Anomander Rake

Not sure if this is something that has been done that I don't have enabled, something that has been suggested before, or something not possible with the site framework, but it'd be awesome to have the site recognize Cosmere stuff as proper words. Like, just there, Cosmere has that red squiggle under it. And again there! Storms.

With Stormlight I'm loyal to Michael and Kate, so I might end up waiting regardless. Though in truth I doubt I'll hold out if the prologue drops early, but if he skips it for Chapter 1 and so on I can for sure.

Behold, the Origin of Storms!

Ahhh, gotcha gotcha, that ties the threads together a lot nicer than what I had thought you'd meant haha. That makes sense, with the soul destroying bit. Great theory!

I feel like both are true in your example! Like, Ruin absolutely guided the dude to the right spot at the right time, so spook could be spiked, but he still needs to provided the intent, that knowing that what was being done could spike spook, that hemalurgy could be used here, so he would get spiked. As for the second bit, when they he talks about the "little bit of preservation that he could touch", my guess is that "bit" is the smidge more of preservation that went into every human to give them the spark of life (life, sentience, i forget what the exact wording is lol). Because the spikes pierce the soul and touch that piece, and that piece is literally what makes you, you, Ruin was connected to you and had an easier time with it. Totally. I wasn't saying they didn't, just that what you said about Nightblood could still be true even if they hadn't. Def makes more sense for someone with a hand in actually creating the thing to have provided the intent after seeing Hemalurgy. Also forgive me if im just missing something, but why would they have needed to visit Scadrial for them to know what Shardblades are like? Wasn't that all picked up from their trips to Roshar? Or are you saying that they learned about filled metalminds / spikes, invested metal with non-normal properties

In Roshar's current state, maybe too complex for them to be widespread among normal people. As they start to industrialize and mass produce, most fabrials will probably cheap af unless restricted by a rare material, or by some super complicated or time consuming process that only a few people can do (bondsmiths, fullborn, etc)

Do any of the scholars even need to have visited Scadrial? When Spook got spiked, Ruin himself provided the intent just by knowing what was going on. If any of the shards we're privy to Nightblood's creation (which doesn't seem too unreasonable to me, the stirring of that much investiture) as well as hemalurgy, maybe they could've done so in a similar way?

The epigraph from the chapter after Elend and Preservation have their game of charades only says "a body" and "the corpse", no mention of the word man, human, etc. A minor thing, but its something that doesnt dismiss the possibility. IDK what chapters Ati's body is referenced tho. I do agree with Ixthos though, i think shapeshifters would default to their natural forms after or in death.

Maybe Odium is just better at heads up poker ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the unmade are still around between desolations, just less active and without their connection to Odium. 4500 years (with whatever % of those being during active desolations and under the direction of Odium) is certainly enough time for Nergaoul to have galvanized pretty much the whole planet to be more warlike than normal imo.

I've recently started using alt text in my engineering reports as I'm sending some far outside my team that I'm familiar and close with, so I want to be inclusive. I assumed it would be a cake walk, but it's surprisingly tough haha, finding that fine line between being thorough and saying too much, being concise and succinct while your meaning is still clear. I've always been fortunate enough to just assume that the picture IS the added context; boiling it down to the perfect bite is an art! Huge props to you both for doing it, especially since each one of these silhouettes seems like quite a challenge! If you're looking for an extra set of hands I'd be happy to help with this! I've got a ton of experience with descriptive and impassive writing, at least as it relates to engineering haha.

I personally go back and forth between TOdium and Taravodium, and though I like the two equally and think both sound good, I use TOdium more often. TOdium is also the one I see being used most often.

LOL thats great, thank you for sharing. I love niche little bits of history like this.

It's the implications for me - knowing that they'll have the magic and physics down to a point where they're able to accomplish incredible things like that. The currently available method doesn't have awesome implications that hide keys to understanding the magic systems, even if it does essentially the same thing a helluva lot easier. Side note, I finally looked up Alice and Bob's origin after seeing them in so many examples like yours and even probably using them myself a time or two XD. They're from a not so old paper on cryptography! I'd seen Carol and Ted before but never knew about the whole cast that exists. A neat story lol

nice ones! IDK why I didn't think to use F-Brass to refrigerate as well. Maybe brass-minds will come in standard sizes (like our batteries), so when your fridge's brassmind has stored enough heat over time, you can go pop it in your heater instead to tap, and vice versa! In your last idea, do you again mean F-Brass? Because wow yeah, heat from friction is a thing of the past now. I think so! For them to work in FTL I've gotta assume some shape manipulation somehow. This WoB also makes me think so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

I'd agree that you can say using the CR is effectively FTL travel, but saying "you were going 20x faster than light" seems disingenuous. Your energy / speed never come remotely close to c to begin with. Differing opinions aside, for the sake of causality, they are FTL.

