Lewis Nethur

Welcome to the Shard! Don't stop there! Who was your favorite character and why? What open points are you still confused about? (I won't spoil anything, but you must be an absolute genius if nothing tripped you up!) Can you name a scene that gave you chills to read or one that made you need to put down the book and take a break? Do you still think, in retrospect after finishing the arc, that the crew were the good guys, or...are they somewhere in between good and evil? Do you feel like the Lord Ruler was right to try and halt the catacendre and take power for himself in order to save as many lives as possible, or that the cataclysm was inevitable and probably should have been allowed to take place 1000 years ago (or something else)? Hopefully you don't mind the prompt, I just always appreciate a fresh perspective if you're happy to give it (on any or all of the above) Edit: typos...

Yes, this is exactly what the Shardic force of Ruin is based on from real life. It is in no way unique to the cosmere; it is prevalent in places most would never think to look and most are not capable of remembering finely enough to pick up on. The only thing that keeps us sane is the changelogs and metadata sweeps but...those supporting documents being filled out thoroughly and completely are the exception, not the rule, friend. May the changes be ever in your favor.

Yeah...I'm inclined to agree now, I've tried searching again and I'm not turning anything up that has an official stamp on it. It might be buried in the annotations or i could well be misremembering an non-official source... I feel like it had something to do with the concept that even extremely old inquisitors should (theoretically) still be extremely able and powerful and, therefore, difficult to kill or remove and, given the duration of the empire's existence, inquisitors in general should obey a mortality curve and plateau more closely resembling that of lobsters (looks like a natural log function on a graph) than of humans (looks like a bell curve on a graph), ergo, they must have had at least a few who were punching into the two to three century realm of longevity or else they would have been getting murdered or been dying and getting replaced often enough that the general population would have enough stories of them dying for them to have not reasonably been mythological in the average person's eyes... It's dangerous to combine too much science with fantasy, so...probably chalk this one up to being just a fan-led math problem that makes the narrative merge with real life mythology better, but isn't actually based on verified storyteller intent if nothing pops up. My bad.

Hahaha. I didn't mean to suggest that it's a rule. Buuuuut...compelling a homeless man with no girlfriend, who serves as a slave soldier, and who's mind is very nearly emotionally shattered and drained to swear life-altering oaths is...just always going to be easier and a more 'sure-thing' than doing the same for a prince supported by devoted followers who stands on (more-or-less) politically stable footing... Pretty sure it's implied somewhere in the books that families were common among Radiants at one point between the last desolation and the recreance, but this was when they were at the peak of their power and recruitment should have been the easiest it ever was. Currently, they're the most battered, disorganized, and (relatively speaking) weak that they have ever been so...the spren seem to be gravitating towards the most extreme and surefire bets they can find: people who live and breath the values of their order and have literally nothing else left in their lives. As things improve I would be shocked if we didn't see a return to more traditional structures among radiants. That said, if you're on roshar and want to become a Radiant in book 5, you might have a hard time joining if you aren't an active military member and also have a loving significant other, because...people like that just don't typically volunteer to serve in global wars, which is what they need from the radiants in the short term. Who knows though?

These are fair points. To them, I would opine that bondsmiths are a little different; their spren don't seem to gain additional cognitive function or presence in the physical realm than they already possess as their radiant swears additional oaths like those of the other 9 orders. To the second...I don't have a good rebuttal. Adolin could very likely steel himself to swear the oaths of any of several of the orders and evolve himself into a serviceable knight. The issue is one of 'need' as I see it. He has a loving family, a robust support network, and no severe disabilities or hardships to conquer. He's the perfect picture of a prince. Once you account for also being in a loving romantic relationship, well...what leverage would a spren have to push or influence him to progress along a specific path of radiancy? He's been in battle, he's proved his Valor, he's served alongside his men, he has witnessed death, and...none of it broke him because it was his duty and he was born and trained for it. The other radiants we see usually have some failing, flaw, or unfortunate backstory that shoved them to where they are, OR, they are so uniquely powerful and influential as a stand-alone citizen of Roshar (like Jasnah or Hoid) that a spren felt compelled to bond them (ie: massive parasitic benefit from the relationship). Recall, Roshar is at war. In a time of peace, adolin might be easy enough and beneficial enough to recruit. In a war with low spren populations, fear and mistrust in every direction, and broken-but-exceptional candidates like kaladin and szeth, who are...for lack of a better word 'want' to swear soul-binding oaths, I just perceive Adolin just being too difficult for them to control. I recognize that's not fair per se, but...there it is. I see no reason that he couldn't put his blade down and join just about any order in the back 5 books though.

