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Harmonium is not involved in Medallions as far as we know, and we dont actually know that it can be used as a metalminds (which is all medallions are at the end of the day). It still remains entirely possible that the only Feruchemcical ability of Harmonium is what we have seen of it acting as a mechanical/non-human Emmitter, the same way it does for Allomancy

The vast majority of the gems in that archive are not infused as it is too deep to be affected by the Highstorm and they run down in short order, only perfect gems would theoretically pose that sort of danger and they are pretty rare. There's also the very real possibility that the light converts to something other than Heat through a realmic process. We know, for example, just being near infused gems improves crop growth (it's why the singers needed them) so heat may not be the energy's conversion/byproduct.

Agreed. It also might be a matter of practical complication in storing itself. Using Hemalurgy in Atium is actually significantly harder than using the more application-specific metals, because the Bind Points become significantly more important and you run a much higher risk of Stealing the wrong thing. Harmonium metalminds would need be be touched, so Dry hands are a must, and perhaps there would be a risk of mixing different attributes into the same chunk causing some of the interference effects that come up when talking about the metallic arts.

For what it's worth, in that quote I think he's actually referring more specifically to Nightblood rather than all Nalthian magics. If all Nalthian magics were similarly discerning, then there wouldnt be any need to convert Stormlight to Breaths before you could Awaken with it. As far as the broader point, Im still wrappign my head around what you are trying to describe, but at first glance I dont think that Color's role in the magic is anything that's going to be Physical Realm based, otherwise the whole trick of using a 10th heightening person to bounce back and forth between grey and White should work. Color seems to serve a function that is closer to Catalyst than Fuel, similar to how the physical (mundane) metals used of Allomancy are facilitating the effect and are used up, but are not the actual source of Power.

Thought it was confirmed in OB, but Ill see if I can find the passage

Not all bonded spren can control who can see and hear them the way Syl and Windle can, it seems to vary by spren race. Ivory, for example has to hide by changing size to be too small to see, and Pattern has to hide on surfaces and hope nobody notices.

Nope, just coincidence:

I definitely think it was a proper Command. At the 9th Heightening you get Audible Commands, which lets you Command things you arent touching with just your voice. As far as Commanding the Knife, I see two issues with that. The first is that its metal, which would make it harder to Command, though Susebron still could technically pull it off. Since the Vasher and Shashara needed to actually study and work at it to be able to Awaken metals (as far as I recall) I get the sense that the Instinctive Awakening from the Breath Horde wouldnt be enough to let Susebron do it. The other side is that, based on a few WOBs, I get the sense that Awakening doesnt itself grant any additional flexibility or cohesion to an object, so if it's not capable of movement already it wouldnt be able to when awakened. This one implies that it wouldnt make a liquid any more cohesive. This one mentions that even with the Phanom statues, there are seams at the joints. So you might be able to stop the Knife in a practical way, but to my mind you'd need a more specific Command, like making it heat up until the person dropped it, or perhaps make it crack and fall apart?

My wild and unsupported guess is that the "universal donor" is a) Adonalsium's vessel (assuming he had one) or b) one of the two resident Shards, or some reasonable combination of them

Sel is a corner case. The Focus of all the different Investitures is Patterns/Symbols, as is evident in AonDor, Dahkor, Forger, etc. However, they fundamentally work differently than all other know Investitures. This is because all of them are sourced in The Dor, which resides in the Cognitive Realm instead of the Spiritual Realm. What happened was Odium came and killed/Shattered both Shards, then for reasons that arent 100% clear shoved all their investiture into the Cognitive Realm rather than letting it return/remain in the Spiritual Realm which is where the bulk of most Shards exist. Among other things this is why all Dor-based magics are fundamentally location-locked, so they all loose strength the further you get from their respective homelands, and all of them fail off-world (unless unrevealed special measures are taken).

It's a Horneater thing. Some (but not all) of them have the ability to see spren even when the spren are not trying to be seen. They call such people alaii'iku. We assume this is a result of the fact that Horneaters as a race have Singer heritage.

He is now a Radiant in his own right, with his own Squires. One of the other Bridge crews all went up as Squires to him once he said the words, Bridge Thirteen I believe it was.

I had been assuming that he'd act like any other shardblade in that both would block and each other and reduce things to more or less a normal swordfight the way Azure's blade does, but that that WOB that there would be ramifications beyond that because of Nightblood's significant Investiture makes me think it might just be a little more lop sided. Would they block once or twice but be nearly immediately overwhelmed and Break? I suspect that would be the case with Plate, where there is precedent for damage, but Blades are historically invulnerable to that kind of damage and so far have no known mechanism for repair. We know that a spren in blade form is more durable than a spren in their native form, since Kaladin so easily destroyed one with Syl. How developed the Bond is might also play a role, as in maybe a 5th Ideal Radiant would hold out longer than a 3rd? Glad Szeth is on Daliar's side... Honorblades are another interesting Question, they were made by Honor directly and are presumably more invested that standard blades to some extent. Im also curious what the broader ramifications of one being destroyed would be. Less than a Herald being Uber-killed, but still...