I agree that objects can be affected by feruchemy, I just don't see how tin could be woven into a microscope in such a way - as far as I'm aware tin cant affect light, which is what it or a tin-affected lens would need to do to raise magnification power. Storing weight and then tapping to add weight to an object seems, as far as feruchemy can be, straightforward. Storing visual acuity and then tapping to bend light, less so.

Gave the topic some further thought, and brushed up on my anatomy lol. My guess is tin, when it comes to sight, affects the lens in your eye. The lens provides about 1/3 of your eyes magnification power, but is the part that changes shape, and thus is the part that allows you to focus on things at various distances by doing so. Now, Sazed wears glasses when reading and storing tin; most people (including yours truly!) need glasses because the shape of their eye is off, which means the placement of your cornea and lens will be off (think misaligned two lenses in a microscope). I don't think storing would actually change the shape of your eye, so my guess is it screws with how you communicate with your lens, which is why Saze is using reading glasses - he holds the book from his face or whatever to correct for the lens being wack. I also just feel like this is consistent with the 5 senses being nervous system things and this being something your nervous system controls. Using tin in low light, and flaring in the dark let you see/glimpse your surroundings. Normally, your pupil changes sizes depending on how much light is present to properly focus your eyes - it expands in the dark where light scarce to take in more, and shrinks in bright light to keep focus on what you are looking at while avoiding excess light. If you've never done it before, go to your bathroom mirror and look at your eyes while you flick the lights! This also happens, at a far far slighter degree, as you focus on things at varying distances All this to say - even with the influence of actual magic, which seems to adhere to biology, there is a limit to how far the human eye can be pushed, which is in line with Brandon's statement. Your pupils and lenses can only do so much. I think Saze's, and genrally, binocular vision is his eyes and pupils super-adjusting and magically compensating to the far distance. Whatever the distance of human sight is, Saze can see in perfect detail - he can pick out the leaves on a tree a mile away, but even if he held that leaf to his face he wouldn't be able to pick out cells. If someone who could use tins eye were held in perfect alignment with a microscope, though (when it comes to high magnification, like, perfect perfect, no room for error perfect, which is VERY VERY hard), there is certainly room to extend the power of even what we currently can do when it comes to magnification, by using the eye as a final lens

*Preface that I work with microscopes pretty often, but not telescopes lol* I think that this is firmly lightweaver territory! I know (at least to the degree that coppermind is correct) that tin doesnt let you see things that would naturally be unobservable, though perhaps, depending on what tin actually does to your brain / eye, hardware could be made to take advantage of it. The workhorse of an optical microscope is the objective lens, its the part that gathers light from what you're observing and focuses it. Different magnifications require different lenses. Unless tin is actually changing the diopter (essentially magnification power) in your eye, which the coppermind sentence leads me to think it isn't, i'm not sure how hardware would be designed for it. Lightweaving, however, should allow for the construction of huge lenses that lightweavers can channel light through to create images at crazy magnifications

A market/exchange for feruchemical stores where you could, for example, buy unkeyed speed or energy or wakefulness. Things like paying for an instant bout of good nights sleep is just such a cool and unique concept to me Probably dozens of markets for different types of copperminds alone: study crash courses, learning new skills, instantly read a book or watch a movie you have stored away (or, conversely, store your memory of a book or movie or similar, and enjoy it again for the first time, literally! Mistborn and Lost here I come!). some suped-up-allomantic bullet train a way to compress time for people travelling, even on a small scale, with time bubbles. no more long commutes into Elendel! super easy space suits (f brass and cadmium)

HoA spoilers

exactly yeah. like for example, controlling Roshar means you control the highstorm, and (assuming they overcome the whole "how do we get stormlight off roshar?" debacle) whoever controls that has a steady stream of investiture at their disposal

The future of the cosmere seems to be a lot less arms race and a lot more land-power struggle

having no Cognitive representation makes sense. Like Shardblades, the plate IS the spren - they should either be in the Physical as plate, or the Cognitive as spren, no in between

mb lol, juggling a lot at work today and responding between. Fair, yeah. I feel though that unless the added weight was a concession for all the added power and endurance Plate lent you, there would be no reason for it to be so heavy. Maybe dead plate lost its ability to self maintain and is stuck heavy now, weighed down by that investiture-mass or something. I also see the armor just being thicker as equally likely tbh.