18th Shard

On 2/21/2023 at 5:44 PM, ZincAboutIt said:

Hi @18th Shard, would you be interested in writing some Emily and Vivica? I am considering having her visit the hospital with a "sorry you found my corpse" apology cake  

 

Absolutely! I'm not sure how quick my response time would be, but tat would be great.

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Questioner

Your magic systems are very structured, and specific rules that dominate them. But are there any universal laws that apply to all of the magic systems in the cosmere together?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there's several of them. Basically, the most important one and relevant to people who enjoy real physics is that I consider something called Investiture to be a third state of matter and energy. So, instead of e=mc^2, we have a third thing, Investiture, in there. And you can change Investiture to matter or to energy. And so, because of that, that law that you can do this, is where we see a lot of the cosmere magics living.

We also have a kind of rule that beings all exist, everything exists on three different levels. The Physical, the Spiritual, and the Cognitive. And, like we have DNA for our Physical self, we also have Mental DNA and Spiritual DNA, and all three influence one another. For instance, you couldn't test an Allomancer's blood and find the Allomancy gene, because it is in a different set of their DNA. You just have three sets. You could compose a test that could test it on the Spiritual Realm, but you're gonna have to use a different branch of physics to do that and determine who was an Allomancer. And so they all work on this kind of fundamental rules of: your Identity, your Connection, and being part of your soul, and the magics working through those things.

So there's some fundamental rules about this, about changing forms from energy to matter, and you having this Identity, Investiture, and Connection stored in your Spiritual DNA that are really relevant to everything.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

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Questioner

How much have you thought about the mathematical relationship between Investiture and energy/matter? Is there a cosmere E=mc^2?

Brandon Sanderson

I've thought about the concepts a lot. The numbers, I actually tried to get some mathematicians... There are some lovely folks, I'm like, can we come up with a standardization? And it kind of broke their brains, not because they aren't smart people, they're very smart people, but they're like, "Brandon, where do we even start? How much energy is being expended?" and this sort of thing. I would like to get a unit of measurement, how much Investiture equals how much energy, but at the same time, the work being done by the various magic systems, it's going to be too constrictive to put too much math on that, I feel like. I would like to. It is a much bigger project than you might imagine it being. How much energy is stored in a sphere? That's kind of where we started. A sphere stores Investiture, obviously some of that Investiture is being lost as energy, it is transferring energy as the sphere releases light. That is happening automatically, it's decaying and radiation is happening. How much is it therefore losing, how much could it do, how much of that can be transferred to doing work with a Lashing... All of this stuff, I have thought about way too much, and we have no answers for you yet because it is a really big project. Maybe we will someday, or maybe we'll just say, this is too big a project to even be able to mathematically quantify. I'm sure if you have suggestions, you can post thoughts on the subreddits, and perhaps that will get to the various arcanists who are helping me with this.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

Disclaimer: Topologically speaking, there's only inside and outside. Your front is continuous with your back, and under appropriate spiking may not preserve the current proportions or shapes. 

Standard DA disclaimer applies. 

I think the relevant question here is whether adding Investiture to a metalmind makes it (even infinitesimally) more massive. I think it would. Adding energy (kinetic, potential, or thermal) to something increases its mass a little bit, and massive concentrations of Investiture, like a perpendicularity, can cause some time dilation. E^2=(mc^2)^2+(pc)^2 really is saying that any energy added to a system increases either its mass or momentum. Adding an Investiture term should really just describe the same thing.  In that case, I would think it would be something like: (E/c)^2+(I/k)^2=(mc)^2+p^2, where k is an arbitrary constant to get Investiture in compatible units at the right ratio. 

Edit: Or perhaps (E/c)^2=(mc)^2+p^2+(Ik)^2 + i^2, where I is passive Investiture and i is kinetic Investiture, analogous to rest mass and momentum. 

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

Rushu has already had Aln return to the post

You are correct. Post updated to reflect that.

