Brandon Sanderson

Or balancing something on a pole. Its probably more a expression of the fact that he's balancing two very different Shards.

Does it explode when you put it in your mouth, I wonder? Probably make it a bitch to use allomantically.

I'm betting it does. That'd also mean you can't use it for Hemalurgy, either. Even Feruchemy would be dicey, if you have to have physical contact with the metal.

Also, now I really wonder what a hemalurgic spike made of Lerasium would do.

EDIT: I like the explanation of Atium referring to the end of things.

edited 16th Nov '17 7:18:21 PM by Durazno

I'm not sure Nalthis really has a taboo against seeing the future. Azure mentioned charlatans preying on the desperate, but more in the way that you would disparage a casino than the visceral disgust Kaladin had. She even points out that her local gods see the future (though they're not that good at it).

Another random thought: is the 'silver' used in Threnody really silver or aluminum being called silver, like 'rhalkalest'?

Which one was rhalkalest? And I hadn't thought about that, but it does make a bit of sense. Threnody "Silver" actively burns the shades though, and while our sample size for cognitive shadows is small, doesn't seem like it would happen normally.

If Threnody calls aluminum "silver," then what does it call the stuff we call silver? Roshar can call weird alien plants "grass" because Shin's the only place with normal grass, but Threnody seems to be Earthlike enough to have silver rather more readily available than aluminum.

We don't actually know where their aluminum comes from, though. Do you think it's possible that they're able to make it?

Threnody's silver is silver. Sanderson said part of the reason he did that was because he was annoyed that Allomancy didn't involve silver at all (it was supposed to be paired with pewter, until he did the research and realized that pewter is not an alloy of silver). I presume its effect on shades is just a specific quirk of the world's magic system, not something that would affect any of the others.

As for making aluminum, they're still too far behind technologically for that. Only Scadrial is close to it being cheap, and even then it's going to take at least a few more decades. Roshar doesn't even have aluminum naturally on the planet, they can only make it with Soulcasters or find it in meteorites.

I figure Elantrians could probably magic some up if they tried.

that applies to a lot of things

I wonder if you could travel back in time by going through the spiritual realm (via Perpendicularity). It appears to be one of hose 'all times and places are one time/place' deals, so of course the first thing I thought of was time travel. Has anyone asked Brandon that?

I have a feeling that time travel will probably never turn up in the Cosmere. Brandon is super into figuring out exactly how magical powers work, carefully plotting out their effects and limitations in a logical manner, and (except when explicitly doing something supernatural) adhering to the laws of physics. Meanwhile, time travel is one of those those speculative fiction concepts that, the more you try to figure out how it would work, the less sense it tends to make.

Yes, but what we know so far about the Spiritual Realms doesn't say it won't work.

Unfortunately for your ideas, time travel into the past isn't a thing in the cosmere.

I see nothing in that entry to refute the mechanics, merely that it's not going to happen.

Also, anyone else think the Old Iri religion is BLATANTLY foreshadowing Adonalsium?

I think actually traveling to the spiritual realm instead of just looking into it would prove to be fatal. The power of nearly all the shards is there and since there is also no space you would get a direct hit by that. Sels cognitive realm is already extremly dangerous because of the power of 2 shards and there at least you can try to evade it. Also i don´t think the spiritual realm actually has an effect on time itself, the in-universe scholars have been wrong before and even they admit it´s difficult to study this realm. Instead i think the spiritual reallm has more to do with probability and Connection. You can see all the paths which could happen, you don´t actually see the future and by using Connection you can see all the events which have already led to a specific event. Exactly how Fortune plays into that i´m not sure right now, but i think it helps you instincly choosing the probability-path with the outcome you want the most.

I don´t think the Iri religion around the One is foreshadowing Adolasium. So far we´ve seen nothing that suggests Adonalsium shattered himself willingly, instead the group of people who did it have been refered to in wob as "a force that opposed Adonalsium". I´m a big fan of the theory that Adonalsium will get reassembled, but the iri relegion makes it sound like a natural process while i think it will require serious effort.

Given the description of the Spiritual Realm as place where everything exists all at once at a single point, I'd imagine that transfering wholly into the Spiritual Realm would mean that you too would exist in all times and in all places at once. At which point, you as an individual would no longer exist, so there would be no leaving the Spiritual Realm.

I was thinking of Khriss' conversation with Wax in New Seran and the question came to mind. She indicated that Wax was one of only a handful of Iron/Steel twinborn to have ever been born.

I had a thought: On scadrial, what's the probability that a specific type of twinborn would be born?

Intuitively, I would imagine that everything works in proportions of 1/16th. So the proportion of the entire population that becomes a misting is 1/16. The probability of also being a feruchemist is also 1/16. And then the probability of having any specific allomantic or feruchemical ability is 1/16.

That would mean for example that the probability of having say a double-gold twinborn out of the general population is (1/16)^4 = 0.0015%, which seems fairly small. But it's actually pretty huge if you factor in the potential population growth.

I know that Scadrial doesn't have a huge population, so let's put the total population of potential allomancers at 10 million. That would still lead to about 152 people like Miles Dagouter.

If we fast-forward to a post-industrial Scadrial, with something like, say, 3 billion people, we would have about 45 thousand people who are effectively immortal. And that number would just keep growing since they seemingly cannot die as long as they have enough gold to burn.

My math is almost certainly off, but it's still an interesting thought. I wonder what sort of inequalities would be created by having so many people who could live forever and accumulate wealth in that period?

Would it be similar to having wealth kept within families? It might look like a present day 1% type deal.

I'm not at all certain that 1/16 of people are born mistings or ferrings. It's got a very strong genetic component, Preservation notwithstanding.

And that genetic component means that the population of potential Twinborns is limited to the population with both Terris and Otherculture ancestry, not the total population.

Also, Miles probably isn't immortal in the unaging sense. Atium's the Feruchemical age metal, and I assume the body of a god isn't going to be strictly inferior to gold in any local magic system.

Word of God is that the percentage of allomancers/feruchemists has decreased significantly since the Final Empire, though it's dropped as far as it's going to. I don't think we have the new numbers. Also, due to the Terris keeping themselves segregated, the number of Twinborn is lower than the number of allomancers and the number of feruchemists would suggest.

And rik is correct, Miles was still aging. I presume his perfect health would have given him a few more decades than a normal person (since he's not going to die of liver failure or whatever), but eventually his body would have just given out. And atium can't be used for immortality anymore because there are no atium mistings and ferrings. And there's no atium, but that might be changing in the next book.

That being said, by combining compounding of aluminum to fix your age Identity with gold compounding for health, you get a much more sustainable form of immortality than what the Lord Ruler was using. And I'm pretty sure that will work with jailbroken metalminds.

Yeah, Harmony fixed the Metal Table and took Atium out of the Loot Rotation for Scadrial

I mean unless some crazy Worldhopper has some beads lying around in his collection *stares at Mraize* *also stares at Hoid*

edited 23rd Nov '17 3:25:10 PM by 3of4

Random thought: could the Honorblades be the Physical component of Honor? Liquid would be the Hightstorm, while gas would be the Stormlight themselves.