Djarskublar

I dunno, I like the thought, if not necessarily the exact conclusion. I had been wondering if that section meant he discovered worldhoppers were a thing since I first read it. I hadn't put two and two together like the OP did, though. Maybe a better way to conclude would be that his genius self decided that the people on Roshar don't actually matter (remember, he was willing to ask people to commit suicide for his eugenics program on one particularly intelligent day). His damage control is an attempt to either weaken Odium, or keep him trapped on-world. His goal is to make it so that other worlds don't have to deal with Odium. He shouldn't know about other Shards, so he might have thought that all the other worlds would be mostly defenseless. I'm not sure what he could have been thinking, but I like the thought that he doesn't think humanity on Roshar needs to survive the crisis.

Well, something I just realized is that there were two goals with making Nightblood. They wanted to see if they could create a sentient object to prove the existence of Type IV entities, and they wanted to see if they could replicate a Shardblade. Those are two very different things, and I guess they just decided to try both at once. That makes me pretty curious about what would happen if you were only trying one or the other. Could you maybe replicate the effects of a Blade without adding sentience to the mix? I'm gonna put that in the questions thread. I am solidly in the camp of NB not being made from a spren. Spren are already basically pure Investiture, and they are 'full' so to speak, so I can't see them being modified like that, even with a lot of breath.

HYYYPE! I kinda have a lot of free time at the moment (a moment being until I find a job >.>) so I can definitely contribute some time to this. I also know a fairly small, but core amount of python, so I might be able to contribute there too. I'll have to take a look at it when you release it. Even if I can't contribute there, it'll still be interesting to look at. Well, I guess I shall eagerly await anything more with this. If you feel it would be useful to get a fresh pair of eyes to look at it, I'd be happy to. Not gonna push on any of this though, better done right than fast, of course. Edit: this was also my 666th post, so I need to add maniacal laughter. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!1!

Ehhh... something feels off with your thoughts though. I think that when you die, your soul is no longer connected to your body, so when you make a lifeless, it would either have to reconnect the two, or mimic a new one. So I don't think it is whether the item itself has an ID or not, it's more what kind of ID is granted it when you awaken it. Is it your ID, or a new one you can't access.

@Argent Hey! I'm not new, and I'm only wet behind the ears because I just took a shower! I started lurking around the time WoK came out. A year later at most. The theories about where Blades came from are hilarious in retrospect. But yes, in 10-20 years it will be really funny looking back at all our crazy thoughts. We will still probably get new people regularly that think Hoid is trying to put Adonalsium back together... *sigh*

I made a topic about something similar a few months ago, and that's where the thread I recently made got its inspiration. The problem with Nightblood is that his morals and understanding of what it is to be human are so rudimentary. So I suggested forging him out of diluted spikes so he would have an element of humanity. The feelings on the topic were pretty mixed, for good reason. This presents a pretty similar idea, just without the extra end goal. It's super dark, and I love it. I just don't think it particularly likely. Not in its current state. If you were to say that part of the steel had to come from blood iron, then that would be more practical, and I would be inclined to believe it. Excellent thought though, and definite upvote.

Divine breaths function better than normal breaths, just like the mists. Perhaps it would be better to compare divine breath with Lerasium. It does something within the same system, yet wholly different. I can see how it would be difficult to see the association between Returned and lifeless, since there are several aspects that are different with them, but I think they are still working on the same base mechanic and can be put into the same category. ?... Normal breaths and divine breaths are both splinters, just with different magnitudes. Divine breaths may have additional properties that we are not fully aware of, but they are still essentially the same thing, just bigger. Slivers are people who have touched the power of a Shard enough (Ascended) to not be forced Beyond when they die. That is something different from a splinter. When someone is born, she imparts them with a breath, and I wouldn't call that awakening. When someone Returns, she gives them something altogether different, and I would call that awakening. It isn't birth, it's rebirth, and inherently different.

