Tempus

I was thinking about the scale of the Desolations. The Desolations were said to have the follow properties, chronogolistically: • There were apparently 99 Desolations • The Desolations last years, one as long as eleven • The Desolations destroyed 90% of the population • The Desolations often regressed a population back an era of technology or two (Iron Age to Stone) So, we know current Roshar is 4500 years since the last Desolation. Given the above facts, the minimum length we could expect the break between Desolations to take would be eleven years (assuming they do not overlap). More likely, we would expect them to have breaks of a several hundred years (in order to rebuild the population and to account for the loss of tech). That would mean, if there were 99, that the Desolations last for no less than 1100 years, and more likely somewhere between 20 000 and 100 000 years. That's just too long. My theory here is that - There were only nine Desolations, and that was distorted by history to become 99 (possibly through Vorin symmetry). Other than my gut feeling that people like Hoid and the Shards haven't been just sitting around derping for a hundred thousand years and then suddenly things got busy, I do have a little bit of evidence to support this claim. Supporting Points: (From myself and the many posters below!) In one of Dalinar's flashbacks, the time is referred to as the Eighth Epoch. At the time of the Eighth Epoch, there were Knights Radiant. We know from a certain slightly madman in Words of Radiance that the Knights Radiant were implemented late in the cycle of Desolations, long enough for the Heralds to become both used to and fed up of rebuilding society, but not so early that the Radiants were able to preserve enough knowledge to advance them past the Iron Age. This suggests that there were in fact, nine Desolations, with Dalinar's vision occurring during the eighth. The time between each Desolation was considered an 'Epoch'. With only nine desolations, even at 1000 years in between each Desolation, we only hit 9000 years. Which is a fairly acceptable number, comparatively. I say 1000 because, well, 10 is very Rosharan after all! The Desolations were devastating enough to reset the technology level an era, for example, from Iron Age to Bronze or Stone Age. This was revealed to us by the person called Taln in WoR, who mentions a number of things that indicates first hand knowledge of the Desolations. He also indicates that they have some time prior to the arrival of the Desolation. This means that each Desolation must take at least enough time between them to lose a tech level (normally takes a thousand years or so to tech up at that point in history - presumably not all knowledge would be lost so shorter than that). And the Desolations must be at least Devastating enough that it wouldn't be unusual for the entire world to lose a thousand years of technological progress - no mean feat, and probably entails huge damage to the population and infrastructure which they would need time to recover from. The idea of large gaps are supported by Taln's torture. "Taln" withstood 4500 years of torture at ten times the usual intensity. And at that point, Odium has had all the previous times between Desolations to develop his torturing abilities to their max. It would be insane if the Heralds can't withstand at least 450 years when Taln took on ten times that, in both duration and intensity. (PorridgeBrick) It's incredibly hard to rebuild when infrastructure is entirely gone. Consider the fall of Rome. After the Germanic tribes sacked everything, incredible amounts of technology were lost, some of it forever, and the Dark Ages started. The people at that time all knew of the technology that was possible: they'd been the ones using it, some of them building it. That knowledge wasn't passed on. There was neither the economy, governance, nor resources to supply using that technological knowledge. And in this sort of preindustrial society, knowledge is passed down by family lines or apprenticeship. Kill off a family, you kill off the secrets of their trade. In bad times, all you do is try to feed your family. You don't care about spreading your knowledge, preserving technology. Now, let's apply this to the Desolations. They'd literally just learned bronze-working. This wasn't all that widely known, presumably: there's only so much one man can do to teach an entire population in a small time span. And everything was just ruined. Their population has been ravaged. Their farms to supply food, their mines to supply metal, their men sent off to fight in the war, all are decimated. The Heralds can't exactly stay long: they can't risk sending another Desolation. These people are going to be desperate. They're not in the situation to technologically innovate, or even preserve. They're back in the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer societies. It takes time to regrow populations, to rebuild civilization. This again leans towards longer Desolation breaks. (PorridgeBrick) Brandon consistently offers unreliable in world information, and we know the Vorins tampered with historical texts and accounts in a variety of places. The unlikeliness of the Desolations lasting hundreds of thousands of years provides an indication that they may be one of those unreliable accounts. Roshar is full of the number 10. The True Desolation being the tenth Desolation would work very well. There is also probably more to the Heralds leaving at exactly the number they did (either 9th or 99th) than just 'they were tired'. Because 99 or 9 are both immediately prior to the number 10 (or ten tens). This is another indication that there is something more going on with the Desolation count and the Oathpact breaking than we are being told. The Vorins add symmetry to all sorts of things for kicks. Notably, the Herald's names all got symmetrified. Converting nine to ninety-nine to have a more symmetrically pleasing number is not outside the realm of possibility for a religious organization that wants to make everything symmetrical and is changing historical accounts to do so. Having the Desolations last hundreds of thousands of years is really too long. We know Adonalsium shattered, and that sometime after that Honor, Cultivation, and humans arrived on Roshar. In the meantime, Odium has been around, and Hoid has been doing things, and there was the seventeeth shard. Did those organizations and people really sit around and do nothing for 100k years and then all of the sudden, Hoid starts searching, Odium starts breaking other shards, and the 17th becomes active, all during the span of a couple thousand years? Seems unlikely. I'm not even sure the Heralds could stay sane after 100k years of torture. In Dalinar's vision in the chapter Starfall, where he talks with the two Radiants and fights the Midnight Essence, his 'wife' implies there hasn't been a Desolation in her life-time, which I'm assuming is ~30 years old. However, there's still some sort of legend or history regarding Desolations, so the memory hasn't faded completely--meaning to me that one has happened within the last 5 generations (150 years). Even if we assume that there's generally 100 years from the start of one Desolation until the start of the next, that's still a good ~10,000 years this has been going on. Tempus's argument that 100k years is too long for anyone to not do anything about it is very reasonable and nearly as applicable to a much smaller number (like 10-20k years) as well. (kaellok) One possibility for length - 4500 years since the last Desolation. 4500 is a perfect multiple of nine. 500 each. If this True Desolation is the tenth Desolation, well, what we're looking at here is another symbolic clue based off the Roshar love of ten, and could place each Desolation gap at 500 years. This is by no means a certain deduction, it could just be general symbolism and non-indicative, but were this to hold true, 99 Desolations would have been about fifty thousand years, but nine would be the nicely symmetrical 4500. It's not conclusive, but is another small shred to add to the symmetry and symbolic tens pile.

