PantsForSquares

All we know about the Scouring of Aimia is that it's a relatively recent event, at least from Axies' point of view. If Aimians lived longer than humans on Roshar by a long shot, then that might be what it's referring to, but I don't think that's the case.

I'd imagine that their strength largely comes from being able to use both Abrasion and Division together in an incredibly synergistic manner. As far as my basic guesses go, only the Stonewards had another, equally synergistic combination of Surges. Every other Order we've seen thus far has their powers exist in somewhat separate manifestations.

There would definitely be some use for a Shardblade (cutting through almost anything is an incredibly useful perk), but using a dead Shardblade is going to be a trump card of sorts - only used if drawing a six-foot sword is of absolute importance and there's no other way to settle things. A Worldhopping Radiant might* get more mileage out of their Shardblade, since they can adjust its size to be smaller, but the glowing might still make it obvious. *Ultimately, it depends on how a living Rosharan Shardblade functions on another Shardworld. If they function exactly the same, then it's got its uses in other worlds.

Here's how I imagined it: Among all of the combatant KR orders, Stonewards would be the heavy hitters - they'd be hard to take down, but nowhere near as mobile as the others. Windrunners provide a defense against ranged offense and can temporarily eliminate opponents via Adhesion, giving them an element of crowd control. Skybreakers are the heavy hitters of the Orders, with both Gravitation and Division to seriously bring the pain. Dustbringers, on the other hand, act as skirmishing units - capable of quickly moving in and out. They're more geared towards offense than Windrunners are, but can't maneuver in the air. Edgedancers round these out as combat medics - matching the mobility of Dustbringers, coupled with their ability to heal. The other Orders don't seem to be heavily geared towards combat (Truthwatchers could probably substitute for Edgedancers), but I'd imagine that they'd be able to lend support and still be able to hold their own in a fight. I'd imagine Lightweavers could provide cover via illusion, or Soulcast objects in/out. Elsecallers could help with deployment, and they'd definitely be able to Soulcast.

A better way of stating it is that because Awakening is so versatile, a Nalthian Shardblade has much more room for variance than a Rosharan Shardblade. Rosharan Shardblades only vary in appearance - but their capacities seem to be similar. A Nalthian Shardblade might not be able to change form, but its design and form would be, to some degree, specified by its creator.

Nightblood is basically a prototype made by emulating a Shardblade. Given enough time and resources, I don't doubt that they could have made a closer approximation of a Shardblade (although you'd still run into issues like the one where Nightblood isn't really aware what 'evil' is). Nightblood is flawed, but it's the only weapon we've seen that is explicitly modeled after the Rosharan Shardblade.

1. Adolin. Fairly obvious. 2. Rysn. Potentially our Dustbringer, and with enough boldness to do the whole greatshell thing. Axies is cool, but he ain't Rysn. 3. Dalinar. Amaram's just a copycat, and can't match that salt 'n pepper Blackthorny goodness. 4. Rock. He has great Unkalaki feet, made for kicking airsick lowlanders, like Kaladin. 5. Eshonai. Teft has a cool beard, but I don't think that's going to cut it. 6. Szeth. Pretty sure the only thing Sigzil could beat Szeth at is literacy and maybe other scholarly stuffs. 7. Lift. She's awesome; doesn't require any explanation. 8. Renarin. Holds a screaming shardblade and doesn't afraid of anything except the screaming voice in his head.

Not to mention the sheer difficulty of making something on the level of a Shardblade. It speaks volumes about the difficulty when the only people able to replicate a Shardblade are Vasher and Shashara working together: both were Returned, and had an absurd stockpile of Breaths as it were. I don't really feel that Shardweapons are feasible anywhere else but Roshar and Nalthis (and even this requires some Awakening hacking) because of that massive gap in readily-accessible Investiture. But I was largely referring to the lack of Rosharan Shardblades on other Shardworlds. They might either not function correctly, or you might not want to use one because they're giant swords and they're super obvious.

