Ciridae

So when making new Inquisitors Seeker mistings, like Marsh, were preferred by the Steel Ministry as they can pierce copperclouds after gaining additional spikes to find skaa mistings. Most Inquisitors are also able to burn Atium, meaning that a full Mistborn was killed for that single spike. I've always felt that this was extremely wasteful. In the days of the Lord Ruler it made a certain amount of sense. He would have only wanted truly dedicated people to become Inquisitors and probably didn't want to pick Mistborn of uncertain loyalty and religious conviction out of the nobility. He still would have had to find and kill the Mistborn for each of the Atium spikes though. But as soon as Ruin is free, we see that Marsh and the other Inquisitors are buffed up with more spikes, some with Feruchemichal abilities after attacking the Terris villages. But as soon as you have more than four spikes Ruin has a pretty strong grip of you, so why didn't he just take preexisting Mistborn and full Feruchemists and buff those up? The argument that hemalurgy is supposed to be ruinous and by using more spikes, ruin killed more people, doesn't hold up. An army of near Fullborn fully under Ruin's control would have been just about unstoppable. We know that Ruin can build things up if it means that he can destroy twice as much in the long run. So why didn't he use the Feruchemists and Mistborn instead? Was it just that he felt it didn't matter and the world was going to end soon anyway?

I think there is a good chance that most of this happens and I am so excited for it. The only thing is that I think due to Eshonai's separation from the rest of the Stormforms in the highstorm she's going to be solo for a while, while Venli takes control and spearheads further research into Voidforms. I cant wait to see proper voidbinding and their orders.

@Calderis I agree, Cultivation is especially broad. That's exactly the reason why the intent is so applicable to other intents. I always thought along the lines of cultivating hatred, cultivating devotion, etc., as something as a process to be applied to the second intent. Much like being ambitious while endowing or being ambitious while claiming dominion. I think we have a similar idea of what Cultivation entails, in regards to the scope of the shard. Along with Autonomy I think I'm most excited to learn more about Cultivation.

@Calderis yeah it feels like Cultivation and Ambition always act as amplifiers for other intents..

I could see Autonomy and Cultivation being Isolation or maybe Wilderness. Devotion and Cultivation could be Fanaticism. Endowment and Autonomy might be Liberation. Endowment and Ambition, Motivation?

Remember, Ruin wanted the people he spiked to ignore their spikes. As soon as the metal was inside of them he was able to influence them in small ways like speaking to them or nudging Vin to keep her earring on. In the case of Spook and Penrod I think Ruin kept them from feeling pain to make it easier to forget that they had a piece of metal stuck inside them. Ruin probably didn't care whether or not the Inquisitors felt any pain, they were under his complete control anyway.

Oh I was aware, I was more wondering if they used some form of stormlight-healing that causes a rapid change to their anatomy while they are inside the cocoon, but thanks for the WoBs nonetheless.

I have a feeling that whatever he asked for seemed important at the time but has less meaning to Dalinar in retrospect. The Nightwatcher gives you what she thinks you deserve, and before Gavilar's death Dalinar was a violent, egoistic and jealous man. We know that Dalinar knows exactly what his boon and curse are, and we've had viewpoints, so we know there's nothing obviously funky going on with his mind or perception. I'm thinking that he might have asked for help unifying the highprinces. Maybe he asked to win a certain battle, or asked for a chance to win a shardblade. Tiny sort of Thrill spoiler Maybe Gavilar received the boon instead, as he was the main coordinator of the unification. Maybe the boon was what caused Gavilar to know all the things that he had no reason to know. Either way, I agree that forgetting his wife is the curse and I think that the boon wont be any spectacular magical ability like Lift's. I think it will be something comparatively mundane.

That would make a lot of sense, new head canon. Plus: Source Oathbringer prologue spoiler: About the point of transformation, I would love to know if chasmfiends or other greatshells experience something similar. Wasn't it mentioned in the books that they prefer to crawl onto plateaus just before highstorms?

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but in this thread I came to a lot of the same conclusions. I wholeheartedly agree that spren are the reason for the above average intelligence of many rosharan creatures. The thread also discusses how this may apply to Knights Radiant, hope this is interesting.

