Lewis Nethur

Plate probably was much rarer, but (estimates vary greatly) something like 90% of the shardblades that were leftover from the Recreance appear to have been lost to the ravages of time, meaning that the documented statistics for who possesses what and what all material is available are not a reliable reflection of what was originally passed down. They might be in the ocean, or buried in crem, or they may have disappeared from existence once they were hidden long enough for all firsthand memory of them died off. I know it's a frustrating answer, but...It's possible that plate is still rarer and we simply have poor documentation on the matter, and it's possible that enough blades were lost to storms that the numbers are about even.

Wait...what'd i do to be called here? I'm innocent! I never hurt anybody!

Okay, yes, but...allomancer Jak is also, very famously, a pathological liar when it comes to narrating about his own exploits and victories... He's like the opposite of a Shard, he can only be honest about other people, not himself.

Oh man...I'd bet a year's salary without even blinking that they would immediately regard any full-metalborn, be they mistborn or feruchemist, as a creature above even the faceless immortals (who...if I'm recalling correctly, have already been dissected as being an allegory for the real world equivalent of "angels," the ninth and lowest order of God's agents according to some IRL theologies) That would immediately put them on the level of archangel (8th order) or higher. I assume that they would have, despite his obvious and glaring flaws, regarded the lord ruler as a full-blown seraphim walking around (1st order i think?). Although...if they were actively and openly hostile, there are some more-or-less equivalent hierarchies of demons established so...maybe somewhere between arch-demon and beelzebub (lord of death and decay)?

Oh I like that. Plus, a metaphorical marriage of the two divergent development pathways, the northerners' steampunk & advanced metallurgy tech with the southerners' soul alteration techniques and arcane magic-tech would be an extremely elegant way to accelerate all of Scadrial from either era2 to era3 or from era3 to era4. Working together, I can definitely see how they could bridge the gap from epic-fantasy to something more closely resembling classic sci-fi (epic-sci-fi...? Epic-Sci...? Fanta-Fi...? Magi-tech...? A brand new word may have to be word-smithed... ) With the tools the two sides developed in era2. I suppose a lot of that will simply hinge on what ends up being the focal points and settings of the story for era3. A criminally-insane mistborn bred or artificed by the agents of Autonomy could make for a very easy excuse to import northern metalborn to the south or southern technology to the north (or both!).

This point is actually rather interesting. Depending on how Identity functions for non-sapient objects, I could imagine the weight being stored into local onboard ironminds or transmitted remotely back to a central hub. I can imagine almost no scenario where an airship pilot could ever want or need to fully utilize the massive feruchemic iron charge that they would build up over time, so it would be interesting to see how Scadrians attempt to utilize it. It could simply be treated as a waste product and expunged periodically (ocean-faring vessels IRL can gradually accumulate magnetic charge across their hull that needs to be hammered back out of them periodically after all!), but it would be more creative and thought-provoking if operators found some kind of novel use for it. A fleet of large ships running patrols continuously might, for example, swap their saturated minds out for empty ones and send them back home to power plants/stations/relays/manufacturers on a schedule rather than just dumping them into the sea when they're full. For the other powers, I've been assuming that we'll observe their functions in machines in a way that best allows for the hand-waving away of complex physics and engineering concepts in device operation. So like...a touch-screen-interface-enabled monitor connected wirelessly to 27 surveillance cameras in distant locations might leverage A/F-Tin for "optical sensing," A-bronze for triggering circuit relays and switches throughout the network, A-copper as a signal dampener/isolator to prevent unintended functions, embedded F-aluminum to uniquely ID the cameras in the network on the monitor interface, ect. This would (just for example) open up opportunities for nicrobursters to be ungodly powerful hackers if they can pry open a device casing and manually overload an allomantic control-relay. That said...Scadrians do appear to have access to classical forms of electricity (some guy did discover the lightbulb...) and fossil fuels...which implies that they'll probably discover semi-conductors and ultra-complex circuit design eventually, so...it's possible that I'm way off base and Scadrial's technology will obey classical IRL physics and development pathways and that allomancy/feruchemy/hemalurgy will be reserved only for augmenting devices beyond the capabilities of real world technology (more like you're suggesting) rather than used as a stand-in for complex hardware/firmware/software elements. Honestly, based on what we've seen thus far I could imagine the author going in either direction still. I suspect that it will largely depend on what "magical" operations ultimately need to be depicted on-page and how much focus/attention gets placed on human-machine interfacing for any future main characters' core development arcs.

