The One Who Connects

The only problem with this is brought up in the first post of the topic Oversleep linked. I-10, Szeth (in Urithiru): I'm not going to dispute your idea about Honorblades forming a perpendicularity, because I do not know if having a literal pool is a Shard only restriction or a natural effect. Lastly, I want people's opinions on this response

Braize and Spren By technicality, Odiumspren should confirm that Odium is invested within the Roshar system, since he has Spren of his own. Yes, or am I oversimplifying this?

Technically, the book says "to the naked eye" which could be meant as a person without any breath (the Ars Arcanum writer him/herself) or as the average person on Nalthis, since 1 breath is standard. It isn't a large enough difference to argue over, because "about 30 breaths, some of which can be stronger or weaker than average" is the definition of close enough.

1. The problem with his Oathstone being "corrupted" and why he can hear the screams is that Taravangian is the one who has it. Szeth is the better half of the Rosharan super-continent away in Azir or the Plains, most of the time. The screams being in his head (real or not) suggests something to do with the Cognitive Realm, where distance matters. It's a spiritual thing actually, refer to the WoB in Point 2. Additionally, per the Shinovar page on the Coppermind, any Shin who picks up a weapon is required to be bound to an Oathstone and live life as a warrior, not just the Truthless 2. Secondly, we have a WoB (may be a tad older/Nope, April of '16) that anyone who did the things he did would have a similar effect, which pulls even further away from the Oathstone and Odium. Now that I've read the WoB, the plot thickens again: "What we would call magical may not be considered magical in the Cosmere, but it depends on your definition of magic." This statement messes with any and all interpretations about the origin of his screams. The lack of screams after his death.. I think that is a true statement. At least, I don't remember anything to the contrary thus far. Lastly, the Shin having the Honorblades. Quoth Brandon, "historically, they kept all of them." We have used this to assume that modern day Shinovar was built around/atop of the Circle of Blades in the Prologue. Given that it was a wasteland that didn't seem to stop any Shard: Dustbringers seemed to function just fine despite the modern "no Spren" issues, Kalak notes where Thunderclasts spawned from the ground nearby, etc.., I don't know about the area being safe from Odium's eyes in that way.

@Elenion He was weaker than the average shard would be in the same situation because he had not attained his mountain of Atium yet. All that solidified power of Ruin was still out of reach. @Samaldin I believe Brandon said that Preservation's power would eventually splinter itself without a holder to guide it. Odium may have perfected a technique to speed that process up. We know that whatever Odium does to splinter a Shard is very draining to him, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to try and smother the Shard like Ruin is doing, but with all his available might at once.

I think they mean compounding in the sense of additive power from the Lerasium in the alloy. I'm not 100% on that, but it seems logical upon more thought, (which happens right after I click post..) it sounds like they are saying that since burning a Lerasium-Steel alloy would increase your Steel Allomancy whenever you burned it, putting push/pull off balance, they speculate that you could choose between getting that power boost, or using the L-Steel for its normal Allomantic effect, whatever that may be. Am I correct in this assumption @Idealistic?

Vivienna (I'm pretty sure, might've been Siri) could see a small ring of enhanced color in the grass around the feet of someone they were talking to in Hallandren. Some priest Vivienna spoke to on the way into the Court of Gods perhaps..? I distinctly remember "small ring of color" and "First Heightening" but I'd have to find the exact quote to be sure. She had to be looking for it to notice, but it was there. So 50 breath seems like a good starting point

We know pretty much absolutely nothing about the world pre-Returned, and hardly anything pre-Manywar. Keeping with her Intent, perhaps she felt that Breath on its own was enough, and after some bout of future vision, created the first Returned and "endowed" knowledge upon them. Vo appears to have seen much more than most Returned, judging by the extent and wording of some of his Five Visions. Perhaps Awakening was always there, but without the intuitive awakening provided by the higher Heightenings, nobody knew how to do it, and Endowments vision saw a need for people to know how. The 5 Scholars made massive leaps in knowledge and technology, possibly with "subtle" nudging in the right direction from Endowment. Now that the Visions are known, the Scholars have advanced, and Awakening is more commonly understood, Endowment only provides simpler visions, such as the ones seen by Lightsong and Blushweaver.

His main problem was the fact that he was dead. A cognitive shadow has no body, and thus has no connection to the Physical Realm. That cuts out a large portion of Kelsier's ability to be "connected" to anything. Ruin even taunts him about this.

The page for the Scouring on the Coppermind says that It sounds more like the Lanceryn dying out was as a result of, rather than the focus of. Especially since the page on the Lanceryn states that they died out "to the dismay of those who had harvested their gemhearts."

Ruin had a Mist of his own if I remember right. He used it to try to turn Vin away from Preservation's mistform. Brandon has said that Sazed has stronger ability to influence things in the areas where his mists are, so it appears to be a natural thing for them.

I must have missed that completely. But I can provide an explanation for physical and enhancement: The 4 sections of the Chart. Physical, Enhancement, Mental and Temporal. Quoth the Coppermind page on Atium, Atium alloys would "produce various expanded mental and temporal effects." That leaves Physical and Enhancement effects to Lerasium. There is an upper bound. Savanthood is basically ascending. Or failing that, I imagine it would be Mistpoint, or whatever the proper term for that is.

Hemalurgy moves the brain and/or heart out of the way of the spike.. somehow. It twists them into something almost inhuman. That's a little different than having a reactive metal in your stomach, especially since Brandon said they have to manually burn them before sleeping to avoid metal poisoning. Allomancy doesn't seem to have the same survival safeguards that Hemalurgy does. Edit: Did I really just say that?

