Tempus

Do you have quotes for the aura of living things? I was under the impression that colour perception and sound perception are what intensified, as well as the colour around you increasing. They called it Life Aura, but I didn't get the impression that it was like Thermal vision for life or something.

Indeed, apologies, I meant armies of ten thousand.

I hate to derail this, because I absolutely love it when you poke big holes in my speculation (serious about this, you guys rock), but I just thought of an important fact. Shards are blind to their Focus, or possibly the reactant. At least, Preservation/Ruin are blind to metal. The Focus on Nalthis is Commands. I've suggested the pattern of sound is the pattern component. I must be mistaken though. If the sound/light waves were the pattern component, then Endowment would be blind to them. However, we know that gaining Breath brings you closer to the Form of Endowment (cue Kurk squeeing in the background). And gaining Breath also allows you to see colours and hear sounds more clearly. Thus, it is impossible for the Focus of Commands to be as I describe - more Breath should make them less visible. Do we know of anything that becomes more difficult to see, do, or sense when you gain Breath? Weirdly enough, even Commands become easier as you gain Breaths. Perhaps my logic above is flawed in some way, or our understanding is.

I'm aware of and considered the amount of energy present in matter. Free energy, or transferable energy, is relatively low however. I'm working under the base assumption that the metals do not undergo spontaneous subatomic fission inside their stomach. I may lose all faith in Brandon if I'm mistaken, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Sure. Intent is important, and is an intrinsic part of the system, how it works, and why it works. The problem isn't with Intent, the problem is with attempting to deduce facts with Intent as the basis. When Intent comes into play, all our facts and theories turn into big paragraphs full of 'I feel' and 'I suspect' and 'this is like being Devoted/Honourable'. Which is fine, especially as supporting point or for speculation. I simply don't think Intent is predictable enough to say things like "Because the Intent is Devotion, it makes sense there is no fuel/reactant on Sel". It's just too hard to pin down. It's the equivalent of looking at a lineup of suspects and pointing at the one that looks most like the thief, and then realizing later the guilty culprit wasn't in the lineup at all. Intent is very important, I just can't accept it as primary evidence for a fact.

Spikes are an Investiture that affects you, it would fall under "cleansing the spirit of unwanted effects of other Investitures".

Shardic Number Theory Revisited Part Three - Shardic Numbers Are Bollox Premise We've talked about 'Every Shard has a number', and also 'Shard Numbers Mesh Together'. And Word of Brandon supports this[1]. However, Shardic number theory is full of holes and things that don't match up and is generally the kind of thing you look at with one eyebrow raised. However, surely there are other options? That Word of Brandon is actually very open to interpretation! We'll be looking at a few of these today, for the last part of Shardic Number Theory Revisited. I will be referring back to evidence from the previous theories to save time and space. Each Shardworld has a Number Hypothesis: Just because the number is important to the Shard doesn't mean that the number belongs to the Shard. A good alternative theory is that the Shardworld is what encodes the number that is important (kind of like how the Shardworld determines the Focus for the planet). Scadrial - Sixteen Scadrial's number must be sixteen. They even have a 'law of sixteen' on Scadrial. Brandon comes out and tells us Preservation picked sixteen since it was important, and Alloy of Law is stuffed with more sixteen's than a high school dance. Sel - Three or Four Sel is still not clear. Going by the significant numbers noted previously, three and four seem very likely. Roshar - Ten If you have read Stormlight Archive, you may have noticed the number ten used once or twice. This subtle hint is Brandon's way of telling you the number for this Shardworld. Nalthis - Five As seen previously, Nalthis remains five, for the very same reasons. The Numbers are Important to the Cosmere as a Whole Hypothesis: Shards may choose to focus on numbers that are important to the Cosmere as a whole. Thus, there may be some numbers here that come up again and again. Sixteen Sixteen is certainly of Cosmere importance. There are sixteen Shards from the Shattered Adonalsium. Here are some other instances where sixteen is important. On Scadrial, Vin's Age, Allomantic, Feruchemic, and Hemalurgic Metals, The number of people in percent that Preservation Snapped, the Law of Sixteen mentioned in Alloy of Law, Wax's address, Wax's generation, when Wax Snapped, and other less important instances. On Roshar, sixteen is considered the time of coming of age. On Sel, the Rose Empire has eighty factions and worship the eighty suns, which is sixteen times five. There is no known significance of sixteen on Nalthis. Ten Ten is also of Cosmere importance. Word of Brandon tells us there are ten Major Shardworlds[2]. Other instances where ten is important are: On Scadrial, there were ten original known metals, ten great houses, ten dominances, ten thousand skaa in the rebellion and numerous other small facts (Mistwraith are ten feet long). The Well of Ascension, in an important fact, refills every 2^10 years. On Sel, the Reod was precisely ten years ago. On Nalthis, there are Ten Heightenings, and the count of Breaths to reach them are always approximating multiples of ten. There are also ten thousand Lifeless. Roshar also has a small amount of influence from the number ten, but I will leave this as an exercise to the reader. Five Five has no known meaning in the meta-narrative, but is nonetheless found all over the Cosmere. Some instances of five include... On Scadrial, the Dominances are split into two groups of five (as are the metals). Skaa do not become Mistings unless they have Aristocratic blood within five generations. Spook snapped when he was five and Inquisitors trained for five years before being spiked. The Lord Ruler's Chamber was lit with five massive braziers. The Well of Ascension can also be counted as refilling every 4^5 years. It was five months since Lessie's death for Wax, and Elendel accomodates about five million people. Lawmen should be one to five hundred people, and bubbles are about five feet across, as far as we know. Wax has been a constable for 25 years. On Sel, the City of Elantris is designed with many five's in it's architecture and planning. It was five years since Sarene began to paint, and five years since Raoden began opposing his father. Sarene was 25, and Hrathen and Sarene were poisoned for five days. Shai has five Essence Marks, there are five Arbiters per faction, and five times sixteen yields the number 80, important both politically and religiously in the Rose Empire. Roshar has the five ideals, and five known groupings of fabrials. The binding charts seem to be able to split into fives along both axis. Nalthis is of course replete with fives as mentioned before, and shshshsh also has significant influence of the number five, such as the spheres at the beginning. Eleven Eleven seems to be a Cosmere number identified with a number of evil things and occurrences. The only know duration of a Desolation lasted eleven years. There were 99 Desolations in total, according to the Vorins. Eleven is also associated with Ruin many times, see Part One for details. In Elantris, the Jeskeri Mysteries met at eleven 'o clock to sacrifice. Conclusion The two theories above are attractive. They are generally simpler than attaching numbers specifically to a Shard, and thus perhaps more likely to be correct. That said, they are all very common numbers, and Brandon has to count things somehow. There is also a very notable concentration of some numbers on some planets, where those numbers aren't seen at all on others. Mysterious. That was pretty much every Shardic Number Theory that held water I could find or dream up, and all the references I could find. I hope you all enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed endlessly typing em' out. References:

