Oltux72

Yes, but that does not help you. The perpendicularities will not be right at the edge of a subastral. Within a subastral at least the settled continents have their original sizes. That means that you have thousands of kilometers to travel. There is a problem. Fabrials include a spren. They take their original shape in the CR. Taking a fabrial through the CR is likely impossible and may have catastrophic consequences, if the spren materializes inside the gem. A lot of open questions. Does the CR shift around? How long would railway tracks last? Do speeds map linearly? Can you do the materialization trick between worlds? If not the Spren apparatus for making drinking water will fail. If you are content to use kind of manual power I see some options awakened constructs lifeless cognitive shadows animal spren If you go for mechanical constructs, you will need to power them. That is problematic. The distances are long. That will take many depots, if you took fuel from the PR. Again open questions. What happens if you manifest a drum of gasoline and put it into an engine? Can you manifest a fire and ice and use that to run a heat engine? Can you manifest a fueled vehicle?

Which would you use? If he survives. If he hasn't suffered lasting damage from Aesudan or Yelig-Nar. Possibly. It depends on when they start researching the methods of taking spren off world and how long it takes. They will make a report about the fall of Kholinar and the trip through Shadesmar. It will mention the strange blade. They also know that man is not native to Roshar (the planet). Yet curiously the supposedly native gods are human. So is Odium. Shallan and Jasnah will say something about the Ghostbloods. They can talk to Spren, who have trade relationships to other worlds. They have seen Nightblood in action. These reports will be analysed by Navani and Jasnah, who know what Fabrial science can do and cannot do. As far as the leadership of the Knights Radiant is concerned, the secret is out. There are other worlds, they are populated and they can be reached through Shadesmar. How exactly is unclear, but that is a question of R & D. True. Yet by that logic he should not be on the battle field. And given the travel times involved, an envoy will have to have some political clout. Malata is the ranking Dustbringer. If the Radiants as an organization know, so will she and so will Taravangian. Taravangian wants to safe mankind. He just thinks surrender is the best option. If he could he would evacuate as many as possible. He has an extreme incentive to look for refuges off Roshar and into how to live in the Cognitive Realm. If the Radiants know, so does the queen of Thaylenah. You can bet she will send explorers. Yes. She is, however, expendable and no use in combat. But the glory!

Jasnah is famous for her atheism. Technically of course the Allmighty does not exist, as he is dead. But the evidence that he indeed existed is overwhelming and known to Jasnah. Does she change her religous stance? For somebody with her dedication to the truth that looks inevitable to me. Her uncle talked to a god. Or did he? She will no longer doubt the existance of Honor. But does she recognise him as a god? His official divine attribute are incomplete, but not altogether wrong. So what does she think and more importantly, what does she publically profess? It seems to me that for an Alethi queen pretending to be atheist makes no sense. So how far will she go?

Somebody who knows there are other worlds has an incentive to investigate them is not held back by other duties or limitations That unfortunately for the time being rules out Jasnah and makes any Radiant unlikely. If I go by planet, that would be Roshar: Adolin - he is trusted, he has been in Shadesmar and he can defend himself Roshar: Adrotegia - Taravangian certainly is looking for a loophole and he cannot go himself Roshar: Rysyn - you need a traveller Scadrial: Marasi - Wax has learned of other worlds, but he can hardly go himself Scadrial: MeLaan - Harmony would like to keep an eye on things and you do not say no to a Kandra Scadrial: Nicelle Sauvage - she knows where the perpendicularity is located Scadrial: Allomancer Jak - the ultimate adventure

Use speed. Yes, Cesium will explode but the reaction takes a little time to really start up. Unfortunately we do not know how long hemalurgy takes to work, but given how quickly Spook was spiked it takes less than a second. So use an air gun to propel it through the sacrificial victim and shoot it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen. Now I have no idea how you would actually use the spike, but you have a chance to make a charged spike.

