Elsecaller_17.5

We already know some changes. Ham is going to be a women; Brandon has said he thinks thr dynamic will work better with Shan as Elend's sister instead of ex fiancee. So when you see that, don't be surprised. I think the real thing to hope for is that the changes that have to happen will be good ones. LoTR is the movie adaptation of a fantasy trilogy and they changed a lot. Most of it was good.

I definitely think he was under utilized. I know people think WaT was too long, but I'm not in that camp. I would have loved to see more of the Listeners and Singers. The fact that he pulled out, what seems to be a Radiant, Shardblade with no explanation kills me.

Best case scenario, these gemstones are forming 20 kilometers deep (according to a guy on r/geology) that seems like an extreme depth even for surgemining. They're also saying that without tectonics or vulcanism they simply couldn't get to the surface (meaning, like 1 kilometer, I think). I've no doubt all of them exist deep within the planet. It has a magnetic field which means it has a molten core. They would form they same way they form on earth. They just wouldn't be accessible. I agree though, we're not going to know for certain without a WoB or book explanation.

No worries, thank you for nerding out with me.

In my mind the WoB about mining normal gemstones and the one about tectonics directly contradict each other. Maybe I need to find a geologist. If he did make a natural process for geological gemstones I don't understand what it could be.

No, you're right. I had not considered surge enabled mining (and I probably am too attached to my theory). I will push back on the mountain thing though. I don't believe it ever had tectonics. It seems to have been created whole, mountains included. It's this WoB that I don't know how to reconcile with normal gemstones. Edit: just found this one. It seems to support the idea that Adonalsium just put them there. My least favorite solution, but I have to admit a plausible one.

I hadn't even considered other surges, that's a really interesting idea. It does seem that Division could be that delicate according to Szeth, and Transformation would make sense with why the Elsecaller's took possession of Honor's Drop. Progression would be trickiest, but Magnified Ones do use the surge in a why more akin to bio engineering. I've seen this idea, and I just don't think it's possible with the geology of Roshar. Gemstone mines, seem to me to be, places where a lot of animals died and you can now dig up the gemhearts that are buried in crem. Several Polestones require the immense heat and pressure deep within a planet to form. Roshar has no tectonics, so they would never come anywhere near the surface. Even IRL not all gemstones we mine up have a "perfect lattice structure." Many imperfections and impurities form in most gemstones. Granted, I'm not a geologist and would be eager to read anything about how a normal gemstone could reach Roshar's surface, but I think this may be a case where Brandon didn't think his answer all the way through. I know, cardinal sin, I'm relying on WoBs and dismissing another one. I just really don't think naturally occurring gemstones are possible without tectonics. Edit: I'm not trying to say you're absolutely wrong and so is Brandon. I just don't understand how it could happen given that the cosmere typically follows real world physics and chemistry to a fairly strong degree.

