happyman

Actually, this is a pretty good description of most of the Final Empire. That's probably not an accident. Edit: OK, OK, it wasn't that extreme. Nevertheless, the final empire was a pretty good example of what happens when Preservation dominates over Ruin, locally. Preservation alone might be able to go further (Ruin still had some effects on the world), but I think it alone says that Preservation by itself is not enough.

I would say that it is clear that there is some kind of afterlife, but there are intermediate states as well. It seems extremely likely that Kelsier, the various Returned, and perhaps others (like the Herald's) never go "all the way," but only come back from some kind of intermediate state. I'm also interested with the possibility that it's not Endowment that gives the dead the ability to see the future. After all, if the death quotes are any indication, it's possible that the primary qualification is to be in (or perhaps near) this intermediate state. Certainly that's what the followers of the Iridescent Tones believe. This would also explain why Kelsier stuck around to meddle. If it is true, he would want to interfere in order to stop his revolution from having all the nasty side effects it may have ended up with otherwise.

Actually, you hit on one of the subtle points of modern science, which is that gravitational mass (which determines the strength of the force of gravity) and inertial mass (which determines how quickly something responds to a force) are the same. At Newton's time, there was no a priori reason why this should be true. It's not true for any of the other forces, where the "charge" (which determines the strength of the force) is determined by other factors entirely. Thus what Szeth does in this scene is to change the form of the law of gravity without changing his inertial mass. Apparently, with Feruchemy, when you change your mass, you change both inertial and gravitational mass at the same time. It's a subtle difference.

Oh, how they met was probably not an accident. The thing about Returned is, they have to have breath to survive. I think Vasher even mentions that when he Returned, he was cared for by a sect which later became the religion of Hallandren. I suspect that the other four scholars had backstories along similar lines. No, the fact that, intellectually, they knew that they were siblings was almost certainly from being told after they Returned. In fact, the fact that they were together at all after they both Returned was probably deliberate collaboration on somebody's part. I won't dispute that at all. The original question was where the very obvious emotional impact of their family relationship came from. My guess is just that they never really forgot it.

We know they lose their memories, but we also know that this loss is not complete. Lightsong remembered the face of his niece, as well as his attachment to her, well before what you might call full, conscious memory came flooding back. He also kept some of the mathematical skills from his previous life. And he could juggle! Basically, whatever is going on with Returned and memory, it's not absolute. Love of family seems like something that might leak through some time in a few hundred years.

The returned don't regain their memories in just the moment before they do their thing. We have strong evidence from Lightsong that, subconsciously, they actually remember quite a bit more and can draw on it. I'd think something very deep and emotional like familial love could survive essentially intact even without having full conscious access to the whole truth.

The way I see it, the Highstorms have to have been going on for a really long time. I mean, the ecosystem is essentially evolved to make use of them/survive them, and in some impressive ways. In the real world, at least, that takes a hecka long time. Of course, with Cultivation floating around, maybe it could be sped up, but even so, I doubt it would be that fast. In fact, if it weren't for the very obvious "supernatural" effects the storms cause, I'd almost suspect they occurred naturally, due to odd planetary effects. With all that said, clearly there is magic involved. I'm just saying that it must have been involved for a very long time indeed. Whatever the causes of the Highstorms, they go a long ways back.

Since everybody is talking about A Song of Fire and Ice, well, part of my problem was that it seemed like it was going nowhere, at the speed of frozen molasses. So I guess I agree with that. The other was that I didn't really like, respect or understand any of the characters except Tyrion, and from Martin's style, I knew that what was going to happen to him would just continue to be painful. Also, the big plots started in the first book didn't seem to be going anywhere. By halfway through the third book, I couldn't care less who was king. They'd all managed to make a dogs dinner out of it, and frankly, demoting the lot of them and installing a competent tyrant seemed like the least bad option. I just didn't care any more.

No, I remember Brandon talking about it as well. There is a meta-fictional reason for the religion. Basically, the idea bounced around in Brandon's head, and he used it in two different settings. Given the Brandon approaches religion, I wouldn't be surprised if, "in-Universe" the worshippers of Dadradah hadn't stumbled across a bit of the truth (part of Realmantics theory, perhaps?), and that this same truth also manifests itself much more clearly in Warbreaker. They have the same metaphysical underpinnings, after all, even if some parts are exaggerated more by the presence of the various shards.

Once again, I feel compelled to mention that I believe two things: (1) Jasnah's revelation is, for some value of the word, correct. (2) We and they have absolutely no idea why it is really important. This, I think, would keep the mystery going without need for anything else.

I would like to add a couple of comments on the discussion on brains. I'm not arguing the bit about brain chemistry. That seems right, as far as I know. I would like to add, though, that in the Cosmere, the brain may have rotted, but it "remembers" having functioned in the past. Breath is a mystical force that can force muscles to move even without oxygen. In the case of divine breaths, they can heal a human body completely. I see no reason why a normal breath, in conjunction with a well and truly dead brain, could not revive part of the brain for reuse, although almost certainly in conjunction with the other realms. I don't think that Kalad's phantoms really affect that. They took a lot more breath to create. The thing about normal lifeless is that they pull all these stunts with just one Breath per body. Presumably, to make that work, the single breath is piggy-backing a lot on the physical aspects of the body.

