AquaRegia

I chickened out and just bought a bottle of Waterman Mysterious Blue. But I also ordered a pen as a birthday present for my wife, so I'm sure we'll use up the Serenity Blue. It's a bit too purple for my taste, and becomes noticeably more purple when dry.

Agreed. She's old compared to our garden-variety humans, but she's not 11,000 years old. I think there is ample evidence (gemhearts, carapace, orange blood, etc.) that Singers are evolutionary cousins of all the other native Rosharan lifeforms.

1) If I recall correctly, there is a WoB to the effect of "it's difficult to move Spren off Roshar, nobody has figured out how to do it yet," which implies it IS possible, and characters may very well be working on it. 2) Obviously several characters already think exporting Stormlight from Roshar is possible, and have been actively working on it. I agree with your list of limitations and difficulties. I also note we Earth humans went from no airplanes to walking on the moon in less than 70 years, despite considerable limitations and difficulties (and no magic). Also, a WoB in which Brandon, discussing Kelsier walking through the Cognitive Realm to the Ire fortress, seems to agree with my view of travel in the CR as FTL:

I see what you did there

All of this is true; TAKE MY STORMING UPVOTE.

Given the way we've seen matter both imported to and manifested in the CR, I see no reason to rule this out, except that it may not fit with the stories Brandon has in mind. ;-)

Am I mistaken that both Elsecallers and Willshapers have the Surge of Transportation? That's two orders of Radiants who can a] move to and from the CR anywhere and b] take armies and equipment along - it's just a matter of scaling, the ability already exists. And if one magic system grants this ability, it seems likely others will also.

I suppose my fundamental question is this: why does it matter whether someone figures out a technological way to make FTL spacecraft when there is already a much easier way to get from point A to point B? Why are people hung up on "who will invent FTL and when"? Characters already can and do travel from planet to planet. I think a better question is "how long until everybody figures out a way to do what a few already can?" Gavilar would say "I'm working on it."

Unfortunately I only have the one pen so far. The ink in question is Waterman. Sounds like your advice would be to just buy their blue-green ink, rather than experiment?

Fountain pen question: is there any reason not to mix inks? I'm thinking about custom-mixing a blue and a green ink from the same manufacturer.

Let's say Alice and Bob shake hands on Scadrial. "May the fastest traveler win!" Bob climbs aboard his starship and engages his hyperwarp drive; Alice enters the Cognitive Realm and starts walking. Bob's instrument panel says Warp 15 or whatever, Alice's legs say "we're walking". If Bob lands on Roshar six months later and finds Alice already waiting for him, who went faster? What difference does it make who "felt like" they were traveling faster? What I see is that Bob has an FTL ship... and Alice won the race. We know Hoid was on Scadrial during MBe1; we know he's on Roshar during SAe1; we know he's on Scadrial again during MBe2. If it looks like FTL, and it acts like FTL... My point is that all you need is a way to move from PR to CR anywhere at will (which Elsecallers, among others, supposedly can). Thus you already have all the "technology" needed to go from anywhere to anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, apparently much faster than anyone could in the PR alone. Now, it's possible that while Worldhopping through the CR, time passes much more quickly in the PR. Maybe after visiting another world, Khriss arrives back home at Silverlight to find that 400 years have passed. I don't know whether that's true, but it's not the impression I've got. It would make for unsatisfying stories, I think.

We may just be having a difference in definitions. By the definitions that make sense to me, Einstein says there is no way to travel faster than light in 4-dimensional spacetime (a.k.a. the Physical Realm, in Cosmere-speak). A real-world ship can accelerate from rest to .999c, but relativity forbids then accelerating more and going FTL. Therefore ANY real-world FTL (if such a thing turns out to be possible) must invoke more than four dimensions. If you enter the Cognitive Realm on one planet, travel for a while, and exit on another planet (which we know for a fact multiple characters have done), then by my definitions, you have traveled faster than light. I don't see how that "does not count". My definition of speed is distance divided by time, so If those two planets are 20 light years apart, and you make that trip in one year, you were going 20x faster than light.

I love it. I don't think it's going to happen... but I still love it! If it DOES happen, you will have earned the title "The Oracle of the Cosmere".

There is also the fact that Roshar's moons are in MUCH closer orbits than Earth's moon is. Our moon takes 28 days to orbit once; Roshar's moons orbit once per day. They must also be in highly elliptical orbits to behave the way they are described to in the books, which means at their closest approach to Roshar they may only be a few HUNDRED miles above the surface (although travelling VERY fast). As with real-life space travel, it's not really about how FAR, but rather how FAST you can go. Not taking credit; people smarter than I am have already worked all this out: But don't they ALREADY have FTL travel? The presence of known Worldhoppers demonstrates that the simplest mechanism for interstellar travel - through the Cognitive Realm - has already been in use for quite a while.

I'm having a hard time understanding why anybody needs to, say, "control the highstorm". You don't have to fight every Radiant and conquer all of Roshar to charge your spheres; the highstorm happens EVERYWHERE. All you need is a way to move the Investiture from Roshar to not-Roshar (the HARD part), and a secret base somewhere remote and uninhabited (easy - Roshar is big and sparsely populated). It's clear the Cosmere is moving towards space travel and interactions between cultures... but why does that insure conflict? It would be like the US invading and conquering Mexico because we want to put up some solar panels there. Why a war when what we really want is a DEAL? Seems to me that the future of the Cosmere should be interstellar TRADE, not interstellar WAR.

Amethyst is purple, or perhaps violet, depending on how you define your color words. There are pink topazes, however.

The stronghold of the Sorceress is said to be in the "Midnight Sea, most dangerous of them all."

One meaning of the word "verdant" is "green". The "Emerald Sea" of the title is the Verdant Ocean, which originates from the Verdant Lunagree - the point where those spores drop from the moon. I think it's clear that each of the twelve moons drops spores of a different type, resulting in seas of twelve different colors.

Anybody else notice the Cytonic nod? "Dominating your view, like if you had a wart on your eyeball." Please tell me I'm not the only one who noticed this...

Finally got a pic to share. The Serenity Blue is not a light blue - I included some pencil and black ballpoint for comparison. I think my next bottle will be the Waterman Mysterious Blue. Less indigo and more aqua.

I, for one, have reached the point where I don't feel like it makes much sense to continue trying to explain this system using actual physical laws, at least, not until we get more information. Those moons (and the seas of spores, for that matter) are just flat-out magic. And I thought the Rosharan moons were a problem! pffff (protip: they are)

Having just seen the first 3 episodes of Arcane, I can see why people are so excited. While CGI certainly exists now for Hollywood to pull off a decent live action MB film series, both the cost and risk would be immense. I agree the animation style demonstrated by Fortiche would suit Mistborn very well, with the additional benefit of lending authenticity to the French inspiration for Scadrian character and place names.

That's good to hear. Does anyone here know the numbers of self-published novellas they have produced, and over what time frame? Edit to add: I was very pleased to hear Brandon and Isaac on the livestream of March 8, 2022 reporting preorders at over 200,000 hardcovers... and neither seemed to be concerned in any way.

Why would I judge someone for doing something I do too? ;-) I agree with you, and even more, Brandon actually alludes to this in his most recent KS update: We may have fundamentally shifted the paradigm for publishing. Oh, how I wish... I remain old school, and prefer a physical book in my hands.

I see what you did there. ;-)