We actually know for a fact that there's a definite lack of accounted Shardblades. Dalinar's Feverstone Keep vision points out that the Blades and Plate at that one site outnumbered the entire Alethi collection (IIRC; I don't have my TWoK copy at hand to double-check) - and we know that the Alethi is the largest publicly-known one. The Shin probably have a several in addition to the Honorblades, but most other societies either have very few, one (like Herdaz) or none (The Unkalaki, for instance). As for why they're not on other worlds, it's most likely got to do with either the lack of existence of spren on other worlds, or perhaps because they're far too obvious. Until we get more Cosmere-centric works, we can't really find out.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Kaladin may have awesome moments, and Shallan's got her interesting moments, but Dalinar is by far the most human out of any of the main characters. He's trying his best to balance managing Gavilar's legacy as well as honoring his memory, and this juggling act is what allows Sadeas to take advantage and manipulate him. Rereading Dalinar's sections also really make me dislike Sadeas.

I was actually trying to point out that using Splinters as a starting point for a Shardblade is more constructive than trying to just dump a ton of Investiture into them. It's the difference between starting with an ingot of metal when metalworking, as opposed to having to mine a shaft, find ore, and smelt enough to get an ingot. You could technically make a sword or whatever with just the mined ore, but using the ingot skips several steps. The same principle is what I'm applying when I'm talking about using a Splinter: They're usually going to have the requisite amount of Investiture anyways, so it's probably the best starting step compared to almost anything else. I should have probably elaborated that point, but bleh.

The problem, however, lies with the fact that Forgery is extremely limited outside of MaiPon, and straight up wouldn't work on another Shardworld. All forms of Selish Investiture share this same flaw, which is problematic when it comes to trying to create effects; even Elantris, with its city-wide Aon Rao+Aon Ela combo isn't enough to give Galladon hints of his Elantrian appearance on Roshar. You could probably Soulstamp a Radiant/Rosharan who was in MaiPon, but I'm not sure how stable the stamp's effects would be once they left MaiPon or hopped to another Shardworld. But, the only other Shardworld we've seen with something even remotely similar to spren is Sel, with the Seons and Skaze. I'm curious to see what it would take to convince a Seon to take the form of a Shardblade, but the Seon/Skaze-blades should be functionally similar to their Rosharan equivalent. There's bound to be some geographical limitation, though, which is shared by all forms of Selish Investiture that we've seen. However, I'd say that the Nahel spren of Roshar are best suited for becomes Shardweapons by a long shot. I suspect that this is either an intentional design by H&C, or an unintended consequence of whatever capacity allows them to form the Nahel bond in the first place. As for other systems, Awakening seems to be the only one that can really come close, but that's due to the incredibly mutable nature of Breath. Feruchemy and Allomancy are more versatile, but it's going to take a lot of hacking to even come close to building something with the Investiture density that spren or other heavily-Invested objects have. Even the Bands, the most Invested object we've seen on Scadrial, doesn't even come close to something like Nightblood.

I'm of the opinion that the Desolations were a war of attrition between Honor & Cultivation vs. Odium, with an "arms race" of sorts. We know that the Parshendi considered the spren giving Surgebinding to humans a betrayal of sorts, and that's what gave the Unmade the opportunity to use them as Voidbringers. We also know that the Heralds inspired the spren to create the Nahel bond, which lends to some idea that there was a timeline to this. My current theory - developed on another thread here - is that Honorblades and Heralds are two halves of a whole - while the Honorblades provide access to the Surges, the Heralds themselves act either as a force multiplier or have other powers that allow them to exceed the power of a fully-realized Radiant (whereas Szeth loses to Kaladin moments after the latter's sworn his Third Ideal). We know that they have some other powers, but there's no way that agelessness and heightened reflexes alone justify their mythical stature.

Why do you call the one-armed Herdazian when your plumbing isn't working? Because he's a... handyman!

Kaladin x2 Sazed x3

That's somewhat odd, but possibly of interest. There's just one thing that bothers me: I just can't see why Odium would pass up an opportunity to destroy a Shardworld with only one Shard. If anything, Endowment should have been offed like Aona and Skai.

Curiously enough, Nalthis is the only major Shardworld we've seen that hasn't been influenced in some way by Bavadin or Rayse (assuming that Trell is one of those). Trell is somehow exerting influence on Scadrial, Roshar and Braize are Rayse's stomping grounds, and he drastically changed how Sel functioned. Taldain is Bavadin's world. The only world we've seen with no influence is Nalthis, which leads me to wonder if Edgli somehow has a way to ward off Rayse or Bavadin.