You probably can't make your arm a lifeless. It's strongly implies in the text that having the whole body, mostly intact, is what makes lifeless so effective. They wear out eventually from accumulated damage. Or to put it another way: A complete body understands itself, and is understood by others, to be a person, and this probably persists somewhat after death. This makes them much easier to awaken, I'm guessing, and makes the resulting creature much more persistent, at least until the semblance of complete life can no longer be kept up. A severed arm, on the other hand, does not understand itself as a person, nor is it understood as a person. It can almost certainly be awakened relatively cheaply, but that's the term for it---it can be Awakened, and that's it.

In one of Dalinar's visions, the one where he fights the midnight essences, the woman swears by the three gods. It seems likely that at some point, humans on Roshar knew more about what was actually going on.

It this case, it's most likely an example of "Translation Convention," with the intent to get the flavor of the words right. That is, in Brandon's mind these correspond to fictional things in a fictional setting with fictional languages, but they have a "feel" which people in-universe would get from hearing them. In this case, using things like Latin or French roots in the "translation" into English would carry some of the same emotional baggage to us, without having a strict relationship with the faux roots in the real world.

The perspective in the epilogue is not easily pegged. It's third person, and it dips into the thoughts of different characters at different times. I'd say that the description of the blade as being a Shardblade is from the guards point of view, which at the least tells us nothing about Hoid's knowledge.

Warning: This one is much more light-hearted than his other work. If that sounds unlikely given the subject of the book, well, it isn't. You've been warned.

The trouble with Pathism is, what if your god actually asks you to do something? Thinking to yourself sounds nice until you realize that somebody is really listening!

There are definitely limits on how hard you can push the cognitive and spiritual aspects, given the physical ones. Otherwise, the limits in Forging would make no sense. I suspect that similar limits would exist for the use of Health or time bubbles. As a side note, given Forging's unique powers, I don't think we should be surprised it's the first magic system to explicitly define the realms in published canon. (Clearly Way of Kings references them as well, but we haven't gotten to a philosophical discussion of what folks on Roshar understand yet.) It is such a scholarly art, with history and, for lack of better terms, natural philosophy at its core. That was probably one of the most engaging parts of the magic system in the book.

I'd say this is right. It seems that Stamping primarily fools the object (or person!) into thinking it had a different past. It seems to me that this is done primarily via the congnitive and spiritual realms, with the physical effects following on as a kind of natural side-effect.

The first couple of chapters left me a little cold, not sure if I liked what was happening. Then Shai had her first one-on-one conversation with Gaotona. Of course, their relationship is the meat of the story right there, so it shouldn't be a surprise that that's where things began zipping. I went through the end of the story, barely stopping. Amazing. At first, I though that forging was too powerful and didn't belong on Sel. Then I realized that Forging is, in many ways, like a limited application of AonDor. AonDor can turn garbage into food and sick people into healthy ones, with the change permanent and no need to leave the Aon standing. Forging can do essentially the same type of changes, but with the "Aon" permanent and the transformation limited to "plausible". Very interesting magic system. It's biggest limitation (the most important thing about it!) is that it is very time and study intensive. Because it shares that with Aon Dor, they really do belong together.

It's a deleted scene from Elantris. In that scene, the glowing stuff in Elantris was made up of very small Aons which reproduced. In the published book, this was changed to some kind of fungal film.

Kiwi: We get the statements about the future from the last chapter of Way of Kings. The speaker is Honor. And I generally agree with your statement about the reason Ruin chose Vin. In various forms, the complex game between Ruin and Preservation comes up, and it always has to be emphasized that Preservation was playing the long game. With his eyes metaphorically blindfolded. And won. Preservation manipulated Ruin into choosing Vin so that Vin could be in position to kill them both when it was needed.

I was just using geek-speak to say that just the term "finite" really doesn't help that much for concrete speculation.

I didn't think it until Comatose mentioned it, but Lightsong. Definitely Lightsong. He's probably the one I would enjoy hanging out with the most.

This is my take on what has been said: I think that every human (and very likely every sapient creature) in the Cosmere has something "extra" (possibly divine) which makes them a self-aware agent. I suspect that this something extra is spiritual. It is also this "something extra" which gives them access to their respective magics, at least potentially. (See also, sDNA.) Thus people throughout the Cosmere access their magics from their respective Shards by doing something in accordance with their Shard's purpose. This then makes the case of Breath seem logical, as follows. People on Nalthis have the sDNA to endow others and things with some of their "something extra." It just follows naturally from the Shard that created or influenced them. This would then make a drab slightly less than baseline human. This then thematically fits in with the notion of the sacrifice that endowment implies, as others here have noted. It definitely makes Breaths a more balanced system in Cosmere terms, as well.