therunner

I am kinda sad but kinda glad that I am not the only one who felt that way reading it :/ I know exactly what you mean. I struggle with that as well. You'll meet people, or get in touch with people who will one day say that without prompting, who will see you. They might not be the ones you would like to hear it from the most, but it will be someone. Fingers crossed it won't take too long. I am glad you did, and not just because I feel the same way. It is good to 'vocalize' things and feelings.

Because the energy has to come from somewhere. If you could freely teleport stuff wherever you want, with no regard to their potential energy, first law of thermodynamics goes out of the window, along with a lot of other stuff. This mean that the 'equation' you mention is only balanced when you also include the fact that potential energy of the matter you are transforming is relevant. Basically, this sentence is a wrong assumption that leads you towards invalid conclusion. Because there is no other place the energy can come from, not in Oathgates at least. Moving something to different location while staying at the same elevation would consume less energy, because the objects being transferred don't have to be raised or lowered.* Simply put, teleport something 10 feet to the left, will consume less energy than teleporting something 10 feet to the left, and 10 feet up. And 10 feet up will consume more than 10 feet left, because the teleportation has to put in the work to increase potential energy. There is no other way. *Edit: Technically, to not have to do work to raise or lower you need to stay at the same level of potential, not necessarily the same elevation. But for simplicity let us assume that the gravitational field is perfectly spherical. Wrong, it is conservation of energy. You can create some output work (to jump), and that work is converted to potential energy (you rise). When you are trying to raise something heavier with the same work, the elevation will be smaller, because potential energy is product of distance and mass. Gravity and inertia are merely the sources of the potential energy, but have no bearing on the situation otherwise. So yes, it is conservation of energy. Also, conservation of energy is fundamental and hence the reason, arguably more so than gravity. You have it even in non-gravitational systems, because it is simply consequence of symmetry towards time translation (in GR it gets messier, however it is still good locally). Even if it is swapping places with the other Oathgate, it would still have to provide the potential energy differential, because you are not swapping the same amount of matter, so you are moving swapping X and Y amount of matter, so the amount of potential energy afterwards would be different, unless Oathgates provides for it. Basically, atom of Hydrogen 10 meters above ground is quantitatively different from Hydrogen atom 20 meters above ground, they have different energies and technically then also masses. The difference is minuscule and basically negligible, but it is there. So you cannot 'just' swap things around, because there are differences in energy.

Couple of points: You cannot fission down to hydrogen. Iron is where fission terminates. To get hydrogen back, you would have to put in more energy, so there would be net loss of energy in the process. If you magically got around first point, at best the process would continue, but you would not get any usable energy. (this however, neglects that machine requires some energy to function). The only way it could continue ad infinitum is if you ignore second law of thermodynamics. So, such a thing is impossible due to multiple different things, however all come down to first and second law of thermodynamics. It does that because it has to. Investiture would convert to potential energy exactly because of the laws, it would have no choice but to provide that energy through some pathway, otherwise it would be impossible. The thing that requires the additional energy is the conservation of energy. In reality you can never get something out of nothing, and we call that law of conservation of energy. So yes, reality does conform to that, because the law is just description of reality. So the teleportation has to conform to physical laws of conservation of energy, which are supposed to hold in Cosmere if you include Investiture. So once you consider mass, energy and Investiture, teleportation has to convert one of these into potential energy. How would I know? Teleportation is not physically possible. If the oathgates function by converting you into Investiture and then reforming you elsewhere, then it would provide additional energy when reconstituting you (or shunt energy elsewhere when you should lose potential energy). And we already have example of Investiture being converted to physical attributes, Feruchemy, so this is definitely possible. If a physical portal is opened, then it could be that when passing through it would feel like pushing through some resistance, owing to the potential difference, so the person moving through would provide the energy necessary.

I am talking about Oathgates. I am not talking about portal, since we don't really know if those exist or are just in-world artistic license. Additionally, why would portal have fixed cost no matter how many people it transforms, but Oathgates don't?

Distance would in theory have no cost impact (what with translational symmetry). However, moving to different elevations would have cost impact, to account for change in potential energy. Though considering how little stormlight it takes to Lash someone, such energy would be rounding error.

