Kolten

I see a difference between them personally. I take Cultivation as much more the puppet master, and has a more defined goal. I think Endowment assisted her in this case, and was more or less hands off after giving the gift. Endowment seems to value her position of neutrality, and I think she justifies her interference by letting the other shards do things themselves, and just providing the means.

There is a theory that she might already be doing something along those lines, full cosmere spoilers I general I would guess that Endowments MO in these sorts of situations is going to be less like a puppet master, and more like providing useful tools to other shards and agents in the cosmere at opportune moments.

Do you remember where he mentions it? I am curious to reread the passage. Also good catch on Vasher being killable by a larkin, it does make sense that a returned could be dealt with in that way. I think it stretches that far exactly. Aluminium works on all other metals but itself, duralumin works on metals you are burning, and that is just the way allomancy works. Other opposing metals have even more disparate effects than that, so I don't think this particular disconnect is any more notable than say gold and electrum. As for the way it drains metals and/or investiture this is my own understanding of it. The metal in your stomach's part in the magic system is like a key, by burning it you are essentially using it as a catalyst to access preservation investiture via the spiritual realm. By having the metal in your stomach you open the "door" to the spiritual realm, and by burning the metal you pull out the investiture through the door. Run out of metal and the door closes. So what chromium/aluminium does is to drain preservations investiture through the door. Due to the way the magic system works that causes the metals to burn until the door closes at which point there is no more investiture to leech. A leecher can not erode physical metals because the eroding of metals is a side effect of the magic system, not a fuel source that they are specifically leeching. External metal structures are not opening the same door to preservation's investiture and so would not be burnt away. I guess that means that an aluminium burning mistborn might be able to resist stab wounds from allomantic metals by burning them away before they can stab deeply? I guess another question that might be fun to ask Brandon. I think the speed at which metals are leeched is a specific effect of aluminium and duralumin, and that on other forms of investiture it is probably slower. And I think it likely that aluminum does not necessarily burn away other pieces of itself but it could if Brandon wanted it to I guess. Maybe with practice an aluminium burner can have it burn away the aluminium too? I would buy it either way . . .

We have not been in the head of someone who is a leecher, and have relatively little data on it. Because leeching is a power that is going to be most useful in how it can act across magic systems, I am guessing that this won't be nailed down until we start seeing a lot more cross magic system fighting taking place. It seemed like the larkin was able to absorb everything she could use for lifelight. It also seems like as soon as she had more food in her stomach she was able to get lifelight out of it. So it seems to me that lifts ability to turn food into lifelight is more like an allomancer burning metals than it is her body converting glucose to lifelight. That probably means that she can't be leeched to death, and that the larkin/leecher will stop when they have empty any potential investiture source from them. I would just note here that normally a leecher needs to make physical contact with their target to leech them, but the cube does not need to do so in the same way. So the cube is already following different rules than a human leecher does, and that makes it hard to extrapolate. Maybe the cube would have leeched the metalmind if it had physically touched it? Who can say . . . Vin did have to burn it. The inquisitor made her do it, and could tell once she had. So we actually have pretty good idea of how aluminium works, seems to me like it sets the rules rather than breaking them since this is the first such effect we see. I think a leecher could do that eventually. I imagine that given enough investiture to leech it takes some time to do so, and costs chromium. A larkin eventually gets full and stops (incidentally this also happens to nightblood when he was used on a shard, he was not able to absorb it all and eventually satiated). We have WoBs that seem to say that Brandon is leaning towards leechers being able to leech breath. I don't think an old awakener would be in trouble because it seems like the 5th heightening actually stops aging (doesn't stretch it out like other immortality methods do like atium). Otherwise old awakeners would not be able to use their breath to awaken things. A returned might be in trouble. But then again it might not. It could be a leecher would just need them to find another breath before next week is up, since their bodies seem to absorb one breath a week discretely, as opposed to continuously. Have we seen a leecher leech anything besides just metals on screen? Larkins seem to metabolize investiture for energy and growth, but leechers seem to just have it disappear somehow, which seems weird because Brandon seem to be leaning towards a sort of 1st law of thermodynamics sort of principle with investiture, I wonder where the power goes? Does it just get converted into mist or something? In the end I think a lot of these decisions are going to hinge on the specific plots Brandon needs to write once things start crossing paths a lot. But for now it seems like leeching effects directly on investiture and indirectly on potential catalysts to access investiture.

My guess would be that if you want to make unbiased investiture with no intent, you need to merge all 16 types back together. I do wonder what you could do once you accomplish that. Also it is possible that the investiture that comes with the dawnshard that rysn receives has no intent, since it predates the shattering

When you say separated do you mean can "neutral" investiture be created that is not associated with any shard? Or something else? I am not really following your pencil/pen example. I think the intent is an intrinsic property of the investiture, not something imposed upon it.

