therunner

Edit: Side note: Now that I think about it, any combustion engines and jets would likely not work properly due to different atmospheric conditions of Roshar. The parts are designed for certain temperature tolerances, and the improved burn from higher oxygen (and lower nitrogen) contents would likely cause damage to those engines. E.g. increasing amount of oxygen from 21% to 30% would increase the burn temperature by about 300-400K, so by about 10-15%, which is certainly outside tolerances, as e.g. increase of temperature by ~30K from optimal conditions halves the lifespan of the part. Even if Rosharan atmosphere has only 25% of oxygen, that is still about 150K-200K higher temperature, that would still likely cause those parts to get irreparably damaged. So US military would be kinda in trouble, because they can't really use their main advantages. No planes and no cars/tanks. This means no surveillance to speak of, or long range strike abilities (hard to use missiles when you have no idea where anything is). Guns and missiles would not have their functioning affected though, as they have their own oxidizer. But this alone removes a large part of US strength, before any contact with Rosharan forces whatsoever. Neither are in way comparable to size of Roshar. Also, Iraq is not under US control and the invasion was done with NATO support (fun fact: the only time Article 5 was used) Korea did not end in US victory (and was never a US invasion in the first place). Assumption of First strike is also quite distortinary. e.g. if you assume first strike, Roshar that suddenly got access to US could handily decapitate the entire state by e.g just using Lightweaving to waltz into White House/Pentagon/Congress and killing everyone there. And coming in late does not mean I cannot question assumptions where they are clearly designed to give one side advantage. I.e. you give US three large advantages knowledge of Rosharan side first strike unattackable home base that you then retro-actively justified (somewhat). But those justifications are subject to discussion, if they don't hold up to scrutiny, that advantage should not be considered. We can always level the playing field: Roshar has knowledge common in US neither side gets unlimited first strike (i.e. tension grow until they erupt into hostilities, where both sides are already preparing for said hostilities) Roshar can send agents to earth (or US cannot send any further supplies outside of what originally got in). And for the reason they are smart they will be suspicous, and use their own tools to track the unknown factor, and not give them access. If you assume US has access to common Rosharan knowledge, you are already giving them another advantage. For parity purposes, either both sides have common knowledge of the other, or neither does. And how can they surveil without Stormfather learning about it? Any presence would be notices by Stormfather/Dalinar basically immediately. Planes need bases/aircraft carries, and those would be seen. Citation needed. Stormfather can notice and does human sized objects within the storm, of course he would notice a ship. At the very least he would notice an unknown object he has never seen, with people on it/in it which is doubly interesting if new portal just appeared in the middle of ocean. Rosharan side effectively has access to satellite/recon plane information with sub ~1m resolution, the only downside is that the information gets refreshed every 10-14 days. But the day after Highstorm, they know exactly where majority of the US assets are. No it couldn't, this was discussed on this forum previously. Central temperature is completely pointless as measure of destructiveness, you want energy at the very minimum. I mean, this building was ~620 meters from the center of the blast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial ) and the construction survived. Urithiru is much sturdier, because you know, its a mountain. If they got bomb inside Urithiru than yeah, but that is frankly completely unrealistic assumption. Do you have any citations on the 11 milllion metric tons, and what was the yield of the bomb and how it was placed? Because i cannot find any. EDIT: If the explosion is fully underground, melt cavity (i.e. what gets completly destroyed) is roughly 4 m per cube root of yield in kilotons. I am taking the lower bound, as the that is for .e.g. granite. Most US arsenal at the moment tops at ~150 kT, i.e. the melt cavity would be at most ~20 meters in radious. Even side-by-side blast would likely make a crater in Urithiru only about ~30 meters deep or so, as most of the energy would go into surrounding atmosphere, not the structure itself. Air-burst explosion would basically not do much at all to Urithiru. I mean, while yes, Urithiru is not full of rock, it is also not a man-made structure but a magical living organism. For all we know its strata have performance more along the lines of reinforced concrete (which they likely have to, otherwise it would have collapsed in the last few millenia). Also, US bunker busters had pretty poor showing in real world conditions just earlier this year, and no they are not accurate to within a foot, not without satellite navigation (that US would not have on Roshar). And 2 tonnes of TNT is laughably small to do anything to a construction as large and solid as Urithiru. It would certainly do some damage, but if it cannot destroy small man made facility that is at most ~80 below ground, it would be hilariously insufficient against 1km tall structure. I am sorry, but this is completely wrong. 