The One Who Connects

Can't speak for RShara, but perhaps they meant Nicrosil Ferrings? Ooh, multiple compounders, so one could nicroburst the compounded burn of the other one, drawing out more power and speeding up the process immensely.

He has previously said that a Female Human and a Male Kandra wouldn't be a big deal, so theoretically... But as the more recent WoB Shqueeves posted says, this is yet another subject that he's going back and forth on.

Honorable =/= Moral. Breaking your word is dishonorable, doing something that's "wrong" is immoral. On to the thread itself, was it ever clarified which sense you mean? If you wanted the character we disliked the most in-world, I can't give you an answer. There aren't really any characters I hate that much. (If I had to choose, it'd be "other," because even if I don't know who it is yet, it's not one of the names up there) If you mean the character we dislike reading about the most, honestly, I have to say Kaladin. He just... isn't that interesting to me.

There were more than Nine Desolations. What happens when the same Herald breaks again, hrmm?

Make an assumption based on this WoB.

So to answer your question, have a timeline describing how everything was Preservation's fault. (The highlighted portions are your proper answer) When Preservation attacked Ruin, he "kind-of" splintered him. The chunk of Ruin's power that produces Atium is/was entirely separate from the rest of Ruin. Preservation wasn't going to absorb Ruin's power into himself, so he forced that chunk of power to produce Atium instead. (Preservation knew how to make Lerasium from his own power, so jury-rigging Ruin's power to do the same isn't too unreasonable.) Normally, the power would return to Ruin after being burned, but using that separated piece of Ruin, Preservation was able to short-cut it directly back into Atium after it was burned. In short, Ruin could not access that stolen piece of his power until Preservation was no longer blocking him. And he couldn't recover the power that was turned into Atium unless he physically obtained that Atium himself. By burning it all, Ruin would have to then get rid of Preservation in order to obtain his stolen power. He never had time to do so, since both he and Preservation died shortly afterwards. With nobody blocking him, Harmony has since recovered this piece of power, and the Pits & the Well are no more.

You'd be surprised what unique circumstances bring to the table. Vin was the daughter of High Prelan Tevidian. He's one of the purest lineages in the empire, and the purer the line, the better your odds of a Mistborn. This circumstance is largely not replicable due to the deaths of Tevidian and a decent number of Obligators/Nobles during the chaos of TLR's death, Ruin's escape and Harmony's ascension. The purer bloodlines made up a monumentally small portion of the total population to begin with, and it only got worse from there. Zane was fathered by Straff Venture. Straff fathered somewhere around 2/3rds of House Venture's Allomancers in search of a Mistborn. Replicating this circumstance was only really attempted by Spook, who didn't produce nearly as many children as Straff did. On an scientific level, Straff tried the experiment several dozen more times than Spook, and still only succeeded once. It's not that unthinkable. Kelsier is the only one I can't deny, but that's down to only one naturally born Mistborn that generation, which is entirely reasonable. Normally I'd agree, except that Harmony's interference is the only reason there were any Mistborn at all during that period: Spook. He turned Spook into a reduced power Mistborn(meaning around Kell/Zane's strength, rather than Elend's). As far as I'm aware, he didn't bear any Mistborn of his own, despite how many children he had. One or two may have tried to remain pure, but as Kaymyth mentioned, the interbred out of necessity. When the choices are sully your pure bloodline or risk extinction, the choice is pretty obvious. I'm a little surprised nobody's brought this up yet. Feruchemy wasn't exactly the most prevalent of magic systems during TLR's reign. The Synod tried to keep it alive, and all of them got killed off(barring Sazed, who didn't father any children). The flipside of the equation was the Lord Ruler's Breeding Programs, made with the specific intent of selective breeding the Feruchemy Genes out of the Terris Population. Meaning that the vast majority of the Terris people Hoid led from the Terris Dominance to the Pits were products of the Breeding Program, and thus, the likelihood of inheriting Feruchemy was greatly reduced before it got reduced further by intermixing with Allomancers.

You have it backwards, actually. The existence of Mistborn was the divine intervention(or semi-Divine, since the Lord Ruler did it with the Lerasium Beads). Mistings are the natural state of Allomancy. Yata is correct about this. It's the intermixing of Allomancy/Feruchemy that messes with the powersets on a Spiritual Level. It screws with the Spiritual DNA, which makes a much bigger impact than messing with normal DNA.

Total Usable Investiture.

Fair enough. I was searching for something else and remembered the epigraphs, so I posted those instead. What I was actually looking for was a description of TLR's Throne Room. I considered drawing it, so I had taken reference notes. One of them was about the pillars in the room, and it appears that(after rereading the chapters) there isn't a solid description of their placements(or how many there were). Meaning that what I was remembering was artistic license on my part, and I rescind my earlier statement.

Warbreaker Spoilers Not that we need that evidence, Yata is correct that most of our examples of Awakening drain color from something else.

Do remember that Hoid is not confirmed to have Feruchemy, meaning that Marsh is closer to Fullborn than Hoid is.

Well, our Golden-haired Iri are 3 planets removed from Roshar, so H&C probably didn't do that. Doesn't get us any closer to knowing who did, but ruling out possibilities is good.

To add to what Yata said, Shards have a secondary intent they inherited from Adonalsium, which influences them to do things. Technically, yes(but that's only because Spren existed first). Spren/Seons/Skaze/Unmade are all Splinters of Shards, so I'd refer to Spren as very small Shards.