Full disclosure, this is a repost from my reddit, but I feel like the discussion could go further here. Broadly speaking, I see 3 main ways they could be formed. They could be natural formations, Shardic creations, or Human or Singer developed technology. I'll tell you up front I'm in camp 3, but I'll spend a little bit of time going into why I don't like the other two options. The first is natural formations. Every once in a while the perfect conditions line up and a Greatshell grows a perfect gemstone. I find this **extremely** implausible, but it is closely tied to option 1.5 Shardic offshoot. They could be "natural" creations. The Atium at the Pits of Hathsin are "natural". The invested sunlight of Taldain is "natural". Aether spores on Lumar are "natural". I find this **even more** implausible for a quite particular reason. Odium's perpendicularity is under the Shattered Plains. If perfect gemstones were cropping up around perpendicularities then we would have seen them in the Chasmfiends throughout the first half of the series. Addendum: the most pushback I got on reddit was about why I thought naturally occurring ones were so implausible. To clarify a bit more, we know that cut gems hold more light. A better cut gem holds more light. Gemhearts are notably bulbous. Gemhearts and perfect gemstones seem to be on the opposite ends of a spectrum. Possibility two, they could be direct Shardic creations. I think this is actually very plausible, especially considering Melishi's perfect gem and Honor's direct involvement with Bo-Ado-Misharm's imprisonment. It's also boring. "Honor did it," is just the end of the conversation. I don't deny the plausiabilty of this; I just don't think it will lead to an interesting discussion. That leaves us with Human/Singer Invention, and the RPG gave us just the clues I needed to start thinking about this. Extremely skilled practitioners of Cohesion can manipulate more than stone. They can manipulate any inorganic solid matter. Unbound Cohesion states, "You can use Cohesion and its talents not only on stone, but on any solid material that isn’t alive, Invested, or infused with Stormlight." To me it seems to explicitly include uninvested gemstones. There's also True Stoneshaping which makes more intricate formations easier. "When you use Cohesion to shape an object or surface, you can automatically reshape it to your will without using additional actions or time. For example, you can instantly raise or lower elevation, form walls or pillars, create or remove difficult terrain, or create intricate shapes or images." We are talking about utter masters of Cohesions individuals who could shape gemstones more granularly then the finest jeweler imaginable. Cohesion is a cousin of microkinesis. A sufficiently skilled user could manipulate objects atom by atom. I believe they could create a perfect gemstone. Cohesion can be accessed by Stonewards, Willshapers, and Deepest Ones. There is one of these groups that I think is particularly likely to be the creators. This is largely speculation, but it seems reasonable that a perfect gemstone would manifest differently than a normal gemstone in the Cognitive Realm. Willshapers also have access to Transportation and the ability to peer into Shadesmar. If there is some kind of "click" in the Cognitive Realm, a Willshaper could see it. If only Willshapers can create them it even explains why they are so remarkably rare. Most people would mass produce these marvels of technology, but Willshapers, recognizing that they are also a perfect prison. Would only create them with the upmost consideration, thought, and desperation. That's all my initial thoughts and below are some WoBs that add to the discussion. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/504/#e15812 This one keys into the perfect crystalline structure and, to me, fully rules out natural occurrences, but I do think Cohesion, a cousin to microkinesis, could force that perfection. Later in it the questioner does ask about natural gemstones, but Brandon just says that gemstones in general can form naturally, not perfect ones. I acknowledge the ambiguity though. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/445/#e14211 This one seems to vaguely support the ideal of synthetic perfect gemstones. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/144/#e2702 Here's a little more on synthetic works in general. A couple miscellaneous points now. Jasnah mentions that she thinks there should be more around. This could be because she's an Elsecaller and had a radically different philosophy than a Willshaper. There do seem to be a lot of perfect gemstones in Shadesmar. Maybe in the lead up to the Recreance is when the Willshapers realized what perfect prisons they had created. Maybe one caught wind of Melishi's plan and shared with the other Willshapers. Then they dropped the perfect gemstones off in Shadesmar with the Spren. Trusting them more than humanity. We know that Kalak was involved with the capture of Bo-Ado-Mishram. Maybe he made Melishi's perfect heliodor. The epigraph of chapter 30 WoR could be support for this idea. "[Melishi] could make no specific account of his process; it was related to the very nature of the Heralds and their divine duties, an attribute the Bondsmiths alone could address." It could be specifically the Herald Kalak and his mastery of Cohesion and Transportation. I'm not 100% sure of the timeline here, in fact, I'm pretty confident he didn't have his Honorblade. Maybe Kalak passed the knowledge onto Melishi and then Melishi to the Willshapers.

It takes investiture to move it, not sustain it. And we might be reading different wobs but the one I'm seeing specifically says that zephyr spores created normal air, not invested.

Dawnsingers are just Singers who predate the arrival of humanity and Odium https://coppermind.net/wiki/Dawnsinger.

I'm going to voice the dissent. Even with purified Dor the battle goes to the shardbearer. The crystal itself doesn't seem to be invested so a Shardblade would cut it. The shard bearer then has two options. A simple lunge through the chest of the golem to twin twinsoul ends it. If twinsoul cam make a golem w ok th a deeper chest then the length of the Shardblade it will take longer, but it took an entire jar for the golem and a second to sustain it so the shardbearer just needs to lop of a limb, forcing twinsoul to replace it, like 6 times to reduce the armor to nothing. The only way twinsoul wins is if he kills the shardbearer before they figure out what is happening, but he isn't going to have a fast win against shardplate.

The biggest thing that makes me say he is not a Stoneward is the description of them working in teams. Dalinar is notoriously independent insisting on taking on any challenges himself, often by himself. Though he isn't anymore, in his past he was incredibly unreliable and flighty. While that has changed, reliability is hardly a core attribute of his. Edit: I think the biggest thing that highlights this is his refusal to even tell people his plan to deal with Odium at the end of RoW. "Don't worry about it, I'll do it by myself," is not very stoneward.

What would happen if Nightblood was wielded to kill someone who is pretty objectively not evil. Directly against his intent. Maybe they are just incredibly virtuous. They've made mistakes, but nothing that's evil. Dedicated their lives to helping people, impacting personally the lives of 100's and making systems that help 10,000's Attentively, someone who's morally neutral, nothing that great or terrible. To take that to the extreme, they are totally innocent. Popped out of the womb 5 minutes ago. Let's run with the last because I think it's the most solid. Someone picks up Nightblood and stabs a baby. I can thing 4 things happening. 1. It fails. Nightblood doesn't cut. Baby is fine. 2. It backfires into the wielder in spectacular fashion. 3. It works but Nightblood is seriously physically, cognitively, and/or spiritually damaged. 4. Some combination of the above. Thoughts on the issue?