If by centuries, you mean millenia.... The oathpact was broken 4500 years prior. There were apparently 99 Desolations before that, and they were long enough to consistently eradicate iron age technologies, so they would have had to have been at least a decade between each one and probably closer to 50-300 years. If the 99 is accurate, that would make Shallash anywhere from 5500 to 34500 years old.

While thinking about Chronology in the cosmere, what strikes me now and again is the discrepancies between different worlds, their stated time periods, and their technology level. I've judged that it should be possible to estimate to some extent the progress and age of worlds in the cosmere if we look at the major events on the world and their technology levels. In human history, we divide general technological levels into a variety of ages, as follows. While there are of course significant local discrepancies for technologies, these rarely vary by more than a couple hundred years in either direction, which is adequate for the kind of accuracy we are looking for. Stone Age: ~ 6000 years Stone tools, crude technology Bronze Age: ~ 2000 years First use of metallic tools, notably bronze (easy to make) Iron Age: ~ 1000 years Standardized use of iron and steel tools, advanced forging techniques Medieval: ~ 500 years Mills, catapults, gunpowder Renaissance ~ 200 years Foundation of scientific method, printing Industrial: ~ 150 years Engines, steam power Modern: ~ 100 years Electricity, Automobiles, Radio, Nuclear tech Information: ~ 50 years Computers, Internet, Fiber optics Now, those are perhaps unpardonably crude measurements, but they're the best I can approximate after reading quite a bit on it without going to get another degree! So, using that information.... I made a pretty chart: (one planet edited out due to avoiding discussion of unpublished works) Interestingly, this suggests that... • Roshar was the first planet settled (that we know of) • Roshar is the least advanced planet that we of • Sel or an Unpublished planet are probably the most advanced technologically - we've had some info that Ashyn seems to be far ahead of Roshar as well (Ashyn not on chart) • Despite Sel being potentially a thousand years or more of tech ahead of Scadrial, Scadrial apparently still gets FTL first. Scary! Conclusions for each Era by Planet: Roshar: • We know from 'Taln' that the peoples during the Desolations were fluctuating between Stone, Bronze, and Iron. This is sufficient to indicate the tech level for that period. The Last Desolation was 4500 years prior to Way of Kings. • We know from flashbacks that at the time of the Recreance that the society was in late stone to mid iron age. Assuming a normal progression from Way of Kings, this interpolates to be Mid-Bronze age. • In Way of Kings, we can place Roshar at late medieval era in tech. This is because of a number of factors, but largely because they don't show the three main signs of the Renaissance - the printing press, the scientific method, and advanced mechanical weaponry (nominally the musket). • Roshar's medicine is much more advanced - this is due to spren, which led to germ theory far prior to developing microscopes. That's gigantic. • Roshar's mechanics and engineering seem to be behind the times by WoK. This is probably due to a combination of lack of metals, lack of need for infrastructure due to ability to gain rare or expensive materials cheaply via soulcasting, and lack of requirements for major war engines due to availability of shardplate and blades. • Roshar's scientific principles in WoK seem to be on track, and while there is no formal scientific method, the research we have seen from Jasnah, Shallan, Mr.T, Navani, and the Ardents shows a civilization on the cusp of the Renaissance in science. • Roshar's lack of gunpowder is due to lack of opportunity to mistakenly find it, as lack of mining operations and birds means no side products to experiment with, and advanced medicine means alchemy is less random testing and more obvious results thanks to the spren. Sel: • In Elantris, regular citizens across the World and in the Rose Empire seem to be firmly in the Medieval, perhaps early medieval. They demonstrate no particular centres of learning, no advanced machinery, no gunpowder (which they should have opportunity to find, unlike Roshar). They do have Iron and Steel, and basic deep water navigation, so they must be later than Iron Age. • In Elantris itself, the Elantrians seem far more advanced then their compatriots. While they use magic to substitute for technology, their libraries, hospitals, and the books we see show a society with knowledge approaching the early modern era - with knowledge of concepts such as waveforms and spectrums. Unfortunately, all their technology is limited to within the boundaries of Elantris, and more often to Elantrians themselves. We can probably expect rapid advancement in some areas from Sel, given their store of knowledge. However, technological advancements might slow as 'making do' with Elantrian magic could hamper non-investiture technologies. Nalthis: • Nalthis demonstrates a medieval level of technology that is difficult to quantify. We see no engines of war or advanced machinery, no printing, no science. However, in another country, Yesteel is rumoured to have begun to invent awakened weapons of warfare. This tentatively places them in the early to mid Medieval Era, where engines of warfare began to be in common usage. Scadrial: • Word of Brandon tells us that pre-Lord Ruler, they had just begun to develop Steam Engines putting them at early Industrial. • The Lord Ruler regressed technology a bit, though he picked and chose his favourites to keep. He then kept it at that level. Thus, there is a combination of Late Medieval infrastructure, early medieval weaponry, and late renaissance economic technologies that I've marked as Very Late Medieval. • Alloy of Law demonstrates pistols (advanced gunpowder technology), advanced metallurgy skills, steam engines, early electricity and very early automobiles that puts it on the boundary of Late Industrial and Early Modern. Word of Brandon places the setting as similar to 1910. • Mistborn Trilogy two is supposedly urban, marking it as 1970's to 2000's tech level. • Mistborn Trilogy three is a space opera with FTL, at an unknown period further in time.