21 hours ago, mathiau said:

"Er... I... " he took a deep breath "The guildmaster, Alanis Sheneth, is currently absent. I do not know where she is but I suppose she'll be back in a few hours?" he said, unable to see or hear Alanis was entering the building

@Rushu42 @18th Shard

"That's alright; I will wait. I don't believe any information I have should be acted on urgently. Careful consideration is necessary for action on any sensitive information." Xanas stepped in front of a seat. "Do you have any paperwork or binding contracts I should sign? I can fill those out as I wait; then we could have a notary or a guild representative handle any business which does not require Ms. Sheneth's personal attention." Xanas started sitting down, then paused, straightening. "I don't believe I ever got your name, nor your spren's. My apologies. My own is Xanas Khaevarin." As he was sitting, a woman rushed in the building. She paused when she saw him.

"Um." 

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I think we can move the remainder of this conversation and Aln's return to the Aftermath thread.

@mathiau @Rushu42

18 minutes ago, Voidus said:

He's said like five different things about it, I don't plan on taking his word on any of them til it gets canonized in a book

Yeah, I picked the most entertaining one to respond with. Here's a selection of the various answers over the years. 

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Maru Nui

What happens when you burn a Hemalurgic spike?

Brandon Sanderson

Burning a Hemalurgic spike would have the effect of splicing your spiritual DNA to that of the person's that is in the spike, which would have some very strange consequences.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/210/#e4616

 

 

Xanas Khaeverin - The Scholar's Guild

A young, bald Terrisman looked up at Xanas, squinting at him. As Xanas spoke, he inhaled in some Stormlight. 

"Is this about the Forgery?" he asked. 

"I suppose so, yes," Xanas answered. "Among other things. For the past few millennia, I have been the Head of the Department of Testing and Analysis in the Dark Alleys, though there have been some lengthy leaves of absence in that time. I want to help advance the knowledge of the people of the city using what I have learned in that time. Spreading knowledge has ever been my goal, but the Alleys have slowly drifted away from that goal toward the insular acquisition of power and control. The Forgery is merely the latest example. I once made an oath to seek correct questions before seeking their answers, so I've come here, to the Scholar's Guild, and I hope that those here are interested in seeking those questions as well. To that end, I will share what I know about the Forgery and the Alleys. Whom should I speak with?"

@mathiau

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The First Heightening grants Aura Recognition, the ability to see the Breath auras of others instinctively, and an increased life sense. This allows them to judge roughly how many Breaths the person holds and the general health of that Breath. 

... The Seventh Heightening grants Invested Breath Recognition, the ability to recognize the auras of objects, and can tell when something has been Invested with Breath via Awakening. 

So similar to the above abilities from Breath, but broadened to all Investiture sources? 

Emily Azizi - The Alleycity

Emily rubbed her eyes as she sat on the couch, setting a bowl of ramen and some peppermint tea on the coffee table beside her. Today had been such a busy day at work. So many patients with suddenly manifesting abilities, injuries, family members. The paperwork alone would keep the hospital busy for months. A thunderstorm - no, the Alleystorm - raged outside. Emily was having trouble combining her memories of both worlds. The Post had explained it was a Forgery on massive scale, but both felt equally real to Emily. The world couldn't seem to make up its mind on when things would go back to normal or what normal even was - some people at the hospital hadn't changed at all, even though they had had very different lives in the Forgery. Emily hadn't noticed nearly any changes in her own life, except for her fridge being suddenly empty. She'd had to go shopping when she'd gotten home. Now she could finally relax. She finished off her quick meal alone in the quiet apartment, showered, and, while her hair was drying, she checked the house for any changes. The spare room still had a bunch of boxes she hadn't unpacked - stuff she'd left at home when in college and just hadn't used since coming to the Alleycity. The kitchen was fine, now that she'd restocked the fridge - different brand of dish soap, but nothing major had changed. As she checked the TV, she found that apparently she had about half the subscriptions she'd had in the Forgery, and a couple she'd had before. Thinking back on it, one of her favorite shows from during the Forgery, Dark Paths, had used the Alleys as a secret evil lair for the villain, an anarchist from Threnody. What were they going to do now that the Alleys were fairly common knowledge? She did not envy the writers who now had to figure out how to retcon that in. Emily got into bed, plugged her mobile in and set an alarm for five in the morning so she could be at the hospital by six. She pulled the brown blankets on the bed up and adjusted her pillow. She drifted off to the sound of the rain on the window. 

Late that night, Emily was woken up by a gentle nudge on her arm. A six-year-old in a big blue shirt and shorts was shaking her awake. "Mom, can I sleep with you tonight? The thunder's kind of loud and I can't sleep." 