I was kind of referring to the "initial velocity" that would be left upon cancellation. Burning aluminum does nothing to cancel that, and a Windrunner/Skybreaker could just pump all their Stormlight into a single, massive Lash. Even if the Aluminum Gnat was able to cancel it, it would still send them hurtling. Probably shouldn't have used "initial velocity" as the term, though, but if this was being solved as a physics problem, the velocity at cancellation would be treated as such. Also, weirdly enough, due to the dependence upon t^2, the best way to survive a super-lash would be cancelling it before 1 second.

That makes sense, if Parshendi are allowed to make a Nahel bond. Has anyone considered Rysn for the Dustbringer character? She's got two interludes, and has some measure of qualification as far as being brave (or foolish) and she obeys Vstim because of her apprenticeship. If she's important enough to appear in more than one book, then there's bound to be something interesting there.

Definitely. The downside, of course, is that a supply of aluminum isn't infinite - whereas Stormlight is far easier to come by. If you could pre-empt getting Lashed, then it might work. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Allomancers are, for the most part, at a large disadvantage against Surgebinders. There are a few powers that are incredibly strong against Surgebinders, but there are only five I can think of: Bronze (if they can sense Surgebinding), Pewter (physical augmenting), Chromium (Cause them to lose Stormlight upon touch? Hellacious!), Aluminum (prevents direct effects), and Bendalloy (I'm really curious to see how this interacts against a Shardblade). A full Mistborn with full reserves of all 16 metals can probably tackle a fledgeling Radiant with creative use of their powers. Atium burns would leverage a serious advantage, but that's limited in the time of Stormlight/Era 2. For the most part, however, a Mistborn is going to be far more well-rounded than any given Radiant.

We've only had a total of four flashback characters. There's Szeth's at the start of TWoK, and Kaladin's during the rest of the book, Jasnah's at the start of WoR and Shallan's during WoR. We've most likely got Dalinar flashbacks in Book 3, and Szeth flashbacks down the line. Considering that there are still three books in the first half with interludes, there's plenty of time to bring in another character like how Lift was brought in. We also lack a Willshaper character, and a Stoneward - if we're unwilling to count Talenel.

I'm a bit disappointed with the seeming lack of potential Dustbringer main characters, but I wouldn't be surprised if we just haven't met them yet. They're an interesting Order, considering that their main values are Bravery and Obedience. I certainly hope that we'll see one, since Division/Abrasion is certainly an interesting Surge combination. I can imagine them being an Order where they pretty much don't need a Shardblade to seriously mess up a Voidbringer or thunderclast (at least, going by TWoK's prelude). Plus, if any one Order would use a Shardbow, I'd see the Dustbringers as being able to do it. Fire arrows and a Shardbow wouldn't be impossible.

Not quite. If you rapidly Lash (see: Szeth vs. Dalinar) someone, you're still giving them some initial velocity. Basic free-fall physics tells you that the maximum height achieved by an object thrown upwards depends upon its initial velocity in the upwards direction (and air resistance, I suppose). Angle it right, and you can just shoot them up into the air, and burning aluminum isn't really going to do much about it. They'd have to be burning aluminum while someone tried to Lash them, or otherwise cut off the Lash really early on. I'd imagine that tapping an aluminummind, instead of storing into it, might act as a defense against Soulcasting. Strengthening your Identity might act as some sort of buffering effect against Soulcasting. Storing in a Nicrosilmind is a bit sketchy, but it might also work.

Horrifyingly enough, the Aluminum Misting would only be able to cancel the effects of the Investiture. If you quickly Lashed an Aluminum Misting to the sky, and they burn off the Investiture, they're still going to have to deal with the fact that they're essentially being shot through the air. And it since it wouldn't affect the consequences of Surges, Windrunners, Skybreakers and Dustbringers can deal with them fairly easily (Gravitation shenanigans for the first two, and setting them on fire for the third). I'm not sure how it would interact with Soulcasting, however.

I suspect what would happen is similar to what happened when Kaladin tries to recall Stormlight from a Lashing: There's some Stormlight that is gone towards initiating the Surge, and the rest is gradually diminished. Trying to draw Stormlight from a larkin post-consumption is going to be like that: with an initial decrease, and drained over a certain amount of time. Also, draining Stormlight from a larkin while it's being "processed" means that it's basically larkin barf. Kinda gross, but I'm not sure if Nalan is against that.