happyman

Since somebody else hasn't mentioned it yet, I'm adding one more piece of evidence in favor of this theory, from Bands of Mourning.

In the Cosmere, it seems likely that emotional allomancy should work on most animals.  If emotionally Allomancy is mostly physical, then human and other creatures brains are almost certainly similar enough to make them generally compatible.  They certainly are in the real world.  If it is cognitive or spiritual, I expect them to be even more similar in how they are effected, considering how much more abstract the other realms are.  

I think that the key part of this is the word "a".

If I'm reading it right, given any single person, there is at least one shard they can pick up.  It's probably rare for a single person to be able to pick up two.

In Kelsier's case, the Shard he could take up (without shenanigans) was almost certainly Ruin, In the case of the Elantrian's, it was probably Devotion.  In either case, they needed the Connection sphere in order to take up Preservation, which is wildly different from both of them.

5 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Except Harmony is also a shard and this entity was able to accomplish all of this right under his nose. That takes experience and skill. 

So it's an experienced Shard.  Practically all the Shards have more experience than Harmony, so that's not a surprise.

1 hour ago, Pathfinder said:

What I find very interesting is that based on the WoB, there is another party with enough knowledge to know there was a resistance between Harmony and Paalm, knew the nature of said resistance, and was able to position a pawn into place to force said resistance to a head resulting in Paalm "coming to the dark side" as it were just like it wanted. That is some A level manipulation skills right there. 

I'd call it "shard-level" manipulation skills myself.  Their enhanced mind and connection to the spiritual realm allows that kind of stunt.

It seems likely that when either atium is burned or the power at the well is used, it becomes diffused throughout the world so finely, even the shards themselves cannot easily extract it.  It just naturally gathers again at the attuned perpendicularity, like dew naturally condensing out of gas, but takes time to do so.

The nature of the prison is kind of complicated, and it comes from the subtle fact that Ruin and Preservation both oppose each other, and yet are part of the same power.  In my opinion, although they constantly fight with each other, their underlying nature is to do so in a way which pushes the universe towards something which has a specific purpose (they are, after all, significant parts of god).  This makes understanding how they interact kind of hard.

Specifically, the power at the well "knew" that Ruin needed to be free for the balance to work properly.  However, it still deferred to the mind that controlled it.  When the mind that took the power specifically used it, it "knew" that it wasn't yet time to free Ruin, but rather to shore up the world and preserve things.  When the power was "given" to Ruin, the power said "Ah, it's time to let go.  Good!" and Ruin was effectively free.

3 hours ago, FeatherWriter said:

That said, Stormlight is my fave series, and Renarin Kholin is my favorite character from anything ever, not just the Cosmere. 

Never would have guessed.  You might want to be a bit less subtle about it.

Oh how I wish we knew.  The epics began appearing almost exactly a single year after Calamity arrived, for reasons nobody understands.  We have no idea what the rest of the things which happened were.  Presumably some of that is waiting for the follow-up series when we discover more about what Calamity was and why he did was he was doing.

6 hours ago, hwiles said:

I noticed two interesting slip-ups by Hoid (one in each epilogue) where he makes references to "coins" as a form of currency, which would probably leave people native to Roshar scratching their heads since, as far as I can determine, they haven't ever minted or used coins:

I justify my assumption that coins haven't been minted or used on Roshar in an extremely long time (if ever) from the following two points:

• The word "coin" doesn't show up anywhere accept when Hoid uses it
• If coins ever did exist they would probably have become worthless the moment the Ardentia obtained soulcasters

If they don't have coins, they probably also don't have a word for coins in their language.  In both epilogues the people Hoid is talking to just let his nonsensical comment slide rather than ask what he means, however, it occurred to me that these type of casual mistakes would be a good way for the members of the 17th shard to track him down.  (I suppose it's also possible Sanderson or an editor somewhere literally just made a typo and meant to say "spheres" instead of "coins"...but that's less fun...)

 

Has anyone noticed any other slip-ups by worldhoppers that reveal that they aren't native to the planet they're on?

That's not a good catch---it's a great catch.  The more I think about it, the more I think that there must be something odd going on with the translation between Hoid and the other characters.  If they don't notice something odd, I can't help but feel that it's because they just don't look for it at all (and why should they?)  He really doesn't fit in on Roshar, does he?  I'm pretty sure that on Scandrial, he sounds a lot more normal.

