cometaryorbit

Quite possibly. I wonder if that is the same point of "too spiked" that requires a linchpin spike? Actually, probably not, as Koloss don't really seem to work on the linchpin model and they are definitely Hemalurgic constructs... But that might be a difference between Human Attribute spikes (which are said to be more distorting, IIRC) vs Allomantic/Feruchemical Power spikes.

True - but it seems Odium's now discovered how to get around that, given Moash/Vyre killing Jezrien with some kind of soul-trapping blade. So I guess the real question applies just as much to Odium's forces working against the Heralds. All 10 Heralds survived up to the time of Oathbringer, so it seems like nothing like that soul-trapping-knife was used in the ancient Desolations. It might just be "new technology", but I'd expect Odium, with a Shard's expanded mind, to have figured out the magic pretty thoroughly even back then. True... I was more thinking about the possibility of either the Heralds going into Braize's Cognitive Realm to kill the Fused's shadows directly, between reincarnations, or Honor using his Shardic knowledge/expanded mind to develop a weapon specifically capable of killing or trapping the Cognitive Shadow (comparable to Nightblood or the knife used on Jezrien) while in a physical body. True. It would depend on how powerful the Heralds really were back then... Some WOBs say they got a direct feed of Investiture from Honor. But if they were operating on that sort of levels, how were they repeatedly captured and tortured? Maybe on Braize that power feed was much more limited, since Honor is Invested in Roshar instead? Something like that must have been happening, because (Mistborn spoilers)

I think that only worked when Honor was actually alive. The trapped soul of a Herald might have other applications though (a Herald is a Cognitive Shadow, which are apparently basically spren on Roshar, so a Herald soul in a gem might work for a fabrial). I think the identification of Jezrien with the Stormfather is just folk mythology* that has built up over thousands of years without the Heralds around. He was a Windrunner, but that was due to his Honorblade. (And without the direct feed from Honor, it's less efficient than a true KR Windrunner's powers.) So I don't think Vyre will get any special storm powers beyond what he gets from the Honorblade - the same powers Szeth had in WOK/WOR. *The ardentia don't seem to believe it, given the way they react to Dalinar and Navani's decision to have the Stormfather marry them - if they thought he was the chief Herald, they would recognize him as a source of religious authority.

I'm not talking about her basic strength that she already has in the first two books, but stuff like how she "pewter-jumps" 7 feet when sparring with Ham early in WOA and everyone is shocked that she can do that, but she jumps... 11 feet or something... in HOA. Without using iron/steel. Good point. It did qualify her as a Sliver though, and Sazed's epigraph says that it "attuned" her to take up the entirety of the mists, so I do think holding but not using the power had some effect.

At least some degree of potential, Allik claims in BOM that they didn't have any Metalborn when the Sovereign showed up, but that's not necessarily contradictory - it appears that in Alendi's era that potential only manifested as actual Allomancy via Mist-snapping ("Allomancy came with the mists").

The old Terris (and later kandra) religion appears to have been basically 100% right, actually. Sure, Preservation isn't truly God in the sense of being genuinely absolute, but they didn't believe him to be that either. (Ironically, despite its oppressive tyranny, TLR's religion was largely factually right too. TLR didn't claim omniscience and omnipotence, only immortality, he described himself as the "Sliver of Infinity" - something like an 'avatar' of true divinity achieved through the Well of Ascension - not as the entirety of God.) I mean, with my own RL beliefs I'd say that the Shards (much less TLR!) aren't truly worthy of worship as God, but that relies on knowledge that very few people (Khriss, Hoid, etc.) have in-world. Many of these beings would seem very divine if you met them personally, without the background knowledge... Well, not all the Shards are particularly 'good', and I'm not sure the nicer ones claim anything false. The Vorin worship of Honor as the absolute Almighty is something that's developed after millennia without real contact with him - in Dalinar's visions Honor himself doesn't come across that way. Harmony certainly doesn't seem to claim anything false - he admits to being limited, and refuses to be worshiped in the usual sense (ritual etc), just asks that people do good and take a little time to talk to him. And some people aren't satisfied with that - the concept of the God Beyond does exist on Scadrial (Wayne mentions it once). Yeah - my own RL beliefs mean that "an un-aging person with superpowers" isn't enough to qualify as divine/worthy of worship to me. But that's basically all the Greek and Norse gods were; the Norse even believed that their gods were ultimately mortal, destined to die at Ragnarok and be replaced for the next cycle.

