Spoolofwhool

I see you missed the deeper point of my argument. Unfortunate, but it wasn't very clear so understandable. I'll iterate it again now. What I was meaning to point out was your habit of stating opinions as if they're facts. It's not a correct way of carrying out an argument, since not only does it does it slant information poorly, it will give the wrong information to other people who are reading this topic. You are correct though that my argument is as much opinion as yours is. I never said anything contrary to that. Moving back to the main argument. You are correct that Jez and Kele's commentary indicates that the torment of the Desolation was something they agreed to do. And it is, but I think you're slanting it too far to being a necessary part of the Oathpact. The way I see it is that the Oathpact enables them to go to the Damnation and delay the next Desolation, but it isn't forcing them to. Kelek's internal monologue shows that even, that they always have the choice of going to Damnation or not. They do go because of their honor, because they swore to protect and help the Rosharans, because not doing so would entail an immediate Desolation after the one just passed. Also, please don't strawman or incorrectly repeat my arguments, it's quite rude. Finally yes, it does make it more complicated than it needs to be, but turning humans into immortal protectors and binding an angry god isn't a simple matter.

I don't think the Desolations were periodic events though. You could argue that the "period" is dependent on how well the Heralds hold the power, but then you're really just stretching definition of periodic. Based on what Taln was muttering to himself, and what Hoid said to him when he appeared, my opinion is that the Heralds arrive fairly early, at least several years, in order to prepare the people to face the Desolation. Taln did mention things like teaching them metalworking, so I imagine that there would've been a fair bit of time to prepare.

The Oathpact is only indirectly trapping him though. There is a greater force at work.

Yes. However, I was specifically referring to the spren who create Nahel bonds.

When you say that they were near a balance, are you referring to before Preservation used a bit more power to instill sapience in humans? Without sapience people wouldn't be able to perform feruchemy either nor do I think that there were ever any non-sapient humans. My impression is that the first humans of Scadrial were endowed with the extra Preservation, granting them sapience and had the seeds of both metallic arts. In addition, I don't recall anything which would indicate that humans were post-creation modified in order to add the seeds of allomancy.

But would the greatshell's gut be unsettled?

My interpretation is that the transition from food to stormlight is so fine and she's so adapt at it that she sees both at one. How many calories she has stored is the amount of stormlight she has at her disposal, and she marks stormlight by calories. Inversely to your argument, you never see her think that she has to store more stormlight, In addition, in your quote, she is directly indicating that she equates food (calories) with stormlight, not as separate things. Finally, the fact that she immediately does become hungry once she runs low on her perceived awesomeness is also indicative that she's converting to stormlight on the fly.

Actual thermal energy from inside your body. Yes. In fact, this is why brass feruchemist are commonly firefighters in Era 2. They just start storing and walking into the fire. The power from compounding, like allomancy, because it is essentially the same thing, comes from Preservation.

First of all, the surges aren't of anyone. They're fundamental laws of Roshar, which surgebinding, a manifestation of investiture created as a result of one or more shards investiture, can manipulate. Secondly, who's investiture composes the spren who can create nahel bonds actually doesn't mean much with regards to whose investiture created surgebinding. The spren just arose as a result of the mixing of Cultivation and Honor's investiture in Roshar, and a combination of the manifestation of investiture surgebinding and the natural laws of Roshar makes the spren bonds give surgebinding.

The seeds for allomancy and feruchemy were always present within the humans of Scadrial from their creation. This is because both allomancy and feruchemy have existed on Scadrial since at least that long.

I see. Fair enough, but I still disagree. We don't know if that was an original part of the Oathpact though, or whether it was a change which arose due to the Desolations. In fact, that might not even part of the Oathpact. They have to go be tortured in Damnation to prevent the next Desolation, not necessarily because the Oathpact mandates it. You're making a lot of assumptions and presenting them as facts about the Heralds and the Oathpact, assumptions which are not substantiated because we really don't know enough.

True, but this is my interpretation of how morality works. EDIT: Also, to me, the most logical way morality can be interpreted.

