Oltux72

I am wondering to which extent the Knights Radiant can be part of an organization or civil society. They are bound to their oaths and specifically to their interpretation of their oath. So suppose you are a Windrunner and you consider a condemned prisoner innocent. What now? You must protect those who cannot protect themselves. Is that a court of law used proper procedures a reason to not follow through your own judgement? If you are a Skybreaker, of course, it would be. But that is exactly what you are not. Are there more conflicts of this sort? Or am I imagining things?

If it works. And they do not look like they are suffering from a shortage of ettmetal. Yes. Maybe. He may just as well be cooperating with somebody or planing to sell the good stuff. No. I am sorry, but you definitely need electricity to make aluminium in bulk. Yes. That is an important point. The economics of metals is completely different on Roshar. It does not matter into which metal you soulcast stuff. Hence there is an upper limit on price that is independent of the scarcity of the metal. They just need an example. That tells you nothing about words more than a few hundred years old. The Lord Ruler really scrambled Scadrials languages. Nor is it plausible that a word would stay the same among different worlds, hundreds of years and multiple species. The word is a kind of "international" word. Anything is possible. The largest trading partner of Germany in 1913 was France. Yet Scadrial and Roshar are true competitors in magomechanical machines. That is a good question? What will you import that a whole world will not provide?

Yes. Though even there we see that Southern Scadrial has been developing a competing technology. The Nalthian equivalent is maybe the best but hideously expensive, while Selish magic is not exportable. Right now we have three sources of arcane machinery: Roshar - Fabrials Scadrial - Medaillions the Ire - as yet nameless In the relative near future it looks like Threnody is going to join them. That is quite a number, so we need to ask into which arcane arts Stormlight would fit without modification. And for that I see just two: the Returned Sandmastery - you can make your sand everywhere. Yet Scadrial has some real advantages they are ready to go now - no issues with moving spren off world or through perpendicularities they can export capabilities they can export mercenaries they can, if they really want to, export the fuel source in form of compounding if they want to get really bloody, they could export hemalurgic products

They have the Returned, whom Investiture is literally vital for.

Very well. Yes, but that need not imply trade between every combination of reachable worlds. Relations may be so frosty that trade will be curtailed. Taldain for example may ban it for ideological reasons. Yes. Actually, what for? Scadrial looks like the world that does not need Stormlight. It gets interesting as soon as you can fuel Feruchemy with it. Failing that, I see no point. The world that really is the ready market for Stormlight would be Nalthis. As far as aluminium is concerned there must be an alternate source in the Cosmere. SA is before Era 2. Aluminium is still scarce on Scadrial The Fused knew that there was aluminium under Urithiru. That makes it ancient. In fact it would predate the Lord Ruler. It was found in the Rose Empire. Well, no. Trade ensues. They'd go to war precisely because they seek the same thing: colonies

There are not many alternatives to sillicates that are not readily soluble in water, make sturdy stones and are not poisonous. Sillicates almost invariably contain aluminium and titanium in significant amounts. This could theoretically be different on Roshar, but then we wouldn't see abundant minerals containing aluminium. And we do see them. Emeralds for example are chemically speaking an aluminium compound. For that specific airship maybe. In general they experimented with the metal on multiple sites. On the contrary. You are doing research in Urithiru. You need a few kilogramms of metal usually known to be made by soulcasting. You have a lot of soulcaster arounds. Do you spend a lot of your spheres on that or do you have a soulcaster make the metal? In Shinovar it is taboo. Not elsewhere. Otherwise there would be no point for a Thaylen trader to sell metal specifically made by soulcasting in Shinovar and feel a need to have prove that it was soulcast from organic material. And we have seen them do that. And stone houses are for the poor. They definitely quarry that stone. Soulcasting is expensive. We are just seeing so much soulcast housing because much of what we see are army camps.

But not the rest of the Cosmere. And there I see the main conflict of the rest of SA. Rosharans want to save Roshar. Hoid and Harmony want to defeat Odium, sacrificing Roshar to do so if necessary. Rayse was irrational to the degree that those goals matched. Taravangian isn't. Cultivay=tion even made sure that she indirectly has hostages for a few generations. Taravangian is not going to destroy his heiress. Taking up a Shard is in effect brain damage. indeed they are not That is not so clear And that is the most complicated part. Surrender to Taravangian may be possible, Taravangian is not going to assume that she has done this out of altruism. Rashek, however, had only minutes and knew it. Taravangian has centuries. Impatience is not a vice he has shown much indication of. It seems to me that Taravangian does not want to destroy. To rule and vanquish his enemies, yes, but not to destroy. The man is less in tune with his Shard than Rayse was. Well, he had failed, had he not?

Not in economic quantities as a pure metal. The chemical properties of aluminium in the Cosmere are the same as in our world. Hence it is found as aluminium oxide. But to have any kind of rock without aluminium is hard. Aluminium's rareness in the Cosmere is a function of its backwards technology, not geology. You need electricity in large scales to make aluminium cheaply. Yes. At the latest by Navani's airships aluminium is a metal important to the war effort. Of course they asked a Soulcaster to make a few dozen kilograms, just to experiment now. They'd have noticed. Aluminium may be among the things traded through Shadesmar. But as a novelty item, not in bulk in modern times. And it may actually be among Roshar's exports. That planet can easily export a few tons of gold or platinum. Aluminium as an element is extremely abundant. Electricity is the issue.