11 tons of TNT is not enough to destroy everything within a mile radius, what the hell are you talking about? That is nuke level (i.e. hundreds of kilotons of TNT) of yield at least. Per the above quick estimates, 11 tons of TNT, when exploded right above Urithiru would...maybe destroy the top floor or two? Scaling with cube root ~30m from 150 kt, that gets you ~1.3 meters at the deepest point. So yeah, top floor would get destroyed, not much else. If BBC or NYT wrote that, those articles are more fictional than Roshar is. Windrunners can place reverse lashing that would render missiles inaccurate, those don't need to touch target. Or Navani can elaborate on attractor fabrials. Not just Jasnah, Lightweavers as well. Logistics wins wars, so if you can deny any resupply to your foe, who is reliant on modern technology, you can win. And you don't need to soulcast individual creates, you can just set them on fire, or soulcast air to rock around them ,etc. Ideally they would focus on disrupting fuel supply, because no fuel = no jets, tanks, cars. Secondary priority would be explosives (missiles, bombs etc.) Third priority would be bullets. They can support that long term quite easily, you know just send shipments through Shadesmar. They don't do that to the Fused in books since Fused don't have a single point of entry to Roshar, in this scenario US does. And yes, the resources should have beads, why wouldn't they? But even if not, they can still soulcast air around those resources into .e.g rock, or oil, or flame. Take your pick, either way resupply would be very hard. and unpleasant. Also, how large is that portal US is using? I assume it must be quite large, if you operate on the assumption they can get aircraft carries through. I don't think you understand how much of a nightmare it would be. In Afghanistan, US had control over places it resupplied into, i.e. they didn't have to worry about getting attacked from nowhere while they unload. On Roshar, thanks to Shadesmar, nowhere is safe. And if this drags on, US will have to start countering Lightweavers shooting laser beams, and Elsecallers just straighup soulcasting supercritical amounts of uranium (or e.g. anthrax) in their bases. The empty space is also a boon to defensive side, you have a lot of space where to stage any units for quick attacks, and US side simply does not have capacity to track all of that territory, unlike Roshar that basically has satellite-level info on the entire continent and surrounding areas. And then they are reborn, and can go again. Plus you have to hit them, and e.g. those Shapeshifting ones or that can meld to ground would be very hard to counter. How do you e.g. establish a physical base, when at any time hand can reach out from ground and snatch you? Cool, how is that useful inside the aircraft carrier? Lezien would travel to carrier in his spren form (which cannot be attacked physically), and then reform inside it. You assume young Radiants would know about Jasnah and where she is. Or that planes could be transported to Shadesmar by some young Radiant. Or that somehow Radiant got captured, turned and traveled to an Oathgate to use it. Why would Radiants leave Oathgates in enemy territory unlocked for anyone to use? So I would say Shadesmar is pretty safe, certainly safer than any US base. And once again, bribes/threats go both ways, and unlike US soldiers that don't know the language or can shapeshift, Radiants have methods of learning language and to blend in. On offensive side of Roshar: they can easily disable all planes of US side by soulcasting air inside cockpit into rock. Or if that is not possible for whatever reason, soulcasting air inside the air intakes into rock. Plane crippled. They can do that from Shadesmar, they know general location of planes from knowing location of air craft carrier via Stormfather, and to get a bead that should be sufficient. You can do that also with other stuff of course, like soulcasting air into rock in the missile exhaust for fun explosions that will disable/kill US units. (This would likely require far too much Stormlight to be realistic, but it is a fun idea) Soulcasting certain amount of water below the aircraft carrier into air, to cause it to sink in the now insufficiently dense environment. Unmade: Thrill and directing it at US forces. Or using Heart of the Revel to cripple US side. Also, you still didn't address e.g. Everstorm/Highstorm targeting US assets, which would be a big deal.