I'm guessing that we are seeing a form of magic here different from the other forms of translation which we have seen in other places.  I'm pretty sure, for instance, that Vasher learned the local language the hard way.  The only other case we have is from

, which behaved different enough I'm pretty sure that it isn't the same.

I know that this issue has become kind of contentious recently, but there's good historical precedent that the word "man" can refer to any person, male or female.  In fact, it's more a historical accident than anything else that one word for person (man) is also the common word for members of the male sex.

So I tend towards the Kaladin/Shallan interpretation.  If we use that "old" usage, it fits perfectly.

Well, I don't think there's any proof that she's gone past the first truth about herself at the end of WOK since lightweavers advance in a different way to the other orders. I suppose it's also possible that each order, or even each individual gets to use their spren as a shardblade at a different time, or even just when they can't survive a situation without it. I'm guessing that usually, the shardblade manifests at level 3 based only on Kaladin's progression, but it's possible that only windrunners or certain orders get the blade at the third ideal. My best guess is that she had to have spoken at least one, and possibly as many as two truths in addition to the first ideal to get pattern to turn into a shardblade, but we don't have enough information on lightweavers to be completely sure.

There's WOB.  She's actually further along in her oaths (truths in her case) than Kaladin is, and she had been there already before she began "breaking her truths" by hiding her memories of killing her mother from herself.

That's that product torn to shreds.  Feel free to do the same to my product: Steelpush or Ironpull-powered door locks that change lock shape or key code depending on whether some lever was pulled by Allomancy, and in what direction.  

As brightness Enna said, this is too general to be an actual product rather than a strategy you use with products specifically for Lurchers and Coinshots.

Note, though, that Wax has custom guns which use exactly this kind of technology.  It's customized just for him, by Ranette, and isn't particularly common.

1. It's unlikely the guards are aluminum. Zahel expressly says, "No one knows what this metal is," yet people clearly know what aluminum is.

 

2. I have a further question no one seems to be posing. If it can only be made via soulcasting, how did people on Roshar know to Soulcast it? Jasnah couldn't Soulcast jam because she'd heard it described but never experienced it. How was someone on Roshar able to Soulcast something into aluminum without knowing aluminum was possible? I expect simple world-hopping is the answer, but who knows.

"Wisdom of the Heralds" seems like as good an explanation as any.  I'm pretty sure if they aren't worldhoppers, they know (and know they know) worldhoppers.

Subatomic bonds are the result of the transfer of force particles, which get their mass through Higgs field interactions.

I'm afraid that's not the way it works.  In the real world, if the interactions with the Higgs boson were changed, or even turned off, it would result in a person dying spectacularly as chemistry shifted unpredictably, but it wouldn't affect their mass much.

Put more specifically, the bulk of the energy inside protons and neutrons comes from the kinetic energy of the quarks and gluons, minus the binding energy caused the the strong force.  The gluons are massless, best we can tell, and the (up and down) quarks almost massless, by comparison with the proton.  Even if both were perfectly massless, the proton would still have essentially the same total mass, due to its internal energy.

I know that science popularizations claim that mass comes from the Higgs field interactions, but that's popular science for you.  It 's dead wrong in this case.

How did Kelsier come back from the dead? Did he do it like Wax? And when/how did Kelsier gain Feruchemy?

Sorry, I was not meaning to be argumentative. I was just trying to cover other possibilities. In my read throughs of BoM is always found the suit color changing to be odd and I am, tentatively, a fan of the subtle Awakening concept. I am not, however, ruling out the possibility that Brandon is just screwing with us haha

No fear, and I didn't take it that way.  I just wasn't sure that I knew which side you were taking, and I did want to consider what, exactly, it would imply for VenDell to actually be changing suits.

I believe it is mentioned in Shadows of Self that there are Kandra living normally among the population and own homes, businesses etc. I could be misremembering what was said and drawing far too unfounded conclusion from it but VenDell, or another Kandra, could have a home in the city stocked with things Kandra need.

As far as I can tell you are in favor of the "subtle awakening" theory, so I don't think I'm really arguing against you.

I'd say that while it is absolutely possible that VenDell is changing suits twice (so you can't rule it out on for logistical reasons) that kind of misses the point.  Why would VenDell do this?  What possible point would there be to it?  Did he spill large amounts of ketchup on his suits off-screen and have to repeatedly change?  It certainly didn't help him achieve his goals.  I don't think "irritating Wayne" was that high of a priority.  It's a waste of time, regardless of how he would have done it.  It's quite pointless and doesn't fit his character in the slightest.