Thanks Kurk, I've been gathering quite a list. I've noted slightly over 200 theories that are mentioned or touched on, but needed development. Some of those have been scratched off as I found theories about them, some have become obsolete with WoR information and all the questions we've answered, but quite a few are still quite good (I was sorting them earlier). I have about 54 right now that I think might be interesting (55 including yours), and I'm sure I'll get a few more before I'm done. Sometime in the first week of June I plan to start work on presenting those nicely and getting a think tank or a theories wanted page or something of the sort for people to bounce around in. Also, been sorting through my scripts, and they really are pretty good. I've made a few corrections, but overall I'm super impressed. If only they could accurately detect 'Plot' theories, and more accurately determine theories from other posts, I wouldn't have to do anything! =D Lastly, I'll be away from my desktop for the next week, I'm visiting Chicago. Won't make any progress on the Index while I'm gone, but I'll still be around the forums via my mobile.

That's certainly possible Weiry. It could be correct. I don't necessarily agree that a Focus can be entirely Cognitive, but I don't think we have enough at this time to say one way or another. I'm presenting it as a physical pattern because what we have from Brandon regarding the nature of Focuses ties them directly to a specific pattern of things. Metal is not the focus, the arrangement of the metal molecules is. Form is not the focus, it's the symbolic depiction and arrangement. Symbols are important in the Cosmere (by WoB), and I'd like to say that there needs to be a tangible symbol or pattern as a part of a Focus beyond the mental intent of the user. The more I suggest that Nalthis and Breath have special cases without offering a reason, the further I undermine the system as a whole.

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Yes, PorridgeBrick, you are absolutely right about that earlier post of mine. The reactant is not lightwaves, I've noted that myself several times. Extrapolating the focus from the reactant doesn't seem implausible to me, but the reasoning I use there for the Rosharan abilities is indeed unsound. I'm just gonna backpedal on that whole post, dunno what I was thinking. That said, I don't buy that the focus on Nalthis is thought. Intent is provided by thought, Focus is something different, and requires a manifestation of a pattern. That is very clear from the WoB regarding Foci on Scadrial and Sel. I'm going to suggest that the Focus is still the Command (the specific pattern produced by the sound waves). There are two modifications to this. In the 9th ⇪, which I am now using a unicode symbol for just to mess with people with crappy setups, you gain the ability to Command without touching an object. In the 10th ⇪, you gain the ability of Mental Command. This allows you to use Commands mentally, and is difficult to learn. Notably, neither of these abilities appear until you reach a very large concentration of Investiture. Mental Command could very well be an application of the feedback principle - concentrated Investiture feedbacks and creates more reactant/focus. This is coincidentally is also the explanation I've put forward for how the Mists can power specific Allomantic abilities without metal patterns to provide focus, when they are apparently just big blobs of Shardstuff / Investiture. Rather than discouraging my theory, I think the fact that this occurs at the 10th ⇪, 50,000 times normal concentration, is supportive of the theory. I'm also still going to maintain the Cosmere relation between light and sound. We see it in Lightweaving, we see it in ⇪s. The fact that it's not lightwaves in specific that are consumed just means we still have more to understand about how things work. There is a categorical link between the two, and I'm suspecting that the Nalthis issue has to do with various realmatic aspects of light/sound. Certainly sucking the property of colour from a thing seems spiritual in nature (looking at you, Shardblade!).