They also had no millitary reasonable military victory in last 20 years. (and no clear victory since WW2) Trying to conquer Roshar would be as if Afghanistan was Asia sized, had regular hurricanes and people there had access to magic that can destory planets if not careful. That alone basically tells you that no, US could not. So you are just casually giving US the first strike advantage? Really? They literally just start dealing with invaders, and have quite warlike history, they would be super suspicious. Also no they don't learn language through Dalinar, Dalinar learns language, or grants that knowledge to Rosharan diplomants. Why would Dalinar help them like this, he is not a moron. Urithiru would survive getting hit with a nuke, it is like trying to nuke a mountain. Conversely we could say that while US is trying to set this up, Rosharan side is getting information from Dalinar and Stormfather that these visitors are positioning things nearby important settlements. Lightweavers and Jasnah can also observe them from Shadesmar (people are nicely visible there). Fused would be massive issue, e.g. certain Lady of Pains deciding to unleash another plague? Or continually teleporting Lezian? Once that one got on any aircraft carrier, or into a base, that base is basically dead. Plus Everstorm would likely target US units as well, and that would be a huge problem for any of them. That still gives unreasonable advantage to US, you are giving them unasailable home base they can use to resupply at leisure. But if the entry point is known (and it should be, thanks to Stormfather), then Jasnah can just camp in Shadesmar and soulcast resources as they are coming in, and so can Lightweavers. E.g. in Iraq war, US used roughly ~250 000 bullets per one kill, and in the first three weeks used up ~30k munitions on bombings, and Iraq is tiny compared to Roshar (roughly 1/100 of the size). So they would have to be sending in a lot of equipment. Until they learn aluminum blocks Investiture, any equipment that gets sent in can get crippled. Or if its ammunition, it can get exploded. No. Or more precisely, US does not have access to Investiture, so they cannot really sail on it in any way. Nor could they use Oathgates, Radiants could lock them via Sibling. Conversely, if you suggest trade, Jasnah can use the portal to travel to us, and just start creating gold from air to bribe politicians. Or just stay on this side and bride soldiers to just go away.

The characters who say that are mortals, and do not know the things that the Shards know. I do not think this take is an intended message. Even outside of what mortal characters say, Shards are certainly fallible. Ruin failed, Autonomy failed, Honor failed, and we could go on. In every larger story arc (Era 1, Era 2, Stormlight) there is a Shard that fails at what they wanted to do. By definition, that makes them fallible, irrespective of in-world mortal character opinion. They are not omnipotent, nor omnipresent, nor omniscient. They are vastly expanded compared to mortal, but they are still limited. Even Adonalsium was. I don't agree, or, not fully at least. I mean, take Ruin in Era 1. From perspective of basically anyone on Scadrial, he is without question evil. And yet, the principle he represents, the driving force and compulsion in him, that things end and decay, is necessary for life to continue. Without decay, leaves won't decompose in fall. Without forest fires, certain species of trees won't reproduce. So world without Ruin wouldn't be a better one. I wonder if Ruin's attempted destruction of Scadrial was as quick and as violent if Preservation did not break their deal, and blocked the destruction for millenia.