I see two possibilities: 1) when Charred die, their cinderhearts stay invested. In this case, upon awakening one's corpse you would have a Lifeless with all the powers of a Charred. They could presumably be filled with Ichor and awakened with a single Breath and be functionally identical to a normal Charred. Alternatively... 2) When Charred die, their cinderheart is drained in the process, possibly due to trying to heal or sustain them against lethal injury and inevitably running itself out of Investiture. In this case, you would have a regular human corpse with a gaping chest wound and most of their critical organs burned away. They could presumably be sewn up and awakened like a regular corpse but would possess no cool Charred powers as the source of said powers is fully depleted. Implanting a cinderheart into a Lifeless who wasn't a Charred previously may or may not do anything. If it worked at all it would probably just result in a Charred who has some weird quirks. Probably best to just use a living body...

Honestly, it might just be because only single people seem to ever get chosen for a spren bond and Adolin almost always has a girlfriend. Plus, there's the dead spren blade that he carries that acts like radiant spren repellent...and there are just other stronger candidates who are objectively more mature while also more spiritually damaged which technically makes the process of leading them to swear soul-binding oaths easier. Adolin may be a good person or great character depending on one's perspective, buuuut...he might just possess too many hurdles and barriers to radianthood to be an attractive candidate from the perspective of a spren. Recall, radiancy is technically a form of mutually parasitic relationship; a bond with Adolin might just be too one-sided to be worthwhile.

I like my theory better, but who knows? I think it would be worth testing for the scadrians to see whether or not, after giving a Charred a rigorous education on biology and human physiology, they still needed to breathe. They might also lose the ability to speak afterwards though, so...it could definitely backfire. lol

Strongly agree. The metaphor that I would use here to drive the point home is: if I logged onto the Coppermind right now and wrote that Kelsier is, was, and always has been 6'9", 300lbs, with jet black hair and a pug nose, the Metadata on the backend would record that a change had been made. There's a tiny chance that I might get away with tricking a couple people, but eventually (maybe immediately) someone would correct the record and anyone who was naive enough to be fooled would be corrected upon checking back or speaking with anyone who was familiar with source material. Could I implant false citations to make it look more convincing? Sure. Could I include excerpts from hacked and edited ebooks or WoBs? Yes. Would these work? Not for very long. The type of magical pseudo forgery being discussed here would be like characters in-world being able to make retcons more powerful than even the author of the books is capable of, which is...so super meta and mindbending that it probably won't be allowed (at least on screen) for narrative reasons.

In my head, the biggest differences between the two are the amount and type of investiture being used to affect the transformation. Hemalurgic spikes appear to contain relatively small amounts of investiture on their own and the investiture that they do possess does not seem to be easily convertible or reusable for any purpose other than conferring the specific power or ability that they stole when being created (used as a murder weapon). In contrast, sunhearts appear to be VERY densely invested with investiture that is only very loosely region-locked and, as was demonstrated, relatively easy to convert into a generic form that is almost as easy to use as true liquid Investiture such as that which exists at Perpendicularities. What we don't have data on unfortunately is whether the Charred experience similar life-extending abilities as (some) Inquisitors. Im having trouble finding it but, if memory serves, there's an old WoB from about 2010 alluding to at least one Inquisitor living surviving over 200 years without the use of atium feruchemy (edit: i might have this paragraph wrong), and another that outright states that most of them had some amount of life-extension by simple virtue of how altered they were from normal humans. That said...I would posit that Charred should be very nearly biologically immortal once created on the basis that most of their internal organs are replaced with raw Investiture (they do apparently still need to breathe despite having no heart or lungs... but this might simply be a self-limitation imposed by their own perception in my opinion). With most of their critical organs completely removed from the equation, and (nearly) raw investiture supplying their body with energy (wait...do Charred even need to eat or sleep!?) I would expect an 80 year old Charred to behave the same as a 20 year old Charred the same as a 400 year old Charred. It's probably also worth bearing in mind that the Charred were invented by highly advanced spacefaring scadrians who almost certainly possess advanced hemalurgic knowledge, so the similarities with inquisitors are very likely intentional and organically arrived at based on the knowledge they brought with them to the planet before experimenting on the local population. One last note: the nature of the cinderhearts appears to be such that they confer some element of collective consciousness between the Charred. Very little is explained in book about this phenomena, but an empathetic link bordering on telepathy seems to exist between them all in general, with Sunlit ones being able to exploit this further to issue mental commands to them, a power only previously observed to be possible by awakeners of the 10th heightening (granted, the mental commands granted by the 10th heightening affect only objects, not living beings. Still though...)

