Tempus

It's likely it hasn't been millions of years post-shattering. With Roshar, I don't recall the exact Brandon clues, but we are led to believe there were non-human sentient races and spren on the planet prior to the arrival of Cultivation and Honor. That suggests a relatively recent arrival, aka, not hundreds of thousands of years. It isn't necessary for Ruin/Preservation to start them at an extremely advanced state. Knowledge of fire, stone tools, and basic building would save them a couple thousand years. Knowledge of basic bronze metallurgy, and basic agriculture would give them a couple thousand more for a jump start. Hell, just starting them out with a good language is gigantic. Non-scadrial worlds are very likely to have gotten a jump start - as far as we're aware, Scadrial is the only world that humans were recreated on, rather than migrated to. Migrations would carry a pre-existing level of tech with them, to a point. In the Liar of Partinel sample chapters Brandon had up briefly, Yolen seemed iron age/medieval-ish. Any migrating population should at least be Bronze Age to start.

Yes to both.

For what it's worth, I actually intend to reveal special role holders as they were killed - none have been killed yet. I'll talk more about some of the decisions I made in the post mortem for the game, which I hope everyone will participate in.

Impossible to say for sure. If Scadrians were created immediately after the Shattering, and began at early stone age, then approximately 10 000 years, give or take a couple thousand. If Honor/Cultivation brought humans to Roshar after the shattering, and there are 99 Desolations at anywhere from 50-500 years apart, then the Shattering is about 9 500 years to 100 000 years ago. If there were nine Desolation, 500 years apart (I have a theory on this, so plugging that, haha), then Rosharan history would be about 9000 years old as well. So, best guess - about 10k years go from the most chronologically advanced books we've seen (Alloy of Law/Stormlight). Coal has been seen on Roshar, Sel, and Scadrial. Lamp oil has been seen on all major shardworlds. Roshar, at least, existed pre-shattering, and it's likely other planets did too. Presumably there was life on them as well. I'm not even gonna touch on the religious thing, so don't ask. Your estimates are a little shorter than mine, but relatively similar. Notably - we don't know if Roshar is the oldest colonized planet or not. Chances are fair that it is, or is close, though. This was noted. As were several other tech discrepancies.

Well, it's a little bit of a jump to assume that not seeing living people means they have seen dead ones. I'm interested in the fact that by that phrase, Hoid either doesn't consider the spren to be alive, or alternatively they don't qualify as 'someone'. I like the pilot epsiodes - you should make a full season. =D

That is an interesting quote. I assumed that he was talking about consuming Breath - living involves him constantly devouring the Breaths of others. That actually suggests that Vasher DOES NOT use Stormlight, that he just brought a couple thousand Breaths with him as a nice stockpile. Hmmm.

I wrote a Metallic Art FTL theory based on the premise of technological ways of using Feruchemy. In summation, it takes the concept of an Alcubierre Drive (a real life FTL concept), and suggests that if a Feruchemical technology were available it could be created fairly simply with a powerful Feruchemical Iron device. You can find the full thread here: Allomantic Faster than Light - Something that doesn't...

The best part of this theory is the Quantum cosmology. I think you should lookup more about that, and post a complete sourced theory on it for non-physicists like myself to squee over.

Argent and Kurk, battling it out for 3rd place at 1201 each. When will they pass Twinborn? Find out soon!

Chatbox is there for me on iPad as well - it's only visible on the forums page, not the news page, that may be your confusion.

I get the feeling that Brandon tends to RAFO interesting but not critical questions the first couple times he sees them, and then gives in and tells the answer when he's had the question floating about in his head a while. Basically - he likes to string us along, but will give in if we ask the same thing enough (unless it's a major plot point).

I don't know what you're talking about. *whistle innocently as he edits*

The Returned changing shape is most certainly not illusion - from all the WoB we have it's almost certainly in the same sort of class as Forging, Soulcasting, Feruchemical gold healing, Stormlight Healing, and other cognitive shape changing abilities. Which means that other than the Aons, there are no known other illusion abilities. The Ars Arcanum author has been to Sel, of course, and there may be other worlds with illusion abilities. While I agree you could interpret it that way, it's not as exciting =P