Per Brandon Investiture does follow Laws of Thermodynamics (albeit with some modifications). The second law of thermodynamics stands as is (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e3544) and the first one only adds Investiture alongside energy and mass. First law is at most you get out what you put in (conservation of energy, mass, Investiture). Second law is, you can never get out exactly what you put in (entropy increases). This alone implies that perpetum mobile of the first (create useful work) and second (maintain movement forever) kind are impossible in Cosmere, since those two imply violation of either the first or the second laws of Thermodynamics. Machines of third kind are most likely also impossible (those would require to fully eliminate all dissipative forces, and even Feruchemy does not allow to store 100% of any attribute). Since the second law holds per Brandon, there must be at the very least increase in entropy, which corresponds to loss of free energy. Perhaps Shards can get around this limitation, however that would imply that second law does not actually hold in Cosmere. Father Machine most likely was using up spirits in some form, or used the spirits to channel Investiture from SR. Since spirits create fabrials, and fabrials do require energy source (e.g. Stormlight), spirits must also be drawing upon some reserve of Investiture, either native to themselves or from SR. Which as @Firesong pointed out, would make FM not closed system, and hence not perpetum mobile.

Rosharan's fabrial tech is and will continue to be ahead of Scadrial (Scadrial being primary Earth analogue with some magical tech, and Roshar being full blown magitech). So when it comes to advanced Invested weapons, Roshar will most likely have Scadrial beat. Not to mention that autoaiming gun is most closely within scope of Nalthis, not Scadrial. Also, the gun would have to include swivels which would be Awakened independently (similar to joints in Kalad's phantomns) because metal cannot move on its own (see Nightblood).

But Hoid does not yet know how it is possible that Odium tampered with his memories, and he thought that it was impossible thanks to the contract. So he might be checking because he is panicking and has no idea what else Odium might have done to him. It is clear that were it not for the contract, Odium could have killed him, because he lacks protection afforded to most.

Indeed

Yeah, those things are tripping me up to. I'll move the rest of answer to spoilers, as these are just Stormlight forums, not Cosmere general

We also have confirmation that at least Elsecaller platespren (armorspren) are not present all the time, and must be called upon. I would assume this holds for other orders as well, though there might be differences. But it might be possible that in great danger Radiant summons them subconsciously, like we see in other magic systems. Still, this possibly leaves Radiants open to unexpected ambush. Edit: And Hoid seems to be using his Invested powers without realizing when agitated. Wonder if this happens to anyone, or if it is a quirk of his. Could be useful for detecting users of Invested Arts. And Warbreaker spoilers

Just hitting a target the size of human is very difficult in combat. The best success in police force is NYPD, and they have ~30% hit rate, which includes officer suicides as 'hit'. Even a trained shooter would have basically no chance to hit specific bind point, or indeed any bindpoint, not without assistance of e.g. atium. To add to it, Olympic level shooters when in ideal conditions (e.g. not a fight, and stationary target) when hitting 10/10 shot are targeting circular area 2,5 centimeter in radius, ~at least ~20 times the size of a bind point. So even literally the best shooters on planet would need to be lucky to hit bind point even under ideal conditions. Add to it that target won't be standing still, and hitting bind point is simply luck and nothing else. So Atium burner, or someone compounding Chromium could possibly do it. No one else. The only spikes made on the fly were by individuals nudged or controlled by Ruin, not by Intent of ordinary human. We don't have any confirmation of if donor and recipients bind points are the same. We do know that every single spike (with the exception of those made under Ruin influence) came from the heart. In TLM non-specific spikes are made without piercing heart, however we don't know how viable the procedure is, or if it could be done on the fly also.

I mean, steel dagger tapping steel would do exactly nothing to the dagger. F-Steel stores effectively muscle speed, not speed of being moved around. And since steel dagger cannot move itself, F-Steel would not enable it do to anything at all. Here possibly yes, depending on how F-steel would interact with the 'physiology' of the awakened construct. So far we have only seen humans draw on human metalminds (and one Kandra, that however had human body at the time). So it is possible drawing on metalmind of different species/body plan would change the effects, and some might not do anything at all. E.g. species without eyes would get no benefit at all from stored F-Tin eyesight.

Not alder, but I will point out that there is difference between how much material can compress to absorb e.g. fall , and how well will the material behave under tension. Cloth can be compressed relatively well, so Awakened clothing will absorb shock from the wall relatively well. However, cloth can be torn with human strength, so cloth will not be able to handle tension very well, e.g. it won't help you lift heavy objects. At least, that would be my understanding of it. Vin needed duralumin pewter to protect against duralumin steel, and no other pushes (since duralumin enhances all the metals you are burning, you could not do it any other way). Wax never achieved such levels of power (outside of BoM), and hence did not need protection. And if I remember right, the one 'great' feat of destruction with A-Steel, was when he destroyed that one building, however there he was on top of it, so the building had to bear his entire weight (or to be more precise, the nails in the construction of the building had to). Since F-Iron protects user against crushing themselves with the mass, it did the same thing there. It would not, because the thick rope now has to work against the millions of lbs of the body/arm as well. The awakened rope is not part of your body, so to it, you are incredibly heavy, and it cannot really move the arm, so it cannot enhance it in any way.

