ScadrianTank

13 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But no, he hastened the return of a Fused to have a weapon tested.

13 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Hence Odium did not know about anti-Light and this weapon is to be used very soon and is important enough to go to the CEO-level.

A big problem here is that the CEO changed from a man with eons of experience to a new guy. When Navani and Raboniel discovered anti-Light, Rayse didn't do much - but Taravangian did.

14 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Odium had to know now, whether it worked, so that there would have been time for a plan B.

Taravangian might not have gotten the knowledge Rayse had access to at that point.

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

I am afraid the anti-Light itself surprised him. Odium himself hurried to get a test subject for the anti-Voidlight weapon. If Odium knew what anti-Voidlight is, there would be no need to scramble to test a weapon based on it. At most he would replicate Navani's and Raboniel's method and recognize the anti-Light for what it is.

I always assumed that the reason Shards don't give away technology was to prevent people from killing their planets Ashyn-style and becoming disinterested in research and science, like Sazed inadvertently did to the people of the Basin. In Odium's case specifically, he already pushed humans to experiment with magic they already had - and they nuked their planet. Not the best approach to raising an army for galactic conquest, especially when your forces are mentally fragile.

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I can see no way that Gavilar would serve Odium without Odium learning about anti-Light. And we must conclude from the hasty weapons test we saw at the end of Rhythm of War that antilight was news to Odium himself, not just his troops.

I assume you mean that the news of mortals having anti-Light is what surprised Odium, not the anti-Light itself. It would be weird if a Shard didn't know something about the fundamentals of the cosmere and Investiture.

Is it an actual object, or is it some sort of unreachable backdrop thing? Is it a star or some natural Invested lightbulb that provides illumination?  Could you go to it on a plane or a rocket?

Just now, Ixthos said:

I meant more in a "the sky was the colour of a TV turned to a dead channel" kind of way, but fair enough  what I'm referring to is the idea of Scadrial once again being a planet of ash and smoke.

Ash and smoke are exactly what you get in an early industrial revolution - there's just not enough people in the Basin for it to really show. Not really Neuromancery, yes, but I doubt that a bunch of regular old humans could pollute so badly that the sky will change color. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Is that what happened with that voidspren in Kholinar? I don't remember this being mentioned in RoW... Will comb through later to see if I can catch it, because that would imply they (the KRs) had done more things like Kaladin had done, only to realize it wasn't permanent (and I am not sure how they would know that).

RoW Chapter Two:

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Stormwinds. This thing seemed more spren than singer. The discarded body tumbled through the fog, and Kaladin followed it down, his wounds fully healing. He breathed in a second pouch of spheres as he landed beside the fallen corpse. Could he even kill this being? A Shardblade could cut spren, but that didn’t kill them. They re-formed eventually.

On 27.01.2021 at 10:39 PM, Ixthos said:

What are the odds that, despite Scadrial being cleansed at the end of Era 1, that future Eras will involve the sky once more covered in ash, this time manufactured by humans?

Elendel factories are doing that already. 

Shadows of Self Chapter 3: 

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“If they did care,” bowl-head said, “they’d do something about all those factories and power plants, dumping ash on us. We ain’t supposed to live in ash anymore. Harmony said it, he did.”
Wayne nodded. Good point, that. These building walls, they were ashen. Did people care about that, on the outside? No. Not as long as they didn’t have to live in here. He didn’t miss the glares Wax and Marasi drew, pointed at them by people who passed behind, or who pulled windows closed up above.

1 hour ago, Mage said:

But even though they haven’t been invented do you think this is a possibility?

Most likely, I think. Maybe a conjoiner made out of musicspren or something like that. There is a chance that Roshar might be stuck with Spanreeds for some time, but fabrials should allow for some form of voice communication.

48 minutes ago, Mage said:

So I'm doing a reread of WoR, and in one of Dalinar's visions he sees one of the Knights Radiant talking to herself.

I always assumed that she was talking to her spren. Modern fabrials are a new thing,  so I doubt it's anything technological. 

17 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Are those books truly holy as opposed to merely true?

It seems that it's one of those religious themes Brandon wants to explore. Like the Bible being a retelling of real events that got changed and mistified more and more with each retelling/revision. 

2 minutes ago, stormwallsurfer said:

In TWOK Demoux is seen worldhopping on Roshar, meaning the non-flashback events we've seen on Roshar must occur after but within decades of the Final Ascension on Scadrial

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. 

Quote

Greg Ellner

When does the Wax and Wayne series take place compared to The Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

Just after.

Greg Ellner

Thank you! So after Stormlight 10, then comes The Alloy of Law? I have noticed a change in Hoid in these books since.

Brandon Sanderson

Alloy is somewhere after Stormlight 5.

General Twitter 2015 (Oct. 13, 2015)

48 minutes ago, CygnusRising said:

Is there a pure tone for, say, Harmony?  If there is, does that pure tone only exist on Roshar, or does it also exist on Scadrial?

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Menderbug

Is the Well's pulsing a 'pure tone of Scadrial'?

Brandon Sanderson

Yup!

Miscellaneous 2020 (Nov. 30, 2020)

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. 

50 minutes ago, CygnusRising said:

Tangential question: would someone invested with Breath to the 2nd heightening be able to perfectly reproduce a pure tone?  Does Intent matter here?

