Oltux72

One thing more. Design can turn into a blade. Hoid has reached the second ideal.

The problem with that is that it is inconsistent with the level of proactivity Father Machine otherwise displayed. If it were a purely logical actor acting on potential dangers, it would have destroyed all remaining settlements after the last one it destroyed. Then eat them all at once. This is introducing a complication that does not really exist. My apologies for being unclear and not making clear distinctions. At the risk of repeating myself, this projects human decision making to a machine. Father Machine does not think like a human being. It needs a reason for any action. It does not stop doing something unless it has to. The notion that results from inaction are different from results from action is deeply ingrained into the human mind. You see that in the trolley problem. Father Machine would react in an obvious manner to that, seeing it as a factual iisue, not a moral dilemma. It is not human. It needed to act to secure an energy supply. So it activated the drainage effect. Is there an advantage in and a need to deactivate it? No. Then it does not. Never change a working system. The idea that Father Machine actively chose to act against Hoid is unsupported. And if you want to entertain it, you'll need to assume that it detected him. Hoid, however, can hide from Shards. You'd have to assume that either Father Machine is better at detecting Hoid than Harmony or Odium are Hoid was cautious enough to run his tempering defence but did not hide his presence when landing on an alien uncontacted planet There is no evidence at all that other human offworlders would be unaffected. In fact the system has been visited. Yet the only offworlder is a hordeling. Why? Simple explanation: The humans that did visit became part of the Shroud. It is true that an ongoing drainage does require an explanation for the continued human population of the planet. I'd say they are just immune. Just as some individuals in a population are usually immune to some diseases, you'll find individuals immune to arcane attacks designed against typical individuals. I'd say the best explanation for the things we have seen are: Father Machine did activate a drainage effect to solve its initial energy shortage It never switched it off because there was no need to a small fraction of the people proved to be immune. Father Machine ignored them, because they did not matter the first time a yoki-hijo broke free Father Machine sent the Nightmares because the people were immune to the drainage, being descendants of immune people Hoid landed and was unintentionally and unknown to Father Machine affected by the ongoing effect Father Machine did send the Nightmares again as the next yuki-hijo broke free, because it had worked and draining would not

Then why did it go for Hoid? It had been operating for centuries without issue. It did not need the energy. Then why send in the nightmares instead of just eating them? Why would Father Machine care? You have to make up your mind. Was it actively looking for more energy or not? It seems to me that you are making a wrong unstated assumption, namely that the drainage effect was a one-time effect. There is no evidence for that. I'd say it operated all those 1763 years and that is why it got Hoid. It was designed for humans because only humans were available when it was designed. It worked. There was no reason to switch it off again. Father Machine does not make changes without reason.

40% of all humans currently are living within 100km of a coast. The more recently settled by an industrialized culture a continent is, the more this applies. Oceans are just extremely useful.

Not really convincing. It leaves Design, the hordelings and all the devices in Hoid's baggage alone. This looks like it only knows how to drain humans and spirits.

Yes, I am aware of stories needing conflict. And I have no problems with it. It just feels inconsistent to have Brandon state that he does not want his books to get too dark, yet he routinely kills billions. JUst as if it counted only if described in detail.

Well, that seems to depend on whether she will succeed or fail. Freeing the slaves has cost a lot of the middle class a lot of money for example. She might be Roshar's equivalent of Joseph II of Austria in the future. Secondly her power among the Knights Radiant should soon be waning, as their number is ggrowing.

Just to mention it, but here we have yet another planet whose history includes the line: And then almost everybody died. This time it is genocide by industrial accident. The majority of the planets in the Cosmere we have seen so far has gone through horrible civilization and population collapses or outright genocide. Brandon seems to be a genuinely nice and caring man. Yet he routinely wipes out planetary populations. Am I the only one to feel that this is odd?

That is possible, but then why was a hordeling there?

Animals don't need to store Stormlight forever on Roshar. Until the next Highstorm will do. As they use the Stormlight they store having a certain leakage does not matter.