mmmmmm Waffle Ice-cream sandwich *nom nom nom* 3

Maybe, thought I tend to think of it more than they've evolved to just naturally sense more of the realmic interplay that makes up reality. In the same way that their Gemhearts are confirmed to form via leakage from the Spiritual Realm, but I dont personally think of them as a magic system so much as simply how life works on Roshar where the realmic boundaries are so much thinner. On the other hand, we know Roshar was Created specifically and unnaturally by Adonalsium, so maybe calling it a Pre -shattering magic system is more accurate

They arent Investiture persay, as in a magic system that is associated with a particular Shard. They are, however, a realmic effect, so certain sensory magics can detect them. It has more to do with how reality works in the three realms. Ditto the screams that Szeth hears from what I can tell:

There are a couple sides of it that I can think up, but it's all very subjective. I think the biggest factor is how the sentient people think of it, whether their collective/popular mental image is of a dune vs individual grains of sand, or even a more all-encompassing Dune Sea. We know that individual stones have their own cognitive aspect, which is why the soulcasters in the camps prefer larger stones to turn into food, rather than the equivalent mass of gravel. But we've also seen a whole Keep/castle consolidate into a single bead. In general Terrain features like that are going to be really strange. When does a pile of rocks become a Mountain? If the people that live on it see a pile, but people in the valley only see the single Mountain, whose mental image wins out? Does a hill have it's own bead, and how far do you have to dig to get into a different bead? Is there a bead for a Chasm, or just a gap between two Plateau beads? How the bloody hell does AIR have a cognitive aspect, which it must if you can soulcast it into things? I realize that's kind of a non-answer, sorry. The only thing I can actually say is that there is some time-lag involved with the cognitive aspect of inanimate objects (as seen when Dalinar was repairing things) so changes would have to be somewhat lasting before they'd get reflected in the bead image.

I mean, people will always have motivation to steal, thats just a human thing, so I dont see how this Command would make it more or less so than any other magic breath based magic armor. If you are saying that using shardplate as the template would somehow make it more transferable, as in able to recover the breaths and whatnot, Im pretty sure your mental image alone cannot actually defy the more fundamental function of Breaths and Awakening. Just because Real Plate has bonds that are transferable doesnt mean an Awakening impersonation of it will be. Well, I tend to gain and loose weight, so I would personally still like the Adaptability effects. Another side of that function is that it moves and flexes with you, allowing for more grace and maneuverability than normal static metal. You are still giving multiple objects entirely separate commands, I would have to assume that would take more Breaths than a single one (barring some really cool awakening breakthrough like the Scholars made with Lifeless). And with individual and separate commands, they are separate objects, so yes, in each Awakening instance you are awaking something that is Hand Shaped or Foot Shaped, not complete Person Shaped, which as I understand it does make a difference. I think that would be the fundamental trade-off to trying to grant so many different Commands, rather than working out a single cohesive one.

I might be misunderstanding your point, but I dont think so. With Awakening it would likely be Identity Locked and only work for you. Unless we're talking Type IV sentience, but then they'd have to convince the armor itself, which would be unavoidable. Im sure that's equally possible, though it would take a more complex and custom mental image. I was basically just using shardplate as a convenient template. I dont see why not, though I see two (potential) downsides. The first is that you're now talking about several separate awakenings, so it would take many times more breath. The other is that Awakening as a general rule works best on objects that are Human shaped (presumably more compatible with the humans pseudo-soul that is powering it) so awakening a full set of human-shaped armor should (in theory) be easier and/ore stronger than individual pieces.

"Be as Shardplate" This would let it heal, resize to you, augment your strength and endurance, and even get the active display transparency bits of the helm. I always figured the trick with commands is to encompass as many functions as you can within a single statement.

A couple years back they released audio recordings of his show as a sleep aid on a mediation app called Calm. In an interview from teh 90's he (not at all surprisingly) described the fact that people used his show s for relaxation instead of arts and crafts as a "Happy accident". https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/bob-ross-the-joy-of-painting-recast-as-bedtime-audio-series-to-help-you-sleep/t

I kind of think of it in the opposite direction, that there is no reason that they would all get them, since the Orders are based on the Heralds and the none of the heralds got Squires even when their associated Order does. And there is similar precedent, as in the case of the Bondsmiths where they have never gotten Shardblades:

There are plenty of relatively unique spren, the argument could be made that ll sapient spren are unique, but even Cusiceshis specifically of a lower tier than the godspren: Per the WOB I linked, they do not all have squires:

The short answer is we dont know yet. WOB says that "For most orders, squire were knights radiant potentially in training", but not all of them and "Many stayed squires forever and that was okay" And that "Some orders dont have them". As far as how it was "seditious" rather than impossible for there to be more than Three Bondsmiths, the most popular theory as far as Im aware is that there are only three normal Godspren of a level that can make a Bondsmith, but that an UnMade might also be able to serve that role, making a Voidbinder Bondsmitth (which would be crazy powerful and scary). Personally I think there are even odd that Sja-Anat might go this route, if she is sincere about defecting to Dalinar's side.

No such thing as a "wrong" way to enjoy fiction