CaptainRyan

Personally, I have a few ideas on this. 1| The Parshendi are different from humans in their thinking, their worldview and their culture. When they decided to assassinate Gavilar they also decided to take responsibility (in their own way) for the action. They knew it would mean war and they planned accordingly by preparing a place deep in the Shattered Plains that would be nearly impossible for the Alethi to find/reach. From there I think their #1 goal was simply to survive the coming war. They needed those gemhearts so they would fight for them but they also knew they did not have the strength (or the shardbearers) to engage the entire Alethi army so they did not attempt to overrun the warcamps. 2| They were possibly trying to deescalate the situation by only fighting when they had to. Eshonai wanted to try and make peace before becoming crazy lightning Stormform Eshonai (CLSE). By reducing the amount of fighting and only fighting defensively the Parshendi were pursuing a policy of deescalation. 3| There is more going on then we understand. If the Parshendi wanted to assassinate Gavilar why did they need a treaty? I think Szeth would have been more than capable of taking down Gavilar without all the pomp and fuss of a treaty. Someone was pulling strings. Those same string pullers might have been forcing/tricking/bribing/etc. the Parshendi into not just fighting the Alethi but also to keep the Alethi focused on the Shattered Plains. That would explain why the Parshendi were fighting in such a way as to prolong the war. If this is the case, my money is on Mr. T but there are other plenty of other possibilities.

Lots of great info! Nice job! One bit that might need some further clarification: I believe a Splinter is not only a self-aware, independent piece of a Shard but can also refer to those who have held a significant amount of a certain Shard's power (Investiture?). E.g. The Lord Ruler is referred to as a Splinter of Preservation because he held a significant portion of Preservation's power when he used the Well of Ascension.

As the OP noted, there are confirmed reports of Allomancy before Rashek Ascended. So, the question is how did those pre-Ascension Allomancers ever stumble upon the idea of ingresting little bits of metal.

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that bothers me about, well, everything! The process of learning something that is already discovered is relatively easy compared to the process of learning something that no one even knows about. How did early farmers figure out that by planting a specific bit of a plant and then pouring water on that spot / putting animal crap around it (sometimes for months!) you could grow that plant? Or that by crushing up grain and adding water/heat/oil you can make delicious, delicious bread? Or milking cows... hahaha, imagine being the first person to suggest milking an animal and then consuming what you squeezed out of an udder/tit! Basically, somebody had to be weird enough to try it and other people had to be weird enough to accept that first person's claim. So, I assume, in Scadrial somebody was weird enough to try ingesting metals and he happened to be an Allomancer. Either that or, you know, the shards taught people stuff after creating them. Sazed dropped a library in the middle of a field so I assume Preservation and Ruin could have provided their first humans with some sort of starting point.

There are so many variables in this that it is hard to say... - Does Vin have access to metals she did not know about (Bendalloy, Nicrosil, Chromium etc.)? - How much stormlight does Kaladin get? - What environment are they fighting in? (an urban area with a lot of metal for Vin to push/pull on? An empty plain? A forest? Both start on kayaks moving swiftly down a river?) And so on. One major advantage Kaladin would have is that stormlight heals at a Miles Hundredlives' level. Even if Vin put a coin in Kaladin's eye it would not be that big of a deal. On the other hand, if nicrosil or chromium could potentially burn out all of Kaladin's stormlight instantly then he would be toast. My personal feeling is that Vin would win (haha, it rhymed!) because she is more ruthless. When she commits to a fight she does not hold back at all. Kaladin is more introspective (I mean, in the WoR rewrite he couldn't even kill Szeth who, from Kaladin's perspective, was a ruthless murderer) and those moments of introspection and wishy-washiness would give Vin the opening she needed. Kaladin is still one of my favorite characters (I am trying to convince my wife that if/when we have a son we should name him Kaladin) but I give the edge to Vin in the fight.