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Questioner

So the Parshendi Rhythms. They talk a lot about them as like music. So do you imagine them as rhythms where they talk like this or is their a melodic quality to it? 

Brandon Sanderson

That is what they're doing. There's not very much melodic quality to it. They set songs to the Rhythms. The way I have it in the books, in my mind, and the canon, is there is Connection between them and the songs of Roshar. That they can pick up a Rhythm when there's actually not enough of it, even in a sentence, because of the intent of the Rhythm and what the other person's hearing. So they can hear a Rhythm even if it's only a couple words being said, that you couldn't learn, if you were just a human listening. No matter how good you were. Some you wouldn't be able to pick up because there is not enough information there. 

Questioner

So they're just like kind of complex rhythmic things that you could write out musically.

Brandon Sanderson

You could. You definitely could write them out.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

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.

1 hour ago, CygnusRising said:

Intrinsic to all Shards (Implying there is always a godmetal for Honor, etc, there is always Light for Harmony, etc.  This would imply that every Shard has many aspects of Investiture.)

All Investiture manifests in three states:

1. Gaseous - the Mist on Scadrial, the Lights on Roshar, and Breath on Nalthis.
2. Liquid - in stationary Perpendicularities.
3. 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!

13 minutes ago, Jash said:

I mean, Moash, at this point, appears to be Kaladin's primary antagonist, so...seems pretty important to the story if you ask me.

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.

56 minutes ago, Jash said:

Kicks children - Dalinar, Raboniel, and Taragavian all murdered children. Although I can't 100% garuntee it for Raboniel, I assume it. Kicking children is apparently.worse than murdering them? Murdering drunkards - Again, all three of the other characters also murdered drunkards. They murdered whole cities. Some of those people were drunkards. Convinces their friends to commit suicide - I mean, again, no direct evidence, but suicide is fairly common in post war and/or slavery type situations. I would guess many people committed suicide based on the other three characters actions. Oh, and when Moash was convincing his friend to commit suicide, he was quite obviously deeply under Odium's influence.

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.

9 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Quote

The warform attacked the shield—and contrary to Navani's expectation, the Blade bit into the blue light. The warform carved off a chunk, which evaporated to nothing before it hit the floor—and the shield restored itself just as quickly. The warform tried again, attempting to dig faster. After a few minutes of watching, Navani could tell the effort was futile. The bubble regrew too quickly.

-Rhythm of War, chapter 61

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The shield is an extrapolation of the Surge of Soulcasting. It solidifies the air in a region by persuading it that it is glass.

-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.

10 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I don't think any of those would be much fun at bullet speeds either, just saying.

Sure, but a projectile made of soft or brittle material is still less dangerous than regular or jacketed lead if they hit armor.

5 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I could see a version that acts on the essence of foil (metal) instead, as that would presumably create a zone where non-aluminium bullets would simply puff away into something significantly less nasty, especially if you can do essence-essence conversion and just turn them into air or smoke within the area of effect.

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.

1 hour ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I had not considered mounting it on a vehicle, I still think that you have to deal with the problem of being encased in a glass orb, either you're stuck inside something in submarine-like conditions, or the air inside also turns to glass, which is a more immediate problem.

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.

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

Well put a hollow sphere, around a guy in shardplate, let him get reallly close without risking his armor, then turn the sheild off to fight.

Radiant hamsters are the best thing I heard today.

9 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Why not? It's a solid sphere of glass, I don't think handheld weapons are going to be much use. 

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. 

44 minutes ago, Frustration said:

So someone living in isolation can't be moral because morality only exists in a culture?

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. 

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

And why is that impossible?

1 hour ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Pretty much yes.

If aliens exist, and I’ve seen no evidence they do, and they have intelligence, their morality should be very similar to humans.

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.

8 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

In fact we have very good evidence that the basics of morality is biologic.

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.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

By that logic there is no such thing as morals, just some things we imagined. And the only basis for any moral judgement is that more people agree with you.

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. 

20 hours ago, Frustration said:

One thing I've been thinking about lately is can Roshar recreate the Siblings shield for personal use?

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. 

5 hours ago, therunner said:

Potentially yes, but that would depend on how precisely shardplate acts. If it acts like usual metal it would be certainly useful, but Scadrial is still at least 50 years from being able to apply that knowledge (and that is assuming they know the principle of operation). I mean cars and electric lights were invented in the last 20 years (not there before Wax left, starting to become 'common' after he returns) and based on Sazed comments they are not progressing particularly fast (he expected them to have radio a century ago)

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. 

6 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

That's entirely fair and I'm not contesting that Plate is hecka heavy, it might just be deceptively light for its size, and losing the enhanced strength would inherently make it feel heavier on your body, no?

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. 

2 hours ago, therunner said:

In this reading burning Steel or Iron has two effects, 1) creates a connection between Allomancer and metal 2) Allows to generate force which acts on that metal, through the line connecting it to the allomancer. At least that is how I understood OP.

That is indeed what I meant.

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

But an allomantic link does not transfer force. It creates force.

If that was all it did, iron and steel Allomancy would work like a bubble-shaped force field.

On 24.06.2021 at 10:16 AM, Inquisitor #5 said:

My read on that is that Wax, could shatter a section of plate, with the right gun, with 2-3 bullets, 1 in the exact right moment. But Wax also has "protagonist power" on his side.

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.

1 hour ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I'd personally have made the connection between iron/steel and attractor/repeller.

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.