Stark

Also worthy of debate, seeing as the listeners seem to have a deeper connection with the cognitive, and can see/feel/hear more of the spren approaching than humans see - Can the listeners see the Deadeyes when the blades are not summoned?

I think I pre-judged this as a Troll post from the title before opening it. I'm not sure if I was right or not, which makes me think it is a clever troll post, making me doubt. I've been known to throw posts together before, a little scattered and riddled with tangents, trying to get all my thoughts on the page before they escape me, but this is next level. I have a little trouble following your thought process. Which, as I re-read before posting, sounds more than a little pedantic and snobby. I by no means intend to belittle your theory. I apologize in advance if you perceive an attack from me - it is not intended, I just want to understand. If you are serious, I am curious how you arrived at these conclusions - though @RShara and @Weltall have covered the flaws in you theory pretty well, so I wont retread them. I'd like to hear about your reasoning. Until then, I can only sum up my reactions as "Ummm... Wat?"

Or maybe it is more insidious than that. We have already seen the unmade able to affect the minds of humans in their region, whether it be the Thrill, the Death Rattles, or the Heart of the revel. If three unmade are able affect peoples behaviour, and at least two of them are the less cognitively able Unmade, then maybe she can too. There was that line in Hessica, the book Shallan found, that said you should run from a region if weird spren start appearing, as it is indicative of her presence. So what if, when she corrupts a lesser spren, it becomes a gateway. And then if you attract that type of spren, I don't know, corrupted joy spren. What if there is a Connection between a person feeling an emotion, and the spren attracted to and feeding on that emotion? While you are feeling joy, the corrupted joy spren appears, with non corrupted spren, or only corrupted appear, and while the corrupted spren 'feeds' she can highjack that connection to plant suggestions? We already saw that each corrupted spren can act as her eyes and ears, when the GLory spren she highjacked passes info to Shallan in Shadesmar. But what if she can do more? With enough corrupted spren in a region, what if she can start manipulating and programing sleepers among the humans? I only suggest the sleeper action because otherwise the advice to flee an area with corrupted spren seems excessive for an Unmade that can only spy through her minions. She must have some other ability that would make her that scary. So maybe she is part of why the Queen's guards were so... Okay with killing messengers and being creepy-evil. It's not just that they are following the queen, but they are being subtly modified by Sja-anat to think this is normal, okay behaviour through the dense concentration of corrupted spren.

And work has just informed me that I will be in Toronto the week before this, only getting home late on June 1st. Driving Montreal to New York after getting back to Montreal around 8pm and not having been home for a week is not a good plan, or a safe plan. Especially not if I want to be a happy personable person when I get my chance to meet Brandon. So, I'm going to have miss this one, and hope another opportunity comes soon.

The whole reason he ended up in Bridge four was that a member of his family challenged Sadeas to earn shards and lost. As a result, they came to serve Sadeas, and Rock made some interesting dietary choices that left him in Bridge four. Simultaneously sad, horrifying and hilarious. Fine. Ownership of shards is transferred by heritance, or by right of conquest, correct? Well Rock, proto-Radiant that cannot handle the touch of shards though he may be, killed Sadeas Amaram. Oathbringer went back to Dalinar, cool. But Heleran's plate and blade, by right of conquest, should belong to Rock now. The first Horneater shards. Mission accomplished, sort of. So what is going to happen there, in the year gap? This takes tertiary interest behind everything else that could happen in that year, like the fallout from Rock taking violent, life ending action, despite being strongly adverse to it, and the implication that he is higher in the Horneater heirarchy than he lets on, but still. Interesting to think on, no? So what will happen in the next year with the Horneater peaks, and the self-loathing proto-Radiant Horneater King who wants nothing more from life than to stay with friends and family and make sure they are well fed?

I have to try. How else will I get to ask my questions about the theoretical cache of shardblades I think the Shin have.

Cusicesh the Protector is a literal protector of Humanity on Roshar, and the faces seen in its body are the faces of the Parsh ancestors trapped on Braize trying to get back to Roshar? We have not had any visibility on Cusicesh since Taln broke or the Everstorm started, so we have no idea if it still appears daily, or if the faces have changed, or if the quantity has diminished since those events. What if Cusicesh is directly linked to the Oathpact? Is that within acceptable realms of possibility?

