name_here

Vorinism apparently got a major doctrinal re-write in the aftermath of the Hierocracy. Ardents command a great deal of respect, but are strictly subservient to their Highprinces and possibly other Brightlords in both temporal and spiritual matters. The Ardent Adolin talks to about Dalinar's vision more-or-less says that he is forbidden from saying the visions are false because Dalinar has been set above him by the Almighty. Their position is probably most closely analogus to either Byzantine priests, who were religiously subordinate to the emperor, or Roman slaves who worked as tutors.

Also, having a Shardblade doesn't actually provide that much protection. Although a Shardblade will generally slice through an attacker's weapon and kill the wielder, it provides no special protection against arrows or attacks from behind. So even if he had summoned it, possibly to kill Nan Balat, who apparently suffered heavy injuries from a beating at about the right time, Shallan could still easily have killed him with a knife in the ribcage from behind. Then the Blade could have dropped from his hand and sliced the Soulcaster before puffing into mist. There's definitely a time lag between dropping it and it vanishing, because one that got dropped during the Chasmfiend fight cut a groove into the plateau before vanishing. I am reasonably sure the inciting event was a near-fatal beating of one of Shallan's brothers. It seems like it would take something pretty extreme for Shallan to grab a knife and stab anyone, much less immediate family. One might wonder why she feels so guilty for killing in defense of others and why she couldn't support it under any moral theory except "ends justify the means", but patricide has historically been considered among the worst possible crimes almost regardless of any mitigating factors.

I'd kind of expect competitive sports and the like to simply create Allomantic/Feruchemical catagories where one or a set of the powers is simply unrestricted. Casinos will probably simply throw people out on the suspicion of using Chromium metalminds instead of actually checking.

So, I of course agree that starting with book #12 just doesn't work. As for the earlier books, I felt #5 kind of dragged in the middle (especially the traveling circus plot) but a whole ton happened in the end. #6 is vitally important in a number of ways and I really need to get myself an intact copy of it. #7, #9, and #11 are all great #10 is honestly the low point of the series. Basically, there was a lot of setting up the events of the next book. Unfortunately, every plotline simultaneously entered a phase of preparing for the next book with the sole exceptions of Mat and Egwene, with the result that virtually nothing actually happened. Though as a result of that, a whole ton of things simultaneously happened in #11, which is part of why it is so good. In order to avoid this problem, Brandon left a number of plotlines completely out of #s 12 and 13, which did kind of introduce its own problems, namely that Perrin's portion of #13 is almost entirely contemporaneous with Rand's portion of #12, while the other plotlines seem to be in step temporally or at least don't highlight being out of sequence.

Regardless, Soulcasters are made of metal and neatly shearing one in two places, plus possibly through the gem that had been in the setting at the time, seems rather beyond Shallan's physical capabilities absent a Shardblade. My personal theory on that incident is that Shallan grabbed a stiletto from somewhere and stabbed him with it while her father was holding the Shardblade/caused the Shardblade to appear on his death, and it sheared through the Soulcaster then.

Gold is valuable because it's rare and shiny. Sure, it's Allomantically near-worthless (although Feruchemically pretty powerful) but the more useful metals are incredibly common and Scadrial seems to have either vast or regenerating ore deposits for those, since mining towns had enough metal to shield their safehouses from Ruin despite being in operation for at least a thousand years.

I'm pretty sure Vin located the WoA assassination team in the first place by using bronze. They were definitely both burning copper; it's how Vin figured out the "coinshot" was really a Mistborn. I'm going to call almost certainly false on the coppercloud waves thing. Essentially, given how most Mistborn seem to never turn off their copper and Smokers do it even less often, if there was any way that multiple copperclouds could partially cancel then it would be general knowledge.

Vim got through two copperclouds simultaneously during both Shan's assassination attempt (two mistborn, probably both using copper) and the fight near the start of Well of Acension (smoker and mistborn, definitely both using copper). So if they do stack, it's almost certainly not addatively.

Glad I wasn't the only person who thought that while reading the article.

Could be the antidote actually reacted with the poison to neutralize it instead of just counteracting the effects. I doubt Taravagian is with the Ghostbloods, mainly because Jasnah survived, but also because Kasbal didn't have a solid cover story. He seemed to have been hastily shoved in by a group with no agents among the local Ardentia. I would caution against assuming that because people are part of a shadowy conspiracy, they're part of the same one. There seems to be rather a lot of them on Roshar, working at cross purposes.

I personally assumed it meant uniting everyone on the planet.

Maybe they just get full telepathy at some point? Alternately, their Spren could have been scouting out the area, or just don't like getting attention called to them. Syl didn't like appearing to people other than Kaladin, although she was perfectly happy with Bridge Four knowing she existed.

I personally think that it's not that here's no free will as such, it's just that people will react to a specific situation in a specific way. If there were no free will, Atium shadows wouldn't happen. The big issue with long-term precognition in the Comere appears to simply be a matter of raw power, and the only people who can use it are Shards, who interact with other Shards and so get into tangled webs of Atium shadows.

