cometaryorbit

Autocorrect can have some weird results... Terris = Tetris Nicrosil = Microsoft () Bendalloy = Generally Atium = Atrium Sazed = Sales Roshar = No what Raysium = Elysium (doesn't sound much like Odium's metal to me...) Taldain = Baldwin Bavadin = Baldwin (...hmmm...) Elantris = Wanted Arelon = A felon (...hmm, maybe auto correct knows something we don't about Sel...) Skai = Spain (...or maybe not...)

Hoid uses the power of Chromium Feruchemy (Fortune) but he might get it through a different magic system, in the same way as his non-Surgebinding Lightweaving from Yolen. If he is a Feruchemist, who knows? We really don't know how the Terris got Feruchemy in the first place... (I think it's implied to be some kind of gift from Preservation, whom they worshipped under the name Terr. But why not Allomancy, which is Preservation's actual magic system?)

I agree the other Heralds seem more like insane humans. But I think that actually makes sense, given something like the following logic: The Heralds were all humans who became Cognitive Shadows. Over time, or possibly by multiple deaths and rebirths, a Cognitive Shadow (Herald or Fused, at least*) becomes more like a spren, more unchanging and more a reflection of an ideal. Their original personality erodes or becomes simplified, more archetypal. But by breaking the Oathpact, the other nine Heralds broke away from their "ideals". And they stopped dying. So that process largely stopped for them. Their souls are "worn thin", as the Stormfather says, from the previous cycles of Desolations. They're definitely broken. But Taln is 4500 years farther along the process. Outside moments of lucidity, he's less "functional" than the others -- but he's also much more of an archetype than they are. He has broken, but maybe can't at this point bend his oath. *we haven't, IIRC, seen any other cognitive shadows nearly old enough, except the Stormfather, who is also a spren. Vasher is several centuries old, but nothing on the Herald/Fused scale; Kelsier we've only seen a few years in; Threnodite Shades aren't really intelligent...

I thought it was super unlikely b/c there was some interference (thus mixing with Allomantic genes produced Ferrings) but not impossible with strong genetics? Few Allomancers survived the end of Era 1 and maybe zero Feruchemists, certainly very few if any. So the genes were already rare. The situation might be different if you had near Lerasium strength Mistborn and Full Feruchemists around, as in the early Final Empire. The fear of a natural Fullborn was why Rashek turned against the Terris, and from holding the power of Preservation I'd think he should have known if it was actually impossible.

For Kelsier/Sovereign I think it is just a deduction from his making the Bands, which contain all powers. (But that's not 100% confirmation as we don't know enough about the process.) Marsh has 20 or so spikes as of the end of HOA, so probably not complete Fullborn abilities, but pretty close. I doubt he has spikes for the metals not yet discovered at the end of HOA (chromium/nicrosil, cadmium/bendalloy). He might also be missing some of the abilities less useful for a super warrior like Duralumin/Aluminum Feruchemy or Aluminum Allomancy.

Maybe the "tower, crown, spear" interpretation is correct, but "the fallen title" is not Honor but Unity. Unity could be a Dawnshard. If one of the Dawnshard Commands is Change, another could be Unite. Dalinar could then use the Unity Dawnshard to help Navani do the Bridge Building stuff you suggest, and help Kaladin become the Vessel of Honor or a large portion thereof (by Uniting Splinters of Honor). -- Or, hmmm... maybe the Tower = Navani, Crown = Taravangian (he was a king), and Spear = Kaladin, and all three will become Shards. Taravangian has now picked up the "Fallen title" of Odium from Rayse; maybe Kaladin will re-forge Honor and Navani will somehow become Cultivation after Koravellium Avast's death.