According to the Stormfather in Oathbringer, even before the Fused got Surges, they were unbeatable because they just kept reincarnating, which necessitated the whole Oathpact thing - the Heralds had to go to Braize forever (which unfortunately turned into being tortured) to lock away the Fused, since they just couldn't kill them. But the Fused are Cognitive Shadows, and we've seen plenty of Cognitive Shadows killed on other planets (Warbreaker/Arcanum Unbounded spoilers). And we know that Nightblood "destroys on all three Realms", and there's a WOB that a Shardblade could kill a spren. With the amount of power Honor could give the Heralds, why wasn't there a way to kill the Fused? Hmmm... actually... is Nightblood the first thing Roshar's seen that actually can permanently kill them? Szeth might be even more important than we thought...

From what the Stormfather says in Oathbringer, it seems like the Heralds didn't really have much choice. They were being progressively destroyed, and the times between Desolations were shortening dramatically - less than a year gap the last time. If they hadn't done something different, Rosharan humanity probably wouldn't have survived the next decade. Their only other option would have been to try something totally out-of-the-box, like evacuating everybody off Roshar through the Perpendicularities. Which makes me wonder why Honor didn't do something, he was fully alive then and surely was aware of what was happening.

My own speculation is that Dalinar isn't exactly becoming Honor, but that what's going on is kind of a "lesser Ascension" vaguely akin to (Mistborn spoilers) But I agree that Odium is referring to the killing of Honor. As for the "WE", I'd suggest Odium and Autonomy - the Letter in the WOK epigraphs has Hoid referring to his "grudge against Rayse and Bavadin", and Bavadin/Autonomy otherwise doesn't seem at all related to anything going on with Roshar. (As for the three shards WOB, probably Autonomy was never actually on Roshar itself... But hmm, I thought the same was true of Odium? He's on Braize, right?)

A normal spren might not be sufficiently "present" in the Physical Realm to eat. OTOH, maybe it's something else, I mean, if larkins ate Shardblades I think we would have heard about it... (Though maybe that's where all those extra shardblades in Dalinar's Recreance vision went )

I think there are two distinct forms of spren bonds on Roshar: - the KR/Herald human-to-Splinter bond; - the natural-magic bond, which requires a gem, uses the highstorms, and, at least in its basic form, involves a non-sapient spren. Everything else except the Old Magic (as always "its own weird thing") is derived from this - Voidbringer forms of power and fabrials being technologies based on, or "hacks" of, the natural system. The natural-magic spren bonds seem very common on Roshar, and the basic "gemheart process" seems quite ubiquitous - though smaller species may not produce anything significant enough to be seen as a gem/considered valuable by humans, "the same sort of chemistry" occurs... Honor's Innovation I think human Surgebinding, as used by the Heralds and KR*, is something distinctly different from everything else on Roshar. (*We're told in Oathbringer that ancient humans destroyed their land (Ashyn) with Surges. Yet we know the KR got Surgebinding when the spren imitated what Honor had done with the Honorblade-Herald bond... which post-dates the arrival of humans on Roshar. So whatever destroyed Ashyn can't have been quite the same Surgebinding as the modern KR are using. That weirdness aside...) The Honorblades don't involve any gems trapping spren (the Heralds started as regular humans, and we now know Surgebinders don't grow gemhearts) and - originally, when Honor was alive - didn't use regular Stormlight derived from the Highstorms; they were directly powered by Honor. When the spren imitated the system, they didn't have the direct Shardic "Investiture feed", so the KR started using Stormlight and trapping it in gems, moving things back toward the natural magic. But it's still something different in origin, and KR Surgebinding keeps the Honorblades' Surge pairings - 10 sets of 2 Surges each. Forms of Power The Forms of Power (stormform, envoyform, etc.) seem (to me anyway) to be Odium's "hack" of the Rosharan natural magic. The singers/listeners' normal forms (dullform, warform etc) use weak local spren that bind to the gemheart in a highstorm (providing Stormlight). Odium has added in voidspren to provide the Forms of Power. In this Desolation, the Everstorm replaces the highstorm's role in the natural bond, but apparently something else happened in ancient Desolations. Fused "Pseudo-Surgebinding" I really am unsure about this one. The Fused who use Surges apparently do not use the same Surge pairings as the Heralds/Honorblades and KR/Nahel-bonding spren. According to Moash, there are 9 "orders" of Fused, and it seems each can use just one Surge. The Stormfather refers to the Fused 'learning' how to use Surges, so their abilities might not have originated as a direct Shardic gift in the same way as Honor initiating Surgebinding by giving out the Honorblades. Are they similar to the Forms of Power, with the Fused itself (now having become a Cognitive Shadow) acting as the spren bound to the body's gemheart, and having enough Investiture to use Surges directly? Or (given the use of 9 in this system) is this actually a Braize magic system, with the Surges themselves being common to all three planets?

