The One Who Connects

Geode is used several times actually. Largely by Kelsier, on account of his history with the Pits. Also google:

Odium physically placed the power of Devotion & Dominion fully into the Selish Cognitive Realm. Chunks of Ambition's power would have washed over all three realms unattended, unless specifically stated otherwise. That is the big difference with Threnody. Power went where it wished, flying around willy-nilly and affecting anything around it.

A Shardblade killed body can be made into a Lifeless, so I don't particularly think the blade killed arm will be a big deal. Orem Signing Document, Page 3.

He'd have to spend a lot of healing to survive moving that fast. Air resistance and burning up is gonna be a pain to heal through. Actually, he wouldn't be able to pass speed of light anyway because of that twisted science of mass approaching speed of light. His Ironminds would be filled instantly to try and store all of that mass. While I imagine that his paranoia from Ruin/betrayal kept him awake most nights anyway, it stands to reason that if you can store one F-Power while sleeping, you should be able to do all of them. I'll edit in a link to the last time this got discussed when I find it, but the general consensus was that TLR would have figured it out if it were possible. Mental Health isn't really something that F-Gold covers. To Quote Myself: A thing to remember is that Sleep isn't just "not being tired."

There was this thread. Not much got nailed down, but it's got a fair bit of good discussion

I'll caution stating assumptions as fact. Odium killed Honor. That is the only one of those three things that we actually know he has done.

Ok, have a correction. The 3 Magic Systems are Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and Fabrials. It doesn't particularly mess with the rest of your post, but having the right details is useful anyway

I agree that the 10 figures was meant to evoke imagery of the Heralds, or at least the Honorblades. (It's where that old theory about Kaladin, Shallan and the others replacing the Heralds came from I think) I could see the Honorblades simply requiring Investiture, regardless of it's flavor. I could also see them being limited to only Stormlight, so it's not a huge thing. What I don't see is what Nightblood has to do with it. Nightblood was created several millennia later. If the Honorblades can consume any Investiture, then they could do that regardless of whether or not that Sword is Nightblood. I'm not seeing the connection you are trying to make here. As for the last line, I don't see that happening. Shards may be pieces of a God, but their hold is far from absolute. The Stormfather couldn't prevent Eshonai from bonding a Stormspren after she chose to initiate it. As little as being indoors or strong mental disagreement between Parshmen and the Everstorm could prevent them from bonding a Stormspren. I don't think mere magic swords can sever that bond. Not without the Listener's consent. This again... I'm not getting involved in this rabbit hole again. Well... why Nergaoul specifically? As for locality, you do remember that Nergaoul and Moelach can choose to move.. or not. The Thrill is peculiarly Alethi because Nergaoul decided that is where he would be. Where he goes, the Thrill goes. For someone as pedant as you are about details, misinterpretations, and what is/is not certain, I'm surprised you'd say those words. Seeing "something familiar in a figure's eyes" is not even remotely the same things as seeing "someone familiar." He also makes absolutely no comment about any familiarity or lack thereof with anything else other than the eyes. Window to the soul they may be, eyes alone are not enough for to recognize someone familiar. If this is what Nalan means, then he has to have a way of gaining this knowledge, which seems.. unlikely. I don't see Honor making anyone privy to information like that, and Odium isn't the type to share trade secrets. It also means that he should try to kill off Dalinar, his character development in Edgedancer notwithstanding. (Wouldn't that be an interesting scene in Oathbringer..) As for the rest of the post, there's not much to say. (boy was I wrong about that. It's nice to know I can still discuss things on here with some modicum of passion) I agree with Toaster Retribution. You seem to be taking the story a bit too literally for my tastes, even if it is the foreshadowing of the ending(which I do not think it is) I also think Dalinar would be the one who joins the enemy side, but I don't see him unknowingly doing it. His decisions should be his own, free of any mental pressure. He can do dark things because of well-reasoned arguments, but actual corruption? It undermines your ability to care about why a character does what he does. Betrayals are supposed to hurt the character's allies, but also hurt the readers. Having Dalinar betray his fellows purely because he's been corrupted by dark magic/whatever-you-want-to-call-it just doesn't evoke that feeling of betrayal. It's like when Odium was controlling the Stormform Parshendi. We don't consider them to be evil so much as we considered them to be battle droids. They couldn't resist his control, and had to do what they were told. If Dalinar is put in a position where he cannot resist that control, then he is essentially made a slave of Odium, rather than a traitor to the KR, and his betrayal means little to me. If he can resist that influence, he would. Blackthorn Dalinar wasn't the type to back down from a challenge, and now that the fate of the world is at stake? He's going to resist his foe at every turn unless not resisting is the better choice. I'd like him to be turned because he actually believed it was the right choice, rather than because his view of events has been vastly skewed due to being corrupted. What would his actions look like to outsiders? I'd much prefer his decisions to make sense to me, even if I disagree with his actions and consider some of them as "evil." If he's been corrupted and his view of events make his actions appear illogical to someone who doesn't know he was corrupted, someone in-world needs to call him out on it. I'll admit that this tangent is mostly because I've become jaded towards Possession/Mind Control/Mental Corruption tropes in literature. They are fine for normal mooks, and people have done well-written puppet characters before. Nowadays, most all of them just feel like an easy way out in place of actual character motivations. Possession and Mind Control are a staple of "wanted to make a character evil, but didn't want to ruin reader opinion of them" story arcs. It's why "the dark side corrupts" trope from Star Wars has been so abused in other types of fantasy/sci-fi stories, allowing characters to be redeemed without much culpability for their actions. Mental Corruption just smacks of an impending "character conveniently/magically got cured and were subsequently redeemed" conclusion to an arc, and I've never really enjoyed those. Sorry for rambling on longer than I anticipated.

