cometaryorbit

I think there's more to Odium's previous advantage than being unInvested in a planet, since he was able to take down Devotion and Dominion, and Cultivation was probably helping out Honor to some degree. - I don't think Harmony would really be disadvantaged by inexperience with his power, though. Even with the incomplete power of the Well, Rashek figured out how to genetically engineer ash-eating bacteria in mere minutes. I'd imagine that it probably took Harmony a lot less than 300 years to learn how his Shardic powers worked. Other Shards are apparently trying to limit his knowledge about other worlds, but IMO that wouldn't affect his ability to understand his own powers.

Maybe a super-spren like the Stormfather is capable of bonding multiple Radiants at once, but it's dangerous for them? The Stormfather survived the Recreance despite being bonded, right? Maybe he wouldn't have if there had been more Bondsmiths, and then Roshar's ecology and Investiture cycle would have been thoroughly wrecked. I never thought of that... it makes a lot of sense.

Sounds right. I guess the question is, does a Shardblade passing through any bit of flesh have that effect, or does a sufficiently superficial graze that doesn't reach the 'core' of any body part have no effect? Does it have to pass through one of the lines of the spiritweb 'Hemalurgic overlay' on the body that's been mentioned in WOB?

I don't think they were hidden at all - several times in TFE it's commented on that TLR openly wears metal jewelry and the nobles copy this for status reasons, despite it making them more vulnerable to Allomancy. - TFE Ch. 22 - TFE Ch. 28

I don't think they were any more invested than anybody else's metalminds. They weren't very big (WOA talks about how Vin and Elend sold the atium from them, but there really wasn't that much) so they couldn't hold terribly much.

I always wondered about that last bit. Wasn't that a major risk to take in terms of preserving their mystique/image of invulnerability, given that they might end up fighting a Mistborn with Atium? But then TLR did a bunch of stupid things, probably because he was at least half crazy most of the time. (spoiler for length)

By the time Ruin was directing things, I'm not sure there were any Feruchemists left (except Sazed). The Terris refugees talk about Inquisitors attacking the Synod late in Well of Ascension, before Ruin is released. Ruin was able to mess with Marsh and Zane while imprisoned, but I don't know that he was really controlling the Inquisitors as a whole yet.

I think it would be analogous to (major WOR spoilers) -- I think death fixes most forms of magically-induced damage so they won't prevent the person passing Beyond. Dead koloss show up in the Cognitive realm as people, even though Hemalurgy has massively messed up their soul. I'd think being killed by a shardblade or Nightblood would make a person pass Beyond faster (reduce your lingering-time in the Cognitive) but not actually destroy the part of them that goes Beyond. Soulcasting is probably similar. I doubt Soulcasting somebody into a fire that then goes out totally erases them from the Cognitive and Spiritual realms.

I'm really impressed at the little details on there, like the year MCLXXIII and Fabrial Surround.

Thinking about this epigraph quote: The word 'bind' suggests this isn't something like a Shardblade, a weapon in the normal sense. It sounds more like how spren are trapped in a fabrial. Now, there doesn't seem to be any way to bind 'mortal' people or animals into a fabrial, but this quote seems pretty mythified given the "steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece" - we know that Heralds are actually normal-human-sized. So maybe the Dawnshards are a vague, mythical memory of a fabrial that could trap either normal or void spren - with the 'normal' spren being turned into "mortal creatures" as the details were forgotten? Alternately, maybe the Dawnshard created a two-way bond -- maybe it was something like a Meta-Fabrial that could create and control bonds between spren and Physical realm life. The Ryshadium don't seem to be true Roshar natives, yet they have inherent spren bonds - maybe they were created with a Dawnshard.

I think that's kind of the opposite - Vin's physical body was destroyed (or, well, transmuted I guess - it showed up again after she died for real) because she was using so much power that a human body couldn't withstand it. EDIT: There is Leras's comment about "the metal, flared at the moment of transition" from SH suggesting that Kelsier got more out of malatium because he was dying.