In a word, "No." It appears to be a cultural evolution, most likely related to their historical tendencies to, apparently VERY severely, manipulate, control, and exploit their people's Identity and Connection for survival (and eventually warfare, once survival was a given). If any random stranger who sees your face is liable to perform soul-severing witchcraft on you for the good of the state, you might want to wear a mask too...

Honestly, I could see this being a logically derived resonance function of overlapping the magic systems involved. Recall: a fully maxed out awakener can issue commands essentially telepathically and remotely, and the surge of transformation can operate remotely when supercharged by knowledge, intent, and raw power. It stands to reason that feruchemist should be able to store and draw charge remotely if they can overcome the power gap between themselves and their target. Honestly, I'm imagining this relationship as being a simple extrapolation of semiconductor physics. Best guess? A fully ascended Radiant who is also in possession of an Honorblade who also happens to be a full feruchemist should be able to store and draw from any metallic object that is personally bound to them on a Spiritual Realm level if they truly know what they're doing. That's pretty darn scary if you ask me...

I'm very much inclined to agree unfortunately. Roshar isn't on the path to world-peace, they're on the path to interplanetary war... The real questions that I'm hoping to see folks be able to have clarity on are: This will hopefully be a very exciting and entertaining one. Or, failing that, an excruciatingly illuminating one. Edit: threw in a spoiler block because I think I probably broke a rule or two. Sorry and thanks!

It should, yeah, but it would require ridiculous amounts of metal to be swallowed by each target in the chain to be observable I'd suspect...and the spiritual deformation for forcing that much investiture that aggressively through a normal spiritweb could theoretically be permanently damaging (or not, who knows?) ...This sort of arrangement should probably be restricted to mechanical allomancy utilizing harmonium to avoid harming people, but... A multi-nicrobursted-nicroburster should, assuming that they've swallowed a stupid amount of nicrosil, be able to nicroburst their target exponentially relative to how they would accelerate them if unaided. If their target had, let's say a pound, of zinc in their stomach, they might be able to traumatize or cause brain damage in the people they riot for example by simple virtue of the hyper extreme degree of stress and strain that they would be inducing in targeted minds. Or rocket themselves to Mach 10 (and probably die...) if they were full of steel and pushed, or be strong enough to crush diamonds with their hands (for maybe a second or two). I think you're onto something...pretty sure it shouldn't ever be used on people though.

That's how I would arrange them, 100% Ambition requires future-planning, discipline, and ferocity to be viably actualized into reality, whereas whimsy requires...well, I would describe it as the reciprocal of those three things...

The problem that I see here is that you might essentially need to simulate an entire alternate lifetime, identity, and internal monologue for someone to tap into while they simultaneously store virtually all of their real one. That...could go horribly wrong very easily by my understanding. In principle though, I think your suggestion technically passes the smell-test from what is canonized currently: A gold compounder, with access to a hacked coppermind that artificially shows them as always having had abilities that they never actually did, who can also separate and store ALL of their real memories that could contradict any part of that false narrative, who then tapped a massive amount of gold Feruchemically, would naturally "heal" themselves to be who they believe that they "are, and always have been." Would the effects be permanent? Well...probably not if they tapped any of their old memories, or spoke too long to anyone who knew them before the alteration...and it might all unravel itself if someone ever accidentally explained to them that their powers were artificial...lol. this might be a horrifyingly efficient way to make exotic or custom hemalurgic spikes without killing someone if the powers couldn't be stabilized in the host though I suppose. What a great a terrible idea!

Something to bear in mind here is the existence of highstorms I think. It might feel like an ex machina a bit, but...any blade dropped in a highstorm is likely gone forever. Maybe the stormfather takes them and collects them on purpose or out of mercy, or maybe they all end up dumped in the ocean at total random. Both would be pretty fair explanations given that blades are traditionally used most effectively in wars and the most ruthless types of wars, ie: the ones most likely to yield super high returns at very high risk, are fought on the extreme edges of their supporting logistics, ie: armies with lots of blades early after the recreance would be utilizing the storms to create ultra high value (ultra high risk) strategic boundary conditions for their conflicts...

Scadrians win on a "build and fight wide" cosmere-scale is my simplified prediction, with the caveat that the exotic worlds with hyper rich sources of easily accessible and easily convertible investiture shall inevitably belong to the Rosharans and their "build and fight tall" approach (or other new factions that closely resemble them), eventually. I don't suspect either could ever hope to "win" an invasion and occupation of the other's home planet to claim a "total" victory in any future war though.