Maybe so, but the epigraphs in HOA seem to distinguish people who are spiked from Hemalurgic constructs. Yeah, that is probably the defining factor. I wonder whether there is a fixed number of spikes you can add before you need a linchpin spike, or whether it depends on what power it grants, Atium spikes vs. regular metals, etc.? Yeah. The odd thing to me is that the HOA epigraphs talk about how incredibly hard it is to make new types of hemalurgic constructs, that the Steel Ministry/TLR tried for 1,000 years and never got any beyond the basic three they started with. Yet adding more spikes to existing Hemalurgic constructs seems to be fine. The Inquisitors in HOA would have benefited from Ruin's knowledge of Hemalurgy, and that might explain the extreme case of Marsh's 20+ spikes. But we do know from WOBs that the TLR-era Inquisitors didn't all have the same powers. Anyway, TenSoon can just add in OreSeur's Blessing and get the extra strength, with no apparent ill effects and without being controlled by Ruin (and thus without Ruin's knowledge of the art). So... what's the dividing line between "adding stuff to existing hemalurgic constructs" (apparently fairly easy) vs "making a new hemalurgic construct" (need Shard-level knowledge to make it work)? Would a koloss with 6 iron spikes instead of 4 be a new construct or just a stronger koloss? What if you added 2 tin spikes to an existing koloss (TenSoon is mixing spike types, after all)?

Kelsier as we knew him in his original lifetime, certainly. But to make the Bands at all he would have had to get access to Nicrosil Feruchemy. Since he was already a Mistborn, that would let him use Nicrosil Compounding to boost his Allomantic strength to maximum. I think that is how it would work anyway... Being a Sliver of Preservation could also give him somewhat of a boost (IIRC, there's some evidence comparing descriptions in WOA and HOA that Vin is stronger in the latter, but still not as strong as Elend), but I don't think it's necessary, as he could Nicrosil Compound to maximum ("mistpoint") strength even from regular, diminished power Allomancer strength. Yes, from the coppermind at the end of BOM, the eye spike must be either allomantic steel or iron given the blue-lines-vision. (Which is a bit odd, since that's a power Kelsier already has...)

It seems that various combinations of spikes can make an Inquisitor, and you can keep adding more - Marsh had 11 at the end of the first book (2 in eyes, 1 linchpin in shoulders, 8 in ribs) and had 20-plus by the end of the trilogy. But koloss seem to be always the same, 4 iron spikes. Why? If someone accumulates spikes, what's the line between human and Inquisitor, and what does crossing that line mean? Maybe the point where you become controlled by Ruin or Harmony (Mr Suit says 3 spikes are safe, 4 aren't)? The point where you need a "linchpin spike" to survive? What if you give an Inquisitor 4 iron spikes? Does it turn into a koloss, just die, become a super-strong Inquisitor or what?

I would imagine that it is probably the same as if they had not become a Cognitive Shadow in the first place, since when Kelsier as a Cognitive Shadow is badly wounded by Ruin, he feels the 'pull of the Beyond' in the same way he did before he jumped into the Well (though successfully resists it, since he had held the Shard Preservation by then).

Well, the story is from Silence's viewpoint. The forest might be very ecologically messed up by Earth standards, but she wouldn't have any way to know. It's possible that the only trees that can survive long term (Deer aren't going to be able to eat full grown trees, but they could eat all the saplings and eventually wipe out the species that way) are those which are toxic or indigestible to deer. The Forests of Hell might be very low diversity, consisting of only a few tree species. OTOH, Nazh in Secret History says that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is "an important rite", suggesting that Threnodite Cognitive Shadows weren't always near-mindless things people feared. The current state of affairs might only be a few centuries old, and the trees might mostly be older than that.

Well, not all of the bad, Ruin is pretty destructive, Dominion includes tyranny, etc. But I think there is definitely something interesting here, with the concept of Odium as somewhat the 'outcast' or 'pariah' of the Shards... In the Letter (WOK epigraphs), Hoid mentions his "grudge against Rayse and Bavadin". Bavadin is Autonomy's Vessel - what does he have to do with anything in Stormlight? His mention here has got to be significant to something. Well, if Odium is an outcast/pariah shard, it might make sense that Autonomy would be the only shard willing to work with him...

Or possibly: The Stormfather is Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow and Syl is the Stormfather's daughter. If Syl and Kaladin's bond is seen as a metaphorical marriage, that would make Kaladin Stormfather/Tanavast's son-in-law.

I suppose the limit to this sort of thing would be how much strength you could store in four reasonably sized iron spikes... Either that, or the point where the muscle mass was unsurvivable. Of course, using chasmfiends instead of humans for the hosts would let the spikes be far larger before they interfered with its ability to move.