Don't sidestep my argument. We're not talking about what Odium is going to do afterwards, we're talking about why Honor was willing to sacrifice his people when it likely wouldn't have prevented anyone save other shards from being harmed at that time. Yes, afterwards Odium might destroy everything, except he wouldn't while Honor is still around. Therefore, inviting Odium to kill your people and possibly you could be construed as accelerating the process, instead of just preparing to defend yourself from his attacks, and is overall illogical. Also, overall, I don't understand the argument that seems to consist of Odium equals destruction. Odium is seeking to destroy other shards because Rayse is selfish and hates the idea of a power opposing him. Once he splinters all the other shards and sequesters their power away so that no one else can use it to ascend, he would have no reason to destroy anything else. My take: So I see it more as Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar. Heralds/Honor have Oathpact (I personally see this as these ten people being the leaders of various groups of "refugees" that migrated to Roshar, and requesting a way to protect their people from future threats. but this is just my personal headcanon, not substantiated in any way.) Jezrien says "We took up this burden willingly" so they obviously weren't forced into it, regardless. Odium later arrives and unaware of the Heralds/Oathpact tries to splinter Honor/Cultivation like he did Dominion/Devotion and it failed because Honor already has champions and it seems that invested people can affect the world in some ways more than actual shards, which seem to have limits on their power and how it can be used. Honor/Cultivation start teaming up to try to resist and Odium starts going after the Heralds/Champions. It'd be useful to get timeline on which came first: The Oathpact or Odium's arrival. Has anyone ever asked this? These are my thoughts on it to. The Heralds asked Honor for power to guide and protect the people of Roshar, so Honor created the Oathpact and gave them the Honorblades so that they would have the power to do so. Not necessarily. As I said above, the Heralds could've asked Honor for power, so that they could protect the Rosharans. This created the Oathpact, binding their souls/cognitive shadows, and granting them the honorblades, proof of the contract and the source of their power. Don't forget, Roshar is a very hostile environment towards humans. They would've needed help in order to survive the highstorms. Surgebinding and shardblades would've proven to be a huge asset. Soulcasting for resources, elsecalling for transport, adhesion and other powers would've helped with their survival. However, when Odium came and the Desolations began, then their role could've changed to fighters. Additionally, your argument that the Heralds were inducted to be harbingers of the Desolation doesn't have any support. We don't actually know why the Heralds originally became Heralds, we just know what they did during the Desolation. So overall, that doesn't really tell us anything.

Except that as far as we've seen, killing shards hasn't had much effect on the world they were invested in. Elantris Spoilers In addition, as per the AU/Mistborn (Spoilers), Possibly I suppose, but then it resides on the assumption that Rayse is ignorant enough to assume a quick win would happen. Since he's been described as crafty, and has figured out a way to effectively defeat shards, I don't see how he would be gullible enough to fall for Honor's offer. Playing by the rules doesn't seem his style, and willingly taking a path which would also force him to invest into a world goes against what we have been told of him. Overall, I just can't see anything in what we know of Odium's character which would make him accept such an offering, instead of just directly attacking Honor. This is why it seems more likely that being bound there never occurred with his willingness.

My issue with the idea that Honor planned out the Devastation is that I don't see what Honor gets from it. Yes, he would be binding Odium and therefore preventing him going after any other shards, but the exchange is that Honor is essentially allowed the Rosharans, people he appears to care about, to suffer, for possible millennia. Also, the Devastations wouldn't be necessary if all that was wanted was to keep Odium bound to Roshar, all that would need to happen would be that Odium remains near Roshar, and he would naturally invest into it. Finally, you do mention the Oathpact, but do you think you could go into a bit more detail of how it relates to this? How do you explain that Honor was splintered despite the Heralds being victorious though? Odium cheated because no Desolations had occurred? But then why wouldn't he have cheated sooner, if he had the power to do so? Also, it doesn't seem to make sense to me that Odium would agree to a pact like this since it almost guarantees that Odium would remain long enough to be invested into Roshar, something which we know he has avoided before.

I get what you're saying now. I thought that you were saying that they would need to be physically manifested to do what they're doing now, the Thrill and Death Rattles. My bad. I'm still going to disagree though. I don't think they're going to need to manifest in the physical realm act during the Devastation. My feeling is that they're going to bond to someone or something, and use that as a base to spread their power. So they are going to be able to affect the physical more directly, and we know they can since in a vision someone comments that one of the Unmade came and slaughtered a group of people, but it's not a physical manifestation of them, but more they'll link to something physical. I don't see a point in them actually manifesting physically as then a large portion of their power would have be to expended in order to create a physical body, whereas bonding to a physical entity would allow them to preserve a large scale of their power, in addition to following what appears to be a natural order of Roshar.

Ettmetal, the metal the southerners used is in fact Harmonium, Harmony's god metal.

Also, in WoA, when Sazed went down the cliff, his clothes and metalminds weighted it down. Also, the spiritual weight shift wouldn't explain the increase in speed when he stored, nor the stabilization when he performs a steelpush. Finally, it has been confirmed by Brandon that it actually does deal more with mass than directly with weight, though physics does get a bit hazy there.

Fair enough. Yet the implication is that you're saying a lot of power, which is why I added the correction. If you don't want that implication to exist, perhaps add a bit more information instead of leaving it that open-ended.

Yes, the definition of savant is someone who has exposed themselves to a flow of investiture for such a time that it has caused permanent changes in the physical and cognitive.

Iron feruchemy is changing your physical mass, which results in a decrease in weight. Acceleration due to gravity is the same. This is why Wax speeds up when he stores more mass because of the law of conservation of momentum. It's possible. Ironminds and clothes would still weigh you done of course.

Preservation and Ruin needed each other to create Scadrial not because of the power required, but because individually their intents prevented them from doing so.

If we assume that the mass is eventually spread throughout the feruchemist and we take the Schwartzchild Radius to be 0.25 m (the feruchemist is in a ball shape), then the mass of the feruchemist would have to a bit over 1.68E26 kg in order to collapse into a singularity. I'm not sure if it would be a stable black hole or not. I doubt it would be.

Steel feruchemy doesn't protect you from friction. You would burn up well before you reached a meaningful speed relative to the speed of light.

I'm aware. I was just providing the link to the general point where Brandon confirms E is H.