Eri

I recently noticed that 3 Aons from the map (from the compass, to be precise) aren't on the Coppermind and I traced them. I'm not sure of Kae, it's really weird and the compass is small.

Should I upload them to Coppermind, or let someone else who knows the wiki better do that, or…?

Aon Ake.svg

Aon Kae.svg

Aon Toa.svg

In this case you're right and Coppermind needs a correction. Thanks for catching it!

Back to the main point, they are talking numbers here. So, since you convinced me to pull the book from the shelf, chapter 21 (p 120 paperback), paraphrased: nearly 5 243 + about 550 (who died) got sick, of total about 38 000.

That's not exactly 16% (we don't get the exact number of not-immune population here), but it means that the "16%" they mention later can't be 16/128 or something like that. It has to be 16/100. And they notice this as significant before the 1/16 thing, and later use this to notice the prevalence of sixteend.

My point is that, without changing the text, the hypothesis of translation convention meaning they don't literally use percents, cannot be defended.

Also, p 191:

Quote

"This third one here isn't exact," Noorden said, "but that's only because the base number isn't a multiple of twenty-five."

Yes, they do use 100-based percents.

I'm still a fan of "hexadecimal numbers, decimal fractions" idea, because cultures do weird things like that, but maybe the simpler explanation is that even during Era 1, the hexadecimal system is an ancient one (like Roman numerals to us), and decimal is now commonly used (probably a mix of worldhopper influence and there being 10 publicly known metals).

Also, I now have a headcanon that Era 2 Southern Scadrians use base-17, because a) there are 17 digits after all, and b ) it would frustrate Hoid.

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

Vin IIRC. But the 16% are not important for that.

I'm sorry, but you remember wrong. Have you read the Coppermind link I put in my post? (I could quote, but I have it in paper, so Coppermind is easier to quote)

Quote

There is something special about the number sixteen. For one thing, it was Preservation's sign to mankind.

Yes, the behavior was important, but the exact number was important too.

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

No. That is half the problem. You had two observable phenomena

1. 16% of the whole group became sick. Expressed as a fraction: 4 / 25
2. Of those 1 / 16 become sick for longer (the future Atium-Mistings) - That turns into 1 / 100 of the whole group

No. Both were 16%. (There were proportionally more atium Mistings than other Mistings in that group.) 

Chapter 36 summary:

Quote

Demoux asks to be relieved of his position as General as he feels that Kelsier has judged him and found him unworthy. Demoux mentions another statistical oddity that Elend was not aware of, that sixteen percent of the sick either remained sick for sixteen days or perished. Demoux mentions other ways that the number sixteen seems to be relevant, stating there is a pattern that Kelsier is behind.

Those 16% that were sick for longer later turn out to be atium Mistings (ch 82):

Quote

Demoux arrives and gives a status report on their forces. He says that all of his soldiers took metals but none of them showed allomantic abilities. Elend has Demoux eat an atium bead and Demoux is able to burn it, and Elend deduces that his group are likely all Seers.

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

The psychological and cultural problem why Leras chose 16 / 100, as opposed to 16 / 256 of course remains. But that depends on his number system, not the Scadrian system.

The whole point of communication is for it to be understandable to the person you're communicating with. But OK, Leras was insane at this point, so I agree, him using the % may be explained. But I still claim that Elend and Demoux understanding the sign is something that could use an explanation.

I'm not attacking the book, I love Cosmere and Mistborn too. But it does have some details off. Like the leaves are red and the sunlight is red. Like Inquisitor!Marsh reads a text written on metal (later in SH it's said he did it by feeling it with his fingers, but in HoA it doesn't look like this, he even uses tin because it's dark). And I think it could be fun to discuss how this one can be retconned too.

48 minutes ago, LuckyJim said:

Option C is obvious.

Ash dies, someone else becomes the main Dustbringer and focus of the book, while the flashbacks are Ash.

Brandon keeps saying it's possible for flashback characters to die.

But in Eshonai's flashback book the PoV was Venli and they both were the relevant Order. I'd probably expect, in another case of dead character's flashbacks, for the character and main PoV to also be the Radiant Order matching the book.

On 23.12.2020 at 7:36 PM, PiedPiper said:

No worries! Are you thinking we'd have a book 4 situation again, where the flashbacks are Eshonai's and Venli's but it's sorta Navani's book anyway?

Because in that case, it's entirely possible we have a non-Radiant character becoming a Dustbringer

But the characters that are in book's Order are the ones that are theoretical main PoV (form the list of main PoVs we were given), not Navani.