"Sure, sweetie." Emily scooted over to make room for Jarah on her bed, pulling the blue quilt back to let her daughter onto the bed. The little girl climbed up, snuggling in against Emily and was soon asleep. Emily was almost back asleep when she remembered something, sitting up with a jerk. Jarah moved in her sleep, chilled by the sudden movement of the blanket. Jarah's got school in the morning! How am I supposed to get her there without missing work?! Emily picked up her phone, opening her schedule. Drop Jarah off at 7am. Work at 8 am, her schedule read. What? Emily stared for a moment. But I work at six. Emily got up from bed, readjusting the blanket around Jarah, and walked around the apartment again. The kitchen and bathroom were the same; the living room looked identical; the spare room - wait, this was Jarah's room. Emily kept her boxes in a storage unit across town. Jarah's room was painted a bright green, a twin bed in the corner and a backpack on the floor. How did I get Jarah to school yesterday around work? Emily thought. I...I must have had... Emily checked her schedule again in confusion. Yesterday... Work at 6am. No mention of Jarah's school. In fact, there wasn't any mention of Jarah at all the past week. Then a few of her memories clicked. Yesterday was the Forgery. Yesterday I didn't even have Jarah. When I went to bed, I didn't have Jarah! Emily's last specific memory of Jarah was - she strained to remember. Last month? A couple months ago? If Jarah hadn't been in the Forgery, where had she been? How had Emily missed a whole month of her daughter's life? What did Jarah remember from that time? So many questions, so little answers. Emily walked back to her bedroom, her mind buzzing with questions. She couldn;t remember Jarah's teacher's name, but she could remember her favorite food. Her birthday was the 5th of - was it Scholus? What kind of mother couldn't remember her daughter's birthday? Her best friend was a girl named Alli. What time does she get out of school? Emily thought. Her phone schedule said three, but Emily could have sworn it was 3:30. Emily laid down and tried to get some sleep. 

3 hours ago, ZincAboutIt said:

Everyone’s material has been glorious! I can’t give anymore rep for the day so rest assured I’ll get to you all later 

Same! I think this is the first time I've personally hit a rep cap. Good job everyone! 

1 hour ago, Rushu42 said:

 ~Aln, the remnants of the Scholar's Guild~

Aln stood in front of the wreckage of what had once been her home. Someone, she didn't know who, had put up yellow caution tape, but that hadn't stopped the more enterprising of the city from making off with a decent portion of her belongings. The structure itself didn't seem in danger of collapsing further, though, so she unlocked what was left of the door and let herself inside. 

She hadn't told anyone she was coming here; she'd wanted to be alone. Maybe that was risky, with the DA theoretically still looking for her, but she doubted that she was their top priority at this point. The city was waking up now. You could see it in the faces of the people you passed, even feel it in the air, like the pressure drop right before a storm. The world was returning, slowly but violently, to reality.

Pel, she said softly in her mind, Do you think we did the right thing?

"What is 'right', Aln?"

Can't you give me a straight answer for once?

In his way, Pel said nothing for a long moment as he thought. "You acted in a way that you believed was moral. You adhered to the oaths that you made. If you are looking for reassurance or absolution of fault, I know of no authority that can provide that. You made a choice, and we shall see the consequences."

Strangely, his words settled something in her, some conflict that had been warring in her mind since her memories first returned. 

"Well," said Aln aloud, "I don't know that this Forgery would have lasted long, even without my interference. The truth has a way of being found out."

And she sat on the broken piece of an armchair in her shredded library, and watched the world change.

 

@Rushu42 I am good with Xanas waiting until Aln gets back. If Acacia or Bell or someone else at the Post wants to interact, they can, but Xanas doesn't have a big sense of urgency. 