Clarification: the original question (hi, I'm the OP haha) focuses on the idea of whether a shardblade, swung by the same person (i.e. with similar force), would be more, less or equally effective against shardplate as a non-shardblade weapon (the example was a mace/warhammer but you could substitute any generic 1h/2h weapon). Certainly, it is hard to debate the "quality" of materials when comparing a shardblade (a spren) to a metal mace/hammer (not a spren - at least, not in the same sense). The idea is to tease out whether the shardblade, being "magical", provides any special bonus against shardplate or not. Personally, I do think that shardblades, due to their Invested nature, are more effective against shardplate than a regular weapon. That being said, normal weapons can definitely shatter plate and the amount of force brought to bear against the plate seems to be an important factor as well. Heavily Investing a piece of chewing gum would not really change its effectiveness against plate haha. In the same way that if a shardblade gently touches a piece of plate as if it were a feather would not harm the plate.

Remind me to never allow Kevino36 to have access to Awakening powers. If Vasher and the other four people he was working with failed so horribly in their creation of a sword (Nightblood) then can you imagine the horror that could come about from Awakening a creation that is self-mobile, has multiple shard/honorblades, is immune/resistant to Investiture and normal attacks (aluminum core + shardplate) and was given the command "Replicate"? I hope these things never learn how to worldhop because then they would destroy every world instead of just the world you dropped them on. The other proposed command "Follow this group's orders" is slightly less prone to issues but is still more than vague enough to allow for disaster. Please, no sentient level Awakening!

Ah, that is the word! Thanks! It is pretty hilarious to me that you referenced that episode because that is literally the only episode I have seen. I was over at a friend's place and they were watching GoT and I thought "Hmm, why not give it a chance. I like the books, right?" and then BAM! Lesbian prostitute action as the attention-grabber so the audience would not get bored while Littlefinger shared plot info. Ugh. I just walked away then and have never looked back.

Thank you for the gentle correction. I appreciate that you were very civil in your reply! For the record, I did not think you were advocating for the Booblight Archive adaptation haha. I imagine that most people on these forums are here because they are huge fans of the work Sanderson does and would not advocate for anything of the like. What I was trying to get across, in a somewhat poorly worded way, was that I think GoT is a huge success, in large part, to the "grittiness" of the show. HBO has a very tried and true formula of drama + decent story + sex/violence = success. (see: the Wire, True Blood, Game of Thrones, the Sopranos etc.) I absolutely love how well-made HBO shows are and I never watch them because they are basically porn (both sex porn and violence porn) with a great storyline. I mean, the catchphrase "sexologue" was coined to refer to how HBO manages to share "boring" plot information with their viewers during an "attention grabbing" sex scene. With that background on how I view HBO's production process I hope it is a bit clearer as to why I was horrified about the idea of the Stormlight Archive being compared to an HBO show. Few things in life would make me as happy and excited as a TV live-action adaptation of the Stormlight Archive that had a massive budget, a serious production crew and the backing of Brandon Sanderson. In all seriousness, whenever people play that game of "what would you do with $X insane amount of money" I always answer that I would hire people to make incredibly well-done adaptations of my favorite Fantasy and Sci-Fi books/video games into incredible movies/TV shows.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but wasn't the Last Desolation roughly 4500 years before the Way of Kings?

I would be absolutely horrified if the Stormlight Archive was adapted in a way similar to Game of Thrones. GoT is already a much, for lack of a better word, raunchier and darker story than SA but HBO took the vulgarity of GoT and magnified it beyond even what the books had. Can you imagine Brandon Sanderson's epic story reduced to using sex and violence to sell itself? Even the scenes in SA where there is a chance to show something of the sort (e.g. Jasnah's bathing scene where Shallan is her attendant or the many battle scenes of Alethi vs Parshendi) the focus is never on the (possible) sexual nature or violence of the scene but always on the characters and the story. HBO (or any other TV producer willing to shell out the money create a realistic Roshar) would also want to "hook" audiences with shots of Jasnah's chest or with excessively gorey fights. No thanks. One of the great things about Brandon Sanderson's work is that he never needs to use these sorts of tropes to hook his audiences. I would much, much, much prefer a well-done animated version (ala Avatar: the Last Airbender) and have it be less "well-known" than to have the Stormlight Archive reduced to peddling smut and graphic violence to hook people too disinterested in the genre-defining story that Sanderson has created to watch it otherwise. Note: I recognize, after proofreading this a few times before clicking "Post", that I might be coming off a bit passionate in my defense of the Stormlight Archive and any theoretical adaptation of it. Hopefully, anyone reading this will recognize my passion is based in the hope of a fantastic TV series being made and not in tearing down anyone else or their idea of what would make a fantastic adaptation.

