cometaryorbit

The knowledge itself might not be superhuman, but to do everything he did in just one day - not just deduce the stuff about the future, the Unmade etc., but invent a whole new language too (and probably more stuff given how little of the Diagram we've seen) - I think is significantly beyond human potential, even of someone like Leonardo da Vinci. Each of the individual things he came up with might be well within what a smart human could do, but so much in so little time, and with such a high accuracy, I think is just too much. And Adrotagia talks about how Diagram Day was ridiculously beyond the smartest end of his 'normal' intelligence fluctuations. I don't think they're dumb enough not to have considered it. Ch. 79 WOR epigraph - They know perfectly well that the Diagram may, probably will, lead them to inhuman courses of action. It's just not considered relevant. Mr. T's lack of compassion (or empathy) when super-smart doesn't mean he will randomly insert pointless cruelty into plans, but that suffering won't deter him from choosing the otherwise most certain/efficient/whatever plan. That's morally wrong in my view, but for someone who accepts the Diagramists' premise that "The cost is irrelevant", it's entirely rational. So long as the Diagramists trust that Mr. T's goal was genuinely to produce a plan that saves humanity, Mr. T's demonstrated lack of compassion doesn't provide any basis not to trust the Diagram.

Along with cerium and mischmetal (see the third post), gallium and galinstan complete the Electromagnetic (Allomantic term) or Perceptual (Feruchemical term) Quadrant of metals. Gallium Allomantic (Internal, Pulling): Burning gallium allows an Allomancer to sense magnetic fields. This is a navigational advantage, but as carrying a compass replaces the basic use of gallium, it is often considered one of the weakest non-Gnat abilities. Gallium Mistings are therefore called Compassheads. However, a truly skilled user - such as a Gallium Savant - can detect many subtle things, even developing something similar to an Inquisitor's strange sight by sensing the inherent magnetic properties (paramagnetic, diamagnetic) of ordinary objects not usually considered magnetic. Feruchemical: Gallium stores scent - not the ability to smell (which falls under tin) but the odor of the Feruchemist's own breath, sweat, skin oils etc. Storing allows one to hide from dogs, while tapping extreme levels can nauseate those nearby. However, Galliumminds are impractical to use, since gallium melts just below body temperature. This is a little valued power, and Gallium Ferrings are sometimes derisively called Stinkers. Galinstan Allomantic (Internal, Pushing): Burning galinstan allows the Allomancer to create electrical charge in the body, shocking people on contact - usually in their fingertips. Galinstan Mistings are called Shockers. Feruchemical: Since galinstan is liquid even at room temperature, making metalminds extremely impractical, this metal's feruchemical property is largely academic. However, experimentation has determined that it stores presence. While storing, one appears undistinguished. While tapping, one is hard to ignore - even if people are looking in the opposite direction, they feel the Feruchemist's presence. This is considered by Cosmere scholars to be similar to the BioChromatic presence of those holding many Nalthian Breaths.

Cerium Allomancy: generate light (you glow brightly) Feruchemy: store/tap loudness. When tapping, you can deafen people by speaking above a whisper and your footsteps sound like thunder; when storing, you have to shout to be heard by someone at arm's length and your footsteps are inaudible. Mischmetal (mostly cerium & lanthanum with some praseodymium & neodymium) Allomancy: absorb light (the area within a dozen yards or so is cast into total darkness, or near-darkness if illuminated by full daylight or something brighter) Feruchemy: store/tap transparency. When storing, your skin looks different since vision can't penetrate even the thin top layer of cells ; when tapping, you become translucent or (at high levels of tapping) transparent.

Quite possibly, given that (minor Edgedancer spoilers) the possibility for Splinters and Shards to manifest in metallic Physical form doesn't seem to be limited to Scadrial. That WoB might mean that to produce a Perpendicularity and "natural" god-metal production would require full Investment in Scadrial.

There are several WOBs that say metal doesn't have to be in the stomach - an the most recent one strongly implies that there doesn't have to be some kind of special trick to burn not-in-the-stomach metal (which IIRC used to be speculated to explain why Vin didn't burn her earring and Inquisitors don't burn their spikes - which I now think is probably something specific to Hemalurgy or Invested metal piercings rather than piercings in general.) @Andy92: yeah, the ettmetal / one connection was brought up before it was confirmed to be the same thing as harmonium, but it wasn't clear whether that supported the harmonium theory or the lithium theory (since it's the first metal on the periodic table).

