Terisen

The grenade MAY rule out the need to fight with Allomantic pushes in the room. Then again, you could push the grenade into the room from a distance. Best of both worlds!

I was thinking about this more and considered the rhythms in conjunction with the highstorms on Roshar. What if the rhythms and pulses are responsible for causing the highstorms? The rhythms, as posited above, come in the form of waves. For the most part, the peaks and troughs don't line up, so there's nothing really happening. You may get some places where interference occurs for a couple pulses (don't know what that might be yet), but what happens when ALL the pulses/rhythms line up? The resulting wave might be massive. Massive enough to cause an explosion in the physical realm. Eshonai does note that all the rhythms are the same during a highstorm. Though, if true, it would seem that it should be easier for stormwardens to calculate the occurrence of highstorms.

Odium is misunderstood? Is there some sort of shardic therapy group we can send him to? Maybe we can avoid this whole desolations thing. It is a bit crazy to think that there might be something out there WORSE than a shard devoted to hatred.

Is Splintering really something that needs to be mended though? Those Splinters of Honor like honorspren predated the Shattering of Honor and things seemed to get along just fine (well, relatively fine, being Roshar and all). If Adonalsium needs to have all the Splinters to be reformed, then maybe, but I would guess that's not necessary.

Ha, nope, it's been my avatar from the get go! Just so happened that SAO was part of the conversation.

Ya know, I gave Log Horizon a go and it just never quite grabbed me the way SAO did. I've only watched a handful of episodes, so I concede that maybe I stopped before it got good. I remember hearing the premise and rolled my eyes, thinking it was a dead rip-off. I see it's not, but I can't quite click with any of the characters. I'm going to assume that you'll tell me I should give it another chance, right? And, hey, I like moping!

Hmmmm, I think you're on to something here. Heck, we could even have the hotline number be 1-800-COSMERE. Gold, I tell ya.

Saw the post Brandon did today about selling off time to talk to him on the phone in support of Altered Perceptions (those sold out fast, dangit). At $75 for about 15 minutes of talk time, I just couldn't help but of it like one of those old pyschic hotlines people could call because of the effective rate per minute. "The Cosmere Psychic Hotline. Find out the future of the Cosmere!. Only $2.99 per minute!" Ok, back to my normal thoughts now....

I've always imagined the highstorms to be a combination of something like those supercells and the haboobs we get in Phoenix. For reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2179556/Enormous-haboob-dust-cloud-2-000-feet-tall-covers-city-Phoenix-cuts-power-9-000-homes.html

I both admire you for coming up with this and hate your guts that you thought of this and I didn't. Amazing, sir. Amazing.

I'll give those a look, thanks. I tried learning Japanese a while back and then realized I just didn't have the time nor the drive to learn it. Plus, I've already done the whole second language thing with Spanish, specifically Peruvian Spanish (used to live there). I'm good with two languages for now!

It's not that I don't like it, per se, but it would feel like another "people from different social classes fall in love" trope that is the subject of pretty much every romantic movie/novel (I'm looking at you, Nicholas Sparks). I think it would be refreshing to see something a bit different like Shallan and Adolin together with no major twists. That said, I wouldn't be overly upset if Kaladin and Shallan wound up together.

I have the first volume of Sword Art (go figure with my avatar, huh?) I quite liked it and enjoyed the little insights that you couldn't get from just watching the anime. I might have to give the others you listed a try.

I like the thought, but I'm still inclined to think that they can hold it perfectly.

I don't think the Stormfather was regarded as one of the Parshendi gods. They certainly knew about him, but not as a god. They feared their gods. Gavilar was trying to bring back their feared gods in a whole different manner, I believe. Likely something to do with that black stone he carried.

Thanks for the extra info! You've got a lot of things that I made note of (but couldn't figure out how to include in the initial post) but you've also given me some extras I hadn't considered and/or noticed. Especially the items from Elantris as it's been a while since I've read that. The Kindle search function can only take you so far! I've thought about the musicality in terms of the waves of Investiture (I'll definitely need to read the wiki you linked) being a "melody" over the top of the inherent rhythm of the Cosmere, essentially make a song. I'm a guitarist on the side and the idea that the fundamentals of the Cosmere could be music an idea the captivated me. I should also note that I'm thinking of this along the lines of string theory in physics, which was/is thought to be the unified theory of physics. That has vibrating strings and I thought it wasn't totally out of the question that the unified theory of magic could be along those same lines.

