The One Who Connects

I really didn't want to get sucked into another one of these threads, but I always see one small thing that needs to be pointed out, and then I have to reply to the whole post b/c double posting is bad Anyway... So that's where you got the term from. Subastral looked so out of place when you first started using it, and I hadn't seen anyone use the term except you. (And apparently Hoid, even if I don't remember him doing so) I'm very curious about why you think Spren have their own Subastral. As far as I was aware, they live in the human one, as it's the Cognitive Realm of Roshar, and they largely function in the Cognitive. Tis a sad day when I can say that trusting the Coppermind's assertions and ideas is a bad idea. Countless pages are in need of updating with the wealth of recent knowledge, and the community can only work so quickly. Shards are primarily Spiritual, where location means nothing. I am curious about how that plays into the "exact spot they invest," not even considering the fact that it can happen naturally just by being there. You are confusing terms. Aona did not "divest from the planet," she merely died and is for all intents and purposes, still invested in Sel. That is why they still have fully functioning magic systems and a Shardpool. It's the same with Honor. Final thing: that WoB says that there is at least one Shard has a Shardpool on a planet they are not currently on. It does not in any way say that a Shard abandoned their Pool.

Prett sure that one of the Poland signings (Warsaw maybe?) had a definitive answer about whether he used the Lerasium. I can't really answer much else, but Brandon has said that Harmony is aware of Hoid, but not exactly aware of who he is/what he's doing

Vasher, Denth, and possibly Shashara have worldhopped though. I don't think all 3 of them could have achieved the 10th Heightening concurrently, if only because I would wonder where Denth's store of breath went.

@Hawkido not exactly my intent, but good enough

@8bitBob I feel like there was a WoB that Kandra couldn't imitate Parshendi Carapace and would need the real deal for it, but I'm not in a position to search for it at the moment. (Have to pick up sibling from school) Given that the Kandra Congract forbids them to kill directly, it'll take a bit more doing, but nothing impossible. Just pointing it out.

This is one of those moments where the joke is bad enough to almost warrant down voting. Seriously humanity, what were you thinking..?

The one issue I see with this is that one does not need to snap to Awaken. We have it from Brandon that "anyone can awaken if they get breath" and I don't think everyone who gets Breath will have snapped already. Especially the kids who give up Breath to the Returned. Breath Transfer still a command in awakening, and they can all use it. I remember a Reddit WoB about there being a quantum of Investiture, but feel like it also said it was kinda funky in some way.