Sanax - Einladung Hospital

The Void reached out, touching something Sanax couldn’t see. Memories snapped into Sanax’s - into Xanas’s mind. For the first time in months, Xanas could think clearly. He could see gossamer webs of the Forgery one of the Denizens had laid. Voidus or the Stranger for sure. No one else had power on this scale, nor the subtlety. No one else could have rewritten the Alleys, rewritten Xanas himself! Xanas’s new memories - the ones his other self had given him - struggled for dominance, but Xanas had faced the Void itself. He had will to spare. He stood, dusting his robe off. The Alleys his other self had known was much like the Alleys Xanas had known just before entering the Void. Rather than truth and science, they hungered for power, control. The Forgery was only a cosmic example of the same principle - the Alleys were seeking answers rather than questions, stability over exploration. That wasn’t why he’d joined the Alleys in the first place. He’d simply wanted to push the boundaries of knowledge. He’d wanted to find the truths of reality. This world had simply been a doctoral thesis by his coworkers on the subject, not the goal of itself, and the people of this world deserved the truth. He stepped out of his room to find the hallway crowded with doctors and patients. Some had collapsed with headaches. A few appeared to be oscillating between their Forged and un-Forged states, bodies collapsing under the stress. Everyone else was frantically trying to help cure the sudden invisible ailment. The stony faces of agonyspren, the black crosses of anxietyspren, and the purple worms of fearspren hovered in the air and on the ground everywhere. No one paid Xanas any mind as he quietly slipped out of the building onto the main street. He walked for a short bit until he ended in front of a small office building. The Alleyverse Post. The most recent edition of the paper seemed to have been about the Forgery, albeit with somewhat limited information. Still, the research had been well done and the paper well written. Perhaps Xanas could find the people who cared about the truth here. He stepped inside. 

"Hello. I'm Xanas, formerly of the Dark Alleys. I'd like to help."

@Rushu42

Xanas - The Dark Alleys

Xanas held a thin atium spike to his right wrist, carefully finding the right veins and tendons. Tsarik watched from the office’s corner with concern. 

“We have not tested this metal enough, Xanas. You are being reckless. We should run more tests before you try this.”

Xanas slid the metal into the bindpoint on his wrist. “I have to know, Tsarik. None of our tests can identify this material. Spectroscopy, dilution, Forgery. Nothing. There is no safe solution anymore.”

“Then let someone else burn it."

“I can’t. It’s connected to what’s been going on for the past few months. The blackouts, the letter - this Blade is wrapped up in it somehow. Someone is messing with me, and I can’t allow that. I have to face this myself. There’s no one else qualified.” He grabbed a vial from the table, swallowing its contents. Water and thin gray shavings poured down his throat. The filings from the mysterious Blade were mostly tanavastium and koravellium. He should be able to burn it with a Mistborn’s abilities. And there was aluminum shavings as well, in case he needed to stop the experiment in a hurry. He felt the metal deposit bloom into awareness as it reached his stomach, an unfamiliar one, and he burned it.

For a moment, it seemed nothing happened. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Most alloys of god metals were poor conductors of any Investiture. Then, something flooded into him. A mix of powers, new and odd, but also familiar. Like deja vu, or a face that was similar to someone you’d only met once. Light and darkness. The powers strained at him, begging to be released – the one to destroy, the other to twist reality and minds. This power – it was greater than Xanas had experienced before. There was ecstasy and adrenaline and pain, all together, all at once. For a moment, he felt as if he had Ascended as some Shard, shouldering the burden of Adonalsium’s corpse. Then the powers collided. This was nothing like Xanas’s accounts of Harmony’s ascension. These powers weren’t two parts of some great whole – they were two powers separate from the beginning, opposite. There was some similarity to the account in the Words of Founding though: as they collided within him, his body dissolved into mist.

Xanas walked about the Cognitive. He knelt and grasped at the pools of blood at the ground, finding a single soul. The clock in his office. Based on past experiments, he should have at least half an hour before the Beyond started pulling on his soul. He was Invested enough for that at least. Somewhere in the Alleys would be a perpendicularity, something to anchor him long enough to spike himself into a new body. As Xanas looked around, he could see threads. Nearly invisible, they stretched in every direction, tangled. One particularly clear thread was bound to him, and Xanas followed it, willing Alleys to bring him to its end. As he stepped from the Alleys, he found himself in a white room. The hospital. And sitting, nearly catatonic, was… himself. A Lifeless version of himself. Xanas reached out to touch him, and the dark power that had dissolved his body leapt from his other self’s body at his touch. Like waking from a dream, Xanas saw the lies he’d been fed. A Forgery, binding him, a figurehead to hide the Alleys behind, while the true gods laughed. His other self, body wrapped in those lies, his soul wrapped in darkness, and in between, a frayed mind, struggling to keep cohesion. Another me. Couldn’t hurt to have a backup plan. Xanas felt at the soul of his other self, pushing memories at him, pulling memories into himself. Their combined knowledge could prove useful.