The Joule-Thompson effect is a nice theory, but ultimately it doesn't hold water. On Roshar, it doesn't really hold water because the effect of rapid decompression is simply not strong enough to produce the level of frost we see in many instances. Over a period of time, the effect can produce extreme cold within the material in question, but this is not what we see. We don't see frozen Surgebinders turning into popsicles after extended periods of use of Surgebinding. We don't see trails of frost follow behind uses of Surgebinding. We see one-time frost generation, far into the surrounding area (heat transfer is really poor, incidentally, and getting something cold enough to affect its surrounding area in a second is bonkers), and not constant frost on the subject where the 'Spiritual expansion' takes place. I crunched the numbers demonstrating some of this in another thread, but those were specific numbers for blood depressurization. Basic concept still stands. Outside of Roshar, it doesn't hold water because there is no evidence for it. The next highest invested planet we've seen is Sel, according to Brandon. We never see frost on Sel, no even natural frost. We never see anyone get cold or produce condensation when they draw or use Aons, Dhakor powers, or anything else. Not even super-concentrated Elantris or Raoden's pressure-packed explosion generates cold. Likewise with Scadrial. The closest we get to frost are some red-frosted cakes. What about the God King's massive Investiture? He's got and uses more Investiture than Nightblood by a large factor. Frost? No. There is simply no evidence for this anywhere in the Cosmere other than Roshar. The simplest answer isn't that everywhere else is special and only Roshar acts normally, it's that the theory is mistaken and Roshar has something else going on. As for 'not every system needs a reactant' Skaa, that is entirely possible. That said, I'm not certain I buy your explanation on "fuel". It's true that Investiture in the Cosmere has been described by Brandon as the 'building blocks of the Cosmere', but I don't think these reactants are used as ways of acquiring additional Investiture from objects. The first reason for that is that the amount they consume is very small. Allomancers consume mere flakes of metals. Surgebinders consume raw thermal energy, it's not matter. Awakeners don't even consume a thing at all, they consume like, the idea of a thing or something. As a supplementing method, they don't provide much Investiture. Awakening is probably the most interesting here, because it's an end neutral system. My general thought is that the reactant is consumed to provide things beyond what the Investiture provides. In the case of Awakening, the Investiture doesn't provide any energy to the object, or it shouldn't, because none of it is consumed. So what powers the transfer of Breath? What allows those objects to move? All movements and transfers require energy of some kind. In other Investitures, you can say "Oh, Investiture can be converted to energy". Not with Awakening. The only explanation I have at the moment is that the colour used somehow provides the energy, a conduit to energy, or a gathering system for energy to the Awakened object. The other reactants would hypothetically provide something the Investiture doesn't or cannot provide. Lastly, I'm really sketchy on the whole 'we should interpret Investitures by their Shardic Intent'. The reason is, Investitures are just too shady, and so are Intents. Let me demonstrate. I'm going to make a Shard called.... hmmm... Chastity. Chastity is one of the Divine virtues laid out by Catholicism, so it's a pretty good one. Chastity here is actually Invested in all the planets. All the other Shards were lying. Let's match Chastity (abstention, cleanliness, refraining from intoxicants, honesty, and wholesomeness, purity, and resistance to corruption are the canonical aspects of Chastity according to the Church) with the Investitures. Allomancy is from Chastity because it's all about burning the metals out of your body and keeping it clean. It's no surprise that only pure metals of a perfect balance can be safely used Allomantically, and other alloys make you sick. This is a perfect fit for Chastity's Intent. Feruchemy likewise is also of Chastity, it revolves around abstaining from certain qualities of yourself, and then returning them in a more pure and wholesome form. Breath is completely of Chastity. The more Breath you gather, the more pure your perceptions become and the more godly you become. You become resistant to the corruptions of disease and age, and even the world around you becomes cleaner and more wholesome looking. Surgebinding too is of Chastity. Like Chastity, increasing your power in surgebinding is all about making Ideals that limit you to actions that are good and wholesome. The more your actions follow those restrictions, the greater your abilities. It's no surprise simply inhaling Stormlight turns you into a more pure and wholesome person, healing you to reform you, resisting corruption form others, and allowing you to abstain from even breathing. It even brings in the wisdom aspect by granting you extra skill. Blah blah blah. Intents can be shoehorned to fit into nearly any form of magic, and justifying a facet of magic by appealing to Intent is at best a supporting point. There's a reason so many people have trouble figuring out why Allomancy is of Preservation - the Intent just simply does not match the magic in extremely obvious and overwhelming ways. It's far more subtle than that.

Nah, Mists aren't like Stormlight. Mists are like Highstorms. Not only that, they have a special term! I wonder if the product of Mists and Highstorms 'skip' or compensate for the reactant and focus? Maybe that's why we haven't found the focus of Roshar - everyone just uses the Investiture from the Highstorms and bypasses it.