To be fair, other people already did that in era2...lol. The lord ruler and any of his hidden descendants who aren't already dead (this is supposedly a non-zero number!) have essentially been decreed to be off limits from further time on page or under investigation after what happened last time...for legal purposes, they're just regular people now. Hopefully that helps.

Yeah...no...that's the point I was trying to get at. TLR did what he could and what he thought he had to. He's gone now, and for good reason. Nobody is happy about what he taught them, which is part of why he died laughing...

I...can't tell if you're being sarcastic...That's what it would take under the conditions provided though!

I really want to say that they, and dark-eyed slaves in general, are described as wearing knee-length tan/brown cloth shorts, but I'm struggling to find a citation, soooo...I might just be remembering artist interpretations of the situation over reality. They come by it honestly though I think. Roshar has extremely developed climate control on a planetary level, they basically don't have seasons and the concept of dressing-for-the-weather basically doesn't exist aside from staying sheltered during highstorms. This means that fabric and cloth are overwhelmingly for appearances rather than function. This means, slaves would be clothed in the minimum amount of fabric or leather required to keep them comfortably and modestly contained without hampering their mobility. So like, best guess...probably undyed (beige) sleeveless shirts and mid-length shorts with a small number of large pockets.

Hahaha, I mean...that's kind of what I meant by option-2, but awesome, sure!

Moash absolutely is an urban legend! I saw him give an emerald broam to some darkeyed children in a slum six months ago. He got frustrated at them for trying to sell him something, told them he didn't want any of their stuff, and firmly told them to not tell anyone until the spent every last sphere. True story...

Well, just like in real life, I would hope and expect that the first use of harmonium that we shall see (explained in fine detail) will be in the form of a music box: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonium Unfortunately, I'm starting to suspect that complex machines based on the Metallic arts may simply not be possible to make by leveraging an individual metal. It's results just seem too inconsistent to be elemental on a fundamental level. For example, the anti-gravity device in the bands of mourning may only be "simulating" iron feruchemy via a complex abstract combination of many harmonium powered subassemblies woven together at a nearly atomic scale. I like where your head's at though!

So...I haven't read through the Wind and Truth samples yet...but it occurred to me that the war on Roshar may not be plausible to resolve within the given time-frame for book-5. My question to the community today is simply: "if a formally declared peace accord between Rosharn People and Parsh People is not achieved within the ten day allowance that appears to be outlined for book 5, then what shall become of the war on Roshar and how shall the conflict resolve or settle itself in the (expected) hiatus and time-skip before book 6 begins to be seriously discussed in fine detail? I can imagine several potential 'worst case' scenarios: 1. The Fused lose more of their sanity every time they're reborn, kill and replace a soldier on their own side everytime they die, and don't seem to be able to recruit new members. The Parshian rebels lose a multi-year slow war of attrition as their leadership class declines in intelligence and capability while struggling to hold on to power that they either cannot or just will not share with new generations of soldiers on their side. 2. The fused are simply overthrown and banished by their own rebel soldiers. There just seems to me to be incredibly little incentive for the average Parsh Person to continuing supporting any form of global conflict for any sustained period of time. In this scenario, I imagine that the greater shardic conflict and contental questions of governance and boundaries are more or less settled within book 5, but the fused maintain some degree of access to power while refusing to stop attempting to provoke new conflicts. I assume this would result in their own people killing them or finding a way to bind their souls badly enough that they may as well be dead and banished. 3. Parsh people everywhere are held accountable for the actions of the fused and the plot of book 6 includes a grand war of displacement and species-level retribution for the atrocities committed in the lead up and duration of the war in book-5. Basically, a transparent genocide scenario... Does anybody have any thoughts on whether one or any of the above are more or less likely? Any additional alternatives we should be expecting to see or holding in our minds or hearts? Does anybody actually think the Fused could ever achieve enough "success" on the battlefield to ever be able to declare "victory?"