Atium really isn't that great. Reckoners kinda proved that. I'm not denying its usefulness, but it gets kinda blown out of proportion. "I have atium, I am god!" Full shardbearer is kinda redundant, since a surgebinder will eventually have both plate and blade at higher functioning level than a regular shardbearer. As for the choice, i'd take mistborn. 16 powers is better than 2. Plus, you are flaring the wrong emotion. Flare confusion and fear = win. Toss in some nerves... Even if you have to get through Plate with a duralumin burn, it would still be worth it to throw them off for an instant and get inside their guard. Mistborn are simply more powerful. Honestly though, I'll take little rods of metal over the other options any day. I'll just steal whatever you guys have while you sleep

A better question is what would it take for an inquisitor to not die from a Blade cut. Compounding gold is a decent option, but may not be enough under some conditions. As was said, being a regular Ferring probably wouldn't be enough. Shardplate is really the best option to defend against Blades. Or maybe certain Aons could do the trick. A Dakhor monk would probably be somewhat harder to cut, but still pretty vulnerable.

A last few notes unless someone else makes a major reply. First, @Calderis, I don't think that the idea that Endowment is directly creating lifeless in the form of Returned requires that it be something completely separate. Direct power by a Shard appears to work best when it is fueling their existing system. The mists are best at fueling Allomancy. The Heralds had a direct line to Honor's power for Surgebinding. Endowment should be able to perform very powerful and interesting awakenings, especially considering the intent. It isn't an intent that condones taking power from her. I think it fitting that she can grant renewed life to someone, and then other people have to keep granting them new life every week. I would guess that if it was just a regular lifeless awakened with a divine breath, they might be fully sentient (might), but it wouldn't require breath every week. That is probably the price to keep the cognitive shadow attached to the body. That makes reviving people with Hemalurgy sound a bit more palatable than sucking souls every week. @FiveLate I forgot to mention this in both the OP, and in my first reply, but I meant to say that Returned can have children with special abilities, and that we don't have any evidence that normal people, regardless of Investment, can. I won't go so far as to say that it's a guarantee. And yes, the plan was to get them to have a kid, or if that didn't work, then take the first Returned baby they happen to find. At least, that's what I remember, in support of what Crucible said.

TLR could have crossed the ocean easy. Just run across, and I'm not even joking. Just tap a moderate amount of steel, and you'll be fine. It would take a while, but it's not like he'd care. As for the smuggling, why can't the guards be in on it?... You can smuggle whole bargeloads of stuff if the guards look the other way. I mean really... guarding skaa there sounds like a crappy job, I'd probably take bribes as long as I can make sure there isn't any atium trading hands. Who cares if they go in with one thing and come out with another? I mean, if you are running a mercantile company, you could probably get some mercenaries that don't mind beating/killing skaa hired as guards. That is the worst case for the merchants. Best case you just get the guards already in place to let you in/out as long as they get to look through your cargo and make sure you didn't steal any atium. Just give them a bauble or two every time.

