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Messages - douglas

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121
Brandon Sanderson / Re: The Gathering Storm - First Impressions *SPOILERS*
« on: November 11, 2009, 04:22:17 PM »
Someone asked about that at one of the signings and reported the answer here.  Pay particular attention to the second paragraph:

Quote
I was at the signing in Roseville, MN last night and asked Brandon a question regarding Graendal possibly not being dead.  I started by saying that Graendal was ordered to keep Arad Doman in chaos.  After she was killed Rand was forced out of Arad Doman because all of the food he brought spoiled all at the same time, not in random intervals like had happened before due to the dark ones touch.  My question to Brandon is was this food spoilage caused by the Dark One or could it have been a strong channeler with inverted weaves, perhaps someone who was ordered to make sure that Rand's plans in Arad Doman failed?

Brandon told me explicitly that this was not caused by someone channeling but instead it was caused by Rand.  Roberet Jordan evidently left strong notes regarding the fact that the quote we heard early on in the story from Thom about "The dragon is one with the land and the land is one with the Dragon" will be emphasized towards the end of the stroy.  When people complained that only bad Ta'veren things happened in Bandar Eban when Rand was there with no offsetting good things this was an examples that as Rand has hardened and become darker the land has also grown more dark.  The spoiling of all the food at once was also caused by the darkness in Rand.

122
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Where's the annotation?
« on: November 03, 2009, 08:48:51 PM »
Thank you.

123
Brandon Sanderson / Where's the annotation?
« on: November 03, 2009, 03:02:31 PM »
Shouldn't there be a new annotation for Hero of Ages up now?  As I recall they were all written out already and were supposed to go up automatically every Tuesday and Thursday morning, but it's Tuesday and there's no new annotation.

124
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Questions!
« on: October 27, 2009, 06:08:56 AM »
The reverse aging thing was specifically the result of combining allomancy and feruchemy, using atium's feruchemical ability to restore youth and powering it with the metal itself through allomancy rather than having to store up the power in the usual feruchemical manner.  This is how Rashek lived 1000 years.  It is "beyond the magical understanding of the people" in the sense that only Rashek knew about it, only Sazed figured it out after Rashek died, and Sazed only told a very small number of people and none of them passed the information on.  Marsh happened to be there for Sazed's explanation, and he's been granted both the allomantic and feruchemical abilities of atium through hemalurgy, so he is capable of pulling it off - provided he has enough atium.  Sazed knew him pretty well pre-ascension, though, so Marsh may well be getting supplied with atium directly by the Hero of Ages specifically to keep him alive.

125
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Questions!
« on: October 27, 2009, 05:03:37 AM »
Considering the focus of the tour and signing event I would have asked something about the Wheel of Time, but for any actually interesting questions that would probably just turn into a game of "how many different ways can I get him to say RAFO".  This way he can actually answer the question and we can all laugh at the idea of certain allomantic savants. :P

Quote from: sortitus on October 27, 2009, 04:33:30 AM
aluminum (moved to be with its group)
There's a reason I put in where it was.  An atium savant is rather unlikely without Sazed's assistance, but it would definitely have a useful ability.  An aluminum savant, on the other hand, is an inherently silly idea.  Just not quite as silly as lerasium.

Quote from: sortitus on October 27, 2009, 04:33:30 AM
Quote from: douglas on October 27, 2009, 02:09:45 AM
lerasium
See atium's entry, except they'd develop a dependence on constantly gaining power to burn metals more effectively. If you had anyone mainline lerasium for any amount of time at all, they'd be able to launch themselves out of the atmosphere using the core of the earth.... I'll take an order of infinite lerasium and atium, please.
Thinking about it a little more, would a supply of lerasium sufficient to create a savant require so much power to make that it would work out to handing over a significant chunk of Preservation's Shard to the subject?  I'm wondering if the attempt to create a lerasium savant would turn into something like Vin's ascension.