I think their awareness is primarily or at least largely in the Spiritual Realm rather than the Cognitive, actually, though they can perceive and in some way manifest in all three realms. http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kwt='spiritual realm' That depends on what sDNA actually is, which I don't think is confirmed. I always understood sDNA to be the inheritable part of the spiritweb, which was fixed barring Hemalurgy, lerasium etc., while the spiritweb as a whole could change through life as Connections are built, diminished etc. So I'm not sure either a Shard Vessel or a Returned has modified sDNA. Their Spiritweb as a whole is definitely changed -- in the Shard's case, very dramatically! The changes a Returned experiences are definitely less dramatic, but they also hold far less Investiture - the equivalent of only 2000 Breaths So I think it's ultimately a question of definitions. A Returned definitely doesn't experience the radical transformation a Shard Vessel does, but that might be a matter of scale.

Or maybe if a Mistborn ingested Ettmetal, it would immediately burn Allomantically rather than chemically. Elend burns lerasium when unconscious, and pewter can be burned unconsciously, so it wouldn't be totally crazy.

Maybe. There are some anomalous things going on with the Southerners (like their apparent hyper-sensitivity to cold, when they ought to be genetically normal, and their possession of Feruchemy). I wouldn't necessarily assume that what we hear in Bands of Mourning is 100% of the truth. I also wouldn't assume Kelsier is working at cross-purposes to Sazed at that point...

Yeah, and IIRC, it's Sunmaker who claimed that the visions were fake, as part of seizing power from the Hierocracy. Given that we know Honor (well, the Stormfather acting as a proxy) did send visions to Dalinar and apparently others, it seems quite possible that the Hierocracy really was telling the truth.

I'm not sure the cause and effect necessarily work that way. The WOB about persisting in the Cognitive Realm after death suggests using the ability makes you more Connected and last longer. So it might be that allomancers start out with more innate investiture from Preservation, and develop greater Connection to Preservation through using Allomancy -- a pre-Snapped person with Allomantic potential might not have any more Connection to Preservation than anyone else. In that case, there'd still be a link... but I think Connections are always developed in the course of life, so not so close a link that Feruchemically altering one would automatically alter the other. (And Feruchemy is very specific about things like that anyway - using Feruchemical iron to become 500x denser doesn't make you bulletproof, even though it probably ought to by normal physics.)

I don't think we know enough about the nature of Investiture to know if it works that way or not. I mean, Compounding is fueling Feruchemy (Preservation plus Ruin) with pure Preservation. I think it's at least implied that other magic system combinations are possible - and at the very least Vasher and apparently Nightblood, who are both BioChromatic Entities and thus 'of' Endowment, can be fueled by Stormlight. It's therefore not clear to me that "raw" Investiture necessarily has different properties based on the Shard it's "of". Something makes Breath different from Stormlight different from the Mists of Scadrial, but it could be the interaction with the Shardworld rather than the Shard itself. Or it could be some third thing we don't know yet -- the difference between Breath and Stormlight could be a matter of Identity and Connection for example. If you could "bind" Stormlight so it fully acted like Breath - stuck to you rather than dissipating, granted Heightenings (in sufficient quantity), and could be used for Awakening - I don't think that would diminish Honor/Cultivation and increase Endowment. The power would still be 'connected' the way a Splinter of a live Shard is.

Well... I think it's both. I think that the distinction between the innate Investiture that lets you use magic and the other (kinetic?) Investiture that's used in magic doesn't exist in Awakening. According to the most recent (and most detailed) WoB on the topic, you don't need anything extra to use Breath. I also don't see any reason to think Feruchemical Nicrosil is that limited -- Mistborn third trilogy is going to be a world-crossing series after all. I think you could theoretically store at least any Innate Investiture and maybe any Investiture you are currently holding, but if you really stored all your innate Investiture you'd die or become non-intelligent or something. I don't think that's anything like confirmed - that would only be true if the 'spiritweb is made of investiture' theory is correct, which I don't think it is, at least not in anything more than the sense that all matter on Scadrial is 'made of investiture' -- that is, converted from Investiture rather than currently being Investiture, IMO, Connection, Identity, and (innate) Investiture are distinct components of the spiritweb. (And maybe luck too, because that's a Feruchemical Spiritual attribute, but no data on that one yet.)

I think Breath is Innate Investiture, so storing it would make perfect sense. (And Divine Breath definitely can be, since the first WoB specifically mentions "a Returned breath").