It seems, oddly enough, more likely that he is using a subtle form of awakening than that he changed suits for no good reason.  The first just requires that there be more to awakening than we have seen before (known to be true) and that VenDell could have accessed it (a bigger stretch, but we've seen plenty of Worldhoppers on Scadrial at this point; he could have just bought "awakening tech" from one of them, for instance.)  The second requires some very odd, out-of-character and completely pointless behavior.  It's strange that I weigh more strongly on the first one, than the second---but it's the kind of thing Brandon does.

It's pretty obvious from the Mistborn annotations that Preservation's color is White and Ruin's color is Black.  This is why, in HoA, Vin wears black and Elend wears white-together, they were balanced.  (This is while Vin is wearing the earring, so it is appropriate to consider her an emissary of Ruin at that point.  Obviously it changed.)

One of the annotations from FE mentions that TLR deliberately chose to wear Black and White to represent his connections with the two powers.  The annotation goes on to say that this a lie, because TLR had only touched one of the powers, and only lightly at that.  Sazed, the true hero, touched both equally.

It's probably relevant to this conversation to note that the spiritual realm is called a "timeless place" when described in the books.  It's strongly implied that time is relevant only in the cognitive and physical realms.

Since Spren are primarily cognitive, this means that they can change.  I'm guessing, though, that part of them is anchored to the spiritual realm, due to being a small part of Adonalsium, and thus are at least partly timeless.  Thus if words manage to completely flip meanings, I doubt that the Spren will go all the way.

We actually have a WoB that indicates otherwise: 

 

I'm pretty sure that was mis-reported.  Brandon certainly claims to have never said it.

The earth below the water affects the water. So all those volcanoes and earthquakes you mentioned for land, apply for water. You get tsunamis, new islands, etc. So the water isn't actually quite static. 

Perhaps not, but people perceive it that way.  It's not about what is, it's about what people think.

So, here's a question - what metal is "ettmetal?" Is it sodium, potassium, rubidium, or cesium? Sodium and potassium don't seem reactive enough in water, and cesium is liquid at room temperature. That implies that it's rubidium, a soft silver-white metal. I assume you can't be an ettmetal misting because swallowing it will cause you to explode, and an ettmetal metamind or spike seems like a really, really bad idea.

 

 

What exactly does ettmetal do? I wasn't super clear on it. Was it what allowed the "Primer" to work? Or was it used as more conventional fuel for airship engines to make the turbines and such move?

According to Allik, there is a little bit of Ettmetal in the primer.  He also implies strongly that the Ettmetal is doing the Allomancy itself (once primed using an Allomancer), and that the Ettmetal will run out if it goes to long, at which point the equipment stops working.

It looks to me like Ettmetal has, among other attributes, the ability to enhance or extend Allomancy once it has been exposed to it.

I don't think this is exactly how it works. I tink that while Savantism is different from the soul expansion, the latter still has consequences. Relevant WoB below.

QUESTION

In Elantris it talks about how to wood and stone in the city is rotten and crumbling. Why does this happen?

BRANDON SANDERSON

This is because when objects become Invested for long periods of time their spirit web changes to accommodate the investiture. When the investiture was pulled up of the stuff in Elantris its spirit web was severely damaged so it showed that in the physical realm. This happened with the Lord Ruler when the Bands of Mourning were ripped out of him.

TAGS

investiture, spirit web, The Lord Ruler, bands of mourning

Oh, I like this.  It explains why ripping out the bands defeated TLR so completely.  He was probably in serious spiritual shock from the resulting damage, kind of like the most powerful Elantrian's were completely undone by the Reod.

All it takes is one truly weak point.

Or being resigned to the imprisonment (i.e. really accepting it vs. railing against it). Also, it could be more about killing time while waiting to be released (i.e. when time is served).

Or, in the case of Axies, not really feeling like you're captive.

The little I know of quantum mechanics made me arrive to the conclusion there are no sich things as waves and particles(I mean, you can model sound as a particle, of all things), and both are only ways to make our brains capable of understanding a small sliver of the mind-bending true laws of this universe.

Not a bad way of looking at it.  A lot of modern physicists say that there actually is, are quantum fields.  Everything else we get from that (including particles and waves of all types, and there is no clean line between them) are derived from this.