cometaryorbit

Ah, well that would totally explain it then. But I thought the reason balefire messed up the Pattern was because of all the actions being un-done? In that case, it would scale pretty strongly with the number of people balefired. Yeah, probably. She honestly seems way too sloppy for someone who's accomplished so much and lived so long. I mean when she first meets Rand in ACOS she slaps him.. he had just been being beaten by Elaida's Aes Sedai and IIRC Cadsuane knew that. If Rand had been just a little farther into madness or less troubled by Moiraine's and the Maidens' deaths, she'd have got balefired.

Why is Cadsuane so utterly horrified by Rand using balefire in TGS? She seems to be an 'independent' enough person that just the fact that it's against White Tower law shouldn't account for that degree of reaction. Sure, it's dangerous to the Pattern on really large scales - but entire cities were destroyed in balefire during the War of Power. Natrin's Barrow is maybe large enough to cause some concern but Cadsuane is even mad about Rand saying that the Forsaken need to be balefired to keep them dead. And even with Natrin's Barrow, we're still talking a difference of 5 orders of magnitude probably... hundreds of people vs likely millions. (On Natrin's Barrow, too... why is that taken as such a huge sign that Rand is off-the-cliff crazy? If he's right that Graendal's slaves are totally brain-dead due to Compulsion - and that does seem to be demonstrated to be true - nobody would be there but Forsaken, Darkfriends, and essentially zombies. It seems like a totally sensible tactical move -- yet both the characters and the plot seem to act as if it's just one small step from the about-to-destroy-the-world full-on insanity we see on Dragonmount?)

They might be round due to being artificial, but it's not impossible for a small natural celestial body to be round -- just very weird, as it would require the material to have basically no structural strength. Saturn's tiny [much smaller than Phobos/Deimos] moon Methone is a very smooth egg shape - which probably means it is essentially made of snowflakes. Roshar moons are too warm for that, but maybe dust?

I dunno, I mean the Stormfather is apparently both a Cognitive Shadow (Tanavast's) and a spren. The borderlines might not be that clear. It's not inherently obvious to me that Syl has more in common with a flamespren than she does with (Mistborn: Secret History spoilers)

Yeah, Inquisitors are not standardized. 9 is normal, but Marsh had 11. A-Duralumin is rare, so it's probably only found on those with more than 9. Do Inquisitors have any use for A-Copper? I mean they can't exactly pretend to be non Allomancers because of the giant spikes sticking out of their faces... 6 Allomantic basic metals (excluding Tin and Copper), Feruchemical Gold, Allomantic Atium... leaves room for one doubled-up power (Bronze if they had to settle for a non-Seeker Misting, otherwise probably a combat power like Pewter or Steel). And since not all had the Atium or Feruchemical gold spike, those might have had an extra doubled power (probably a fighting power).

Elend has enormous power, but relatively limited skill. It's not just inexperience, either, IMO - by the time HOA begins he's been a Mistborn for a year. Vin has an exceptional intuition for Allomancy - probably because of Connection with Preservation or something like that. Stuff that she could just do pretty much immediately, he'd have to take time to learn. (And since Vin didn't know why she could pierce copperclouds, Elend might not have known he had the potential & thus never bothered to try to learn.) And Vin's base (pre-spike) strength is more than normal, though nowhere near Lerasium Mistborn level.

Do we know that Nightblood couldn't eat a whole Shard given time? EDIT: I think a human bond with a non-sapient spren would be more like what Rosharan animals have. It might grant some advantage related to a Surge (like how a chasmfiend or skyeel is lighter than it should be) but not the full Surge control a Radiant has, IMO.

Yeah, that analogy was not terribly good. I still think fabrial types are paired, but yeah, there isn't really much evidence for it.

Well, the fact that Threnody got badly messed up doesn't negate the fact that Sel didn't -- and Devotion and Dominion were directly Invested in Sel, while Ambition doesn't seem to have been Invested in Threnody. Well, Honor's Splintering seems to have happened without much human notice, since Vorinism still worships him as an alive and currently-reigning god, and Aharietiam is still spoken of as the 'Last' Desolation.

Yeah, I think this is right. A Radiant with active Stormlight healing can survive Shardblades, so I think an actively tapping Feruchemical Gold user could as well. I don't think the situation is that different from radically destructive physical damage. I think if the brain was destroyed or the person was decapitated or blown apart, they'd have to already be tapping to survive it. A sniper rifle shot (that they don't see/hear coming) that destroyed the correct part of the brain would probably be fatal even without aluminum bullets. I'm not sure what the threshold is, though. Wax only gets handed the Bands when he's already talking to Harmony in the Cognitive Realm - though Harmony might have stretched a point there, so who knows if that would work normally...

