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I have to say that "liespren" makes loads more sense to me than truthspren ever did. If I hadn't been so late to the forums I would definitely argued against that one. (Though my name for them was "stalkerspren" and would not have been adopted by anyone.)

 

Two thoughts One thought on this: (I moved the other to its own post)

If the cryptics are in charge of Shadesmar, then no wonder the nature of the place is obfuscated and unknown. I doubt we can thank revisionist Vorin historians for all the misinformation or lost details.

Thanks, Peter! Looking forward to the announcement.

One of the things I loved about the WoK release was the "epic bookmark" that came out. Obviously this is up to Tor's marketing dept, but what do you think is the likelihood of a similar WoR bookmark being made? Anyone know if it was a successful thing for them?

 

Also, I know I got my bookmark at a signing, but that was serendipitous timing. I doubt I'll be near one this time around. Was that the only way to get one when WoK came out? If there are promotional release materials like a bookmark or whatever, is there a good way to acquire them from non-tour cities?

Good quotes, Shardlet. I hadn't known about Vibrance--I thought it was odd that there were only 3 corners labeled. I agree with several who've already posted, that's definitely Nalthis.

 

Also, thanks for the planet list, Aether. It helps to have them all in one place.

Working from the assumption that cognitive and physical topology are correlated (not necessarily true but it makes sense to me), I would guess that Braise and Ashyn account for two of the elements on there. Vapors fits remarkably well with the disease motif of Ashyn, and Broken Sky is an easy Odium association for me even though we don't know anything about that world yet. 

 

All the reasoning for Densities so far seems forced. I can't make a connection to "a world we know."

I've always been confused about the Shallarin thing. Personally I think Shallan and Adolin would be a much more exciting and better relationship anyway. 

Agreed. I'm withholding judgment on Shallan until we see more of her in WoR, but quite frankly I think Renarin deserves better.

Thanks for bringing this up. Until now I hadn't been aware of the WoB that the expanses refer to other worlds, at least one of which we've seen before.

• Just by association, Vapors makes me think of Breath, so Nalthis. Alternatively it could be the mists, so Scadrial (as Moogle points out above).
• Broken Sky actually sounds like Final Empire era Scadrial to me, but I doubt that's the case. Especially since, chronologically, Harmony already fixed that whole too-close-to-the-sun problem. (Although, given that very little information has made it across from Shadesmar since the Recreance, we may be dealing with centuries-old information anyway.) I suspect this is a world we haven't seen yet.
• Densities... I don't know.

I'm probably going about this the wrong way. Viewed from Shadesmar, it's likely that the feel of the ideas, rather than any physical manifestations, contribute to the name.

Even the first time through, I read the "distant thunder" bit as hinting that Cenn was about to have a death-quote moment and his consciousness was easing between realms. After multiple re-reads I still think this is the case: he can hear the storm beyond, nothing to do with the horse or with surgebinding.

Compare this deathquote (emphasis mine):

I’m cold. Mother, I’m cold. Mother? Why can I still hear the rain? Will it stop?
-Collected on Vevishes, 1172, 32 seconds pre-death. Subject was a lighteyes female child, six years old.

Also, this one (emphasis mine):

Light grows so distant. The storm never stops. I am broken, and all around me have died. I weep for the end of all things. He has won. Oh, he has beaten us.
-Dated Palahakev, 1173, 16 seconds pre-death. Subject: A Thaylen sailor.

 

Its actually shallan second chapter of part 3. She is talking about soulcasting jade opal and marble for her family and mentions that you can't soulcast gems, that was said to be impossible.

Thanks for the reference, I was having trouble finding that.

 

It's still ambiguous whether there are non-gemheart gems to be mined, but the context of that quote suggests that maybe they do exist?  She's talking about making fake marble deposits to mine and says you can't make a fake gem deposit, possibly implying that one might expect to find gem deposits in the ground....

I'm not convinced either way. I would like the gemheart-only idea to be true because it would fit well with the magic system and have additional cool implications, but I can't talk myself into either position yet.

I've been reading some of the other threads on gemstone economics and properties. They have sparked a few intriguing questions for me about the world and magic.

 

First question: Do all gemstones on Roshar come from gemhearts? 

I didn't think so at first, but I can't recall any mention in TWoK of mining gems. The Davar quarries are for marble. It could be that all gems are harvested from large chulls or other large animals. Extant big gems may be "left-overs" from the greatshells of past generations (thought to be extinct after Aimia was razed).