To add, to rewrite yourself to be Knight Radiant, the stamp would basically have to create a complete spren, which would take a lot of Investiture. Afterwards, not much. Comparatively, changing piece of metal into different metal is 'easy'. So some stamps would require such ridiculous amounts of Investiture, they would not be really feasible.

Yeah, I think that is the most likely scenario, I was just playing devil's advocate.

While I don't think that is the case, perhaps Brandon has decided to retcon this and leatherbound edition will make minor adjustment to this scene? E.g. "A small metal cube. He picked it up and threw it back, fearing an explosive, but nothing happened. What had that been?"

Yeah, I am kind of guilty of this :/ It is not that I don't read the previous posts, typically I try. But because composing a reply in threads like these typically takes me around ~40 minutes, and by then I usually have to move to other things (or even sooner, which causes me some issues ), so I end up only replying to people who specifically mentioned me. I see these threads as sort-of running 'parallel' discussion sometimes, where not everyone interacts with everyone, but I understand that is most likely not viewpoint of everyone. I've read AoN as well It has been a while but I did. I am typically quite conservative with my statements (i.e. books + WoBs, unreleased chapters, mild generalizations) and more mentally suited to poking holes in other theories, which can make me seem as sort of 'hard-a**'. With threads that are specifically only wild conjecture I don't engage (e.g. Twinborn combos), simply because I would be dampening their fun for no good reason. This thread asked for strength of Roseite along various dimensions (those I had nothing to add to that was not already said), and how it might match up against Shardbearer, which is not inherently asking only for brainstorming. I answered that to the best of my knowledge and ability, using information I see as solid as possible (e.g. how other things we see interact with Shardblades, other possible properites of Aethers from WoBs). Eh, better to err on the side of caution than the other way around And you are being quite polite about it, I think. So no harm no foul. Well my viewpoint is that: Three points: Roseite requires Investiture field only when disconnected from Aetherbound, and hence the entity that it is part of. Shardblade and Shardplate are always Connected to the spren that make them up, because they are them. This would suggest that neither Blade nor Plate would crumble. Shardblade definitely does not require external power source (see all non-Radiant summoning and using deadblades), and Living Plate seems to use Investiture only to heal itself (see RoW, specifically Jasnah battle, she runs out of Stormlight but her Plate keeps functioning). Deadplate does require Stormlight to function as we see multiple times. The fact that disconnected pieces of (dead)Plate do crumble to dust, suggests that Roshar does not have Investiture field. Assuming the crumbling to dust is analogous to Roseite crumbling to dust. So I come to conclusion that neither Living Plate nor Blade require Investiture to persist or function. Plate does require Light to heal, and Deadplate does requires light to function. Additionally, based on disconnected pieces of Plate crumbling, I would posit that Roshar does not have ambient Investiture field. SP3: Thanks for the reminder of this. It makes sense, we know that Plate can break even from ordinary damage, and so merely having more Physical mass behind strike should do more damage. But I don't think it can be just mass of the Blade, Investiture density clearly must play a role as well based on all of the WoBs on Investiture playing a role in this. Catching a Blade will not be a great tactic, since Shardbearer can dismiss it to free it. It would grant some advantage against someone with Deadblade (for 10 heartbeats or a bit less, if they are like Adolin), but anyone with Living spren could simply skip through the obstacle, or change shape of the blade.

Manipulation could still count as Intent for this purpose, which would spoil the process. Ruin manipulating people was enough to count as Intent for Hemalurgy, so the lines are kind of blurry. I agree, the character arcs and their journeys are the best part of stories. Though it is interesting how strongly Kel defines himself with powers he had only for 2-3 years of his life. It is a minuscule fraction of his life by now. Maybe part of it is how strongly others identify him as Kelsier 'The Survivor', and as CS he is also affected by it. But on personal level, it makes sense he misses it, flying through the night must have been beautiful freedom for him.

