The One Who Connects

It's meant to be an "evolutionary" thing to help diseases survive. You aren't exactly gonna rush to eradicate/cure diseases when they let you fly/shoot lasers/etc... now are you?

The Inquisitors did. It's from the HoA annotations about how "Human" came to be. I think these set up the time period up quite nicely. I'm having a little trouble finding it, but Brandon has specifically said that "TLR kept too tight a hold on the Inquisitors for Ruin to take control of them while TLR was alive." That is all the explaining that I think is needed. TLR was powerful enough to keep them from being taken over by a Shard(trapped as he may have been). Vin/Elend simply aren't that powerful, as Ruin demonstrates when he rips all the Koloss from Elend's control in book 3. I don't think TLR fully controlled them like the Koloss, merely came close enough that Ruin couldn't get a grip on them in his weakened state. If TLR used a Duralumin Soothing on the Inquisitors though... all bets are off. As for why he "let" Marsh kill the other Inquisitors, I see several things that could contribute to this. Marsh was a new inquisitor, and we know TLR gave them enough autonomy to choose their own subjects to convert. Marsh may have simply been new enough that he wasn't aware of him yet. He could be distracted by the issues with Vin. He could simply have not noticed them die(he's got connections to ~50k Koloss, so I can forgive him not noticing a few lives pass away, especially given how Koloss are. A few dropping out here and there wouldn't be uncommon) There's no taking them back from Ruin, as Vin tries it on Marsh in book 3, only to fail even with Duralumin. I doubt she could take over one without Duralumin, meaning that she can't overpower TLR's grip in book 1 either. She doesn't really encounter Inquisitors in book 2, at least to my knowledge, and she only gets the idea to try near the end of book 3 when she tries it on Marsh. This is why they never did it. You should also keep in mind that the subjects mental fortitude makes it more difficult to take control, which is why the eternally stubborn Marsh was given eleven extra spikes, putting him at 22 compared to the average Inquisitor's 14. More spikes, more soul crack for Ruin to use while taking over.

Oh right that did happen. I suppose it's only fitting that we argue "how we get into this situation" before arguing if the situation has merit. Not much i can say that wasn't already said back then, besides me thinking that it'd take several lashings to have a meaningful impact(stuck in orbit/actually launched out into space, as opposed to his going up and then falling back down)

One. Two. Make of these how you wish.

Given that he has the power to move planets, he can maneuver something else to knock the aluminum projectile off course if he can't move the aluminum on it's own. Or he could just move Scadrial out of the way, come to think of it.

Never seen that entry before, but we have this entry here, so it's not an issue. I'm a little surprised it's taken this long for someone to bring this up. I don't think it's that simple, all things considered. The lack of oxygen is meaningless, as Miles is on the record for healing dying brain cells from a lack of oxygen. The healing would help him survive any impacts with micro-debris, and possibly keep him intact despite the lack of pressure in space. Gold healing can keep a body intact in the face of a lot of things. If there is a space station/mars colony , he can possibly break back in without too much trouble, provided he's got the momentum in space. Anyone on here wanna give me the odds on a Gold Compounder surviving atmospheric reentry? I really like this logic. Consider me a fan of this theory.

I'd like to talk to you about road signs in Britain (and apparently a lot of the world, that's a lot more countries than I expected) As for how such a system would arise, Maelstrom is right. Consider that Khriss uses a Cosmere Standard for planetary weight and gravity. She likely uses a cosmere standard year as well. Silverlight and the Worldhopping Community is gonna be behind any push for a universal measuring system. I do like Farnsworth's suggestion that Roshar would be a base-10 system(metric), but other worlds might use different numbers. Imperial Units are a base-12 system(12 inches per foot), so a base-16 wouldn't be that out there in my opinion, and Brandon could make it work. As long as he doesn't go into too much detail about it in the books, we could understand "30 feet," even if that doesn't exactly translate into 30 ft for us. A year on Roshar doesn't translate into a year for us, but we don't get confused about that, now do we?

