V Is For Vinebud

Shallan's Journey: Chapter 1, In Which an Experiment Goes Wrong

Shallan grimaced as Pattern formed into a sword in her hands. She still wasn't completely comfortable with the idea of wielding a sword, but it was what needed to be done, so she would do it. She, Navani and Jasnah were running experiments on the portals at Urithiru, trying to get a second one open. Prior to Jasnah's return, everyone had been completely stumped, but between the knowledge Jasnah brought back from her time in Shadesmar and her abilities with the transportation surge, she brought new energy to the project. Their current working theory was that they would eventually need Jasnah and Highprince Kalinar working together to permanently reopen a portal, but they wanted to make sure they had things right before Kalinar bound it open. If this worked, Shallan would use the portal to briefly visit Jah Keved and then promptly return to Urithiru. Jasnah was physically sitting in the tower, but was mentally in Shadesmar monitoring and guiding the portal. Shallan slid Pattern into the sword slot and was excited to feel the portal unlock – finally, actual progress! She rotated the fabrial and, as expected the stormlight in the lamps faded. That, however, is where her expectations broke down. As the lamps faded, the room itself seemed to fade until she seemed to be floating in a black void. Once she got past the initial shock she called out “Oh storm it! Pattern, are you still here? Something seems to have gone wrong...do you have any idea where we are?”

Shallan closed her eyes against the overwhelming darkness as she lost her self in the contemplation of what to do next. What would Jasnah do in this situation? She sighed. Jasnah would know how to navigate Shadesmar, and that wasn't something she could do. As Shallan pondered this, she felt a tapping on her shoulder, startled, and whipped her head around hoping to be able to see something in the inky blackness. She was relieved to see pattern glowing gently, “Mmmm, didn't mean to startle... you were getting lost...”

“Well, yes, when we think hard on something we can get lost in those thoughts.”

“Yes. Dangerous here. Lost in thoughts in Shadesmar is lost entirely.”

Shallan considered this. “Pattern, I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Mmmm... Thoughts are Shadesmar... A lie, but a good lie. If you get lost in thought in thoughts you are lost.”

Shallan shook her head. “I'm still not sure I follow, but I'll try to be careful. Do you have any suggestion as to what we should be doing next? How can we get back to Roshar?”

“Look. Your truth is what you see.”

“Look where? Pattern, the only thing I can see is you...”

Pattern took her hand and pointed with it. As Shallan squinted in that direction she could make out... something. At least it wasn't pitch black. “Ok, how do I get there?"

“Mmmm... Lightweavers aren't for traveling... Lie? The best lies become like truth...”

Shallan looked over at Pattern with eyes narrowed in thought as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. “Do you mean that I just need to be sufficiently convinced that I am already there and then I will be?”

“Mmmm.... not sure... perhaps?”

“Well I guess I don't have any better ideas...” Shallan took a deep breath to center herself and tried to focus on believing that she was at that point in the distance that was something other than inky blackness. She quickly realized that as long as she could see that she was still surrounded by darkness, she was not going to be able to truly believe it, so she closed her eyes tightly and tried to block out her skepticism.

Suddenly, she felt herself fall and land on...something...she didn't recognize. When her brain caught up that things had changed and she was once again in a new situation, her eyes snapped open and she quickly sat up. As she looked around, her eyes grew wide – where on Roshar was she? She was definitely outdoors and seemed to be on the ground, but it wasn't any kind of ground she was familiar with. For one thing, whatever vegetation she was sitting on didn't seem even remotely inclined to retreat back into the rock...which...didn't exactly seem like rock, it was too soft. There did appear to be large rocks standing around though... Did she end up somewhere in Shinovar? Shallan knew that they at least had plants that didn't retreat, and maybe this soft stuff was the soil she had read about... She reached into the bag of supplies she had packed in case something went wrong to pull out her sketchbook. Drawing often helped her make sense of what she was seeing. As she did, she thanked the Almighty that her bag hadn't gotten lost somewhere in her unusual journey. That thought reminded her of her traveling companion. She looked around, but didn't immediately see him and, as her heart started racing in panic, she called out, “Pattern? Did... Did you make it here as well?” She was highly relieved to her a sudden buzzing above her and to see Pattern's tangled mass of lines floating down as she looked up.