I figure that if Adonalsium was involved in everything, and hios investiture permeates everything, than so to does his metal. Which would be intermingled with the raw materials used to build a planet, and maybe so interlinked that it must be refined out. I know I'm stretching, but I do not think that I am outside the realm of plausibility.5 As for removing investiture, are you sure? We have seen Investiture be wiped from something before - by Larkins and Nightblood. On Nalthis, people give up their investiture. The rules are flexible for how investiture is contained in an object. Ad, if his investiture was taken up by the 16, it cannot still be in what remains of his vessel. It is gone. Not destroyed, but gone nonetheless. The energy is transformed, not duplicated. It is like heat, if you have a bar of metal, red hot and transfer the heat to ice, the ice melts and boils and the bar loses energy. The energyu is transformed and gone from the metal, but still exists. Adonalsium's investiture was taken by the 16. Thermodynamics cannot allow his remains to still have that energy, duplication is not allowed right? And finally, there is so much we do not know about god metals, I think it is premature to make definitive statements about what can and cannot be. As a further thought - Yes, the 16 god metals are not naturally occuring, and appear pure. Atium grows out of Geode bulbs. Lerasium and Harmonium, we do not know. Tanavastium and Cultivationium condense out of thin air when spren need physical form. None of that is natural. This could be because, when Adonalsium was around, and his investiture permeated everything, it was in balance. So his godmetal growing in Volcanoes could be realistic. But when shattered, and 16 new godlings appeared, the Cosmere had to react and instantly create 16 new elements. Of course they are going to appear pure, and not interlinked with the rest of the natural world. They are new and unnatural, the natural world does not know how to cope. But Adonalsium was part of everything, so his metal being intertwined with the core of planets feels right to me. But I could be wrong, and a lot of people dislike this theory. Which is cool, I do not presume enough to call it anything other than a theory. An alternate could be, if it is not a godmetal, seeing as Aluminum has a natural immunity to Investiture, that Aluminum is the prime component to the weapon the 16 used to kill Adonalsium. And as a result, it rejects investiture's influence. I don't like this as much as thinking Aluminum is a god metal, but it could work.

So it is canon now that Aluminum is a duck? @The One Who Connects I was not implying that Aluminum is invested. My belief is that it is an absence of Investiture - as Adonalsium's investiture has been taken and split in 16 pieces, his metal, and body is empty. So for me, Aluminum is empty, which links a little with it being a dead thing/odd duck from the WOB. The original point was that other materials, heavily invested, are more difficult to manipulate via investiture - Such as Nightblood, or metalminds. So Aluminum acts like Invested material, which is not saying that it is. The follow up asked how Feruchemists could use it if it was invested (which is not what I said) and I compared to Atium, which is solid investiture, which can hold a feruchemical charge. So Godmetals, which are investiture rich, can still be metalminds. The counter here is that while Atium is investiture heavy, it can still be pushed and pulled with Allomancy, unlike Aluminum. So I see with the conversation history, and my responses to responses, it is possible to see me hinting that aluminum is invested, and I apologize for that. Not my intent. I don't think that, and did not state that. I think that Adonalsium is like a vampire's victim, drained of everything, a husk. Only investiture, not blood. So his Godmetal would be absent the investiture markers like Atium and others. But it would still have some markers, acting like an invested item, but different. I'm doing a really poor job of explaining myself right now. What I'm trying to say is that I think that Adonalsium's husk, his godmetal would be so empty it would act like an anti-godmetal. Opposite of the others. Wiping out investiture rather than boosting it. Being blank and unresponsive, rather than manipulable. Worth noting, Feruchemical Aluminum stores Identity, making the user a blank slate of Identity.

How do they store in Atium, which is also full of investiture? God metals are weird. Aluminum is weird. Aluminum may not be a Godmetal, but I think it is far from the worst candidate, and I like it as a candidate.

It maybe does. There is difficulty pushing invested metal - such as metalminds. So much so that And Brandon has stated that heavily invested items are more difficult to forge or Soulcast, due in part to the Investiture cost to overcome the investiture already contained in the target. I am horribly misquoting that WoB. Please be gentle Arcanists. That said, I do support the theory that Adonalsium is a God metal, but it is a flawed theory. Rshara's point about the need for refinement is as valid as ever. We have yet to see any godmetal that needs refinement of any type. Unless (Nalthis) Either way, we have only seen three of 16 godmetals on screen, absolute max of six. That is not enough to conclude that the metal must always appear pure. Or even stable (Harmonium?) Anyway, that is my two cents. We don't know enough to be able to conclude what we do and don't know with Aluminum, other than it is weird, valuable, RAFO'd till the end of time, and makes decent bicycles. But the blank state idea is kinda neat.

Damnit, now I need to convince my wife that she wants to go visit her parents that weekend. Lets see if we can do this.(Honestly, probably not)

This is super helpful for the timeline aspect of my theory regarding the Shin. Too bad we don't also have the Shin invasions listed in this quote.

