MathEpic

I suppose that at some point they just have to take a chance. When you are fighting an enemy that can break laws of science then there is really no completely safe action. The Reckoners take as many precautions as possible, and I am sure that any information that gets to the transmitter in the phone is encrypted. At that point what else can they do? They need to communicate and information couriers are just as likely to get intercepted as any other form of communication. The Knighthawk Foundry on the other hand has put itself in a very stable position. Any person that takes a shot at Knighthawk, Reckoner or Epic, is going to loose a valuable service. Therefore nobody attacks Knighthawk. If Knighthawk is an evil Epic then I am sure the Reckoners wouldn't mind taking him/her down. However, the Reckoners know better then most that they need to pick their battles carefully. In a world filled with Fortuitys, Steelhearts, and Nightwielders the guy who builds your cell phone gets low priority.

I am a little surprised that nobody else on this forum has quoted this rule yet: 220. Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be "Hmm...I think I need a shave." (From the evil overlord list by Peter Anspach.) If an Epic Killer learns through intensive research that an Epic's weakness is grapefruit, they would be well advised to have a backup plan in case a quick stop at the local grocery store is not enough to protect you from the dreaded Fruit-stand Crusher.

There is one piece of Epic inspired tech that people tend to overlook. The phone system. The cell phones in Steelheart are capable of communicating with each other directly, are capable of penetrating steel caves,and apparently they do not broadcast a traceable signal. This is almost impossible with real world science and technology. If your theory is correct then it seems likely that Knighthawk foundry (where the phones are made) is run by an epic with telepathic powers whose blood goes into each and every phone.

Perhaps Firefight was hedging her bets. She was shaken by the destruction of her home in Oregon, so it would make sense that she would try to find some sort of stability in the fractured world. If Steelheart ever fell to another Epic or even to some lucky normal human she would have a home in the Reckoners. On the other hand if the Reckoners got wiped out as a result of their carelessness then she could flee to Newcago and still have a home. In the end it did not work out this way, but if David had not changed the dynamic of the group she could have maintained two safe havens for herself for years.

Near the end, when David makes the connection between Firefight and Megan he recalls how the enemy was expecting an attack when they tried to attack Conflux. That implies that Megan was passing information on to Steelheart, On the other hand, there was no additional security at the power plant, so either Steelheart is very discriminating when he acts on intelligence, or he just expected an attack.

In the confrontation between Steelheart and David the tyrant looks at David and said "Ah yes, the child in the bank. I remember everyone and everything, you needn't be surprised. I am divine, child. I do not forget. I thought you well and dead. A loose end. I hate loose ends." To give some context, Steelheart had been fighting Prof, but Prof had hidden somewhere. Steelheart paused the battle in order to draw his opponent out of hiding, so he has another motive in making this little speech. So, Steelheart is making the following claims: 1. Steelheart has perfect memory. 2. Steelheart is good enough with faces to connect a teenager to a child he saw 10 years ago. I have to wonder though, is this a bluff? Steelheart wants to be recognized as a god by all who see him. That is why he conquered Chicago and why he works to make it a place where people want to live. The perfect memory gimmick would go a long way to making him seem more divine, so long as he could pull it off. In addition, we know that he was spying on the Reckoners, and David would not shut up about his own origin story. It would not have been hard for him to pretend that he remembered more than he did for the sake of the show. Thoughts?

Power: When I am near (i.e. about 3-4 meters) books, and I concentrate hard I can become an expert in the topic of those books as if I had spent years studying the contents. For example, if I sit on a pile of programming books I can become an expert coder. If I hang around a law school library I can argue case law with the best of them. If I sit down at a desk of ledgers I can become the ultimate accountant. As a limitation, I would loose this skill the moment I stop concentrating or lose the proximity to the books. (Oh, I would also be bulletproof as a secondary power. Just because.) Weakness: If I am in range of a book by Brandon Sanderson I loose both my primary and secondary powers. This obviously leads to a number of very hard choices. Name: Bookworm. This fits with the compound noun motif that a lot of epics have. How my Evilness manifests itself: My skills are best served for middle management. Just imagine a boss that is better then you at everything. You now know how my evil side manifests itself. Edit: Costume: I would "dress for the occasion". If I thought I would be doing accounting, I would wear a sweater vest. If I was going to be going Engineer work I would wear a button up shirt and slacks. If I was going to be a judge I would wear judge robes etc. My one constant would be that every outfit would have thin black stripes on white wherever possible to fit with the book theme.

In the Reckoners universe "The Faithful" is a title given to people that believe that eventually there will be good people with superpowers that will come and displace the bad. In chapter 23 on page 225 David describes the symbol that the Faithful have adopted to represent their hope. My first thought when reading this was that he was describing the Superman crest. It fits the description and it makes sense on a practical level since Superman's primary character trait is that he is noble and heroic. What does everyone else think?

I suppose it is possible that Calamity did not receive its name until after epics started appearing, but what did they call the thing in the mean time? The way I see it there are three possibilities 1. Calamity went without a name for a full year before it was given any kind of name. Given how much people like to have names for things I think this is unlikely. 2. Calamity went by a different name, and people started calling it something different before Epics started to appear. This may be possible, but people usually need some kind of reason to change the name of something. 3. People began calling the thing Calamity for some other reason then the Epics. In either the second or the third case there is some part of the story of the rise of the Epics that we have not seen yet. David specifically says at one point that he does not care how the Epics get their powers, so it makes sense that this does not come up in the book. I just want to know what that story is.

Sorry, I think I was unclear. For the first year after Calamity's appearance there were no epics. Life continued normally for a time (as far as I know). During that time however, people would have come up with a name for the strange star in the sky. It seems odd that they would settle on Calamity because (briefly) there is nothing calamitous happening.

Here is a question I haven't seen anyone ask yet: Why is it called Calamity? If evil epics started appearing immediately after the red star-like thing appeared in the sky it would make perfect sense, but there was a delay of about a year between Calamity's appearance and the epics. Are we missing part of the story?

If I recall correctly, David saw someone in the stadium before the big fight, but then that person vanished. I thought that the implication was that Firefight dropped her illusion for a moment and David saw her. Keep in mind also that Firefight was probably Steelheart's best illusionist. Otherwise he would have used someone else to craft the deception. Even Refractory had a minor form of invisibility, so it stands to reason that Firefight does too. My guess is that Firefight probably has invisibility to go along with the rest of her power suite.

What about the professor? He had a healing factor, so his power is also "always on", yet he was not a sociopath. This would support the idea that unconscious powers only have their cost when they are active. I suspect that in the case of Fortuity the power was a little like jerking your leg. You can do it intentionally (like when he decides to predict dice rolls) but it can also be also activated unintentionally if threatened (like when a doctor hits your leg with his little hammer.)

Back on the theory of Firefight and dust, on pg 205 of the hardcover: "[Firefight] unwrapped her scarf, releasing a puff of metal dust, grimaced, and then began shaking out her clothing." Her grimace may be from the normal human reaction to dust, but it would be constant with dust being her weakness. Although, it is possible that Firefight does not know her weakness. It was established elsewhere in the book that not all epics know their hidden weakness. Since the only way to know for sure that something would prevent her reincarnation would be for her to not get better after she dies I think it is quite likely that she is in the dark as much as the rest of us. Thoughts?