Cactuschef

For some reason I had a similar problem with the skaa in mistborn. i don't know if it was something I remembered or maybe I was reading something else at the time and mixed it up or what, but for whatever reason I initially thought the skaa were some kind of animal-people and not just another race of humans.

how bout that. still, I think it makes more sense and is more consistent that a cognitive entity was involved. It seems like, if large aggregations of investiture were able to engender intelligence in inanimate objects, you'd see some kind of sliding scale, with moderate amounts of investiture creating ones that were clever or animal-like but not human-level. but so far there's just mindlessly animated automatons, and one sword capable of speech. human(oids) can be sapient, things that were some part of adonalsium can too, perhaps animals if the right form of magic was applied, but having non-living materials being capable of that level of thought just because you crammed enough energy into them just doesn't seem like something you'd get in a sanderson-type magic system.

it's all the years of watching star trek where they used 'sentient life' to mean 'something with a human-like capacity to think and reason'. and yeah, obviously we've got objects like Stick or the boat that are by the definition of the word "sentient", but I'm referring to something you could call a 'person' like syl or a human or nightblood, capable of carrying on conversation and having opinions and pondering ideas and so forth. brandon notes the distinction with 'sapience' in the quote. also I don't see how honorblades could be considered shardblades, honorblades existed first, and are fundamentally different. shardblades are the result of spren mimicing the properties of honorblades.

I see, although I don't think either of those really apply to what I'm talking about (raw investiture giving an inanimate object sentience). the first is about giving intelligence to something that's already alive, and the second is takling about the splinters of a shard gaining sentience which we've already seen with spren and seons. although after some digging, I think nightblood likely does have a bond, although a strange one, since I stumbled across a quote saying his telepathy required a bond. perhaps there are other types of 'spren' type bonds than the nahel bond (or nightblood's could be a unique aberation). Another couple quotes that make me think nightblood has to have a spren/splinter type entity involved; http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kw=nightblood#32 and #34, i dont know how to link to them directly from a search page since all the blades we know are either an honorblade, with no spren, or a shardblade, with a spren, living or dead, it seems odd that he'd say that nightblood is exactly the same thing as shardblade if no spren(or at least spren-like splinter/cognitive entity) was involved, since being spren-based is a defining characteristic of a shardblade. so i'm sticking with the theory that when nightblood was created a spren or similar entity was inadvertently involved (drawn in by the mass amounts of investiture involved even), although likely altered significantly in the process of having a Command issued to it

the spark of life itself is a type of investiture, seperate from breath. it's quite possible to be completely without breath but still alive and sentient.

can you point to where? near as I can tell everything sentient we've seen has some form of 'soul' (either it's a person or a fragment of adonalsium), with nightblood and the returned being the only 'exceptions' i can think of in that we haven't been told specifically whether a person's soul/a cognitive entity is involved. are there any examples of a definitely inanimate object gaining sentience via raw investiture?

I see no reason why spren couldn't worldhop, if humans can do it, one would assume creatures indigineous to the cognitive realm could as well. and perhaps I shouldn't have specified just spren, but some kind of splinter, like a spren or seon. I just think it makes more sense that a cognitive entity was inexplicably drawn in during the process (likely BECAUSE of the huge amount of investiture involved), rather than an intelligence simply spontaneously generating out of raw power. If that were the case, I'd assume you'd see a sliding scale in objects with breath depending on how much was used; i.e. just a bit gives you the kind we see, mindless automatons capable of carrying out only one order, but if you invested more you'd get something akin to an animal intelligence, capable of rudimentary independant function, with something like nightblood at the top, but all you see is mindless automaton and sentient with no in-between. again the part that makes this idea seem to fit the most for me is his memory issues, which we see with bond-less spren, or seons whose human is... its been too long since i read elantris but the way the plagued elantrians get that turn their seon mindless. nightblood remembers his creation when he was crammed full of an insane amount of investiture, but lacking a human bond he can't keep a working memory going forward. I imagine it as sort of the reverse equivalent of kaladin ripping that last bit of investiture through syl when he fell into the chasm, 'killing' her, this well of investiture in nightblood is what keeps him 'alive'. (and just as she wasn't completely dead by virtue of a broken/damaged bond, neither is he fully alive without one) also might even explain why nightblood feeds on breaths when in use, although that's just spitballing

this analogy doesn't work though, because x-rays are still part of the physical world. the cognitive realm is another dimension of reality, not an invisible part the physical world.