Ah, I see. Thanks for clarification! In that sense it seems to me that most systems are aristocratic: Allomancy and Feruchemy certainly are, they cannot be given away or sold Medallions might eventually change that to some extent, but it is unknown how their manufacture happens Knight Radiant, theoretically Blade and Plate can be lent to others, and possibly you can make people your squires at least in some orders, so elements of what can be given away are there From this perspective Hemalurgy is the most free one, it is defined mostly by knowledge, and so can be traded/given away like any other knowledge can.

Well, yes, but access to high-level magic abilities is wildly different in Knight Radiants and Mistborn, so grouping them together is confusing. In Allomancy you are born with it, and nothing you can do will change that. Knights Radiant have to earn their power, and can lose it. That is fundamentally very different way of obtaining access to magic. Under Nale they effectively became a cult-like fascist organization serving a single person, Nale. True Skybreakers I would not have a problem with, mostly I think "From each according to his ability, To each according to his need" does fit with Singer forms somewhat I would disagree that forms are weak compared to allomancers, forms in general are comparable to Mistings, albeit a bit weaker. E.g. Warform are ~2x the strength of adult human, which is comparable to Pewterarm. But yes, they don't reach to Mistborn, or Knight Radiants.

No, meritocracy means that those of merit rule, on what basis you determine merit (i.e. skill, achievement etc.) is immaterial. Knight Radiants are chosen by merit, of how well they can live up to the Ideals of their order, hence they are meritocracy. This does not necessarily mean they would be good rulers (see e.g. Hoid). What you are describing is technocracy, where those of proven skill (relevant to task at hand) rule, though admittedly there is overlap of those two. Literal meaning of aristocracy is rule by best, however: Not a single country in the history that is aristocracy would fit that literal definition Neither would Knight Radiants, because their certain members would likely not fit (numerous Skybreakers for example). They fit only if you use two wildly different meaning for each: Knight Radiant might fit if you choose literal meaning of aristocracy, but that would exclude heraditary nobility (e.g. Mistborn) Mistborn and heraditary nobility are included if you use the word aristocracy in its usual sense, but it then excludes Knight Radiant. And that is why I don't think grouping them together makes sense. Edit: @Qianweilian I like the two dimensional scale! If you would consider what Singers do as magic, then I would say this fit. It is widespread (every Singer participates), and meritocratic (what Form you get depends entirely upon you and your state). But as it is a part of their 'biology', it might not make sense to consider it as magic, for the purpose of this discussion.

One correction Stormlight and Mistborn Era 1 systems are very different, and grouping them together as 'aristocracy' is very flawed in my opinion. Mistborn in either Era, the powers are heraditary, and some people are simply born 'better'. But Stormlight is instead more meritocratic (with elements of nepotism, due to Connection). You have to earn the powers, and can lose them. I would say the Stormlight system is among the better ones, as Power can be lost, helping to prevent concentration of power Power cannot be concentrated within any single group of society (as anyone can become Knight Radiant) Basically, Stormlight-style system gives equal opportunity, and has certain checks in-built (the Oaths), even if those are not ideal.

I would say Soulcasting spren would be much more difficult than soulcasting even TLR. Slivers have only expanded souls by Shards power, whereas spren are Splinters of Shard. I mean to soulcast spren, you basically have to soulcast equivalent amount of Godmetal, and Shardblades are pretty large. Mistborn are not particularly Invested when they are not using their powers, and TLR won't be an exception, as he is not Invested enough to be ageless. If we take Breaths as a guide, TLR has less than 2000 BEUs (likely far less than that, as Mistborn are 2-3 BEUs), so soulcasting him is equivalent to Soulcasting less than 2000 people, difficult but with enough Lifelight...

Fair enough. Though I would still bet on most Heralds, even over rational TLR. They have literally centuries (if not millenia) more experience fighting against Invested foes, and they fought multiple wars where it was bronze-age/iron-age level humans + Heralds vs Singers + Fused + Thunderclasts + Unmade, and they won them all. TLR never did get challenged to that extent. Even outside of Taln, they exhibit that atium-like effect, except unlike TLR they don\t need Atium to fuel it. And they also exhibit superspeed, that is of supersonic level. They are all on another level compared to basically anyone else in Cosmere, it's just that Taln is on another level even compared to them. Fair. If she just randomly dropped out, she would have a chance, since TLR is not tapping F-steel and f-zinc 24/7. But that (or trying to soulcast him) are probably the only ways she could do it at the moment.

