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I'll repeat that I think we haven't seen any of Dalinar's actual powers and everything we've seen is just him managing to activate Radiant-only features of his Shardplate.

It is a vision of the future Honor had in the past.

I kind of assumed House Tekiel is comprised of descendants of all the members of the original who happened to not be in Luthandel. Maybe their home was located near one of the caches and they'd slowly pulled their Allomancers back before the final disastrous escape attempt. It would explain why an attack on an entire Great House at once didn't irreparably cripple House Hasting way back in the original. Of course, given the ending, I'd have to say that the Cosmere hates them for some reason regardless.

The political system reminds me of the Roman Republic; there's an elected body but most of the common people are aligned with a particular noble house which is expected to look after their interests. I assume they're running off a sort of Divine Right system, since with the exception of House Tekiel (who were a Great House before getting wiped out in the Final Empire and appear to be cursed) they're all descended from people with major roles in the New Empire or who were critical in deciding the outcome of the battle with Ruin. Presumably the reason they aren't having serious conflicts with the new rich is that two out of three religions are of the opinion that rising to prominence by hard work is totally awesome and definitely not a perversion of the natural order of things.

Well, my theory is that the future splitting only occurs when the information you obtain from the future would cause the events you're seeing to happen differently, and in the specific case of Atium this doesn't include what you do but does include people reacting to what you do, so even one human can split the future if they see the results of their actions, but the more people involved the more crazy it gets. This would imply that if a Shard looked into the future and determined it was perfectly fine the future would not split, but if there's multiple Shards they won't agree and things would grow progressively more complex. I wouldn't read too much into the Kandra prophecies; I'm pretty sure they were more Preservations/TLRs game plan and only appeared to be prophetic because they managed to arrange matters to their desires.

So, there are a number of forms of looking into the future, and I want to analyze them. 1) Atium burning: You see other people's futures. Normally there is only one shadow per person/object, but any Atium or Electrum burner produces a massive, shifting cloud. Furthermore, if someone manages to react to your response to their shadow, their shadow splits. 2) Electrum burning: See only your future, produces a cloud of possibilities 3) Returned visions: I believe the precognition happens prior to actually returning and they they remember it in their dreams. Lightsong sees only one possible future, but then it doesn't happen. I believe he saw only what would happen if he did not Return. 4) Returned art viewing: It is unclear if this actually shows the future or if it shows the present, but it's notable that the priesthood insists that Returned must never interact with the subject of their viewings. 5) Honor looking into the future: Unfortunately, we don't have a viewpoint on this one, but he does indicate that the further ahead he looks the more possibilites he sees. So, here's the unified theory: Any attempt to look into the future that will show you the effects of your actions will show you, in order, how things would proceed if you didn't look into the future, how things would proceed if you saw that future but not this one, how things would proceed based on your response to that, etc. Atium only produces multiple shadows if the person you're looking at is somehow obtaining information from the future, either by their own temporal allomancy or by reacting to the actions you take based on your Atium, and the second one is rare simply because the timeframe is so short. Electrum will always (or at least in any situation in which you have options) produce multiple shadows because you're looking into your future and it splits off a new one for every possible response you'd have to that one. Returned visions show only what will happen if they don't show up, and not the results of them showing up, so it doesn't split. Since Honor is interacting with two other Shards, both of whom can also see into the future, he gets an Atium shadow style effect even before accounting for his own actions, which grows progressively stronger as he looks further into the future. Presumably the reason he's able to extract useful information from it is because he's a Shard, and theoretically an Atium/Zinc Twinborn or a Mistborn compounding Zinc could actually take advantage of the shadow cloud, although doing that might expand the shadow cloud too much for them to manage it.

There's some indications that it is possible to do a directional steelpush without focusing on specific metal lines, mostly from when Mistborn do omnidirectional pushes to give them some space in a crowd. If it's impossible to sustain that at high power for long, deflections could consist of doing one in the direction of the shooter. This would fit with them requiring being aware of the shooter.

Huh, I could have sworn air was a valid Soulcasting target. Ultimately, the biggest Alethi problem is that they're not taking the war seriously. They could slowly press forwards, constructing stone bridges the old-fashioned way, pressing towards the Parshendi base camp in a unified front with the bulk of their forces concentrated as mobile reserves on larger plateaus and Soulcasting bunkers to weather the Highstorms with the rate of construction dictating the speed of the advance. Given the Alethi formations' advantage in large-scale battles, greater numbers, and apparent Shard superiority, any strategy which would force the Parshendi to commit to a decisive action would be a winning one. They could also try bunching up most of their heavy forces and all of their Shardbearers for a lighting assault across the plains for a quick end to the war, but even discounting the unreliability of cooperation between Highprinces that's excessively risky for the side with the strong material advantage. Personally, I'm not all that convinced that the Alethi leadership really knows what they're doing. Even accounting for the fact that they have good reason to avoid cooperative tactics, there's some serious issues with Saedas's strategies in particular and presumably in others as well 1) Bridgemen. I mean, I know he explains that they divert Pareshendi fire from his more valuable troops, but I can't shake the feeling that the Pareshendi target them because on those occasions when they do kill enough of them the Alethi cavalry charge is too small to secure the bridgehead and they're easily surrounded and brought down, while firing bows at soldiers in heavy armor or shieldwall formations is a waste of wood most of the time. This is supported by the way they immediately stop firing on them once the bridges are placed and they're no longer tactically relevant. 2) Alethi armies consist of heavy cavalry, heavy infantry, and spearmen. Given the constraints imposed by the plateaus, only a small portion of the army can be deployed. So why do they bring along their spearmen to every battle instead of a larger number of heavy infantry companies? Sure, that would prevent them from rotating their heavy infantry companies in and out of reserves and put more of a strain on them, but they apparently don't even do it occasionally. 3) So, if one of the constraints on how many troops they can bring is the way the bridges produce bottlenecks, and they have enough bridges to form three or more shifts, couldn't they have a second wave follow behind with some of the extra bridges?