We know from WoB that gemhearts are a sort of leak from the spiritual realm into the physical. Given that, I might go so far as to suggest that even if a gem were mined out of the rock on Roshar, it would not hold stormlight the same way that gemheart-sourced gems do. 

 

Second question: Are gemstones immune to soulcasting?

Large gemstones are extremely valuable, yet (as far as we know) nobody has ever created them via soulcasting. If they are the same kind of minerals we find on earth, that makes them essentially rocks. That means soulcasting them should be possible using Topaz, associated with the essence of rock/stone. Amethyst could handle any trace metals for color, and diamond could do quartz/glass/crystal. In combination that should be all the qualities of every gem. Even if the fabrial soulcasters can't do it, I doubt the chemistry of the transformation is beyond a talented surgebinder. So why don't we see boulder-sized emeralds/diamonds/whatever? Such gems would be invaluable for storing huge amounts of stormlight*, or simply for getting rich (disregarding inflation). If the Davars tried this with marble, surely someone else would have thought of it using gems.

That leads me to conclude that there is something special about gemstones magically that prevents them from being soulcast. And it can't just be the ones infused with stormlight at the time, though I'm sure that's a factor. So it makes sense to say soulcasting cannot create gems from other materials, nor interconvert from one gem type to another. (Nor, presumably, turn gems into anything else, though I'm less sure of that interpretation. It may be the destination material that matters more than the source.)

 

*Yes, I know that the cut rather than the size of gem may correlate to total stormlight capacity, but if you cut said giant gem into a bunch of little ones, you could get the same effect.

I've been unable to follow any links to the TWG archive section. Every time I try it gives me an error:

 

Unknown column 'add_deny' in 'field list'

or

Unknown column 'b.num_topics' in 'field list'

 

Does anyone else get these errors? I haven't tried it on a second computer yet, so it may be a browser/OS problem (the one I'm on is old and slowly becoming incompatible with some sites).

There have been extensive discussions about potential FTL mechanics for allomancy in the third trilogy, and a few about mechanical-driven allomancy (I haven't really followed all of those ones but one example is here). But it occurs to me that we've all overlooked the potential for very interesting applications of metal based magic in electronics: Suppose that in the third trilogy the Scadrians not only develop space flight but also artificial intelligence, that other great SF staple.

 

The abilities and/or personality of an AI could depend crucially on its hardware composition, either simply the native metals themselves or more subtly the presence of a feruchemical or hemalurgic charge. It's easy to imagine someone building their AI with a "heat sink" that instead stores sense-of-self, mass, or any number of other options.

 

One division (and often in-world question) in SF is whether AI in a given universe are alive/have souls. If Brandon chose to go with the "AI are people too" camp (which I think he would, given that everything has a spritual and cognitive aspect), then we could end up with AI displaying abilities in the metallic arts.

 

The above was my seed idea, and the one that I find most interesting. Still, I half expect this thread to be hijacked by related possibilities:

>One extension would be full-on androids, rather than the ship's-computer style AI. This type of story would focus more on the physical abilities than personality effects.

>Another extension (or maybe independent topic) is cybernetics. The idea of ability-enhancing implants has a lot of potential both in opposition to and in combination with the various metallic arts.

 

Then again, there could be enough room in a trilogy for all of the above. Now, there's an exciting thought!

While I have moderate reservations about the whole Nalan=Darkness thing, I really disagree that the other ambassador would also be a herald. Even finding two of them together at the feast seems momentous, and I strongly doubt that two would be working so closely together.

 

It has been decided, Kalak. We will go our ways, and we will not seek out one another.

 

I think they meant it. They have gone their own ways, pursuing their own goals as they see fit. In the various actions we've attributed to them (the vandalism in particular) I see at the least an absence of coordination, and elements of willful separation. They may be ignoring each other, or they may be working at cross purposes based on different opinions of how to help save the world. (In fact, I think I can only accept Nalan=Darkness if the heralds are working towards conflicting goals.)

Obviously this conjecture does not preclude two or more of them posing as ambassadors together, but my gut feeling says no, there is a master/minion relationship going on.

Are the heralds currently working at cross purposes?

How many parties were there to the Oathpact?

Legion was, as I expected, a colossal amount of fun.

This is the only thread where the Legion excerpt has been mentioned at all. Can someone confirm that the link to that one is still good? When I click on it I get redirected back to the vault top page, which currently shows the Lift interlude.

EDIT: looks like it was a computer issue. Can't load it on the desktop I used first, but trying it on a different machine worked fine.