The One Who Connects

1) Yes. 2) I agree with Calderis. Burning 30 minutes of Pewter all at once gives you the same amount of total power as it would over 30 minutes. The only difference is that you get it all at once. That's how burning metal works. 3) I agree with Calderis(again). 4) This is an interesting one. The thing is, this could go both ways. We know that two Feruchemists can store in the same Metalmind, since they'd be stored in different "compartments" of it. If the first Feruchemist stored hearing in a Tinmind, would the second be able to store a different sense or be limited to hearing? If he can store a different sense, it stands to reason that the first Feruchemist can store multiple senses in different sections of the same Tinmind. Translate this into storing in Nicrosil...

I had them backwards then, huh? Preservation's insanity is making us go insane it appears. I disagree. Lerasium has an actual Allomantic effect, and Brandon specifies the difference between burning and burning with Investiture. So I'd say there's a difference between a Lerasium Misting and a normal person. I suppose he could have, but I'm not sure he would have. He was a rather petty man, given he created the Skaa to begin with. Failure to keep track of potential half-breed offspring was already punishable of death, just ask Tevidian. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but after 1,000 years of either system, people get careless and others get lazy. It actually does make sense for Preservation's plan. TLR's culls were largely irrelevant because Preservation would be mist-snapping normal people later, but they did serve a purpose, one which fits the Lord Ruler perfectly: Denying Ruin. By culling potential Allomancers, Ruin had much fewer people to use for making Inquisitors once he was freed. His culling of Feruchemists also had this effect, albeit unintentionally.

Could be a similar case to why you don't see many Emotion Spren around large crowds. Your average tavern would have quite the mix of emotions going on. People drinking to forget something(sadness, shame, gloom), to numb themselves(pain, anger, cold), drinking after a long day(hunger, exhaustion), liquid courage(fear), drunken revelry(laughter, music), etc... It's entirely possible that the Winespren can't easily see what they are looking for in order to manifest. This might be an artifact of earlier revisions, combined with a dislike of confined spaces. Honorspren and Cryptics don't get along, so I don't think it's a coincidence that the Cryptic was willing to explore.

Brandon has also considered backtracking on that statement. Spoilers b/c text wall.

Brandon does say "any Allomancer with access to steel or iron." I personally think of it a a savant perk(so far). The main reason Inquisitors end up doing it is because their eyes are gone, so they have to use the only other method of "sight" they know. They probably became savants in under a week, since they were quite literally constantly burning/flaring it.

You'd have to have some form of magical translation in order to set up interplanetary trade deals to begin with, would you not? If your book clients were "in the know," they could easily contract you for this, maybe have a Skaa slave re-scribe the book as you translate it, so they could enjoy it whenever they wish. It's a start at least.

We don't technically know that Adonalsium created them, but we do know that Yolen was not the only world with humans on it pre-shattering.

1/16 =/= 16% This happens so much around here. Argument 1: The God Metals themselves aren't exactly naturally occurring either, per se. Spoilers SA and WB Argument 2: It's entirely possible for another Shard to have a God Metal that anyone could burn, like Lerasium. If it works in the system, then it stands to reason that you could make viable alloys with it. There aren't Mistings for those now are there? Argument 3: Bad Alloys. It's been Yata's pet theory for ages that the limit to what a Misting can burn would prevent them from burning a bad alloy of their Metal, while a Mistborn can burn any alloy that's still considered as that metal. I happen to agree, and think this would speak to Mistborn going past the normal limits to Mistings. I think it's entirely possible for Mistborn to be able to burn metals that there's no natural Misting of. We could also ask Brandon is there were ever Lerasium Mistings too, to help clear this up. There's several reasons for this. The first of which is that it would cheapen the mystical image of the magic(not really important, but TLR kept some metals hidden for this reason). The rest are about the feasibility of the idea. Two is manpower. IIRC, there's about a million Skaa in Luthadel. How would you monitor that many people, let alone check the children of? Third, the outlying settlements would be lax on this, making everywhere that wasn't Luthadel unchanged by TLR instituting this. Fourth, they were faceless slaves(unless they had a pretty face). Nobody would put in the effort to differentiate them enough to monitor all one million and notice when there's a new one. Kelsier abuses this fact to no end in order to sneak around, and Skaa would just take their children to a communal house that had already been checked, and the Obligators wouldn't see them again for maybe a year(a million+ people takes a while to sift through, communal housing or not), maybe more if they also checked the outer plantations. By that point, the children would be old enough to have exceeded the certain age and not be beaten. There's always a loophole, and when the alternative is your kids getting beaten half to death, you can bet people will abuse it.