Guess I'm assuming majority of battles will be big areas like in Kaladin flashbacks.. Anyway, I wasn't counting mobility towards them being everywhere because it's not like the east flank will fire, then the west, then the middle, then the... It's all over, all the time. Haphazardly of course: reload time and all, but that mobility rushing to protect the west flank from arrows would open up the east flank that you rushed away from. It'd serve them better to ignore that movement speed and give them designated sectors to defend. Fair enough about long range arrows, that's my fault for not taking into account that the armies don't start close by. I do like the Lurcher and Hay idea, even if its a pain to drag with you on the march. (This but is for @Calderis as well) I see where you're coming from, but I just don't think something small like coins could break it with any speed, given that we see people(technically a Kandra) take coins to the chest without any real wounds. Some minor bleeding, but little more. I feel that if plate can resist a bullet, it can resist that. I don't know if Szeth hit the plate beforehand, but he shatters a breastplate of a Shardbearer in interlude I-9. Granted that was with a large block of the wall and some absurd number of lashings, but it might be our only example of something that isn't an Invested Weapon taking under 3 hits. (Szeth's Honorblade seems to take two, according to some people on here. I'd have to reread) Thats a fair point about carts with metals. Ignoring the prep time of that method(can never really get rid of prep time) the weight of the object they are pulling would still slightly throw off their flight path. Nothing irreversible, but using a little extra steel each time can still be an issue in an extended battle. Though I guess they'd be given a few extra vials in a military campaign that what they carry around Luthadel. Getting in and out was never the issue. Getting out with the spoils was the difficult part. I suppose they could use a net that they can pull on to hold the Plate. That's pretty clever actually, nice idea. I know they don't have to bond it to kill with it, but without that bond, they would have to manually go and grab it if it got knocked out of their hands. A bonded one has the respawn time, but you don't risk someone else picking it up and swinging it at you before you reach it. I just added in the Soulcasters bit to get it out of the way, because someone mentioned in the early pages about how they'll "never go short on metal once they get a Soulcaster" or something to that effect. They aren't that easy to use, people. Minor thing on the Kandra is that might still stand out. The Espionage game will be more tricky here, as Scadrians and Rosharans are ethnically different. I don't think Kandra have had any practice imitating Alethi epicanthic folds before, or Thaylen eyebrows(their issue with hair) and I'm sure there are several other defining features that Kandra won't have tried before. Granted, this issue works both ways, since Rosharans won't look like Scadrians. Anyway, that's a different discussion for a different time. Lastly Calderis, the bit about interfering with Allomancy was basically my speculation. I feel like being fully inside an Invested object will prevent you from messing with objects outside of it via other Investiture(sort of like a very rich man's aluminum) We know that Radiants in Dalinar's visions could lash in plate, so I don't think the lack of touch is the main issue there. I don't have any real evidence to back up what I'm speculating, but we don't really have anything definitive about using magic in Plate other than what's been said.

Super tap your reserves to get diminishing returns, store and repeat. Empty Metalmind in minutes, and all is well. Make sure to be near a bathroom just in case. Brandon has said that not all power combinations are useful, so this metal compounded would be one of those.

There was a Reddit WoB to this effect, and Brandon's response was that "Shardblades (blade names?) have history that goes back a lot farther than their current owners" or something very close to this. (I don't have the exact wording, but something definitely "goes back further than current owners")

