Oltux72

How do you make a Shard forget that she is married? Also, Hoid's children will be Mistborn.

If they wouldn'r find another perpendicularity, they'd have to pass through Patji, wouldn't they? And what good does the Investiture do them if they don't use it? Perpendicularities don't float, do they? Chances are that the one that got to Shadesmar was on land. Hence you cannot sail there. If you want to use a ship in Shadesmar, you'll have to assemble it in Shadesmar. People will have to carry the parts and materials through the perpendicularity. I'd make it as light as I could get away with.

True. But why would electricity be any easier? If you are going to develop such a system, would you start from scratch or with something that you already have, but does not quite do what you want?

Well, technically no planet in our solar system had electricity before balloons. But that aside do you call rubbing amber with a catskin having electricity? And the development of hot air balloons seems to have happened twice in human history.

I against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. Our cousins and we against outsiders.

We have seen a spren living far away from Roshar. That raises questions. If you are a spren where would you go? Will other worldsform groups akin to the Knights Radiant? Where are the inkspren? Given what we saw Szeth do, the economic value of an inkspren should be phenomenal.

Would you want to be captain of an outdated half-wreck and a crew of misfits? Plus, if you really hurt a dragon pointing to your authority as a captain will be a thinner defense than you thought.

Isn't that reason enough? How? Carrying boats built for Shadesmar through a perpendicularity, through the jungles of Patji and then sail an ocean they did not know?

This list is specific to Scadrial. And I am afraid I need to point out that baloons generally predate electricity. Scadrial is different from Roshar. Arcane powers on Scadrial are more like superpowers and are very well defined. You just cannot build the Scadrian equivalent of fabrials without some pretty specific stuff. The technological progress will develop differently due to chance, but it'll not develop differently specifically due to magic. Until they get to technology at about the level of 1920, when the contact with the Southerners happens. So I think the best approach is to look at things that technology you will necessarily discover if you have 1920ies tech and what they cannot do. For example with that level of technology you will be abe to build a cyclotrone and if you do that you will discover relativity. Hence they will know that FTL cannot be done with mundane means.

I guess the issue is that the bond between an Aether and a person is much more political, as you are bonding to the core Aether, not to another individual, if you bond an Aether.

They didn't. Dusk's people were backward. The dominant culture was at a tech level of 1880 or so. They went to 1960 or so technologically. Now that is still a quick jump by modern standards of Europe or North America. But not everybody moves that slow. Look at China. I am afraid I cannot concur. That man was for most practical purposes, a buffoon. To be blunt I consider him the weakest major character Brandon ever wrote. Straff Venture was more interesting.

How do you know that the reference in IotE doesn't also reference the initial arrival of the Evil? That destroyed the great culture mentioned in Secret History.

I stand corrected.

Yes, but he does not say controlled by whom. By logic it has to be somebody who lets the Ghostbloods pass, but that need not be the Malwish. For all we know Harmony has put a company of mercenaries or Koloss there. Or the Ghostbloods control it themselves. Yet those caravans have been running for a long time. I suppose once you own lifeless draft animals or porters, the running costs are low.

By the specific connection with ethnicity I would assume that Harmony has left Scadrial, or to be more precise become a multiplanet Shard without going the routes of Cultivation or Autonomy.

But the caravans were still running in Rhythm of War yet the Malwish had airship technology for at least a century by that time. How sure are we that the Malwish are alreday controlling Scadrial's perpendicularity in the time of The Lost Metal ?

I will state the thesis in the beginning: The Cosmere will not strictly go from isolated worlds only linked by secretive caravans directly to the space age. There will be an intermediate age where the worlds with perpendicularities are linked by airships in Shadesmar. It seems to me that there is a common misconception that the space age in the cosmere will proceed along two lines through Shadesmar and through normal space concurrently. I don't think that that is right. On the contrary the existance of Shadesmar will delay conventional space travel. Why strap yourself into a rocket just to go to orbit, if walking through Shadesmar can take you to other inhabitated worlds? The obvious solution is to make travel through Shadesmar better rather than built spaceships. I would propose that the initial development of true FTL will come as a Scadrian response to Rosharan Elsecalling. When will this intermediate age begin? Now. I predict that Ghostbloods will be set a few decades after its beginning. Island of the Emberdark is set at its end towards a transition to FTL.

Ati and Leras did that. Spook agitated in a coal mine town even in Era 1. Now for the general question. Technology in general works quite well. What are you reading this message on? What are the shortcomings of technology? That is the question you need to ask if you want to know where a culture with limited arcane powers will use Investiture for. Antigravity Conservation of mass and energy Cooling Selective regeneration and destruction of tissue Objectively processing information according to importance FTL

Why would they need to? Feruchemy can already turn heat into Investiture.

It would seem to me that the Shards and mankind are in a general conflict during this age. Maybe Harmony has just drastically curtailed the supply of Harmonium, hence we are seeing a regression, not a failure to develop. In consequence the Scadrians are not letting Harmonium off planet, if they can help it.

I would say that Sanderson is about averting the very worst outcome by human action. That his stories show change for the better is a bold proposition. That guy routinely kills over 95% of a population.

I am afraid that saying what makes things better is hard as well. I am sure the things the Ones Above have brought have lowered infant mortality, reduced polution and saved quite some people from harsh labor conditions. If we go to another planet I notice a suspicious absence of people critical of House Kholin for unifying Alethkar with naked violence. They are making war, sort of. They are making a limited war of small forces very hard to supply and transport. You will see extreme forms of selection bias among the troops. Including people whose capabilities do not justify their ambitions.

At the risk of repeating myself: Ask any Parshman whether Roshar has improved. In Mistborn and Warbreaker Brandon cheated by having either an insane magic entity or zombies pay the price for the victory of the side you were supposed to favour. To be blunt, by rescuing Dalinar Kholin Kaladin in a sense validated all the atrocities of the Blackthorn. That cheating is coming to an end and must come to an end. If real people clash, one side must lose. And the smaller powers will suffer.

Well, modern Brandon is more honest. And, most important, wordier. He could have split The Final Empire into two books and stopped the first book at the Skaa army being wiped out. And then left his readers with that cilffhanger for the better part of a decade. Islands of the Emberdark is considerably less bleak than Hero of Ages if you go by body count. I mean less than fifty people die in the whole book. Hero of Ages is bloodier by a small factor of a million, give or take. Now, is modern Brandon more honest in showing the suffering? Possibly, yes, he is. That is the fundamental issue if you write a war story. Both sides are people and at least one of them has to lose. You cannot write a war ending without one side losing hope, because that is how and why wars end. Earlier books could sort crank up the losses to numbers which go beyond the imaginable for most people. If you get the deaths into the millions, you turn them into a statistic. And he had the escape of letting most of his book take place in nations isolated from possible foes or letting them be about averting a war. Deaths could be made to seem like accidents or freak acts of nature, rather than individual horrors. That is no longer possible if the great opening of Shadesmar to everybody is to happen. It means that people with conflicting interests will come into contact. They will act by the logic of power politics because they have to if they want to survive and thrive. This means that you'll have two groups of readers. Those for whom the strategy of turning the megadeths of the earlier books into statistics worked. And those for whom it didn't. The first group will see death and despair creeping into the stories, while the second group will calmly do the math and scratch their heads at the firsty group.

So you have been telling ... I've noticed the subtle avoidance of saying "doing". You are working for the Ghostbloods! Confess! Do not trust them. There is always another secret a.k.a. traitor. They are all traitors.