I will echo @Underwater_Worldhopper , I do enjoy theorizing and the discussion that come with it. And yeah, sometimes it can become too heated (which is typically when either discussion goes into sociological aspects, or people start resorting to personal attacks instead of argumentation), however I don't think it has gotten to this point here yet, and I don't think it was on trajectory to get there. It can be frustrating sometimes, but all debates/discussions can be, and the best theories must stand the tests of being poked and prodded. Personally, I am more suited to the prodding, and not coming up with new theories myself, because most of the ideas I have a tear apart and never put anywhere. Oh I do agree! I hope (and think) there will be counters to both Shardplates and Shardblades in the future. I just don't think anything on screen so far rises to that level. And I think defense against Shardblade will always be temporary at best (outside of suppressors), because even Shardplate cannot withstand repeated blows and that is the best mobile defensive material we have seen in Cosmere (hypothetical spren shield not withstanding). SoTD2 spoilers:

Are they? I was under the impression that Honorblades are basically about as Invested as Shardblades, and I am not aware of any evidence to the contrary. They used to be powered directly by Honor, which would made them more powerful in some ways, but they are no longer. Why? We have two different materials (Godmetal, Invested regular metal) both react the same way (shatter into metallic pieces after 2-3 hits). BoM is not wildly different, why would it react differently? Metalminds can be broken by hits from Shardblade (WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/75/#e4363 ), so the most direct explanation is that they would fail exactly the same way as everything else so far, as BoM are still just a metalmind/Medallion and not a Shardblade (the only thing shown to resist other Shardblades fully). There are basically four modes of interaction with Shardblades: Non-living, non-Invested matter: Go right through with minuscule resistance, cutting the Physical substance. Living, non-Invested matter: Go right through with minuscule resistance, cutting the Spiritual aspect. Invested matter/Godmetals (but not sapient): Resist for 2-3 blows, before shattering into pieces. Invested matter/Godmetals (sapient): Fully resist. One outlier here being Nightblood/Honorblade interaction, however Nightblood is downright weird, and far beyond all the other Invested weapons/armor.

Well, any fabrial is kind of resistant to Shardblades, same way any Awakened object is kind of resistant. It's just that for most cases it does not make any difference. Half-Shards would 'simply' be a Fabrial that through its construction somehow became more Invested than is usual for Fabrials, by e.g. using the sprens essence and not just Stormlight. Fine metalwork does not deal with strong blows very well, even indirect one. I know, I pointed out in my comment that the diamond shape being requirement is conjecture on my end. However, we never see any other shape. Plus they cannot apply it to armor (which would be natural next step). The shields are mentioned as bulky and unwieldy, why make them in such a way, if better alternative is possible? Why not make smaller shield, so that the wielder retains mobility? Or have breastplate with small cage attached at the back? If shield is part of fabrial, then why shape of metal is a factor is answered, it is part of cage and there shape of metal is important. If only the box is fabrial, and not the rest of shield, it raises more questions about its use. There are no inconsistencies with this model, instead it explains why we only ever see one shape of shield and no other, and why is it not applied to other armor. With lack of any other evidence, the simplest explanation is the preferred one. And the principle is not reserved for philosophy, it is basically used in science as well. You don't posit something new, unless you cannot explain what is happening with what you already know (or some combination of that). Don't know, we cannot really tell, since we don't know capacity of metalminds with any certainty. If a bracer can store tens of thousands of kg/hours easily, then ~300 kg construction of a ship could store tens of thousands ton/hours easily. So it could possibly make month long trips without needing to tap the weight. That is odd. Someone should ask Brandon about that, or someone from his team. @alder24 never said any such a thing, at least that was not my understanding: However, from RoW we know that the entire gauntlet, is seemingly just one spren. One spren smashes to the hand, gauntlet is in place only translucent (which full Plate can be made to be, so that is no evidence for gauntlet being incomplete). Per WoK chapter 26 where we get the description of putting on a Shardplate: Sabaton encases the entire boot of Dalinar, and military boots are typically nearly up to knees. Greaves go on next, and they cover the up to and over the knees, locking on to sabatons: Cuisses after to cover thighs So to entirely cover a single leg you need ~3-5 pieces of armor (Sabaton, greaves, cuiss, the last twopossibly doubled if they are attached one from front and the other from back). So legs require just 6-10 armor pieces. He already has culet, faulds, skirt goes over them next, so that is 4 pieces for torso and lower body. Breastplate is a single piece based on description (but could be two so lets go with that). For arm we know have rerebraces, vambrace, continuing with gauntlet: So that is just 3 pieces for a single arm, so arms requires 6 pieces in total. Finally, goes gorget, pauldrons and helmet: This puts the total of distinct armor pieces for the entire Shardplate at 22-26. So 30 just for limbs is clearly not correct. 3-5 for each leg 3 for each arm 4 for lower torso (culet, faulds 2x, skirt) 5 for upper torso (breastplate 2x, gorget, pauldrons 2x) 1 Helm Gauntlet is most likely single spren (per what is shown on screen in RoW, same in both our versions). We see gauntlet shatter in WoR. Hence shattered pieces are pieces of one spren, and shattering into pieces is not 'spren no longer being Conencted together' as you posit. Except that Syl has been to drawn to him since before they ever met. She even says so. So there is precedent for spren to being drawn to 'where they belong'. So, bunch of appropriately sized spren being drawn to Kaladin (especially when there were thousands of windspren present) is not much of a reach. Or, you know, there were thousands of windspren present, so ones of appropriate size were simply there. What? I never said anything of the sort? And I do have a valid response. That there is precedent for Radiants messing with causality in limited fashion, and so we should not be surprised to see appropriate sized spren being present when Radiant gets plate. Syl was drawn to him before they ever met. Why would not specific windspren not be drawn to him in the same fashion? I mean, Kaladin finding the vendor at the end of RoW is more surprising than that. And if you don't like that reasoning, there were thousands of windspren present when he got Plate, self-selection of appropriate sized ones would be 'easy'.