PorridgeBrick - that's about it, give or take. I'm assuming we're still ignoring 'Intent', which is a big part of it. And of course all the spiritual connection aspects. And how the Focused Investiture is transmitted or translated, depending on case. And exactly why those effects are the reaction of those results. Okay, so we're missing a lot of things, but generally yes. Anyway, back to the theory. One extremely interesting aspect of this (to me) is that a few of the major reactants and focuses are either similar, or the same. Metal does double duty. Spoken words and visible colour already have a strong correlation in the Cosmere with the Lightweavers, are indeed are potentially collapsible. Shshshshsh is unclear, but those may be the same as well. Another option that I've been considering in a different form but works better here is that there is a distinction between the content of something and the pattern of it. This is spured by Aons a little - it doesn't matter what the Aon is drawn on. Soulstamps are the same. Well, "doesn't matter" is not exactly correct, but I digress. WoB says it's the pattern of metals that is the focus. Interestingly, spoken words aren't enough to focus either, it needs to be a Command. So, that option suggests that a Focus as we know it is three things. The first thing is a pattern. Words, Metal molecular structure, shapes, etc. The second thing is a reactant, related directly to the pattern. Light waves (to relate to the sound waves as noted), the actual metal, heat, etc. The reactant clearly needs to be in direct contact or proximity to the user, and in the case of metals, directly entangled. The third thing is Intent - the will to use the power and direct it. If any three of these aspects does not occur, the Investiture cannot be released. Furthermore, a deficiency of any one of these aspects may have an individual effect. Raoden has the issue of a malformed pattern. He continues to summon Investiture, unable to release it, building pressure against himself, damaging him until it eventually explodes forth. The Aon fizzles out and disappears - related to the reactant perhaps? If this theory holds true, the reactant on Sel would be related to those symbolic constructs. On Scadrial, a Mistborn burning a wrong focus causes severe illness. This isn't some weird thing, this is the same as Raoden - right type of thing, wrong focus. So lack of proper focus summons Investiture, but it's unfocused and dangerous. Lack of intent, nothing happens. Unless you are an Allomancer, then you get heavy metal poisoning when the metal digests. Lack of reactant? That one is very sticky. There are some facts we might bring to bear here. Vin uses Allomancy with Mists, and not metals. Where's the reactant? Is it the Mists? This one instance challenges many of our theories more than any other. In Shshshshsh, you die if there is no reactant. That's bad, but probably due to what it is more than anything. We've never seen a lack of reactant on Roshar. On Nalthis, lack of colour simply prevents the Awakening from occurring, they use a colour drained cell as a prison. But it does show us that the reactant is necessary to the process and not a side effect of the process. Extrapolations: Tentatively testing out this theory, the Focus on Roshar should be related to Thermal or Kinetic energy, Energy Transfers, or something of the sort. Huh, now that I think of it, we've never seen a Cosmere power that can make fire or heat directly (come on, Dustbringer book). Hmm... the surges start to kind of look like modifications of kinetic energy, if I phrase it this way. Tension, Cohesion, Gravity, Transportation, Friction are all kinetic pushes or pulls in a way. Extrapolating this seems plausible, though we don't seem to have it quite right yet.

Yep. Those are good points. I also don't necessarily feel the woman is Cultivation, but if she is, it could be important. As for symmetry, square pages didn't stop them from adding ten Heralds. The point about the Well of Ascension will come into play tomorrow, it's definitely a thing. As for the Hero of Ages, they're important to both Shards, so I'd say it is a neutral point to Meshing.

