cometaryorbit

I think the green mist in the Valley is Lifelight, yeah, so it's at least fundamentally similar. Whether it's equally *useful* to Radiants, who don't generally use Lifelight, is another question. But as Lights get better understood that might cease to be an issue. (It could also be a location set up for Lift to Ascend to Cultivation in the second arc. Honor says Cultivation has better future sight, so she might have been planning this for thousands of years. Koravari wouldn't necessarily have to die, either - as a dragon she's ageless anyway so she could give up her Shard and remain immortal.)

I think the Nightwatcher, Sibling, and Stormfather were all equal or near-equal in Investiture before Honor's death, but absorbing Honor's Cognitive Shadow and likely more of his Investiture boosted him. The Sibling might be more powerful in practice even if equally Invested, though, because of all the fabrial components they've been able to turn themselves into - basically a technological boost. On the other hand, we've never really seen the Nightwatcher do anything! All the major boons (Dalinar's, Lift's, and Taravangian's) were actually Cultivation. So judging the Nightwatcher's actual capabilities is probably not really possible at this point. Some of the things she offered Dalinar might suggest that she's genuinely super powerful (could she really have given him Nightblood? If so, was it in Nale's hands then? Ability to take it from a 5th ideal Radiant/Herald is fairly impressive.) EDIT: the Sibling was apparently created intentionally by Honor and Cultivation after humans arrived, so likely isn't the spren of a natural feature (only of the Tower of Urithiru). The Stormfather in some form (Rider of Storms) existed pre-Shattering, but there were no sapient spren then, so probably the Rider of Storms was granted sapience by Honor after he arrived (either intentionally or just as a side effect of Investing the planet). I'd imagine the Nightwatcher was similar. I tend to think the proto-Nightwatcher originally was the spren of the supercontinent of Roshar, just as the Rider of Storms was the spren of the highstorm. ...which leaves the possibility that Cusicesh is the spren of the third major natural feature of Roshar, its planetary ocean, just never granted full sapience like the SF and NW were.

Yeah, TwinSoul claims the Aethers are independent of Adonalsium. If that's true, Adonalsium can't have created everything. So Brandon not questioning the idea that Adonalsium created an infinite universe makes sense to me for spoiler reasons.

1) Scadrial's physical dimensions are the same as Earth's, so horizons will be the same. 2) I just meant that I don't think there would really be anything for TLR to suppress. Anything surviving from pre Ascension times about whatever cultures or nations became the SoScads wouldn't have revealed that TLR had a control group elsewhere. Even if it were possible to determine that those people didn't have descendants in the Final Empire (and I think TLR's changes made that impossible) they'd just be assumed to be extinct. OTOH, apparently a few scholarly inclined nobility realized they lived on a spherical planet, so the possibility of another habitable region might have been imaginable. 3) Right, but neither was terribly close to the pole then. Thuban in Draco was the pole star during very ancient times (e.g. building the Great Pyramid about 2500 BC) but had moved away well before classical times. Kochab was close-ish but not a really great pole star in late centuries BC and first centuries AD.

I don't think it's too much bias to Preservation since Lerasium grants Allomancy and it is pure Preservation. I think it's either specifically imperfect "stapling" of Cognitive Shadow to body (so the Spiritual DNA codes for Allomancy his cognitive-shadow-and-Sliver-ized spiritweb still has can't be properly expressed in his body), or more generally using a non-Allomancer and likely non-human body (it's probably a mistwraith) that doesn't match up correctly with an Allomantic spiritweb/Spiritual DNA. Mistwraiths are descended from transformed Feruchemists so they might actually be harder to get Allomancy to work with than a random non-Allomantic human. Still, if it was just a body problem lerasium could fix that. But if it's a link from soul to body problem then eating lerasium might not necessarily rewrite the soul properly either. Also, while it's ultimately in the Spiritual DNA/spiritweb, Allomancy may be more body-based than Surgebinding since the metal has to get physically inside the body to be burned, and since there's a WoB about Vin's Mist-burning to Ascension that "the corporeal host" defines the specific powers. Also, newer WoBs that Allomancers are resistant or immune to metal poisoning imply that being an Allomancer makes actual measurable changes to a body vs default human. So body-soul match may matter.

Yeah, I think "the Sovereign was involved" is worded that way because Kelsier likely *designed* them (with Sliver-expanded mind) but didn't have the powers to *make* them personally. Spook provided the Allomantic powers, and presumably recruited a Full Feruchemist to provide rhe Feruchemical ones (they likely were still around in the first post-Catacendre generation, since it's the mixing of Allomantic and Feruchemical bloodlines that broke the powers up to create Ferrings).