So, if a Shardblade cuts through the spine it's fatal, and if it cuts through the core of a limb that limb becomes "killed"/permanently paralyzed. If it cut through an individual finger, would that finger be "killed", or is it major limbs only? If someone were stabbed in the stomach with a Shardblade, but not deeply enough to reach the spine, would it "kill" the internal organs or would it do nothing?

The Set seem to be working for an 'alien' power hostile to Scadrial as a whole; Harmony interfering with them doesn't mean he would interfere with Kelsier, even if he disapproved of what Kell did. Also, if the Set knew that more spikes would let Harmony control them, they'd have avoided doing it even if he wouldn't actually control them, because they couldn't know he'd refrain from doing so.

The question also says stomach and piercings, specifically. I think it will burn metalminds, but only if they are inside the body or piercing the body like TLR's Atiumminds, not if they're simply worn. Which ironically means that if people had known about Chromium in Era 1, a Leecher or Mistborn could kill TLR. No wonder he kept the other metals secret... (Though they'd have to maintain contact for a few seconds, which might be really hard. Depends how complacent he was/how quick he reacted, and whether he went around all the time with a full set of metalminds.)

Ah, OK. Still, though, all Inquisitor spikes are in locations that would be painful if not fatal for a normal human; an earring isn't. Now that I think of it, Wax's earring is Hemalurgic too, and Ruin definitely isn't messing with his perceptions. I think the Pathians would have trouble recruiting if becoming one meant constant pain (and I don't think Harmony would have set it up, either).

It's entirely possible. I don't think we know enough about the nature of Hemalurgically-unaltered mistwraiths to be sure. Cognitive aspects and Hemalurgy are weird - dead Koloss show up as normal humans in the Cognitive Realm in SH. So mistwraiths might have a human-type Cognitive aspect and afterlife. I think of Mistwraiths as a separate non-sapient species rather than as the young of a sapient species, since adult Mistwraiths reproduce Mistwraith offspring*, with Kandra being sort of an artificial 'magical hack', but who knows. Mistwraiths are definitely at least human-derived, so there are potentially more ethical issues than with a natural animal. I don't think Kelsier thinks of them as human, though. Maybe he learned their true nature when he held Preservation - he certainly could have, since Sazed could see what prior users of the power had done, and Rashek made mistwraiths with the power of Preservation at the Well - but he had a lot of other things to think about then, and I doubt he'd retain the full expanded mind of a Shard after he handed it over. Would his Cognitive body manifest as a human body in the Physical, though? Spren are apparently a lot different on the two sides, and they need a Nahel bond to stay conscious in the Physical. He might become something like a Threnodite Shade (though probably non-contagious). *HOA Ch. 80 Part 2 Annotation - "Remember, all of the kandra save for the First Generation were born first as mistwraiths. That race of creatures breeds true, and has only a fifty-year lifespan. They die off, but birth new members."

IIRC the Hybrid metals are basically Physical metals (that's why pewter spikes can steal Feruchemical gold), but having two quadrants called Physical would be confusing. While, as you point out, electrum wasn't originally meant to be in that quadrant at all, now that it canonically is, IMO it probably stores neurotransmitters or something of that nature - it probably works via brain chemistry rather than spiritweb. The description sounds, to me, rather like a controllable form of bipolar disorder - except that the high-determination/manic state seems to have less associated problems.

Before AU and White Sand, I thought 'trellium' was probably Dominion's god metal (or rather, the splinter-metal of a splinter of Dominion) and that 'Trell' was not a Shard but a name used by multiple beings. I'm leaning more toward the Autonomy theory now, given (AU and White Sand very minor spoilers) but we do know that there are no other Shards on Scadrial in AoL era, so the splinter-metal used by a non-shardic group theory is IMO still quite viable.

My theory is he used a non-sapient Mistwraith, not an actual Kandra. The spike would then act as a Blessing, bypassing the Cognitive blockage mistwraiths have - except that it would get Kelsier's consciousness, not a new consciousness.

Where does the concept of all hemalurgic spikes being painful come from? I don't think it can be universal, because if Vin's earring hurt that would have been a huge tip-off, given that healed ear piercings normally don't.