Shardic Number Theory Revisited Part Two - Shardic Numbers Mesh Together Premise Previously we talked about the traditional Shardic Number Theory - 'Every Shard has a number'. Today we've got a slightly different theory. In the Cosmere, there are instances on planets where Shardic Intents seem to interact with each other. On Scadrial, Preservation and Ruin made the Balance Magic of Feruchemy[1]. On Sel, the Dor is apparently both Dominion and Devotion together[2]. On Roshar, it seems like Honor, Cultivation, and Odium all interact in a variety of ways which aren't necessarily clear yet. Could this not apply to numbers as well? Hypothesis Each Shard has a number which is important to them, often Realmatically. These numbers interact with other numbers of Shards on the Shardworld to more fully describe the world. Known Shards from Published Works Scadrial - Preservation is eight, and Ruin is two. Harmony is sixteen. Preservation has always been a shoe in for sixteen. And why not? In Hero of Ages, people suddenly start getting sick, Vin deduces that it is in fact a sign, and Sazed tells us that Preservation chose sixteen because it was an important number to the people on Scadrial. Wait, what? Here's the kicker. The Mistborn series as it stands is four books. The first book, Final Empire, deals with Allomancy, and Vin and Kelsier fighting the Lord Ruler. The second book, Well of Ascension, deals with Feruchemy, and is all about the Well and stablizing the world after the collapse. The third book delves more into Hemalurgy, and about the confrontation between Ruin and Preservation. Alloy of Law is all about Wax, Wayne, and Harmony. So sixteen is super important right? It's a sign everyone will recognize. Everyone in Alloy of Law does, Wax mentions it a bunch, it's all over the book. What about the first trilogy? Sixteen must be big there too, right? Nope. The only instance of sixteen in the first book is Vin's age. The second book has no instances of note at all. The third book, is it anywhere? Yes! It exists ONLY in the scene where Vin magically deduces sixteen is important. Fact is, if Vin didn't tell us, if that scene didn't happen, if Sazed didn't clear it up, we would never know anyone on Scadrial cared about sixteen at all until Alloy of Law. What's your game Brandon? Are you daft. No, he's not daft. The simple fact is, sixteen is not Preservation's number. Eight is. Eight is all over the place in the Mistborn books, especially the first book. Eight metals, eight people on Kelsier's team, eight Mistings, eight months of planning for the attack on the Lord Ruler, eight Inquistors guarding the Lord Ruler, we're drowning in plot-centric eights. Ruin, by contrast, we said might be eleven. Okay, eight and eleven don't really mean much. But eight and two do. Ruin's number is actually two. There's evidence as well - hemalurgic spikes work best in balanced pairs. Inquisitors have spikes in groups of twos, attached by the single neck spike. Four groups below and one above. Kandra blessings require two spikes. Koloss use paired hemalurgic spikes. When we get to the plot, plots where Ruin influences events are all in pairs - Vin and Kelsier, Vin and Zane. When we look at Preservation... eight guards, eight people per profession on Elend's council, eight people in the thief group, eight core people involved in running Elend's new empire. This is why sixteen is a sign. Just like how Allomancy and Hemalurgy combine to form Feruchemy, Ruin and Preservation's numbers combine to make sixteen. This is why Harmony is sixteen, and why Alloy of Law is full of sixteens. The numbers meshed. Sel - Devotion and Dominion, One, Three and Four Sel is not clear at all, as we have very little information. Based on the information from the previous post, things are pretty inconclusive. There is some evidence for five (in the structure and layout of Elantris) but five is taken. But when meshing is taken into the picture, one becomes an option. It's difficult to examine the viability of one, because one is used so often in books. However, rather than multiply systems like we see on Scadrial, it could be said Devotion and Dominion added together to make one larger system, powered by the Dor (which is a combo of both[2]). Thus, our most likely significant options, Three, Four and Five, can be balanced by one. One and Three would add up into Four, and One and Four would add into Five, nicely covering the significant numbers we can't reach. This is very tentative support, however. Roshar - Honour is Five, Cultivation is Six (possibly Four, Fourteen), and Odium is Nine Honour is Five? You must be daft! Ten is ALL OVER the Stormlight Archives. Pretty much everywhere. How could Honour be five? Well, there are a few things that are shifty about 'ten'. First off, ten is important in every Cosmere book. Yup. In Mistborn, there are ten great houses, ten original metals if you include the God Metals, ten Dominances on the planet, Vin was ten when she snapped, one is every ten thousand skaa became a Misting (whether or not they had noble blood), ten thousand people in the skaa rebellion, Mistwraiths are ten feet long... the list goes on. Nalthis has Ten Heightenings, ten thousand Lifeless, Lifeless skin is exactly ten shades lighter... even on Sel, the Reod was ten years ago. Even on Threnody, Silence had been hunting for ten years, and had first killed a Shade when she was ten. Weird. But there is one thing, one thing we know that Honour does that is Five. The Five Ideals, the basis of the Knights Radiant, the foundation of the order that lives to be of Honour. Incidentally, there are also five types of discovered Fabrial at the moment. Another point, 500 years times 9 is the length since the last Desolation, see my Desolations theory for why that could be an important balance between Odium and Honour. Cultivation, we don't have enough info for, as stated in the previous thread. Numeric meshing makes six seem likely. There are '30' magic systems on Roshar according to Brandon[3], and five goes into thirty six times. Four is also possible - we've seen four images of a woman on the purple binding chart in Way of Kings, and four and five make twenty, accounting for all powers on the two charts we've seen. Two is also a possibility: two times five makes ten, which might help Roshar's ten fetish. Of other meshing numbers of interest, 5+6 * 9 == 99 Desolations. 5+11+14 (if Odium is eleven, which is unlikely but possible) would equal 30, and Greatshells have fourteen legs for Cultivation there (that one is a huge stretch). That's all I got. Of course, Honour could still be ten, Cultivation one of her many options, and Odium nine. Then we've got the same problem of 'Too many offworld tens', and the meshing is a little less supported. Nalthis - Endowment is Five Endowment still looks like five. As there are no other Shards, no meshing can occur. Non-canon Shards, and Shards from Unpublished Works Mythwalker - Eight, Sixteen Mythwalker Shard(s?) seem to have parallels to Mistborn, and the Well of Ascension. It's possible their numbers were similar, and repurposed when the book was cannibalized for Mistborn. Bavadin - Same as before One Shard on Taldain, no meshing. shshshshsh and shshshshsh - Three, ??? Due to the split that occurred here, three looks very nice in this theory, and fits EXCELLENTLY. The other number is a mystery. Conclusion Shardic Number Meshing is good in some parts, and bad in others. It makes Scadrial make a LOT of sense, and deals with a large majority of the inconsistencies found in the other theory (which I politely didn't mention last time so I could use them as evidence here). Sel stays about the same, but fits just slightly better with Meshing than without. Roshar is a mess. But Roshar was a mess before too. Single Shardworlds have no effect. Coming up soon, the third and final segment going over some other options presenting solutions to the above. References:

Gas expansion and Investiture spiritual expansion just don't make sense, the math doesn't add up. If you're going to go so far as to make something that complies with physics, you're going to make sure it could work. If you're gonna hand wave it, you just hand wave it. In general Brandon is very consistent this way (looking at you, Feruchemical iron and your weirdness), and he wouldn't decide on complicated gas expansion reasons unless they fit with it precisely. I've posted some about this in Trevor's thread. That said, it's not guaranteed this is the reason either. Thermodynamic issues of Investiture have some uniqueness about them that has room for the frost on the highly Invested Roshar. I'm leaning towards the "fuel" theory at the moment. I think reactant is more correct here than reagent, and those are good terms to consider. A proper survey in-depth will be necessary, it's on my list!

Yeah. Rapid decompression has been mentioned before in various contexts, and it just isn't all that plausible. There has to be some other reason for the frost. It could be due to the fuel thing Moogle and I were talking about in the other thread, or it could be related to the balancing mechanics in place for Investiture within a thermodynamic system, causing a massive heat transfer from the surrounding area as energy. The rest of your things are pretty interesting and I see no immediate issues, including the general pressurization of blood vessels. Even a small amount of pressure would vastly increase blood flow, and we know Investiture is described twice as having pressure (Once by Raoden, once by Eshonai - both after the Investiture they were using hadn't been used in a long time). Also, it's likely the porous nature of the body would prevent extreme pressures from 'popping' a person, as suggested.