What explanation does Iyatil really require? She was never really more than an afterthought for me, so I don't know what the big deal is. Nightblood can be "explained away" with half-truths: It was an attempt by scholarly people to create a Shardblade. The results were... unexpected, and deadly. Nalan feeds this story to Szeth, and he'll probably believe it. Nalan is not the type to lie, so an out of context truth is valid, and it should be accepted by the others without much reluctance. Szeth also has the physical object in front of him, and he knows it had to have been created somehow. Besides, how much do we know about Shardblades or Nightblood? Any explanation, flawed as they may be, will suffice until someone finds a problem with it, which the average reader(and in-world figure) isn't likely to do. As mentioned, Warbreaker is Vasher's backstory, but not his first literary appearance. This makes Warbreaker his in-world origin story, but not his in-story origin world, per se, if you can follow my meaning. Hoid is a bigger character in SA than anything else beyond Mistborn Era 4. As Calderis says, his appearance in the other stories is the real easter egg. The people chasing Hoid requires almost no explanation. Have you even met Hoid? His character is a smart-mouthed, mischievous troublemaker who gets involved in important events. A third of the Cosmere has probably tried to hunt Hoid down at one point or another, for reasons both valid and petty. See bullet point 3 above. We forget that our level of knowledge exceeds that of characters in-world when it comes to some things. Navani would probably try to classify Jezrien's Honorblade as some type of Advanced Fabrial, since it is a mechanical way to access Surgebinding. She might not be right, but it's an explanation that she can make sense of. Nightblood was an attempt to replicate Shardblades without fully understanding them. Brandon has likened Nightblood to a "robot Spren" at one point, and a proper KR would make a similar connection to a talking sword being "of a Spren." They'd be incorrect, but not necessarily inaccurate. Nightblood should grant .. something .. as a result of bonding with it, and the KR will liken that to the Nahel Bond, while Szeth/the Heralds will liken it to the Honorblades. Lack of Shapeshifting ability will draw comparisons to dead Shardblades, causing them to classify Nightblood as something in-between a Living Sprenblade and a Dead Shardblade. If/When someone properly revives a Dead Shardblade, that classification might change, but they will cross that bridge when they get to it. They might consider Nightblood as an attempt to revive a Shardblade without knowing how, labeling it a partial success of these "scholars." Draining the user's Stormlight reserve could be attributed to an unexpected consequence of trying to revive a deadblade. Gems hold Stormlight. We put gems in Shardplate and it worked. We put gems on Shardblades and now they work. We did a thing to a Shardblade and now it needs to consume Stormlight in order to continue working. Seems legit. "Hey gancho, grab some spheres!" It's not that big of a logical leap to think that Shardblades would drain Stormlight in order to be revived, especially since Shardplate consumes Stormlight in order to be repaired. If anything this revelation will actually hinder the proper revival of Shardblades, as Adents try to feed infused gemstones to deadblades. (Which is a rather amusing mental image) The blade controlling the wielder and the inexorable drive to "destroy evil" will be misconstrued by religious nutcases on all sides of the discussion. Controlling the wielder will be blamed on Odium by the common people, and may lead to suspicion that Nahel Spren could do that to their KR(Recreance reasoning has to be discussed in-world eventually). People may even consider Nightblood as a Shardblade made by Odium, if not for the "destroy evil" thing. Perhaps a former KR had a Nahel Bond with an Odiumspren, and this is what become of it.... The drive to destroy evil will be taken as proof that the weapon is not of Odium(or at least used to try and prove it). It could lead to yet more misconstruing of Shardic Intents, as they try to give Honor the moral high ground. Depending on what point in the story this is, Cultivation might be brought up as a potential source, as one needs to "destroy evil" in order to "cultivate a healthy society." Here's a Theory: The Honorblade Comparison, coupled with the Intent of Cultivation. An Honorblade made from the powers of both Shards, to be wielded by the Champion to vanquish Odium. If people believe it to be of both Shards, then that will be used to explain away how much more powerful it is than even an Honorblade. Being of Multiple Shards could also be used as a reasoning for why the "Stormlight" is black. There are a great many ways to explain away the inconsistencies with Nightblood. You'll note that almost every explanation I provided is incomplete, and sometimes even a blatant lie. You will also notice that every explanation I provided makes sense in-world.