The fragment of conversation indicates he's part of a mystery conspiracy possibly assembled by Stormwardens that opposes the Ghostbloods. The bit Kaladin heard wasn't particularly informative to him and the conversation cut off, so I suspect he was being as truthful as he normally was talking to that Stormwarden.

The key limitation is that Atium actually looks into the future and it appears that the cosmere has the future be fixed absent time travel or precognition. So merely considering a lot of options would not produce multiple shadows; only cascade effects from reactions to precognition can do that. Zinc would make that easier, but not inevitable.

I'm pretty sure that the only way to produce multiple shadows is to obtain information from the future. So the reason Vin managed to split her shadow was that she reacted to Zane doing something in response to her existing shadow. Zinc might help with that but wouldn't allow splitting shadows except as a reaction to the actions of the Atium burner. Because of that limitation, it'd be an extremely poor imitation of Electrum, mainly valuable for the element of suprise. If it became known to Atium burners, they could delay reacting until the feruchemist committed to a course of action.

I think there was some back and forth travel between Shardworlds. Notably, the rule about sacred grottos and not speaking the name of their god outside of them to keep his brother from hearing seems a lot like how information was hidden from Ruin. But the color focus of Astalsi seems likely to have been derived from BioChroma, so it seems likely those religions came from Scadrial and Nalthis respectively

I thought he was just trying to get to Origin because it was the source of the Highstorms. Given the low tech level of the prologue, it seems odd they could make a sturdy enough ship to plow through Highstorms during the Desolations.

I kind of think Champions are unique to Roshar. I mean, Vin could definitely be called Preservation's Champion because he was sending her power via the mists, but Marsh and Elend also got direct power from their associated Shards for their duel, and we learned that it was difficult for Shards to counter power being granted despite being able to deadlock everything else. So if it's the same thing, why would Honor want Odium to choose a champion? It seems to be drawback-free, aside from Ruin's elaborate plot to get Vin to kill TLR and trigger the well, which wouldn't be a problem for a Shard who could keep tabs on their champion. I personally think Honor managed to create a magically binding proxy combat-by-champion set of rules that Odium will be dragged into if he chooses a champion.

So, one of the more prominent Scadrial religions outside the big three is Trellagism. Early in The Final Empire, Sazed explains they worship the stars as the thousand eyes of Trell, and believe the sun is the one eye of his jealous brother, who blots out the stars to try to get people to worship him instead. The Purelaker religion has two gods, one of whom they worship. The other is his jealous brother, who they pretend to worship in the open so he won't send them misfortune. They can only say the name of the elder brother in sacred grottos. I suspect it's a descendent of Trellagism, because of the jealous brother gods they both have. I think it's Trellagism to Purelaker instead of the other way around mostly because Scadrial had dualistic Shards and the rules about pretending to worship the younger brother remind me of the ways things were hidden from Ruin. I highly suspect the sacred grottos are required to be lined with metal EDIT: Of course, immediately after posting this I see it was already brought up in another thread..

I always figured he got himself disappeared by his superiors for failing to get Kaladin killed. Even his low rank apparently wouldn't make it possible to have him executed for no reason (without anything resembling a fair trial, yes, without charges no) but he'd consistently failed to remove a rather severe embarrassment for his Highprince. Since they couldn't publicly punish him without calling attention to the whole situation, they did it discreetly. If he just died or vanished, it would probably have been mentioned in passing when Hashal took over direct leadership. Regardless, I am pretty sure Hashal knows what happened to him and is intentionally covering it up. Not even idly mentioning his disappearance strikes me as decidedly suspicious.

It's quite possible that the situation with nahn is more complex than just all farmers being fourth or fifth. There's no particular indication that nahn directly limit what jobs a person can get or are provided purely by occupation. For instance, Tien was apprenticing as a carpenter, which is much lower status than surgeon, but there was no indication that he would lose his position as Second Nahn. So if he'd had children they would probably be Second Nahn but not surgeons. At a guess, fifth is unusually high for farmers and the town inhabitants are relatively independent compared to the average. Also, nahn provide degrees of civil rights. For instance, being Second Nahn provides right of inquest, which seems to mean a reasonably fair trial. So they're probably more about that than job access.

One other possibility is that the Ghostbloods wanted her dead just because she's a natural soulcaster and is therefore aware they exist. But I think the most likely possibility is that Jasnah is potentially a threat to whatever their Desolation-related plan is. It's hard to tell without knowing what that plan is, but Jasnah seems relatively unlikely to ally with a religiously motivated group unless they have a convincing plan. Also, they really didn't seem to be putting all that much effort into killing her; they sent a single Ardent with poison instead of numerous hired killers with knives and didn't even establish a solid background for him.

According to the message received, he just got sick and died. It's possible he was poisoned, but there doesn't seem to really be a particular motive.

Actually, having been through this storm, it seems to suit Highstorms much better. There was a line of thunderstorms that plowed through the area at sixty miles an hour with hurricane-force gusts, followed by weaker scattered storms. It's apparently called a derecho, and the wikipedia page image looks a good deal like the description of the stormwall.