While we do not know for sure how quick Szeth is to adapt to new magic systems we have seen him make creative, destructive and powerful uses of his abilities. He does not simply know how to swing his Honorblade (though he is both very skilled and has stormlight speed/strength enhancements) but he also knows how to fight without his Honorblade and can defeat dozens of skilled opponents by using the lashings and his surroundings. My personal opinion is that Szeth would be fairly quick to adapt to new enemies but I recognize this is merely speculation on my part. I believe he is a powerful contender but, most likely, would be unable to match Vin/Marsh/Vasher+Nightblood imo.

Personally, I think the mists count as part of Preservation as opposed to part of Vin and therefore should not be included as part of her "kit". If Vasher has Nightblood then I think he would come out as the winner. This is mainly a "gut" feeling as I think Nightblood has power far beyond what we have been shown and that it (he?) would not allow Vasher to be killed. If my assumptions about how powerful Nightblood is are wrong then I think Vin/Marsh, assuming A Atium for both or the ability to compound steel for Marsh, would be the last two standing and I imagine Marsh has the advantage but Vin did defeat an atium burning Mistborn w/o atium herself so I would never count her completely out. Szeth and Raoden are the wild cards in my mind - Szeth is probably outmatched by Vin/Marsh/Nightblood but is still a strong contender and Raoden, depending on how much time he has/what Aons he has up his sleeve could possibly pull off a surprise upset. All of the other contenders are either far too weak (Dilaf, MeLaan, Dalinar) or too inexperienced at killing (Lift, Sazed) to win.

If the team who produced the Nickelodeon show "Avatar: the Last Airbender" could be convinced to do "the Stormlight Archive" then I think it would a smash success. A:tLA appealed to young and old, had great voice acting, beautiful art and a compelling story. If they bumped up the age level a bit and had Sanderson to help with adapting the story to an episodic form then I could easily see each SA book being a ~20 episode season.

Fwiw, I am a programmer who would be interested in helping develop. I do not have experience in game design/creation but I do have a background in CS and work as a Software Engineer for a living so I imagine I can contribute. Drop me a reply here on the forum and I will send my email to you. Thanks!

For the scouting aspect I would recruit Kandra - preferably TenSoon but I would take as many Kandra as I could get. Due to the unknown strength of the enemy and, I assume, unknown location I would lean heavily on Metalborn from Scadrial. Their magic is the least dependent on a location/resource (e.g. Aons/Stormlight). I would either send the Metalborn to Nalthis and have them stock up on Breaths (lots of great passive abilities plus some useful active abilities) or I would try and recruit a strong Awakener(s). I would try and recruit a world hopper group (17th Shard, Ghostbloods etc.) for research and also for training my worldhoppers. I would also require each team member to have a weak hemurgic spike to communicate with Harmony. (Is that breaking the rules?)

At this point, I think I am going to take a break from this thread. I feel like the relevant portions of the discussion have been hit on and, at this point, we are just repeating things to each other. Perhaps one day Brandon will look on this thread, shake his head in confusion at how much time people spend on his made up fantasy worlds, and then give us a one word answer: Shshshshsh.

@Voidus 'Grats on 10,000 upvotes and "God Beyond" status Voidus. If I did not already worship the Christian god I would be tempted to worship you!

This completely ignores the fact that militaries all throughout history have managed to invade relatively unknown areas successfully. Scouting, reconnaissance, capturing of maps/intel etc. are all methods that have worked for invaders in the past. Not to mention that historical militaries lacked even the weakest of magic systems!