That task completed, Xanas felt around the Alleys for some locus of power, something he could use to preserve his soul a bit longer. He held the soul of the clock up. He’d wasted more time here than he’d thought. He stepped into the Alleys, and felt the Beyond begin to tug at him, like a fishhook stuck in his gut. But there was another pull, faint, pulling on him faintly, a siren song. He moved towards it, leaving wisps of himself behind in his hurry. The Alleyways opened up to a small cavern, filled with placid azure water, a steady stream of drops falling from the ceiling above. Light from the omnipresent sun of the Cognitive streamed through the droplets, refracting like tiny stained glass panels. The song was louder now. Enter. Learn. Xanas knelt and touched the pool. Hopefully, like the Survivor, the pool would give him enough Investiture to work with, to get back to the Physical. Except, the gentle water did nothing. But that song! Hunger awoke within him. The things he needed were in that waterfall. He stepped into the pool, barely disturbing its surface. The Beyond pulled on him, but Xanas barely noticed. The pool would fix that. He could know what he needed. He could fix this. He needed the waters. He stepped beneath the rain, and his mind expanded. The wealth of knowledge was intoxicating, like Stormlight and pewter and Breath, mixed and multiplied and exponentiated. 

Two old coworkers in a dark Alleyway. Two new ones at a university. An old shell, waking with new determination and new memories. Shades flickering in hidden realms. A whisper in the dark, hungering for the very waters Xanas stood under. Xanas frowned. Others had touched the waters, but now they were his. He’d have to figure out how to keep them. Only a minute till the Beyond claims me. Xanas searched for Investiture. He had to keep the waters pure from another’s touch. Nothing nearby. The waters only grant knowledge, not the power I need. Maybe he could leave… No, I can’t risk leaving the waters. Someone else might claim them while I’m gone. A deeper, truer voice whispered in his mind, And I can’t leave. I don't want to. I don’t have the will. Maybe he could get Tsarik to bring him power. But the waters are mine! He would take them from me! The drops began to tear through him, falling through his ghostly form. Otherworldly winds began to tear at him, pulling him, ripping him towards a distant vanishing point. Xanas scrambled to hold himself under the water, futilely. The knowledge contained here was all he’d ever needed. Just a few moments longer, and he could find a way to survive, to keep the waters to himself. The pull of the Beyond grew and grew. In a moment, he was gone. For the second time in millenia, Xanas Khaeverin died. The soul of a clock fell into the empty waters, dissolving back to its Physical location.
 

53 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Yes. It does have a spectrum even without spectral lines, which is what you are after with a spectrograph. You'll just get black body radiation depending on temperature.

 

I'm aware of this. I was wondering more if the fact that it is using Investiture affects the spectral lines differently than simple black body radiation without that Investiture being used. 

Speaking of spectroscopy of god metals, when harmonium is used to power Allomantic devices like the flying ships, do you think the glow it emits is its own spectra, the spectra of the metal it is mimicking, or maybe its own spectra with absorption lines along the mimicked metals emission spectra? 

Edit: Also, maybe the lack of reaction is similar to cesium forming a precipitate in aqueous HCl? I'm not a chemist, but maybe by lack of reaction, it's simply not near as dramatic as reaction with water and so it got missed that there is some small dissolved solid forming? 

14 hours ago, Rushu42 said:

Guild or Organization Name: The Scholar's Guild

Members (3 minimum): @Rushu42, @mathiau, @NerdyAarakocra  [I'm pinging the three people that I've recently been in contact with that are interested in the Guild. We've had other members in the past, and are always looking for more, so please let me know if you want your name on this list! Employees of the Alleyverse Post can decide whether or not to be official guild members as well - let me know.]

Purpose/Mission Statement: The Scholar's Guild is dedicated to free trade of information and the general increase of knowledge. 

Description: Though primarily a research organization, the Scholar's Guild is also active in various educational initiative and publications, including the production of the Alleyverse Post, the Alleycity's most widely read newspaper.

How to contact: IC, swing by the Scholar's Guild building or send a message to Aln. OOC, PM @Rushu42 (or another guild member)!