So we got this new WoB which states that by Era 3, Scadrial is still unable to produce Lerasium. Wax did something that no one else did, and never tried again interestingly enough. (I am partial to the theory that it had to do with his Intent) But what is more interesting is that causing ettmetal explosion alone also produces something, something new that we will see in Era 3. Any ideas of what that could be? Maybe some compounds with interesting physical and Invested properties?

I mean...no Heralds absolutely are on the same level as TLR, if not beyond him. . I mean, they seem to have semi permanent Atium-like power they can turn on and off seemingly at will (Ishar dodging Windrunners, Nale dodging Kaladin, and even Kaladin back in WoR duel), and we haven't really seen them nowhere near their best. As to Lift vs TLR. Lift already showed herselft capable of beating Full Feruchemist, so that is nothing to sneeze at. She is also hugely invested, though we don't know the exact details. Add on Nightblood... I think she would still lose to TLR, unless she somehow got similar Atium-like perk as Heralds at the very least. But Lift after training with Zahel for a decade or so? Possibly unlocking other abilities? That might be a different conversation.

Rosharan side has already destroyed one planet, they have a leg up on mass destruction capabilities. With the setup given: Mobility: Roshar dominates there. They have easy access to CR, and can use that to move soldiers faster. Plus Windrunners provide mobility that Scadrial won't match for years yet. Long range: Scadrial has advantage there, with early rocketry (though how replicable they are is open question, as Set required active assistance of a Shard, and didn't actually understand what they were doing) and with cannons and guns. Though all of these will have to leverage aluminum ammunition, as otherwise simple atractor fabrials would render them useless. Against Fused/Radiants/Shardbearers guns are also not as useful. (Plate especially helps a lot). Short range: Roshar dominates. They are used to this type of warfare, and unlike Scadrial have a lot of practice in war. WMD: Scadrial might have some Trellium-Harmonium bombs, but they require a lot of energy to opperate (i.e. large electricity generators) so cannot be used in rockets. On the other hand, Light-anti-light reaction is not necessarily as explosive, unless in large gems. But Surges are becoming unbound, and those already destroyed one planet. So I'd give a bit of advantage to Roshar. Investiture: Roshar, and it is not even close. Just baseline healing is important. And while leeching cubes could be useful, grenades like that seems to be quite rare, and you need leecher. Plus they would likely be blocked by suppressor fabrials. Personel: We know that Roshar is the second most populous planet, so likely even Unified Scadrial has fewer people available. Add to that Singers quicker maturation rate, and Roshar is more suitable for waging wars. Plus they have immortal Fused and Heralds, Nale and Kaladin alone would be utter nightmare for Scadrians, what with their Atium-lite abilities. Short-term and mid-term Roshar has advantage, Scadrial would have to build up a lot of industrial capacity, but that can be easily destroyed by Windrunners or Heavenly Ones, as Scadrial has no way of detecting them or stopping them. That, plus Rosharan access to CR via their native powers gives them a lot of advantages in logistic, and options to hurt Scadrial logistics which Scadrial has little ways of defending against. If Scadrial survives, then long-term they might have an edge? It would depend on how easy it is to develop regular science, vs Rosharan magi-tech (as they would not be just standing around). Also, from Doylist angle: I would say Roshar would likely dominate, and that is why Roshar right now sits in time out, the rest of Cosmere has to catch up to their martial potential.

He could have simply asked if this would happen again (which he would since he was concerned with keeping Ruin imprisoned), at which point he would learn about the cycle.