I don't think so - a Shard's Investiture pervades all three Realms on a planet when they Invest there, I believe. I think it's a lot more than just the actual Splinters, even outside Scadrial (for example, on Nalthis, Endowment's Splinters are Divine Breath, but at least every human and quite probably every living thing* contains some of her BioChromatic Investiture). *since Vasher's lifesense can detect grass I'll agree Odium hasn't Invested as much as the Scadrian Shards did, but I'm not sure that's the issue, anyway. I don't think it's a case of "they can leave but lose whatever amount of power they've Invested into the planet"; I think they simply can't leave without something major happening Secret History That WOB says that if they 'divested themselves' the Perpendicularity would probably go away; that doesn't necessarily mean they can do that any time they want.

Legends don't take nearly that long. Arthur's time was 1500 years ago to us, but he was already a legend in the 10th century if not earlier, and it had lost almost any connection to potential real history by the 12th century. But it can be much quicker than that. El Cid had an epic poem written about him within about a century of his death. The old stories about George Washington (throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac, chopping down a cherry tree, never lying) are from shortly after he died. Davy Crockett was legendary really fast too. There were fictional, exaggerated stories about Kit Carson's adventures being published while he was actually out on the frontier doing stuff. IMO "just long enough for legends to develop" probably means beyond living memory but not distant history - say more than 50-60 years but no more than a couple of centuries.

I'd really like to know why kandra can't grow hair and bones... they may not be technically alive themselves, but they are produced by living cells, and it seems less complex than a lot of the stuff the kandra manage in Era 2 especially. I'd think it's a Realmatic/magical limitation, except that there's a WOB that the Kandra don't get any special Realmatic/magical benefits from the bones in terms of mimicking people, it's just physical structure. (Of course, pursue that line of thought far enough and the kandra could basically become practically-invulnerable living nanotech factories, so...)

Do we know that Odium was imprisoned by "enemy action?" In Mistborn: Secret History, So Odium may be unable to leave the Rosharan system simply because he's Invested in Braize. IMO the "Not a direct result of the Oathpact, but the Oathpact was part of it." WOB is non-specific enough that it could just mean that Odium invested in Braize as part of his war against Honor and the Heralds.

The Shards are all 'broken gods', principles separated from a greater context, so Honor isn't necessarily at all equivalent to Goodness. I'd think there could be evil Radiants. What there can't be are unscrupulous Radiants, working solely for personal advantage without concern for a 'code' or principles. Some of the Orders' codes are probably more corruptible than others, but a Skybreaker enforcing laws for a tyrannical government seems entirely possible. There's a WOB that the Lord Ruler might have qualified to be a Skybreaker. We don't know enough about the Oaths for most of the Orders, but I'd imagine there are others that could be twisted fairly easily.

I kind of doubt it, because when you steal Allomancy with Hemalurgy, you still need to burn the right metal to use the power. There may very well be a Hemalurgy-based way to make Selish magic work off-world, but I don't think it would be as simple as "all stolen Selish magic is automatically location-independent". You'd probably also have to steal the victim/donor's Connection to their birthplace - Connection appears to be a spiritweb thing, so it should be Hemalurgically stealable, if you knew how. You might end up needing 2 atium spikes per Selish power though (one for the actual magic and one for the Connection), which could get expensive (though maybe one of the unknown spikes out of the sixteen normal metals steals connection as a human attribute, who knows...) It'd also make you easier to control (since you have twice the spikes-per-power of someone using Hemalurgically-stolen Scadrian magic).

The Well is far more powerful than Vin's pre-Ascension Mist-burning, yes (though by absorbing all the mists, Vin Ascended to hold the entire Shard, which is even more powerful than the Well). However, the mists and the Well are still two forms of the same thing - Preservation's Investiture expressed in physical form, in gaseous and liquid states respectively. The Well is more concentrated. (Lerasium is the third, solid state - while it has a specific Allomantic effect, it's still fundamentally the same thing And I'm not convinced the pre-full-Ascension mist burning is the same kind of boost as duralumin. Even beyond the issue of power (Vin exploded Kredik Shaw, which is well beyond what we see her do with duralumin Steelpushes, impressive as they are), there may be a qualitative difference too. Once she starts mist-burning, her broken bones seem to become irrelevant; I'm not convinced just super-charging the effect of Allomantic pewter would do that. It makes the bones and muscles and so on stronger (and also increases dexterity/balance etc.) but I'm not sure increased strength would logically le you work around actually broken structural elements.