The experiment pressures the liquid in the canister by adding CO2 gas, which is inert. That's our parallel, best I could find without a bucket of blood and a magical Stormlight pump. We're not even sure Stormlight pressurizes. It seems rather unlikely that just breathing it in could produce the amount of pressure you're speaking of - rapid expansion doesn't occur with just a little pressure, you need significant pressure. That said, you're mistaking the phenomenon. It's not the gas that is released that loses temperature - it's the gas under pressure that no longer is. Simple example: Helium canister. Get a helium balloon, put it on the canister, blow it up. The balloon is warm, the canister (which is where the depressurization went down) is now cold to the touch. I actually took into account an internal human body temperature of 37.5° C. Rapid decompression of the nature you describe should drop the temperature of the blood vessels to approximately -24°C, nearly instantly. After that, the energy would have to travel through the flesh (thermal energy doesn't transfer that well, btw), and then through the air (which circulates and dissipates heat and cold quite rapidly through sheer volume) and then somehow make that giant mass of air cold enough to cause the moisture to not only condense (like your breath in -30°C weather) but immediately frost (I live in one of the coldest cities in Canada, and have never seen this happen even at -80° Windchills - also, look back up there for my points on the MUCH colder Liquid Nitrogen, which also isn't cold enough to produce those effects).

Everyone is thinking too small! Assuming some sort of mass conservation is required, transform the shard into a mm thin cutting wire, like a garotte, and make it several hundred metres long and surrounding the battle. Have it be attached to a tension-spring retraction device. Activate it, instant slice and dice for everything within about a hundred metres radius of you. A gigantic shardblade dragnet.

A few comments. First off, easiest thing. PorridgeBrick, the Pressure is noted on Roshar, by Eshonai, who notices quite a lot of it indeed. Secondly, frost and internal compression on a physical level. Nope. Not gonna work. First off, rapid depressurization of liquid would cause a pressure shock in your blood stream and cells, similar to a hydraulic piston. Instant heart stoppage, and probably significant damage to vessels and cell structure. Secondly, if cold were generated, it would affect the container primarily - anything cold enough to generate frost outside of the container would literally flash freeze the container. Thirdly, I number crunched - a 7 litre container of liquid rapidly depressurized over 20 ms sees a temperature decrease of 61°C within the liquid. The blood contained in a human body is approximately 4.7 to 5 litres, so the changes should be slightly smaller. Regardless, 60°C change in temperature is not enough to instantly turn the moisture in the air to frost. Notably, Dry Ice subsumes at temperatures of -78°C or so, and while it does cause the air in its general vicinity to rapidly condense, it hardly instafrosts. A 60° change would put the direct temperature of human blood at only -23° Celsius or so, not even close to the thing that is not even close. You'd need something more like Liquid Nitrogen, at -200°C or so, several times colder than you could expect to generate. Even then, it would have to be much, much colder to exhibit the sort of radius Kaladin exhibits with his frost circle, as even Liquid Nitrogen only affects things in very close proximity. And it still takes a couple seconds to freeze a banana completely through, even when immersed. But if it makes you feel better, your blood would freeze reasonably quickly.

Doctor Whoid "The Cosmere isn't really just a bunch of planets hanging in space in fixed spots. It's kind of this, wibbly wobbly, findy mindy thing. So you can jump around in the Cognitive Realm, and the space you travel just kind of takes care of itself."

