KidWayne

What exactly constitutes a "bond" with Nightblood? I think this concept is irrelevant since we see Vasher and Vivena interacting with Nightblood - without mention of a bond - in a way that would probably require a nahel bond on Roshar. We also see Paalm communicating in a similar way with Wax in SoS again without any sort of formal bond. Nightblood is a "type whatever biochromatic construct." As such, Nightblood is essentially an object granted sentience via investiture. The breath/investiture used by Vasher and his scholarly crew in Nightblood's creation allowed them to connect some ideal in the spiritual realm to an object in the physical realm. So, Nightblood is different from spren who are simply cognitive realm entities that have a limited ability to manifest in the physical realm. For spren, the nahel bond is essential to manifest themselves in the physical realm for any but the most temporary of durations. Nightblood needs no such bond to exist and remain in the physical realm. In my mind, Nightblood is more analogous to a non-surgebinder (with access to investiture via an honor blade) than he/it is to a spren. If you disagree, then please explain why/how - in existential terms - Nightblood is any different from a Returned on Nalthis who was somehow transmuted into a sword. So what can Nightblood do? I think Nightblood's power is its larkin-like ability to consume the investiture of others. In other words, I think Nightblood's power will be in its ability to neutralize surgebinders. I would be curious to know whether Nightblood's ability to consume investiture is only effective magic systems that use external sources of investiture (e.g. surgebinding, awakening, sand mastery) or if it would also somehow affect magic systems that use innate and/or form-based investiture (e.g. feruchemy, allomancy, aon dor). In other words, can Nightblood feed off the Dor itself? What would happen if Szeth pulled Nightblood during a visit to Scardial on a misty night, would the sword consume the mists? TL;DR → Nightblood = larkin sword = weaponized kryptonite for all the supermen & superwomen of Roshar (and possibly elsewhere).

Apologies for the long post, this touched on some things I've spend a little bit of time thinking about recently... I completely agree with you about Szeth's story being a tragedy. The irony is that before his run in with Kaladin, Szeth was seeking invalidate those laws that his sense of honor compelled him to obey. Kaladin's existence (and obvious lack of an honorblade) proved to Szeth that he was not, in fact, truthless. In Szeth's mind, this freed him from the obligation of the Oathstone. Taravangian noted this, too. So, honorable service to falsehoodis not honor at all; it is delusion. For other examples, look at the actions of Nalan, Amaram, and Eshonai; each of these individuals commit atrocities in their efforts to do the "right thing" because they lacked accurate information or believed a lie (I'm assuming that Nalan is wrong about the effect that killing surgebinders has on the arrival of desolations). Honor must serve truth to be honorable. The discovery of such a falsehood could be the philosophical impetus behind the Recreance and the fall of the Knights Radiant (such as the discovery of the Almighty's death when we was thought to be alive). Justice is supposed to be the basis of the law. However, justice is not a qualitative attribute that is not easily quantifiable. This is the reason that District Attorneys measure their effectiveness in convictions, guilty pleas, and plea bargains instead of units of justice. Since justice is not objectively quantifiable and the perception of justice depends on perspective, I agree that it is individual. This is why society tries to act through impartial jurors and judges in the judicial system. Impartiality attempts to make the perspective of the judge and/or jury neutral which is supposed to make their verdict approximate an objective pronouncement of justice. The problem is that no system can perfectly eliminate bias, the rules of the system can be exploited to circumvent justice, and sometimes the laws themselves are unjust or otherwise flawed. This means that there are times when the judicial system wrongly condemns/punishes the innocent and times when it permits the guilty to escape justice. In this environment, do we need to permit a limited amount of vigilante justice to correct the mistakes of the justice system? Personally, I would say that this is more dangerous since vigilantes are likely to act on imperfect knowledge and to be motivated by strong emotions like anger, grief, or revenge. So, only someone with perfect or near-perfect knowledge could possibly dispense justice better than the justice system. Let's look at an example, Batman and the Punisher are two well known fictional vigilantes that have both recently made appearances (Batman in Batman v. Superman and the Punisher in Daredevil (Season 2) on Netflix) While Batman v. Superman portrays Batman a little differently, he is usually considered the "good guy" because he is extremely smart, considered to be the world's greatest detective, has the money to act on his knowledge, and he refrains from killing those he acts against (which serves as a passive acknowledgement that he's not God and that he could be wrong). Now the Punisher is usually regarded as a pseudo-justified, almost psychotic threat; he's a loose cannon that is nearly as bad as the criminals he murders in pursuit of his own brand of justice. The Punisher's status as a "good guy" is shaky and comes only reluctantly as a nod to the fact that most regard the people he kills to be "bad guys." In the real world, vigilantes look a lot more like the Punisher than they do Batman. Perhaps this is why the Bible admonishes the faithful with this tidbit from Chapter 12 of Paul's letter to the Romans: However, the Skybreakers have forsaken their oaths (namely 'life before death' and 'journey before destination') in their murder of surgebinders. One major theme of the book is that it is not honorable to sacrifice the few for the benefit of the many without the consent of those being sacrificed. So, the Skybreakers have abandoned honor and they are justifying this by maintaining the appearance of working within the confines of the law. They are perverting the just intent of the law to accomplish their vision of order (they are placing the destination before the journey). If order and stability are superior to honor and justice, then it could be argued that Hitler's Third Reich was "good." Hitler certainly valued order and stability... he forced that order upon Germany under the guise of political legitimacy. Then once he stabilized the German economy and solidified his hold on the country, he started to force his brand of "order" on Poland, France, Brittan, and Russia. For that matter, Apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow era in the United States are both examples of legalized oppression where the law was used dishonorably/unjustly to oppress others. So, I can't say that I agree with your choice of "law abiding stability" over the messiness inherent in the individual nature of justice & honor. Collectivism destroys individual liberty in service of the "greater good." The less understood aspect of this is that Collectivism destroys the individual conscience as well since everyone in the collective is coerced by the law to act in ways that serve the collective; the law legislates morality instead of allowing individuals to choose between right and wrong. TL;DR → I agree that Szeth's story is tragic. Vigilantes could potentially act justly, but without near-perfect knowledge they are likely to do more harm than good. Individually interpreted honor/justice is better than the stability and order imposed by a legal code that fails to base itself on something other than justice.

