User:Ccstat

Personal List of Questions for Brandon:

Cosmere/Crossover

1. You've used the term spiritual DNA. Every cell in our body has a complete copy of our physical DNA, and With the right tools a small sample of DNA can tell you a ton about the person it came from. Is the same true of sDNA? Could a forensic analysis of a piece of identity (e.g. left in a metalmind or an awakened object) paint a complete picture of the user's origins and/or spiritweb? Do such tools exist in the Cosmere?
2. If you operated an airplane or rocket in the CR, is there anything to reach at higher altitudes?
3. A person has their arm cut by a shardblade, making it a dead limb. Eventually they die and an awakener tries to make a Lifeless from their body. Will the Lifeless have a functional arm, or will it remain cognitively/spiritually separate?
   1. If the awakener met the person while they were still alive, would they be able to awaken the limb, making a partial Lifeless? Would the arm be able to obey instructions (from someone with the command phrase) like a regular lifeless would?
4. Harmony did something to the people of Scadrial that has made it easier for them to snap. If one of these post-Catacendre Scadrians were to travel to Roshar, would the change that Harmony made make it easier for them to bond a spren?
5. Could a kandra wear the body of a Sleepless?
6. Would the emotions of a cognitive shadow attract spren in Shadesmar?
7. Has the total number of perpendicularities increased since the shattering?
8. From what we've seen of Seons and other splinters, it appears that subdivided investiture has some inherent flavor analogous to a Shard's intent, if less potent in those smaller doses. Question: Is a Shard's intent an additive sum of its component parts, or is it an emergent property of the parts interacting?
   1. thought process:You've told us that twinborn, for example, get particular perks, while mistborn/full-feruchemists get the full power but no Resonances. Are intents loosely analogous to the Resonances in this way?
9. If Ruin and Preservation had picked Roshar instead of Scadrial, would magical abilities still divide into sets of 16? Would they still be based on metals?
10. Gravity appears constant between areas of the cognitive realm, regardless of their spacial relationship to a planet vs intervening space. Does it vary between planets?

Scadrial

1. Miles Hundred lives had access to unlimited healing, which works by matching your physical still to your spiritual self (as filtered by the cognitive). But through allomantic gold he also has access to at least one alternate version of himself. If he wanted to, could he use that "healing" process to truly become those other selves?
2. A kandra obtains access to feruchemy by spiking Ferring A, and wears the body of Ferring B, both of whom had full metalminds when they died. Which of the metalminds will she be able to access?
3. Does duralumin share aluminum's allomantic shielding abilities?
4. If you use two different metals to make a spike (i.e. glued together, not alloyed) could you steal two different abilities from the same person?

Roshar

1. During the time that Syl was "dead" in WoR, did she manifest as a deadeye in the CR? Or is that only for spren that have already become blades?
2. The Everstorm doesn't seem to require Fused in any way. Could it have been summoned prior to Taln breaking?
3. You've suggested that Radiants in general, and Kaladin specifically, are immune to / protected from the Thrill, but that is not at all Dalinar's experience in OB. Is he an exception due to his past, or have we misconstrued those earlier hints? Similarly, is to Shallan's apparent susceptibility to Ashertmarn and affinity to Re-Shephir a function more of her personal history or her Radiance as a Lightweaver?
4. If I measure a spren, and then instead of writing the measurement down I store the memory in a coppermind, would that have the same "recording" effect?
5. The Stormfather learns about humanity via his bond with Dalinar, but he had been bonded to other KRs in the past, so wouldn't he have learned from those experiences too? Did he lose that insight every time a bondsmith died, or only after the recreance? The same reasoning should apply to the Nightwatcher, who clearly has trouble understanding people.
6. Chiri-chiri drained the King's Drop of stormlight. Most spheres reinfused when the perpendicularity manifested, but the King's Drop did not? Was it inside a ship at the time? Would its infused/empty state matter for its ability to contain NerGaoul?
7. Would the King's Drop have been equally viable as a prison for any of the Unmade? Or must the gem be tuned for each entity?
8. In Oathbringer, Odium appears in several guises. Do any of them accurately reflect Rayse's appearance pre-Ascension?
9. From what we know of the orbits of the moons, it appears that they should grow and shrink by around 50% in apparent size as they cross the sky. This isn't mentioned by the characters, though. Have we misunderstood something or is it just not worthy of comment to them?
10. Can a detector fabrial be tuned to detect aluminum?
11. Sleepless are similar to Vinge's Tines from Fire Upon the Deep. Do sleepless have difficulty being close to/intermingling one another? Is membership in a horde fluid?
12. We've seen the descendants of human:singer and human:siah interbreeding. Are there singer:siah crosses as well? (previously RAFO'd)
13. We know that certain ethnicities on Roshar have Listener heritage. Are there subgroups of listeners with human heritage?
14. Wit calls his instrument a Trailman's flute. Is that a reference to the Iriali Long Trail?
15. Mraize shoots a cremling with a blow gun. Sleepless?
16. Would spren look the same to Lift and Eshonai?
17. Does the double-pupiled Eye of the Almighty have a biological counterpart in Rosharan fauna?
18. Do parshendi have epicanthic folds?

Nalthis

1. If a Lifeless became sufficiently self aware, could it give away its animating breath?
2. Awakening is powered by breath and fueled by color. Only Nathian breaths work: what about off-world colors?
3. Would powering awakening with e.g. stormlight still drain color, or would it pull from a different physical property? (note, previously RAFO'd in 2014)
4. What proportion of a person's inherent investiture makes up a breath? 5%? 50%?
5. Assuming they could live long enough, how many Returned would fulfill their purposes?
6. Why can't you sense Breath inside an object? Life sense feels like Seeking, but in this case it seems opposite to Seeking, which can only sense kinetic investiture.

Threnody

1. According to Silence, the Forests of Hell have carried that name and been populated by shades since well before the Evil befell Homeland. Were the Deepest Ones also present prior to the Evil?
2. Would a shade on Threnody be more or less dangerous if encountered in Shadesmar? (Assuming no rules had been broken.)
3. If the shades stopped enforcing the Simple Rules, would the spread of the Evil from the Homeland be hastened?
4. On Threnody, are there different Simple Rules governing conduct when in Shadesmar as compared to the physical realm?

Sel

1. Why were only those seons bound to elantrians affected by the Reod? Based on Aons, wouldn't all of them need a chasm line to function?
2. What happened to Hrathen's seon? Did it pass back to Wyrn, did he designate someone else, or did it become untethered for a time?

Non-Cosmere

1. Sunlight appears to be deleterious to wild/unbound manifestations of the magic. Do the people of Joel's era understand this and/or the reason for it?
2. David and the Dowser: simple self delusion shouldn't be able to fool the dowser. What's going on here?
3. Are Epic weaknesses still a feature of the Reckonerverse post-Calamity?
4. Do you have a canon term for the Reckoners multiverse?

Writing

1. What is the best thing you've gained from the recent season of Writing Excuses?

Thoughts on Books

Stormlight Notes

What in Damnation’s depths? Damnation's own

Minions in SoS

It is clear that while Paalm does many things herself (shapeshifting is good for that) she also has people working for her. Most seem to be spiked (though I'm not sure about Drim) and therefore open to her influence. (In retrospect, the scene with the first speech where the governor is telling his own assassin to hurry up and shoot him is a more interesting one.)

I've been trying to figure out what happened to the server who jumped out the window at the party. At the time, Paalm was wearing Innate so Wayne's deduction that the server was a minion is correct. They don't find a body, so he had some way to survive the fall: maybe steel allomancy, maybe iron feruchemy, maybe something else entirely.