Depends on how you look at it. Preservation's death could be considered him "allowing" Ruin to destroy Scadrial. If the deal never specified when, then by technicality, entrapping Ruin didn't break the deal by delaying its completion. Also, the people who stopped Ruin were Kelsier, Vin, Elend and Sazed. Leras may have given them the opportunity, but he isn't the one who actually prevented Ruin from getting his end of the bargain. Leras was dead by then, giving Ruin his opportunity to destroy Scadrial. He was prevented by forces that were not similarly limited by the deal as Leras was. At most, the deal is incomplete because Ruin wasn't able to hold up his end of the bargain and destroy Scadrial.

If you mean my post near the bottom of page 3, that was probably me momentarily forgetting it's got several close together mixed with thinking that the Inquisitors used it as a "semi-universal" point. I'd say more of the latter, but I wouldn't put it past myself to have simply forgotten here and there.

Also why he is one of the more polarizing characters in SA. He's one of the few "villain" characters that doesn't have "good intentions" as one of his motivations, and that makes him much harder to forgive in many people's eyes. He replaced "good intentions" with "following his code no matter what" and serves as a prime example of why that isn't always a good thing. As much as we like to bash on dishonorable characters in media, we all know there are times where following the rules is the wrong choice. This is probably gonna be a character struggle for Dalinar later down the line: When does "being honorable" stop being "doing the right thing" and turn into "following the rules, regardless of the consequences"? It feels somewhat odd, yet somehow right, that the character closest to being like Szeth might be Dalinar(the walking definition of "good guy" for most readers before the flashbacks happened) I realized why your example didn't sit right with me. If memory serves, our historical assassins actually followed the codes of the societies they infiltrated to achieve their goal, in the same way Nalan is obsessed with the "law of the (specific) land." Amaram doesn't really seem to do that. Or seem the type to do that, in my opinion. Being honorable is being consistent with following your code. The big thing that I see here is a matter of where the line is drawn. At what point is your own code superseded by something else? With Szeth, his personal code is king. Nothing has higher authority than his code, nothing can make him bend or break his code. The situation, the consequences, the morality, they are all irrelevant. With Nalan, the judicial law takes precedence over his own code. If something in his code is contradicted by a local law, then that bit of his code takes a backseat for a time. With Amaram, what overrules what? I agree that we haven't seen enough of his actions to say for sure, but I get the feeling that "if he stands to gain from it," it could trump societal codes and his organizational code. Other times, the Sons of Honor's goals come first. It feels too inconsistent, which is why I don't subscribe to him being honorable. Even Kaladin had points where he was willing to put his code aside, but that doesn't suddenly make him a bad guy. It simply gave him a less than perfect record, which is where we are all at. Nobody has a perfect record, as our honor is marred/tempered by morals and compassion, lest we end up like Szeth. The true measure of how "honorable" someone is would be a list of situations where you would be willing to break your code. Szeth's list contains nothing. Nalan's list is "only when a local law overrules my code." Dalinar's list (might currently be empty, come to think of it..), but it will likely have a few more things on it by the end of his story arc. How long would Amaram's list be?

I know that, but given the size of normal Hemalurgic Spikes, I'd expect many of those other bind points to be a bit mangled(around the part that just got spiked). Granted, the heart is probably a bit bigger than I think it is, but it still feels... like it'd be up to luck. For all we know the spike-out points for A-Gold and F-Gold are right next to each other, which would prevent the second spike from hitting it until the first is out of the way. You are definitely right about using bullets as spikes. Didn't even think of those