Sorry to be obnoxious, but let's be clear. If she is a Returned, then Hoid has just told somebody that there is a way to artificially create Returned with their full memories and without the need to consume Breaths. That is not a matter you can just shrug off.

You also have to give the summoned spirits commands to tell them what to turn into. And the ancient fabrials of Roshar had to be told at a minimum into a fabrial of which Surge they were to turn into. Just as Soulcasting requires commands. And just as you give your Shardblade a command to stay manifested to lend it to somebody or when you throw it. Commands are most prominent in Awakening but not limited to it.

Not if you have enough time. You need a viable breeding population and a plot of land on Nalthis. You then sell the resulting drabs as slaves off planet or outright kill them. Humans are mammals and as such a breedable renewable resource That looks like a much better way forward. Would you get more breaths or one "megabreath" though?

Komashi is in the same star system as a planet of some notoriety. Why were they officially uncontacted? I'd say because they were lethal to most humans. Hoid is attacked, but a hordeling is not. That means that the Machine is still drawing power from people it can drain, that is humans, simply because that is more efficient. Why waste a source of energy? So why have people survived so long? It seems to me that the answer will have to be evolution. They descend from people who happened to be immune to that specific drainage effect. In the early years it was probably somewhat harder to get pregnant as those who reverted to human norm were eliminated in utero, but they had more pressing problems at that time and after so long everybody is immune. This leads to a second point. Why does Hoid dare tell this story to anybody on another world? He thereby reveals that somebody created a machine that can depopulate a world and generate an army of undead slaves with shadow powers. If this were transferable to other worlds he'd trigger a rush by every major power to dig in the ruins for plans. Hence I would say that the death of a Shard has the generic effect of creating Cognitive Shadows nearby.

If the commotion of dozens of painters fighting and shouting and frightened people having walking by running away does not draw reinforcements, nothing will. If you are in that situation you can spare one of your numbers to dash to the next public phone and call HQ.

You do not. Law is a creation of a community with the community gathering being safely stronger than any individual. Shards are not in that category. If you are human in the Cosmere you might (I would say should) conclude that as long as Shards are around, man can never be truly free. The goal arising from that is clear: Splinter them all I suspect that may be Kelsier's goal during the end game of the Cosmere. Reuniters versus Splitters if you will. The power exists. Weakness is slavery and death. That is the one lesson everybody living (well technically dieing in his case) in the Final Empire understands. Lack of information dooms you. Kelsier subjected Scadrial to learning that the hard way. Now, this is just my personal opinion, so keep that in mind, but Kelsier is not a democrat. That in fact is more than personal opinion. The way he runs the Ghostbloods and builds shadow governments pretty much shows that. But what is he? Also quite obviously he hated the aristocracy. But does that mean he hates the powerful? And here we start into shaky territory. There are two kinds (at least) of power. The membership in a class with inherited wealth and legal priviledge. And personal strength through Invested Arts. Essentially, let's be clear, the power to kill in combat. I think Kelsier absolutely detests the former, but he is fine with the latter. He is a product of his time. He would be fine with a council of Mistborn ruling, even if they are a tiny minority, as long as the members are really mistborn. Kelsier has no problem with inequality. He is triggered by inherited inequality. And he has some justification for his views. The way Invested Arts work, some people will always be more powerful in them than others. Vastly more powerful. (Nalthis) One way to avoid that is to tone down the power level. That, however, is inacceptable. Weakness is death. Kelsier is ready (well, some would say enough of a sociopath) to think this through and accept the consequences. Look at the Catacendre and tell him that he is wrong. Can you?

