Wrath

I suspect that something similar to what you're suggesting is possible. Rather than practical invisibility, it seems like a Connector could make themselves seem "ordinary" to an onlooker. For example if someone has been given a description of you and is keeping an eye out for you, it might reduce the chances of them recognising you. Or if it can't do that, then you could perhaps use a little misdirection to help it along - presented with two things happening at the same time a person will usually find their attention drawn to the more interesting.

Actually if you had a pair of Connectors you could have fun manipulating attention. One person taps their reserve and the other fills it and they could probably slip past just about anyone.

My personal theory is that Szeth became Truthless as a result of being in contact with a Herald. The Herald told him some sort of big truth like "Hey, the Knights Radiant are returning" or "Be careful or the Everstorm will return" and when Szeth tried to pass the information on he was told that it was a lie and made Truthless. That's why he's so angry in WoR when Kaladin's existence calls into question whether he deserved to be made Truthless or not.

Right, right, I was getting mixed up about who drew the lines. Thanks for the correction. But still Joel was the one making the strategy for the fight, so Melody's drawings shouldn't have had the same intent given that wasn't explaining it to her.

Intent is definitely a factor of some sort and it's definitely not understood in-world. Or at least not by your lay-person or student Rithmatist. Joel tells Melody that according to Rithmatic theory her chalklings should not work the way they do. If a human knows how it works then their information is not available to Joel or Melody in the first book.

There's also the thing about how Melody's whole family are Rithmatists even though that's supposed to be impossible too.

I think it's interesting that a Rithmatist can activate the drawings of a non-Rithmatist. Assuming that intent is a factor (and Melody's chalklings certainly suggest that it is), does that mean that when Joel draws a line he's imprinting it with his intent even though he's a non-Rithmatist?

Or you have preset chalklings worth a certain amount. You can have chalkling X that looks like a unicorn and has so many hit points, attack points, etc. and you just select that one to draw and it draws it automatically.

What I would do would be to have a "Chalkling Draw" mode where you are free to draw your own chalklings, which are then evaluated based on the number of lines used, etc, and you are allowed to assign stat values/behaviours. Probably just a simple version with general classes (ie, Attacker, Defender, etc).

Then you have a character who is allowed to "equip" a certain number of chalklings, including the default options, the ones you've drawn and ones you've downloaded (from other people and also premium chalklings for monetisation).

Anyone who wanted to put time into making cool chalklings would be free to do so without punishing people (like me) who suck at art.

If memory serves, don't the teachers realise at the end that Melody and Joel are fighting rather than duelling? I know someone at some point (Fitch, I expect) thinks about how Nalizar's offensive-oriented teachings are great for duels and terrible for actually fighting in Nebrask.

So working together, focusing on defence and being careful and strategic with your attacks are probably all things that Rithmatists in actual combat would use.

I wouldn't be surprised if the only ones who can observe Calamity's form are Epics. Note that in the above quote Regalia only mentions herself, Prof and Lincoln looking at him even though Tia was with them - and in fact was the one who worked at NASA and therefore would have been the one most likely to take part in astronomy.

Sparks. I genuinely thought of this last night but was too tired to write it up. Then I forgot about it till now, at which point I found this topic of yours.

 

It definitely makes sense. At the time of reading I thought that David's research was simply wrong, but it makes an equal amount of sense that Regalia helped him to remove his limitation. One wonders whether Sourcefield and Instabam were paid by having their limitations removed.

 

I also wonder how long Regalia's been able to enhance Epics. Has she been using enhanced Epics as her agents outside her projection range for years now? What if there are hundreds of Epics throughout the Fractured States and beyond, with their original limitations removed after performing special operations for her?

I would expect that the origin of all of Regalia's strange behaviour (for an Epic) is when she learned she was dying. She might have had the knowledge of how to enhance/create Epics for years but the important thing is when her motivation changed. She had no need to enhance people like Mitosis and Obliteration until she had something she wanted beyond a dominion.

I think he's killing potential Knights Radiant not because of crimes they may have committed in the past but because of their potential to break laws in the future - specifically, the oaths. If breaking a KR oath is the worst crime you can commit then it would be a twisted sort of justice to kill people before they get the chance to break them.

I doubt a weakness actually disappears once it's established. Edmund thought his weakness was dogs because he was - presumably - having nightmares about them, but at some point overcame his fear. But the key thing, I think, is that Edmund never actually knew what his weakness was for sure - meaning he didn't actually test it at any point, which is unsurprising given that he's basically lived in a box for years.

So Edmund's thought process was: I'm having nightmares about dogs > that must be my weakness; I stopped having nightmares about dogs > that must not have been my weakness. But Edmund doesn't have any sort of special insight into how Epics work.

After all, Megan stopped being corrupted by her powers after conquering her fear (or at least conquering her fear enabled her to overcome the corruption) but didn't lose her powers. The powers, corruption, weakness and fear are all related but aren't necessarily dependant on each other.

Besides, if conquering your fear removed your weakness, that would make some Epics literally invincible. Imagine a Steelheart without a weakness.

Well his main power - if he has one - would seem to be to grow plants. He has control over the type of plants, even making them do otherwise impossible things like glow or send messages, and he used them to shore up the buildings in Babylar.

Or perhaps he has the power to add properties to things - he can add a property to paint that makes it glow or a property to water to make it warm.

Or maybe his power has to do with him being in a coma and it's about sustaining life. Instead of creating things his powers have changed circumstances in order to maintain the existing order. No more electric lighting? Make paint glow! City flooded? Heat that water up! Food running low? Fruit for everyone!