Generally, having the book assigned to Ash and Ash not being a Dustbringer would break the mold. Which may be the whole point of it, but anyway it would break it.

25 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Leras was not Scadrian. He was Yolish. 

Yes. But the people who noticed the 16% thing (I don't remember, who that was exactly. Elend? Demoux?) were Scadrian.

26 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Or they noticed a constant fraction 4/25 and given that one in sixteen was specially afflicted they came to 16 / 100 and were just using fractions rather than a positional system for numbers between 0 and 1.

It was 16%, not one in 16.That's the whole problem here. 

Yes, they have a zero and a slightly more complicated system than our, but it's a positional system anyway. See this thread.

Translation or not, if a "percent" is 1/256, then 16% is just 1/16, which is a simpler way to say it. also, the total number of atium mistings would be too low, I don't remeber but I saw a thread about "why 16%, not 1/16?".

You could claim it's translation convention and "percent" is 1/128. I believe the "hexadecimal before comma, decimal after comma" is a more elegant explanation (the resulting system is so unnecessarily inefficient that I'm 100% willing to suspend my disbelief that a culture would use it for a long time. People do things like that a lot. Like Roman numerals. Or our music notation.), but YMMV. Still, 1/128 is much less natural choice for percent for base-16 than 1/256.

OK, so one of the main plot points is that 16% of people affected by the mists Snap and that shows that the whole event is intentional. 

Except that a percent is 1/100 and the use of percents is inherently tied to the fact that we use base 10. 16% is just 16/100. And we know from other sources that Scadrians use a hexadecimal number system. In this base, 0.16 (16% or 16/100) would be 0.28F5C28F6… or roughly 0.29, or 29% (by "29" I mean 2*16+9, ie 41.).

I know, Mistborn is an old book, and written before Brandon had tons of consultants, and it also depicts red leaves photosynthesizing using red sunlight, but maybe let's try to find some explanation anyway.

Like, maybe they used hexadecimal for natural numbers but base-10 for the fractional part, because they learned decimal fractions from another culture… this mix would make fractions interesting. By "interesting" I mean "probably weirdly complicated and inconvenient", so I guess modern Scadrial uses 16 for everything, or maye 10 for everything (Harmony wanted to make it worldhopper-friendly) and the base-16 is like Roman numerals for us - old, official, nice for dates and such but not used for actual maths. 

However, if they still use base-16, and have money denominations like 4 and 8 of something… I'd really like to see a worldhopper trying to get accustomed to this.

Or maybe the percents are not our percents, but pre-Catacendre Scadrians used "percent" to mean 1/128 and used those a lot. This could work too, I guess.

19 minutes ago, PiedPiper said:

Also, Ash wouldn't belong to two orders if she became a Dustbringer; the Heralds, except for Nale, never actually joined their orders. They just had a different method of accessing the same powers.

Yes, I know. 

What I meant by two Orders is "Ash may be other than Dustbringer if one of the known Radiants joins Dustbringers as their second Order" (Though it's unlikely). Sorry for the confusion.

We know there'll be 10 books and 10 Radiants. We know all the PoV characters (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, Venli, Szeth; and in unknown order Jasnah, Renarin, Lift, Taln and Ash). We know Orders of all Radiants, so we have 2 Orders left: Stonewards and Dustbringers. Taln is the patron of Stonewards, so I guess we can mark them as accounted for. This leaves us with Dustbringers and Ash.

And even if one of the Radiants joins a second Order (it's theoretically possible per WoB), we can't easily assingn Ash, because her natural Order is Lightweavers who already had a book.

So either

a ) Ash joins Chach's Order, or

b ) Dustbringers will be destroyed or turn to Odium and we'll get another Lightweavers book.

I can't think of another explanation. What do you think?

I think y'all may like this WoB if you haven't seen it. Unfortunately it isn't a clear yes/no answer. Personally, I read this answer as "I didn't plan for her to be, but since you mentioned it, it makes sense and I would consider canonizing this" but it's vague.

(PS: I'm cis so not gonna comment on whether Lift sounds trans because IDK, just on the wording of the answer.)

1 hour ago, Proletariat said:

We've even seen atium metalminds discretely used in RoW

Wait, what? 

At the yt spoiler livestream (which I saw only yesterday, because in my timezone it was live in the middle of the night ) someone asked about why Seons can travel out of Sel even though they're Splinters and Brandon said it was a great question and knowing the answer would help Thaidakar (whom I 100% assume to be Kelsier) a lot.

