happyman

All I can say for certain is that there is Something Up with those ten gas giants. That kind of system is not remotely typical in either the real world or the Cosmere. Under normal circumstances, those Gas Giants would destabilize each other, colliding, combining, or falling into the sun or out of the system. In the Cosmere, we see nothing remotely similar. And ten of them? Around Roshar? You might as well put up a neon sign saying "These are important; pay attention!"

I generally agree with all of the comments about the Intents. I'd like to add, though, that I'm pretty sure the shattering and separation of the intents is not absolute, partly because of the Vessels themselves (which were once not just one thing, and therefore have probably stayed not one thing, even while their Intent came to dominate them) and partly because I believe that in some undefinable way, they're all still part of a larger whole which can never truly destroyed and which spans all of creation. After all, most of the power is still in the Spiritual Realm, and that does not know location. But yes, the intents in themselves are generally not good or evil. Preservation having too much influence resulted in the Final Empire, for instance. Essentially 1000 years of almost perfect stasis, with no ability to give up bad ideas and replace them with good ones. Ruin having too much influence, on the other hand, was far more catastrophic quickly, but the choice was between a slow death and a fast death, until Harmony balanced them out.

It's pretty clear from the story that she actually is aging, but thinks that she shouldn't be. We don't really know why.

I'm really glad you're doing this, and I'll be listening for more. BTW, I've found that that chapter really gets better on re-read. If there's one thing that Lift's good at, it's lying to herself, and so you really need to get a handle on what she's actually up to before it all makes sense. For example, her behavior at the beginning is very confusing. When I first read this bit in Brandon's newsletter, I was all "Whu?" But I did catch something, even on my first read-through: when she let all of the grain fall into the immigrant quarter of the city, after discovering it had been stolen? She was keep her oath, remembering those who had been forgotten. The immigrants needed food, and she, in her absolutely bizarre way, got it for them. Wyndle may complain a lot, but their bond is just getting stronger.

Languages can be stupid-conservative at times, especially when nothing much has changed that would drive them to change. I'm guessing that the term shards are very, very old usages, and because their is nothing else like them generally known, the name has just stuck. ETA: As for where it came from: given just how old the history is there, the term "just about anybody" comes to mind. The Heralds would be very high on the list, though. When we see Darkness talking to his nascent Skybreakers, he's quite open about Honor's existence and behavior.

I've always assumed he meant as a Cognitive Shadow. After all, when he says "Serve in another realm," if he's talking realmantics, he means either cognitive or spiritual. Cognitive seems more likely. As to how we would be anchored---we don't know. We do know, though, that it can happen in a relatively low-investiture environment, thanks to

Hello all, Wow, how did I miss this conversation? I love this kind of thing! Y'all have been so nerdy about this, and I appreciate it. It's been a really smart conversation so far, and that's good. (I love this site.) Anyway, I'd like to add as a caveat that I'm a theoretical physicist by training, but I'm not working in the field any more. I also didn't do any particle physics beyond the QED class as a grad student; my actual research went into solving the classical wave equation (harder than it sounds). I still try to keep my math and physics to some degree, though. That said, the conversation about the exclusion principle really interested me, because the basic argument that "Ruin" electrons and "Preservation" electrons would be measurably different particles is actually really good. It shouldn't just be Harmonium, either. All of Scadrial should have wildly different chemistry because of the existence of these distinguishable particles. (As an aside, the term "distinguishable particles" is largely a misnomer in modern particle physics. The truly up-to-the-minute widely accepted theories are quantum field theories. In these theories, there is one electron field which exists everywhere, just like the electric and magnetic fields exist everywhere. What we call particles are just quantized excitations of these underlying fields, just like photons are quantized excitations of the electromagnetic fields. Thus when we say two electrons are identical, in modern theories that's pretty meaningless. If they weren't identical, they would be different fields. However, there are different kinds of stable excitations; these correspond to different electron spins and to the positron, the anti-particle. Yes, in modern theories the positron is a necessary part of the electron field. There are also unstable excitations which can exist for only short distances; these are the so-called virtual particles, which are badly misnamed.) Except... Except... The entire thing depends on something called the spin-statistics theorem, which is a complex theorem explaining how quantum fields interact with special relativity. Under certain assumptions, including assuming that all particles are either fermions or bosons, we can come up with the usual statistics and behavior. However, I had a professor who said that it was logically possible that there were types of quantum particles (fields, really) with more complex structure than "I'm a boson" or "I'm a fermion." (We haven't seen any actual evidence for such things in the real world.) If they did exist, they would almost certainly consist of multiple particle types with more complex spin interactions and structure than we are used to, including more complex statistical behavior. I have no idea if this could result in multiple particles looking identical except for having very slightly different spiritual identity, but why not? If I've learned one thing from quantum mechanics, is that the universe is weird.

Yes, but it's now canon because Khriss references it in Arcanum Unbounded, when comparing the plants and animals on Scadrial to those on Yolen.

Yeah, probably. Creepy thought. I wonder if it affects them going to the Beyond. From Secret History and Kelsier's point of view, it seems like true oblivion (rather than the Beyond, which probably isn't actually oblivion) is possible, if the soul is damaged enough.

Yeah, and my original post was slightly tongue-in-cheek. But more seriously, I'm wondering what would really happen with Nightblood on Threnody. What would it do to the shades? Would it see them as evil, or not? It managed to do a real number on bog-standard non-evil walls in Warbreaker. Scary thought. What would happen if one of the shades wielded Nightblood?