Welcome to the Shard! Let's not discount the possibility that Odium could be killed again or simply recombined with Honor. Taravangian and Kaladin might not be able to hold both and survive, but I bet Szeth could. His Honor: unbreakable to a suicidal fault. His Hatred: enough to vow to kill his own people in order to free them from their own lies. Plus, he doesn't actually want anything in particular except absolute truth. Szeth would make a brilliant Shard of War. lol

Oh I really like this one. May I just opine the counter-option that the final answer should be more assertive, self-assured, and resolute than "give it to me, I/they need it."? I'm thinking more along the lines of: "give it to me...it is time." A fully ascended bondsmith should ideally (forgive the phrase please) think, speak, and act with the intent of all of their Ideals with everything that they think, say, or do. One does not simply make demands of a godlike force of nature, and asking them for favors is just normal prayer and hopefulness. So...I'd hypothesize that he isn't going to ask for, and he isn't going to demand, anything. He will simply gesture to the situation at hand during a moment of extreme duress and catastrophe and assert that it is self evident why he was chosen and he formally accepts the responsibility and consequences and spiritual bindings required for full ascendancy. And if he is logically correct when making that assertion, the stormfather shall have no choice but to acknowledge the words. Perhaps: "lend me your power...I am ready now..."

Honestly, at this point, I sincerely believe that Nightblood might be a unique one-off beast of the cosmere that can never be emulated or fully understood except at a shard-wielder level. It has been repeatedly implied (but never close to confirmed) that Endowment herself may have personally altered the governing rules of Awakening to prevent any of her practitioners from ever producing another Nightblood simply because of how realmatically-hacked and stupidly-menacing he is. I don't even suspect that Nightblood's form of bonding should have a name; it's completely unnatural. He permanently and irrevocably binds his soul to anyone who touches him and...he can only do that without unraveling his own mind because he's ridiculous powerful and/or kills most of his users. Is Nightblood's bond a form of Luhel or Nahel? No...I believe it is a unique form of bonding that Awakeners accidentally created for themselves; one which violates the normal principles and constraints of any naturally evolved symbiotic bonding relationship and is, quite frankly, no longer allowed by divine decree.

Lol. I love the enthusiasm. Yeah, it seems like this would work just fine within the self-contained rosharan system of fantastical magic. Given the metaphorical nature of how investiture and stormlight translate in a general storytelling sense though, I wouldn't expect any koloss-sized radiants to ever appear on screen unfortunately (fortunately!). Recall: Koloss require four human-sacrifices and a hacked host-body that essentially gets brain-wiped to make...super-swole is technically possible, it just comes with a terrible price!

See, this is exactly why I think there MIGHT (keyword) have to be permanent spiritual changes that result from nicrobursting an Augur. At least the first time. I'm imagining the information that gets slammed through their brain being like unto the experience of "opening the gate" in full metal alchemist terms, or "piercing the veil" in more generic psi-believer and witchcraft terms. Like...people are self-aware in general and "know" how they got to where they are and what they are or could or could not have been capable of under different circumstances in a loose and abstract sense of the word...but this...this would be taking that to the next level of being absolutely unbreakably certain about the underlying details of that general awareness. I think a bursted-augur might be permanently altered, not unlike turning someone into an inquisitor (albeit much less gross, violent, and damaging). I love the added detail though, thank you, this did help. This has crossed my mind, yes.

Just like the title says: what would an Augur see if a nicroburst turbocharged them? In historical and religious text IRL, Augurs leverage their mastery of the past and their deep profound self-knowledge to predict the future by interpreting the "natural signs" all around them in real time. It isn't like atium, it's much more generalized and longterm where atium is hyper-specific and short-term, but it is ultimately all about predicting and controlling the future. So back to the question: what does an Augur see when they are forced to burn and process and incredible amount of gold all at once? Is it a perfect harmonized version of themselves that, upon visualizing, forever changes and alters the way they think and behave? Is it some kind of extremely abstracted form of prophecy and futuresight via historic understanding ala wheel of time? Is it a simple onetime view of who they could have been under different circumstances as is implied in Era 1 with no strong correlation to the real world historical verbiage usage? Or is it something radically different entirely? The world has to know!

I think @Quantus has the golden answer already on this one, but i would just add that the risk for extreme dysfunctional mental illness and emotional collapse resulting from attempting to bind multiple spren, which are embodiment of forces of nature, into a single soul should probably not be ignored for anyone considering attempting hemalurgic experimentation on Singers and Listeners. They would be more likely to create an uncontrollable monster that runs impossibly hot until it kills itself than a construct that "works" in any meaningful way. Not saying it's impossible, it would simply be extremely horrifying in all likelihood.