I've had some lingering questions about how listeners change forms. We know they go into the highstorms, have a certain mindset, hope to attract the right spren, when the point of transformation comes they absorb the spren and finally transform. But what allows them to undergo this rapid change to their anatomy? How does the spren factor into the transformation? The spren relate not only to the physical forms of the parshendi, but they also give typical mindsets to go along with the forms. Warform is more obedient, workform avoids confrontation and finds it hard to commit acts of violence, and listeners in mateform are easily distracted. So different forms are not only physically different, but cognitively distinct. I think that the transformation is caused by stormlight healing, like we see with radiants. The spren the listener bonds with is absorbed and forms a part of their spiritweb until it is ejected and replaced with a different spren. The change in the spiritweb causes a change in how the listener views themself. Because they have absorbed the spren and see themselves differently, the stormlight healing tries to match their physical body to their newly changed spiritweb, resulting in a new form. The spren is basically a packet of information for how the body, mind and spirit manifest themself, by providing a specialized form, mindset, new rhythms and sometimes magical abilities. At the point of transformation that Eshonai mentions, the listeners must for some reason gain access to the abundant stormlight around them. The transformation is obviously magical and the fuel has to come from somewhere. I think it's safe to say stormlight is the only logical option. The biggest mystery to me is the point of transformation. Listeners don't usually have access to kinetic investiture (even if they can hold on to spren for a seemingly indefinite amount of time). So what causes them to be able to absorb stormlight? My first thought was that someone like the stormfather briefly grants them access. Maybe the spren they are bonding in that moment allows them to absorb stormlight. Or maybe it's something inherent to all listeners. Maybe that's how parshmen were created, by somehow breaking the listener's ability to arrive at the point of transformation. I also suspect that most megafauna like chasmfiends use a similar process when pupating. I apologize if these ideas have been discussed already, let me know what you think

I agree, but she could just as easily be the destroyer. You're not going to destroy the aimians by stabbing all the cremlings, (Oathbringer excerpt spoiler) And right now Shallan is the most likely to come across some long lost information.

I am convinced that we'll see a parshendi radiant, Brandon likes to set strict rules and then break them in a spectacular way. The only question is how they will work. Rlain as part of bridge four sets him up nicely for at least a squire phase, I would be very surprised if he didn't become a squire. And I think one of the parshendi songs talks about how the surges could be theirs in the end. The above WoB about the comet spren being important to an order makes it more likely still. I agree with the theory that Eshonai will be our Willshaper. But it may be that parshendi really can't be radiants as we understand them. I could see the nahel spren bonding with the parshendi in the same way that we've seen minor spren bond with them, that they are absorbed in a highstorm and then live inside the parshendi. This could be really interesting, as we might see things like honor, ink or cultivation form. In this case the spren might talk inside the parshendi's head, like Syl does as a weapon. But if the spren lives inside the parshendi I highly doubt that they could summon their spren as a shardblade. The other option I see is that the spren acts like other bonded nahel spren and floats around, but because parshendi minds are closer to the CR the spren might behave like other nahel spren just after the transition into the physical realm, i. e. a little slow, only permanently. The slowness of mind may manifest in either case, which could mean that the radiant has to work more to figure out the oaths. Either way, I think that exploring how the bonding and oath development for a parshendi looks like is too interesting of a scenario for Brandon not to write about. Not to mention the character dynamics and reactions to one of the voidbringers becoming one of the good guys mid desolation.

I agree, it's such a big world. Out of the ones you mentioned I would either pick Rysn or Axies, but it's a tough choice. There is still so much we don't know about spren, plus Axies seems to travel just as much as Rysn. On the other hand Brandon seems to be grooming Rysn as one of the more important non-main-book-characters. I could definitely see either as a candidate for a future novella.

You're right, I thought it had been but I couldn't find anything confirming it. I hope we get more info on soulcasting in OB, there's just so many questions.

Jasnah gets ranged soulcasting as a result of her surge combination. If a leecher or nicroburst had access to Transportation, would they be able to use their powers at a distance? In a similar vein, could allomantic duralumin or nicrosil be used to boost non-allomantic abilities?

Rock fixed dinner with coriander, But chulldung just made it taste blander, The highprince did not enjoy, That clever ploy, What an airsick lowlander!

Maybe pairing this with a primer cube could work? I'm not good with time bubbles either, but if you charge the primer before putting on the armor...

A slippery girl that is awesome, She can slide and make trees blossom, She's got a Voidbringer, And steals people's dinner, If she had to, she'd eat a whole possum. (This is hard)

@Spoolofwhool That's a great elaboration, I agree with most of what you say. I'm not sure about the investiture being in the spiritual realm though, if being killed by a shade connects you to that investiture, turning you into a shade, then where did the first shade come from? I think this might be the answer to that question. Assuming the investiture is in the CR, if you died in the PR equivalent to the CR location of the investiture, you might be turned into a shade. Khriss seems to imply that withering isn't the only way to become a shade: She also believes that it has to do with people from Threnody specifically. We know that the people were twisted by the chunks of Ambition, but I can't tell where that detail fits into the theory.