Alright, I'm back. Allow me to present my take on this. Moogle and I did have a few points we disagreed on, and I've always been leery about the term 'fuel'. That term has been used before, but it isn't accurate. What powers a magical effect is Investiture, it is in fact the actual fuel. Nonetheless there is a concept here to consider. The theory here is pretty simple. If you remove intent from the equation of 'how magic gets used', you get a little chart like this (I hope you suckers like unicode): Investiture ➜ Focus ➜ Effect Preservation ➜ Metal ➜ Allomancy Self ➜ Metal ➜ Feruchemy Others ➜ Metal ➜ Hemalurgy Breath ➜ Command ➜ Awakening Stormlight ➜ ??? ➜ Surgebinding Dor ➜ Aon ➜ AonDor All pretty clear and simple. But besides that, many of these systems, have, mmmm... side effects. It is these effects that throw a wrench into the works, and it is these effects that the theory is trying to explain. Here are the known ones, the obvious ones. Allomancy consumes a metal. The metal just disappears. We don't know why, no other system makes their direct focus disappear. Awakening consumes the colour from things, in an extremely strange way. It's not even consistent - some Awakenings drain colour from their target (lifeless), and others from nearby the Awakening, or sometimes from an area the Awakener is touching. Colour isn't even a 'thing', how can it consume it? Surgebinding consumes heat. When Surgebinding is used, the directly surrounding area experiences wild temperature fluctuations, generally in the negative. Best example is Kaladin's frost glyph, so cool. Those ones are really obvious, and easy to see. The others, not as easy, I'm putting that discussion aside for now. The basic idea is that those three have a REALLY OBVIOUS side effect, where it consumes some other thing that it has no reason to. It is not consuming Investiture, it is not consuming general energy. Metal is matter, colour is a property, heat is energy. It just consumes a thing. So far as we know, at least. So okay, by now you might be thinking 'Okay, maybe the other systems consume something and we didn't notice because it's something not obvious, like consuming Connection like a Ferring or the ability of Brandon to write sequels or whatnot.' That's what we thought too. We shoehorned a bunch of things in, based off the general principle something should be consumed, but again, that discussion is aside. It's enough to establish for now 'There might be a trend'. One way to identify a thing is to look at the edge cases. Surgebinding usually produces cold things, but guess what? Sometimes for no particular reason Kaladin describes it as incredibly hot instead. That's not consuming heat at all! Hmmm. Well, what about Allomancy? Allomancy never makes metals, right? But it does. When an Allomancer absorbs the mists, they not only get a metric Koloss of Investiture, they can also focus this raw Investiture and have it undertake the effect of any metal. Wait a minute, metals are the focus, not mists. How does the mist DO that? How does it duplicate the effect of metals? The pattern of the metal is the important bit, and mist is nothing like metal. That's really weird, it's like it is generating the metal pattern FOR the Allomancer to focus, even in the absence of metals. Huh. Well, certainly there's no such effect in Warbreaker. Never ever ever do we see anyone with lots of Breath do anything that looks like colour appears from nowhere... Wait, yes we do. We see it all the time. All Breath holders who have reached heightenings seem to generate some colour, as an aura. That's weird, why do they do that? Is that part of the normal Realmatics we know about? No? Hmmm. And it gets significantly stronger, the more Breath you get! The God King is all like 'colour everywhere, dudes and dudettes'. The colour doesn't seem to be useable for Awakening, but it's still a very strange and unexplained effect. Why does it happen? That's why I want to call it the feedback principle. The basic idea is, there is some substance (fine, I guess I'll use "fuel" for now but I'm putting it in quotes), a "fuel" to go along with the power of Investiture. When the Investiture is activated, the "fuel" is consumed. However, when a lot of that type of Investiture gathers in one concentration, the reverse occurs, and the Investiture feeds back and start to do the opposite - it makes more. This is why only the Mists have this effect on Scadrial (a weakly invested planet). This is why the more Breaths you have, the more colourful your aura gets (stupid colour property makes no sense in physics). This is why when Kaladin concentrates the huge quantities of Stormlight in his hand alone, the hand starts to get very hot. This should apply to any Investiture. If you had an Investiture that consumed water, highly concentrating it should make a lot of water. Feruchemy, Hemalurgy, Aons, Dhakor, Skeletals, Forgery, ChayShan, and other investiture systems might also evidence these effects. It's unclear exactly what roles these consumed items play in the process of magic, but Allomancy suggests that they could be directly related to the focus in a way we aren't aware of (our knowledge of focus as a term is woeful and sad). Speculation: This is where all the junk comes in. The above stuff is cool, and interesting, and shows a few trends which are indicative. Moogle believes that the feedback principle, properly applied, results in an infinite "fuel" stock. This is not unlimited power, mind you. Power is Investiture. But whatever it is we'd have, we'd have it. And of course there are other implication besides breaking entropy into tiny smithereens (though there is probably a better explanation about why that doesn't happen over a larger system). As stated, they could be related to focuses. Awakening's focus could be a physical waveform attached to an intent, and could manifest as light or sound like Shallan's Lightweaver ability. Mental awakening is actually using light instead of sound to carry your Intent. Surgebinding could have a focus of heat, or infrared, or something like that. It makes no sense at all from my point of view, but it is something no one has considered. And of course there are issues with if the other Investitures have this "fuel", and what it is. Is the lichen supported by the Aons the "fuel" of the AonDor? Certainly the Aons stick around forever, but the lichen quickly died out and slimed up the place. It doesn't seem to be consumed, though. How about Feruchemy? Are our attributes the things that are consumed, and when concentrated in a metalmind, do they simply come back to us in feedback? Or is there something much less obvious? What about other Investitures? tl:dr; Some Investitures consume things other than Investiture (tentatively called fuel) - Allomancy consumes metals, Awakening Colour Properties, and Surgebinding Heat. Various outlier effects of those magic systems seem to do the reverse as well, and produce those things (though not always in the same way). Why do these things get consumed? What relation do they have to the magic? Why does compressing Investiture seem to create feedback of these things? And why do not all systems have it, or if they do, what are they?

This is a great theory me and Moogle have been discussing in the chat, and there really is a lot to it. I'll add a bigger reply later, I need to go soon.

I can and did, though they don't look as nice.

