Mael

Post Secret History spoilers in the Secret History board. Spoiler tags are not sufficient, as per http://www.17thshard.com/news/brandon-news/bands-of-mourning-release-spoiler-policies-mi-r247

My apologies Chaos, I made an incorrect assumption about the spoiler policy that I should have checked on before posting that. It won't happen again.

To get back on topic, I think One Spike Man is Kelsier using a body that was regrown for him by a kandra. We saw MeLaan fix up Marasai easily enough by creating new tissue for her, what's keeping TenSoon from doing the same with Kel's bones? Assuming TenSoon can regain equal mass to what he would lose doing so anyways

Can we call him Mr. T instead?  Because a spike kinda looks like a T, right?  Right?

Nah, we can't call him Mr. T. There wasn't anything in his description about wearing massive gold chain necklaces and he didn't say anything about "hammer time".

 

But seriously, we already call Taravangian Mr. T. It would get confusing if we called One Eye Spike Man Mr. T. Why don't we just call him Spike on a count of that fact that we only know of the one hemalurgic spike in his eye?

I like the idea that svarkiss are a memory of what Odium  used to splinter Dominion and Devotion. This is consistent with Roshar.

 

A question I have is this. On Roshar, Odium appears to fight the war of attrition: won't stop until full Desolation (destruction of the world).  On Sel, Odium beat two Shards to a pulp and left. Why not genocide? 

I would imagine that the Oathpact has something to do with why Odium is fighting the war of attrition, something in that is trapping him on Roshar and limiting how he can maneuver to splinter Cultivation who is also on Roshar. As for why he moved on after splintering Devotion and Dominion on Sel, I'm guessing it would be because his objective was to Splinter the Shards, not kill everything on the face of the planet (maybe that's the condition to get to Cultivation on Roshar?)

I want to point out that the idea that aluminum and chromium leaves the metal in the body, unburnable, draws attention to some (in my opinion) unsatisfactorily answered questions about how allomancers deal with metal toxicity. (Mistborn can sidestep that by burning pewter, I'll grant, but most allomancers aren't mistborn.)

So we know the power doesn't come from the metal, but instead the allomancer's spiritweb holds a lock for which that metal's physical composition is the key. (I don't think it can be straight chemical composition, since aren't alloys mixtures, not compounds? And I'm pretty sure an allomancer can't swallow an alloys components separately in order to get the allomantic effect. Feel free to correct me if my high school level understanding of chemistry is incorrect.)

And we know that Chromium/Aluminum (I'm assuming they do essentially the same thing- I'd be fascinated to discover they actually work on different principles, and do let me know if you think there's reason to believe that's the case.) "cleanse" the subject of investiture.

I'm pretty sure that everything we've seen and been told suggests that after your metals have been sapped, you'll still be able to down another vial of metals and burn those normally immediately after if you have it available.

And now a first hand account by a leecher tells us that rather than "burning the metal to no effect" like I assumed, the metal stays, but the investiture goes. Assuming this is accurate, what is the leecher actually doing to the metals? Is it somehow twisting their physical composition so they're no longer burnable? Is it actually imbuing them with some sort of counter-investiture to make them effectively inert for the allomancer? Neither of those answers seem to be consistent with the idea that Aluminum cleanses a subject of investiture.

So I think the OP is posing a really good question.

Things from the Secret History novella and brief scenes in The Bands of Mourning suggest that souls and metal look to be invested in similar ways when seen from the perspective of Scadrism shards or super-potent Steel/Iron sight. So is metal on Scadrial special somehow or isn't it? If it is, then this whole thing with Chromium leaving metal but removing investiture makes sense.

But I thought that would contradict what we've been told in WoB, that an allomancer from Scadrial could burn metal on anger world without difficulty. This is what I feel throws a wrench into things.