I want to bring up the point that the gate was first activated in the middle of a gigantic highstorm. If the gates need a massive amount of stormlight to first boot up and unlock, it could be difficult to open them unless you do so during the middle of a highstorm where stormlight is in abundance.

We don't know where in the timeline White Sand takes place, but we can take a few educated guesses. We know by WoB that Blunt in Way of Kings, is from White Sand. So, for certain before then. We suspect Khriss is the Ars Arcanum author, because we have a WoB she is the most knowledgeable. That would put White Sand prior to Mistborn. Given that the rest of the Sanderson novels were written approximately in chronological order, and White Sand was the first book written, we can guess that if the approximate pattern holds true White Sand should be a bit before Elantris, but not too much. That's the best we have at the moment, I think.

I vaguely recall a Word of Brandon that he was iffy about the Szeth scene, as he didn't want it to be too much like 'reviving characters from the dead' and wanted it to be more like 'he was rescued'. Someone with more motivation than I at the moment should look that up! ^_-

That just predisposes me even MORE towards the shardpools. The weird thing is that Hoid on Scadrial seems to be able to World Hop without any shardpools being accessible.

Okay, so here's my premise. • Investiture grants sentience (I can dig up the WoB on this if you like, there are several) • All being have sDNA that they inherit • Kandra that are born (as Mistwraiths) have a blockage between their Cognitive and Physical Aspects • That blockage can be bridged by application of any increase of investiture in their spirit web (any pair or more of hemalurgic spikes will do, it seems) • Thus, the Kandra are lacking a necessary component of their spiritual aspect to become sentient, that is most likely directly related to investiture • It follows then, that any half-child of the Kandra would be likely to inherit the sDNA at least partially of the parent, regardless of whether the pDNA is correctly human or not • Leading to the scenario previously explained (Half-Kandra children would not function correctly even if the pDNA was perfectly compatible) • This sDNA seems to be lacking the same sort of investiture that Preservation 'added' to the humans he created, thus my comparison

I meant, humans on Scadrial have investiture directly from Preservation in them, to grant them sentience.

Here's my take on it. In order of approximate importance (as determined by book count?). The places listed are the main settings : Threnody: Forest of Hell, Waystop Elantris: Elantris, Kae, The Rose Palace White Sand: ***, ***, and *** Warbreaker: Idris, T'Telir, Court of the Gods Mistborn: Luthadel, Fadrex City, Urteau Alloy: The Roughs, Elendel, Field of Rebirth Stormlight: Karbranth, Shattered Plains, Urithiru Dragonsteel: *** and *** The Train stations should be... not sure here. The Utilities should be the Spiritual Realm and the Cognitive Realm.