Brandon, Circa 2008. I disagree. He should just have one big pool. (Arcanum isn't loading, so have the Theoryland entry)

If memory serves, Mistwraiths could still breed normally. Oh you mean.. While I agree with Rshara that Harmony wouldn't have done it intentionally, there was still a world-ending catastrophe going on. The ashmounts, the quakes, the burning sunlight, rampaging Koloss hordes, etc.. whether any of them survived the Catacendre is unknown, as we haven't asked Brandon.

That "too many Kholin KR" thing is new(to me at least). Reasoning in the past has been different, and much more varied. With Adolin, there's at least two rabbit holes going on(there's been... 3? 4? threads lockings so far?) in addition to the rational "Non-Radiant PoV" argument. Such and such along the lines of "is he really broken?" and "he wouldn't fit in the order," etc... It's a mess. With Navani, I haven't seen anything like that. Other than myself and Maxal, I don't think much of anyone has expressed any real opinion on her potential Radiancy(or lack thereof). Those of us who have are on the narrative purpose bandwagon. (I know this is gonna sound a little insensitive to the effort Brandon puts into his writing, but it's not exactly wrong either) Ignoring everything else, at their base, main characters became Radiants so that Brandon could show off the orders and what they could do. Other characters did not become Radiants so they could show off something else. The squires(while that's a bit grey now) showed off partial Radiancy, Szeth introduced and showed off the Honorblades, Dalinar/Adolin introduced Plate and Blade, Venli/Rlain demonstrate the possibility of Singer KR/Squires, etc... Navani's specialization is Fabrial-Tech. It's not that we don't want Navani to become a KR, it's that we don't think she needs to. She has her fancy tech to help her keep up in this emerging world of magic and devilry. She can do all manner of things, without being limited to the two Surges a KR has. Per WoB, Fabrials can duplicate all ten Surges, their Voidbinding counterparts, as well as all manner of other things. Half-Shard shields, the elevated archer tower, spanreed communications, those are all part of the opening act. We've gotten our first taste of the main event with the airship sketches, and there's still 7 more books. Think of the wonders she could create in the future. Her personal potential may be limited as a non-KR, but through widespread usage of her tech, she could influence or even change the tide of the story, at a scale no singular character(barring the Shards) could match. Think of how much of an advantage Soulcasters give to a war effort, and realize that's only 1 Surge out of 10. If she cracks the secret of Progression Fabrials, she could turn normal men into Radiant Healers, while also freeing up actual Radiant Healers(who have Shardblades, and possibly Plate) to join the fight. Thanks to the Oathgates, it's gonna be a small world, and if she can replicate Lashings, it'll get even smaller. Replicating Division could(eventually) be something on the scale that inventing the gun had on Earth. Then there's Voidbinding(I highly doubt this'll happen, but with Glys and Sja-Anat, you never know...) She doesn't need a Shardblade to do any of this. She doesn't need Shardplate for this. She doesn't really need a Nahel Bond to do this either: As we get more KR, she'll have enough test subjects to help her learn about/understand the powers, Jasnah/Shallan's Soulcasting could provide her with the spark of an idea to try and replicate the other Surges with Fabrials, etc... Her narrative purpose(as we currently see it) revolves around Fabrials, and a Nahel Bond is not necessary for her to achieve that purpose. If she gets a Nahel Bond, congrats to her, but she appears to be perfectly capable of holding her own throughout all 10 books without it. This is what I mean when I say I don't "see the need" for her to become a Radiant.

Rshara is correct. We've got a long wait ahead of us.

I'm old-fashioned, because simplicity is fun.

Timeline doesn't work. D&D have no ties to Shu-Keseg at the time of Odium's arrival because Shu-Keseg didn't exist yet.