And that is the most popular gut reaction I've seen. But, why? What makes him a Stoneward?

First let's comb through the elsecaller entry from the radiant quiz. Lots of stuff that's applicable. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/the-ten-orders-of-knights-radiant/ Though typically scholars "the Order is open to many different types, so long as they want to improve themselves . . . They seek self-improvement and personal betterment in their lives, but aren’t limited to one specific theme or set of Ideals." That's Dalinar to a T. Furthermore, "They have their share of scholars, and often a large number of theologians, but also attract those who are interested in leadership." Dalinar (though he would deny being a theologian) fits both of those secondary traits. "They are good at encouraging others, but some are known to set their sights upon the things they want and then seize them." Another two check marks. "they tend to be among the best tacticians, and are logistical geniuses." Though we haven't seen him deal too much with logistics his time as highprince of war highlights his tactical genius. Lastly, he has already sworn the second ideal of the Elsecallers. You might be thinking "what, we don't even know what it is!" I disagree. The Elsecaller oaths are similair to the Skybreakers in pattern and we already know the core philosophy of the order. "I will reach my potential." And he swore it during the battle of Thaylen Field. "If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man."

But what about invested matter. It seems that invested matter has more fundamental energy. Could it just be E = Mc^2+I and we need a way to quantity I?

First, this isn't going to make much sense unless your caught up with the The Lost Metal Release chapters including today's. Second, I am a amateur physicist at best; I've completed a (singular) college physics class. So Wax just invented nuclear bombs. Fun. But good old E=mc2 isn't going to quite do that for us with investiture in the mix. Harmony has confirmed that we need to get an I in there somewhere. To my mind the I has to modify the m. c2 is a constant and isn't going to be affected, energy is the output. The two simplest results would be E = MI c2 or E = MI c2 I could also see E = MsubI C2 allowing for a far more complicated relationship between M and I. People who are smarter than me please tear this to pieces. I've put this in the cosmere spoiler area in case you want to involve RoW physics somehow.

It's been forever since I last posted, but let's go. An extension of a previous post a made way back when, now with new arguments! So, feurchemical savatism. Impossible right? Savantism occurs when the spiritweb is overloaded with investure and feurchemy only gives you back investure you naturally had (less even because of the diminishing return problem) so theres no way to become a savant. Wrong. There is a mechanic that allows the spiritweb to be overloaded with feurchemical investure and we are actually introduced to it all the way make in TFE. Compounding. No before I go forward I want to state why I think this is true. Because it makes sense. Savantism is a cosmere constant. Its seen (minor SA) The overload of power results in savantism. I would posit we have actually seen two feurchemical savants. TLR and Miles. I'll go over Miles first. Savantism has a give and take. In our one canonical metalborn example of savantism, Spook, we see the benefit of huge increased power and the detriment of absolute reliance. Miles we see the same thing. He uses so much but never once do we see him consume gold with the express purpose of compounding. This could be an oversight, but I suspect he is just hugely efficient. His savantism allows much more power output than Sazed's x10 prediction. He also doesn't feel pain which I could argue equally is a benefit and detriment. I believe Wax says at one point (correct me if I'm wrong) that he would also just drop dead if he ever stopped tapping. Certainly a detriment. Above all else though I propose his main detriment is is delusion. Even when stripped of all his metalminds he truly believes he is invincible. Miles is anything but stupid; I don't believe he would think that without a magical effect. TLR is next. He is theoretically a savant x33. Every power plus Atium. But it is atium savantism, if I am correct, that he definitely has. He has to do it constantly for 1000 years and every year he has to dedicate more than before. I don't think it would be possible for him to maintain without increased efficiency from savantism. Much like Miles I believe his detriment is his delusion of immortality. The man is a genius (likely due to his compounded memory and mental speed). He shouldn't have fallen into so simple a trap of being taken out by the very power who made him who he was. Investure induced madness is where he fell. So what are your thoughts?

Lmao, stop trolling my posts, Eric. Is that all you do here?

That's interesting, I read it, I didn't listen.

But he could just be saying spren as a general term. Any cognitive entity can be referred to as a spren, and as a Rosharan native Sigzil would be likely to do that.

What kills that for me is that Auxiliary is not an Honorspren name. It doesn't follow the same sort of pattern.

This little bit does not bode well for SA5. We might be looking at some really nasty stuff for our friends.

Right about what? And are y'all as confused as I am? Sigzil a full world hopper, better traveled than STORMING HOID, seems to have held and lost a Dawnshard, something happened to his spren, is Aux his spren or the remnants of the Dawnshard, how is the Spren still around if he broke his oaths, what combination of the "Torment," broken oaths, ans a pseudo-nahel bond are we dealing with!