I don't think the evil necessarily has to be the same type of investiture as in the forests, Khriss says that some of of the investiture was there before the clash of Odium and Ambition. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the is a large enough piece of investiture in the homeland, large enough to create cognitive shadows, but not large enough to create a stable perpendicularity. I really can't say for sure about the evil, it just seems to fit that that large piece of investiture is somehow responsible for the only supernatural things we hear about the homeland.

Shades and nahel spren have a lot in common and I think by looking at the mechanics of how spren work and comparing the two we can guess some things about shades and the Forests of Hell. 1. Both seem to be primarily cognitive entities made of investiture that can have a presence in the PR. 2. In the PR both go stupid, they lose most of their cognitive abilities. Spren need to relearn language and basic social interactions, shades don't seem to retain much of anything that made them human. 3. In their physical manifestation they have the ability to harm the spiritual aspects of living beings, Shardblade cuts and withering are extremely similar. 4. Cognitive shadows are something like people-spren. Relevant WoB, emphasis added: We know how Kelsier was made a cognitive shadow, the Well anchored his soul to the CR and replaced it with investiture in the process. We also know that Ambition left chunks of their power near Threnody. This part is my best guess at what hapoens when you turn into a shade. Presumably for shades to be created there has to be a significant amount of investiture that can turn the soul of someone who was killed by shades into a person-spren. The investiture has to be in the Cognitive Realm, shades only exist in the Forests of Hell and we know that the CR is location dependant. I would have to guess and say that Odium went back after the fight and put the chunk of Ambition into the CR like he did on Sel. So after dying by shade-attack the person's soul is quickly spren-ified by whatever the source of investiture is, presumably a piece of Ambition. The person-spren is then, for reasons I cannot explain, thrust into the physical realm to become what we know as shades. In the AU essay Khriss writes that people and planet were both twisted by the pieces of Ambition. It would be interesting to know if only people from Threnody can become shades. Khriss says that the perpendicularities are unstable, and of morbid origin. If there is a large enough source of investiture in the cognitive realm ready to turn someone into a shade when that person dies, that could be what she is referring to. This would imply that the source of investiture could move around which would be pretty weird. Whatever that source of investiture is, it's not alone. In Secret History Nazh tells Kelsier that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is an important rite with requirements and traditions. So the people of the homeland presumably had their own chunk of investiture to turn some who were privy to the knowledge into Cognitive Shadows. This is just a guess, but if something went wrong that investiture could be what later turned into the Evil. As a sidenote, the longer spren on Roshar are connected to someone in the Physical Realm, the more they regain their personality. I think we see something similar with Silence and her grandmother. The Nahel bond is very different from Silence's situation, but her grandmother's shade is always close to her and the book makes clear what an important role Silence's grandmother had in her life. They are not bonded, but I think the lingering Connection is why her grandmother is not as far removed from humanity as the other shades are, and why she is able to help Silence. None of this explains why shades only appear at night or how the simple rules come into play or why only people who die through shade-attacks turn into shades themselves. I don't think we've seen anything comparable in the cosmere so far that could give any clues about what is happening there. Let me know what you think!

@Calderis that's the one, thanks!

I was looking for a WoB that said that at the time of secret history Kelsier was basically a person-spren. Does anybody else remember seeing it? I can't seem to find it anywhere. Thanks

Do we know that he could at the time of TES? I agree that that's what Hoid might try during the AoL era, but as the chapter above shows, back then Hoid was still trying to figure out the details of the various magic systems and was very experimental. Thirty years after Elantris Hoid has probably figured out a lot more, but surely not as much as he has hundreds of years later. I'd say stealing an artifact that allows one magic system to fuel another is a pretty good indication that you have access to at least one system. What else would be the point? Since then he has probably found more efficient ways, I agree, but at the time I can't think of another reason for him to steal it unless he wanted to use it. About the mechanics of the medallion itself, I'm no expert, but I think simply tapping Connection wouldn't be enough. Allik still has an accent and explains that he would still be Southern Scadrian but the Connection tricks him into believing he was raised in the Elendel basin. It's been a while so please correct me if I'm misremembering, but to gain access to a Selish magic system you have to be born in the appropriate nation. I'm sure there is an Identity aspect involved and I don't think you can tap someone else's Identity. By definition unsealed metalminds are made by Identity-less ferrings. Maybe tapping Connection while storing all your Identity coukd do the trick. I may be wrong, and Connection might be enough, but I don't think we can say for sure just yet.