I actually think it's in the HoA Ars Arcanum. Either way, I agree. Atium can steal anything, but I was talking about what normal metal to use. We can steal 12/16 A-Powers and 16/16 F-Powers with the H-powers we currently know about.

Harmony somewhat disagrees. 26, 28.

To answer your question simply: No. We still don't even know what metals we'd need to steal some of the Allomantic Powers. Two things. 1st) Fabrials don't lose the Spren they have trapped in them when they run out of Stormlight(afaik). Oh that recharge. Nevermind. 2nd) People are taking the second WoB that Agent34 posted as proof that spikes will always be metal. I'm also of that opinion(always have been), but it doesn't necessarily disprove your theory(via technicalities). We know that a lot of the magic systems have similar powers(detecting Investiture with Alerter Fabrials or A-Bronze, the Yolish/Rosharan Lightweaving, etc..), so if Surgebinding had a method of stealing powers, it might use gemstones. For the purpose of Brandon's writing, he's probably gonna focus on Hemalurgy though.

I'm not actually sure. I was gonna say no, but all I can find on here is two discussions about how quickly Stormlight escapes their bodies. I swear there was also a discussion regarding Szeth's extreme Stormlight draw in WoK I-9. During the Highstorm fight in WoR, we get Kaladin's PoV. During said Highstorm scene: That shows how much Stormlight they were holding during the Storm, and I don't think Kaladin ever describes feeling like Szeth did, despite the sheer volume of Stormlight around/within him. So I made the assumption that Szeth simply could not hold as much as Kaladin could. (Does anyone in the Battle of Thaylen Fields describe something similar? That would be useful to know.) I really do not like this. It just feels.. unnatural. But that colors-cursed Kholin boy is preventing me from just disagreeing with you. "Up in the air" indeed... I think they were copying the Honorblades more than copying the Heralds, but I could be misinterpreting the WoB. I also don't think they could "see"(so to speak) that the Heralds were Cognitive Shadows in order to copy them. I feel like they would just see that "something's up," but not specifically what. MB:SH Spoilers(kinda)

Bloodmakers can survive decapitation. Yes, the question asks about a Compounder, but the real power of compounding is just filling F-Reserves faster. A normal Blookmaker can store that much health given enough time, so they can survive it too. I'd think that counts as "keeping pieces together," in a sense. Not directly applied, no. But the primary point is still there. Stormlight doesn't heal instantly(Renarin/Progression is a special case), so one can still be killed if the damage is done faster than it heals. Our whole understanding of Stormlight healing(before OB, at least) was that a killing blow is still a killing blow. Sure, Kaladin healed his broken legs in five-ish minutes, but that's still a decent amount of time that his ground mobility would be suffering. Dalinar vs Chasmfiend Claw shows us that speed and mobility against something like that is vital. Had that claw slammed down, Elhokar would've died even with Plate. I really feel like the same would be true for a normal Radiant. If the blow is slightly off and it would've crippled them, by all means let them heal from it. I just feel like a killing blow should be a killing blow. They are less efficient even when a Herald holds them. (Not your point, just a thing to remember). As for your actual point, I somewhat disagree. I think the passive healing of Stormlight is a quality of the Stormlight itself(why most everybody is healthier on Roshar). I think you heal quicker when you have more Stormlight(which makes sense), so Szeth's healing was less efficient because he couldn't hold as much Stormlight as a KR can.

You've already explained why when you spoke about Renarin. With 2 exceptions(Vedel and Paliah), the Heralds would be in the same bin as most of the Radiants. Normal (slow) Stormlight Healing only. Doesn't matter if you have infinite healing, if you heal slowly, you can still die. Szeth's perspective on his broken jaw in WoK prologue points this out.

Have these two things, and make your assumptions:

Anyone with enough power to peer into the Spiritual Realm can see the future(provided they can actually make sense of the information they see). We've seen/heard about 5 Shards doing so in the books themselves. Honor(who isn't good at it), Preservation(Terris prophecies), Cultivation(Honor says so), Odium(OB related) and Harmony(the radio comment). Per WoB, Ruin isn't very good at it, but his God Metal is(for some reason), and Elend uses it in HoA. Atium, like Ascension, expands the user's mind slightly so they can deal with the extra information. This is why Elend's method worked, while our friend in MB:SH only gets a minor glance. Seeing the future itself is not evil. However, Moelach(an Unmade) is the main/only example of future-sight on Roshar. Moelach's association with Odium(who appears kinda evil) is why they consider it evil. Cultivation is just as good/if not better than Odium at future-sight though, so it'd be interesting to see how the Vorin faith feels about that.

You assume incorrectly:

Travel Destinations. Nightblood was created by Team Hanald(Vasher, Shashara, and Denth). Vasher is confirmed and Denth is implied to have not gone to Scadrial. That means that only Shashara went there. You posit that she went to Scadrial to find a material to experiment with, without either of her fellow scholars, one of whom was her brother and the other was her husband. I don't see her doing that. If she wasn't gonna provide all the details to her colleagues, why involve them at all? Reasons 2 and 3 have both been brought up already, and are more conclusive. Weltall mentioned that the Annotations say that Yesteel would have made more of them and destroyed Hallandren. I don't see him acquiring(or TLR allowing) that much Atium to be taken. Lastly, Spool mentioned that the Annotations say that Shashara would have told Hanald how to make more. Is she just supposed to say "I used this otherworldly metal to make it, but good luck"? Or will she lie and say "I used steel" and then just hope it works? If she's gonna give the secret away, there's gotta be some value in the information she gives. More specifically, there have to be people who can make use of that information for it to be worth giving away.