From the thread you are bringing these questions from, it seems pretty well agreed that the weapon Preservation was referring to was the Atium cache he had TLR hide. Since he segues from the weapon to needing a sign to show them the weapon, it's pretty much certain. His sign was "sixteen" as he said himself, and that sign helped lead to the Atium Misting discovery, as they were "1/16th of Elend's army." Having read what Preservation said in Secret History in the other thread(thank you for posting that, by the way), water has absolutely nothing to do with either weapon. The weapon he refers to is Atium, and Preservation says he "needed a sign, something he[Ruin] can't change." He brings up the boiling/freezing point of water as examples of numbers that wouldn't change. The fact that he used water as his example is irrelevant. He could just have easily used the boiling/freezing/melting point of something like gold, mercury, petroleum, etc... Water was the choice because it's the most likely to become common knowledge(as the real world shows: who here actually knows the boiling point of mercury or the melting point of gold? But you all know the boiling point of water.) Also from Preservation's statement, he discarded water as his metric anyway, making it even more irrelevant than it already was. His sign was a set number, and if units changed(see Celsius vs Fahrenheit), then his water boiling number was useless. He then chose the number of Allomantic metals, knowing that it would never change. "Something they would immediately recognize. Sixteen." Another quote from Preservation implies that this sixteen is a direct reference to the metals, not the Shards. He even discusses this with Kelsier.

For what I would rather be, I've essentially got a three-way tie between Feruchemist, Elantrian, and Awakener. Simply put, they are the most versatile [single magic system] skill-sets in the Cosmere. An Elantrian can do quite literally anything with the right Aon chains(and inscribed plates make things both repeatable and quicker). Given enough breath, an Awakener is pretty much only limited by their own imagination. For Feruchemy, there is no limit to experimentation: several extra senses to work with, creative interactions between the powers, etc.. I ended up picking Elantrian, because Feruchemist wasn't an option, and Returned have the "breath per week" issue, whereas a normal Awakener wouldn't.

A snippet of the Royal Locks from Nalthis. It's the only place we've seen so far that has anything to do with hair. Not sure they would be of any use separated from the head that grew them, but... For future reference, we have a WoB on what this is, even if you didn't mention it in the "unsure" category. I'm gonna be honest and say them being spikes has never sat right with me. It always felt.. off, like we were missing something important and just going with the 2nd option. I was almost convinced it was something from one of the other worlds we haven't seen yet, something in the same vein as the Royal Locks, where we wouldn't make the connection to any particular magic system. I'm willing to believe that they are a Kandra blessing through, since that takes away most of the uncertainty. Nice catch.

This is... debatable. Personally, I don't think it would work, since "the urge to heal" isn't exactly an emotion. Even if you could come up with the requisite emotions, I see three ways around this. You would also have to soothe many more emotions, to placate any attempts at violence against the soothers/captors. (Mostly a resource drain, not sure how common soothers are/how expensive brass is in Era 2) Kelsier could resist the Lord Ruler's mega-soothing, so a particularly stubborn individual could resist the soothing for longer. (Even more resource drain, possibly making the process fail altogether(unlikely, but it's an option)) You'd have to have a supremely strong soothing while you actually try to kill them, as the shock of pain/blood loss might snap them out of it. Adrenaline is a heck of a chemical. (I added blood loss for someone like Miles, who doesn't feel external pain) There is also the "if they are already healing, it would keep going" line of reasoning, but for an extended soothing session this probably won't be an issue. Atium is irrelevant unless it is being burned Allomantically, so this is no different from a normal machine gun. Easily healed through. And unless the bullets are low enough velocity to stay in the body, aluminum bullets are pointless as well. Unless you know the proper bind points, this method will not work. Without knowing the right place to spike out the abilities, you are forced to use the heart for both. Do you think you can drive a spike into his heart, pull that spike out, and then drive a different spike into his heart before he can start healing? This doesn't even consider the possibility that his heart may be too mangled by the first spike to function as a Bind Point anymore. Additionally, unless you can sneak up on him, he can just start healing before you spike him and make the matter irrelevant. Either the Lord Ruler never slept, or else you can tap Metalminds while sleeping, as he was always tapping Atium. I would not be surprised to see a Gold Compounder forgoing sleep due to the paranoia, but this is probably the best chance of sneaking up on them.