Is it actually a different mechanism though? The amount of power in the Well is much larger than Vin pulling out TLR's bracers or Elend using Allomancy without metals, but in both cases, the person is using 'raw' Investiture outside the constraints of the normal magic system. And when Vin draws in all the mists in the process of Ascension, she's still using it 'like' the normal metals rather than doing arbitrary reality-rewriting, but her supercharged pewter lets her ignore broken bones. That's not really a logical result of super-powering the normal use of Allomantic pewter, as a duralumin flare would; the physical structure would still have to be there and functioning. The liquid in the Well is basically the same thing as the mists, in a different phase. I think there's less to the distinction than it seems.

I believe Ruin gets to the contents of copperminds while the information is in some kind of Cognitive limbo during storage or transfer. The reason Ruin can't alter stuff written in metal is because it's blindingly bright to the perception of Scadrial's Shards - he can't see what's there precisely enough to alter it. Similarly, TLR's Obligators could work in metal-lined rooms to blind Ruin to what they were doing with the atium geodes - he couldn't see through the walls. So I think as long as the information is in the Physical Realm and the hard drive is made of proper metals (can you Allomantically Push/Pull on metalloids like silicon? Probably not...), Ruin would be blind to it.

IMO, this is pretty clearly the case. Definitely he was influenced during his time in the Well - that's discussed in the HoA Epigraphs, Ch 17 The Ch 29 epigraph also says It's not explicitly said that this was Preservation's influence, but it seems very suggestive at the very least. Also, in Secret History, Preservation's shadow says of TLR's use of the Well "It was spectacular to watch! And now, he is Preserved. I am glad you didn't find a way to destroy him. Everyone else passes, but not him. It's wonderful." (he also calls TLR "unchanging" and says "Better to have stability. Yes. A constant leader.") -- TLR was probably more interested in protecting his empire from the effects of advanced technology, rather than himself personally, but he would actually have been somewhat vulnerable if technology got too far - I don't think Gold Compounding would save him from an aluminum bullet fired from a sniper rifle into the right part of his brain, or from an explosion large enough to vaporize his body and his metalminds. EDIT: TLR would actually have been somewhat more vulnerable to big explosions than another Gold Compounder, since he was dependent on his atiumminds. Even if he personally could heal from it, anything that completely separated his atiumminds from his body would kill him. Miles Hundredlives could survive being cut in two, but TLR only could if the cut left his atiumminds attached to the largest piece of him (which would be the piece that healed). Being blown to pieces would be almost certainly fatal.

We don't have enough information, but IMO the Splintering of Honor is key here. This doesn't seem to be a known event on Roshar - the Vorin cultures still think Honor/the Almighty is alive & actively being God - so somehow Odium splintered Honor without creating the vast destruction and death of a Desolation. Honor was Splintered after the Recreance -- maybe shortly after? Somehow, the Radiants had a choice - to let Honor be Splintered, without harm to humanity; or to fight to prevent it, inducing another Desolation, which they might lose without the Heralds, and even if they won would kill off 90%+ of humanity and destroy civilization. So they broke their oaths, rejecting Honor, and let him die. I don't entirely think my old theory on these lines (linked in my signature) is 100% correct, since I don't know how to reconcile it with the 'Heralds breaking starts a Desolation' thing. OTOH, somehow we have to reconcile: - Honor was Splintered without a major cataclysm on Roshar; - Dominion and Devotion were Splintered on Sel, and despite their being no living Shard like Cultivation to oppose Odium there, humanity survived and the world remains "Earthlike", not twisted into some kind of hellscape. It's possible that Odium is only actually interested in killing and torturing beings of very high Investiture/power level like Shards/Heralds. He might not really be a threat to ordinary humans, or even 'ordinary' Cosmere magic users. (Yes, I know there is the vision of Roshar crumbling to dust. But if this idea is true, Honor isn't necessarily a reliable source. He isn't necessarily strictly a 'good' Shard - the word honor has a lot of meanings, many of which are good but some of which can be quite destructive. And it seems that the Shard Honor is about Oaths and Bonds, not necessarily Justice and Virtue. Even if he's honest, he might be warped by his Intent -- after thousands of years of the Oathpact, he might truly believe Odium escaping is the worst possible thing even if that's not actually true.)