While I agree that Vasher's description of how BioChroma works is accurate, there is clearly stuff missing. Even leaving aside his glossing over type IV entities, he didn't even mention self modifying Commands. Adding in those immediately messes up the nice symmetry of his description. I took the square of 4 types at face value for a long time, but Brandon's comments on Mistborn made me question that presentation fundamentally. In the Mistborn series, one of the defining features is that they are always finding out more about the magic. They don't know even close to everything, even now. We know more about it than anyone in universe, and we are chomping at the bit for more info. I can't accept his description and classification when he is deliberately leaving out at least 2/5 of the things he knows he can do. This on top of the fact that the Scholars didn't really learn all that much about BioChroma in the couple decades they were researching anyway. Vasher is the leading authority on BioChroma, and he only knows a small fraction of the possible Commands. They were looking for gimmicks they could use for warfare. They just approached it scientifically. If we pretend that Warbreaker is really Mistborn: TFE, then it puts it into perspective how little we probably know about BioChroma. I mean, in TFE they were wigging out over finding out there are more than 10 metals. Allomancy had mistborn available to test for new metals for a thousand years, and they never found out. Even with TLR suppressing research like that, they did lots of stuff behind his back. Why not experiment? Then look back at Nalthis. BioChroma has only been studied for the last 300 years or so, and only the first 20ish had any real progress, what with military interests funding the Scholars' research. (That is how long the Manywar lasted, right?) I think it's safe to say that not even Vasher knows much more than the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BioChroma. As an amusing aside, that 20 years includes vacations to other planets. Run of the mill honeymoon for Vasher/Shashara. They went somewhere nice and rocky, with plenty of rain. Basically, I think Vasher is either wrong or lying with that description, and I'm presenting an alternate that I think fits what we know. Even though Brandon said his description is dead on, we know it isn't really, since it leaves out self-targeting Commands. So I can only assume that he is generally right, but some of the specifics are wrong. For example, based on my understanding of Realmatics, I think he is wrong about why breath sticks to lifeless. He says it is because it's really close to life and that animal bodies are sticky, but if I cut a branch off a tree and awakened it the moment it was officially dead, I would expect it to be a normal puppet, not a lifeless. If I cut off your arm and awakened it, I wouldn't expect a lifeless either. The difference between lifeless/Nightblood and a straw doll is how you picture it working. The first two are given a measure of free will to interpret their Command and orders. That is what makes them useful. Normal awakenings are just making a puppet that is an extension of your will, your very self. The breath in the object is still keyed to your Identity. A lifeless is basically a new person. A slave, yes, but they do have varying levels of free will. Clod is an excellent example of that. Because they are a new person, they get their own separate Identity and the Breath they have is theirs, not yours. You can't recall it in that case. Vasher can't recall the breath from NB for the same reason. NB is his own person now. (Well, that is assuming it was Vahser that awakened him. I don't remember if it was him or Shashara, but I don't think she could have recalled the breath either. Considering how NB turned out, I would have tried again in her position if I could.)

I mentioned this idea in a series of looong posts about Nightblood a few months ago, but it didn't generate any conversation at the time (unsurprisingly, it would have been quite a tangent). I happened to re-read the thread, and decided to expand my thoughts a little bit. Basically, I want to revise the categories of BioChroma. First, I would like to demonstrate that there is a fair chance that there is something inherently special about divine breaths. It's quite simple, really. Children of Returned can have strange abilities like the Royal Locks. Normal people who reach the middle Heightenings don't have children like that. I don't think this is conclusive, since there could be something special about a cognitive shadow having children. That said, I think it is still likely that there is something special about divine breath. It could be a combination effect of the two as well. To actually talk about the categories, I think there are only 3 known types of BioChromatic magic. The creation of Lifeless, awakened objects, and on-self stuff like memory manipulation. The first, lifeless, include normal lifeless that we already know, and Returned. Returned are special case lifeless that have a lot more power going into them, and have the original person reattached. The possible extra stuff with divine breath may contribute as well. Endowment herself gives them the Command and awakens them. The Command she uses is amorphous enough to generally allow them normal free will, while still helping trigger them into fulfilling the purpose they Returned for. The second type includes all awakened inanimate objects. This category includes things that are awakened to full sentience like Nightblood. Awakening him was essentially a normal awakening, just with a much more powerful Command, a more effectively delivered Command, and a lot more breath. The only concrete difference between Nightblood and a standard awakened object is the level of Investiture dumped into him. Now, there is one caveat to that: Nightblood is an extra special case since he is more Invested than a mere 1000 breaths would imply. We don't know where that extra power came from, but it might change him enough that we can't even fully classify him as an awakened object any more. He might be something beyond classification, truly unique. I don't think that would necessarily change anything with my classifications, though. The third known type is the self-targeted stuff. Since we know essentially nothing about it other than that it exists, I won't comment on it too much, other than to say that it may not necessarily be restricted to on-self casting. I would also like to note that this may be how Vasher manipulates his form. I have always thought it strange that the Returned can just mentally change their form. It should require a spiritual component as well, and this kind of magic could potentially provide it. The 'run-of-the-mill' Returned in the Court of the Gods could be using this instinctively to some extent, allowing them to change over time. As one final note, these are only the types we know about. There may be more kinds of things that BioChroma can do besides these things. Like maybe shooting breaths at your enemies Aon Daa style. That particular example doesn't sound likely at all for multiple reasons, but it was the first thing I could think of. I could probably spit-ball a few more possibilities, but they would likely be even worse examples.

