Lightning

I sent the email, and I've been waiting about a month. But given that I waited about 2 years before getting Dragonsteel from BYU library, I suppose I can wait a bit longer.

I'm pretty sure that feruchemy would be the best option for me. But that's because my wife would be a forger. She would have stamps that make my metalminds become as if I had been filling them for the past year. And even if the stamps wouldn't stick for long, I could pull out the attribute and then stick it in the reverted metalmind. I could have instant super health, super intelligence, super luck.

Regarding the timeline: CHAOS (15 OCTOBER 2008) When did Preservation decide to imprison Ruin in the Well? No need to be specific, I should think. A simple "Near Alendi's time" or "Way before Alendi's time" would suffice, or whichever time of reference you want to use. Also, this one is not a question, but nice Hoid reference in there. I especially like it how the Ars Arcanum refers to Slowswift as "bears a striking resemblance to a well-known storyteller." I'm on to you... BRANDON SANDERSON (15 OCTOBER 2008)Way before Alendi's time. Hence the need for the prophecies. But Ruin managed to corrupt them. The following also may be useful: KAIMIPONO (16 OCTOBER 2008)What was Vin supposed to do at the end of Well of Ascension? How exactly did not-using the power, end up releasing Ruin? I still don't get how that all worked. Can you explain it? BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER 2008) What was she supposed to do? Well, this is difficult to answer, since the prophecies have been changed and shifted so much. Originally, the prophesies intended for a person to go take the power every thousand years and become a protector of mankind for a period of time. Someone to keep an eye on Ruin in Preservation's absence and watch over the world as he would have done. Imagine an avatar who arrives every thousand years and lives for their lifetime blessing the people with the power of Preservation, renewing Ruin's prison, and generally being a force for protection. (Note that Ruin wouldn't have gotten out if the prison wasn't renewed, he'd simply have been able to touch the world a little bit more.) Obviously, it changed a LOT during the years that Ruin was playing with things. What should she have done? Well, Ruin's release was inevitable. Even if she hadn't let him go, the world would have 'wound down' eventually. The ashfalls would have grown worse over the centuries, and the next buildup of the Well might not have come in time for them to do anything. Or, perhaps, mankind would have found a way to adapt. But Ruin was going to get himself out eventually, so the choice Vin made was all right. There weren't really any good choices at this point. She could have decided to take the power and become a 'good' Lord Ruler, trying to keep the world from falling apart. Of course, she would have had to make herself immortal with Hemalurgy to make that work right. And since she was already tainted, chances are good she wouldn't have ended up any better than the Lord Ruler himself.

We already have clues that they are doing more than that.

Q: What's brown and sticky? A: A stick.

Remember that Sazed at one point also had his metalminds embedded in his body (during his fight with Marsh). It wouldn't be too hard to put that much atium in your body. Just coat your skull, or something like that. It would only take the same amount of atium as in the bracers the Lord Ruler actually wore, so perhaps enough to cover a few bones.

TheArcanist, Good ideas, but I don't think it works. 1. He could have just as easily coated part of his skeleton with atium (kind of like wolverine), and not only would allomancers be unable to remove the metal, but they wouldn't even know he had it! 2. This would also have allowed himself to use feruchemy since he is touching the metal, without the drawback of opening his mind to Ruin's influence. You are right about the upper arms being bind points for bronze. I've got nothing there either (so I'll give you a rep point).

Thanks! Now, my follow-up question: Why do you believe Harmony has no inherent intent? Why wouldn't the merging of the shards also merge their intents? (Did Adonalsium have multiple-personalities?) When looking at Roshar, it appears that some of the splintering of Honor has also splintered the intent: some are honorable with respect to "justice" some are honorable with respect to "oath-keeping" etc...

That was my impression as well Observer, but apparently king of nowhere had a different theory-- I'd like to see his reasoning.

I agree with many here that what happened in my dream probably won't happen in-book in the Cosmere. I shared my dream only because I thought it was an interesting thought, and I'm glad for the comments people have given. One thing "king of nowhere" said made me question one of my assumptions. Do we know that the two shards that Sazed picked up really have been merged into a single shard? If so, why would Sazed find it difficult to act? Wouldn't he want to follow the new intent inherent in the new shard (whatever that is)?