While I don't think there is a straightforward one-to-one Shard-to-metal correspondence, the same metal quadrants apply to the other Metallic Arts, where the opposites don't really hold. My real issue with it is the idea of "physical" and "temporal" Shards which don't really seem to fit the spaceless, timeless nature of the Spiritual Realm well. I think that WOB does imply that the 16 Shards split into four quadrants, but I don't think those quadrants are the same "themes" as the metal quadrants. Within the quadrants, it might be a simple set of four Shards sharing a common theme, they might pair the way metals do... Or they might even pair "both ways" creating a square pattern... eg... Honor --- Dominion | | Odium --- Devotion Honor + Odium = Justice or (righteous/divine) Wrath Devotion / Odium (straightforward opposites) Dominion + Devotion = Unity Honor + Dominion = Law or Kingship

I think we need to distinguish between Hoid's overall goal and his goal on Roshar (the latter probably being thwarting Odium, from the Letters and comments to Dalinar, IMO). The "obvious" thought is that the overall goal is reuniting Adonalsium, but that seems too obvious/simplistic IMO. Still, I think there is some purpose to collecting Investiture from lots of different worlds beyond just amassing personal power. Wild guess - there's a WOB that all the Investiture in the Cosmere became associated to a Shard at the Shattering, even if that Shard's Vessel isn't consciously aware of or involved with stuff off their planet or whatever. Maybe Hoid wants to change that, combining small bits of Investiture from all the Shards to create "pre-Shattering-style" Investiture of Adonalsium, not "filtered" through any particular Shard Intent/Mandate. If so, that would allow 'pure, unbroken' powers of creation to exist in the world again without "killing" the Shards or messing up everybody using the existing post-Shattering manifestations of Investiture.

That seems to be what's implied by Leras/Preservation's sun/light ray/spot of light on the floor analogy from Secret History, combined with the WOBs that there's no real location in the Spiritual Realm. Since the Spiritual Realm doesn't have any physical "space", no dimensions in the space/time sense, the Realms can't be literally parallel or perpendicular in the "planes in a higher dimensional space" sense. But a Perpendicularity is a point of transition between Realms which is (in a somewhat looser sense) "perpendicular" to travel within a Realm.

To me, the most interesting question is the various "Investiture power-drain" abilities, like larkins, Nightblood "feeding", and Chromium Allomancy. What's the limit on that? If that metal had been known in Era 1, could a Leecher have killed TLR by "accidentally-on-purpose" bumping into him in a public square and burning metal - then his Atiumminds' charge vanishes? Leechers, at least, require physical contact, so a Fullborn who was paying attention could easily evade that. But there are other similar effects that don't - like the Primer Cube/allomantic grenade charged with Chromium Allomancy we see in Bands of Mourning. There's got to be some limit - surely these sorts of effects can't be an automatic win against even the most powerful Investiture users, else Odium could just have used Larkins to eat the Heralds' Investiture-feed from Honor and win the Desolations trivially. Would a Larkin hooked up to that much investiture throw up or explode? What about a Leecher? Surely, if a Leecher had hit Vin when she was absorbing the mists, it wouldn't have destroyed the Shard of Preservation...

If so, though, then human souls would also have to contain an infinite quantity of Investiture, since the amount of Ruin trapped as atium balanced out the amount of Preservation contained in humanity... Also, there's WOB that matter, energy, and Investiture can be interconverted in the cosmere, the same way matter and energy can be in the real world. So if there's a fixed, E = mc^2 type relationship, then a particular finite mass of atium would have to correspond to a particular finite quantity of Ruin's Investiture. And if Shards are infinite, then Harmony would be no more powerful than any single Shard, which the WOBs about Odium really not wanting that to happen implies is not the case. It just seems far simpler on all levels to assume that Shards are not in fact infinite, at least not in the sense of quantity of Investiture (they might be infinite or at least unbounded in some other sense, e.g. capable of reaching any distance across time and space).

Not exactly, not at the point when she explodes Kredik Shaw. At that point she is still in physical human form and using the basic Allomantic powers boosted to extreme levels - healing with "limitless pewter", exploding Kredik Shaw with a massive Steelpush. And the majority of the mists haven't yet been absorbed. It's only when she absorbs the entirety of the mists and her physical body vanishes that she truly becomes Preservation and gets the broader Shardic abilities. Soothing could be a distraction, at extreme levels, but it isn't really that powerful in combat. Vin uses a duralumin powered soothing as a distraction against one of Yomen's Allomancers set to follow her before she attacks, but that's about it.