That I actually doubt. Fortifications are very important in premodern warfare. Roshar is made for that kind of warfare. If you can shape stone, material is readily available Long sieges are difficult Building an earthen ramp is not an option An argument can be made that the core combat troops that really counted were the Stonewards.

lack of metallic arts (in the Kandra) willingness to kill (Kandra) ability to operate among people without causing a panic (Marsh) replaceability relationship issues (Kelsier)

Or something that Sazed did not have. If malatium stored fertility, for example, Sazed would have had a problem. You would still have a charged metal mind. If you had a Lurcher or a Coinshot look at them, you would have identified the correct Ferrings. And those would really have an incentive to experiment? But are there ferrings for malatium? Or atium for that matter?

We know that Harmony specifically groomed Wax for events he foresaw. That looks like an awful risk to take if it is the only agent he prepared. Wax could always fall of a horse, eat soemthing bad or get hit with an obsidian blade. And how sure was Harmony that Wax would choose to live on? That makes me suspect that Harmony has a B team and maybe a whole plan B. How does it look like? Might it indeed be --- the monks of Baz-Kor?

If we can assume that he can transfer Stormlight instead of living directly of Highstorms, he can just use multiple gems. He lets them leak doen to 5w%. Then he transfers the Stormlight from every second sphere into the other member of the pair. Rinse and repeat.

The Kandra should probably be still alive. Also there apparently is a perpendicularity on Scadrial somewhere in the southern mountains. Felt and Demoux should also still be around. OK, I admit it, I want to see Allomancer Jak touring Roshar and Shadesmar.

Britain and the Netherlands were the richest parts of Europe in the 18th century. It would be too much of a coincidence to assume that the Industrial Revolution happened in the richest place that had coal by accident. Areas with coal deposits are not that rare in Europe, let alone in the world. In addition, the early British textile industry was powered by water. The earliest mechanical looms were even called 'water frames'. The relative wealth of preindustrial times depended on trade, which needs transport. Not very practical ones. Unless you dig down, you will end up with canals above ground level. Your canal banks will be a problem. Water is heavy. They are a security risk, in case a bank breaks. You need to build bridges over it. You need a system to fill them with water, and so on. So much or little labor that they were dug regularly, even back into classical antiquity. This really does not explain why Germany's heavy and chemical industry is lined up along the Rhine river. It has the Po river and, no, the area is home to several major canals linking the important cities to it. Exactly. They were. Yet permanent waterways are a rare exception on Roshar. There is the explanation.

That is precisely the point. Roshar is developing slowly. Why? Hypothesis: One factor is a lack of cheap transportation Finding: Roshar indeed has little cheap sea transport, due to its shape. Where did the industrial revolution start? Great Britain. A ridiculously long coast line for its area. Where do we find thriving proto-industries? Among other areas, the northern Mediterranean. Again, long coast lines for its area. Another area was China. Major permament rivers and a famous canal and costal shipping. Again not found on Roshar. Roshar usually has ground which is rock. You would need to dig into that, if you want a canal. How many of those are there for a whole continent? Not in the areas where industrialization started on Earth. When was the last time a major English river dried out? You have to go into the geological past for examples. Or a German river or a Northern Italian or East Chinese river or a river on the east coast of North America? All the areas in which the industrial revolution took hold in early or showed a thriving proto-industry show permanent rivers and decent oceanic shipping. You can ship goods quite reliably there by numerous ways. That is precisely the reason it does not help to show that under good conditions you can sometimes ship by river on Roshar. It needs to work well, not just in principle. Yes. On a world where you cannot just build an earthen dam. On a world where most rivers have a wildly fluctuating amount of flow. We are talking about making something work economically, not a proof of concept.

Is that what you referred to in page 954? Also important for proto-industry. That does not require drilling. That is not easy. In particular the rocks need to withstand the next flood. Yes. Any people living in a land which has rivers with enough sediment knows natural dams rivers build. If your land isn't too flat, you will see land slides. If it is cold enough you will also see ice dams. The idea that a dam is primarily an artificial construct is a cultural notion of people living in an industrial economy. Certainly, if Hoid in WoR is not enough we also have: Oathbringer, page 187: Oathbringer, page 582: Oathbringer, page 981: Oathbringer, page 1209: A typical Rosharan river is impermanent and falls dry often and many are filled only during and shortly after rain.