@RShara

I always pictured it something like this Jasnah, holding the picture in front of her so it faces the viewer, asking "Have you seen this man? Have you seen this woman? What about this herald?"

Oh geez. Now I'm wondering about an Aimian bonded to a shardblade. Ten heartbeats, right? Well, an Aimian has how many hearts? Can they essentially insta-summon a blade, as they could literally have a hundred or more heartbeats inside a second? Or is it limited to the ten heartbeats of the hordeling that is in the anatomical location of the heart when they are in bipedal form? What are the rules?

If anyone is feeling so inclined to ask a potentially RAFO bait question, here is mine: How many Shardblades (excluding Honorblades) are in the possession of the Shin?

I know have this mental image of Leyrann as one of those tinfoil hat types who has coated the entire inside of their home with aluminum foil to prevent detection and having their things be used against them, while being a mistborn. Possibly with an aluminum lined suit. I guess I need more context for the question before I answer. Are we theoretically a Mistborn on Scadrial in Era 1? The only Mistborn on Scadrial in Era 2? A Mistborn on Earth? Or finally, the only Mistborn on Earth. Context could change my answer. That said, no matter where I was a mistborn, nothing would scare me more than super magnets.

Oh geez. Now I want to see this. For oaths delivered by ASL. Or more specifically, RSL. But also for the Lift interactions. She must listen to those who have been ignored, and those who cannot speak are often sidelined. But how would she listen to someone who cannot speak. Of course there are many ways to interpret listening, other than the literal. But the dilemma of it all is just too funny to imagine Lift not being perplexed by it.

Actually, it is almost too bad that Rock is already married happily with kids. He is definitely more important in the Horneater culture than he lets on, or wants to admit. And he killed Amaram, Jasnah's nemesis. And he is Radiant. If you want a political marriage, there you have it. Jasnah and Rock. Guaranteed she'd be able to pronounce his name properly, and participate in the slam poetry style insults his people use based on the recipients name. Except, you know, he's married. Happily. With kids. So not happening.

@Narcoleptic AxolotlIf you have not finished reading/listening to WoR, you may want to avoid the OB spoiler pages like the plague. There are a lot of things that the rest of WoR, and subsequently OB, will address that will answer for you. You run an extremely high risk of being burnt by spoilers here. Pattern, Shallan's shardblade, how it is like Adolin's, how it is different. All these things are not things you want to be reading about here... Keep reading at your own risk.

What this quote tells me is that if Adolin manages to revive her, it will be by what amounts to a soulgraft. The Maya he revives will not necessarily be the same Maya that 'died.' This can go three ways I guess. One is the ship of Theseus paradox, where the part will be replaced, is it the same spren? She will have (eventually) her memories return from before the Recreance. She will function as a spren. She will hopefully never remember her centuries as a Deadeye. She will be a little different for her experience, but ultimately be the same as any other spren who has bonded someone new after their original bondmate has died. The same as before, yet different, subtly. One is the Frankenstein's monster result. I view it almost as organ transplant, only more along the lines that she lost an arm, and they grafted someone else's arm onto replace it. Is she whole? Yes? Is it clear that it was a graft job? Very. Could it be unsettling to other spren? Most definitely. Will it be better than an eternity as a deadeye. Yes, but only because there is hope for improvement now. But the scars from the soulgraft to fix what was ripped out will be very apparent. One is something new entirely. She is not the old Maya. She is not the Deadeye Maya. She is the Adolin Maya, something new created by the blend of her soul and the part of his grafted on. The line delineating the two is blurred, and you can't tell where one ends and the other begins, but the parts are distinct for now, but become less so with time. Maybe she starts presenting similar to Glys. Like a corrupted Cultivation spren - not red, not fully different, but fundamentally changed. A spren with human eyes? A spren made of vines, but with Adolin's hair. Option one is best case, two is worst case, three is what I view as most likely. She becomes something new, like Glys. A Radiant spren not wholly of the previous ten categories. Whether this is wonderful or terrible, only time will tell.

So... Kandra Awakeners need things to resemble amorphous blobs to be able to awaken them? Or is it more closely linked to their self perception? IE: Tensoon would need canid forms, Melaan humanoid forms, Vendell dusty-old-coat-rack forms, and that one kandra to into horror would need cthulu-oid forms?

I expect nothing less from one of the skeptics of the Arcanum. I'll convince you all of something one day, and it may even be something true. But not this day it would seem. Thanks for the upvote and please keep challenging my theories, crazy or not. It forces me to craft better arguments, and I appreciate the mix of counterpoints and constructive criticism.

I did not know that. That is super cool. Unsurprising that the research is that well done, but super cool nonetheless. Do you think that was intentional?