Shardic Number Theory Revisited Part One - Shards each have a number Premise Kicking around for a long time has been a theory that each shard has a number associated with them, a specifically meaningful number. I've had a copious amount of notes on the topic for a while, so I thought that now would be a good time to start and post a few theories on em'. For convenience sake, I've divided it into three parts - I might follow it up with a post on Shardic Colour theory as well. The first part, displayed here today, will be the traditional approach, that each Shard has a number that is special to them.[1] Hypothesis Each Shard has a number which is important to them, often Realmatically. It is possible these are related to the order of Shattering, or the Shattering in another fashion. Known Shards from Published Works Preservation - Sixteen Preservation, in this theory, is the most simple and straight forward. We have Word of Brandon that Preservation used sixteen as his number, because it would be significant to his followers - it was apparently an important number to them.[2][3] It is also the known number of ordinary Allomantic metals. There are various appearances of sixteen[4]. No other Shard has such a nicely tied number. Ruin - Eleven We don't have as much concrete info for Ruin, but there are some potentially significant numbers. We know that Inquisitors needed Eleven spikes. We also know that the metal intended to topple the Lord Ruler (the one Preserving the Empire) was the Eleventh Metal, and was influenced by Ruin through Kelsier's teacher. Koloss are also described in Hero of Ages as being eleven feet tall. Ruin's number could very well be eleven, in the absence of better candidates. Harmony - Sixteen again? Harmony is two Shards, technically. In Alloy of Law, we see lots of sixteens: Wax is the sixteenth of his line, his address is Sixteen Ladrian Place, Wax snapped when he was sixteen, etc. Eleven is not found at all in Alloy of Law. Endowment - Five Endowment is a little easier. We have quite a few important instances of the number five. The Returned are at the fifth Heightening with a single Breath. There were Five Scholars, of which Vasher was one. Austrism promotes living your life according to the Five Visions, an important religious concept. Lightsong Returned five years prior to the events of Warbreaker. Vivenna receives about 500 Breaths from Lemex. There were 25 Returned Gods in the Court during the events of Warbreaker. The rebellion began five years ago. Lightsong deals in fives all the time - randomly grabbing five lemons, looking at five painting before giving up, getting points in that game he played that were in the five hundreds, or ended in five. In addition, there were five God Kings in the history of Hallandren, and approximately five hundred years since people began to Awaken. Nightblood is also five feet long. Fifths of color are considered harmonic perfection in Hallandren. Yep, five is pretty good for Endowment. Dominion - Three or Four Dominion is not terribly clear cut. The best options are three and four. For three, Hrathen was given three months to covert Arelon. Three hundred years since Fjorden was founded after the collapsed previous empire. The fallen Elantris was original dominated by three gangs. There are three original gods: Shu-Korath, Shu-Keseg, and Shu-Dereth. Wyrn the King, the founding text of Fjorden, is three thousand lines long. Sarene had three engagements, and three husbands in the course of Elantris. Shai had a three month deadline to fix the Emperor. For four, there have been four long-live emperors of Fjorden. Four vials of poison were delivered to Hrathen. The poison took four days to clear up, and one day to take effect (five days total). Kaise knows four languages, and is described as 'Domineering' (Dominion is only used in regards to Dilaf and Fjorden, other than that instance). Shai's unforgeable prison has fourty four types of stone. Devotion - Three or Five Like Dominion, Devotion is tough. Best options are three and five. For three, Aons have three core lines. The Three Virgins are a religious figure in Teod. Aons should be drawn with three fingers pressed together. Again, three Shu-gods. For five, there are five domes, and five wings in the Palace of Elantris. Elantris itself is made up of five cities. The Elantris University has five buildings. Sarene began to paint five years ago, at the same time Raoden began to oppose his father. Sarene is 25. Shai has five Essence Marks, there are five arbiters per faction in the Rose kingdom, and Shai finished five days prior to the deadline. Honor - Ten If Honor has a number, it is ten. Ten Heralds, ten surges, ten Radiants, ten Highprinces, plus many, many other sets of ten. There are so many tens. Or is it? More on this tomorrow. Cultivation - Fourteen, Six, Five, Others? Cultivation is particularly tough. We have very little information. Fourteen is an option - there are fourteen legs on a Greatshell, and Lift is fourteen. Six is possible - six legs on an axehound, six years spent on the Shattered Plains. There are also five discovered groupings of Fabrials, and that may be related to Cultivation. Odium - Nine The best bet for Odium is probably nine. There were 99 Desolations (or possibly nine, as I've theorized). Nine Heralds abandoned the Oathpact. Nine of ten people were killedthe Desolation Nohadon's fought. The last Desolation was 4500 years ago, which is conveniently nine times five hundred. See above linked theory for more on that. In unrelated nines Kaladin's flashbacks go back nine years, and there are nine colours of spheres in their currency. The only known length of a Desolation is eleven years, and eleven times nine is ninety nine, which is entirely beside the point, but there might be a link to eleven as well. Non-canon Shards, and Shards from Unpublished Works Mythwalker - Seven, Eight, Nine, Eleven, Sixteen The Shard in Mythwalker is unknown. The book was never finished, and parts of the book were taken for Warbreaker, Mistborn, and a small bit for Way of Kings. Despite this book not being canon, and never finished, it was written long after many Realmatic concepts were throughly established, so if there are Shardic numbers, Mythwalker should have evidence of one. The number in Mythwalker is probably eight. There are eight great houses. There are eight major magic abilities. That said, there are eleven different powers evident in the book (reminiscent of Mistborn, and one is even a God power potentially). The number of houses is actually unclear. There were eight, but also possibly eight minor houses. That would be sixteen. Also, each house may have a female and a male power, that could be sixteen major powers as well. Lastly, one house dies early on, meaning there are seven houses - there are also seven septs of rank that they inform us of. Those numbers are all possibilities. Bavadin - Five, Eight, Nine We don't know much about Bavadin, but there are a few options. There are five shshshshsh, and a shshshshsh can have five shshshshsh. The religious texts on shshshshsh are five hundred years old. There are eight shshshshsh, who elect eight shshshshsh, and shshshshsh spent eight years training. The shshshshsh religion sends eight shshshshsh at shshshshsh per day. There are also nine ranks of shshshshsh, nine people in shshshshsh's expedition, a maximum of nine shshsh without over-shshshshsh, and nine shshshshsh if you count the beggars. This paragraph brought to you by the Librarians. shshshshsh and shshshshsh - Three, four six It's hard to talk about an unpublished work without talking about it! Suffice it to say, Aether was a book that was heavily cannibalized, and the shards in that book are definitely non-canon, and were partially reused for Mistborn in a very different form. All of that is in WoB. The three numbers in the book that have some sort of religious or realmatic significance seem to be three, four, or six. No telling what belongs with which. The above four Shards, while not canon, do show that the books at least have a tendency towards some significant numbers. Which is general support for Shardic number theory. Conclusion There are lots of unknowns with Shardic number theory, and lots of problems. That said, the above conclusions look pretty good... or do they? Part two can be found here, with a whole different take on things. References: