Oltux72

No crem Fields much harder to work during constant bad weather Ecological disruption from species dieing out due to maladaption Crops not adapted to the new weather pattern Shipping is severely impeded Resistances dropping without being flooded in Stormlight Rosharan crops are adapted to an environment where they become very wet for a short time. They'll probably just rot if it keeps raining for weeks. Something will be needed to overcome those deficiencies. If that is not Singer growth magic, there will be an issue.

Now, for your question, fabrial technology depends on a source of Investiture. Currently on Roshar that means Retribution or the Sibling. If you are talking about outside Urithiru only Retribution. Hence the question you need to answer first would be about the political future of Roshar. Do they collaborate with Retribution causing Retribution to be generous with Warlight? If so, fabrial technology is likely to continue. If not, it seems quite unikely and we are looking at a collapse of civilisation including the death of most of the human population..

They have coal. Spook agitated among coal miners in Era 1. Probably they do not have oil.

The basic issue I have with this answer is that different observers may dramatically disagree about that. Suppose I count the spheres in my purse and miscount. Does the number of beads representing them change?

Suppose I have a cube of sugar and a cup of tea. If I drop the sugar into the tea and start stirring, will the bead representing the lump of sugar dissolve? If so, when? If I put multiple objects into a blender, what will happen to the beads?

Could they have made lerasium then?

Do they form a Luhel bond, a Nahel bond or is it something else?

Could Rashek and Vin have made Atium?

Valid points. As far as I can tell, Survivorists simply take Harmony by his word. He does not want to be worshipped, so they don't worship him. They absolutely acknowledge that he exists and has divine powers. They just don't see him as a role model. And by saying that Harmony exists only due to Kelsier's action they are correct, again by Harmony's own admission. In theory, perhaps you could remain on that standpoint. Yet on Scadrial Shards created the planet you are standing on. In fact they moved the planet twice and allowed a mere sliver to remake the genetics of the whole population. Well, it follows basically natural laws, hence it must have sedimentation like the Earth and the basic shape of the land has been retained. It has major lakes and seasons. You should have records of biological activity in them, even if you don't have old macroscopic fossils. Spook worked with coal miners in Fadrex City. So there is at least coal.

That is very much based on a monotheist western religion. No Cosmere religion can claim to have created the world. They have a creation story on Scadrial. It does not involve the current gods. Yet, it is verifiable. For example, look at the fossil record. Again, they have evidence. The Words of Founding are scientifically verifiable to an extent. You just have to dig. New plants and animals right at the layer laid down at the Catacendre. Geomagnetics. Artefacts from the old world. Just finding a calender would prove a miracle. You could even prove that the planet has been moved by checking the length of the year in the geological record. Scadrians have direct physical unequivocal evidence of miracles. It is not just academic either. Everybody can go to New Serran. Their religious experience thus is different from our examples. You can quarrel seriously only about interpretation of the facts, not the facts themselves. If you are a hardline atheist on Scadrial you are basically delusional and they will treat you as such. Freedom of religion on Scadrial is not the same thing as it is here. I really doubt whether Survivorist teaching really is about morals in a narrow sense. You cannot use Kelsier as a reason to say that stealing is wrong, for example. Yet, again, the ancient Greeks, just to give an example, had no problem saying that adultery is wrong while telling stories about Zeus. If you are looking for the inherent contradictions in Survivorism as opposed to new developments then you'd have to look at the community versus the individual survival. The caves at the Catacendre - to give the obvious example - should have been filled with healthy, young, fertile people with a preponderance of women. On the other hand Survivorism supposedly also tells sick postmenopausal women or old men to survive. You may very well be able to build a case for eugenics from Survivorism as well as a case bitterly opposing it. There is ample room for conflict and schism. But it is not new.

They have too much physical proof. The very bunkers people survived the Catacendre in still exist. If you doubt the Survivor existed you'll be kind of a flatearther. The main point of contention among Suvivorists I'd reckon to be the incorporation of the Malwish into the theology. Survivorism now will have to decided whether it is an ethnic religion or has a universal message.

That sums up the problem. This division is plausible, but no more plausible than other divisions. You could see Whimsy as random change. Some people kill out of their interpretation of Mercy.

Absolutely true. My point was that for Kelsier's ruthlessness to dominate his actions a convincing reason had to be created. Hence Brandon Sanderson went ahead to create and free Retribution. In that sense I still maintain that the end of Wind and Truth was good and necessary, although to me that Roshar is no longer Roshar. In our terms we would call Kelsier a nationalist or a patriot, depending on personal attitude. Creating an antagonist to him with a universalist approach in Retribution, who wants to rule the whole Cosmere, but is in turn forced to guard his own base of power, makes it even better. He himself would strongly agree. It seems to me that we are too often disregarding a central piece of Kelsier's attitude: He blames himself for the Catacendre. To him this was not an act of renewal as it is to people in the Wax & Wayne era. He saw tens of millions die. In his typical fashion his reaction is not recrimination or shame, but resolve to do better. This will never ever happen again on his watch and if you are in the way of that, he will deal with you. I would argue that they do on the contrary understand themselves and, most of all, their true position in the world better. The complexity in the first two books is talk. When they need to act, their options shrink and they understand that more and more. The last two books are about people losing their delusions. That is inherently not pretty.