I, personally, wonder what would happen if Nightblood ever ended up on Threnody in the hands of a well-invested native. Destroy evil, indeed.

Come on! We all know that the Lord Ruler's move would be to flip the board over and kill everybody, then go recruit new pieces afterwards. Seriously, I personally feel that the game is better set after Mistborn: The Final Empire is over. Much better matched power sets, at least in normal circumstances.

What do you mean, steel? I said iron. And I agree, it mostly makes good sense, and people have gone pretty far down this path and managed to keep things sensible. It's just...I'm a physicist. I know how to actually do these calculations to high accuracy. Modern scientists are insanely good at measuring very small things---we measured gravitational waves, for crying out loud. "Small" doesn't begin to describe it. I just know that if I try to take all those tools and use them the way I was trained to, I will push them to the point that they will break. And I don't want to. I like the stories. So I guess this is kind of a downer, but I feel like we need to sometimes just relax and let it be fiction. If you push too hard, you start to see behind the curtain.

For the best. If you try to get too "science-y" on these things, they always eventually break. We're probably best off saying that it changes the inherent "resistance to forces" that everything experiences and leave it at that. For instance, people have speculated that Steel Iron changes how the body interacts with the Higgs field. I won't go into details, but what would actually happen in the real world if that happened to somebody could be summed up as "instant, messy death," definitely for them, and maybe for a decent chunk of their surroundings. (Although it probably wouldn't be a nuclear explosion.) Our biology is stupidly sensitive to how the chemistry works, and tinkering with the Higgs field is like throwing a wrench at random into all of known chemistry. This is something that should just be handwaved. It's not purely spiritual or cognitive, but those other realms are almost certainly what keeps things hanging together.

Out of curiosity, could somebody provide a link that Ettmetal is Harmonium? I feel like I've missed a few bits of information. I mean, it makes sense, it really does. I was kind of irritated with Brandon for introducing yet another new metal with Ettmetal, so Harmonium fills that gap quite nicely. As for the stability of the nucleus---well, I was a physics major. I know just enough about the subject to know how little I know about the subject. (I'm a tad bit better on the math behind wave chaos). One thing I do know, though, is that at that level, with the sheer amount of energy crammed into that tiny little nuclear volume, the behavior of protons and neutrons is wildly quantum mechanical. They apparently have a shell structure, like the electrons, but far more complicated thanks to the strength of the, er, strong force. There can be unintuitive side effects from this, like we see in chemistry with full shells being favored, but more complicated. It's still true, though, that extra repulsion makes things less stable. However, most regular atoms are very stable, so it's still probably not easy. We can barely pull the stunt of truly breaking the atom with Uranium and Plutonium, and those are at the very edge. Most natural radioactivity is more like a human dropping a couple of pounds rather than an actual break. Which is to say that Brandon can do what he wants, but in my opinion, he shouldn't make it too easy.

Yep, that's right. We just don't know how far the ability stretches. In Lightsong's flashback, he remembers himself before he died. He was still himself, just...not a godly version of himself. He was a pudgy clerk. But his transformation didn't change everything, it just...upgraded him to what he and others thought he should be. Vasher also implies that even for Returned who have practiced, there are limits. Certainly neither he nor Denth uses any special shapeshifting abilities to become a spy.

It's an interesting thought, but (Arcanum Unbounded and Secret History spoilers)

Kenod has it mostly right, but I feel we should add that there are some (mostly unknown) limitations on Returned shapeshifting. The only examples we see "on-screen" are the Royal Locks (because the Royals are descended from a Returned) and Vasher's ability to become a "divine" version of himself. We don't know how far it goes.

Yes, but that forum is still separate, so I'm leaving the conversation here vague. I don't think it changes my conclusions, though.

Don't forget that Preservation was still around, in various forms. I'm not just talking about the cognitive remains of Leras (a.k.a the mist spirit), either; both Ruin and Preservation literally made up most of Scadrial. When Ruin pushed, Preservation pushed back instinctively. I think he had to be subtle; it was probably like writing with your foot because both hands are tied behind your back.

Well, yeah, not everywhere. But (once we take into account the speaker and his audience), Honor was saying that he created the "local species" of human. I tend to believe him. Unless you really, really, really want to claim that he was lying somehow. Let's call that "unlikely."

Don't we have Word of Honor himself, claiming that he created humanity? From the end of Way of Kings?

Yep. We also saw Vin's body reappear at the same time. That's a large part of why I think that the various Shards' bodies are still floating around somewhere. Part of the debate here is whether the Shards can manifest in those bodies if they really want to. The other part is whether the shards can create a physical avatar, related to their "original" body or not. A large part of the debate seems to be centered on, if this is possible, why we haven't seen it.

I personally suspect that Shards can, if they really focus, make their actual, physical bodies manifest in the physical realm while they are still alive, much like the bodies of Ruin, Preservation and later Vin, manifested after they died. In fact, my personal favorite theory is that for Ruin to have reclaimed his power in the Atium, he would have had to manifest his physical body and burn the atium like an Allomancer. I'm guessing that this is difficult and dangerous for the Shard, but that's pure speculation.

This. Dragons are awesome more or less as-is. I don't see any particular reasons to change them too much. Some things benefit from being modified, and others are just great. That said, I doubt they're going to be a perfect carbon-copy of Smaug. There's gotta be some kind of twist. Just---let them be honking big, really impressive flying, fire-breathing reptiles as well, please?