Happy Halloween!

Hello tumblr Cosmere fandom!

This last weekend was the MIT mystery hunt and this got me thinking.  Branderson's world building has given us all sorts of lovely systems that could be used as the basis for puzzle-hunt style puzzles.  Are there other puzzle hunt type people around the tumblr cosmere fandom?  If I were to actually turn one/some of the puzzle ideas floating around my head into reality, would there be people interested in poking at it/them?

J is for Jella tree.

"The basin was fairly well sheltered, the slopes covered in Jella trees.  Their strong branches grew spindly leaves – long spikes of pink, yellow and orange, so the trees looked like explosions of color. Shallan had read in one of her father's books that the trees drew in crem, the used it to make their wood hard, like rock." … "Jella trees here rose high, their hardened trunks colored the light brown of crem. The needles sprouted like a thousand tongues of fire from each limb, though the nearest ones pulled in as she approached." From Ch 45 of Words of Radiance

Welcome to the 2015 Cross Cosmere Rithmatics Olympiad!

The other night in FNCC I brought up the question of what would happen if someone drew a chasmfiend chalkling.  Things snowballed from there and dm-mo, ElderDragonMystic and I got carried away.  As a result, our friends from across the Cosmere are gathering to compete in games derived from one of Sanderson’s non-Cosmere magic systems.

Welcome to the 2015 Cross Cosmere Rithmatics Olympiad!  Teams are gathering from across the Cosmere to compete in an exciting assortment of rithmatic events! The games will be kicking off soon and we here at the Cosmere Chronicle will follow the action when they do, but in the mean time let’s introduce the teams.  

Roshar is fielding three teams this year.  

The first is their traditional team from the Alethkar Academy of Rithmatics.  This team’s roster is formed of brothers Adolin and Renarin Kholin, their cousin Elhokar Kholin, and Shallan Davar, a young woman who hails from Jah Keved.  As expected, these four all have solid groundings in classical rithmatics and should be a force to reckon with.  Rumor has it that there is some dissension in the group though and that they don’t always work particularly well as a team. It will be interesting to watch them and see how this plays out

The other two teams are a ragtag bunch known only as Bridge 4 that are not associated with the Alethkar Academy.  This motley crew appears to bring together students from nearly all regions of Roshar and has divided itself into a Division 1 and a Division 2 team. The senior team consists of Kaladin “Stormblessed”, Moash, Teft and Sigzil.  The junior team is comprised of Lopen, Rysn, Tien, Lift and Syl and coached by Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor “Rock” of the Unkalaki.  We know very little about the rithmatic background of any of these competitors, but if what we have seen in the practice fields is any indication, they could shake things up - they appear to be bringing a style unlike anything we have seen before.

Scadrial is fielding two teams, one each for Division 1 and Division 2.

Scadrial’s senior team should look familiar to anyone who follows Intra-Cosmere Rithmatics.  It is, as expected, comprised of husband and wife team Elend and Vin Venture as well as The Survivors, Kelsier and Spook.  In case you don’t  usually follow ICR, Scadrial rithmatics is known for working in pairs and they should help make the pairs dueling exciting to watch.  The Ventures work seamlessly together while Kelsier and Spook always seem to be able to recover no matter what mess of a situation they find themselves in.

Oddly enough, Scadrial’s division 2 team has an odd number of competitors: the established duo Wax Ladrian and Wayne and newcomer Marasi Colms.  We caught Marasi to ask her how it is working in rithmatics on Scadrial without a partner. She informed us very matter of factly that she simply hasn’t found the right partner yet, but that there was no way she was going to let that cause her to miss the opportunity to come to the games this year.  Based on the rest of our conversation, we expect her to hold her own in the theory competition.

Sel is also fielding a team for each division.

To form its senior team, Sel held a local preliminary competition where it ended up choosing a pair each from two very different parts of the planet.  It is comprised of Sarene, Hrathen, Shai and Gaotona.  It will be interesting to see how the four members blend their styles for the team portions of the games, but they all seem quite focused and determined to win.  One thing is certain - we can always expect precision from Sel rithmatics.

Sel’s division 2 team is possibly the most unusual team - its captain, Raoden, isn’t actually a Rithmatist!  When we found Raoden to ask about this, he calmly reminded us that one doesn’t have to be a Rithmatist to be a scholar of rithmatic theory. His team is rounded out by a particularly laid back young man named Galladon and an enthusiastic but clearly intelligent girl named Kaise who is, we believe, this year’s youngest competitor.  

Political unrest on Nalthis has disrupted its rithmatics program, so it has only sent one team this year.  Veteran Vasher is back and should be a powerhouse in any event he competes in,  though rumors suggest that he may only be here for theory this year.  The team seems to be held together by the lovely princesses of Idris, Vivenna and Sisirinah.  It is rounded out by Siri’s quiet husband Susebron. Keep an eye on Nalthis if you are interested in chalklings.  No one is quite sure how they do it, but in the past we have seen chalklings from the Nalthiean competitors that seem almost sentient.

We here at the Cosmere Chronicle look forward to sharing the Cross Cosmere Rithmatics Olympiad with you in the coming days.  We will bring you the results from the events, analysis of different rithmatic styles, and stories from around Olympic Village.

MOAR CHALKLINGS

Oathbringer Speculation: Soulcasters

We know that people who consistently use soulcasters over a long period of time are...changed. My theory is that they are being slowly turned into spren and sucked into Shadesmar and further that this is the source of Syl’s comment about how the power coalesces slowly  and parts become sentient and a spren is born.