I think your biggest block is that to make an allomancer you need preservation's investiture. Forgery goes off the dor which is combined dominion/devotion investiture so no amount of it is going to make you a misting. I guess you could try to make it so that it is an alternative magic that acts like allomancy and is fueled by the dor, but at that point you are trying to rewrite the history of the world which is not what forgery is about. Maybe you could use forgery to make someone who came from scadrial violently snap in their past such that they are now an allomancer?

I think that the shardcast, and then the rest of the community, spent a lot of time discussing a villainous interpretation of Kelsier's character to the point that it has colored peoples memory of how he was portrayed in the books. I recently reread the original trilogy and was surprised at how unambiguously heroic he is portrayed vs what my mental image of him was from spending time here. The way he is discussed you would think he was a grimdark antihero. Kelsier's personality is the kind that could easily go too far and become a villian, but I agree with KnightsOfHonor that it hasn't happened yet, and is not inevitable either.

I was always under the impression that it was a Singer cultural thing, similar to how he was told to wear white to "not blend in with the night".

Cool theory! You lay out a very strong case for scadrial and roshar being the driving force of the competing factions in the space age. Your point about both the odium and honor sides of roshar having seeds of contention with scardrial is really good. I think the weakest part of the theory is probably that odium will be able to become war, just because there is less evidence in that direction. I always thought the point of splintering a shard was to make it nigh impossible to pick up again, and "bondsmith abilities" is a pretty vague handwave for reforging it. I suspect that whatever method you use to put the shard back together after splintering it would require killing a lot of spren and detaching their consciousness from the investiture. I could be wrong about that though. If we need to reforge honor, then I wonder if a dawnshard could maybe do it? There is a pretty strong theory that one of the dawnshards has a command like "bind" associated with it, and apparently the dawnshards can have some pretty spectacular effects. Another path to a similar setup would be if somehow odium is able to unmake the stormfather. The stormfather could end up being a sort of link between honor and odium like the sibling is between honor and cultivation. There would be a lot of fallout from that I am sure, but by the space age I bet that roshar could have worked through it and would be able to put up a unified front against harmony/scadrial

I thought that the radiant spren were already in the the physical the whole time, and that is why they can't think so good without the bond? I don't think their ability to be a blade has to do with their nearness to the physical realm.

Hmm good point. I guess if a radiant breaks bonds before swearing the 2nd oath, becoming a deadeye might make sense. And I guess they would be in the cognitive like other deadeyed spren that are bonded. We don't actually know if a radiant dies in that situation that a blade wouldn't appear. Unless there is something I am unaware of? I am not sure why it would be more probable that one would not.

Yeah I see what you mean, but in the context of the WoB it was mostly asking about the color, so I stand by my reading of it. Of course in the cosmere with perception shenanigans, we can both be right. The perception of them as opposites by a whole world of people may very well have an effect on how the shards are.

Why postpone? Isn't the fun of this kind of question the speculation? Some assorted thoughts from me, One thing to consider is that as an individual becomes more and more invested the type of fight they can have might look less like a superhero showdown, and more how we see the different shards "fight" each other. Fullborn are so tough because they can just pull as much investiture as they want from preservation through the spiritual realm. Most of the other magic systems require some sort of power source to fuel it in the physical or cognitive realm. Really the way compounding can be used to just pull out preservation investiture at such a high rate almost feels like a loophole in the magic system. It could be that part of the reason it works the way it does is because at the time preservation was mostly brain dead, and following Leras's "programming" by rote. I think that the biggest reason fullborn are so strong is because the only plot relevant fullborn we have seen has been an immortal god emperor. I think when Brandon actually sits down to create a plot involving a fullborn or a steel compounder he will end up retconning in a few more limitations. I mean the way compounding can be used makes it hard to maintain the stakes of a story, and at the end of the day that is what Brandon cares the most about.

Look at Tolkien's fandom for a glimpse of the future. Christopher Tolkien published every scrap of paper that J.R.R. every scribbled on, where it concerned lord of the rings. The history of middle earth makes for a deep well.

Both of these WoBs make the opposition out to be more cultural, at least to my reading. The color thing is certainly cultural. Even the "polarization" line seems to say that because they were the only influences around, they became two ends on a spectrum. I think this cultural effect extends to the fandom. They were the first shards we saw on screen, and we saw them through the eyes of a society which view them as the primordial order and chaos in their creation myth. We have since learned that this view of the cosmere is limited. But that original impression of them as irreconcilably opposite sticks in our minds. The idea that it could have happened to other shard pairing seems to confirm that this is not unique to ruin and preservation. As for the perfect opposites thing, I like to think that what happened was that Ati, being concerned about what his shard would eventually turn him into, split off with preservation with the understanding that Leras would minimize the damage he could do. I am very excited to see the vessels before they were all warped by their shards, it is going to be fascinating! That seems patently untrue to me. Scadrial and everything on it is made out of the combined investiture of ruin and preservation. And when vin throws herself at ati, the vessels perish but the shards are unharmed. If this was true there would be a lot more explosions going on. What example do you have of them behaving like investiture and anti investiture? This suggests that she would not be in balance, and either she would become Discord or Ruin would be pushed out with one of the following options Okay good point. Thinking back to books, while Vin did cause a lot of destruction, she was never at peace with the fact that she had to do so. So yeah, after thinking about that I agree that Vin as she was at the end of HoA would not have been able to pick up ruin. At least without a bottle of ruin connection juice. (stormlight spoilers)

I imagine the story was spread that they all died. And those who knew the truth were smart enough to keep their mouths mostly shut. There are probably some hushed rumors about the truth around camp, but nothing that would be politically inconvenient to Amaram. As for the conversation Random Guy: Is your chicken . . . cursing you to damnation? Amaram : Some chickens can talk, haven't you ever been to a menagerie?