"An organic host that is far removed from having been alive" doesn't specify it has to be animal... I wonder if you Awakened a whole dead tree (as opposed to a stick or wooden object), would it be Type II or III?

It may be more direct than that. Eye color on Roshar seems to be different than on Earth -- there's a WoB that suggests heterochromia (one dark and one light eye) is the most likely outcome for the child of a darkeyed and a lighteyed parent, whereas on Earth it's pretty rare and not of that origin. And there's apparently a clear distinction between "brown" (darkeyed) and "tan" (lighteyed) eyes, and there are green lighteyes and green darkeyes. So I'm thinking that all lighteyes are descended from Radiants or Shardbearers, and that the blue, green, etc. eye colors of lighteyes probably are much more vivid/bright/distinct (maybe even slightly luminous?) than the equivalent colors on our world. Eye colors are often pretty hard to distinguish except very close, on Earth.

Depends. If Odium is getting stronger/building up forces, starting the Desolation early -- before Odium is ready -- might be the best chance of winning it. And Gavilar wanted to get the Parshendi involved for this, so it sounds like if his plan had worked, Alethkar would be much better shape to deal with the Desolation than they actually are now that it's happened.

I'd been thinking along the corrupted Essences line too, with smoke for midnight essence and stone for thunderclast, but I was thinking that the Ten Deaths are what you get when an Odiumspren possesses inanimate matter, while Voidbringers are what you get when an Odiumspren possesses a Listener. I believe one of Dalinar's visions shows a spren going into stone and a thunderclast emerging. That would explain why the Shardblade cuts rather than soul-cuts the Midnight Essence, if its body is really "inanimate" matter (in the same way that a Shardblade cuts rather than soul-cuts 'dead' parts of a living thing like hair and shells). Or maybe voidbinding is actually not Odium's magic but a Honor plus Odium balance magic the way that (Mistborn first trilogy spoilers) Or maybe Honor was the first Shard to Invest in Roshar, so 10 became Roshar's number and now anybody who Invests there gets a 10 based magic system.

That's probably true, but I'm thinking there might have to be more to it than that, because very few Nalthians could survive wielding Nightblood long enough to get much out of that exponential increase -- in the modern era, probably only the God King. Whereas the ch. 55 annotation implies that just letting that secret out, without any exceptional new source of Investiture or cross-world magic stuff (like handing Nightblood to a Nicrosil Compounder or something), would by itself lead to vast destruction. Shashara might've been able to get to that level in the Battle of Twilight Falls, though, since she must have been at least 9th heightening to make Nightblood in the first place. So maybe that's what scared Vasher so much.

Oh, probably not -- that annotation certainly implies there are effective large-scale uses, and I don't think Vasher is cold enough to have killed his wife over something that would ultimately be of little significance. But what are those worse abilities, and how do they fit with what we have seen? Maybe there's some way for Nightblood, or a potential "improved model" Type IV Awakened Shardblade, to produce a defensive effect that would prevent the wielder from being shot down beyond sword range. Possibly an improved version of its enhancement of the wielder's strength/speed? The enhancement ability is a bit similar to Allomantic Pewter, and when Vin fueled Pewter burning with the Mists in HOA, it either healed her injuries or made them irrelevant. So maybe if Nightblood was "fully consuming Investiture" from some major source, he could allow the wielder to heal fast enough, or become physically tough enough, to ignore arrow wounds? Or, maybe there's a way to expand and enhance the nausea effect of Nightblood. If there were a 1000-foot aura of nausea so powerful that people other than the wielder were unable to fight, just lying on the ground retching, that would protect the wielder from anything shorter ranged than a pretty advanced rifle (which only Scadrial might have).

I think Odium was already trapped when he splintered Honor. -Words of Radiance, Ch. 69 Epigraph So he seems to be imprisoned in the Greater Roshar system, not just the planet of Braize, so affecting stuff on Roshar (like Honor) is presumably possible. His influence is probably stronger / more constant on Braize because he's actually Invested there.

I imagine it as being basically a taco, though I guess with an unusually thick tortilla (or, since the flatbread is fried and it doesn't fall out when you're holding it in one hand, possibly more like a taquito or flauta). I'm hardly a culinary expert, but the most "generic" meat we have on Earth is chicken, I'd say. As for cremling claws - well, cremling seems to be a very broad term for small crustaceans, I'd think the Rosharans would probably consider crayfish to be cremlings (shrimp and lobster are totally aquatic so probably don't count, but even though they're still gill-breathers, you find crayfish in burrows in really wet soils in the Southern US). However, while crayfish are edible (and tasty), the claws probably aren't a good idea, since Earth humans don't have Herdazian teeth (they've got some Parshendi blood so their teeth are different).