That I have to disagree with. At the risk of repeating myself, the first two books are about an upcoming war, while the later three books are about a war that has started. That has consequences. When you say that those questions are no longer asked, then in absolute terms I must say that you are factually wrong. Yes, they are no longer coming up in discussions among the protagonists. That is inevitable. Such is the logic of war. If you start discussing during a war whether you deserve to win, you better give up. But the questions are asked Kaladin asks them Moash asks them The Skybreakers ask them In a sense even Eshonai and Venli ask them In fact during a war more questions arise, namely where your loyalty lies. Queen Fen Rrnamdi was asked that question and she gave an answer. In fact in hindsight her plotline was sadly underused. It is just not true that in a war you don't ask complex question. The difference is that warfare forces you to give on a fundamental level a simple answer. Conflating that is not helpful. If you can live with a complex process of reasoning being forced into a binary answer there is no problem. If you cannot, there is a problem. But that does not arise from the quality of the book, but from its subject. Exactly. However, Brandon Sanderson does not tell the story. The later three books of SA are about a war the protagonists lose, but not on it. This must sound nonsensical, so allow me to explain. We never see the war as it plays out. We see the very start in Oathbringer and the conclusion in the later two books. If you will SA until Oathbringer is Dune and Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth are Dune Messiah. The war takes places in the time jump. As far as Brandon Sanderson not telling stories of a losing war, well, what is Mistborn? Now, he may be unable to tell a story of hopelessness, but that is not the same thing as losing a war. The story of a hero sacrificing everything for the people living in a world of ash and blood is a good synopsis of The Final Empire, while that also featured a very pyrrhic victory. Hence I have to disagree. Sanderson has a talent for making a loss not feel like a loss. The man's signature is somewhere between a pyrrhic victory and a less than absolute defeat. He just writes in a way that you don't really dwell on the death of 98% or so of a planet's population. A necessary consequence of the time jump. If he had written a chapter featuring a sequence of beloved characters of Bridge Four dieing in clash after clash and the survivors slowly succumbing to drugs and orgies you would have made it extremely convincing. I would have liked such a chapter. But I think I am in the minority. Just imagine how the corpse of a Radiant must look after losing a battle given their healing. A good description of that would have made people reproduce their lunch. There is no ideal choice in telling a story. There may be a best choice, but that is not the same. Again I must disagree, as Kelsier is no villain. Neither is he a saint. But fundamentally he was willing to die for his people. He is a hero. Making him mindlessly evil would have led to a weaker story line.

How did Battar charge her spikes? It also raises the question whether you can make spikes by awakening or AonDor.

He felt the tug before his ascension.

Wind and Truth has explained why Spren, Fused and Light were chained to Roshar. The reason cannot apply to Thaidakar. So what keeps him in his home system?

I am afraid I need to point out that Ba-Ado-Mishram knows that, too. So do the Fused. In fact, so do the humans who are aware of the wider Cosmere. So do the Spren. Hence the basic question: What is important enough to continue warfare on Roshar? Yes, they could struggle for dominance internally. But is that worth open warfare?

Retribution is now the Rosharan Shard. Acting against Retribution would mean restartung the war against the Singers No. It is not. In terms of technology access to the CR means that they are already there. A South Scadrian airship is good enough to go to another solar system.

By the time SA#6 will come, Brandon will have layed the groundwork for the space age. Hence it seems unlikely that he'll do a regression into a purely Rosharan setting. I'd say that the back half of the Stormlight Archive will be about Roshar catching up to the rest of the Cosmere in terms of technology and Roshar coming to terms with the reemergence of the Singers.

Retribution has existed only for an extremely short part of SA 1 - 5. Retribution represents both sides.

I need to point out that we've never seen a Steel Inquisitor in a situation where he could see Spren. Secondly, awakened objects apparently can see. Hemalurgy has two steps Charging the spike by human sacrifice altering a spirit web by sticking it into the correct bind point It is unclear whether Battah has replicated both steps. In fact, Moash's spikes glowed with Voidlight. Why would spiking a human fill a gemstone with Voidlight? In fact why would you go for human sacrifice at all, knowing that some organisms have gemhearts? It seems to me that Battah has recreated a primitive equivalent of Hemalurgy, which allows the most basic function of hemalurgy, instead of transfering powers.

It would seem that entities like Wind and Truth are really ancient and not limited to Roshar.

S : Final Empire, Oathbringer, Words of Radiance, Tress of the Emerald Sea A : Hero of Ages, Shadow of Self, Allomancer Jak, The Way of Kings, Secret History, The Emperor's Soul B : Sunlit Man, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Edgedancer, Shadows of Silence, Sixth of the Dusk, Well of Ascension, Alloy of Law, The Lost Metal, Bands of Mourning, Warbreaker C : Wind and Truth, Elantris, Rhythm of War D : Dawnshard, Hope of Elantris, The Eleventh Metal

Harmony does not want soldiers. If he wanted them, he'd make improved Koloss and Kandra and he'd arm them with high-tech weapons. The threats to Scadrial are hidden, not overt for now. He needs a 00 agent. He wants James Ladrian or Black Widow, not Captain Scadrial. A cop is closer to that than a soldier. He has a Black Widow. Now he needs a Bond and an Ironman.