Like the "is Hemalurgy really a Metallic Art?", you'll have to take this one up with Brandon. Based Realmatically. Anyone else want to take stabs at the implications of this phrase? (Or is this just Realmatics in the sense of 3 Realms, 3 Quadrant Types?) Keep in mind that before the Shards arrived does not necessarily equate to pre-Shattering, as Odium visiting a bit later down the line shows. In this case, it probably is pre-Shattering, but that isn't what the WoB says. Speaking of the WoB, yes, he paraphrased the answers. However, he began his post with the words "written question." Given that the question specifies humans in it, I believe that the answer is not misinterpreted. Edit: I found a Sel WoB that I've never seen before.

Bear in mind that in the Cosmere: Matter, Energy and Investiture are interchangeable, giving both the potential to be a type of condensed Investiture, and vice versa. Nightblood may not be able to consume that much energy, but if that energy is converted into Investiture? The potential is there, even if I doubt Brandon will ever give us the math for it.

People on earth can escape handcuffs by breaking their wrists(and their thumb as well I think) to fit through the openings. A gold compounder can easily escape any bindings of that type, as they can heal the unnaturally bent limbs and broken bones after wriggling out of their manacles. They could also just remove the hand, foot, arm, or leg that is bound up and regrow it. You would have to completely encase said compounder in something to prevent escape, at which point the ocean is rendered irrelevant and you have to wait for them to use up their reserves(healing through the lack of food, water, or air). Depending on what material they are encased in, they might even be able to wear it down over time, the way friction wears out a pair of jeans. Either way, they are gonna live for a long while. Leechers work on a formula(that Brandon has not saw fit to provide us with yet) where burning "X" amount of Chromium will destroy "Y" amount of Investiture Reserves. A Compounder has a lot of extra Investiture within their Metalminds compared to a normal Allomancer's metal reserves. Brandon has said that "cleaning out a compounder would take time" and that they would need to keep hold of their target while it drained the Metalminds. What this boils down to is that our Compounder can just manually kill the Leecher while he is in close proximity to them, and their is nothing the Leecher can do about it. It's the main reason why Leechers aren't an effective counter against the Lord Ruler. In theory, this would probably work. In practice, the biggest issues with this one are getting him into that situation to begin with, and making sure he can't escape while the walls close in.

I figured referencing the current religious belief was a viable source in the sense of that belief had to come from somewhere. "Myths often have a grain of truth in them if you know where to look." -Third Doctor You would probably be right. We learned Renarin was writing them when he was carving the zeroes during the Battle of Narak(Ishishach 1173). Navani's journal entry is dated Jeseses 1174. 10-10-3 to 1-1-1 is only 3 days later. I'm not sure that would have been mentioned within that timeframe, especially given all the other revelations to be explained, but it's possible.

I'm gonna say no. We know that not all of them have opposites like R&P, we know some colors and numbers are important, but IIRC that entry was from a cosmere standpoint more than "important to some Shards" We don't have anything more specific than those though. Then it could be 1000 of whatever equivalent metric they use. It's the idea that counts. ??

Oh.. I guess you glossed over a couple statements directly saying that the Vorin believe that "predicting the future = evil" during .. one of Szeth's interludes (WoK I-6?) and one of Shallan's Kharbranth chapters I think. Well, congrats for coming up with the idea on your own. Navani's journal entry is most likely a product of her Vorin beliefs, so it falls to the Sunmaker argument. As an Honorspren, Syl's words would theoretically carry more weight, but.. they don't. IIRC, she says that future-sight is "not of Honor," which doesn't necessarily imply evil. Cultivation is quite good at it, Preservation was also adept at it, Odium is believed to be good at it too. Honor and Ruin weren't. Even if you consider some Shards to be evil(I don't), the split is mixed among good/bad.