Jorofforoy (since the j/y consonants appear to work similar to the c/k consonant in English)

I'm currently nursing a pet theory that Vasher is/was the SunMaker (the guy who brought down the Hierocracy on Roshar).

I like this supposition, but wouldn't "Jealousy" be a better name for the shard if this is the intended meaning? After all, the old testament quotes God as saying things like, "I am a jealous God..."

So, first, thank you for all the time and care you put into your response. Second, I wanted to respond to your suggestions, so I numbered the items in your post above and responded below. (1) My wife also has Hashimoto disease. She was diagnosed with this before her pregnancy, and she treats this with a pill and regular blood tests. (2) About two weeks ago she went to see an immunologist who sent her to a hospital for extensive blood testing. My understanding/assumption is that this was done to look at things like her white globule count. (3) Yep, I agree with everything you said here. The bankruptcy prevents her from taking out more debt which is one of the reasons I went that route. The problem is that she has pressured/manipulated me into charging up my personal credit cards. The only options now are [ A ] increase income or [ B ] go bankrupt myself. [ B ] is an unattractive option since I am an accountant working in financial services; filing bankruptcy is regarded as professional suicide. (4) My wife is depressed and has been wrestling with depression since the birth of our twins. She is not a stay-at-home mom, though. She is actually a registered nurse who works for an outpatient psychiatric clinic, so she is very up-to-date on these kinds of things. I actually (finally) convinced her to start seeing a therapist in January of this year. I believe the root cause of many of her problems is related to some hidden early childhood sexual abuse she endured from age 3 - 5 (she has told me about it, but it is still a secret she keeps from her parents and extended family since her abuser - now deceased - was her father's uncle). (5) Exactly. The low energy levels have hobbled her ability to be the mom she wants to be and she feels both angry and ashamed for the way she wasn't able to live up to her own expectations for motherhood. (6) You nailed the part about keeping the house clean, it's an exercise in futility and it can be overwhelming & demoralizing. As far as getting outside, I tried that for a while but I recently had some success with it; maybe I can build on that and get a positive feedback loop going. (7) She would like to be more physically active, but the frequent illness seems to interrupt and delay her attempts to make a habit of it. Also, picking the kids up from daycare and then having to care for them just makes it hard to be consistent for either of us. (8) Her grandmother watches the boys overnight every Thursday evening. So she has time to herself. It was supposed to be so that we could have a regular date night, but the financial problems have thrown a wet blanket on that too. Also, talking about her trauma/abuse in her therapy sessions has made her a lot less affectionate (not that she was ever touchy-feely to begin with). The point is that - now - she functionally has a whole weekday evening to herself; however, she usually uses that time to go to bed early. (9) I've stretched this as far as I can. The big problem came when I did a consolidation loan, and she charged up the cards we paid off without my knowledge. I didn't cancel or destroy MY cards after that because I intended to use them as a contingency plan. I mistakenly thought that the bankruptcy would have humbled her inclination to spend money we don't have. (10) I'm more than a little worried about this too. Right now, I'm pursuing the extra income angle and we will see how long I can make that work. Thanks for your thoughts, suggestions, and kind words!