What I just heard is: the 17th shard is looking to expand outreach initiatives to more broadly include skybreakers and dustbringers. (Bondsmiths are always going to be rare...they're inducted out of necessity, not of their own volition...)

As far as I'm aware, there is no "cannonized" explanation, the phenomena is simply left to be self-evident as a fundamental rule of nature that is so base as to be of practically zeroth order. My interpretation of it? The shards are each the living personifications of a characteristic. IE: They are so ironclad in their self definition that they could no more break their word than water at room temperature and ambient pressure could stop being "wet." Imagine an artificial intelligence that was so ungodly complicated, but also so transparently and perfectly self-contained, that it walked around in public with fully open-source code and didn't regard that fact as in any way special or unique because it didn't have a meaningful concept of lying about what itself or ever being able to hide. That's how I imagine shards to be. The language necessary for a Shard to "break" its word simply isn't built into the metaphysical framework of the story. They seem to only be able to lie about things that don't involve or affect themselves personally.

Obviously Wayne. He was killin folks and feeling bad what's for about it when the Lopin was still figurin' on the ideal of protectin' people afore themselves! They do both possess severe deficits though.

I don't totally agree. Shallan's personal war is rooted in an inverted form of struggle from people like Kaladin's; that doesn't make it less difficult. Kaladin's oaths, for example, largely place governance over his actions at any given time under the determination of an external combination of control factors in that he shall generally strive to do whatever is required to prevent someone else from being prevented from doing something they wanted, in progressively more restrictive terms. Whereas Shallan is coping with the evil and horrible things that she has knowingly had to do in order to stay alive that have made her wish she were dead to the point of blanking out parts of her memory. Edit: and like...just to be clear, Kaladin murdered waaaaayyyy more people, for waaaaaayyyy worse reasons than Shallan...lol. if anything, he's who is getting off easy...

Almost certainly not unfortunately; the spren were emulating the honorblades when shardblades were created from their bodies. We simply don't have an equivalent name for Heraldic armor compared to their weapons. To pull ten suits of honorplate out of the aether would be...peculiar at this point... No...I believe that the Heralds were always unarmored, and shardplate was an innovation of the spren that was developed as a direct result of their observation of how the Heralds' vulnerability, despite being one of their greatest strengths, had left them ravaged and damaged to their very souls after countless ages of fighting to protect others...

Can it...? Yes, I think technically it probably could...but I also think we're getting deep into the territory of the answer being "no..." for the question: "would or could anyone ever gather, coordinate, and exhaust the level of resources needed to do so?" Simultaneously. Recall: once hemalurgically charged, our best current understanding is that a cotiguous piece of lerasium is fundamentally altered in how it functions permanently. It can thenceforth only be used for grafting the souls of the dead unto the living in place of their own, which is pretty messed up to think about...

It's definitely a metaphor about "throwing shade at the sun," but beyond that...who knows...? =/

They'll just have to conduct the operation without certainty or guarantees, exactly like how all wars are fought...=) They're reactionary and ad hoc in nature, with lies and deceit being key tools and ghoulish attacks of misdirection being a favored weapon. Book 5 is going to be very interesting, especially if they find enough truthwatchers (enlightened or otherwise) to make it hard for cultivation, who is basically sitting on the sidelines near as I can tell, to be able to see and engage proactively...

Odium's confidence is most likely still very warranted unfortunately. His work on the diagram made him the ideal candidate for ascension and it's easy to believe that, at least on an intuitive level, he understood and operated with some level of awareness about the limitations and potential weaknesses of godly futuresight even as a mortal. The only solutions here are, I expect, going to be painfully ironic for everyone who isn't Odium, who pretty much already got what he came for and way way more besides. Even if he gets killed and replaced at this point, he essentially already won the personal war which he had been conducting from the shadows for the last decade or so and no one can change that without a time machine.

Hahaha! It's super important for authors to express their freewill and ability to change course is all. Plus...acronyms are bad for people's brains.

Whoa. That's radically more truthwatchers than I ever thought existed, that's pretty neat considering that they're supposed to be among the rarest.