Well, each Breath gives you a bit better perception of colors until you hit Perfect Color Recognition, each Breath gives you a trace more longevity and health until you hit Perfect Health and immortality, etc. So I'd imagine that if a 7th Heightening Awakener and a 2nd Heightening Awakener each awakened an identical object from an identical color source, the 7th Heightening one would end up with a paler gray - closer to white. If that's true, then probably you can get something out of any gray darker than the one you would produce by Awakening. OTOH, the better the color source the less Breath you need, so trying to use (in hex color terms) #999999 gray when your used-up color sources are #888888 would probably take thousands of Breaths for even the most basic things.

The Pits of Hathsin were relatively close to Luthadel, though, so it seems like that was a factor. Personally, I think it was probably intentional action by Preservation, possibly at the same time as the origin of the Terris Prophecies. Maybe when Preservation provided the Prophecies, he 'empowered' the people the Prophecies were given to as evidence that they were real?

One would think... if they can control their immune systems, make human blood, etc. there doesn't seem to be much they couldn't do biologically. OTOH, they can't make bones or even hair, which is weird since these are produced by cells in the human body, and if they can replicate human cells... Sure hair is dead, but it's made by living cells, which kandra ought to be able to replicate. It would take time, but it ought to be possible. The bones/hair limitation might be a Cognitive limit on something otherwise fundamentally possible, like happens with magical healing. Or maybe the kandra just haven't figured out how to manage it yet, but could. In SoS/BoM they seem significantly more capable than in the first trilogy - I think they've experimented and learned a lot since the Catacendre. OTOH, that's probably a dangerous road to go down story-wise, else the kandra would become absurdly powerful. Given how quickly kandra can assimilate and transform biomass (TenSoon built up to horse mass really fast), the ability to replicate just any biological product would have let Paalm poison pretty much everybody in Elendel.

Because the ch. 55 annotation seems to be saying Yesteel's ability to make more Nightblood-type weapons would make a new war vastly more destructive than otherwise. I'm wondering why that is. I'm not at all arguing that Nightblood isn't terrifying on a personal scale -- it clearly is! But " Yesteel’s ability to create swords like Nightblood would end with T’Telir falling and then the entire world being cast into chaos and destruction" seems to draw a direct connection between more Nightbloods and global "chaos and destruction". Sure, it's totally believable that with research, they could Shardblade without Nightblood's extra powers (except that it would be fully intelligent, as Type IVs are defined as intelligent Awakened objects) that didn't continually drain Breath from the user - Rosharan Blades don't, after all. But it would still take a lot of Breaths in the first place -- a "basic" Shardblade involves a ton of Investiture, more than the Bands of Mourning hold, per WOB -- and Breaths are very expensive in quantity. In real world pre-industrial warfare, things like horses and good armor were often quite limited in supply, and Breaths are way more expensive than that. But if you look at it from a nation's economic perspective, paying to build their military forces and supplies... that Blade won't be worth it vs. 1000 Lifeless. And from a real world pre-industrial war perspective, the life of a couple of dozen "ordinary" soldiers (common men at arms, not knights or such) isn't terribly valuable. And with Nalthian tech level rather than Rosharan, a Shardblade wouldn't be as advantageous - especially once they became known things and people developed countermeasures. See, I don't think it likely would, because of the cost. One nation might do it, and be effective in the first couple battles... then their enemies would figure out what was happening and counter it, and they'd be limited-role specialty weapons after that. Hallandren is unusually rich in the era of Warbreaker, though -- I don't think most nations can afford armies mostly composed of Lifeless. Any fighting not involving Hallandren is probably human vs human. I agree that piercing weapons like 'standard' crossbows wouldn't likely be the best choice vs Lifeless, though. You'd want something to break legs or arms, so the Lifeless would be incapacitated even though still animated. Nalthis probably has the level of tech to come up with a crossbow variant that would do that, though. Bullet-shooting crossbows were invented even in our world; they weren't used much beyond hunting small game, or developed very far, but that's because bladed bolts were more effective vs humans and we didn't have zombies to fight.