The underlined parts of your post remind me of the 2nd generation Kandra from The Hero of Ages. So, if things go this way, it would be classic-Sanderson. In my mind, this gives your arguments merit. It also casts Szeth in the same role as TenSoon. Interesting.

Ok, to re-introduce some civility here. SIDE NOTE > SMH... C'mon guys, this is the 17th Shard. This is not the place for internet flame wars, provocative statements, and/or sarcastic backbiting. If we are going to continue to encourage the free exchange of ideas we would do well not to frighten or intimidate potential posters by abusing those who do go out on a limb to share their thoughts. Now play nice or Eric/Chaos (or some other admin) will show up and send you all running home with a "does not play well with others" on your report card(s). I personally think the "moons are gemstones" thing is weak but not impossible. The moons' colors are obviously related to the three shards (Odium = Salas/violet | Honor = Nomon/blue | Cultivation = Mishim/green). Now, whether or not the moons are the shards' physical realm components/representations or not is up for debate. To my knowledge there aren't any WoBs that explain the mystical or realmatic aspects of the moons, so I suppose theorizing that they are in fact gemstones (i.e. repositories of investiture) works as well as anything else. Again, IMO, that seems unlikely but not impossible.

We know from the 'Midnight Essence' scene that ShardPlate does have some adaptive features. Dalinar remarks two or three times about the sudden absence or presence of the Knights' helms. At one point he notes that a Knight's helm is missing and then he notices that the same Knight was wearing his/her helm; he asks something like, "When did she put that on?" So, apparently the Knights could magically/mentally remove their armor at will (or at least parts of it). To me, this seems like it is very similar to Syl's ability to "shift her form as Kaladin needs/desires." More interesting would be how far this ability can be stretched. Does the Knight have any say in the features of his/her armor? For instance, could spikes be added to the sabatons (foot gear) for increased kicking damage or gauntlets could be augmented with sword-like blade protrusions (e.g. the sword arm Edward Elrich uses in Full Metal Alchemist; see attached pic)? If so, it would help to overcome some of the known vulnerabilities of shard-bearers (e.g. rendering them impotent by tying them up & their ineffective close-quarters fighting abilities).

My only thought is that... WOR spoilers So, if this was related to hemalurgy it was a failed attempt. The questions about the nature of magic on Roshar intersects with hemalurgy are good ones though.

So, last year right after I took out a loan to refinance existing credit card debt, my wife ran up $45,000 of credit card debt without my knowledge. Thinking we had some financial breathing room, I participated in the accumulation of $10,000 in additional debts. She has had to file for bankruptcy (Chapter 13 - the kind where you can't take out new loans and have to pay everything back with reduced interest rates). You see, she was using retail therapy to cope with some moderate to severe health problems; she has an non-specific autoimmune disorder that is similar in effect to lupus + hypothyroidism. She has been sick off and on about once every six weeks since early 2013. Being sick that often messes with you if unexpected ways; she has seen all but one of her friendships wither away to Facebook acquaintances since no one understands (or flat out doesn't believe) how a person can be sick so often. She also has been struggling with depression since her circumstances are pretty terrible. Well, love makes us do stupid things. I had pity on her and I wanted her to find something that made her happy and/or a new social outlet. So, when she went to a Mary Kay party and asked me if she could start selling it herself, I allowed her to do so. She insisted that she could sell the products and that she could make a decent profit doing so. I knew that allowing this would stress our monthly budget to uncomfortably thin margins, but I was almost desperate to see my wife happy again. She did have some initial success, but she spent her profits on god knows what and used our checking account to purchase new products to sell (using the "beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission" strategy). Her health deteriorated even further and her sales declined. Now I have to take a second job to make ends meet. I have an interview for a nights & weekends job at a grocery store later this evening. I'm pretty demoralized. Being married to someone that is a constant drain on your financial & emotional resources without being able to give much in return was difficult, but this is making me question whether or not I'm a victim of the sunk cost fallacy. At the same, time it's pretty difficult to justify leaving the mother of your 3 year old twins who can barely take care of herself (much less the twins). It's just such a kick to the groin to have to lose the time that I would normally see my kids to have to work an extra 30 hours a week (70 hours total) just to pay the bills. I'm trying not to be angry, resentful, or bitter but I'm losing the battle today. Somehow, I thought the less desirable aspects of traditional wedding vows (i.e. "for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health") applied to old age and not the prime of your life. *sigh*