Shardplate is basically as Invested as Shardblade, and yet it shatters. Again, so far nothing but another Shardblade can withstand Shardblade. Everything either gets cut through, or shatters in few hits. I don't see any reason why BoM would be outlier to that rule. To compare Investiture density: Shardplate is most likely more Invested (if not by a lot) than BoM. It is after all pure godmetal. Cognitive/Spiritual aspect: Shardplate has cognitive and spiritual aspect since it is made out of living spren. BoM most likely have some minor cognitive/spiritual aspect since they are (most likely) kind of Medallion. These are the only relevant factors in resisting Shardblade we have. BoM seems to be comparable, or weaker than Shardplate. Shardplate shatters, hence BoM would most likely shatter as well. (with the Aluminum piece surviving, or being just dented/cut through regularly). Just consider, why would side-effect of BoM provide better defense than an Invested Item designed for the purpose?

Or they can be lesser spren forced somehow to Invest the Shield. Plate proves that lesser spren are Invested enough to resist Shardblade a bit. Yeah, but the fine metalwork of Fabrial would get damaged by blows more easily than the shield itself. And this does not explain why only diamond shapes shields are used for Half-Shards, nor why can the same Fabrial not be used for breastplate/armor. Simplest explanation is that the entirety of shield is part of Fabrial. If it effect of the Blade, then Roseite should also shatter in similar way. Which is how this entire discussion got started. Well Wax carries metalminds that can store thousands of kg/hours, and not be really full. So something like 3 kg of Iron could plausibly store weight of the entire ship for some short trip. Interesting, is it by any chance a translation? Per Alder it would be more like ~30 ish pieces. And since gauntlet does seem to be formed from single spren (it looks exactly the same later on when made translucent, as when the spren first forms it), I don't really see any evidence for sections being formed from multiple spren. And all sections shatter the same way, and clearly single section is not dozens of spren. So the shattered pieces of metal are almost certainly coming from just few spren, so individual shards cannot be just one spren. Not at the moment, you can look it up, it is in WoK in the party chapter (I think 22?), Coppermind has pointer to it. She only mentions that they are only shields, and no other armor, nor do they provide the other augments of Shardplate. The part about being only ever diamond shaped is my observation, I don't think any other shape of Half-Shard was ever shown or mentioned. Or, shield is part of fabrial construction, and they have not figured out how to make fabrial work with different shape of metal. Radiants mess with causality quite often (Kal being good with spear, because he will be good with spear, Shallan drawing things she did not withness as they are happening, Dalinar Connecting Kal with his brother). Attracting appropriately sized spren is a minor thing.

We don't know the exact principle along which Half-Shard functions. If it is somehow using the spren's 'essence' to charge the shield, it should be more then enough Investiture. After all, Nahel spren can create quite sizeable amount of Godmetal, and this would be 'just' charging with Investiture. Thank you for the second WoB, perhaps he has changed his mind in between the two, or perhaps BoM are something else than just full Metalmind. Which, they actually kind of are, since they are medallion and they then must have some cognitive aspect. I concede that Half-Shard is not a good analogue for BoM, however that does not change the fact that only other Shardblades can fully resist Shardblades on semi-permanent basis, and BoM are not on the Shardblade level per the second WoB. Everything else (including Shardplate, which I wager is still more Invested than BoM) shatters after 2-3 hits, so I expect also BoM to shatter like that after few hits.