“Mmmm... still with you... still don't know where here is. Here is a nice pattern though.”

“A pattern?”

“Mmmm... big rocks all around in a circle with rocks on rocks, but maybe some missing.”

Shallan raised her eyebrows as she carefully stood with her bag and sketchbook and began to slowly walk around in wonder investigating the area she had so unceremoniously landed in. She didn't know as much as she wished she did about the Shin, but this seemed like something that might have been sacred to them at one point. It also seemed abandoned and was impressive enough that she should have come across it in her studies. “Pattern... Either we have discovered some long lost sacred site in Shinovar, or...” here she took a deep breath, “or we aren't on Roshar anymore.”

Whrrrrrrrrthwick! Whrrrrrrrrthwick! Whrrrrrrrrthwick! Whrrrrrrrrthwick!

Dumbledore looked up from his desk and frowned at the little silver device that had just started going off. He had many similar devices in his office to alert him of strong magical disturbances at key locations. This one suggested that something significant had just happened at Stonehenge. Thankfully it was just whrrrthwiking - if it had been shrieking that would have meant dark magic and likely that Voldemort had decided to come out of hiding. This, however, was just intriguing. He glanced back down at the paperwork he had been filling out and shrugged. It could wait. He looked over to his phoenix, “Fawkes, my dear old friend, would you be up for a visit to Stonehenge?” Fawkes chirruped and cocked his head. “Something seems to have happened there, and, beyond the fact that I am curious, it would be prudent to investigate.” Fawkes stretched his wings and trilled as flew over to Dumbledore who stood reached out for his tail feathers. They vanished in a flash of fire.

Sisters

After some thought, she decided that the concept of loving siblings was a little like the Allomantic pulse lengths she was supposed to be looking for - they were just too unfamiliar for her to understand at the moment.

Oh, Vin. Your brother may have helped you survive, but he was a horrible, horrible brother. And she HAD a baby sister that their mom killed.  I can't even...

Vin still needs to have Lift as a little sister.  Then, one night when Shallan is out on a mission as Veil she needs to come across them and bring them in off the streets and eventually be accepted into their little group as the big sister. She would try to tame them somewhat and teach them things like writing, but they would spend just as much time corrupting Shallan.  They would create an alter-ego for Lift so that the Ladies Davar, Valette and [I'm still trying to come up with a good name] could go out together, but they would also create a third alter-ego for Shallan (beacuse they wouldn't want the ghostbloods to recognize Veil) so that they could sneak out in the streets together.

Now I really want to know if burning copper affects lightweaving at all... Can Vin see through lightweaving if she is burning copper? or maybe if she is burning tin? hmmm.... Also, if Shallan weaves a disguise for another Radiant, can they maintain it with their stormlight even if they aren't a light weaver?

Rithmatics: Part 4, obtuse triangles

In the previous posts we have addressed all acute and right triangles.  In this post, we look at what happens if the triangle is obtuse.

Obtuse triangles and the 9-Point Circle Construction

In an obtuse triangle, two of the altitudes fall outside of the triangle. This appears to be a problem, but we can work around it.  The 9 point circle construction we have been using so far is the special case of a more general 9 point conic construction that starts with 4 points.  This more general construction produces a circle whenever the 4 points are the three vertices of a triangle and its orthocenter (the point where the three altitudes intersect).  To find the orthocenter of an obtuse triangle we have to extend the altitudes to find where they intersect outside of the triangle.  We then use the three midpoints of the sides of the triangle, the three points where the altitudes intersect the opposite side (or side extension) and the midpoints of the segments connecting the orthocenter to the three vertices of the triangle.  As you can see in the diagram below, this ends up being the same triangle you would get from considering the acute triangle formed by the orthocenter and acute vertices of the original triangle.  This means that obtuse triangles can give us a different perspective on our circles, but will not produce any new patterns we couldn't get using acute triangles.  The advanced rithmatic theorist should be aware of this but for basic rithmatics it is fine to ignore obtuse triangles.

Literary Hub

The Brooklyn Public Library is giving eCards to teens nationwide to challenge book bans.

Like we needed another reason to love libraries: with book bans ramping up in school systems around the country, the Brooklyn Public Library

Right now, and for a “limited time,” anyone in the United States between the age of 13 and 21 can apply for a free Brooklyn Public Library eCard, which gives access to 350,000 eBooks, 200,000 audiobooks, and online databases.