Reading the conversation, Calderis did say "I guess I thought you'd meant it differently than you did then" before changing what he was saying. I'd consider that more as a misunderstanding than a flip-flopping argument, which it kinda sounded like you were implying. If that was unintentional, then I misread, but that's how it looks. I completely agree with Chaos here. Take a break here and there to let your head cool. Check out a different sub-forum for a minute to distract you. If need be, wait it out and let the conversations shift before resuming. Works wonders for me. Ok. This is the third time you've said this in the thread, so I may as well tackle all three at once. As someone who just spent 40 minutes rereading the entire thread(stopwatch, if it matters), these ring as rather hollow accusations. For easy reference, the quoted snippets from you above are from Pages 2, 4, and 9 respectively. There are only really 3 instances of comments that are wholly positive towards Oathbringer: a short statement by wotbibliophile on page 6, a long piece by hoiditthroughthegrapevine on page 7, and a short comment by Drake Marshall on page 8. Everyone else has made criticisms, and as such, do not fall under your third statement. The mentioned instances of these "oh he's great" posts(as you appear to see them) are several pages after the first statement of yours, making it not hold water here either. There is nothing in the first two pages that implied people thought everything Sanderson touches is gold(as you put it). I can't speak to the "back then" in your second statement, but I haven't read anything that should remind you of something like what you imply. The only other person in this thread who has not made their opinion on Oathbringer known is myself because, as I have already stated, I have not read the book. As I've noted above, everybody but me has made an opinion of their own in this thread. Saying that people who are sharing their opinion aren't making an opinion of their own is illogical. You've stated your opinions on things that you disliked within the book. Others have shared their opinions on those things, some agreed with you, others didn't. But you've used phrases like "such and such thing didn't make sense." So in response, you should be expecting people to try and justify the author's choice in doing it, to try and explain why they thought it did make sense. You are essentially criticizing people for trying to debate the subject you've brought up, when we are on a discussion forum. Debate is the point. Additionally, someone else explaining their opinion is not necessarily trying to invalidate your opinion. It's just the spirit of debating, since life would be boring if we all agreed on everything. (If this came off as rude, it was not intentional. It's been a long day)

I'm imagining a very.. entertaining conversation about this if she ever meets our resident cheater of death from the Expanse of the Vapors. But I agree with you. It's not her style

There's 1 WoB containing "Tai-Na," 4 with the "Greatshells" tag, and 17 containing "Greatshell." They don't tell us much. Have no fear Calderis. Oh wait.. have a little fear.

Just gonna toss myself into the mix here. Regarding the point that you were trying to prove, this passage from the Eila Stele means nothing. All it says is that they were binding Surges, and that the Singers knew that Spren could grant those powers. It doesn't imply anything about how the humans were accessing the powers, only that the powers they had looked similar. In that same vein, the Singers knew about the Nahel Bond, and the powers it granted. In the face of that, the first assumption when seeing people using those powers would be to assume that they had a Nahel Bond. The Parshendi do just this in WoK Kaladin does the "draw arrows to shield" moment, but had that been Szeth instead of Kaladin, they would've made the same assumption, and been wrong. See "Surges" below. The "Surges" as we currently know them are simply a way to tap into the fundamental forces: gravity, the electromagnetic spectrum, the weak/strong force, etc... and they are far from the only way to do that. The Oathgates probably operate on the Surge of Transportation, and teleport people to elsewhere. Aon Tia does exactly the same thing, and teleports people elsewhere. The Elantrians even had metal plates to take you to predetermined locations, like an Oathgate. There's a Yolish Lightweaving as well as the Rosharan version using the Surge of Illumination. Renarin heals almost instantly from being crushed with the Surge of Progression, while Miles heals his legs as they break with Feruchemical Gold. We have an Aon whose definition includes the word "illumination," another with "cohesion," and yet a third with "transportation." Would it be too far to assume that these could probably do similar things to the Surges they share names with? To an outsider, these would probably look like the same powers(Elantrians even glow, like Surgebinders ). And they probably are manipulating the same underlying fundamental force, but with entirely different magic systems. Well, Yolish Lightweaving predates the Shards, so.... (I'm not being entirely serious here, no need to counter this with the "Adonalsium counts" argument) I could've sworn there was a WoB to the tune of "Ashyn may not have always been without a Shard," but I can't find it. So.. guess this section gets cut short. And to foster more discussion, here's the other WoB:

