"Magic is what makes fantasy fantastic," someone says, "you can't apply rules to them or else it loses wonder!" I respond, "Sure, but if you want to write them you will certainly want to know how they work." Writing is all about execution, and I find applying some basic laws of physics to magic systems make them more understandable and realistic. Here, I'm going to outline my basic method for developing a magic system.
Column by Chaos2651
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That quote came from this thread:
http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7878.0
I yanked this out of another post I was reading.QuoteAdditionally, every shard is controlled by a god-like consciousness that used to belong to a mortal. Each shard has a sort of ... pathology to it that eventually turns the mind of the shardholder until it matches the shard's will. Some might be considered "bad", while others are arguably "good.
I'm assuming these people who "just got out of class" to post were from one of Brandon's classes.
I know you said not to mention religion but I wonder how LDS and the devil might tie into the evil of the stories.
<= I started Hoid's Compendium, it's first incarnation.
About last year's competition.. I'm trying to think of people in any book that could possibly beat Rand al'Thor in this "duel to the death". Really can't come up with a single person who would even be close, who did he fight for the championship? Was it close?
Long Live Barbarians! Go Logen!
Some mixtures are so intimately combined that they have some properties similar to compounds and may easily be mistaken for compounds. One example is alloys. Alloys are made mechanically, most commonly by heating the constituent metals to a liquid state, mixing them thoroughly, and then cooling the mixture quickly so that the constituents are trapped in the base metal. Other examples of compound-like mixtures include intermetallic compounds and solutions of alkali metals in a liquid form of ammonia.
The PULLING metals are chemical elements; the PUSHING metals are chemical compounds; that is, the PUSHING metals are actually more than one element.
spikes in the eyes grant super tineye vision
I don't think a magic system has to be well defined, though personally I like to make well defined magic systems for my books. However, there are many books out there that don't need a perfectly defined magic system. E.g. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, A Song of Fire and Ice, Dark is Rising. These books are still magical, but there is no well defined, or even commonly used magic system. There are obviously boundaries, what magic can and cannot do, but these things are never explained, and only the author knows the true power of any magic system.
Sometimes I find these magic systems interesting, and they imbue the world with something magical in its simplicity. There is a sense of mystery. It is quite good.
That makes a lot of sense about them making their own humans that are based off what they know (and were) as opposed to inventing humans fresh.
Though I was still led to believe through the Mistborn trilogy that Ruin and Preservation were responsible for the circle of life of the planet. In a very mythology-like "and that's why this happens" sort of way, I thought things were born and lived because of Preservation and decayed and withered due to Ruin's touch, with the certain knowledge that without Ruin, Preservation would eventually become self-defeating. If this is true, it means the other worlds need a reason to have a cohesive physics structure.Shards don't always come in pairs. For instance, Roshar had 3 shards, (2 now that the Almighty is dead) and as far as we know Warbreaker features only Endowment.
While I'm going to readily embrace what we know (what you said above) as the easiest and most straightforward solution, I'm not going to discount the possibility that we don't know everything. For example, 2 could've been responsible for establishing Roshar, and then Odium could've swooped in and said "I want this one!" Likewise, Endowment could have a counterpart whose simply been absent for one reason or another since the founding of the Warbreaker planet (I can never remember the name!). Of course, if Endowment had a counterpart, it would likely be something that gives nothing -- not even destruction. So perhaps it simply has no magic system to share or even influence on the land -- a dud shard.
Just one correction: The three that would have been involved with Roshar would have been *before* Odium showed up. At least, that's the simplest reading of the evidence.
18. How many Shards have existed on Roshar?
ANSWER: Three