We have a WoB from 2012 that says magical strain on the land was "part of it" so.. take of this how you will. The Reod being a natural effect was explained as what would've happened by making the chasm, even if the chasm occurred naturally like they do on Earth. So that is here more or less for completionism of the WoB.

The problem with this idea is that the Expanses are in the Cognitive Realm. The Cognitive only has areas with cognitive thought, i.e. Life usually. Before Scadrial was created, there was no thinking life in that section of the Physical Realm, thus there was no cognitive equivalent for that area. Logically, there was no Expanse of the Vapors before R&P created life on Scadrial. Which means that the focus cannot directly be a trait of the Expanse as opposed to the planet, since the planet had to have existed first for thinking life to exist there.

From the wob's I have in memory, since mobile doesn't like theoryland , it always sounded like Odium was technically at fault, but couldnt really be considered accountable for it. Odium's actions splintered D&D and stuck them in the cognitive realm. The full power of shards are usually in the Spiritual, which doesn't care about time or space. Now, that immense energy is confined in the Cognitive, where space matters, making the Dor some kind of energy maelstrom. (Why you can't easily worldhop to Sel.) Brandon made it sound like that immense pressure had after effects, since it doesn't have the numerous Spren to release excess energy, only a few Seons/Skaze. Pressure built up until it snapped, big quake, chasm, Elantrian Magic was in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc...

Has he? Guess I haven't seen those. Time to go searching, I'll be back sometime later

The Well never specifically moved, Rashek moved the crust of the entire planet, and the Well along with it. Here. So if the Well does still exist, it is still underneath Kredik Shaw.

Thank you for this, the distinction about "order-specificity" was never pointed out in High School, I just used whichever one seemed to fit in my head. I think that concept is where I screwed up, but at a far earlier number. What I did was with 16 letters, there are 14 combinations that have AB in them. Since I've already done ABC, there would be 1 less triple with AC in it, and so forth down the line. Same for BC, BD, and the rest of the letters. I used that same logic all the way up to 7 before I noticed a pattern and just did numbers from there. Looking at your math explanation, I basically did addition rather than multiplication, resulting in vastly lower numbers as time went on. The link never worked, you had to click it and then cut out everything before the http in the middle of the URL. I couldn't get the math to work because for some strange reason, I mixed up which was N and R, thus getting me negative numbers half of the time. I'm doing the formula in excel now, and it's working out a lot better. I don't know why I couldn't get it to work earlier.

After having perused that Tour, I am forced to assume that you mean Question 31. It is still a manner of hacking, but on the opposite side of the coin compared to the WoB I posted. In the earlier one, Odium would have to do the workarounds to form a usable God Metal, while in yours, the Allomancer is the one hacking the system. Nothing is really disputed by having both, but it is interesting to note that you can hack Shardic Investiture into a specific magic system.

Following the logic that differing ratios of the same metals are not new metals, there are a limited number of combinations. Imagine that the 16 Shards are A-P (first 16 letters of the alphabet) 16 + 120 + 560 + [wrong] + 1 = 2536 god metals and solely god metal alloys. Each of those metals can alloy with any of the 16 normal metals. 2536*16 = 40576 total Allomantic alloys, nowhere near the Million you reached. Adding in Harmonium and Harmonium-God metal alloys would add in 1 god metal, 16 pairs, 120 triples, [more flawed math] and 1 17 combo. Those new numbers combined = 697. 2536 + 697 = 3233. Repeating the alloy with any of the 16 normal metals from earlier, that makes the new total 51,728 Allomantic Metals and Alloys. If anyone wants to fact-check my math, feel free. I added the Harmonium numbers while writing this post, so those may have been a tad rushed. As for the OP, I am curious how you did your math, since I am at a loss to figure out how you reached such a high number. edit: I did some sort of franken-math, and clearly didn't know what I was doing at the time. If only mobile had the strikethrough text button, then it would look cleaner. Edit: fixed.

Questions 2 and 3 Odium could still delay the Desolation if he has control over the torturing of the Heralds. It would be within his power to delay the next one, but not an actual defined power while on Braize. I'm using the "related, but only tangentially/indirectly" logic that Brandon seems so fond of now. As for taking turns Cometary, in the prologue, per Jezrien: Ishar thinks that they can cheat the rules and stay as long as at least one of them goes. It is entirely likely that they could have used that loophole for centuries. Odds are that they didn't because none of them had figured it was doable until then, or didn't want to risk it. They reached a point where enough of them lost hope that they decided to try it. Had they done it centuries earlier, I fully expect that they would've stayed to help mankind, but by Aharietiam, they lost the will to resist and gave up.

Given that "harmony" is how Sazed interprets his shardic dual-intent, i think that has a larger affect on his inaction, but I don't know how much power you need to make a planet, so you may still be right anyway.

Do you think Brandon would still refer to some manner of Atium forming a solid perpendicularity as a "pool?" Actually, do we know that not all of them are liquid? I've never seen that speculation before now. I agree with this sentiment. Brandon has called the readers perceptive on noting the Shardpools throughout the books and not having one in Warbreaker. He basically RAFO'd if such a pool is underneath where the Tears of Edgli grow though, so it makes me want to believe your interpretation just a little bit more. I remember a WoB asking about a shard lightsaber, with Brandon saying that is would still be some form of metal item since the Spren "can't do plasma," but [..] Found it.

No idea if this has any proper relevance, but I found this WoB while looking for something else. Emphasis added. Of additional note is this WoB is from April 23 of 2016. Edgedancer came out in Arcanum unbounded only 7 months later in November. I wouldn't put it past him to have been finishing up on Edgedancer around that time. Perhaps there is something here