No you are mistaken, Starling thinks they found the perpendicularity at the Dakwara place, because it was where the coordinates led them. They were not intercepted, they went where they were looking for, thought they found the place and then they were intercepted. And she is wrong, because the perpendicularity is certainly hundreds of km away. If Dusk wasn't there, they would be kind of at a loss. So again, this is evidence that Shadesmar even near perpendicularity drifts up to hundreds of km if there is no regular travel. So random non-perpendicular piece is probably basically constantly moving then. Which (unless you are Navigator from First of the Sun) is one of the only ways of mapping Shadesmar. The only semi-stable regions are those near perpendicularities, and those are identified by the location they lead to PR. Silverlight being the only known exception. Dusk is quite explicit that in emberdark, there are no landmarks to navigate by.

Which makes sense for a game, you want to sort of compress the scale, otherwise you have balancing issues.

This is something that was discussed on the forums quite a bit, and from what actually happens in the books, it seems like Stormlight does not increase your strenght in sense of multiplier , i.e. what previously took 1 unit of strength takes only 0.5 on Stormlight, but instead it increases your cap. Basically it acts like semi-permanent adrenaline boost to strength. This is consistent with both the fact the people on Stormlight mostly don't perceive increase in strength in regular interactions (back in TWoK Kaladin even though it does not increase strength at all), and also with the fact that it allows you to fight hand to hand with explicitly inhumanly strong Regals and Fused. These are certainly more gamified than what actually happens in books, Shardplate explicitly makes you roughly as 10-20x as strong as regular trained human. At very minimum, shardhammer has to be carried by 3 people, and Dalinar than wields it one handed with complete ease. That is much more than +2 modifier, I would assume.

He grabs helmet (and it basically turns into sort of bulbous glove), which if Shardplate behaved like full plate would be circa ~40kg, which yeah that is a bit much. But then again, he is holding Stormlight, and that makes you stronger than regular human. We don't have hard numbers on how much, but in RoW he grapples with Stormform, and those are stronger than Warform, and those are ~2x as strong as human. So Kaladin in that scene is about at minimum ~2.5 as strong as ordinary human. Put that on top of the fact that he until recently was carrying heavy wooden bridges every single day for months, so he is super buff and it starts to look a bit more realistic.

That is actually in line with the books, in TWoK Shardplate is described as 100 stoneweigth, which is ~635 kg. Assuming Rosharan lowered gravity it would still be ~440 kg (980 lbs) of weight in earth units. Which, yeah it is supernatural powered armor, that sounds about right. Cuirass usually forms circa 30% of full plate weight, but in Shardplate it is actually at least two pieces, so each would be at most 95kg. Heavy, but doable for few people to lift. And historically, drawn carts can carry between 1000-2000 pounds, so they could be loaded and moved on a cart. That is likely game rules less than actual lore. Though depends on what exactly they mean no longer Invested. Considering the weight is consistent with TWoK, it si more likely that the Ryshadium carrying capacity is error, and should be higher. Or more specifically, it could be unit mismatch, Ryshadium capacity being in 'earth' lbs and Shardplate weight in Rosharan lbs.