Day Two Ends The second day draws to a close, and another murder is found. Upon coming downstairs in the morning, the body of Gamene is found on a table in the kitchen, gutted from neck to stomach, entrails missing, and filled with cloves of garlic. A heated discussion leads to Faidh being turned out in the snow with their pack, left to the mercy of the howling winds. Player Voted out: Faidh (Aonar Faileas) Player Murdered: Gamene (Gamma Fiend) Votes: 4 votes for Faidh (Aonar Faileas): Gamene (Gamma Fiend), Ratel (Alvron), Nepene, Kai (luckat) 2 votes for Warkel (el_warko): GreyPilgrim, Cann (Lord Claincy Ffnord) 1 votes for Caan (Lord Claincy Ffnord): el_warko (Warkel) 1 votes for Kai (luckat): Faidh (AonarFaileas) Were active, but did not vote: Adolin_Dustbringer, Asgren (Aspren)

I was planning on maintaining a narrative only approach, but reading over the last days posts I'm getting the feeling that some of you are feeling confused or frustrated by it. I'm hesitant to switch tracks midgame, but as this is the pioneer game, I suppose I'll try a more transparent disclosure this day. You can then tell me if you prefer the narrative disclosure (which takes a little thought on your part), or the full disclosure.

Don't think we did, but many people support it.

Diamond and quartz are the least valuable gems in their currency. Coincidence? Or is it because they hold noticeably less stormlight?

Reading over the Ars Arcanum in Words of Radiance, there is a phrase that I've remarked on many times, as have many others. In the bit about lightweaving, it states: Today however, I remarked just how important this sentence is, because of all the things it implies. I was blinded by the whole "Yolish" red herring - the chapters of Liar of Brandon's website made me go 'ah, yes of course it is to' and I never really read the phrase. But there is so much more in this one tidbit. The first important bit is: the most similar ability to the original Yolish variant. This implies a few things. The magic is similar to the abilities on Yolen. 'Most similar' implies that there are many other abilities similar to Yolish magic, more than a few It also implies the author is familiar enough with them to make comparisons. The use of the words similar and variant show that that Yolish abilities all worked slightly differently As a conclusion, I think this a strong supporting phrase for the "Yolen has all magics" school of thought that has been bandied about from time to time. BONUS INFO: The Ars Arcanum author is highly familiar with Yolish magic of multiple types. How else could they make comparisons, and speak so authoritatively? How could they qualify it as the most, unless they had at least a casual understanding of the majority of the others? If they visited Yolen post-shattering (and if Yolen is still around), then how did they know it was the original? This strongly implies the author is from Yolen, or has associated significantly with someone from Yolen. Our current leading Ars Arcanum author is Khriss, who is super knowledgeable but isn't from Yolen, and is many many years to young to have been on pre-shattering Yolen. Nazh, another favoured contender, is highly suspected to be from Threnody, so same arguments apply. It is of course possible that they were simply taught about Yolish magic. But it is interesting to note it.

I was under the impression that the Lord Ruler survived his beheading? Certainly Feruchemical gold has the ability to heal even from dynamite exploding you, or you being cut vertically in two.

Votes can be changed whenever. I take the most recent of the day.

I don't see it as penalizing, I see it as way to give precedence to the most valued members of the community. While the date you joined does have an impact, if you look at the top rep posters you will see that most of them are not joke crackers, but thoughtful contributors. Kurkistan, Argent, Moogle, Weiry, the majority of the admins, and many other thoughtful people are up at the top. I don't think anyone contend that they made their way to the top by jokes. It doesn't take long to get a few reputation points either - Awesomeness has an astounding 850 rep, and has been here only four months. I myself have 250 rep and have been here only three months. EMTrevor has 333 rep and has been here only a single month. Gathering 50 rep is only saying "You've been here and active a couple weeks", really. Of course, big downside - if you start giving out the ability to answer questions based on rep, there will be people who start abusing the rep system with fake accounts and such to get questions. So it's probably not a good idea regardless. Still, I don't think it's fair at all to say rep is based off tenure and jokes when you have only to look at the top 50 rep list to see that there are both lots of newcomers and that it is populated with mostly thoughtful people. And that's just the top 50 - there are plenty of others with 50+ rep.

Offer questions based on forum reputation points? You're allowed 1 question per 50 or 100 points or something of the sort. Then you're basically giving the questions to the most active and involved members, rewarding their contributions to the site with a return of sorts. You'd also tend to get a lot of well informed questions, and questions with interesting answers.

I made it to the top 50 list! Watch out Aether. Only 750 points or so to go to grind you into the dust!

I used ungendered pronouns most of the time when possible. So 'they' refers to Nepene there, and yes Ratel voted for Nepene.

The votes have been tallied into the narrative. As you abstained, you would not be as aware of that as the others. For example, Joe voted for himself, so in the narrative, he casts the final 'vote' to give himself the majority of three.