Atium Acupuncture (ask for the happy ending) Awaken to Toys Bloodseal Security The Holy Order of Shu-Dereth - Free copies of the writ inside 17th Shard Travel Agency

No, my basement is completely empty, officer. You can't come in without a warrant.

Fantastic theory, we need more theories with actual physics training behind them around here!

Half-kandra should be impossible. Let's assume that Kandra can perfectly replicate the physical aspects necessary to create a person, including DNA. Cognitive should be fine as well, Kandras have mind. Spiritual is gonna be an issue - the Kandra do not contain the necessary piece of preservation to allow sentience. They are in fact granted it by hemalurgic spikes. Any children produced by such an issue should be malformed spiritually, at best mindless and drooling (no sentience), at worst brain dead or stillborn at birth.

Some possible stores: Piercing Emporium and Forgery Tattoos, hemalurgic spikes from 100% organic materials Rent-a-Lifeless Royal Locks Salon and Beauty Parlour Lightweavers: Express Tailoring and Fashion Soothers Spa Shardpool Splashpark and World Slides

Is there an updated list around here of the ranks? I know some boards (some others I moderate) have nice lists of all currently discovered rankings, but as we're left to discover them here, I'd be interested if anyone is keeping up a table.

I'd always envisioned a Nalthis-set videogame as being a kind of strategy game set during the manywar, where you can trade the productivity and army potential of your citizens for vast, powerful single breath units or awakened objects, or for armies of lifeless.

Only ten cosmere books so far?!

You mention this every time I bring this up, Weiry, and this is true. I think it's safe to say that I'm identifying them categorically as a whole, because we really have no real idea what the other parts of a seon are, or whether they matter at all. And if they do matter, how.

How do you determine what the 'prime' Aon is?

Well, those are all good points. Especially the first quote, which implies the Stormfather was watching as a third person when Tanavast as Honor was shattered. Hard to be the cognitive shadow of someone still living and only a short distance away.

I'm not convinced about several points. • The Returned return because they are given a splinter, called the Divine Breath, given directly by the Shard. The known splinters on Sel are Seons and Skaze. We have no indication that the transformation of the Shaod is caused by Elantrians gaining some kind of splinter, or if it were who would grant those splinters. • We don't have any particular proof that splinters have the same investiture from planet to planet - in fact the difference in power for Spren strongly suggests that splinters are entirely capable of being very different power levels. Veggiespren, for example, have a power level lower than Ricespren, which have a power level over 90001. • Vasher is indeed on Roshar, and is probably using stormlight to fuel himself. I even wrote a good theory2 on how that could work. While he probably understands how much stormlight is roughly equivalent to a Breath, in a very non-scientific way (messing it up would get him killed, remember), we certainly don't know. • As stated in the book, science on Roshar is insufficient to allow for classification and fabrication of gemstones consistent enough to maintain exact amounts of stormlight. We also don't know if highstorms power gems equally depending on storm intensity, location, duration in the storm, etc... There's also the decay rate for stormlight, which is a significant factor in any calculations • Scadrians each have different allomantic strength, making burn time insufficient as an objective measuring system. Feruchemical nicrosil should work, as feruchemy is dependent on the quality/size of the metalmind, which is a fairly simple process to codify as a standard. 1 All a lie. 2 I'm biased, of course. I wrote it. Here it is.

The sliver terminology thing is actually a point in favour of Tanavast, I think. The cosmere terminology like sliver, splinter, etc, are fairly exclusive in the cosmere. Someone like a shardholder would be one of the few who would know the correct terms. Spren are also interesting, because many spren seem to know the correct terms. This would imply that someone in the know had been informing and teaching them, or else they would have world exclusive terms like the other planets do. In addition, the Stormfather has a clear link to the memories of Tanavast. I am speaking of the visions which Dalinar begins to get around the same time he begins to bond the Stormfather. The ones that come every highstorm. It makes all kinds of sense for these to be directly from the source, rather than some sort of separate special memory magic.

Sel is stated as having high investiture, similar to Roshar.

Well, Hoid has some method of travelling forward through time. We know he was in the pool room just prior to the Well being used... • Hoid was on Scadrial for the important events when Rashek got his mitts on the pool. • He was then stuck. He used his unknown timeskip ability to jump forward in time to the period he knew would have the pool. • He began to interfere with the Lord Ruler and 'assist' the resistance in order to help himself elude the Lord Ruler and locate the pool. • He located the pool just before Vin, as his primary objective. • He noticed the Lerasium, and took it as an act of opportunity. • He shardpooled it out of there, just a few hours before Vin and Elend's descent into the area. And then 300 years later... • He used Harmony's shardpool or some newly acquired ability of his to return briefly during Alloy of Law. Could be possible, perhaps.