Oltux72

We have Preservation/Harmony and Odium who both granted Futuresight in form of electrum and Regals. (I am leaving out Atium because Atium is weird). So why do these Shards still have Futuresight although Renarin blocks Odium's? What is going on there? Do we misunderstand this? Is Odium blinded by Renarin because Renarin is connected to Honor/Cultivation? Or does Harmony have a blind spot in his Futuresight for every electrum Misting? And Odium simply just cares about Renarin due to his position and ignores all those Regals causing gaps?

Possible. Any ideas how to tell this apart? We would need some external source of numbers.

The spikes on the pauldrons are supposed to stop a blade from glancing off towards the throat. Hence they need to be as close to the neck as you can get away with in terms of moving your head.

While @Eri looked at unambiguous fractions, there is another occasion where Scadrians use numbers of their own choice on screen. Steris does a ranking with numbers up to 100. Now this may be seen as choosing an arbitrary positive number or as a fraction with essentially a utility rating between 0 and 1. There are also 100 clips to the boxing and there are coins of 10 boxings, not 16. I am afraid we are forced to conclude that Northern Scadrial uses two number systems. Contrary to what one may assume languages do borrow numbers. A language that has done so is, likely not so incidentally, Korean. But these numbers still use the same base. I have been unable to find an example of a language that has done that. Anyway, in such cases of borrowing it is usual that the borrowed numbers are from a more advanced or prestigious culture and allow counting up to higher numbers. Hence I suspect that the base-16 system is Terris, based on Rashek being Terris, but has never stomped out the old native numbers of the Central Dominance, which are based on 10, with 100 being the largest number word in the native numbers, so if you go beyond 999, you need to go base-16, which we know from the reproduced broadsheets to have much higher number words.

Sure. In most parts of the world sales and deliveries of ice in fact continued into the 1950ies. But that conflates two different things. That you do not have a device for refrigeration on the premise means that you will have to buy ice. But it does not mean that the ice you buy has to be gathered from glaciers or stored in winter. It can just as well be made in a factory. And that was how it was done from the last quarter of the 19th century onwards. Yet the text clearly states that the ice comes from the mountains and is becoming affordable because transportation has been getting cheaper. And that puts a pretty incriminating light on Scadrian technology and science. In fact, we can no longer be sure that they have thermodynamics as a scientific concept.

Sorry for beginning this with a big fat spoiler space (Scadrial) So I am wondering whether Brandon is planning for a subversion of the trope of the modernizing queen. In short is Jasnah heading for a huge disappointment and failure with her modernization? In fact in terms of historic equivalents she reminds me of Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great of Russia. Among her advisors Hoid is encouraging her. That looks like an early warning sign to me. Hoid in an important sense is no longer fully human. Nobody who is pushing five thousand years could be. What do you think?

The problem is that if the spren were intended to show up in Shadesmar, but did not, you need to explain why nobody noticed and told the remaining radiants. Unless of course there were none. But then you need to explain what was the rush. In fact why did they feel that a common decision was necessary and that all spren needed to take part?

Absolutely logical. In fact after that he had some level of control over her, so he would use her for reading and writing. No need to invoke pillow talk.

I am sorry, but this is logically inconsistent. You have to make up your mind. Either the spren would be available in Shadesmar or not. Points 2 and 3 are mutually exclusive.

This is fundamentally mudled thinking. Your enemy is your enemy. Any Singer fighting for his side is innocent (at first glance. Obviously he or she could be guilty for unrelated reasons). An Alethi fighting for Honor is guilty. What do you think happens while his forces besiege a city? He may very well be unable to kill Gavinor, but that would be because he is hs grandchild. He would put his personal obligations above his duty. Dishonor.

An Alethi taking up arms for Odium to get Alethkar is a traitor. He wouldn't be innocent.

Why would he do that? It would make worldhopping even harder. He'd have to also move his Plate's spren.