But planet without perpendicularity is not necessarily in a system without Perpendicularity. Edit: Or in an unmapped system. For all we know she could have been studying Ashyn, which is still in Rosharan subastral, and so easy to navigate to. That one off-hand sentance is not particularly strong piece of evidence, in face of the entire book IoTE repeatedly stating that navigating Emberdark reliably is basically impossible. Cuicesh announces "I am to be your guide for the Fifth Journey", and the Iriali immediately understand that this is a call to the Long Trail. There is nothing suggesting it is atypical, in fact their behavior suggests that this is how it usually goes. But even if not, conversely you have no evidence that Iriali do guide themselves, and so they are at most not evidence either for or against ability to navigate in Emberdark. No it was not valid, the map didn't even lead to perpendicularity as it was supposed to, but to a different island altogether! The map lead them hundreds of kilometers from where it was supposed to. And that is with perpendicularity stabilizing the subastral. So if anything, this shows that non-traveled pieces of Shadesmar even relatively near to perpendicularity drift up to hundreds of km! But with modern technology tracking speed and course is mostly trivial. So why is no one using it to navigate. Not to mention that IRL dead reckoning suffers from inevitable drift due to inaccuracies, so you have to use something else to re-fix your position if you actually want to travel anywhere. And that part is not possible in Emberdark. The obvious answer is that dead reckoning effectively does not work in Shadesmar, due to the aforementioned factors. We don't know enough about early Cosmere to say how those were established. For all we know Endowment helped with their creation, or Adonalsium set them up. Or dragons helped. Or the Invested Art Cakoban was using was more common. Routes existing in the past does not mean dead reckoning worked, as it couldn't anyway due to drift and inability to refix your position. And you might notice that some points on are very distant on map, despite being next to each other IRL (e.g. polar regions, or some oceans). Shadesmar by necessarity is like that, so it horribly deforms IRL space to flat plane.

There is no evidence of that at all. The compasses found in Urithiru can also be used just to navigate non-Emberdark portions of the Shadesmar, like we see them being used in WAT, and how they are used in Isles. Their presence does not mean they were capable of navigating Emberdark. Scadrial did not have 'booming interplanetary trade' during TLR. There was some trade, but that does not mean they were capable of navigation in the emberdark. As we see in Isles and elsewhere, moving on established routes is relatively easy. But navigating emberdark is basically impossible. Again, if it was possible previously to navigate Emberdark reliably, why is Starling acting like it is brand new revolutionary discovery that will give large soft power to First of the Sun?

Or if something affects the measurement (i.e. time dilation due to Investiture present either in CR, PR in sufficient quantities). Or if someone becomes aware of something, creating new parts of Shadesmar. Trade routes are stable because people travel them. Likely they had to have been discovered first, and then solidified over time. Default state of Shadesmar seems to be the 'unsea', which if traveled enough/thought about enough turns solid into a traversalble region. We have zero information on any such routes. If they are within subastral of planet with Perpendicularity, they would be much easier to travel to, like Ashyn. But that does not mean they are common. And Iriali, as I mentioned have guides that lead them, which does not imply reliable means of navigation to other places. I think the simplest evidence against dead reckoning working is the fact that no one is using it to navigate Shadesmar. If it worked, it would be used. It isn't, so it doesn't. It might work on sufficiently known places/routes, but not in unsea. Possibly they were there seeded by Adonalsium? Well, if it worked, why is no one using it? Hearing Knell and Current is not enough to navigate unsea, or find anything in it. You need to be able to detect interferences in the Current, and Dusk is the first person to be able to do that from what we see. Starling knows that Seekers can feel the Current, but is clearly surprised that he can use it to navigate, which makes it clear that Seekers can't use it to navigate Simples explanation is that Seekers simply are not sensitive enough/attuned enough to be able to navigate Shadesmar. If they have issue detecting Feruchemy in use, I doubt they will be able to detect interference of object with Investiture. It is known that Seekers can detect the Current, so clearly some would have tried to navigate, but clearly none were succeseful. Just because they have similar powers, does not mean they are exactly the same. E.g. Windrunner Lashings vs Heavenly Ones Lashings, similar powers, but with different limitations. Same thing likely applies here.

I think the dead reckoning method wouldn't work, because Shadesmar is changing and shifting over time. It also reacts to cognition of entities in it (the regular paths being more stable for example). And finally, some regions of Shadesmar have time dilation going on due to high amounts of Investiture, and you won't necessarily know when you get into the effect. E.g. at time after WAT, any path going in certain distance of Rosharan Shadesmar mapped out by dead reckoning will be distorted by the time distortion, and will be increasingly less accurate. Seekers can be quite sensitive, but clearly they are not sufficiently sensitive to map Shadesmar. If they could, Scadrial would already be doing it as it would be massive advantage. They don't, hence they cannot. Maybe if you enhanced them with spikes and F-Tin, but perhaps not even that.