Sure, but the characters who deal with their issues in a human way keep that personal growth. Taln's moments of lucidity go away quickly. I don't think anything was really fixed so much as the damage was bypassed - the symptoms were suppressed momentarily but the underlying problem remains. The way the Stormfather describes it, it sounds like the fact that the Heralds could be coerced to bend their oath was not considered by either them or Honor at the time - the Fused and/or Odium discovered that would work after-the-fact. So I don't think either Honor or the Heralds expected the Heralds to be tortured at the time the Oathpact was agreed upon.

I think Hoid's "know where he needs to be" ability is the same cosmere principle as Feruchemical luck/Fortune, but not confirmed whether it is actual Feruchemy or another similar ability.

So time and distance are irrelevant in the Spiritual Realm. But Shards (except the remains of Devotion and Dominion) exist primarily in the Spiritual Realm. So how can a Shard be Splintered at all? If it exists in a timeless way, shouldn't it's pre Splintered state still be there in the Spiritual Realm, since it once existed that way? Similarly, even to Shards the future is imperfectly defined... Does this mean that the timelessness of the Spiritual really means that "relationships between things in the Spiritual are defined by Connection, not physical dimensions of time and space" - not that the Spiritual Realm is truly eternal? So Splintering a Shard would be a matter of destroying the Connections among its Investiture (or between its Investiture and its Intent)?

Is there a way to get this WoB added to Arcanum?

Yeah, I kind of thought the "reversed attributes" of the Heralds were a result of abandoning the Oathpact. Not sure if that is just because they're rejecting what they once were (e.g. Ash talks about the Heralds as useless in the current situation) or something more directly magical, the warped effects of the semi-broken but not totally gone Oathpact working on them. It is not necessarily a direct opposite though, Nale is acting out warped Justice rather than completely rejecting the concept in the way Ash destroys art. See, I'm not sure there is a difference. Taln *is* very broken, but it is magical (in the sense of being non-real-world, not necessarily directly powered by Investiture) because everything about a cognitive shadow is.

Hmm, though, could the 'Warbreaker as foreshadowing the greater arc' imply the Shards giving up their power (as the Returned give up their Divine Breaths)? Perhaps dispersing Investiture to all the peoples of the Cosmere? Perhaps some sort of Spiritual Connection could still "reunite" Adonalsium in a sense, even if held by many people? That actually raises its own question - if a Shard exists in the Spiritual Realm, and time is irrelevant in the Spiritual, how can a Shard Splinter? Why doesn't its unSplintered state "still" exist in timelessness since it once existed? But that probably deserves its own thread...

I tend to think Adonalsium lacked a Vessel; from Secret History, it seems that the Shards have Vessels because the first sixteen claimed parts of Adonalsium upon killing it. We know Investiture develops sapience on its own if left alone; Adonalsium wouldn't have needed a Vessel to have a mind.

The Iri myth from Stormlight might suggest re-forming Adonalsium. But that doesn't seem entirely satisfying - it didn't work out the first time around. Now maybe Adonalsium lacked a Vessel the first time, and re-forming Adonalsium with a Vessel will give it a necessary touch of human/mortal experience. But still... who would it be, and what happens to the other existing Shards' Vessels? If Harmony, say, became Adonalsium, would that kill Edgli and Koravellium Avast, etc.? And what about Spren, Seons, etc? OTOH, some spren existed pre-Shattering, and Endowment has Splinters without being Splintered, so perhaps the sapient spren, Seons, etc could survive a re-forming of Adonalsium?

The Heralds are Cognitive Shadows, I'm not at all sure real world mental illnesses are even possible any more. Their minds don't really work on brain chemistry any longer ; they're Cognitive entities stapled to a body. So yeah, it's magical madness, not any real world diagnosis, though symptoms might be similar.