What do you plan to do: After participating in the fall of the Forgery, the Guild is now engaged in efforts to rebuild the city. The Guild has also become committed to the discovery and distribution of information outside of the control of the Dark Alley, and will using the Alleyverse Post for this purpose. 

I would like to RP Xanas joining next Era, so you can add me to the list. 

5 hours ago, ZincAboutIt said:

Sadly no post-mortem tea parties allowed

Resurrection is a thing in the cosmere. It just has to be a plausible post-mortem tea party. 

Repost from other thread. There's some formatting issues, so make sure to expand all the spoilers.

Figured I'd get my characters into the new format. Note that some of this applies to next Era (I've marked some but not all of it as such). 

Returning Characters:

Xanas "Sanax" Khaevarin [Note: the Forged version of him will die when the Forgery ends]

New Characters (or actually NPC's becoming Characters):

Tsarik Khaevarin

Figured I'd get my characters into the new format. Note that some of this applies to next Era (I've marked some but not all of it as such). 

Returning Characters:

Xanas "Sanax" Khaevarin [Note: the Forged version of him will die when the Forgery ends]

Emily Azizi

New Characters (or actually NPC's becoming Characters):

Tsarik Khaevarin

Josie and Jarah Azizi (I combined them because they really go together)

Xanas gently filed the Blade on the table in front of him. The aluminum file, while generally far too soft for ordinary filing, was the only simple method for obtaining samples from physically manifested spren. This Blade, however, was far from simple. It had simply appeared outside his office one evening, for one thing, without provenance or hint of sender. Xanas had heard that a Stranger had malfunctioned in another department, giving a possible explanation for its arrival, but the object itself had far more compelling questions. Firstly, it exactly resembled Tsarik’s typical Blade form. Xanas rarely used his spren as a weapon, and few of those who had ever seen the spren as a Blade were still living. Additionally, the Blade had cracks running through it, flaws and fractures. Xanas had never seen a Blade damaged like this. Inside the cracks, a pulsing white light and inky black darkness interacted, coming into existence and then annihilating nearly instantly, folded tightly like Damascus steel. There wasn’t any Investiture field until you got close enough to the Blade to differentiate the two substances, which implied there was some kind of anti-Investiture involved in it. However, the Investiture didn’t match any known types. There also wasn’t any energy being created by the annihilation.

Xanas gently brushed the shavings of the Blade into a small ceramic dish, then mixed in a few milliliters of solvent. He carefully sucked the solution into a pipette, then added it to a similar solution containing a mix of liquid anti-Stormlight and anti-Lifelight. The suspended particles from the Blade dissolved, producing a few air bubbles and a very slight change in temperature. Xanas made a note, stirred the remaining solution, and then titrated it with liquid Stormlight and Lifelight until he got an entirely neutral solution.

“Slightly more Stormlight than Lifelight required for complete neutralization – about 10 mils. Factoring in the thermal energy output, the mix is almost exactly an inkspren’s composition.” Tsarik listened carefully, frowning.

“How is this?” he asked. “Unaccounted inkspren in the Alleys are not, and the flaws must be from the Alleys.”

Xanas shrugged. “We’ll have to find a way to separate the two substances in the flaws. Until then, we’ll just have another mystery piling up on our desk.”

Tsarik nodded. “I want to see what is under an axon microscope. Perhaps then we may see the structure of the Blade.”

Emily stopped outside C180. Sanax’s room. She glanced down the hallway. She could just see the room where Vivica had – well, Vivica’s old room. She looked away, knocking on Sanax’s door. Focus on the ones you can help, she reminded herself.

“Come in – door’s unlocked,” Sanax called. She opened the door to find Sanax sitting on the floor, his silver hair done in a ponytail. His blanket was missing, and paper was scattered around him. He was hunched over some figures and equations, scribbling notes in a tiny script furiously. Logicspren kept appearing along the corners of eyesight, the tiny stormclouds disappearing whenever she looked directly at them. Looking at the papers, Emily saw diagrams, pictures, math, all notated. There were notes in Thaylen, Alethi women’s script, English, Arelish. She even saw a few pages that looked like Nalthian writing, but in greyscale. He glanced up toward her, his black irises staring for a long moment at her shoes, before turning back to his notes. Emily bent down and picked up a page. There was a poem she’d heard written across the top, “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” Scribbled underneath were notes: “Suppose the hand to linger: would the inscription run wider or deeper? Is the Writer single-handed? Suppose another hand. And which finger? Natural motion of primates suggests the index finger. Is there then a finger Nameless, which rings of nothing bears? Does not time wear flaws in all that is writ? Does not nothing remain ‘round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away’? Who is right then, the eastern mathematician or the western humanist?” A series of equations followed the notes, with the symbols fading into mere scribbles near the end. Sanax snatched the paper from her hand, setting it back into place carefully, placing a hand-drawn paper with various angles drawn on it down and orienting the paper precisely. Then his head dropped back to the paper in front of him.