My hypothesis is that Seons have a part of the land they're Connected to inside themselves (the Aon), so they can travel because instead of being anchored to something huge and immobile, they're anchored to something they carry inside.

I'm not sure how Vasher being able to worldhop factors into that, maybe the Divine Breath also works as something he can be anchored to?

…Anyway now I can't get rid of a mental image of Kelsier traveling, Dracula-style, in a coffin filled with metal shavings from his homeland. 

Where's "I don't have a preference about Moash redemption, but it's not going to happen"?

I don't mean he doesn't deserve it morally (that's a false question anyway), but I don't think that's where the book is heading. He's had almost no PoV etc. My bet is he's gonna kill himself or at least die by his mistakes, Gollum-style. (What Gollum had wasn't a redemption, it was something different narratively).

1 hour ago, industrialistDragon said:

Mary-Robinette's post goes into this in detail here: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/kowal-mary-robinette-on-the-subject-of-my-name/

Basically, two-part first names are unusual in the US as a whole, but more common in the South, where Mary-Robinette is from. However her two-part name is unusual even by the South's standards, so eventually she felt self-conscious about it and the confusion it caused and stopped using her whole name. She's decided to go back to using the whole name now, for reasons she gives in the post. 

Oh, thanks! I thought she might have explained somewhere, checked har Facebook, didn't think about the website.

Here in Poland people use only one name, but some use their second name as the first (because they don't like the first). And some don't even have a second name. Every country has its way, I guess.

Mary Robinette sounds pretty. Though Mary indeed fitted the rhythm of WE intro better, I wish they change the whole intro in next episodes to make it sound good again. Sort the introductions by name length (from Mary Robinette to Dan) or something.

In tobdays podcast, Mary Robinette Kowal says something like "I had introduced myself earlier as Mary, because here in the South, Mary Robinette is [something I didn't fully understand]". Can someone explain, why having a second name is controversial? It's probably not that important, but I don't like not understanding things. Thanks.

When reading the book to my daughter, I got in the mood and made this snippet. It's a working clock which is also a ever-changing Rithmatic diagram. I wish I knew how to do Android apps, it would make a cool clock app. Any suggestions welcome.

Wow, I didn't even notice there was a script on that image, great job!

I've tried to trace/clear the writings (white is for lines that are probably waves and may make other lines hard to read, dark blue for something that seems a main line / initial, colors are for letters that look similar, blue for other letters). Also, I've added the original location names, just in case. I hope this helps a bit.

Edit: I've tried to match the letters, but I'm too bad at this. 

I posted it in previous thread but then I noticed this one is more alive, so… Some content back from WoK. Have fun with this! (I can't figure out those glyphs, but they look readable. Their origin involves a polar coordinates filter and the voidbinding chart. They may have flipped left half and right half, can't be sure.)

Spoilers-safe content: Let's go back to WoK for a while, more precisely – to its back cover. I straightened the Void "essence" glyphs from the voidbinding svg some good soul made (I just run it throught polar coordinates filter + vectorization to make them prettier). They turned out to look very much like normal glyphs.

I wonder, can we somehow read those or match them to something (the Unmade, maybe?).

Sell.

[Correction to one of my previous theories] Zahel dies before SA ends, and in a meaningful way.

Not exactly a tatoo, but close enough not to open a new thread: something I did today and I'm very happy with it.

link  link

Actually… how sure are we that Renarin really is a Truthwatcher? He says so, yeah, and he has some powers, sees the future… since when seeing the future is a KR ability? It seems to belong more to another kind of magic users… And we never see his spren. Or what's in the box.

Just for the Rule of Cool: who would you (most) like to see with our favourite sociopathic Awakened sword in their hands and why? Including the original owner.

My personal choice is Lift, because a ) they have kinda similar style of dialogue/humor, b ) she's awesome and c ) it could lead to some Realmatic mess, because of her peculiar abilities. Also, she'll feed him. With food.

If the Divine Breath were left outside of a human, could it gain sapience? 

It's a Splinter, so I think the answer is "yes".

edit: Another question:

If a non-Herald were to bond an Honorblade would that process be the same as with (corrupted) Shardblades (taking five days)?

IIRC there's a WoB that an Honorblade cannot be bonded.

Edit:

 

 

• Q:Can someone bond more than one honorblade
• A:Honorblade? You can't bond an honorblade, though it can be given to you.

Somewhere in this thread.