Well, let's do some math. There were ten orders of the Knights Radient. At Feverstone Keep, the Stonewards and Windrunners totaled about three hundred. Let's assume that was all of them, so there would be an average of 150 knights per order. 150*10 = 1500 sets of blade and plate. That is, um, a lot more than are accounted for. Even assuming that the parts of the world with minimal contact have an equal number of Shards, which isn't too likely when the Knights were based in Alethkar, we're still short by maybe a thousand sets. Now, it's quite possible a number of shards ended up at the bottom of the ocean or some similarly inaccessible location. But over half of them? That's not likely at all.

I think Dalinar is a Shardplate specialist, and if his order has any powers beyond superior use of Plate we haven't seen them. His armor glows faintly whenever he's being exceptionally spectacular with it, and in addition to being even stronger, faster, and more graceful than normal Shardbearers he apparently managed to activate some sort of gyroscopic stabilizing effect during the fight with the chasmfiend to land on his feet when thrown. But I think those are all inactive powers of the armor that only Knights Radiant can access instead of an ability specific to one order.

The Alloy of Law Ars Arcanum indicates that the Sel systems are "form based". I believe that all the systems are based off patterns, so AonDor uses the patterns Elantrians draw or construct, Dakhor uses the patterns in the bones, and ChayShan uses the patterns in their katas. Under this theory, the written characters aren't inherently tied to the magic systems but were instead based off of them in at least two cases. I'm thinking that might not be inherent in the system but because Elantris itself is a power boosting Aon with limited range in addition to powering the Shaod. That would explain why Aons are so much more dramatically powerful than the other types once the Elantris Chasm Line is added.

I expect that Duralumium would just give you increasingly outlandish time gradients and possibly volumes. So you'd get three seconds of outside time corresponding to half an hour inside the bubble or something like that.

Nice to see another new fan-type person. Yeah, Vin does not like OreSeur very much for no particular reason. Well, actually, there is one but it's kind of dumb. She does not exactly have an excess of emotional stability, self-reflection, or forethought.

Evidence suggests a Desolation is when Odium and Honor instruct their various dudes to throw down. The precise mechanics are uncertain, but apparently the Voidbringers show up/turn hostile (I think that all of Odium's forces are Voidbringers, as opposed to them being some mysterious malevolent species that leads the others or something) and the Heralds get called out of the inferno to lead everyone else in battle against them, and eventually there's a huge showdown, a majority of both sides die, and the surviving Heralds and Voidbringers go back to wherever they are between Desolations. Only most of the Heralds quit after the previous one and Honor is splintered, so the next round isn't looking so hot for Team Honor. I think it works something like this: 1. Odium starts his prep work, Midnight Essences and other minor Voidbringer types begin showing up in quantity 2. The Radients notice and step up recruiting 3. The Unmade get called to Roshar by Odium ---Offical start of Desolation--- 4. The Heralds arrive 5. Parshmen-form Voidbringers specialize, presumably powered by the Unmade. Voidbinders, Thunderclasts, and other elite Voidbringers form at this point. Alternately, the elite types simply manifest from elsewhere or form from other creatures and the Parshmen serve as foot-soldiers only 6. The Heralds and Radients create a solid front line, gathering as much of the population as possible. 7. There's the fight immediately prior to the prologue, most everyone dies ---Offical end of Desolation--- 8. Surviving Heralds and Unmade withdraw from Roshar 9. Elite Voidbringers get hunted down, no new ones can form until the next Desolation Time passes 10. goto 1

The main problem I see with adapting The Final Empire is that Vin spends most of her time sitting in a corner and narrating. With her tendency to hide her emotions as much as possible, I worry that she'd just come off as bland and lead most of the newcomers to ask, "Why are we following this girl again? Can't Kelsier be the the main character? He does all the cool stuff anyway." Frankly, for most of part one her most visible external character trait is her capacity to channel the powers of Extra-Man, able to stand still for long periods of time without saying anything. Sure, she's got a lot more character than that, but much of it is established purely by narration because she would never actually display it.

No, actually that's Iron/Steel, they see the metal lines.

