Jozomby

Ahh, I didn't know that. Requiring intent would explain a lot. Thanks!

Maybe this has already been answered before, but I just had a thought. Hemalurgy can work anywhere, correct? And it isn't really reliant on any particular shard or magic system? I mean, if you know what you're doing, you can spike someone who's not a feruchemist or allomancer? I've seen a decent amount of discussion about spiking nahel bonds, and that got me thinking. Why has hemalurgy not been discovered on planets other than Scadrial? I suppose the immediate response is that it's not intuitive, and if you don't know it works, then you're not likely to ever figure it out. As far as we know, the only reason hemalurgy even exists on Scadrial is because the Lord Ruler had his moment of omniscience. However, there are just too many accidental hemalurgic spikings in mistborn for me to believe that no one, for thousands of years, across an entire galaxy, would ever figure this out on their own. I mean, at some point, somewhere, someone would have (accidentally or otherwise) gotten spiked, and after a while, people would have figured out they were able to do things they shouldn't have, and why. Now, I know that a lot of the accidental spikings in mistborn were actually set up by Ruin, but they were situations that legitimately could have happened, and likely have happened in other places at other times (I'm looking at you, Spook). Does anyone have any answers? Why has no one in the cosmere, (that we know of) over who knows how many thousand years figured out hemalurgy? *Note - Thinking about it, I realize that in Stormlight and Elantris magic is not at all common. So, at least in those worlds, perhaps we just aren't in the right time period or haven't had the chance to see this happen yet. But the question still stands.

I'd be hesitant to trust any evidence that wasn't in the text itself; I'm assuming that the person who drew the picture didn't actually see the worldhopper. Since the text itself doesn't actually mention a beard, it might just be an addition of the newspaper artist. Of course, Brandon rarely does anything without a reason, so there still might be a reason for the beard...

Given the Liar of Partinel sample chapters, this seems rather unlikely. I don't want to go too much into details since I'm not sure what's permissible for unpublished works, but Hoid's presented as human. Also referencing general information about the world, races, dragons and such from Dragonsteel, it would be rather strange for him to be a dragon. Given, all that could change since so much of Dragonsteel no longer holds. Again, sorry for not providing any solid evidence, I just don't want to break any rules.

Wayne. If Shai stamps herself into some sort of warrior, he would just put on the hat of someone that knows how to beat that kind of warrior.

Well, there's 3 different Spook's to consider. Spook the tineye, Spook with the spike, and Spook the Lord Mistborn. I think Marasi would beat normal Spook, but the other two would beat Marasi, so my vote goes to Spook. Especially since a lot of our time with Spook is when he's spiked.

Dalinar. Though Odium might be technically more powerful and able to squish him if he wanted to, there's obviously got to be some way to stop him, and I'm pretty certain that Dalinar's going to play a large role in that due to his position now. Plus, Dalinar's awesome.

I'm actually going to have to go with David. Partially because Elantris is one of my least favorite of Brandon's books, and partially because David does enough research beforehand that I'm pretty sure he would figure out the geography connection.

Hmm. If the flute originally was the Lord Ruler's, then this becomes a lot more reasonable. I always assumed it was Hoid's from the beginning (as in, he brought it from Yolen; yes, baseless assumption, I now realize) but this actually makes sense.

The Well of Ascension happens chronologically before the Stormlight Archive, so if it is the same flute, at some point Hoid would have to come back to Scadrial to get the flute and then take it to Roshar. That seems a bit convoluted, but not impossible.

As for the pool, I asked Brandon if it was a shardpool at the signing, and got RAFO'd. I suppose I really shouldn't have expected anything else, but I thought I might as well ask. He did his "I know something I'm not telling you" smile, though, so I think it's safe to say there's something going on with that pool. My personal opinion is that it's a shardpool, though I'm still not certain who I think the worldhopper is. Oh, and there's no way the atium flakes are real. It's common for the media (especially in that time period) to report sensational things like that without real proof.

I don't remember if there's WoB for this, but I don't think there are opposites for every shard. And, as far as I know we don't have any evidence of Autonomy assassinating shards before. As someone confirmed for me not long ago, the only published reference we have to Bavadin is in the Letter, where Hoid expresses his dislike for Bavadin and Rayse in the same sentence. Other than that, there's White Sand, which isn't canon (yet).

Hmm. So the idea is that somehow someone gets their hands on metal from another shard. How would that even look on another world? I think we can safely assume that Hoid's Lerasium bead has traveled off-world and stayed in a solid metallic state, recognizable as Lerasium, am I right? It's not like you can just gather a bunch of god-essence then go to Scadrial and it just morphs into metal. So Trell would need to have somehow obtained this foreign metal before coming to Scadrial. How do you distill metal from a God's essence? Or, maybe Trell showed up on Scadrial and invested in a locally occurring metal, causing it to change. That matches up with the idea of endowment, though it doesn't fit into the system of Awakening we're familiar with, and I have no idea how he would do that either. That's where I run into problems. If we can figure out where this new metal came from, everything else will start to make a bit more sense.