Ok, so I apparently never mentioned this before, but when I was working on an idea for how a trailer for WoK would go, I had an idea about how to end them. I put the design of an Honorblade in the ending title screen(like this image, where his two sabers were morphed into the roman number 2 behind the logo in the trailer) We know that the names for one-ten are named after the 10 Heralds. Jes - 1 - Jezrien. Shash - 6 - Shalash. Ishi - 10 - Ishar. etc.. so I figured we could have their respective Honorblade be the "numbering" of the 10 movies. It'd be a neat easter egg for people who've read the books, and it'll just look awesome for those who haven't. Sample Scene from my WoK trailer draft(that I never got around to finishing because I'm a lazy sod) Visualizing the scene in my head, I felt it transitioned rather well. The same can not presently be said for my WoR trailer(a draft that is even more unfinished) We can all agree that there is no other scene that could end a trailer as perfectly as "Honor is dead" can. So while I'm still looking for a scene that could better carry the blade transition, I'll make do. If I do find a better scene that doesn't spoil too much, I'll use it, and transfer Kaladin's line and subsequent leap into the arena as the transition from exposition segment into the action packed portion of the trailer. For those who aren't familiar with my usage of the term Honorglyph, (it's because I made it up) they are the Honorblade Glyph Artworks we have gotten on the Parts 1, 2, & 3 pages of WoK and WoR. For reference: Jezrien, Nalan, Chana. In WoR we got Shalash, Battar and Kalak (6, 7, & 8 respectively.) I would assume we'll get 3 of the others in Oathbringer(probably Vedel, Paliah and Ishar, so that Taln's is left out because of course it is.)

It's remarkably less deadly than you'd think. Death is usually a secondary effect of Throwing Knife/Shuriken/Arrow wounds on a battlefield unless you can guarantee a shot the the heart/brain. The real killers from those type of wounds are blood loss, infection and/or cumulative injury. Blood loss and infection are ruled out automatically with Shardblades, as they don't cause open wounds on a live target. Cumulative injury is rather speculative, due to the questionable effectiveness of partial Shardblade cuts (see below) A Shardblade kills a limb by cutting the core of it. A throwing knife/arrow/what-have-you, is not going to be very good at severing limb cores. The blade is much smaller, which requires more precision. The projectile is thrown, which hinders that precision. The projectile is unbreakable, so there is no danger of shrapnel.The projectile is always a through and through, so there is no danger to your bones/organs from running around with a knife stuck in you. Speaking of bones, those would not be damaged by knife/arrow impacts at all, so there will be no broken ribs/fractured shins causing the target to lose their mobility. it's easier to hit a target that is slowed by your earlier shots, and you won't reliably have that with this method. We simply don't know enough about partial cuts to make a definitive statement on it, but getting stabbed six times in the stomach by a steel knife will probably kill you. Getting a Shardblade to the gut probably won't kill you. That distinction makes the conventional tactics require a little rewriting. Well, that was a fascinating google search. I'm tempted to agree with you on this. The effective "size" of the blade would be the diameter of the ring, and that's got much more certainty in hitting the core of a limb than an arrow would.

Have some quotes from another book series exploring the nature of good and evil. Fate of the Jedi, Book 1: Betrayal Fate of the Jedi, Book 2: Bloodlines Fate of the Jedi, Book 3: Tempest I've still got books 4 through 9 to reread, and I imagine I'll have several more fitting quotes by the end of it. To those that are curious, this is the book series that I refer to in the Dalinar Theory in my signature. As a parting line: "What do you call someone who joins sides with evil because of a well-reasoned argument?" -Nelani Dinn

Make your assumptions on what a "natural manifestation" implies. You too @Calderis, this is y'alls discussion, not mine.