Teens who want to apply for the free eCard can send an email to BooksUnbanned@bklynlibrary.org or a message to @bklynfuture on Instagram.

I sat down to work on the “Sh is for Shalebark” page and got the basic layout and text done. Then I started contemplating which kind of shalebark I wanted to draw.  I’m bad at decisions, so you get this instead... If you want to know more about Shalebark, the Coppermind page is good :-) 

(Probably Crazy) Nightblood Theory

So, I just had a probably crazy idea.  

What if Nightblood isn't actually completely native to Nalthis? What if Nale is bringing it back home when he gives it to Szeth? Nightblood could have been a Rosharian Shardblade (Szeth doesn't seem to question it being a shardblade) that ended up on Nalthis. Then when Vashar and Shashara awakened it, the process roused the dead/trapped spren in the shardblade.  From what we have seen,  spren require an active bond with a human to remain sentient in the physical realm.  Awakening would interact strangely with this resulting in the spren needing a steady supply of breath to remain active.  This could provide an explanation for why it sucks the breath out of people (something that is never really explained in Warbreaker). 

Nightblood's inability to fully understand what evil is and place it in a human context runs reasonably parallel to Pattern and Syl's attempts to understand the more abstract concepts of the human world.  In Nightblood's case, the spren is still trapped in the sword and since it doesn't have a proper bond with a person, it is even harder for it to learn, so it can't progress as well or as quickly as Pattern and Syl.

The more I think about this the better it is working...

Oathbringer Speculation: Timbre

The descriptions of Timbre would fit with the name “lightspren”. We know that she communicates with Venli by pulsing to different rhythms. During the first shadesmar boat trip, Shallan speculates that the Reachers/lightspresn are using vibrations (ie pulses) to communicate.

This suggests that Timbre is a Reacher, but I suspect that she’s not just any Reacher. We meet Ico in Shadesmar and learn that his father is a deadeye and his daughter “ran off chasing stupid dreams”. Then Timbre tells Venli that her own grandfather was lost to human betrayal. Putting all of this together, I strongly suspect that Timbre is Ico’s daughter. I’m not sure what implications this will have for the future. But it’s a thing.

Citations: (Note: Page numbers come from the Kindle edition.)

What was that small spren that had crept out from beneath Eshonai’s corpse? It looked like a small ball of white fire; it gave off little rings of light and trailed a streak behind it. Like a comet. (pg 340) 

“The copper vibrates,” Shallan said. “And they keep touching it. I think they might be using it to communicate somehow.” (pg 931)

 “Wait!” Adolin said. “Ico, I saw something moving back there.” Ico locked the door and hung the keys on his belt. “My father.” “Your father?” Adolin said. “You keep your father locked up?” “Can’t stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere,” Ico said, eyes forward. (Pg 946)

Ico speaking:  “My daughter used to work there, before she ran off chasing stupid dreams.”  (Pg 948)

Timbre pulsed to Irritation, then the Lost. “That many? I had no idea the human betrayal had cost so many of your people’s lives. And your own grandfather?” (pg 1196)

Pixely critters from hanging out in the Steel Ministry on iscribble.

Last Chance to Pledge for Full Negative Book

Friends. Readers. Fellow nerds with impeccable taste. We are officially in the home stretch. The final 24 hours. The last lap. The dramatic climax of the movie where everything explodes in slow motion and the music swells and someone says something heroic right before punching a fascist in the face. (Okay, that last bit’s just wishful thinking, but after the week we’ve all had, I think we…

Last Chance to Pledge for Full Negative Book

On Shardblades and Horcruxes

I'm working on a longer SA/HP story, but this notion got into my head.  It won't fit in the larger story, but it also won't leave me alone:

In the Harry Potter universe Kaladin finds out about horcruxes when Syl passes through an object without appearing to harm it (maybe he is going on a rampage in the room of requirement which gave him things that he could destroy to relieve stress and he comes across the diadem?).  When Shardblades pierce living things, they kill or cut off the soul rather than harming the physical shell, so it stands to reason that a shardblade passing through a horcrux would destroy the soul piece instead of the object.  He eventually learns about the horcrux in Harry and has Syl manifest as a scalpel so he can remove the soul piece from Harry's scar.