The word "break" may be being used in two different ways. He didn't "bend his oath" but that does not necessarily mean he isn't "broken" in the sense that the word is applied to other non-Herald Stormlight characters e.g. Kaladin and Shallan - I think he pretty certainly is "broken" in the latter sense. That actually seems really likely. He probably has kind of been turned into "I Will Not Give In" as his whole identity. He is pretty thoroughly mind-shattered when he comes back to Roshar, just repeating the same mantra over and over. This might also be operating. There may not be all that much left of Taln-the-human... Taln the Cognitive Shadow might be largely turned into something like the Spren of Endurance. Well, he will get flashbacks, but that doesn't confirm that he will be a functional character in the present of the second arc (flashbacks for a character dead in present-time are possible). The flashbacks may well be of the Ashyn exodus/first Desolations when Taln was still human.

Yeah, in Era 1 the magnetic north pole and the Well are far from the geographical north pole. Hard to determine what latitude range it is: not really arctic since no midnight sun/polar night, but climate in Era 1 seems pretty heavily driven by ash and such, so hard to tell. Also, Scadrial is unnaturally hot in Era 1, so the apparently quite mild climate of Luthadel - the dangerously bad winter in WOA does not actually sound that cold by usual temperate zone standards - doesn't necessarily imply a low latitude. While not actually arctic it could well be at a mid 50s latitude like Dublin (above 53 degrees north) or Copenhagen and Edinburgh (about 56). Given how intense the unshielded sun is at the end of HoA I think it is tricky to make the Final Empire climate livable even with both ash shield and high latitude. I think it is pretty likely the continent was moved significantly in latitude.

A Keeper seems pretty likely. OTOH, could be Mistborn. Kelsier was a "normal" (not Lerasium like Elend or otherwise boosted like Vin) Mistborn and only had like 2 years experience as a Mistborn then. He was exceptionally skillful with Iron/Steel, sure, but still... His profound awesomeness doesn't mean super-normal Allomantic strength. Not all Inquisitors had f-Gold, after all, and Hemalurgic Decay is a thing..

Not really a new WOB, but not posted before (I forgot) Q: In Mistborn, was Kelsier the first person ever to kill a Steel Inquisitor? A: No

Good point. I was just thinking that when they're listed "in order" there's 3 Surges between Adhesion and Progression one way (Gravitation-Division-Abrasion) and 5 the other way.

A good point. Conventical of Seran isn't far from the border either. I'd just like to have seen what the Southern Islands, or the bandit/rebel camps which apparently existed in the desert areas on the border, were like.

Are non-Truthless allowed to use one as a weapon (as distinct from using their Surges for non-combat purposes)? If so, that would go a long way to making it work. I don't think it's enough in itself to maintain the system for the implied time scale of thousands of years -- I think human nature and economics would operate to lower the status of farmers* and probably to raise the status of warriors -- but it would keep the first random group of rebels from taking over the nation. *IIRC in at least one era of China, the Confucian system nominally gave farmers a rather high status, for similar philosophical reasons as in Shinovar. But I don't think this actually correlated to effective status, and I don't see how it could in practice, in a pre-industrial society where most people must be farmers.

Maybe? But I think there's a difference between "investiture converted into matter" and Investiture 'charge' in an object. Kind of like how in RL a battery stores a comparatively small amount of energy in electrochemical form... but its mass technically represents many orders of magnitude more energy. Shardblades might be considered very highly Invested because they're actually functional in the local magic "as is" (rather than having to be burned, like atium) not just because of the "Investiture-mass-energy equivalence" (which should be the same for all matter). It might be possible for "all-Ruin water" to exist, but it wouldn't have any Metallic Arts effect.

Ok, the Luthadel accent is definitely good information. I think that's technically still Inner Dominances though - as is the Conventical of Seran in Well of Ascension. Aren't the Outer Dominances Crescent, Farmost, Remote, Terris, and Southern Islands? I don't think we ever actually get to Terris in any of the Era 1 stories (Vin and Elend turn back in WoA...)

Yeah, I think Progression pretty much has to be "Cultivation's Truest Surge" - both due to the non-suppression, and because it literally grows things, and a cultivationspren looks like a plant... Although it bothers me that it's not exactly opposite Adhesion... Illumination is...