While I agree with your point, they were buying soulcast metal. They didn't want metal that had been mined. It was probably just a typo on your part, since most of the post has it right except that one word. Just a standard nitpick. Your point about thunderclasts is interesting though. I wouldn't be surprised. It depends on how exactly Transformation works, I think. If the new stuff remembers that it wasn't originally stone, it may not be usable by them.

Well actually the gemhearts from chasmfiends are all emeralds. Which are generally used to soulcast food. That's an important resource for an army. Calling in @Yata, since I think he was the one that got WoB on this. As for hemalurgists, I don't think they are all necessarily immediately savants on being spiked, but they are well on their way. If they have multiple spikes, I'd say they are there. Getting steelsight might take a bit for someone with only one spike, but I would bet inquisitors get it practically immediately.

It seems like this is the first theory every new sharder posts (not really, but it is a repeat offender). I have never liked it. I still don't, even with the support people have been giving it here. The thing is, I don't think the fainlife would be a problem for the new Shards to deal with. They can create planets, I see no reason why they can't strip away the infected topsoil and dump it into empty space. They can then mash up some asteroids or something to replace the mass. Also, why would the fainlife be infecting stars in the first place? I could accept it effectively destroying Yolen (except that Frost is still there). I can't see it getting off planet. Not with the Shards vacating the premises. As for Hoid's motives, I don't think he wants to put Adonalsium back together in the first place. He likely helped break it in the first place. He is probably running around collecting power simply for the sake of having more power to influence events. It could also be incidental to him running around to novel worthy events. While he's there he may as well try to get some more abilities, after all.

Ehhh... I think the mistborn would usually win. Coins are used simply out of convenience. I would personally carry around shotgun pellets. The mistborn isn't going to run out of metals to push if they are flying around intelligently, since iron will recall them if they are good at their job. I mean, I'd put my money on Wax over a Surgebinder any day, let alone a mistborn. Then again, Wax has shenanigans available to him that neither he, nor most readers realize. I refer you to this thread for an explanation of the mechanic. So, he uses this to make himself fly at the Radiant super fast, then gets close and socks him in the face with a massive tap. Stick some metals near the eyeslit while they recover, and bam. Dead. If they manage to heal anyway, you are already close, so just repeat until they stay dead. If they manage to react properly, you can avoid impaling yourself by either flying over them with a push, or slowing down with the mechanic in that thread. Then the fight is trickier, but my money is still on Wax. Or you could, you know, just pelt them with coins until enough go through the faceplate to either insta-kill, or run them out of Light to heal with. A mistborn wouldn't have any problems maneuvering to keep away from the Radiant even on open terrain. At worst, they can push metal against the Plate and use that to send themselves flying directly away. At best, they can drop 3+ coins and just balance pushes on them and stay above the Radiant out of reach until their Light runs out. Unless Plate acts as a really good Light battery, in which case they would also spray them with coins constantly while doing this, then using iron to recollect them over time, simply to wear down the armor by forcing it to make minor repairs and some from leaking. As an aside, could a mistborn perhaps resist a Blade by duralumin burning all their metals at the instant the Blade connects? They would have a massive temporary influx of Investiture, so I could see it potentially at least slowing the Blade, if not deflecting it. Not that that would save you, since then you are without metals right up next to an angry Radiant.

I think the theory is that you can compound the power to restore the reserves you have consumed, not that it works like a spike, though they both end with the same result.

@Extesian I do agree that for an awakener to become a savant, they need to be awakening constantly, and that that is pretty unreasonable to ask of a person. I think it might eventually happen at a low level for someone who reaches agelessness who then awakens frequently for hundreds to thousands of years. As for things you missed, first, you need to answer the question of whether you could become a feruchemical savant by tapping a large unkeyed store that someone else compounded. Then the power isn't coming straight from Preservation. My guess is that the answer is yes. The question at hand is whether tapping is a power stream capable of causing savantism. I agree that under normal circumstances a ferring would likely never become one, but it should be possible given minor shenanigans. A few things I think need to be on the record for the Heightenings is that they aren't thresholds, they are upper bounds. Every breath makes you closer to perfect pitch, and after obtaining so many, you have perfect pitch and it can't be improved any more. Also, there are short term effects for gaining/losing large amounts of breath, but those are closer to withdrawal symptoms than savantism. Hemalurgy isn't so clean as just making a new channel for power. It is twisted and messy, regardless of how surgical you make it. It twists the soul of the recipient, it isn't merely a staple. It is a spike, driven into the cloth of your soul and twisted around so the cloth shifts and twists around it. It damages your soul in fundamental ways that simply removing the spike won't fix. Also, you can spike things out of that aren't powers. That's how koloss and kandra can be made, though you can use power spikes for them. So yes, I would say Hemalurgy definitely causes the requisite damage to be approximately equivalent to a savant.