Failing that, I imagine the ability to gain power more efficiently would be overshadowed by the power already gained.  But who cares about that, this is just an exercise in stretching the magic system to find valid but absurd ideas in it to laugh at - while still attempting to get a serious answer in the end, of course. ;)

Quote from: sortitus on October 27, 2009, 04:33:30 AM
Quote from: douglas on October 27, 2009, 02:09:45 AM
malatium
And we hit a snag. Brandon said that there are 16 (or 17, he didn't actually say a number) types of malatium, depending on what you alloy atium with. The malatium in the book is made using gold, and Vin sees TLR performing actions from the past.
Do you have a source on that?  I'm fairly sure malatium is the specific name of the atium/gold alloy, and the other alloys of atium have their own names.  I'd ask about them too, but that would be getting a bit too far ahead as we don't even know the base effects or names of those metals yet.

126
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Questions!
« on: October 27, 2009, 02:09:45 AM »
Assume a mad scientist has access to modern medical technology, an unlimited supply of all allomantic metals, and as many willing mistborn test subjects as he needs, and is absolutely determined that this chart titled "Benefits of Being an Allomantic Savant" must be completed.  What would he determine for the metals listed below?  Alternatively, if Sazed were writing such a table down honestly with his full knowledge granted by possession of two Shards, what would he write?

In approximate order by increasing absurdity:
pewter
gold
electrum
duralumin
chromium
nicrosil
atium
malatium
aluminum
lerasium

For aluminum, the mad scientist pokes a feeding tube down the mistborn's throat and pumps in a constant influx of the metal so that the test subject is able to continuously burn it despite constantly using it up.  If necessary a second tube is used to pump out excess water to prevent damage from an overfilled stomach.

Make sure you get to the last four, and especially the last two, even if you have to skip some of the others to fit them in, and present the solution for how an aluminum savant might be created in the first place.

127
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Table of Allomantic Metals *Spoilers*
« on: October 16, 2009, 01:54:55 PM »
Well there's a credit card if you have one, but you have to pay that back eventually...

128
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Brandon's Twitter Page
« on: October 14, 2009, 03:59:40 PM »
The battle ajah is green.  Blues take up causes as I recall.

129
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Haven't read WOT - Is it a waste of time to try to read Gathering Storm?
« on: October 13, 2009, 09:01:15 PM »
My personal opinion on the subject of the later WoT books is that the real problem was the time period covered in each book compared to the time between each book release.  By that point in the series there are a large number of plot lines going on at once, and even a large book can only make so much progress when its pages are split over as many different things as those books cover.  So, when people got a book they'd been waiting two or three years for and found it only advanced the timeline by a week or two (I think that's actually literally accurate for one of them), with an appropriate amount of stuff happening for such a short period, they were understandably disappointed.  When it happened again for all the same reasons two or three years later, and another time two or three years after that...

Cut out the multiple years wait between books and the problem suddenly gets a lot smaller.  Now you can just read them all as fast as you like, and the books you do have to wait for are supposed to come at just one year intervals and are at the point in the series where plot lines are converging, resolving, and getting less numerous so each book can cover more time and be more eventful.

Also, some of the major plot lines in the much criticized books are primarily political, and a lot of people don't like that.  I found it interesting, but many people seem to view that as boring filler.

130
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **Spilers** What's going to happen in AMoL (our theories)
« on: October 01, 2009, 05:29:46 AM »
The Tower of Ghenjei exists in both the real world and TAR, and can be entered in either.  According to Birgitte, it is much more difficult to leave if you enter through TAR than directly from the real world.

131
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **Spilers** What's going to happen in AMoL (our theories)
« on: September 29, 2009, 06:20:14 PM »
That last paragraph about Ishamael is based mostly on some things from the Big Book of Bad Art, also known as The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.  There are, however, some significant hints of it in the series proper.  For example, in the Rhuidean history sequence, there's mention of an Aes Sedai who claims early in the Breaking that Ishamael is still free.  I think Ishamael in his guise as Ba'alzamon claims credit, maybe in one of the dreams he plagues the ta'veren trio with early on, for the Trolloc Wars and for Artur Hawkwing's hatred of Aes Sedai.  He was also free to a significant degree in TEotW before any of the other Forsaken showed up, and had already channeled the True Power enough to have developed extremely advanced TP addiction symptoms despite not having shown any such symptoms when he talked with Lews Therin in the prologue.  As I understand it, it would have been rather difficult, if not impossible, to channel that much (or at all) of any kind of power while bound by the Seals, so he had to have been free and able to walk the world for a significant period in order to have developed those symptoms.  I think some of the Forsaken comment a time or two about Ishamael being extremely proud about having not been fully trapped by the Seals.