First off, let’s visit our friend Kaza in Interlude 4. We learn that she is slowly turning to smoke, but it seems to hold together well enough that she can wear a glove over her smoke fingers and still use her hand. She is forgetting the “ordinary passions of human life” and increasingly not needing to eat or drink. The she says that “I have begun to see the dark sky and the second sun, the creatures that lurk, hidden, around the cities of men.” It is clear that she is starting to see into Shadesmar and it isn’t too much of a stretch that in Shadesmar there might start also being evidence of her. The Aimian cook notes that she is “barely human anymore.” At the end of the interlude she chooses to “go with the smoke,” but the other times that she almost goes it sounds like she almost goes all the way into shadesmar and doesn’t come back, not that she almost turns into smoke in the physical realm and drifts off. Later in Celebrant (chapter 102) Kaladin finds himself in a tent with a “single bewildered spren made of smoke,” confirming that smoke spren are a thing.

In chapter 81 Kaladin meets a grain soulcaster and notes that “The woman had an inhuman look to her; she seemed to be growing vines under her skin, and they peeked out around her eyes, growing from the corners and spreading down her face like runners of ivy.” Then in Celebrant we meet spren that “were made entirely of vines, though they had crystal hands and wore human clothing.”

In chapter 105, we meet a soulcaster that makes stone and learn that his “skin beneath [his cloak] was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within.”   In Celebrant there “were other spren with skin like cracked stone, molten light shining from within.”

We don’t have a description of the Azish soulcaster that makes bronze, but it seems like a good bet that their description would match that of the Reachers, who “looked like humans with strange bronze skin—metallic, as if they were living statues.”

In Chapter 35 of Words of Radiance we meet a soulcaster that doesn’t quite fit any of the descriptions of spren that we meet in Celebrant, though she could potentially be in an earlier stage of the granite type: “Prolonged use of the Soulcaster had transformed the eyes so that they sparkled like gemstones themselves. The woman’s skin had hardened to something like stone, smooth, with fine cracks. It was as if the person were a living statue.”

We also hear about Honor and then the Stormfather making Honorspren, so soulcasters wouldn’t be the only way that sentient spren are formed, but I’m fairly convinced that it is at least one way that spren are born. 

For reference and as a side note, in Celebrant they meet Cryptics, Honorspren, Reachers (bronze), Cultivationspren (vines), Inkspren, the ones whose skin turns to ash, the glowing granite ones, the ones made of smoke and possibly also ones made of fog/mist, though I’m not completely convinced those aren’t the same as smoke. If the fog/mist ones are different from the smoke ones, then this gives us 9 different types of sentient spren to correspond to the 9 non-bondsmith orders of the Knights Radiant. 

Oathbringer thoughts: Eshonai

What if, just maybe, part of the point is that we are supposed to be angry and bitter about Eshonai’s death? Maybe, given what we know right now, it is supposed to come across as completely pointless. 

It seems like no one (except Timbre and sometimes Venli) cares. Eshonai’s death happens off screen and the only reason we get confirmation that she is dead is that Ulim guides Venli and Demid to her to retrieve the plate. We learned all the way back in WoK that scavenging from corpses goes against Listener culture, and yet here we are with Venli being forced to do so anyway. The only reason we even find Eshonai’s corpse is that Venli is being forced to do things that go against her culture. Eshonai is dead. Their culture is being erased. 

There are various parallels between the Listeners and the native peoples of the Americas. Far too often their plights are ignored. Indigenous women are murdered or go missing at disturbing rates and yet it almost never makes the news. Their deaths are horrible and pointless and it seems like no one cares. When they do get talked about it is almost always (at least from what I have seen) as an after thought. Much like Eshonai. Maybe that’s part of the point.

But you know what? Even with Eshonai dead, this isn’t the end of her story. Just because her death happened off screen doesn’t mean that will continue to be true. One of the next two books is going to give us Eshonai flashbacks. We are going to get to know her and her world better. And, I suspect, we are going to get to see that awful battle from her perspective and be with her as she falls into the chasm.  

Ulim says it looks like she drowned in the flood waters, but my guess is there is more going on. She had plate, a blade, and storm form. We know she was at least somewhat trained with the plate and blade. Kaladin and Shallan survived spending a high storm in the chasms when they were both a mess and Kaladin didn’t have his powers and Shallan was wary of hers. Eshonai should have had the tools to survive. I can imagine a heartwrenching scene coming where Eshonai knows that she could save herself using the power that she has in storm form, but fighting that power and rejecting it. Or Eshonai being given the chance during that first Everstorm to become a fused and choosing to die instead. Some kind of intense internal struggle where she makes the choice to die rather than give in to something she can’t accept. 

Her death will still be tragic. We can (maybe even should) still be angry that she died, but until we get her flashback chapters I’m going to cling to the hope that there is more going on than we currently know. 

I used fallenwithstyle's chart to knit myself a Pattern hat! The brown is KnitPicks City Tweed DK and the purple is KnitPicks Wool of the Andes sport. They were both sitting in my stash of yarn waiting to be right for something. I need to work on my consistency with keeping the floats loose enough in stranded knitting, but it isn't bad enough to be a problem.The hat also came out slightly longer than I usually prefer, but I'm super happy with it anyway :-). While I was knitting it, it occurred to me that there is potential for an amazing Pattern hat done with cables rather than colorwork. I'm not sure when I will get to it, but designing that pattern has gone in my "projects I will get to at some point" file. 

Sprenhead!

Here’s my finished Pattern hat! I’m really happy with how it came out not just as fanart but as a hat in general (and I said I didn’t need any more hats…).

I changed the chart sightly from the original version I posted, so here is the final version (it doesn’t include instructions for the flared brim or picot hem though, just the colorwork). 

Hi, I'm auditioning for the role of Spook, Survivor of the Flames, and I'll be singing "Village Lanterne" by Blackmore's Night.

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.

Inspired by a conversation with Ashiok in the chat :-)