ScadrianTank

The first half of Stormlight takes place about ten years before the Wax and Wayne series - around 300 years after the Catacandre. Meaning that Kelsier had a little less than that to establish the Ghostbloods because he arrived at the south 10 to 20 years after the Final Ascension.

Tones and rhythms are not unique to a planet or a Shard - they are a property of all Investiture. Bronze pulses are rhythms of Allomancy, in a way. Rhythms are sounds, so you could write them down. Finding a rhythm on your own seems to require either training or supernatural help, so I incline towards it being possible with Perfect Pitch. All Investiture manifests in three states: Gaseous - the Mist on Scadrial, the Lights on Roshar, and Breath on Nalthis. Liquid - in stationary Perpendicularities. Metal - Atium, Lerasium, Raysium, Trellium, Harmonium, Sharblade metal, and so on. They have different properties, but still fit into one of those categories. Apparently, color is also important but the places where it shows are not necessarily numerous. So congratulations, you have figured out cosmere mechanics on your own!

I'm not saying that he isn't important. Dalinar, as a character, is someone who represents "Journey before destination." He conquered and murdered, only to realize that his entire life was a string of atrocities and start doing better. Taravangian was a regular monarch who discovered that the apocalypse is coming - and began doing whatever it took to save humanity. He has a much more utilitarian view of the Immortal words - to him, the Last Desolation is just calculus. No matter how many people die right now, as long as humanity survives at the end, "Life before death" is achieved because there are people to live. Raboniel is a mix between Navani and Taravangian for Odium's side. She will do everything it takes to get Roshar back to the Singers. Moash is the opposite of "Journey before destination." He doesn't accept responsibility for his actions, instead choosing to give up uncomfortable emotions. He doesn't have any reason to do what he does other than what Odium told him. He has no desire to improve, only for life to be easy. If there wasn't a narrative need for an antagonist to be someone whom the protagonists and readers know, from Oathbringer and forward, Moash could've been replaced with any random murderer from the street and serve the same function in the plot. Dalinar, Raboniel, and Taravangian are at the point where if you add more atrocities to their past, they wouldn't change as characters. That's what I mean by counting bad guy points. If you were a judge in a court, those would be relevant, and Moash would be tried for murder and possibly treason, while Dalinar, Raboniel, and Taravangian would be tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes. But as characters in a fictional work, D, R, and T are doing what they do to achieve something, while Moash just keeps kicking the proverbial dog from Oatbringer and on because it's easy.

In your first topic, you were surprised that Moash is hated so much when there are characters who are objectively worse than him. But people don't hate characters based on how many bad guy points they have. Taravangian can systematically murder the powerless, Raboinel can create biological weapons, and Dalinar can commit war crimes while still being more sympathetic to the average reader because of what they represent in the series than someone who kicks children, murders drunkards, and convinces their friends to commit suicide.

-Rhythm of War, chapter 61 -Rhythm of War, chapter 49 The first quote makes more sense to me if the shield is turning the air from the pillar to the edge of its influence to glass, a solid sphere, rather than hollow, otherwise it should be possible to smash through it, and once you can do that you can get inside, if you cannonball through. I didn't mean that it was hollow but that a spherical shell around a soft human is not as strong structurally as a sphere made entirely of glass, or even a glass shell around another solid object. There are videos on youtube of people shooting or otherwise damaging spheres made of solid glass. You can see there that they distribute the energy around the surface quite well, and the worst damage is from glass being layered. But when there is a person inside the benefit of the sphere diminishes severely. First, humans being roughly taller than wider makes it so that some parts of the sphere have less glass than the others. Next, unless the person inside is wearing Shardplate, they would still get wounded by the force of the impact going through the sphere. Sure, but a projectile made of soft or brittle material is still less dangerous than regular or jacketed lead if they hit armor.

Even if soulcasting a solid into gas is too costly in terms of Stormlight, you can just turn it into other solids - like rock, wood, ice, and so on. Should be extremely effective regardless. The minimal viable version would be attached to a separate hull/armor plate and soulcast air into necessary material. I think that it should be possible to attach that fabrial to the entire hull, but who knows.

Radiant hamsters are the best thing I heard today.

Because a solid glass sphere is no longer solid glass when there is a human inside. And I was thinking that a personal armor suit wouldn't be a literal glass sphere, but a regular piece of armor that can regrow on its own.

That is debatable - I lean towards a no or a kind-off. Living in a state where you can't do anything immoral is not exactly the same as choosing not to when you are tempted. What I tried to say in a sentence you quoted is that morality wasn't really a concept relevant to tribes of hunter-gatherers and the like. Because not every species has the same values. An intelligent mushroom or insect would have a very different perspective on some things we consider moral because they would be irrelevant to them in the first place. We might just have to disagree on that. I absolutely agree that what we consider moral is biological in origin, but a being has to have reasoning beyond instincts to exercise those values, whatever they are to them.