True but I don't think Brandon would want to give away something like "Adonalsium didn't actually create the Cosmere" (and doesn't TwinSoul imply that he believes that?) or "Adonalsium only created the Cosmere star cluster, not the universe it's part of" yet. It's intentionally ambiguous so far - and likely until Dragonsteel - what Adonalsium was.

I generally liked TLM but I agree it felt more uneven than most Cosmere books, and didn't answer some of the questions raised in BoM. I do agree the time gap between writing SoS/BoM (which were basically written as one unit) and TLM probably contributed. It's really Marasi's plot line (the secret Set underground colony / Autonomy's army attempting to invade through the artificial perpendicularity) that bothers me. It's super cool, but it feels rushed. If we'd had another 10k-20k words of this, maybe a couple brief POVs from the people there.. Wax and Wayne's plots work great for me all through the book. The ending is great, and so is the beginning of the book before the plot line split. It's just the middle and especially Marasi's plot in the middle that feels rushed. TLM also has a more complex, more split plot than the other Era 2 books but is shorter than the Era 1 books. I think it kind of falls in an awkward middle where it doesn't have the narrower focus of AoL through BoM* but doesn't have the room to add depth that Era 1 has. *each of those is much more pulp styled: AoL as a Western, SoS more noir/mystery ish, BoM full on adventure. TLM tries to be a spy thriller but it's just not as focused. Overall I like it, especially the beginning and end, and I do like the more foreground Cosmere connections, but the seams do show in TLM in a way they didn't in SoS or BoM (or Tress).

Hmm. Very good point. Blue water navigation techniques IMO were almost certainly lost before the Keepers existed - iirc they were founded 200+ years post TLR Ascension - and so couldn't be saved. They couldn't be used in ash-world (not only was the accessible sea area pretty small, you couldn't see the stars without Tin Allomancy anyway). Era 2 Scadrial surely has the astronomical and technological ability to work out good navigation, we had it by the late 18th century, but the theory may not have been worked out into practical advice for sailors if there have only been a couple recent attempts at blue water sailing (like the Ironsights) rather than a continuing subculture of it with a knowledge base. They may just not know a good method of finding longitude, though they surely *could*. The Basin's small land area and reluctance to travel (thus no practical need to determine it) plus small population and narrow academic community- how many different universities do they have? - may mean no one has thought of it. They probably don't have time zones either - the Basin is small enough that it would all be in one time zone by our system. They may well lack a good North Star (and even for Earth that changes - there was no really good North Star in say Ancient Greek times). As for whether the SoScads were known in pre-TLR-Ascension times... quite likely (the Bennett apparently explored most if not all of the world's coasts) but they probably weren't "SoScads" yet. There were lots of distinct cultures before TLR messed up the world and shoved everyone into two comparatively small habitable areas. The SoScads probably have *more* continuity with their previous culture, since they didn't have TLR's culture-crushing and homogenizing rule, but I imagine they were still drastically affected. Civilization was falling apart from the Deepness before TLR took power, and TLR's radical changes to the world would have had their own effects on culture even if TLR didn't meddle directly. (And he still might have done something. He probably wanted to limit the South's tech advancement - if they started at ~1800 levels then even with slowed advancement due to a small population and resource base it wouldn't have been that hard to hit a level where reaching the Final Empire was possible in a thousand years. I think we likely could have done it since 1950s-60s via airplanes, though it depends on what the upper atmosphere was like in ashworld times.)

Yeah. It's worth noting that Mists/Well aside, Scadrian magic is generally low Investiture. The Bands of Mourning are less Invested than a Shardblade, and they're colossally more Invested/filled than most "normal" metalminds - the Bands don't even show blue lines to Wax, while normally metalminds can be Pushed with only somewhat increased difficulty. Hemalurgic spikes are also quite low Investiture. Mistborn and Feruchemists also don't hold enough Investiture to get "passive" benefits like Returned or Elantrians do.

Sure, but that's not where I'm going there. Awakening can also chemically change pigments. But if you Awaken food and someone eats it, the digestion process will release the Breaths, right? So if you Awaken poison and someone consumes it, the chemical interaction with the victim's body will probably also release the Breaths.

The problem imo is that the actual harm from poison is generally a chemical process so once it starts interacting with the body it'll probably be changed enough for the Breaths to escape. So it might not really overcome resistance by Investiture interference, since the Investiture is disappearing. - I really would like to know why Awakening liquids is so different. I mean, water might need the 9th Heightening since it's not formerly alive, but what about fruit juice or olive oil?