"[page 4 – CaptainRyan] 1) If [the Scadrians] started at the Horneater Peaks, they would be stuck there because of the extreme cold and would likely die without a ton of heat Medallions Any military would scout their invasion point in some manner so the Scadrians would not be surprised by the cold. They would definitely prepare, in some manner, to appear in cold, mountainous heights." edit: I just realized that you, Kevino36, were the one who suggested heat medallions as a possible solution. There are plenty of ways for soldiers to fight in the cold without heat medallions. Horneater Peaks would not be a death trap unless, somehow, the Alethi army knew to encamp their full might at the shardpool. Maybe they would do that but then, at worst, the war would be a stalemate.

Kevino36, I suggest you just go back in this conversation and re-read the parts where people already addressed this specific objection along with your other objections. I feel as if you keep cycling through the same objections every couple of pages.

This is taken from Chapter 4 of Alloy of Law: “The population of our octant is around six hundred thousand,” [Marasi] explained. “By the same ratio Lord Ladrian described, we should have roughly twelve hundred constables. But we don’t. It’s somewhere closer to six hundred, last I looked over the numbers. So, Lord Ladrian, your ‘savage’ wildlands actually had double the number of lawmen watching over it as we have here in the city.” One octant of the city has 600,000 people. There are eight octants. There are, literally, four million+ people living in Elendel city. Even if it was merely Elendel city vs. Alethkar then the city of Elendel could field half a million soldiers with a draft. Metalborn are, iirc, 16% of the population so the army, if it did not focus on metalborn and merely took what they got with a draft, would have ~80,000 Metalborn. If you include the entire Basin in the draft then, well, speculatively it would be possible to field a Scadrian army of one million soldiers with, roughly, 160,000 metalborn. Granted, not all of the metalborn will be useful to the war effort but that would still be tens of thousands of pewterarms, coinshots, soothers/rioters etc.

Kevino36, I love your enthusiasm but I think it is time to acknowledge that people have addressed these ideas more than once. Bullet Repelling Fabrials a: They do not exist b: If the fabrial tech does exist to make them they would only be able to repel a certain number of bullets. In small engagements they might be useful but in pitched battles there would be wayyyyyy too many bullets flying. The gemstones would run out of charge really fast. Reverse-Engineering Guns a: Guns require fairly precise engineering if you want to mass produce them (soulcasters might be able to generate enough but, if you think about it, the Alethi use regular blacksmiths for swords and stuff right? soulcasting is an intense process that costs precious stormlight and also affects the soulcasters in some way - mass producing tens of thousands of guns would have some serious consequences imo) b: Even if you have gun you still need bullets and see (a) about the effect this would have on soulcasters. Furthermore, you need millions upon millions of bullets to equip tens of thousands of infantry. Wow. Lots of bullets eh? c: Gunpowder. Thousands of tons of gunpowder. A substance Rosharans have no understanding of and will not have infrastructure in place to manufacture d: Training. Guns might seem to be a "point and shoot" type of weapon but, in reality, they require a serious amount of training to use effectively. On top of that you have to know how to maintain your weapon and Generals need to know how to employ infantry that use guns as opposed to spears. None of this would be easy or quick. edit: Why in the world does b + ) equal ? Ugh. Emojis I love you but not when you interfere with my list making!

I agree with a lot of what you said but this did stick out to me: the sneaky Leecher is unloading a gun at the personal guards of the shardbearer while standing behind the shardbearer? That does NOT sound very sneaky to me! But seriously, if it was two massed armies facing off and even if the Rosharan army had terrain advantages that provided lots of cover I still do not think that Roshar stands much of a chance. Imo, current shardplate would be able to withstand no more than a few hits per piece from bullets - a single revolver could probably shatter two pieces of plate or just shatter a chest piece and then kill the shardbearer. Sorry Roshar, I love you and your series but you just are not going to win this one. I blame the OP for picking Era2 Scadrial haha.

This is correct - I am wondering if shardplate is damaged only by the amount of force involved / how that force is applied or if shardplate, due to its magical nature, responds to damage differently depending on the invested nature of the weapon.