Plot for the back five confirmed.

AonDor. *drops the mic* To elaborate, an Elantrian on their home turf is basically unstoppable. If they have a chance to prepare, that is. Engraved Aons that activate on touch are easily the most overpowered thing in the Cosmere. Period. Aon Daa machine guns, basically. Or fire traps that trigger when someone walks past them (that should be doable). Get a big enough Aon, use it several times, and even Shardplate won't stand up to it. Then realize that there are a lot of Elantrians that could fire those off indiscriminately all day just by wanting to and touching the Aon. Basically, Elantris is the Death Star of the Cosmere.

No, I don't think she was just talking about other times her shadow moved. This is the relevant passage: That reads to me as her saying 'I am having these episodes, I may be cursed, even though it should just be superstition. I have had other experiences that confirmed that some are rooted in fact.' I don't think she would feel the need to investigate if she had already proved it to be rooted in fact. I agree that she doesn't actually think she is cursed, but she does want to know the root cause. She is commenting that her other experiences with superstition have proved that some are rooted in fact, so she wants to investigate why her shadow is misbehaving. What I want to know is what those other experiences with superstition are. I.e. are any of them actually important.

Well, you said it better than I did. I'm glad the portion of my post I felt the least confident about received some support. I still feel like there was something else I wanted to say in the OP, but I can't remember what.

With some of the discussion that occurred in these two threads: I have made some connections with what may be going on with Roshar's cognitive realm. Shout out to @The Flash for sparking the connections with his comment about the Highstorm potentially weakening the border between the physical and cognitive realm. Given the knowledge that spren are attracted to their physical embodiment, and assuming the Storm does weaken the border between realms, I think it is fairly safe to extrapolate a few things. As with many things that cause wear, I doubt the weakening of the border would be uniform, so that leaves room for Shinovar to not be close enough to the CR for spren to manifest there because the Storm isn't powerful enough there. This also makes more likely my idea that the junctions mentioned in the unreleased Jasnah chapter aren't standard perpendicularities that correspond 1:1 with a shard. They are just spots where the realms are particularly close together. Based on this, I also think that the way the Nahel bond works is that the spren finds someone who is consistently presenting an attraction to the physical realm, and decides to make the attraction more permanent. The bond changes their natural state to be closer to the physical realm, which allows them to manifest in it as a Blade when they have gotten close enough to the physical through the bond. This should also remove the 'no spren in Shinovar' restriction because they are attached to a person and closer to the physical regardless. If the Radiant breaks their Oaths, the spren is stuck too close to the physical realm, and damages them in a way that makes them similar to the Hoed. The bond is still there, just not intact. This is what keeps the spren trapped. If the Radiant dies, the bond is not broken, but rather dissipated. The spren is still too close to the physical and experiences trauma as they grieve and are forced back to the CR. Admittedly, the portion of that speculating on broken Oaths and death are not well supported, but they make sense as a tangent to the rest. I could easily accept alternate explanations. With Lift being moved closer to the CR by the Nightwatcher, she is on a more similar level to Wyndle, and can physically interact with him. The two of them are partway to the other's realm, and are approximately meeting. I think that covers everything I wanted to cover. If I think of anything else I'll edit it in later.

You guys missed the obvious choices. The trove of 50k breaths is a definite choice, because not dying is cool. The Bands are another good choice, but I'm not sure I'd take them because... I'd be too busy bringing the Nightwatcher and Stormfather (who I am incidentally bonded to). I could ditch the Nightwatcher in favor of the Bands, though.