I would think he could. When Shard power is being accessed "directly" rather than through the normal magic systems, it can do a lot of crazy things outside the normal rules, even if a non-Shard is the one actually manipulating the power: Rashek with the Well did a bunch of things outside the normal Metallic Arts power-sets, like moving the planet and re-engineering the genetics/metabolism of bacteria, plants, and people, and Leras still held Preservation at the time (though mentally diminished). But the expense of power might be even greater than usual, so whether Ruin would be willing to do it is another question.

Probably... I remembered the 'half Miles' WOB, but thought it might be a slightly different situation since each half would have half his brain, while in a decapitation, the larger portion would have zero brain. And Brandon didn't directly reply to the TLR part. Well, TLR did specifically push on the metals in Vin's stomach (it describes "It felt like a Steelpush, slamming against the metals inside her stomach" and "the metals in her stomach threatening to rip free from her body"). Maybe he could push on the metals inside somebody's blood, but I kind of doubt it -- the Bands at full "draw" are probably more powerful than even TLR was (he wasn't emitting mist) and trace metals in the ground might be traces of actual metal while the iron in blood is part of a protein, therefore non-metallic. I don't think the metal that is part of the chemical formula of the stone could be described as "trace" - it's a significant portion of the total mass.

Yes they did - Vin's metallurgist in WOA gets the aluminum to make duralumin (and the other alloys they experiment with) from noble silverware. What TLR/the Ministry kept secret was the knowledge that it was an Allomantic metal. Was TLR actually completely beheaded (as opposed to having most of his neck cut through, but not completely separated from the body)? I'd think that would separate his brain from his goldminds, so he wouldn't be able to heal... or would the soul stay with the body, so he'd grow a new head? That would only work if he was already tapping or Compounding-burning gold at the time, though. Either way, though, an aluminum weapon could kill him by damaging his brain sufficiently that he couldn't heal - even an already-operating gold healing couldn't fix it as long as the weapon stayed there. It would be really tricky to arrange without guns, though, since aluminum isn't hard enough to make arrowheads that could pierce a skull -- the best bet would probably be something like a warhammer with a spike/military pick. A minor point, but I think he pushes on the metals in Vin's stomach, not the iron in her blood - I doubt even TLR could manage that, especially as iron in blood etc. aren't actually in metallic form, and you can't Push on rocks - limestone is calcium carbonate etc. Well, sure, but cutting off two arms at once isn't inconceivable with a large blade and pewter-boosted strength - Vin cut Straff in two, which is probably a lot harder than cutting just the arms. All these things are pretty low-probability, but if you expect to live forever you have to watch out for the low-probability things too. Yeah, that's why I included the F-Electrum to not faint. He'd cut himself open without tapping Gold (but while tapping massive Electrum), stick the atiummind into his body cavity, then tap massive Gold to heal the wound. I think yes, if the healing rate was sufficient to keep up with the cutting rate. Not if he did it intelligently - all TLR has to do is demonstrate his power to the existing leaders and once they're convinced that they personally won't survive unless they do what TLR wants, he can leave the existing infrastructure in place (and if any don't fall in line, he kills them and tries again with their successor). No need to actually fight armies. I don't think creating vast armies of beings easily controlled by Ruin was a good tradeoff for being able to take direct control immediately (especially since - being immortal - he could slowly change those existing systems over centuries, probably without people even realizing what was happening). He was just impatient. While that's all true, it still seems like a poor tradeoff to me - TLR considered the possibility that he would die (as shown by those plates in the storage caverns), at which point the Inquisitors become extremely powerful agents for Ruin. I think TLR really didn't know what he was doing, though. When he took power, he was young, driven by anger, and with absolutely no experience in governing anything; and I think Ruin's influence kept him from learning as much from experience as he could/should have. But IMO he was a fairly mean person even without Ruin's influence; he can't have been that touched by Ruin right at the beginning (the HOA epigraphs even say that his actions holding the power show Preservation's influence), and a decent person wouldn't have turned most of the world's Feruchemists into mindless blobs to avoid something that might be a threat to him centuries down the line.

Re-reading HOA, and now I'm really confused. Vin says at one point that the normal Inquisitor spikes are 2 steel in the eyes, 1 steel in the shoulders, and 6 in the sides/ribs - 4 bronze and 2 steel. That would allow for the basic 8 allomantic metals (with one doubled), but neither steel nor bronze can grant Allomantic Atium or Feruchemical Gold. Now, we know from WOB that the Inquisitors didn't all have those powers, but surely most did - without either, they'd be too vulnerable: Atium's just too overwhelming a weapon. Also, the HOA epigraphs talk about the Inquisitors gaining their healing powers from a pewter spike stealing/granting Feruchemical gold, and the way it's written implies that was part of the "normal" power set. Weird...