Aradel

Why does it have to be character traits or actions? They go hand in hand. Spen bind with someone because of defining personal traits, and the only traits that matter are the ones that become actions. They have to "walk the walk" so to speak. Another thing I want to bring up is that the time when Syl started talking with kaladin, and the truthspren began appearing to Shallan was when they both were struggling with the ideals we've been talking about. Kaladin doubts himself as a leader, Shallan is deceiving Jasnah... It seems that the times when they're struggleing with the attributes that mark their presumed orders is some kind of step in the bonding process.

That's why it should be the slider using the explosives. Get within twenty to fifty meters from target (for maximum effect), freeze time, set up a claymore at their leisure, set off the claymore at their leisure, rinse, repeat. The Claymore, I should mention, is a hand-triggered directional mine. Meaning the slider gets to stand safely behind it while setting it off.

Cadmium mistings would be great for bomb squads, show up and slow the bomb down until it can be identified and defused. Bendalloy mistings, on the other hand, would be great at setting bombs. As long as they're equiped with heavy sheilding or bombs that send shrapnel in only one direction.

I thought we were talking about shardblades? Drabs were brought up in the other topic.

Actually, while I'm thinking about could the plates and blades be smaller peices of adanalsium? Ones not part of the sixteen shards? If adonalsium didn't break cleanly, there'd be a bunch of tiny peices that don't behave in the same way as larger shards.

'Irregardless' isn't actually a word. 'Regardless' resents having it's meaning stolen by a look-alike wearing a hat.

I've always guessed that the Nalthians would call everyone else in the cosmere drabs. The single breath every Nalthian is born with is added to the normal level of primary investment required for sentience.

Most of these are good in general, but what about weapons tailored for specific powers? I've said before that flails or slings would be especially dangerous in the hands of a steelrunner. They don't require pewter-strength to use and increased speed adds exponentially to the damage dealt.

I was afraid of that, so as far as Vo is concerned we still aren't sure how he had kids.

Are we absolutly certain that Vo was male? I'm wondering what would happen to a woman who returned while pregnant.

Blushweaver most likely returned to prevent the war that would have been if events had gone differently. Remember in WoK during one of Dalinar's visions, the 'narrator' talks about how seeing the future gets harder the further away that future is? What she returned to prevent didn't happen the way she saw it might.

Chemical weapon to the face, preferably a fluid that vaporates into a toxic gas or anasthesia.

It's nice, and settles the gem debate, but what about spren? I always thought that spren were the cognitive aspects of objects made manifest because the known world is regularly doused in stormlight, and honorspren were spren that shift gears to be bound to honor's power instead of cultivation like other spren. How would the switch work in your 'vessles' theory?

I hope you know that I had to wait for my phone to load the full ip board before I could +1 that. Subscribe me to the stormlight-vessel-distortion-somthing-or-other theory.

I think you meant ascention.

Go with "fellow bookworms."

I'm placing my bets on Binding as Honor's focus. Dual-shard system where cultivation is given freely and bound by Honor; final answer. I still have no idea about cultivation's focus though...

I hurt myself laughing when I realized that halfway through AoL.

Huh, could've sworn they were sapphire... Oh well, my mistake.

Why does pewter increase physical strength and not senses? [/rhetorical question] Maybe it's less of an issue of certain gems granting certain surges, and more an issue of who has the power to pull from a particular gem. I think you're right and stormlight is stormlight, but once it is bound to a gem like a spren would be, it produces pre-determined effects. Earlier you mentioned that you might be able to acceds ambiant stormlight during a highstorm. Remember that when Kaladin survived the highstorm, he had a gem in his hand that gathered stormlight he could draw from, he didn't pull from the storm directly. I think that shardplate worked the same way for the knights radiant, gathering stormlight for them while protecting them from the wind. The reason gems are necessary is because raw stormlight is not of honor. I subscribe to the theory that surgebinding is a dual-shard system between honor and cultivation. Though I think that the shards do not share the same focus the way that Ruin and Preservation do. That being said, surgebinding seems to have more steps in its use than a single-shard system should. If I count every time power is transfered in a known system it comes out looking like this: Aon-dor: Draw the aon, produce effect. Alloamancy: Burn the metal, produce the effect. Feruchemy: Fill the metalmind, tap the metalmind, produce the effect. Hemalurgy: Charge the spike, insert the spike, produce the effect. Surgebinding: Let stormlight fill the gems, draw stormlight from the gems, produce the effect. Both allomancy and aon-dor are powered by a single shard, and need to have only one transfer of power before producing an effect. Hemalurgy, while created by only one shard, needs power from another source and requires an extra transfer of power. Feruchemy was created by two shards, needs power from both of them to work, and so it also requires an extra transfer of power. In surgebinding, a radiant(surgebinder) has to wait for stormlight to fill a gem before they can produce an effect. I believe this is the step where power changes hands from cultivation to honor. In fact I think the nahael-bond mirrors this process. Cultivation to Honor to Surgebinder.

To amend that, I can't remember an instance where it was explicitly said that either of them drew from anything but sapphire gems. The closest I can think of is where Kaladin drew stormlight from the gems woven in parshendi beards, but I don't think the book said what gems those were either. By far, most of the spheres they're described using are spheres used for illunination and cheaper money-spheres. Both are predominately sapphire, which is the most common gem on Roshar.

I had a sudden thought. Brandon hasn't been very forthcoming with what being a splinter entails. (A splinter is someone who has heald a significant portion of a shard, large enough to make an unexplained permanent change in them) I've also been wondering how and if allomancy can work on other worlds when Preservation is still on Scadrial. My raw theory is this, an allomancer who worldhops will have a significant decrease in power due to enormous physical distance. A sliver of preservation, having a much deeper connection with the shard would suffer less decrease or no change in power at all. Is there anything we know that might contradict this?

Kelsier grabbed the shard after Lerasi died. If he hadn't ruin might have had more influence than he did. So we haven't seen a whole lot of "downtime" as far as allomancy goes. It ran well enough with Leras's cognitive presence diminished if that's what you meant.

Hasn't Brandon said that it is the molecular structure of the metals that tells preservation's power which form to take, similar to aons, only really small. So metal from anywhere would work for allomancers, as long as it was close enough on a molecular level. My question is how much of an allomancer's power comes from having preservation in 'orbit' around scadrial, and what happens to their powers then they're on a world where preservation isn't around? Edit: Sorry, off-topic.

I wonder if the writer of the Ars Arcanum(s) is aware of all this, or how it affects our concepts of world hopping. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a magic user's powers work off-planet they same way they would on their homeworld with maybe a power reduction at most, it would be too weird to see everyone's powers switch focus everytime they visit a new world.