The Outer Dominances aren't that big either. The Crescent Dominance is literally a wasteland, the Remote Dominance is described as untamed, with little noble presence, probably some rebels but not many cities for them to raid for supplies. The Terris Dominance likely has human soldiers running the breeding program, we know basically nothing about the Farmost Dominance (I think Renoux claimed to be from there?) The Southern Isles were mentioned as having resisted in the past, but navally transporting Koloss seems.. difficult. Brandon's words were "He turned all surviving Feruchemists into Mistwraiths." Not Kandra, so that point still has legs to stand on. I don't see the need to have hundreds of thousands of Koloss. That much smaller force basically took Luthadel, and it was the only city in the Inner Dominances that was allowed to have manmade defenses(like City Walls) He could stomp most any big city with a couple thousand, and I don't see rebel groups taking a whole city from whatever nobles run it without a fight before the Koloss get sent in. @8bitBob A few issues with your points. Point 1) A small group of Coinshots wont be able to deflect every arrow because of the scale of combat. Like Kelsier says about Mistborn: "we can't be everywhere." That doesn't even take into account the fact that constantly pushing that many objects would have them basically operating on instinct, pushing as soon as the line shows up, which means that here and there two will push on the same arrow. The amount of wasted steel is minimal, but can add up over time. Secondly, where do the arrows go? They still have to land somewhere, and a light push to slow it down risks it landing in the frontline, as the Alethi aim to hit the middle lines where they are less spread out. Point 2) Might have been 2 pages ago now, but Oversleep linked a Reddit WoB that "Shardplate would resist a bullet well." Coinshots have better odds at breaking Plate than most regular forces, but they won't smash plate, at least not with the coins they usually push. Heavy stuff sure, but carrying a bunch of lead weights or something will throw off the natural balance of using pushes to fly, since they are now a lot heavier. Can they adapt to dealing with it? Absolutely. But it'll make them slower until they adapt, and will cost them more steel to keep the pre-weights speed they are used to. Against regular infantry, the advantage is much more profound, so I'll just move to point three. Point 3) Let's talk about the logistics behind actually stealing Rosharan stuff. Shardblades can be taken. With great effort, but thats unavoidable. (Killing the bearer and all that..) Learning to bond then could be an experience, but we'll save that discussion for when we understand how bonding works. Shardplate... Not so easily stolen. From the battlefield, they get nothing. Break the plate, it needs Stormlight to regrow. Stealing gems with Stormlight to regrow it is the easy part. They have to first figure out that they can regrow it, then figure out that it needs Stormlight to do it, steal the gems, and then figure out how to feed it Stormlight. I don't think you can just say "open wide" like you're feeding a toddler and have it work, but we don't know how it's done either. They also have to hope they get the bigger piece or else the Rosharans could rebuild it themselves and Scadrial just gets wasted effort. That's also assuming that they consider it worth taking in its semi.. exploded state. Stealing it from the enemy camp has its own issues. It takes several people helping the person to put it on, one piece at a time so our thieves will have to carry a lot of separate armor pieces with them. Pewter gives strength, but not the extra arms to carry all of it. It's too invested to push/pull on it, so that method is out too. It takes a team to put the thing on, so they can't just equip it to themself and leave that way. It's relevant here if they try that, but even if they do get a suit of Plate, they are gonna have to put it on in the right order or else the person inside will get crushed under its weight. Pewter can negate, but using pewter while armoring up? The metal burns out pretty fast compared to others. Then there's the matter of getting used to wearing plate, in more ways than just what Renarin had to deal with. They literally don't know their own strength, have to recalculate push/pulls to counter the extra weight, assuming the Plate doesn't interfere with their powers. (It would've prevented Szeth from using his Honorblade Surgebinding, and it's the same general magic system as Plate. Affecting things with Allomancy might not even be feasible in plate.) I know you didn't mention stealing Soulcasters, but I'll bring it up just for good measure. Scadrian people have no Realmatic theory, and would have no idea how to use the things. Young Ardents(who have experienced people training them) have to practice a lot in order to effectively use Soulcasters, (and not make poison food b/c that's bad.) Not to mention having to resupply on infused gems, knowing what gemstones allow you to do what, finding out about Soulcasters and what they can do in the first place, etc.. Fabrials too, assuming they've made more than just Spanreeds in this timeline. We still don't know how some of them work, and we actually know what they do while Scadrians won't. Long story short, stealing Rosharan stuff would not be an immediate advantage to Scadrial. There's a lot more trial and error/learning involved than just "this is mine now."

I actually think you're the first to post this idea, so props for originality. I feel like the way other KR Spren are (a mix of Honor and Cultivation) means that none of the Bondsmith Spren should be of Odium. That said, he should still have some Stormfather level Spren because the other two have them. So it is entirely possible that someone could bond it. I don't think many people could fully express a mindset of pure hate in order to bond with it, Taln least of all, but that's my opinion. Lastly, given the Blade switch between WoK and WoR, I don't think he's a spy for Odium, mostly because I don't think Odium would let Taln's Honorblade just get taken. (He might have figured out a way to use Voidlight? to stand in for Stormlight to power the magic) but even if he couldn't, I don't see him letting it out of his sight and potentially ending up with the good guys.

I dropped that question into the Ultimate List of Questions topic a while back, and Yata mentioned there being some WoB about it not being as clearcut as how they affect humans, but I don't think Kandra were immune to it. It's probably a Reddit WoB so I'll search for it tomorrow.

@Hawkido There is a WoB (fairly sure it was prior to learning of Ambition) that said "Odium has killed at least one more Shard than the ones you know about" I'm on mobile so I can't really find it that easily. That is where we should direct efforts towards understanding what really happened to Ambition.