I think that WoB is problematic because the questioner *assumes* Adonalsium created an infinite universe (that's far from confirmed).

1) Well the power itself was never really "alive" in the first place. Investiture left alone can 'come to life' but most Shards never got that chance (though the Dor might be starting to become alive, as it invests the land of Sel, and Odium might have become a little alive due to Rayse's poor control of it). But living Investiture can still be killed even though the power itself isn't destroyed. Spren and Cognitive Shadows are living Investiture and there are several ways to kill them, anti-Investiture or Nightblood being the most definitive. Splintering of a Shard destroys it as a distinct entity, which is as close to "killed" as is possible for something that isn't really alive. If Odium had gone on to develop a full personality, then Splintering it would kill that personality, like a spren being killed. 2) I agree Shards are most likely "so vast in power that to humans they might as well be infinite, since nothing but another Shard is remotely comparable" rather than "literally mathematically infinite". I'd say that a finite quantity of atium affecting the Preservation-Ruin balance confirms this absolutely, except that there might be a distinction between the total cosmere-wide power of the Shard ⁰ 3) "omnipotent" is a much stronger claim than just "infinite" though. If two infinite beings can successfully prevent one another from acting, neither is omnipotent. So even if one thinks that Shards are mathematically infinite, they are not omnipotent. In addition to opposition by other Shards, they're also limited by some Spiritual Realm mechanics like Connection and (Stormlight)

Yes, I think Xisis was likely there far longer, before Riina arrived, but since he's secretive - his only interaction with the outside world seems to be trading boons for service - Riina didn't know about him at first. I do think he's likely Foil, and Frost likely has a long "true" name like Xisisrefliel or Koravellium.

Shards are not omnipotent. Even if they have an infinite amount of Investiture (WoBs are possibly inconsistent on this*) they have very definite limitations even beyond their Intent - being opposed by another Shard, and needing Connection to act on some things even if unopposed. *The fact that a finite amount of atium was key to the balance between Preservation and Ruin IMO confirms that they're not truly mathematically infinite. Subtracting a finite quantity from infinity doesn't change it. It might be a simple extrapolation - Adonalsium wasn't truly omnipotent or infinite either, because he was killed. If you've already accepted that the Shards come from Adonalsium, another level of being seems a fairly natural idea. And it seems that this has been connected with the idea of the "Beyond" as where souls go after the Cognitive Realm. Now, people we've seen mention the God Beyond aren't that cosmere aware, but that could be the original source of the idea. Or it might just be philosophical thought about a more perfect divinity, the same way some of the Greek philosophers felt about the very finite & flawed Olympians and suggested a higher level of being (the Stoics' pantheistic Divine Mind or Plato's Form of the Good for example).

The 'slightly' more explosive than dynamite is based on the Set's early experiments. The Hunters' temple destroying bomb was likely better --their airships are very weight conscious, to the point people need to store weight all the time. If we assume instead that the early experiments were getting poor yield because the explosion was blowing itself apart before most of the harmonium could react with the water (so the rest of the reaction happened/the energy was released as more dispersed burning rather than one big detonation, like you often see with liquid fueled rocket explosions, for the same reason- the explosion itself keeps fuel and oxidizer from mixing well), it makes more sense. There's also a WoB that the harmonium water reaction is more energetic than normal chemical, and 1.3x dynamite is less energetic than the best modern solid explosives, and even less than fuel-oxidizer reactions like in liquid fuel rockets. So I think those early 'slightly better than dynamite' experiments need to have had poor yield. If the Set's early experiments were getting say 5% yield then it works better, and your 4+ tons of TNT for completely full barrels becomes 80+. That's above the largest conventional weapons and in the range of small tactical nukes (the US Davy Crockett warhead from the 60s had a 25 ton to 500 ton range AFAIK). It also IMO fits the WoB better since this is clearly beyond the range of normal chemical explosives. Now maybe that WoB just means "more than a normal cesium-water reaction", but "so much more explosive" IMO suggests a major increase, not just 'a bit better than dynamite but worse than other chemical reactions'. The WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/117/#e1663

