cometaryorbit

Kandra biology seems to be really mutable, a couple of days underground is probably no big deal. Some turtles can survive in hibernation under a frozen-over pond for months, so the degree of metabolism-slowing involved really isn't that exceptional even by Earth standards.

I think Nightblood would obliterate shades if the blade hit them. I'm not sure they're physical enough to wield it, though - wouldn't they actually have to be able to pick up/draw the sword to use it? Nightblood, as Invested as it is, is still a physical object. The way it's worded seems to me to suggest that at least Kelsier thinks that he would end up in the Beyond (whatever that is) if Ruin had successfully obliterated him - he feels the 'pull of the Beyond' again after the attack.

Yeah, exactly. Either the Aimians have some exploitable weakness - say they need some kind of specific (and destroy-able) wetland for some part of their life cycle, or something like that. Or some powerful magic was used. Or they never inhabited the majority of Aimia (the physical island shown on the map) and the area 'scoured' was far smaller. It would have to be really small though - the non-magical capabilities of Rosharans seem rather limited, maybe ancient Rome level at best & possibly somewhat less. Alethkar can mobilize a hundred thousand troops or something like that to the Shattered Plains (IIRC it's about 10,000 per highprince), which is on that level, but they've got Soulcasting to help with their logistics. The Romans were capable of destroying cities like Carthage*, but burning half of North Africa to the ground would have been beyond them. They did do environmental damage to the area by overharvesting (elephants were extirpated from North Africa in Roman times), but this wouldn't be nearly sufficient to do what seems to have been done to Aimia. *though apparently the whole 'salting the earth of Carthage so nothing could grow' is probably legendary.

Physical, yeah sorry. Edited.

Yeah, I was responding specifically to Spoolofwhool's comment about it being "unviable for hemalurgy use". Allomancy is more of an open question - I could speculate that it would burn immediately upon ingestion - if it was ingested by an Allomancer, it would burn Allomantically and produce the appropriate effect (as opposed to burning chemically and causing damage to the person's mouth/throat/stomach if ingested by a non-Allomancer). Lerasium didn't seem to require 'intent' from the person who ate it to burn, since Elend burned it while unconscious. And IIRC Thugs can burn Pewter unconsciously. So burning without an active "burn now" decision/intent does seem to have precedent.

Well that could be essentially right. Dominion as rule/control is essentially synonymous, and I rather doubt the shard's name refers to dominion in the sense of a nation or controlled territory (though there was a theory about that being the source of Sel's region-specific magic before AU).

Honestly, given human nature, "they're freaky monsters who can spy on us as stealthy miniature bugs" is probably enough of a reason. I doubt the larkins were targeted. Probably they just totally devastated the island and killed pretty nearly everything on it... probably to catch all the little bug-lets they can split into. 'Scouring' IMO implies something rather complete and thorough. How they managed that I'm not sure; Aimia looks pretty big on the map. We don't have a scale, but given that the Reshi Isles at the north edge of the Roshar continent are pretty tropical and the southernmost part is called 'Frostlands', the scale of the map must be fairly large. Plus Brandon's called Roshar a supercontinent; if it's the size of Eurasia, Aimia would be at least as big as New Guinea (which is ~300,000 square miles - larger than Texas). If it's the size of Pangaea, Aimia would be more than twice as big, maybe roughly Greenland- or Mexico-sized. I really can't see any Rosharan nation or even alliance of nations having the ability to totally burn down or devastate an area that big*. *In a time short enough for 'the scouring of Aimia' to be seen as one historical event, anyway. I can see it being done over centuries of settlement, clearcutting forests etc. - although that wouldn't be complete enough to keep creatures that can split into a thousand little bug-lets from hanging on in the changed environment.

Yeah I agree creating a blade from heat energy as an energy-matter conversion would take way too much energy. But we know the blade is formed from the spren, Cognitive "matter" or whatever they have to Physical matter... I can totally believe that heat energy is drawn from the environment as an endothermic reaction, but just to fuel the Cognitive-Physical transition, not to actually create matter.