Per TFE Annotations(might've been WoA) He showed off his powers to foreign kings to get them on his side and repaid those that joined with Lerasium. He had entire kingdoms on his side to help take over the world, not to mention that per a Reddit WoB, he was "actively pretending to be someone that he was not" so I imagine he could use the "I am Alendi and I stopped the Deepness" to his advantage. As for numbers during his takeover, I don't think he used that many. Koloss are Hemalurgic constructs, so he couldn't just make them with the Well's power, he had to spend the time spiking people. Even if you automate that via underlings, 50K would take ages to do. (Not to mention justifying the deaths of 200,000 people for spikes, and another 50,000 to receive those spikes. Good PR can only go so far before one of his newfound allies think he goes too far.) Fairly certain that Ruin's line (or something else) directly confirmed he made them from people in the outer dominances. I could be wrong, but at the very least I'm pretty sure his line wasn't as ambiguous as you imply it to be.

As was pointed out to me a long while back (the Final Empire vs real world empires thread IIRC) that the massive army at the end of HoA was created by Ruin and his Inquisitors from the people of the outer dominances during the events of that book. What the Lord Ruler had was much closer to 50,000. Elend managed to get ahold of roughly 40,000 for the siege of Fadrex city, and there were losses along the way from the siege of Luthadel up to that point (in the thread, he estimated about 10K losses in that timeframe) since they learned to replenish at a 1:1 ratio, the casualty numbers are only from when they got pushed back/taken over by Vin(since she wouldn't really approve of that method) 50,000 is still a large number, but it's much more surmountable than a quarter million.

There was a 1v1 battle near the very end of the book, and Brandon changed how it ended. WoR Spoilers (on off chance someone hasn't read the book)

I'll take a look at the battle sometime, should prove enlightening. Thank you for the link. As for reusing spikes, it's not as much of a game breaker as you would think. Per one of the HoA Epigraphs, it is Sazed's understanding that the Koloss are the ones that figured out that they could reuse the spikes. TLR would've used that instead of sending more skaa and more spikes to replenish their numbers if he had known. This bit is speculation, but it is my belief that this breakthrough came from Human, as he is the only Koloss given a backstory and the fact that he retained some of his cleverness after being turned into a Koloss. (Coppermind page as either Vershad or Human(Koloss) I'm not sure at the moment) So while the tactic will work (assuming more scuffles don't break out while the sides recover equipment/their dead from the battlefields) I don't think it can be discovered by Koloss while under direct control of Inquisitors, but a clever Inq/Nobleman might make the connection. Actually, the Noblemen don't understand Hemalurgy, so that basically limits it to the Inquisitors making assumptions.

I don't have an exact quote, but basically the molecular structure of the metals are synonymous with the patterns of Aons. The pattern determines the power.

I was in the middle of editing that WoB in.. Blasted Ninjas

I remember a WoB from ... somewhere that a Cadmium Savant could probably end up living longer, but without the context of the WoB I can't say much. (Off to find Kurk's sig) I don't think they could make the bubble last for a few centuries outside time, since they would have to spend a long while in the bubble, and getting older.

I don't see why he would try and do that either, but he is brazen enough to actually do it and stubborn enough to not give up when others would. The OP is equating perfect fit with the one who will try it, when they often aren't. Sazed, as good of a fit as he was for Harmony, basically decided last minute to take up the power. The IRE were the ones going for it, and they were hardly good choices. That said, if we could think of a valid reason to motivate Kelsier into trying to reform Ambition...

Just gonna leave this here.... @jofwu@Extesian

Unless I'm remembering a different scene(entirely possible) didn't he tell the girl "I'm going to say something to you, and you're going to repeat it, and I need you to mean it." or something to that effect? It's still commands that affect people, but affecting oneself rather than others

For the purpose of cross world cooperation: Spanreeds. They are instant communication to wherever the linked piece is, likely even on other planets, since they ignore curvature of the planet when making both pieces face upright. But I can fully see them creating their own method of cross-planet co... What am I saying, they have Seons. All they need is to find a way to get them through the portal to the other world and they're set.