Or am I actually misremembering, and that was one of the things he said would require the allomancer to "jump through hoops" or do something special to make it work? In that case, all of this fits together, but I really, really want to know what metalborn have to do to burn metal from other worlds.

The WoB that you're talking about says that Allomancers can still use their Allomancy on other planets, but they have hoops they have to go through to make it work (like on Roshar, I'd imagine they'd have to have a gem infused with Stormlight while they are burning metals to power the investiture since the mists aren't around). What those hoops are probably dependent on the world they are on, but we have no clue what those are yet

When it comes to Soulcasting, I think it would depend on whether it was an Elsecaller, Lightweaver, or an ardent with a Soulcaster who is trying to cause the change. When Shallan caused the Wind's Pleasure to change she had to convince it that changing what it was would be a good thing. Jasnah, on the other hand, commanded the rope to change so the sailors would be released so there is no real evidence pointing to Connection there.

 

Jasnah gripped the beads in her hand.

“You,” she command, “will change.”

“I am a rope,” one of them said. “I am—”

“You will change.”

The ropes shivered, transforming—one by one—into smoke in the physical realm.

 

Since we haven't seen how ardents can use a working Soulcaster to cause an object to change I'm guessing only Sanderson knows for certain how that would fit

Upvote for you Dirigible, this is my favorite theory about who (or what) Trell is as well as how the Set is connected to it.

 

Unfortunately, for all we know Autonomy could have sent agents to Scadrial to whose methods are similar to Svrakiss to destabilize the planet and make way for stronger outside Shardic influences to come into play. The WoB you quoted tells us that something of non-Scadrial origin has been working in the background, and considering that Dominion has been Splintered I don't think a Splinter of Dominion would have enough strength to bring the fight to Harmony on Scadrial (even Odium, the strongest of the Shards, is terrified of Harmony). Maybe Autonomy recruited some Svrakiss from Elantris and is using them as autonomous agents in the background in the first stage of a potentially upcoming Shard Invasion to weaken Harmony's grip on Scadrial and the Set is just the locals who have turned because they think it's the winning side?

In the broadsheet included in BoM, there is a first-person account of a Leecher successfully draining Investiture from a device wielded by the person who may be Nazh. The description in the broadsheet explains how the Investiture is drained away in the Physical Realm and passes elsewhere, possibly into the Spiritual Realm, from the perspective of the Leecher.

 

Prior to this, all we knew about Leeching was that it could destroy the metal reserves inside of an Allomancer. We have multiple WoBs stating that the metals themselves don't have any Investiture and that they are only a key that allows an Allomancer to use Investiture to get an effect. How do we reconcile the WoBs with the story in the broadsheet?

My guess would be that it works both ways. As you said, from the Leecher's perspective all he did was destroy the metal reserves inside of the Allomancer but if we look at the bigger picture what he may have actually done is pushed the Investiture that could be tapped by burning metals away or out of the Allomancer, thereby rendering his or her metal reserves inert and effectively "destroying" them.

 

Or at least, that's how I'm reconciling the WoB with the broadsheet in question 

I don't think the memory was necessarily taken by Hoid directly from The Sovereign. He probably stored memories purposefully for people to see. There may even be more of those medallions with memories in them but Hoid chose that one specifically for Wax.

Wasn't there a quote from the information broker at the party in New Saren about one of the nobles having purchased similar coins at a black market auction that are no longer on display in his house? Seems to me that something happened to the other coppermind discs that noble purchased... maybe Hold happened to them?

I don't think we can judge that. Appearance of mindlessness in the physical realm doesn't necessarily suggest diminished cognitive aspect - most Rosharan spren show virtually no cognitive ability in the Physical Realm, but are noticeably better in the Cognitive (though not necessarily full-on intelligent). Even a stick has more cognition in Shadesmar than it does in the Physical Realm.

So the Threnodian (was that the term the Ire used?) shades could be quite formidable in the Cognitive Realm. Indeed, I imagine they are, if they can affect the physical world in such profound ways.