But the basic problem I see here is that this just assumes that she has to. And that again stems from the assumption that she wants him to be anywhere near her. I can see no reason for that. Hence this looks like circular reasoning to me. Why does she not just release him from whatever bound him to the Rosharan system and tells him that he can go without her making any trouble, on condition that he go soon? Actually as far as anything less than a Shard in an attack on another Shard is concerned, Nightblood is the only known option.

Why then did she not attack immediately? The interactions between Taravangian and Cultivation were, for a lack of a better description, friendly. You´d have to see another kill by Nightblood. Why would Taravangian materialize anywhere near Nightblood?

Ars Arcanum of Warbreaker Well, the spiritual is supposed to be unchanging. Memories change by experience. And they did heal back to their current age, not an ideal state. This has to come from somewhere.

No. Take the vision of the Radiants flying to the village under attack. It mattered whose Plate was retracted.

What is Cultivation's motivation? Ruin tried to destroy Scadrial. Odium wants to escape.Why would Cultivation wish to be locked in a system with an angry Shard?

There is the Azish emperor. It has to be said to maintain fairness. The Spren and Honor indirectly have had a political goal, namely fighting a war. They have been acting accordingly. Do you want stories with a realistic concept of politics or not?

So did the Sibling. You should probably liken the bond more to marriage than to anything else. And in many cultures marriages is not based on love primarily. That is going to be fun. They are Bondsmiths, not Libertysmiths. If you want that go the Willshapers. Honor is about oaths and keeping them. Any oath is good. If you said something, you have said it, reason is irrelevant. The Stormlight Archive cannot be reduced to a story of Good vs. Evil.

Spren are made out of Investiture. They react to other metals in fabrials. All metals shine like souls in "Mistmar" of Scadrial. Ruin could not read stuff engraved in steel. Aluminium is less unique than a naive view would suggest. It is merely spectacular and useful. Well, there is a problem. We saw Jasnah soulcast while wearing her armor. Dalinar had visions of Knights Radiant using Abrasion and Gravitation on themselves and their armor but being blocked by somebody else's Plate. Heavily invested items resist alien Investiture only. Nobody has ever made that experiment with aluminium. It would take a Twinborn and a lot of aluminium to do so.

She seems to be particularly interested in the methods of Initiation. How good is her ability to understand and measure things? For example, would she be able to understand that a magic system is based on blood groups or would she see just a hereditary system based Mendelian laws? I guess that boils down to asking what is the level of natural science in Silverlight. We have seen a magic system that changes what we would consider biological features. (Surgebinding - eye color). Do you think it is possible that we might see a magic system that is based on biology? Say you must be exceptionally tall or muscular?

Well, yes, to an extent. And apparently everybody in their region except in Arelon is a potential practitioner of the regional arcane art. But there is no element of chance while fulfilling the conditions, except in Elantris and that is artificial.

At the beginning of White Sand we saw an assembly of Sandmasters. It was male to a statistically improbable degree. Can we assume a somewhat unegalitarian culture or are there arcane reasons? Or is it biology? One interesting tidbit of biology is that men are on average "wetter", that is they have a higher water content.

No. Shallan got an aluminium necklace as a gift from her father and it was stated that it was valuable because it had to be made by soulcasting. She tried to use it to pay off her brother's gambling debts.

While this is elegant, there is one gigantic question. Why would Odium fall for that? I suppose Adonalsium's killers must have had a plan to make sure that the first one of them to pick up a Shard did not use it to wipe out the other fifteen. Depending on Hoid's role and the wording he may be covered by that. But that would be coming right out of the blue. We are supposed to be theoretically able to see the loophole, like in a murder mystery the clues are supposed to be there, but it would take superhuman powers of deduction to preempt the conclusion. Loyalty plays an extreme role in Alethi culture. Gavinor would not take up arms against Alethkar. His successor would still be bound to the agreement. That would presumably be the other Bondsmith. Do you see Navani kill her only grandchild?

Arguably he does and he may have made copies and stored them in secure locations. For all we know the conversation really did happen twice (or even more often). People of the Fifth Heightening do not suffer memory loss. We have an upper bound. We have seen Hoid use Awakening. In fact we have seen him use what were arguably very advanced techniques. It is unlikely that he would carry so little that losses would endanger his memory. Furthermore taking away Breath would likely count as harm. Hoids Breaths may simply be malfunctioning from abuse rather than be gone. In fact that would make the attack much better. The information gained is even more valuable if Hoid does not recognise that it was taken. So an attacker would take care not to reduce the number of Breaths. What is the benefit for Hoid in showing up at all? And how do you trick somebody without remembering it?

This ignores the Shard known to have been present when Ambition was killed - Mercy - in favor of a speculation, however well based on theoretical considerations.

Well, we already had an example of statues not being what they were universally considered to be. If you are looking for a reason to look at them regularly.

An impressive one. If you were capable of any look, would you look like a bald, elderly man? So we are talking about beings of which there are a few hundred in the whole Cosmere? A small fraction of whom is insane? And then disciplined enough to come out every sixteen days and would flee from some strange woman?