First off, you're right that this is a very large stretch without a lot of support. However, I love the fact that you're proposing a theory that doesn't involve a foreign shardholder. The more I research, and the more I think about it, I'm becoming convinced that Trell does not hold a shard. That's one point for you right there. I'm not sure, though, that an interaction of Awakening and Hemalurgy would look like what shows up in Shadows of Self. I don't see any evidence for anyone using Breaths. I love the idea of a someone (not a shard) being behind this, maybe even a worldhopper, but I'm not sure that Endowment is the right direction to go with this. I wish I had more time, but I don't. Sorry!

WoB that all 16 original shardholders were from Yolen: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1052#106 "Nutiketaiel: Were all the original sixteen Shardholder from Yolen? Brandon Sanderson: Yes." *Note that I don't know if there's any etiquette for quoting Brandon; I just cited the first source I could find from a google search.

Technically true, I suppose, but isn't there a WoB somewhere saying that all humans originated from Yolen? (Or at least were modeled after those on Yolen) I guess that doesn't prove anything; colonists could have left, settled somewhere else, then after a couple generations, Trell could have come back for the shattering, but I think that might be stretching it a bit. I suppose this brings the question, are all shardholders human?

Woah. If Trell isn't from Yolen, then either: A. Like you said, some shard has died somewhere along the way, or B. He's not a Shardholder. Either way, crazy stuff. Do you have reference/link to the WoB that says that?

Given the dating of Shadows of Self, I think that Odium might be tied up with events on Roshar. Given, we don't know exactly how much time passes between stormlight arc 1 and AoL/SoS, and we also know that Shardholders' mental processing is much faster than normal humans, but I would still expect Odium to attack another shard when he doesn't have so much on his plate. (Since it's looking like he's going to be a major villain of the stormlight archive.) Also, purely from a stylistic point of view, it seems rather strange for Sanderson to write 2 series at the same time with Odium as the villain. If he's going to use Odium again at some point, I would expect it to come as more of a surprise, and not be something we could predict so easily. As for Bavadin, I really can't speak to that since I don't know anything about him. It would work, I suppose.

Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self take place after Stormlight, or at least after the first five stormlight books. Since we still don't know how those will end, it's possible that at this point Odium is free to act. As for Autonomy, the only published reference we have to it/Bavadin is the Letter, correct?

After actually looking at the way Chaos' question was phrased, and given Brandon's proclivity for the unexpected, I would not be surprised for there to be another way to interpret his answer. Given, I'm not saying that my theory's correct. After reading everyone's thoughts, especially the ones about Corruption already being a subset of Ruin, I'm willing to admit this may not (currently) be the most likely solution. However, I also don't think that the events in Shadows of Self can be attributed to Odium. That just seems to obvious for Sanderson. Maybe I'm just too used to him surprising me at the end of every book, but I'm expecting something a little more spectacular and unexpected with this. Perhaps this isn't another shard after all. I have absolutely no evidence or explanation on how that could be possible, but I think it would be just like Brandon to make us think that some third foreign shard was behind everything and then reveal that it was something completely different the entire time.

Was that a WoB somewhere that the new metal comes from a Shard we've already been introduced to? That's news to me, and exciting, because you're right, that really does narrow down the options quite a bit.

Sorry about that. Still trying to figure that out. How do I insert spoiler tags?

I've found a couple places on the forum where people have discussed what the remaining shards might be, and Corruption has come up a couple of times: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/2339-remaining-shards/page-2?hl=corruption#entry44274 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1715-unknown-shards/?hl=corruption#entry30180 After reading Shadows of Self, I'm of the opinion that one of the shards is indeed Corruption, and there is a good chance that it has interacted before with Scadrial. I'm even going so far as to assign the name Trell to the shardholder People on Scadrial often say "rust and ruin". Though I usually skip over the "rust" part since it goes pretty well with the whole "ruin" theme, it wouldn't be too far a stretch to say that there's an actual source for the first part of that phrase as well. Rust is the corruption of metal. So, as you can see, there's nothing definitive, but I feel like the pieces are definitely here. What do you think?

I think this is the appropriate moment for a: "mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Thanks for the help!

Hey all! I suppose I'm new here, though I lurked the forums (and the coppermind) for a while. I just have a quick question, though, if anyone has a second. Where are the forum rules/guidelines/etc? Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I haven't been able to find them, and I want to make sure I don't do anything stupid and annoy anyone. Specifically, I'm looking for rules on resurrecting old threads, but I'm sure I'll have more questions over time that others have asked before. As for introducing myself, I, as most of you, am an avid Sanderson fan and nerd. I believe the only books I have ever checked out from the BYU library are Dragonsteel and Dangerous Women. Sadly, I haven't read all his short stories since I only read hardcopy. Thanks so much!