By my count they have: 1 gold feruchemical spike 1 electrum allomantic spike (responsible for the "Atium" shadows they produce) 1 each of the base metal allomantic spikes Possibly a second allomantic steel spike? One of the Inquisitors Vin fights manages to steelpush her easily without so much as stumbling, and she'd previously demonstrated the ability to shove Kelsier back in a pushing match Sometimes a duralanium spike Marsh had eleven spikes at the end of The Final Empire, and presumably that's the base set. Only once the Lord Ruler died did they start adding most of the Feruchemical spikes, and I'm pretty sure they didn't have Atium spikes either. Certainly, while they healed far too fast to be explained without Feruchemical gold, they also didn't heal as outrageously fast as Miles.

I'm thinking Voidbringers are not a single creature but a generic term for the forces of Odium. Or they're one creature in the same way that the Zerg are one creature, with Thunderclasts, Midnight Essences, and Parshendi all being various forms of the same kind of creature. There was some mention of their forms changing like smoke, which would fit with that and explain where all the non-Parshmen ones went. Loony theory forming: The Parshmen are Voidbringers, but the Parshendi are actually their Honor-backed opposite numbers.

The problem I see with it is that Shallan's father apparently had a Shardblade when he died, so unless their family had two I can't see why Helaran wouldn't have used that one.

I'm pretty sure they're attempting to breed a Mistborn, their targeting is just way too specific to make sense otherwise. Kidnapping Spook's descendents is just far too much work to justify the slightly higher odds of scoring regular Mistings if they're going for an army, and if they were creating a synthetic Mistborn they could indeed just murder completely random people. If power level is an issue, they could just murder more random people instead of targeting a handful of powerful people. What confuses me is that they're apparently not trying to create a Mistborn Keeper, since however they intend to get the Mistborn to obey them should apply equally well to a combo. Then again, the other half of the breeding group might be a bunch of Twinborn. Still, it's possible trying that could complicate the project depending on how Feruchemy and Allomancy inheritance patterns work and conflict.

That's how I always assumed it worked.

Elend is called The Last Emperor, and he's got a statue across from Vin's. Though, given the lack of any direct mention of him elsewhere, it's quite possible that his role in the mythology boils down to, "And the Ascendent Warrior married some guy and made him emperor." Incidentally, the fact that Vin enjoyed wearing dresses when not fighting people got left out of the legends. I think Marsh got confused or combined with The Lord Ruler by everyone who doesn't follow Sliverism, although Sliverism itself may have done the same. It's actually kind of odd, The Words Of Founding apparently included a concise summery of the events of the original series. Seems strange they'd mix up major figures like that.

Well, those were actually two separate issues. The issue with breeding a Mistborn is that the genetic line they'd be trying to cultivate does not in fact have a demonstrated capacity to create Mistborn at present, and given that there are actually no Mistborn as opposed to very few Mistborn cropping up seemingly at random (at least, as far as we know) it is quite possible that even literally cloning Spook would not result in a Mistborn. I mean, they could simply want to get a hundred or so normal Allomancers, but that leads to the question of their outlandishly specific targeting. The issue with not including Feruchemical abilities is that clearly being Mistborn and being a Keeper is not mutually exclusive and I cannot imagine why they'd pointedly target a group containing absolutely no possibility of producing a Keeper if they're intent on creating a super-soldier. And worrying that they wouldn't be able to control the result doesn't seem like it would stop people who feel fully confident that they can control a Mistborn, because clearly their control mechanism doesn't depend on being able to kill the result in any sort of a hurry anyhow. I mean, they'd be trusting an incredibly mobile and deadly person to go out pretty much on his/her own regardless of whether or not that person can abuse compounding.

The way I see it is that Feruchemy always stores an attribute, but what Gold stores is not health, but healing. So if you restore a leg with gold, it doesn't revert because you weren't tapping "a healthy leg" but "the capacity to regrow a leg". When you stop tapping it, your body does revert to normal. It's just that the attribute that was altered is not how wounded you are but how quickly you heal from wounds and fight off diseases, both of which drop to normal when you stop tapping gold. Atium, however, stores youth and not your body's capacity to reduce physical age. So when you run out snapping back to normal makes you as old as you would be normally.

I'm honestly unsure what to think about the accuracy of the "breeding program" theory. Points for: Would explain why they're going after the genetic line instead of people with powers. Kind of explains why they only target women Points against: There's no indication that any of the victims have Feruchemical powers. Would presumably not produce a Mistborn However, the Hemalurgy explanation is also kind of odd. The Set already has: 1 coinshot, 1 lurcher, 1 bloodmaker, 1 thug, plus an uncertain number of other allomancers and twinborn, so if they were really planning to make a Mistborn they could simply spike their existing people and have the resulting powerhouse hijack a train and spike every Allomancer onboard. And there's really no reason to go to all the trouble of elaborate kidnappings on high nobles disguised as raids instead of just killing assorted Roughs residents. And they apparently haven't killed anyone yet, despite there really being no reason to wait.