Can someone point me to this part of M:SH? I've read it through twice but I must have glossed over this part.

Welcome! The officially unofficial designation for Sanderson fans is "Sharder" (I see "Sanderfan" a lot, too). However, I like your term pretty well. Here's to "Cosmernaut" catching on!

From the Coppermind/Brandon's Elantris Glosary: The Derethi believe that the souls of men who hated Jaddeth during life become become Svrakiss. The Svrakiss are considered to be evil entities barred from entrance into heaven and having the power to take over the bodies of living men and control their actions. I feel obligated to point out that Skaze ≠ Svrakiss. The Skaze are believed to be Splinters of Dominion. The Svrakiss are almost certainly related to Odium (consider the similarity to the Thunderclasts and voidbringers in the SLA; namely, the red eyes).

Yes, this is really the only explanation that makes sense. We know that Odium shattered the Selish shards. Also, from the Coppermind (which gets its info from Brandon's Elantris Glosary): The Derethi believe that the souls of men who hated Jaddeth during life become become Svrakiss. The Svrakiss are considered to be evil entities barred from entrance into heaven and having the power to take over the bodies of living men and control their actions. So, we can reasonably guess that the Set's "faceless immortals" are Svrakiss. Also, the Svrakiss are servants of Odium which were involved with Odium's action against the shards on Sel. While I agree that this would be exciting, I feel obligated to point out that Skaze ≠ Svrakiss. The Skaze are believed to be Splinters of Dominion. The Svrakiss are almost certainly related to Odium (consider the similarity to the Thunderclasts and voidbringers in the SLA; namely, the red eyes).

See, I was going to go with "emotional abuse" or "Obsession" but on second thought, I like "Unity" better.

Wild theory time! What if everyone "living" on Threnody IS in the cognitive realm?! That is what if the forests of Hell is in the Cognitive realm and everyone there is oblivious to that fact? That way when someone dies, they hang around. There are a few obstacles to overcome here (like why does threnody have day and night?) but hey I can ignore inconvenient facts to have some fun when it suits me.

My impression was that the Series was the governing body of the Set. The Set itself uses a lot of mathematical terms for groups as titles/ranks (series, set, sequence, etc.) I think the Set may have connections to the Svrakiss on Sel. See the WoB below:

As an account & auditor (not affiliated with the IRS), I'd find the following very helpful (as would any office worker that had to meet a lot of deadlines): • F. Steel (stores speed) - to type, file, and sort really fast • F. Zinc (stores mental speed) - to facilitate the physical speed, and to work through conceptually difficult things (like when I have to create a new process, program macros, write formulas for or preform complex circular calculations, do VB/XML coding, do financial statements for structurally complex companies, etc.) • A. Iron (pulls nearby metal to you) - for when I can't find my keys, my phone, staple puller, ruler, stapler, or paper clips (or to be able to detect staples and paper clips before I try to scan or copy a stack of paper). • F. Copper (stores memory) - for remembering rarely used but important information (tax regulations for trust accounts, obscure compliance regulations, accounting rules, higher level statistics - and the required calculus - for audit samples, etc.) and passing professional certification exams (e.g. CPA, CIA, CFA, et al). • F. Bronze (stores wakefulness) - because I'm not a morning person • F. Chromium (stores fortune) - for finding stuff in audits that people try to hide • F. Duralumin (stores connection) - to establish trust in audit clients and co-workers (internal office politics) and dispel fear of auditors in general. • A. Brass (soothes emotions) - same as F. Duralumin above. • A. Zinc (riots emotions) - same as F. Duralumin above. • A. Bronze & Copper (hides/detects allomancy) - to hide or detect allomancy (and possibly feruchemy) in co-workers or clients. • F. Electrum (stores determination) - for meeting deadlines or dealing with stubborn people and staying focus when doing repetitive or boring tasks • F. Cadmium (stores breath) - to enable a snarky response for the occasions when someone says, "don't hold your breath..." BUT MOST OF ALL: • A. Bendalloy (a.k.a. Cerrobend, speeds up time around the allomancer) - To get extra time to complete projects and or just to create some personal time following the long 10+ hour days. After all, time is money and if you can make more of one you get more of the other. @ hwiles- You win this topic; that's the best idea ever. I have often had this thought when I imagine time travel, but I never put it together that a slider with a lot of metal could totally do this. Hell, you could do this with a regular old savings account and do pretty well, or you could pop in and out and make small speculative investments in newer tech and really amp up your gains. Brilliant! The only problem with this is that it would probably only work once. When you filed your taxes and reported the realized gain on investment, the government (or the bank) would probably see that the basis/book value was unrealistic or way too old and catch on to what you did. Then there would be a law passed that either seized 100% of the return on investment after 70 years or froze the account at year 70 (in the real world, the government forces you to take mandatory withdrawals from your retirement savings accounts in the year that you reach age 70 & 1/2 (the minimum withdrawal for a given year is computed based on your total savings and your remaining life expectancy). That's after a fraud investigation determined that you are actually who you say you are and that you have a legitimate ability to be 100+ years old... EDIT: Because double-posting is a no-no and I wanted to respond to hwiles. Sorry for the long post...