You brought up a good point, and I hadn't considered the comparison of shades to spren. After reading your comment, it does make a lot of sense. Would that potentially make Honorspren and other varieties of Radientspren cognitive beings who got a new "string" connecting them to the physical realm through the nahel bond? And could that possibly point to Shardblades being physical shadows that need a "string" to connect them back to the cognitive realm to be resurrected?

am i invited?

Everyone is invited! Just be careful of the mule, it's exceptionally stubborn for it's breed.

Slightly erratic? He's almost as erratic as Kruppe.

Nobody could possibly be as erratic as dearest Kruppe, in all of his magnanimous and humble wisdom! Though I do wish he would take a break from Darujistan to visit me and Tehol in Lether (and maybe bring K'rul with him, it has been ages since I've had a good drink or 200 with that Elder God). That would definitely be a gathering for the ages!

Dang, kind of a bummer the first part of my theory was dead on arrival since I wasn't aware of that particular WoB (probably should have done some research on that part before posting. Lesson learned for next time!)

In M:SH, we got a good look at what a Cognitive shadow is and how it can interact. They can only interact within the Cognitive realm and in extreme circumstances cause very small disturbances in the Physical realm (like making Vin feel uneasy about Hoid) until their "string" connecting them to the Physical realm is replaced.

 

What does this have to do with another world? Well, let's look at Threnody and the Shades in the forest there. They cannot think independently, aside from the "program" they have of retaliating to the breaking of the Simple Rules (and in a couple cases of sticking around the places they lived before they became a shade). Because of how little independent action we see from these Shades it seems clear to me that they have very little presence in the Cognitive realm at all. So I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Shades on Threnody are Physical shadows, and examples of what would happen to Cosmerians if their Cognitive self is killed before their Physical self dies.

 

What do you Sharders think? Could I be on to something here? Or am I making connections in the Cognitive realm that aren't really there?

Sadly godhood is much more taxing than many would assume (have you ever had thousands of souls, if not millions or billions, whispering in your ear for petty things? It gets incredibly dull after a couple millenia...). Creation is a bit tricky, considering at least in my case I was the created and not the Creator... Plus I'm not an Elder god of the Cosmere, so I'm just as clueless about future events as you are... and gods can too have fun! That's why we adopt personas as manservants for incredibly clever and brilliant (and slightly erratic) humans in our free time dodging the requests of our believers

Maybe Yolen is dead in the Cognitive realm (turning the whole planet into the physical version of a Cognitive shadow)? That way there is no "string" (to use Kelsier's and Preservation's phrasing) connecting the planet to the Cognitive realm and removing access to it from the Cognitive realm at the same time... but if this is the case, what on Yolen could possibly kill the Cognitive ability of an entire planet and still leaving the Physical aspect of the planet untouched?

I have trouble coming up with my own theories too so I tend to play with other people's theories and expanding on them a bit instead lol

As much as I wish Mraize = Kelsier just so we could see what Kelsier could do out in the larger Cosmere... I don't think that's the case. Kelsier has that spike coming out of one of his eyes that Mraize is lacking, and I don't see Kelsier allowing one of his associates to potentially kill someone he is interested in. Plus we probably would have seen some of Kelsier's ongoing hatred towards nobility come out once he found out Shallan was a Jah Keved noble (a middling one, but still a noble)

 

It's a fun thought, and there are a couple similarities between the two, but I really doubt M=K

Hello all! I'm Mael, and I've been lurking on the 17th Shard for a while. Finally figured now is as good as ever to jump in to the conversations and start forging Cosmere theories since we have a new book and novela to play with. I've managed to tear through all of Sanderson's released Cosmere books and novelas, and when I'm not reading Brandon's books I can usually be found grinding my way through the Malazan Book of the Fallen at the moment or trying to keep up with school work.

 

You all seem like such interesting people and I look forward to theory crafting with all of you!