I am not saying they don't use magi-tech at all, but per Brandon the primary faction that will be magi-tech coded is Roshar. (unless he changes his mind in the future) I.e. Scadrial uses things that look like something we might expect (e.g. implanted communicators, beam weapons, etc.) even if the means are magical. But Roshar will likely have more esoteric stuff for lack of better word.

We know their invested arts are relatively weak, but they are very good at regular-ish technoligy. Roshar will be the magicpunk power (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/124/#e1807 ) Also it is the population of the Basin that we know is relatively small (~15 million is closest we have), we don't have data on Malwish at all. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e3466 ) But based on on maps, they could easily be larger population. FTL is likely something easier for Scadrians since they literally have powers that compress time. Conversely Rosharans have powers that directly interact with gravity, hence them having easier time to construct antigrav machines. If it works differently, all the more reason to get it and then replicate it, that way you can learn something (i.e. industrial espionage basically) . I am certain they will have their signature technologies (e.g. Scadrian steelfields), antigravity is just simply not one of those. It is quite a staple of sci-fi genre, so it makes sense everyone has it. Only Iriali seem to be able to do it repeatedly, and we know very little of them. E.g. cakoban (if he was Iriali) used unknown Invested art for navigation and for forcing the dakwara to obey him. Additionally, from WAT it seems that at least 'now' they have highly Invested entities as guides to next land (and based on their behavior, they likely have had guides in the past), so they themselves don't necessarily know where they are going. I.e. Iriali can find specific places via their guides, but that does not mean they are generally capable of searching in Shadesmar. Plus, a month long travel by ship is considered 'close', so unsea/Emberdark is large, as in multiple ocean's worth of empty space. Without reliable navigation you basically have no chance of finding anything. Khriss only mentions that worlds without perpendicularity cannot be visited in PR, but can be studies from CR. Which, yes. But that does not mean she is capable of finding such planets. E.g. Braize and Ashyn are both examples of planets without perpendicularity. Plus Khriss herself is clearly incapable of even finding a perpendicularity she suspects exists on First of the Sun, so likely she has no better way of navigating Emberdark than others. FTL is clearly still very early and very expansive tech, most travel is still through shadesmar. So this is likely not cost effective. Plus they couldn't simply walk back, as we see how dangerous Emberdark is. Elsecalling as we have seen it does not support taking much with you beyond what is on you, so they would likely immediately fall to the 'ground', and then were stuck without any navigable landmarks. CR and PR don't map particularly directly to each other, that only happens near perpendicularities as we have learned in this book. So even if you get to CR you won't be able to travel back to known place, because you have no idea where you are in relation to it. Or the CR shifted after perpendicularity vanished. IotE mentions that perpendicularities are the only 'fixed' points, and all else does not match precisely (or at all) with PR. So once known paths can be lost. They do mention that Shadesmar can be very different ,and that while usually you have the ground/water inversion, it is not hard rule.

But those are not implanted in the body, which is what I was talking about. Pushing on spikes and metalminds outside of body is possible yes, but if they are implanted no. Personally I wasn't that suprised. I have long thought that people overestimate what Scadrians will be able to do with Invested Arts. On it being accessible, I suspect there is thriving economy, even among the nominally hostile nations (just like IRL). I did expect that as well, so it was a bit surprising. From the description of the Shadesmar in this book, it seems to me that CR near planets without perpendicularity would be very difficult to find. You would basically have to blindly navigate Emberdark and hope you happen to run into planetary subastral. Which can be nearly indistinguishable from Emberdark itself as Drominad subastral shows. So theoretically yes, Rosharans can transition between PR and CR with greater ease, but you still have to find the right part of CR to do that.