The short answer appears to be "yes." There are a few WoBs out there: So we can expect Atium to show up again in the future... Apparently, Sazed could do something to prevent Marsh from running out of Atium. Again, it's possible for Atium to show up in the future and Sazed may have the power to release it. This answers another question from earlier. This also answers an earlier question. This is just bizzare and I wonder what exactly Brandon's meaning was. Finally some telling RAFOs:

Now that BoM & Mistborn: Secret History are out, this quote brings up a whole lot of other issues. I won't spoil anything here, but I do find it interesting that Sazed speaks of Kelsier as if he no longer interacts with him on a regular basis or like they had a falling out of sorts.

Hi Max, my purpose here is to apologize. Let me explain... I'm a 31-year old non-Reddit user. That's relevant because I had no idea what an AMA was until about 5 minutes ago. The only reason I circled back here to this topic was to copy the html I used to change the font color in this post (for whatever reason, my work computer won't let me use the toolbar, so I have to code any formatting I use manually when I'm at work). I'm going to guess that you're younger than me, but if you aren't then we can reminisce together... back in the 2000's MySpace was a serious competitor to Facebook since Facebook was somewhat restricted to college students at first. Well, most everyone I knew had both a MySpace and a Facebook page, and we used them for different purposes. On MySpace, it was pretty common for people to post lists of questions (funny get-to-know-you kind of questions) and show off their wit by answering them in clever or humorous ways. Well, I had been on the Shard for all of a month when I posted here in your AMA. I saw the list of questions in MrMistborn's reply and assumed it was like a MySpace list of questions. I made an ignorant mistake and hijacked your thread; I'm sorry. P.S. for anyone else that is ignorant of the term, AMA = ask me anything.

Congrats! I actually had the same thought, I'm really grasping at straws here because (if you looked under my spoiler tag) you can see that my alternative is to conclude that Sazed is being a jerk to the Southerners. I like Sazed and don't want to think of him that way. The only justifications I can come up with are [A] Sazed looked into the future before fixing/helping the Southerners and saw something that made him hold off, or [B] he is using the Southerners the same way that Rashek did: he's leaving them as a control group. It's a reach but, perhaps Sazed wanted to make sure that the comforts with which he blessed the Basin didn't corrupt the people, so he left the Southerners to struggle and survive on their own. As an aside, I like MagpieMaydin's suggestion that perhaps Sazed didn't intervene because he knew that they were already taken care of... even if he "took care" of them in the way that a pair of holey pair of jeans is taken care of by patches made from brightly colored bandanas... Stormlight Archive (WoR) spoilers: Maybe you're on to something there.

So has anyone considered pairing this with the fact that we know Adonalsium was killed? Could the weapon that killed Adonalsium be an ordinary weapon? If Adonalsium was a vessel (i.e. human) just like those we see attached to other shards, would it have been possible to kill the man and then use a separate process to fracture his power into 16 shards? Also, can anyone direct me to the WoB (or whatever the source is) for the existence of Adonalsium's Opposition?