I thought I'd list a few technological oddities and how they are visible in the books. Then maybe we can discuss a common denominator 1. Guns. Scadrian gun technology is a curious thing. And it seems to be in extreme flux, leading to extremely anachronistic solutions.. In Alloy of Law Wax takes a captured gun and its ammo apart. The propellant is definitely black powder. Yet they use cartridges. That was a transition technology on Earth. Tech level around 1870. Yet Shadows of Self mentions a submachine gun. 2. No refrigeration Shadow of Self clearly states that they get their ice from the mountains. On Earth refrigeration was invented around 1850 and became economical around 1875 3. Cars like around 1920 They look reliable and mass produced. That is post-WW1 technology. They definitely have gasoline engines. Waxillium wonders about using them in Bands of Mourning 4. No immunology Bleeder tells us that the scientists of Scadrial don't know about the function of leukocytes. That is really odd. This is 1860ies knowledge. 5. Spectroscopy & Zeeman effect Again Shadows of Self. That is fairly advanced physics. If you wish to understand it fully, you will need quentum mechanics. 6. Tarcsel's speaker's It looks like he has invented an amplifier based on vacuum tubes. That is 1905 technology and was combined with loudspeakers in 1925. On the whole it looks to be ahead of our world where electricity or materials help, but they are hopeless in organic chemistry or biology.

I am afraid I have to point out that this suspiciously sounds like cultivating the Alethi. And I will allow myself a question. Why are people always coming back to the dead loser instead of the livig winner, who got her revenge, concerning the history of Roshar?

Preservation also became mentally unstable. Odium killed Ambition, Devotion and Dominion without an oathpact being involved. The only thing we know, by direct admission, to be a fatal risk to a Shard is breaking ther own word. That killed Preservation. However, the example of Ruin showed that killing a Shard is possible without that precondition. I am afraid you reduced a general problem to a smaller problem without justification. The problem is explaining how Odium killed Ambition, Devotion, Dominion and Honor.

"Adoda" means light in contemporary Alethi. It may be derived from an earlier "Ado" or "Adod", but that is speculation. Ba-Ado-Mishram was presumably named when she was unmade, which must be around the time of the frst few Desolations at the latest, possibly right after the Splintering. So we must either assume That certain sounds have meaning in the Cosmere for Arcane reasons a hilarious degree of conservativism random chance Ba-Ado-Mishram was renamed

Why then? Did they assume themselves and their spren to go mad? Recognising that danger means avoiding it. Seems like suicide out of the fear of death. If you fear that on the contrary, you must never allow the knowledge to be lost. So they do this all at the same time? If not how do you explain that none of the slow ones picks up a Blade and hears the scream?

Quite a lot of the Fused are drooling idiots, literally. And their god had not died, when they worsened to that level. Nor does it explain the wide disparaty of functionality we see among the Heralds.

Yes. But we have to ask a basic question. Why did he never asked Shallan to give the Blade to him? Why did he not make up a history of an intruder killing his wife with a Blade and he himself killing that intruder subsequently? Nobody would blame a man for failing to defend his wife against a Shardbearer. If you have two corpses, it will always be an option to say that one of them was the attacker. But what did they offer? Why did he never make an attempt to secure the Blade for himself?

Not with an explosion. And they cooperate for Feruchemy You can make Harmonium. That should then be impossible.

To be blunt, what would be the point? If those spren were of the opinion that they should no longer form bonds, why do anything? In a few decades there would be no Knights Radiant left and you cannot torture a spren into a bond. Even if you could, the Recreance would not affect the unbonded and the new spren. Why do something dangerous and painful now?

No, definitely, no, because surely a Radiant would have picked up a dead Blade and heared the scream.

I think that touches on a topic that maybe discussed only in a specific forum.

The Constructs of Antiquity mentions a small colony of machine beings, named Kelkis, on Scadrial, which @Lesser spren remarked upon. And attributes them to the Lord Ruler's hemalurgy. That is too close to a corpate not to suspect a connection, especially as Nazriloffi s interested in them, as depicted in the Ghastly Gondola. What do you think?

I was thinking about what might happen in the gap between Era 2 and Era 3 and I relized that I am unsure about the most important factor. Does Trell know that Harmony has detected his intrusion? I cannot decide. Obviously the name Trell has been uttered, but does Trell still assume that the Scadrians and Harmony think that some social outcasts have just revived an ancient religion from the Words of Founding, or must he assume that he has been identified as having started an extraplanetary invasion? The god metal he gave to Paalm would have to give him away, but upon reread it became unclear to me whether he knows that Paalm used her stash for anything but modifying herself and it became unclear to me whether Trell would assume that her spike was recovered. What do you think?