Timewaster's Guide Archive

Quote from: Harakeke on October 08, 2010, 04:02:14 AM

but I forgot about this part:

You were the one to translate it. Those two pages were really interesting, but I would've never been able to translate it in a million years. Your a legend.

Well, yeah -- that's the thing.  I got carried away with just those two, and overlooked the other... thousand or so: like when kaladin's actually in a Highstorm.  =P

I very much doubt it.  It simply seems that he is experiencing a simulation created by the Almighty.  If he were to actually be changing things, the implications would be much larger, the changes much bigger, than what we've seen.

Unfortunately the Almighty is (by his own admission) dead.  Some of his spiritual power may remain, possibly enabling time-travel visions, Knight Radiant powers, etc. -- but there seems to be no... cognitive processing happening.   If the Almighty can't even carry on a two-sided conversation, I imagine it would be even more difficult for him to tailor a simulation that adapted to the viewer's actions.

It seems to me that the Almighty picked specific points in time when he was still alive to record snippets of a static "magical video will". The viewer gets their consciousness transported back to just before that moment, and then the message plays.  It's not an exact science, so the viewer might have some wiggle room to affect the past in small ways while they're there -- but the Almighty picked moments that would be unlikely to lead to a major paradox.

And since we know Stormlight gems = trapped spren, that could be related to the mystery spren that emerge from a dead Greatshell.

Here's an editable table I made:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Al9mpDUN_8rSdGZIcU1DbFJ1amRLb2l6UVZwRWtEQ3c&hl=en&authkey=CPyvzssM

I still like the idea of 1173 being "the present", and with age measured in Weepings it seems to work out.
According to the table, Kaladin experienced a Weeping between leaving Amaram's army and arriving in the Shattered Plains.  Does anything in the text support this?

Quote from: Fireborn on October 07, 2010, 04:57:48 AM

I don't think burrowing into solid rock is gonna work very well.

How about soulcasting owls. They have a limited power to soulcast stone in order to burrow, granted to them by a shard. Nothing powerful or useful except in order to dig through stone.

Badgermoles!

That's an interesting point, though -- can non-human animals use Rosharan magic?  Skyeels, for instance seem like they physically shouldn't be able to fly.  Could they be doing Lashings to stay aloft?  This might explain why they are accompanied by unknown spren.

What does yBP stand for?

Sorry -- archaeology shorthand.  "years before present"

Finally got around to cleaning up my key.  I shrank the diacritics and took out the extraneous letters.
edit: Note that since Alethi has no W or X, the respective English transliterations are U and KS.



And for any other typography nerds out there, the font on the cover of the US edition is Ravenwood One.

Oh, great... desolation AND zombies...