There’s more that I want to do with this theory and try to integrate frequencies and waves from music with the information here (I have quite the notebook on it so far). I believe that music is fundamental to the Cosmere. Hoid seems to back this up when talking with Kaladin. Rhythms in the Cosmere There seems to be a rhythm to the entire Cosmere that has an effect on all the things within it, how the magic work and particularly how the Cognitive realm works. A rhythm, at its most fundamental level, is a series of occurrences that have occur with a frequency. In this case, I’ll refer to it as a series of pulses that occur in a wave (much like how sound works). It’s my contention that the Cognitive realm is host to the rhythms that we see occurring in the Cosmere. When it comes to waves, they need a host medium that transports them. In physics, when we look at gravitational waves, the medium through which is moves is space-time. Sound that we hear is a wave that moves the air particles around us. So, the rhythm waves would need a medium. I think we have them in the ocean of “glass beads” that are in Shadesmar. When Jasnah was hearing the Parshendi drums during the night of Gavilar’s assassination, she commented on how the drums sounded. This would explain a lot about the Listeners/Parshendi. They appear to have a deeper connection the Cognitive Realm than most other species. They are constantly are attuning to different rhythms (Resolve, Appreciation, etc) and these rhythms help them communicate and stay in sync. In the case of the drumming, each drummer was probably playing a different Rhythm, giving it a polyrhythmic sound. This is basically how Samba beats work in Brazilian music. With syncopated beats, they all eventually line back up at some point. The Rhythms seems to do the same thing during highstorms. These rhythms are then universal and are heard in the listener’s head. So the rhythms come from the cognitive realm, but from whence do they originate? We get this quote from Brandon: The beats can plausibly be attained to the Shards and their power being used. This extends to the powers given through Investiture being used (Allomancy, Surgebinding, etc). This is what the Listeners hear, as well as Vin when she was first trying to push through the coppercloud. The Listeners are also very similar to Pattern with the emotions that they attune to. Pattern is constantly buzzing and vibrating in different ways that appear to correlate to emotions. He is likely attuning to the same rhythms that the Listeners do, given that they both have strong connections to the Cognitive realm. I’d love to get feedback on this. Thoughts? Am I just retreading old ground here? I looked around and couldn’t find much on this, but that’s not to say this hasn’t been discussed. Edit: Grammar

Honor with Hatred. I wonder what that would look like. Some sort of righteous indignation? Hatred is such a powerful emotion but redirecting it towards constructive means would be, as you say, a powerful force. Might that turn Roshar into some sort of Comeric utopia? That would be interesting to see indeed.

Well, we've actually seen her kill four thugs with whom she had no real connection with. She only knew that they were terrorizing a part of the city, so she took it upon herself to deal with them. She may have had something similar occur with the Ghostbloods. They could have been involved in criminal activity. Heck, we've seen them try to assassinate one of the Sons of Honor. Jasnah might have gotten caught up in that unintentionally and now she's in their crosshairs. She did know Amaram, after all.

I wonder what this would mean then for Dalinar with his bond with the Stormfather. It might imply that Dalinar would be the champion that would oppose Odium and would make for a bit of a redemption arc for the Stormfather, going from trying to destroy humanity to sacrificing himself to save it.

The Parshendi most definitely have a higher connection to the Congitive. The point about the music is a good one. All the rhythms that they attune are likely coming from that realm. I've actually been trying to put together some things about music and whatnot because it's so prevalent and I think there's some properties about music that is implicit to the Congitive.

There probably is something to this. While gaining Breaths on Nalthis doesn't follow this pattern since they can be given freely, the innate Investiture of the Returned fits the pattern. And we don't know a whole lot about the Shaod in Elantris. I mean, Raoden seemed pretty well adjusted (from what I remember).

I think this makes a lot of sense. I agree that due to the bond, the Surgebinders live partially in the Cognitive, but I think that it still might come up as something useful. And stressing the surges by invoking more of the Cognitive may have some results along the lines of drawing more power to the surge than normal. Doing this repeatedly may then have the consequence of being like an Allomantic Savant, only with Stormlight.

I would say that a highprince of health (wellness? aid?) makes a lot of sense. Alethi culture, and Roshar in general, seems to be quite advanced in terms of medical care with their surgeons. Lirin knew to always wash his hands before surgery, something that wasn't generally known here on Earth until the mid 1800s. A highprince overseeing and pouring resources into medical care would help advance care to the point we see.

Yeah, I thought it was a bit of a stretch, but I was encouraged to post it to see if anything came out of it. I knew there was a flaw with the whole Transformation surge. I tried to work around it, but knew it was definitely a weak point. I still think that Kaladin briefly crossing into the Cognitive Realm is out out the ordinary. When Shallan is really trying to construct Lightweaving at the beginning, she didn't slip into Shadesmar, despite definitely knowing how to do so. Something still feels off about it.