It's not like morality exists somewhere in a vacuum - humans only began exhibiting moral behavior when society(-ies) formed. If it is somehow beyond what humanity imagined, every species across the universe has to have the same morals as we, despite having nothing in common with us.

They would have to scale it down for it to be effective as a personal shield. Also, in this application, it wouldn't be effective against firearms. Regenerating armor is useful, but it doesn't help the person if it got penetrated. It seems more useful for structures and/or mechanisms than people, at least if I'm not missing anything. The coolest use for that fabrial I came up with is soulcasting air/water into air, for deep-sea exploration. But in practical terms, it could make Roharan vehicles, like the Forth Bridge or Navani's sphere, practically indestructible.

The Basin discovering southerners should be enough motivation to at least try catching up technologically. Their main slowing factor is Sazed making the land into a practical paradise. He practically removed the need for people to adapt, especially compared to the Final Empire. Not only strength but the plate section have to be connected to the breastplate via other parts. There were a few scenes where our characters had to discard a section because the one next to it was destroyed/depleted.

That is indeed what I meant. If that was all it did, iron and steel Allomancy would work like a bubble-shaped force field.

I second this. If anything could shatter a Plate section, it would be the main character with a special gun that fires special bullets. And given what happened in RoW, I assume that the one-bullet method involves anti-Investiture.

If repellers (or repulsors?) affect every available substance in their range, as attractors do, they would be closer to Wax's bubble and steel working with primer cubes more than regular Allomancy.

Just wanted to point out that Allomantic Steel and Iron function similarly to Conjoiners and Reversers. Allomancer burns the metal -> Blue lines (Connections) appear -> Allomancer pushes or pulls on a line -> Force (generated by Preservations power) is transferred through the line, making the object move. A Conjoiner (a reverser) is created -> A Connection between the two halves exists but is not visible by the naked eye -> The halves are conjoined, the Connection snaps in place -> Conjoined halves behave as a single object, effectively allowing to transfer force. There is no real point to this, except that using Connection manipulation, a trapped spren, and some Stormlight Bondsmiths can practically do telekinesis.

I don't enjoy reading Shallan's chapters. When I do, it's usually because of something that happens around her, like worldbuilding and Jasnah in WoK and her interactions with Adolin and Pattern in WoR. Her quips don't do it for me and her personality issues make her PoVs difficult to read in ways I don't experience with other cosmere characters. Still, it's worth recognizing that we're talking opinions here, and other people don't like Dalinar and Kaladin solving problems by "sucking it up and doing things like a manly man." In a series focused on characters going through a journey of self-discovery, different and varying perspectives on that path are a must.

If this WoB stays canon, Sel's timeline might get confusing. Centuries pass on the outside while decades go on Sel. I don't think it's that drastic, but still.

It looks like it.

Thanks, haven't seen that one. I wonder if he changed his mind on the matter because Kel said this in the Final Empire:

The title pretty much says it. I get that Allomantic cadmium should be safer because the time of exposure isn't long, but having a Metalmind made of cadmium constantly in contact with the skin should still cause damage, correct? Or is there something Harmony did that protects people from toxic metal exposure?

That seems to be the problem Saze has - he can't use the powers separately - they have to be harmonized for him to do anything. With revelations in RoW, the ending of Hero of Ages reads a bit differently. It's a lot like when Navani and Raboniel were trying to create Warlight for the first time. If one of them pulled too much, the Rhythm couldn't find harmony. And Sazed exists in a state where if he pushes too much with only one power - he'll tear himself apart.

Any splinter created to live primarily in the Cognitive realm should theoretically be like a spren, in that it would be strongly influenced by thoughts and perception. As to why they are a thing, "God did it" seems to sum it up quite neatly. Which is a good argument for the original sixteen being absolutely clueless of the consequences of killing God. Makes one wonder why Honor and Cultivation even chose to settle there, given the wide range of things that might go wrong. Worried about leaving Investiture of all the Shards combined for mortals to access, maybe?

Moash hate-train has more coal in the engine than necessary, but it's not like disliking a character who goes against everything "Journey before destination" stands for is unreasonable or wrong. And I don't really understand the whole "assassinating Elhokar was right" point, but I usually stay out of character discussions like they have a radiation warning, especially when the concept of oppression phases into a discussion, so maybe it's just me. So to me, shanking a man in the dark so that his more amiable relative can get his job, especially when that relative is also a part of the oppressors, doesn't seem like an act of a man fighting for rights, or justice, or equality. It's an act of a selfish, hateful person, and trying to justify murder done for personal reasons with their upbringing or systemic oppression doesn't change that, at least I'm my eyes.

I think that spren have some innate awareness or Forture that allows them to feel when a Shard focuses its attention on something.