Well it's said in BoM that it's more powerful than dynamite, but not dramatically so. Now they're comparing to city destroying explosions the Set wants, so slightly more could be pretty significant on the scale of normal chemical explosions. And there is WoB that it is more energetic than an usual chemical reaction due to extra from the Spiritual. OTOH the Hunters' bomb was good enough to destroy a large stone temple. Now that's still way below MT levels - I think the largest non nuclear bombs (tens of tons TNT equivalent) could surely do that - but the Set may have been getting poor explosive yield as the reaction blew itself apart before all the harmonium was consumed. Still, I think it's more plausibly in the order of magnitude of 10-100x normal chemical than the 100,000-1 million x normal chemical you'd need to get a MT class explosion out of a couple tons of explosive. (IIRC, the best solid explosives are something like 2.5x TNT - though reactions that don't have to carry their own oxidizer, like fuel-air, can be more. So even 10x TNT would be well beyond normal chemical explosives. ) 1. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/98/#e860 2. Gold burning is still limited to your Allomancy burn rate. Wayne isn't a superstrong Mistborn like Elend, and even Elend's Allomantic burn rate wouldn't be nearly enough to survive this. Even Feruchemically charged gold + duralumin won't save him, because duralumin doesnt give extra power, just all of it at once... so it is limited to the amount of charged gold he has... which would be miniscule because of the first WoB (Wayne can't store for 30 seconds then count the entire piece of metal as "Feruchemically charged gold" for burning it).

No way it was a megaton class explosion, the matter to energy transformation specifically was prevented- it was "just" the chemical harmonium-water reaction. But three barrels of harmonium must be multiple tons at least, and harmonium-water reaction is more powerful than conventional chemical explosion due to pulling energy from the Spiritual component of the harmonium.

Also, Allomancy isn't going extinct. The Basin population has reached an equilibrium as of Era 2, it's not getting weaker currently.

The original form *of the Dawnshards*, but not the original form *of the weapon*, imo. In the same way as if a spear is made out of a piece of wood, a leather strip, and a stone point it can still be said to be disassembled and no longer exist in its original form (of the spear) even if the components are all still there and haven't been physically changed from *their* original form. (I'm also not sure how much we can read into the exact wording of these pre-Dawnshard novella WoBs.) There is however the 'one Dawnshard is different' WoB, so conceivably either one or three of them was altered/weakened in some way.

I believe there is, but it's not yet known and possibly not decided even by Brandon's team yet. Investiture to energy is tricky because it's not always a direct conversion - you can use Investiture to pull energy from the Spiritual Realm without actually converting the Investiture you have (like a perfect gem glowing without leaking Stormlight, or a kandra Blessing of Potency giving extra strength to muscles without using up what's in the spikes) Direct Investiture-matter conversion is more straightforward, but we still can't get a ratio because we don't actually have numerical units for Investiture. But there are some things that can give a feel for what's involved: - A normal (non-Bondsmith) Radiant Spren usually turns into a Shardblade about six feet long. - A suit of Shardplate is made of hundreds of non-sapient spren. - A single bead of lerasium, small enough to swallow easily, grants Allomantic strength significantly greater than a normal Mistborn's when that Investiture is "melded" with a person's soul.

See to me that implies the Dawnshards are the remnants (plural) of the weapon (singular). The older WoBs (pre-Dawnshard novella) are vaguely worded (to avoid giving too much away, presumably) but they do talk about the weapon as singular. I think "the weapon" was some form of composite of the four Dawnshards used together, possibly also including a Vessel with a pre-Shattering Invested Art*, similarly to how Sazed used Preservation/Ruin together to reshape the world, and they melded into Harmony. But unlike Harmony, the melding didn't work quite right (or the stress of the Shattering was too much) so it broke back into four Dawnshards. *although perhaps the four combined didn't need a Vessel with an Invested Art the way an individual one does? Specifically my theory on the Shattering is that the 3 Dawnshards other than Change are something like Persist/Remain/Protect (Hoid's), Enact or Bind (the one "known to bind"), Bestow (or Create or Envision). They were used in unison, IMO, to Change the unity of Adonalsium and make it fragile; Bestow the power on and Bind it to the sixteen Vessels; and make the resulting Shards Persist in isolation. Similarly to create the cosmere they would have been used to Bestow reality, Bind it to permanence (or Envision the result and Enact it into reality), give it the ability to Change and to Persist.

That's how I read it, too...you'd need all of Preservation in lerasium form. Or, well, maybe you could get a non-full-Shard, Well-equivalent temporary Ascension with a quantity of lerasium equal to the Investiture in the Well... but given that the Well liquid is extra powerful, that's a crazy amount of lerasium... when probably no more than a few ounces ever existed.

I'm not sure the weapon WoBs mean simply the Dawnshards... might be Dawnshard combination + "vessel". "Its original form" wouldn't be the Dawnshards themselves but whatever composite of them was made to kill Adonalsium.