So apparently . I find this strange given that the Lord Ruler was effectively immortal anyway . Why would he do that to himself? But then I realized this may be the entirely wrong question.

Which order was it that survived again? That might be a clue.

While I like the rampant theories given so far, I think there may be a much simpler explanation (which I admit is just another rampant theory). Supposing, for a moment, we didn't have the quotation from the diagram, and we didn't have our knowledge about the nature of the spren, what would we think would be the reason for the oath-breaking? The most natural thing that comes to my mind is that the Knights Radiant have seen their beloved leaders apparently (but according to Brandon, not technically) break the oathpact. They would no longer want to follow such leaders, or be a part of any organization linked to them. In Dalinar's vision the reason they give is "The Night of Sorrows will come, and the True Desolation. The Everstorm." They have lost hope for mankind. That said, can we now merge this idea with what we really DO know about the nature of the spren, and also with the diagram quote? I believe we can. 1. We know that spren die when their bonded humans break their oaths. Is it possible that the knights had sworn oaths of loyalty to the Heralds, which were a part of their Nahel bond? Thus they were unable to keep those oaths of loyalty while simultaneously being honorable. 2. If so, how would this mix with Taravangian having a secret that could destroy the new knights? Perhaps that secret is he merely needs to have them swear contradictory oaths, and then their spren naturally *must* perish. 3. If this is what did happen, it makes sense that the Radiants would abandon their weapons and armor. They wouldn't want to hear the screams of their dead spren every time they called upon their sword. We know from Dalinar's vision that the spren had not yet died (at least, I imagine that was what the blue glow meant), but they might have seen the effects start to take place (just as it took Syl a while to regress when Khaladin started breaking his oaths). There are of course holes with this theory (possibly patchable). One data point which can either blast this theory out of the water or partially confirm it, is that (if I remember correctly) one of the orders of the Radiants never did not break their oaths. Was that the order connected to Taln?

That is a definite possibility. Indeed, I hadn't even thought about how

This quote from Brandon seems to suggest that Hoid was up to good when he was going to meet with Vin.

I thought at least one person should see if figgldygrak was just the result of a straightforward letter-for-letter cipher swap. So, plugging it into my friends decoder, only one word pops out!! So clearly this means...um...hair?

RShara, that sounds reasonable. And Aleksiel, I think you are correct! Note that the rattle says "two dead men" and we know Shallan's a woman, so that makes me think we shouldn't look at the death rattles too literally. Which in turn makes me wonder what good it will do Taravangian to keep track of the rattles. If they are not completely accurate, how can they be useful to him?

Recently someone posted that Brandon has said that Sazed finds it difficult to do much because of the opposite natures of the two shards he possesses. Another thought I've had recently was wondering why Preservation was not just as evil as Ruin, because the desire to keep things exactly the way they are is no better than wanting to break them down into their components. I guess these two idea started floating in my brain last night because I had a really weird dream where Sazed started being corrupted by the two intents of the shards he possesses. Basically it broke his mind, because he wanted to both keep things preserved but also ruin them completely. Instead of being Harmony he changed his name to Discord. I woke up thinking "poor Sazed".

I like that idea too, but how is Elhokar the one who killed Khaladin's promises? Khaladin had made no promises before Tien was sent to war. While the king is partially to blame for Tien being sent to the front, I don't see how he is to blame for Khaladin's failed promise to protect him. Perhaps obliquely Elhokar is to blame for Sadeas's behavior to the bridgemen (in that Elhokar did not rein Sadeas in); and he is directly responsible for overreacting to Khaladin's call to face Amaram. But again, I don't see how this makes Elhokar the one who killed Khaladin's promises. Maybe there is something else? Hmmm....

I went and found it. I must have been quite tired when I finally got to that part (I didn't even remember it at all!). Thanks!

Why do people keep saying that Kaladin is now a light-eyes? I thought that he kept his dark eyes, even though he now has a shardblade, because it wasn't one of the dead blades.

Here is the quote I was looking for: This seems to suggest that the Stormfather is bound by certain laws, which may be why he accepted Dalinar's oaths even though he didn't want to bond. A shadow true, but perhaps with the potential to become more?

Good points. I'll have to look it up when I get back, but my impression was that the Stormfather himself does say something to Dalinar (near the end of the book) about being what is left of Honor who died.