Seons and Skaze are blobs of light, so are spirits - Spren are not Spren are attracted to natural phenomena I think I now see the difference in the subconcious assumptions we are making. To put it bluntly there is no evidence the Komashi/UTol system was unsplintered Virtuosity's seat as opposed to only the site of her death. I would say it wasn't, because (though the evidence is thin): no mentioning of her in the letters between Hoid and Harmony no memento in the trophy cases seen in Oathbringer And the Machine operated on every human, but only on humans. It triggered Hoid's defenses, who apparently still counts as human, despite all modifications, but hordelings and Spren are fine. Every human including those from ordinary worlds bears Investiture. It was certainly not intentionally built to do so, so we must assume that human is the template it learned to drain because they were available. Well, this looks incomplete, at least for some people. In fact I am not sure this was settled. Cognitive Shadows can be reincarnated. So while we are at it, is the state of being a Cognitive Shadow universal, just very brief for most people due to too little Investiture, or is it an exception? What does soul mean in that regard? Did it really use the spiritual component of people as fuel? If not, then whence did the Investiture needed to make Cognitive Shadows that last for centuries without a body come from? It would seem that a process that does that would require additional Investiture, not generate it. Or is this a side effect of using that particular kind of "necromancy" close to the place a Shard has died? That would analagous to Threnody then.

Then I have to ask the obvious question. Is she fully human now? Or is she basically a Returned? Does she, going for the book's example, eat, digest and return stuff to the ecosystem?

Spren are different they predate the splintering they predate Honor's death But for her then it ends. The attracted spren are useless. At best they are pretty. Yumi, however, is highly invested and that is needed to get the Spirits to do something. But Nightmares are not made out of Virtuosity's Investiture. They are ex-people. Correct. If we have the same power at three different places, two of which are unrelated, the reason to assume that the other two are related goes away. I am sorry, but a few thousand years are not enough for multiple totally new species to develop. Virtuosity can have resided there only since the splintering. That opens a whole can of worms. How do we know what lives on the subastral? For all we know it has the equivalent of Spren or even literally Spren. What granted them the Investiture before the Splintering? What else? I cannot use Invested Art if a semisentient machine and plants do it, can I? Nor is it a magic system. There is no obvious connection like in allomancy. Well, it commands ghosts and edits their memories and drew power from them. Maybe the Shades need to be called necromancy, too, but this is necromancy.

I am afraid I have to factually dispute that Shades have colored eyes Shades glow at night Shades trail whiteness at night Nightmares basically look like the products of the Midnight Mother, not a Shade

If he did that what reason would you have to go to medieval England? Hardly the weather, the beaches or the food.

We do not know the last part of the enumeration. For all we know that chain was just made out of silver because you want it to repel Shades while you travel. We can be almost certain that a simple silver chain does not have that property. It would not be an extremely valuable gift if any silver chain would do the job. They did something to that chain, which may or may not require it to be made out of silver.

To cut to the core of the question: Is Yumi a Cognitive Shadow? That is, what happened to her spiritual aspect? By reincarnating her, did Painter do what the Surge of Regrowth does combined with creating a body out of nothing? Or did he give a body to a true Cognitive Shadow? Does she retain the ability to call up the Spirits?

There are multiple ones, sadly only one of them is named The Spirits themselves have arcane powers up to manipulation of Connection. Do we agree that they are to Virtuosity what Seons are to Devotion? The art of calling up the Spirits. That has no direct equivalent. The Spirits materializing and doing work. They are basically old-style fabrials like they were to be found on Roshar. The Hion-lines. They seem to be immaterial fabrials. This is also completely new. Anything equivalent? The Machine. This seems to be a cross between Awakening and new-style fabrials. Necromancy. I am sorry, but what the Machine does amounts to do that. Though I got to ask what exactly powers this Arcana. Is it the act of killing so many people or are the souls used as a permanent power source? Nightmare Painting. Is this a generic thing? Could a Nightmare Painter operate on a Seon or Skaze? The Nightmares themselves. The Midnight Mother, respectively Midnight Aethers. I guess this almost certainly kills the theory that the Midnight Mother was an Aether. The flying trees. Skyeels? It seems to be the same arcana. This looks like a clear evolutionary adaption. That means that Virtuosity did not create them. What is going on? When I list them like this, this beats Roshar. This is an alarming number of Arcana. What is going on there?

This one is an oddity. The ravens are talked about as if they still existed. How is that possible? How have they survived without sunlight?