It's at the bottom of my big post from the other day, but here:

Again, bear in mind that, unless I am remembering incorrectly, this connection stems from the Sunmaker and the Hierocracy. Meaning that this "Future Sight == Voidbringers" idea is only about 700 years old. The Last Desolation was 4,500 years ago. That's a lot of time where people could have thought differently. This also opens the door to Odium/Cultivation's influence in why the Sunmaker said that. On the other hand, if say.. Truthwatchers had future-sight, the Odium could have influenced a deep seated public opinion against Radiantkind to become even worse. If future-sight like the death rattles is giving Odium hints about the future too, then Cultivation stepping in to put a stop to it is justified(and could be why Truthwatchers never spoke of what they saw). Both of these conclusions seem valid enough to me, so.. opinions?

This makes me wonder if Dalinar's Squires(if he has any in the future) will be limited by distance, given that Dalinar isn't limited by distance from his Spren. Your "reasonable estimate of 1,000 meters high" gave me an idea. 1000 is 10*10*10. There's no reasonable way to split 10 by 18 into "nicer" numbers, so perhaps they just decided the height is what needed to be a 10-centric number. Or this is Brandon being funny and we'll think it's actually significant that we have 10(Honor) by 18( 9(Odium) * 2(?Cultivation?) ). The Sunmaker is on record for having toppled the Hierocracy. This description implies that the Sunmaker uniting the Highprincedoms happened during the Hierocracy. Concurrent events, especially ones as intertwined as these two, are.. difficult to put in a solid "which came first" order. The Sunmaker unified the Highprinces to battle the Hierocracy, so his conquest could be considered "first" since the massive battles of the Hierocracy happened after he united them. His conquest could be considered "second" since he ended the Hierocracy. It depends on the perspective of who wrote the histories, and intertwined events are bound to have conflicting reports, even with history being written by the victor. I think the thing to note is that the Shin Invasions are ordered first either way. Brandon puts the Hierocracy at about 700ish years before the books, and my/our estimates on here put the Recreance at 2200-2500 years before the books. I think Shin invasions would be during a time without the KR, so there's a good chunk of time for it to have happened. WhiteLeeopard is more than likely right that it's primarily a matter of trust. Highlords are 3rd Dahn, making them higher rank than Shardbearers & Battalionlords(4th Dahn) and equal rank to Renarin(3rd). Given the "assassin" debacle with Elhokar in book 1&2, would you promote people you previously suspected of high treason(attempted assassination of the King) to high ranks? But to actually answer your question, people can be promoted to higher Nahn/Dahn. Getting assigned to be a citylord for instance implies a certain rank, so you would gain that Dahn with the job. Darkeyed soldiers can rise in Nahn by getting promotions in the Alethi military, etc.. I get the sense that Highlord isn't as.. defined as say "Highprince," "Citylord," or "Captain." Who/What/Where are they gonna be Highlord of? Captain of 200 men, Citylord of Hearthstone, Highprince of "insert name's" Princedom, etc... We know Eshonai's Prologue PoV takes place earlier than Szeth/Jasnah's did, so Dalinar's could be an early entry too, maybe discussing with Gavilar and Sadeas before they go off to: get drunk/meet with Eshonai/to disguise as Gavilar. Maybe the Thrill is the "gateway drug," to coin a poor analogy. Once you get consumed by the Thrill, you start to.. connect with the others. Being "bonded" in some way to all 9 Unmade would make you an dangerous individual, likely giving you access to some impressive powers. Also, if we do have said proto-champion be one of the PoV cast, that could be our in for learning about the other Unmade, the way we got casual Hemalurgy tidbits from Ruin's Champion in HoA.

I figured that was "Honor" talking, personally. A merged consciousness ought to have some shared memories, and that's a pretty apt way to describe a cognitive shadow to somebody without going too deep into details.