Exactly. During a high storm they stop and take shelter in a mobile bunker. Meaning that sailing a ship on a flooding river during a Highstorm is problematic to say the least. ANy wind mill you would have to take apart removing the blades before a storm and the tower would have to be much sturdier than a terrestial wind mill. You could build a horizontal mill. But you would still have to secure it before every storm and it would have to be housed in a bunker. Well yes, but the topic is not whether you can live under Rosharan conditions, but how suitable they are to protoindustrial technologies. And how suitable Roshar is. The continent is less well suited to sea transport than Europe or South East Asia Or Japan. I did read it. But it has very few facts relevant to technology. That is the key point. It turns rapidly into stone. For the purpose of how much water it retains the answer is the same whether we are talking about cremstone or bedrock: So close to zero that it does not matter. Meaning that water that falls onto Roshar (the continent) is either sucked up by plants or follows gravity. So it collects in depressions, which get always shallower because crem will fill them, or runs into rivers directly. That is good if you want to build a wall. But if you go down, the problem persists. You have to go through stone. Granted, it is cremstone, not granit, but soil is still much easier if you want to dig a canal. Canals are extremely important in protoindustrial transportation. Well yes. A windbreak won't help you with a flood though. And building a wind mill behind a wind break limits its utility. Yes, as figures of speech: No indication anybody built a dam. Exactly. As an unusual exception: Normal Rosharan rivers often fall dry. For the obvious reason of the land having no soil.

Turning the task of building a water wheel into the task of building a house that is built to withstand a flooding river in its ground floor. Which now has to be decremed. And you cannot build dams out of soil. It needs to be crem or rock. A water wheel is supposed to save labor. Meaning that if it takes that much effort, it is no longer feasible.

Crem turns rapidly into rock. The capacity to retain water needs a soil with organics and a lot of voids. You cannot sail a flash flood. People in monsoon climes build wind mills or build their water mills on the rivers supplied by mountain ice and snow. At the risk of repeating myself, there is no logical connection between normal and suitable for some activities. Not all that many. As you noted: crem. Whereever water pools, crem will accumulate faster. Roshar has a tendency to become smoother over time.

Yes, they retract, so they do not stabilize soil. In terran soils roots act to keep together particles. To have that function they must stay in the soil. The storms are not the issue. The issue arises due to the time after the storms. The roots stay only in the open while there is water to be sucked up. Water just does not last all that long on solid stone. Without a stable soil, the water from rains cannot stay in that soil. It washes the soil downstream and once that is done it just immediately drains to the next river. You also get the effect that the organics in soil suck up water. Again there is no soil for organics to be in the first place. Rosharan plants lose water to evaporation. That is not just theory. It is exactly what the more densely populated countries of Europe see when they seal more and more of their area with roofs and road surfaces. The speed of run-offs goes up and flooding gets worse. It is also one of the reasons areas with less plant cover are more prone to flash floods. Basic ecology. I stand corrected. That leaves you with the less efficient kind of water wheel. It also limits the size of the wheel. And it does not help you when the water gets too low, which will be often. Which are artificial and magical. The water vanishing just before the storm hits? A sea of spears? Well, yes. You deal with it and Roshar is inhabitated. But dealing with it has consequences, some of which will be disadvantages for certain purposes. Trivial example, if you want carpeted ground floors, the Purelake is not the right abode for you. In countries with more arid climates and sporadic rains, settlement patterns change. In Spain for example, spots in river valleys close by the actual river are not the most popular areas for cities. You find them at some distance. Settlements in North Africa avoid large windows to the south, Northern Europe favors them. Roshar just happens to be worse for preindustrial activities. That is perfectly normal and has precedents on Earth. The Polynesians lost ceramics and many crops and domestic animals the Lapita people, whom they descend from, still knew. Adaption to an island environment, whose limited resources didn't support some technologies.