Or perhaps his powers are centred around trying to call for help. He was communicating through the fortune cookies, obviously, but he also told David to "Follow the music" which could mean that he was making radios work because it would enable someone to track his location.

I'm just wondering if Tia may be the trigger for Prof's weakness somehow. We know that they used to date in the past at the very least. It could be that his weakness has something to do with failing to protect someone he cares about (stemming from the deaths of his students), and from what I've seen Tia would be the only living character to qualify as I don't feel that Prof has the same connection with the other members of the Reckoners. In order to prevent his weakness from being taken advantage of, Prof would kidnap Tia and squirrel her away somewhere safe. Then again, I may be completely nuts, but that's my theory.

Well Tia has to be taken off the table at the beginning of Calamity because David now understands how Epic weaknesses work, which means all he has to do with Prof Phaedrus is figure out what he's afraid of... which Tia would likely know. It's too easy that way, so she most likely appear until the end of the book. Perhaps David will have to track down the loreists to try to get their help instead.

Nice connection. I'd forgotten about that.

I still think he became an Epic and I'm going to ignore the whole gifting thing. I don't think it would have been what Regalia was expecting though. His nickname is now Steelslayer and I think the theme might revolve around that. At the beginning of chapter 42;

When I was listening to the book I totally thought David was going to lift that bridge out of the water with magnetic powers.

Actually, he does have a constructive power.  There are tons of people working on better ways to harvest the power of the sun to generate electricity.  If he gifted his power to people (and I still believe that every epic has the ability to gift) then they could come home at the end of a day working in the sun and heat up some water to turn a turbine.  I'm curious as to how efficiently he collects light.

There's also the opposite - pulling heat out of things to cool them. Very useful, especially in a world where electricity is no longer guaranteed.

I think Obliteration has moved from one type of insanity to another and I'm very interested in what caused him to do so, but I wouldn't ever call him sane. Still it's an interesting point.

I don't think Regalia knew that David was afraid of water. She wanted him to get water powers in honor of Waterlog, the Epic killed to make the spyril, which Regalia has seen David use. It's something she requested Calamity, not something she deduced. From what we've seen so far, the nature of an Epic's power does not necessarily relate to his weakness.

When she said "I've been assured that they will be fitting" (or something along those lines) I figured that rather than water powers David was going to be given powers relating to his nickname of Steelslayer. At the time I thought he was going to get the power to control metal and raise the bridge out of the water or something.

It's interesting that Steelheart called Prof "Little Epic" and now he's turning out to potentially be even more powerful. I suspect he still has powers we don't know about, and that we may not even know what sort of Epic he really is - as David suggested when he was presented with the possibility that Prof also had enhanced physical abilities.

Actually the reason for Feruchemy "splitting" and the emergence of Ferrings is because of the genes for Feruchemy mixing with those for Allomancy.  In the trilogy Rashek has been trying to breed Feruchemy out of the Terris population for a thousand years (while also keeping the Terris genepool separate) and there are still only full Feruchemists, no Ferrings.  We have no indication that Feruchemists got weaker as time went on, that I can recall.

But remember that while that was the Lord Ruler's goal the Feruchemists were actually taking advantage of the breeding programme to ensure that Feruchemy remained strong. The female Feruchemist Sazed was in love with, she was a mother what.. seventeen times over? And she was considered a hero for her part in keeping Feruchemy alive.

He was just an ordinary Feruchemist. He was Terris, remember?

Yeah, but Feruchemical powers have dwindled over time just like Allomantic powers. That's why both Mistborns and full Feruchemists are extinct in the modern era. So if Mistborns got less powerful between the time when the original nobles ate Lerasium and Vin's era then it follows that Feruchemists may also have become less powerful.

It's not just that those who ate Lerasium were more powerful than natural Mistborns, because Vin was a throwback who was more powerful than the other Mistborns of her time even when she wasn't drawing on the mists.

Only just now realizing how much of a BAMF the Lord Ruler was....

Remember he was also a more powerful Mistborn than most since he got his powers direct from the source like Elend rather than dwindled through the generations. Probably a more powerful Feruchemist in the same way.

My theory is that Szeth received a warning about the coming Desolation from a Herald, along with his Honourblade, but when he passed it on to the Stone Shamans they declared him Truthless instead of listening.

Parshendi forms existed before Honor,Cultivation,or Odium came to roshar. This very likely means that Parshendi forms are actually connected to Adonalsium magic sytem.Odium just hijacked it by introducing his own spren into the system.

 

As for Cultivation magic system-I have no idea.Random guess is that it turns out to be like a Pokemon-like system with Spren instead of Pokemon.

What's your source for the Listener forms existing before Cultivation came to Roshar? The Listeners themselves existed, but there's WoB implying that both Cultivation and Odium have meddled with them while Honour has not.

We'll I haven't seen that one but I know that an Aluminium Savant could conceivably cleanse themselves of Investiture, so I assume a Chromium Savant could do it for someone else.

I am absolutely rock-solid certain that the Listeners are not of Odium.

 

The aspect of the Voidbringers that are of Odium are the Spren they have bonded.

 

My personal pet theory is that the Voidbringers are either of Adonalsium or come from even further back.

There's a WoB where someone asked if the Listeners were of Honour, Cultivation or Odium. The answer was "No" for Honour and "Not originally" for Cultivation and Odium.

Isnt it obvious? THE STICK!

We'd better hope that Shallan isn't the other champion, then.