A split situation like that would probably still destroy the warriors-on-the-bottom structure of Shin society, though. In our world, situations of uncertainty and chaos very often lead to various forms of military or warrior-class rule (knights and feudalism arising from the chaos of invasions after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, juntas and warlords in the modern Third World). The split loyalty situation would have to be resolved quickly to avoid ending up with a state of continued civil war or at least low-level continuing violence, and once a rebel group strong enough not to be quickly crushed had arisen, I can't see them accepting a resolution that would put them back at the bottom. And Shinovar has the same territory as Shin Kak Nish on the Silver Kingdoms map, so it couldn't even be a case of rebel groups splitting off and forming their own nations rather than overthrowing the central leadership. I'm sure that actually is the situation. However, I don't think that that would be stable over Roshar-history lengths of time; beliefs change. If the current social structure arose shortly after the Heralds left the Honorblades behind, that would be close to 5000 Earth years.

This is a tricky question partially because the situation is one we don't see in the modern Western/technologically-connected world (and haven't in centuries). There really is no effective government or justice system over the highprinces; technically they are subject to the king, but this is very much an early-medieval feudal situation where the lords only listen to the king if it's in their own interest. Sadeas has an army personally loyal to him/his dynasty, not the kingdom as a whole; there is no real way for Elhokar (...or even a hypothetical halfway-competent, non-useless king of Alethkar...) to try and sentence Sadeas for his crimes - at least not without sparking a civil war while the kingdom as a whole is at war with an external enemy. Given that, this is something that could be argued for ages. I think, technically, Adolin was probably still in the wrong since he acted totally alone without any kind of sanction. However, depending on exactly how Alethi custom on these sorts of things works, if one wanted to defend Adolin's actions, one could argue that he was essentially acting as a representative of the Kholin dynasty, doing what Dalinar himself couldn't for political reasons. I think there's a plausible argument that Sadeas's betrayal of Dalinar in battle could be seen to have created a de facto state of war between the Kholins and the Sadeas, or at least been sufficient grounds for a reprisal.

Well, yes, but what I mean is, how is that obedience maintained, especially over historically long periods of time? For the warrior class, "these people who are treating us like dirt can't touch weapons, and wouldn't know the first thing about fighting even if they were willing to break the taboo - it would be really easy to take over" is a really obvious thought. Surely the Shin are like all other humans - they've got to have people who don't just accept what they're told. It seems terribly unstable - in the sense that a very small rebellion could quickly wreck/overturn the whole society. One small group of warriors goes rogue & has some early successes, others join them or just stand by to see what happens... pretty soon all of Shinovar is in upheaval. I can't imagine them going thousands of years without having even one rebellion, not even Dynastic Ancient Egypt or the pre-Meiji Japanese dynasties were that stable. Or even worse, some foreign agents (either of a nation or just some opportunistic wannabe warlord) come in and stir up the warrior class, maybe assassinate a few key people in Shin society/government... The Stone Shamans might be able to crush this sort of thing with the Honorblades, but realistically in a pre-industrial society they couldn't expect to know about it fast enough to catch it early... a communication network with spanreeds could avoid this problem, but modern fabrials seem to be comparatively recent, so that solution would still support the current Shin class structure being new (on the scale of Roshar's very long history). Even if they didn't catch it early, they might be able to crush it by main force... but IMO it wouldn't take long for it to evolve into a situation where the old social order was irretrievably broken whichever side finally won. And using the Honorblades would be dangerous - it doesn't actually make you invulnerable, what if the rebels get hold of one?

I kind of doubt wide-scale counterattacks with Honorblades would work out for them. Seven Honorblades aren't enough to matter on the scale of a supercontinent-wide war. They could assassinate leaders like Szeth does, but that's as likely to make your enemies more determined to kill you (eg Vengeance Pact) as to win a war for you. It's like in the Mistborn series where it's repeatedly pointed out that one person with powers can't realistically fight an army. It would make a lot of sense if the Shin disdain for warfare is historically recent though. I can't see how that setup could last long, given that the other classes aren't even allowed to touch weapons, what keeps the disdained warrior class from just taking over by force? Nobody else could even try to fight them...

This is likely a regional/population difference; in some parts of the world brown eyes overwhelmingly predominate.