No soil, well not much soil. In particular no root system and organics in the sand, which we know they have enough to use it in arenas, probably to be found in basins. There is very little capacity to hold back water. Add to that irregular seasons. That means no regular cycle of snow deposits at variable heights to melt into the summer. Water levels will fluctuate frequently, unpredictably and wildly. Remember that the Windrunner River was called one of the few permanent rivers. The rivers as water courses are permanent. But not necessarily them being filled with flowing water, in particular enough water to run a loaded boat through. Furthermore where are the cities at major confluences and riverfords? Roshar is like a tropical forest. They have the nutrients in the plants and very little in the soil. That is the way Roshar deals with water. There is just no way you can store water in stones, unless you form a pond. And those will evaporate quickly being exposed to the sun. The Shattered Plains must be one of the wettest places on Roshar It is closest to the ocean and regularly drenched by the Highstorms. Sebarial had no troubles establishing agriculture there. In fact Roshar seems to have no deserts. But it is just not a terrestial world. All that water that pours down in a Highstorm must go somewhere and it won't go into the soil, as there is no soil. Every Rosharan (outside Shinovar) river will undergo a catastrophic flash flood in every Highstorm. That does not preclude them from supporting lush ecosystems, in fact it encourages it. Millions of little pockets of water in every crevice and puddles of water as the flood receeds. But for mills, that is no good.

71%Elsecaller 47%Lightweaver 35%Edgedancer 33%Dustbringer 33%Stoneward 18%Bondsmith 17%Skybreaker 11%Windrunner 5%Truthwatcher 0%Willshaper

We are talking about a man who considers a 'shash' brand part of his identity. Who watched a dozen men under his command whom he cared for die many of them while he desperately tried to stop the bleeding, spent like ammunition, treated worse than animals used for pulling carts. A man whose brother was killed almost before his eyes. A man living in a world threatened with population loss of 90% in a clash between deities. The Stormlight Archive is a tragedy. It may be written in a comparatively light tone, but the content of the stories is about as dark as it gets. Yes, of course. Without individual differences pointing to a different behavior, you expect Alethi to act like Alethi, don't you?

Why? For issues of balance? I am afraid I will need to be callous again. Alethkar is a feudal, preindustrial land. Its people marry for a lot of reasons (including sets of shard plate). Love and attraction is not the only one, nor the most important. This is not the Western World in the 21st century. Kaladin is under a lot of pressure to marry. The poor man is supposed to lead the Windrunners but cannot even read his own mail or any reports. He is coming home to a cot in an army camp, if he comes home at all. He is a very young man. He is disappointed with women in general. There is a high chance he would marry just to get it over with and just to have somebody at home.

Yes, but they have to eat. Those Singers surely have the capability and knowledge to plant fields and keep the group alive. But to do that they have to plant fields and errect some shelters. Yet we have Windrunners, Skybreakers and Fused flying above the Shattered Plains. How come they remain undiscovered from aerial observation for a whole year?

Railroads are a late invention of the industrial revolution. To build them you already need to have cheap iron (preferably steel) and steam engines. We need to look earlier at coal mines, textile plants and transportation, that is into the 18th and 17th centuries. Roshar is a terrible place for transportation Highstorms No navigable rivers The major lakes are not navigable either One compact land mass No soil - you cannot dig canals, you have to blast them out of rock Horses are expensive. You are limited to chulls, who are strong and dependable, but slow. It is also a planet without major power sources other than muscle power Few, if any permanent rivers - no water mills Good luck building a wind mill that will withstand a highstorm Little soil, hence little sedimentation, hence no major basins or coal swamps in the past - no coal or oil or natural gas A further problem is Vorinism. You have no real labor market. Wages are set by the church.

That raises a question. That group contained the noncombatants. It is unlikely that they would survive wondering around a whole year and living as hunter/gatherers. So that means that they have been located at the beginning of the book, or they are dead.