Brandon Sanderson

scm those were a lot of spoilers I hadn't read through yet :(

Sorry. Well, too late now.

Must....share...the...adorable...

OH MY GOD

I reread Elantris over Christmas.

It's probably the Cosmere book I recall the least of, since only it and Mistborn I hadn't reread. And Mistborn gets way more discussion here.

I was struck by how it seems that Wulf seems to have some sort of future sight/precognition, or at least access to it. With what he had done to Hrathen.

I was also really curious about the black Seon, I didn't remember that epilogue the first time I read Elantris.

I checked the Coppermind and found out they were called Skaze. Which I remembered Dilaf mentioned near the end.

The line on the wiki about them influencing the politics of Fjordell made me think that maybe they came from Domination, while the Seon's came from Devotion. Since I did recall Seon's were Splinters.

Of course many others had the same conclusion given later on the page that theory came up.

I suppose Domination might be one of the other Shards which is decent at precognition.

edited 27th Dec '17 12:59:19 AM by 32ndfreeze

Yeah, I really need to reread Elantris.

So I was reading the Coppermind Mistborn page and saw that the Era 3 tentative protagonist was described thusly: "The second trilogy will be set in the early computer age with 1980s technology and will follow a Terris woman and her brother.[9] The woman is planned as a computer programmer and Nicroburst".

I wonder if she might end up being a Nicroburst/Soulbearer. Or if she could get a unkeyed Nicrosil medallion at some point.

Given her being described as a computer programmer I think it might make sense for her to be characterized as someone with an interest in the Metallic Arts for their own sake.

Vin was pretty interested in Allomancy at some points, but generally as a means to an end.

So I think it could be neat to have a POV character on Scadrial interested in delving into mechanics of the magic systems.

I'm still interested in whether silicon is going to count as a metal or not, both for the purposes of iron/steel and for Sazed's sight. In real life it's a metalloid, but we don't know if that's close enough. Will Sazed be able to see directly inside a computer, maybe even change things like all other text, or will he be blinded by it?

While this probably won't come up until the third trilogy, if ever, I wonder if a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence would count as having soul in the Cosmere, to the point where it could access jailbroken metalminds, or have Shardblades phase through its physical body.

A random stick on the beach has a soul, so yeah, I'm pretty sure an AI would have a soul. Once it's grown enough and is properly complex, then it can be affected by other magic systems to one degree or another.

I imagine an AI would end up having a lot in common with a spren, just like how Nightblood is a sort of robot spren.

I was going to say, we already have an example of creating a sapient being through artificial means in Nightblood, so I could definitely see an AI working similarly, even without Investiture being involved in its creation.

Yeah, though the only question would be if AI would have a Spiritual component as well.

As far as I understand it, everything has all three components, so an AI wouldn't be an exception there.

Right, but I mean the difference between a person's soul and, say, Stick's.

Pretty sure the primary difference is complexity. If a stick had any ability to grow, it would eventually become as complex as a human soul—but that's not likely to happen. That's why living things take two hits to sever instead of one. Something that's alive, even just a simple vine, automatically has a more complex and stronger soul than a rock.

What about thunderclasts, though? They seem to be alive, but their bodies are made of inorganic rock, and as far as I can remember Shardblades were cutting through them like any other non-living matter.

Thunderclasts seem to be returned Parshendi Spren-spirits posessing rock, not a thing of its own.

Honestly, it's pretty hard to talk about, since we know very little of the Spiritual Realm and spiritual aspects. Probably the clearest explanation of it comes from The Emperor's Soul, which describes the physical realm as being made up of what we can see, hear, touch, etc; the cognitive realm as being how we view ourselves and how others view us, and the spiritual realm as being about a thing's essence and its connections to the rest of the cosmere.

So what's the difference between a person's soul and a stick's soul? Well, a person is capable of doing far more things than a stick, so its essential nature and the nature of its connections to the world around it is going to be far more complex than a stick's. If an AI is just as complicated and changeable in nature as a human being, then I'd certainly expect its soul to be as complex as a human's, too.

Random thought for the day: could a steel compounder fly by flapping their arms fast enough? I'm going to go with yes.

So, a few assumptions here. The big one is that tapping speed from a steel metalmind does not make you fall any faster than normal. Steelrunning seems affect movements you yourself make, but not on external forces. (eg, if you're sitting in a car and tap speed, you can move super-quick within the confines of the car, but it won't make the car move any faster.) This presumably includes gravity.

So falling while tapping speed would mean you could spin around doing mid-air maneuvers like a skydiver or something, but you wouldn't actually hit the ground any faster. So you would be able to flap your arms a whole lot before you hit the ground. We know that tapping enough speed can cause a sonic boom, so the air around a steelrunner seems to react normally, as if the steelrunner were any other high-speed object.

So, I propose that if you tap enough speed, you could flap your arms fast enough to fly away. There'd probably be some technique to it (you'd have to "scoop" your hands so you were pushing more air down than you were pushing back up), and it'd undoubtedly be exponentially easier if you had some kind of "wings" built for your arms, but if you had sufficient speed reserves, you could do it. Of course, "sufficient speed reserves" would be an ungodly huge amount of speed, so I don't see a normal steelrunner ever storing up enough. Which means you'd have to get a steel compounder to do it, as ungodly huge metalmind stores is exactly their deal.

Discuss.

Is there Word of Brandon on whether steel Feruchemy gives you a Required Secondary Power that lets your body withstand high speed movements? 'Cause if not, flapping your arms at sufficient velocity to let you fly might be fast enough for friction with the air to scrape flesh off your limbs.

I'm not sure it's been explicitly mentioned, but it's a pretty safe assumption. We've seen other powers where required secondary powers come with it for free (eg, weight, where your strength increases so you can still move your heavier body, and you get tougher so your bones don't break because you suddenly weigh ten times as much, etc). And in Bands of Mourning, Marasi taps enough speed to cause a sonic boom with her movement but doesn't injure herself doing it. It's possible that she was also tapping health to heal from the damage she was causing herself, but if she was, it's not mentioned.

edited 14th Jan '18 8:23:23 PM by NativeJovian

Mistborn'd

We have empirical evidence in the form of Marasi. She went all Flash with the Spearhead of Mourning without burning pewter, and left noticeable vacuums. Since at those speeds her very footsteps would be hitting the ground so fast she'd be shattering her ankles, I think this means that with Steel speed, unlike Windcrafting Speed, you can't injure your body with your own speed.

on that note, I really want Brandon to show use a Steel compounder wearing all red or, if they're evil, yellow.

edited 14th Jan '18 8:25:27 PM by SCMof2814

Marasi was explicitly tapping everything, so it's possible that she was hurting herself and immediately healing, but I think she would have noticed. /nitpick

I believe that WOB on the subject is that when tapping enough Steel, the primary limitation on top speed is air resistance. So I think the "flesh sloughing off bones" scenario is fairly likely.

In general I always assume that all metalborn have the Required Secondary Powers unless otherwise specified.