I think Vin automatically wins by a landslide, even against all the other three. I see it going like this; Shallan immediately hides herself somewhere and creates whatever illusions she can to distract the opponents. She'd be absolutely worthless in a fight, shardblade or no. Vin takes the fight airborne which effectively eliminates Wayne, whom she can come back and slaughter with ease after Kaladin's dealt with. Now Vin is free to shred Kaladin with coins. Unless she really screws up, there's no way he can even get near her. It'd be borderline impossible for him to dodge the speed of coinshots even at a good range, and the closer he is the harder it gets. Consequently if he ever gets too close Vin just sprays him with coins and then pushes herself off the ones that hit to widen the gap. So he can't touch her. She can also use blasts of emotional allomancy to screw with his emotions. Make him depressed, enraged, hopeless, just go to town on his already messed up psyche, and he's sure to get sloppy. Eventually either just wear him down, or get in a killing shot. It obviously hasn't been established in the books, but I'm going to assume that if she blows his brain or heart out with a coin or barrage of coins he dies before it heals, no matter how much Light he's got. Really it just comes down to the fact that Vin gets projectiles and Kaladin can't get in striking distance of her. It becomes an even easier win assuming she's allowed Duralumin (throw a couple big sacks of coins and duralumin push, Kaladin is now a pile of giblets), and an instant win if she's got atium. Shallan and Wayne don't even factor into the fight really.

I think Nightblood IS a spren blade, but has various idosyncrasies because of the way he was created. I recall someone (probably Vasher) saying that creating it shouldn't even have worked or that they didn't know why it did, something of that nature, which suggest to me that a spren was involved, which explains his sentience. So far we've never seen anything sentient created with investiture alone, you need a soul of some kind to start with, or you just get an animated object or corpse (the only grey area so far being the returned as far as I recall but I'd bank on them either being based off the original person's soul or some other pre-existing intelligence, not just investiture becoming a person). it also fits with his limited memory, because he lacks a proper bond with a human, the same way syl or pattern lose their memories without the bond or a weak bond. I think the differences in the way nightblood works in warbreaker is partially because of his unique method of creation, but also because he's being fuelled by breath rather than stormlight. it seems likely that an invested being's abilities would behave differently when fueled by a different type of investiture. and I doubt nightblood would be on roshar if he couldn't run on stormlight, because otherwise he'd be less a weapon than a sword-shaped suicide booth, since no one (local) has breath.

Steelheart would almost certainly come out best. I personally would much rather have mistborn or stormlight, but as we've all probably seen with book adaptations, the 'bigger' a setting is, the worse it fairs as a movie adaptation. Getting the audience to understand allomancy without tons of sort of forced exposition is gonna be really difficult. it's fine in book form because you can have long conversations, but you've got much less time on screen. it's easy to tell the reader that only vin can see her steelpush/ironpull lines, but would get really confusing and possibly silly looking when you've got multiple coinshots/mistborn onscreen, or if you didn't show them alot of your average moviegoers are going to think it's just telekinesis or that she can fly. and that's just one pairing, a slew of others pop up for the rest, emotional allomancy in particular. then there's the characters. you've got 8 or 9 central characters, the obligators, the steel ministry, the skaa, the skaa rebellion, the nobility, and the lord ruler to familiarize your audience with. this isn't to say it can't be done well, just that it's very large scope and would be very easy to screw up badly. steelheart on the other hand is much more compact. a smaller group of main characters, only a couple 'factions' (pretty much just downtrodden humans and collaborator humans), and epics. likewise the powers are much simpler and very easy to show exactly what they're doing in a visual medium. It's not that I want the simpler story over the more complicated one. It's just that this is the way things tend to go with movie adaptations. look at lord of the rings for example. it's very simple as fantasy series go, was extremely well known, and had a budget of like 300 million, and they still ended up cutting and changing a good chunk of the source material. so when a 'dream project' like that goes "pretty well", I'd be really worried about a series that's extremely complex, not nearly as well known, and unlikely to get that kind of money put into it. it'd be all too easy to do poorly. or worse yet they might butcher the source material entirely. anyone watching game of thrones at the moment is probably experiencing this on multiple fronts (main character who's supposed to undergoing an arc that opens his eyes to the horrors of war and learning to become a leader is instead having wacky adventures with his wise-cracking sidekick with terribly choreographed fight scenes). I can all too easily imagine 'stormlight archive by HBO' where they cut the veil subplot to blow up a shallan love triangle and also make sure that tons of scenes needlessly take place in a camp brothel so they can have boobs onscreen for no reason. so i'm a cynical bastard, and I say keep it simple stupid as far as the big (or little) screen goes for book adaptations. also while i'd prefer steelheart, since no one's mentioned it, I think rithmatist would also make a pretty cool movie.

I've got it. Sticks only like certain colors of stormlight.

My guess has been that the cryptics were somehow observing/approaching Elhokar, the way they did Shallan, but lacking her specific artistic abilities (the way she saw them by taking memories and drawing them), he ended up seeing them in a different way. But because he's bound a dead-spren shardblade, they're repelled (we've already seen how strongly live spren and shardblades don't mix) and all that gets through is glimpses and whispers. I just assumed that after trying futily for awhile and an honorspren showing up, the cryptics stopped trying.

God help the voidbringers if anyone turns their spren into a tiny net