“Don’t touch – you’ll ruin the organization.”

Emily carefully stepped between papers until she stood next to him. “Sanax, what is this?” she asked. It was worrying when the ward patients started acting like they were all-knowing; it often preceded some break with reality that removed any progress they’d made. A few patients she’d treated had regressed enough to forget she’d even met them, and she’d had to start from scratch with them. Sanax muttered under his breath.

“Sanax, what is this?” Emily asked again.

“It’s broken. All of it.” He started scribbling again.

“What’s broken, Sanax?”

He looked up, finally making eye contact. “Everything is.” He held his sheet of scribbled notes. “Reality is axiomatic. Defined by the divine Commands, populated with the various permutations of Investiture. But this reality, it’s all wrong. It’s the Realmatic axiom of foundation – it’s broken. The physics don’t work. Thermodynamics don’t work. In this reality, there’s not a void set.” He saw Emily’s lack of comprehension and started elaborating. “You add zero to anything, it’s unchanged. It doesn’t affect whatever it touches. You can’t get a net positive out of nothing. In statistics, there’s a null hypothesis, the supposition that nothing unaccounted for occurred. In set theory, everything is constructed from the empty set. There’s a vacuum state for every quantum field, the state of the field without excitation, without particles. Empty space. Investiture is the same. All investiture can be quantized, just as elementary particles can. All investiture can be described as a combination of various variables – there’s alignment to a Shard, or intent. The ground state of the world should include very little unbound Investiture. A vacuum, with minor quantum fluctuations. To borrow from gravitational models, my soul is a singularity in that field, absorbing investiture, but wrapped in aluminum as I am, the radius of curvature in the field is quite small. I should have absorbed almost zero investiture passively.”

Emily stared again. “And that’s important because…?”

“I require investiture to live, to maintain the Connections binding my soul to my body. I absorbed the investiture of a flamespren just before the earthquake. However, it had been over a week since I’d absorbed any significant measure of Investiture, and I haven’t absorbed any significant source since then. I should be dead, or at the least, functioning at a far lower level than I once was. But I’m not. And that’s only one example. The rate of dimming in the gemstones here. Rates of physical illness in the city. Assuming the basic laws of physics I know, that means the vacuum state of reality isn’t at zero energy. Take everything away, and there’s still something. Something from nothing. Energy from nothing. Entropy, shattered. There is no null set.” He started scribbling again. “I must have missed something. This is fundamental. Something is wrong in the math.” He trailed off, muttering. “Some kind of Investiture cosmological constant? A spiritual dark energy equivalent? No, no, it’s all broken. It’s all BROKEN!” He threw his hand across the papers on the ground, sending them whirling to the side. Emily stepped back from him, moving towards the door. The whites of his eyes went black, and a dark mist seeped from his fingers onto the ground. Paper and tile started disappearing, consumed as if by an invisible fire. He screamed. “The lights are coming for me. The strings, the strings. The puppetmaster’s strings!” Sanax grabbed a fistful of paper and tore it to pieces, throwing the remains like confetti around him. He started beating his fists against the floor, more in despair than in anger. He started sobbing, though he didn’t have any tears. “The questions just don’t have answers anymore! How is anyone supposed to do science in these conditions?”

Then, in a moment, Sanax straightened, cocking his head as if listening to something. “That tone…” He smiled. “There it is. Something snapped. A thread of light snapped, and the vibration is echoing across them all. The empty set is empty once again.” He hummed a pure tone that resonated inside Emily’s chest, a tone of perfect quiet and raging chaos all at once. A massive headache formed, as if the humming were hundreds of times louder, and Emily passed out.

Sounds good to me. My character's plotlines don't need too much to close out the era.

I found this very amusing in light of this joke theory from 2012 I remember.