That's 100% our own faults. We, like Kaladin, assumed there'd be a crisis because we assumed we knew things about the Voidbringers. The Hearthstone bit was done that way on purpose, to start us on the path of "maybe we're wrong about them," and facilitate Kaladin's internal moral conflict for the future. The non-radiant population seems to have trouble navigating Urithiru. The Radiant population(minus Jasnah) aren't the most scientific bunch. There's also the end of the world to be dividing their efforts. In the face of these, a lack of extreme progress is understandable. I'd say the discoveries of the giant Fabrial and the gemstone library are a good start on the mystical side, and the plumbing/air currents are a good start on the more mundane side(though it'd be good if they learned the secret to agriculture). The problem with the Recreance explanation is that it's become abundantly clear that there was no singular cause to the Recreance. Any singular scene revealing Recreance info is gonna come off as an unsatisfactory explanation to use because it's only one piece of the puzzle. The internal conflict of who to defend, the "Voidbringer" revelation, shattering the plains, creating the Parshmen, the "we won" declaration, etc... until a character puts all the various pieces together in-world, we've got to do it ourselves. We've gotten theory-crazy around here: we want to work for our answers, rather than getting them on a silver platter, and it seems like Brandon has noticed this. I'm sure it'll be spelled out in book 4 or 5 for the more casual readers, but I think that Brandon is giving us a puzzle, and is letting us solve it instead of just spelling it out for us(for now). A lot of things that were "supposed to happen" got interrupted by the arrival of the Fused. Remember those supply caravans that never arrived during one of Kaladin's chapters with the Parshmen? These aren't broken promises, it's just the way life goes.

I think it feels like that because the general consensus is roughly "he's probably doing that, but I can't guarantee it, so I'll just wait for more proof." For instance, I remember reading this WoB before, and thought nothing of it. I saw it, went "alright, cool" and moved on. A lot of us have just gotten desensitized to topics like this given how many times new people post a thread posing this idea.

You've posted in all but 1 of them. You're missing the Nov19 discussion. Although your post in the Dec4 topic was before that discussion happened.. I agree. It's curious how little resistance we have to many of the others.

We've seen stages 2 and 3 of Chasmfiends, and the Chrysalis counts as a stage. The chrysalis cannot be stage 1 because we haven't seen that stage. There's an ecological price to not letting them finish pupating, so the chrysalis can't be the end, thus making it stage 2. The live Chasmfiends we've seen cannot be stage 1 either, for the same reason. Stage 2 is now taken, so they have to be stage 3. Brandon has said we've seen their final stage, and that we've seen stages 2 & 3. Thus, Stage 3 should probably be the final stage. I'd consider the Chasmfiends we've seen as a few stages away from the Ta-Na.

And that's an Upvote. I don't even need to read your post for that. (Though I'll give you props for the math. That's dedication) Also, what do you use for your diagrams? I feel like a pleb over here. (And you'll probably get a kick out of what I've used for mine) I agree. Gotta set up the baseline when you turn the device on. Until the very far future, when they can make a massive, but lightweight, synthetic gemstone. Bigger gems are less likely to crack, IIRC.

I'm not sure you want to do that. Have the rabbit hole itself: September 2nd(Side Discussion): [OB] SO GLAD HE'S DEAD November 19th: [OB] A certain character needing to be broken enough to become a radiant December 2nd: [OB] Adolin's breaking December 3rd: [OB] An argument for becoming a Stoneward December 4th: [OB] The problem with Adolin January 24th: [OB] Adolin, a potential Edgedancer? Several Times between Pages 4-15: [OB] Mayalaran At least Three Times, but I'm not searching 96 Pages: [OB] Adolin-Shallan-Kaladin Discussion Go and have a read, maybe two. If you still feel there's something to discuss, please do.

I saw that later, but I reply to posts by section as I'm reading them, so by the time I realized, I'd already typed it up, and I just decided to keep it. Glad we agree, though.