That makes me curious about how practical this would be. I feel that it wouldn't leak from a Metalmind, but I'm not sure why Stormlight in a Metalmind is any different from being in an awakened object.

There are several limiting factors. More than you'd imagine, since you aren't limited by one of them. As Agent34 says, they are time consuming to draw out(can be negated by inscribing them on metal plates, but when the Aon setup to turn garbage into food would fill a room, this advantage is lessened) As Agent34 says, you have to make the precise lines every time(negated with inscribed plates, but those plates aren't erasable. You'd have to draw up another one to try something different next time) Sel itself is still limited by distance, making the Elantrian people powerful only near Elantris. They could conquer Arelon, but they aren't moving past it And the last one is the one we all forget: Knowledge. We can imagine Aon Grenades because we have a base to work off of. They don't. The rapid response idea for police/fire rescue would work wonders in a city like Elendel, but Sel doesn't have cities like Elendel. Etc...

I'm fairly sure I made that post before we got that Bondsmith WoB, but it's no big deal. Now we get to speculate why they never had blades. (And get nowhere until we get a WoB, because that's how it works around here)

Remember the blue/amber glyphs glowing on the Shardplate in Dalinar's visions? Something exists that distinguishes the plate as "Windrunner" vs "Stoneward," and I'm not entirely sure that Plate can somehow tell what order its wearer is. I believe they are(well, Szeth's was silvery, but he's a special case anyway)

This is curious, given the light we got in Chapter One. We've likened that "harsh, golden light" to the sun. The sun is many things, but not dark. Gavilar has the line of "I've got another" when offering the sphere to Eshonai in the prologue reading Brandon did a long while back at one of the signings. IIRC, that line was cut from the final version of the prologue. The line being cut does not necessarily mean that his "another one" suddenly stopped existing. That should be resolved sometime in the next three books, as Brandon said we would know what the sphere is by the end of Book 3, and the Main PoV's of Books 4&5 are the two people offered the Spheres: Eshonai and Szeth.

Even without Spook's word, we know that the TLR and the Steel Inquisitors had Hemalurgic laboratories where they were experimenting for the past 1,024 years during the Final Empire. Per Harmony: they got nothing beyond what they already knew how to make: Kandra, Koloss, and Inquisitors. That says just as much, if not more than Spook's failed attempts do. In total, we have roughly 1,100 years of trying and failing to gain any groundbreaking understanding of Hemalurgy. Let's face the facts. We(the readers) are probably only gonna learn new things about Hemalurgy from Brandon and Ruin. Ruin's current host is.. disapproving at the moment. Brandon likes his RAFO's. And we can't easily come up with good enough questions with this little knowledge.

Me and Hwiles have had this conversation before. @Hwiles, I could make the case that the nature of Feruchemy protecting you from the effect of your own power prevents the skin from ripping, and that since it only protects up to a certain extent, you would start to snap once you go any further, but there's no basis either way without further examples of F-Pewter. Both of your suggestions make sense though, hrmm... Agree to disagree that our 3 potential scenarios would only happen if someone tapped far more than would be physically practical? After all, the practical limit doesn't necessarily have to be the same as the hard limit. There are two types of "limits" to Feruchemical Powers: The Practical Limit: Where you are physically too large to actually move around with any speed or skill. Your size impedes your range of motion and walking becomes a rather clunky exercise. (Think of a big buff dude walking around like C-3PO) The Physical Limit: There are like 3 of these beyond your bone crushing idea. You get so big that your skin starts to rip/tear like the Koloss. Muscle constriction and friction between blood&veins prevents blood from actually flowing. Super Pewter-enhanced heart pumps blood with enough force to rupture blood vessels.

They are an exception. Remember what Szeth says that prompts Nalan giving him Nightblood? He knows that they have them, he knows they will use them, and he knows they know how to use them.

According to Maxal, there's a WoB out there saying he's alternating Male/Female viewpoints. Eshonai was always gonna be Book 4 even without it, so I'd posited the alternating thing as a theory since the one time he mentioned a planned order for the back five it was F/M/F/M/F(with names obviously, but I forget) As for your actual question, I think it was after. Although come to think of it, when did he decide to make that switch?

That's an actual scene in WoR Chapter 32: I've always loved the imagery this short description has made in my head. Szeth stepping into the light from around the corner is like a movie trailer shot. Needless to say, I approve of your choice.

That's a new one. Never noticed this before. I happen to have my book next to me today. Do you happen to know what chapter this was? Edit: @hoidhunter I found it. Chapter 63 I never noticed this before. Good eye, even if it doesn't end up meaning much.

For future reference, there is a thread made for that Not a bad line though.