BigBadBagsworth

First off, I think people should cut Brandon a little slack. When you’re writing anything like Cosmere-style fantasy (i.e. based of a wholly unfamiliar planet with a culture and language unconnected to ours) it’s inevitable that things like this will happen. There will always be language humor that only makes sense in Rosharan. There will always be Scadrians proverbs with no good parallel in any real language. I think we just have to accept that this tale is twice-translated (once from December’s language to The language of wherever the tale is being told, and again to English), and that the only way to represent an invented culture correctly would be to go even farther than Tolkien and not just invent but write in the language of that culture. Which would require all readers to read in that language. Which, frankly, is stupid. Now to try to turn this bickering about Latin roots back to an arcanum discussion! First off, I trust Design that time travel is impossible. Especially because a solid list of unproblematic rules for how time travel affects the plot is impossible. Therefore, the first viewing probably happened within the spiritual realm and/or due to use of Fortune. Basically, she didn’t go back in time after her first life, but lived it as a vision that lasted sixty years to her, but a night’s sleep to everyone else. It’s important to ask here whether Hoid has access to long-term fortune. If he does, then any Fortune viewings may be unreliable, especially over longer spans of time. BIG QUESTIONS: Where did she get all that fortune? Is she secretly very highly invested? Or (this is my preferred theory) did something external (like the demon, or another highly invested being) give it to her? It feels a bit like the start of Yumi, when Alternatively, if the fortune was internal, how does she have it? Is December connected to different important invested things than everyone else? It seems like the dominant investiture on demonworld is… well, the demon, along with its rivers of blood. Are there others we don’t know of? What is that demon guy, anyway? December is clearly unusually invested and/or connected; she has the vision, and interacts specially with the river of blood, suggesting her connections and investiture are at least related to the demon. I’ve noticed Brandon doesn’t love writing “Chosen Ones” who were born with the power they use to resolve the book’s conflict (the only one I can think of is Vin, and she still uses ingenuity and arcana to win where pure skill isn’t enough), which is why I’m willing to bet that December was externally invested/connected. And because of the special interactions with the blood river, I’m willing to bet that whatever invested her is at least connected to the demon. It’s a flimsy theory, and I’m fully open to criticisms. I just want more people here theorizing.

Notum would be nice

I’m not a good enough actor for Kaladin, but that would be my first choice. In the realm of roles I can actually achieve, Adolin, then Lopen, then Taravangian (I would love t pretend to be and old dude), then szeth, then scar, then kadash, then Thule, then Geranid’s husband from that one interlude. If I was a girl I would totally go for Jasnah. And Renarin sounds fun.

It seems that when a metalmind is filled, the power instantly diffuses through the metal. So theoretically, you could have a thousand kilometer long breath mind to transport air 1000 km instantly from one person’s lungs to another. More interestingly, imagine a spaceship has a thousand km long nicrosil pole, turns itself into investiture (possibly by having something like Nightblood poke the ship, then store the investiture it turned the ship into in the nicrosil pole) and an awakened metalmind on the other end takes the investiture out. It’d just be investiture at the other end, but it may be possible to have a bunch of the ship’s identity stored at the far end of the pole and recode the identity of the investiture you take out. So, Nightblood takes the ship and turns it into identityless investiture, which instantly travels through the metalmind, and then a metalmind full of the ship’s identity returns the ship’s identity to the un coded investiture, and a ship has traveled one thousand kilometers in no time at all. You could also, instead of using a gigantic, expensive pole, Connect two separate pieces of nicrosil a thousand miles apart, and have them share their investiture the same way someone’s investiture infuses a piece of worn or ingested metal. The problem here is that you’d need to have gone to the place you’re teleporting to in order to have identity at that end and to connect the pieces of nicrosil. But you could use something like Aon Tia to place a 10 pound metalmind where you want to teleport instead of transporting another ship. Or you could use a small ship that only carries the necessary metalminds to transport a ship of almost any size. It would also be possible to use cognitive FTL to place a metalmind in the place you’re trying to teleport to, then teleport. Either way, almost no energy is used.

I can’t join because my school’s workload is inane, but I think the ruleset is awesome.

In this situation, always deny cookies. Most websites don’t steal your soul when you accept cookies, but some people here practice hemalurgy *cough* @Trusk'our *cough*.

I concede this point. You are right, and I am wrong. Then the question becomes, how many of those places is the Vessel’s spiritweb in? And could you use metalminds and connection to re-create a physical manifestation without the Vessel’s knowledge, then stab it with Nightblood, or does my theory just not make sense in the slightest?

Got it. But as true Sanderfans, we should start using base 16, like Scadrians do!

Still, you won’t really find other non-changing, non-arbitrary units for time, and a system needs units for time. Or maybe time between the Big Bang and the first star?

He also happens to be mostly literate, partly sane, and my little brother.

First of all, please use my terminology. A mask is completely controlled by the shard. An avatar was born as a normal being, but was then connected to the shard and gained powers, but can be controlled by the shard at will. I disagree. I have evidence that not all of a shard’s spiritweb (or at least consciousness) is concentrated in a mask. Evidence includes: In Secret History, And in WaT, To re clarify, because that’s apparently necessary: I believe that when a mask is stabbed with Nightblood, Nightblood doesn’t destroy a connection, but somehow uses the connection between the mask and the vessel’s spiritweb to destroy the vessel. If all things in the Cosmere are a combination of matter, energy, investiture and connection, and a certain combination of those four things are automatically inhabited with an exploitable connection to a vessel’s spiritweb (or, if your theory is correct, the spiritweb itself), then if you recreated that combination of investiture and connection, you’d have the same ability to exploit that connection as with a naturally summoned mask. A viable way to do this might be to get an unkeyed connectionmind, have a friendly mask fill it, and then blank the connection and rewrite it’s identity. Sorry! I thought the posts would merge.

? I don’t get it. Why is that funny?