There are probably a few other hints that I just don't remember offhand.

132
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **Spilers** What's going to happen in AMoL (our theories)
« on: September 29, 2009, 03:43:00 PM »
Either you misread something or are misremembering it.  The Age of Legends was the 2nd Age.  The Age before the Age of Legends was the 1st Age, and there are a number of hints that it is the present day modern world.  The events surrounding Artur Hawkwing's rise and his empire's collapse are nowhere near major enough to be an Age transition.

Major ta'veren happen whenever the pattern needs them, which depends entirely on what's happening in the world and how closely it corresponds to what's "supposed" to happen, and sometimes on whether any major world changing events are supposed to be coming up.

The intervals are 1000 years from the Breaking to the Trolloc Wars, 1000 years from the Trolloc Wars to Artur Hawkwing, and 1000 years from Artur Hawkwing to Rand.  Quite a number of ta'veren came along in those 3000 years, some of them major, Hawkwing was just the most major of them before Rand.  In any case, while both the Trolloc Wars and the collapse of Hawkwing's empire were major historical events, neither of them is anywhere near as cataclysmic as a true Age transition.  Compare either of them to the Breaking of the World or Tarmon Gai'don and they just don't measure up.  Changing from one Age to another is Serious Business, and continent-wide but otherwise mostly mundane warfare is not sufficient, and if it were we would have seen several references to those periods being different Ages rather than the actual total of 0.

Oh, and before you say anything about the regularity of the 1000 year intervals, that's due to Ishamael's release cycle, not the Wheel turning.  Ishamael was only partly bound, with about 40 years of freedom every 1000 years.  He was free for some time immediately after the Sealing of the Bore, was free 1000 years later and started the Trolloc Wars, and was free again to become Artur Hawkwing's adviser and turn him against the White Tower, set up the Seanchan, and ensure his empire's collapse.  If Tarmon Gai'don weren't coming, he would be free again about this time anyway to unleash some new nastiness on civilization, and all of this has nothing to do with Age transitions or the length of the Wheel's spokes.

133
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **Spilers** What's going to happen in AMoL (our theories)
« on: September 28, 2009, 10:41:15 PM »
Quote from: Champion Kaz on September 28, 2009, 07:14:07 PM
and i believe the age of legends is more than one spoke away otherwise Rand is reborn several times a wheel turn and that he only gets screwed into being the creators champion 2 of the times.
Where did you get that idea from?  The series is quite explicitly clear that one spoke of the Wheel = one Age, and the only Ages mentioned specifically are "the Age before the Age of Legends" (mostly minor references), the Age of Legends, the Third Age (which the series is set in), and the Fourth Age (which will begin after Tarmon Gai'don).  The Breaking of the World ended the Age of Legends and began the Third Age.  If there were an Age between the two, there would have been a large number of references to it.  There are, instead, precisely zero such references.

Also, there is no evidence either way on whether Rand is reborn in any ages other than the AoL and the Third Age, or that if he is born in any other ages he does not end up being the Creator's champion in those ages as well.

134
Brandon Sanderson / Re: WOT Help
« on: September 24, 2009, 03:19:06 AM »
I think Verin is on the good side and just used clever and ambiguous wording or stretching of the truth for that oft-quoted "lie".  "Moiraine (and what I learned from her) caused me to come" is, I believe, a technically correct possible meaning of the phrase "Moiraine sent me", and is completely true.  It's not her fault everyone interpreted it differently from how she meant it. ::)

135
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **Spilers** What's going to happen in AMoL (our theories)
« on: September 23, 2009, 07:59:58 PM »
I will be very surprised if Rand does not survive.  The quote from the Finns about "if you would live, you must die" and Min's viewing that Alivia will "help Rand die" are two giant hints about what's going to happen with him.  Rand is going to "die" in a way that somehow makes it possible for him to live past the Last Battle.  This may involve a metaphorical meaning of the word "die", soul/body swapping with someone (Moridin?), Nynaeve healing him from death, or any number of other possibilities, but I think it's practically guaranteed to happen given all the various prophecies, foretellings, viewings, etc. related to it.

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