More like she was feeling a memory of what happened. Maybe the dawnshards get the intuitive history of their use like (mistborn spoilers) In any case that is just how it came off to me in the text, maybe I should go find the passage so @Benedictify I would say that more than supports your suspicion

I don't think the dawnshards are sapient, they seem more like a tool than a mini shard. Plus in the context of the scene it was the light of the "sun" that was being shattered in the mural that she felt it from.

Well in dawnshard, rysn did get a feeling of acceptance from the mural depicting the shattering.So I would say this view has a lot of merit.

(stormlight spoilers, might want to add some spoiler tags to some of your post too) To me equilibrium is too close to preservation for ruin to be happy, I think someone might be able to shift the intent of preservation to equilibrium if they were holding that shard. Let processes happen but they should be a closed loop. In this sense I don't think ruin would be satisfied because there is no ending.

Well I mean just because we can't fully answer it without a WoB doesn't mean we can't make a good case for it. The overlapping CR and PR stuff is already a mindbender with what we have already seen. Brandon has mentioned that something like the thrill will be hard to hide, and that the method they used at the end of oathbringer was flawed because of how easy it is to see in the cognitive realm. That implies that there is a way to glean information from it. I would argue a shardblade becoming a deadeye if physically brought into the cognitive realm would be the least surprising result, and a decent enough foundation for further theorizing. I mean that is more or less exactly what happened to Maya and Syl in oathbringer. Though of the two, I would guess an immortal bonding a bunch of blades a more likely scenario. Certainly it checks out with the text just fine. What is weird is how the deadeyes get to go to the cognitive when they are not summoned. Living bonded spren don't seem to be able to do that, so arguably that is something they can do that their living relatives have a harder time doing.

Intent is a tricky word since we can only infer its definition when it comes to shards. Cue shardcast "what does it mean to have an intent?". I am okay with calling harmony the intent, I just think it is very different than the others we have seen. I think the sticking point most people have with my theory is that they don't think the vessel can have that strong of an effect on the shard's intent. But I think that especially when mixing them, they can probably make a big difference. I think that as long as both halves of a merged shard are being expressed equally, the shards intents are satisfied. Kind of like when you are pulled toward a planet, you can only really move toward the planet, but when you are pulled between two planets you might be able to influence your path a bit more and end up in many possible stable orbits between them. Survival is just a single word summary. At the shard level I think survival of your community against a hostile world would apply well, and would work well for Vin even at the end.

Yeah I push back against that. Ruin as preservation's opposite seems polar in the mistborn era context. But (Stormlight spoilers) All of these powers were blended together at some point so I don't think any are uniquely polar in that way. And I think the fact that Harmony isn't really an intent is evidence for my point, that what Sazed is attempting is not a true mixing of shardic power in the same way that (RoW spoilers) is. That kelsier would be Discord I think has to do more with the fact that he would be unable to properly mix the two shards since his holding of preservation was more of a hack anyway. He is unbalanced and I think if anyone else who was unbalanced tried to pick up both shards, they would just be unable to pick up one of them. I think Vin would have a better shot at making it happen, hence my suggestion that she would be able to become something like "Surival"

I did read your post first, and thought the logic was pretty good! This idea was a bit more tongue in cheek so I figured it could have its own post. It might be cool if the shin had a herald among them, if they are the one gathering the blades the could be bringing them to the herald to bond, seems like a good way to store a secret cache of blades. They seem to have a lot of knowledge of the heralds so that could be one explanation. As for the WoB, have another WoB! So while many swords might be abandoned to the elements, there must be some mechanisms for the ones we find family members permanently caring for in shadesmar. This hit squad could also act as a recovery crew, if a particular shard was abandoned. I assume that shardblades have some cognitive realm presence (like how human souls appear as little flames) so it might be easier to get a hint to their location on the other side. They also appear to have fortune tellers with access to Fortune for hire, so tracking them down would probably be the easiest part With as much economic activity that is going on in the cognitive realm, I am sure there is some way to transfer value around. I mean it could just be credit for passage on spren ships that could then be traded to the caravans for off world goods. You both are getting at the same question, but even without a WoB, a shardblade turning into a deadeye when brought into the physical realm makes the most sense to me. Maya could not be summoned as a blade in shadesmar, and Syl was stuck in her human like shape. So far from what we have seen spren can not exist as a blade in the cognitive realm.