Well... define 'dead'. They're not really experiencing biological/metabolic functions as we'd understand them, so in that sense they're dead. But they didn't undergo death in the sense of the cognitive-spiritual part separating from the physical part.

Well, empty space is kind of 'missing' in the Cognitive; maybe it is in the Spiritual too, since there isn't anything much there to have Connections to? The relative positions of different solar systems are reasonably constant over the relevant time scale (IIRC the Cosmere timeline is something like 10,000 years). Stars do move relative to one another, but the timeline is long; Proxima Centauri is supposed to stay the closest star to the Sun for something like the next 25,000 years, and it's been that way a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs#/media/File:Near-stars-past-future-en.svg

Well, the champions thing might be the wrong wording on my part. But I think Honor did something relating to the rules binding Shards that he mentioned to turn it into a Heralds vs Voidbringers fight rather than Odium vs Honor/Cultivation directly. IMO Odium's side is still around (at least after the end of WOR) - they're the Voidbringers. They aren't individually equal to the Heralds, but are far more numerous. There's that bit about how Odium waited to let humanity weaken itself... I think the old situation (pre Last Desolation) was getting worse and worse for him. Originally it was just the Heralds opposing him. Then the KR showed up and Odium had to create even more Spren to make more Voidbringers... his Investiture was getting "spread out" - not separated to the degree atium was from Ruin, but nonetheless limiting his ability to concentrate his own power on a single task or target. The difference this time is the lack of Heralds on Honor/Roshar's side (or at least functional Heralds, if "Taln" really is the actual Herald). So it could actually come down to a 1v1 champion battle without collateral damage sufficient to kill off 90% of humanity.

I'm not sure it would necessarily be unviable though - if Hemalurgy lets Inquisitors survive with two giant spikes through their brain it might be able to deal with the harmonium/water incompatibility.

IMO Odium Invested in Braize because he found out he needed to if he was going to have a chance against the Heralds. Honor figured out some way to force their conflict into a battle of champions, then gave his champions (the Heralds) so much power that Odium had to fully Invest (trapping himself in the system) to counter it. That's why the Oathpact 'indirectly' trapped Odium - directly it's just between Honor and the Heralds, but it gave the Heralds so much power that Odium had to trap himself to match it.

Yep. Chapter 83 WOR epigraph. They're all on Coppermind btw http://coppermind.net/wiki/Words_of_Radiance/Epigraphs#The_Diagram But if so, having all the Heralds there actually made things worse. So why wouldn't they have taken turns all along (I know they didn't have a choice if they died, but if they didn't...) That way they'd improve things for Roshar and endure less total suffering - it seems the obvious way to do it.

Cancelouts Surges: Division and Adhesion Known for: Blowing things up and then putting them back together just as they were Oaths after First Ideal 2. Since I cannot put them back together, I will not blow up people unless they really deserve it 3. Spren can be fixed, so I will feel free to blow up spren (other than my own!) whenever I feel like it 4. I will annoy the more useful KR orders (all of them) as much as possible 5. I will strive to always use my powers in ways that create no net change to the world

I wonder how carnivores survive... Or do they? Maybe the Forests of Hell are seriously ecologically messed up, with no large carnivores. (It's possible that the body fluids of insects and such don't count as 'blood' to Shades, they're really quite different - so little carnivores might be OK). Or maybe only human blood counts?

OK, but how are there only 32 god metal alloys? Shouldn't there be at least 48 (16 atium, 16 lerasium, and 16 harmonium)?

I think both are true in part. Ati even at the end had relics of who he was IMO... he doesn't seem malicious when he talks to Vin despite his totally destructive goals and actions. Rather he seems to pity Vin for opposing the 'obvious right way for things to be'. But for the people in the way of the Shard the practical difference may be meaningless. OTOH I'd imagine that a really "integrated" Shard/Vessel pairing like Odium/Rayse might have more 'free will'. That could make them less predictable even though both can commit 100% of their power to their purpose. That could explain why Odium is "the most dangerous" despite his inherent initial power being the same as Ruin's. Or it could just be that flat out creating a planet took so much more Investiture than the normal way of Investing, so Ruin and Preservation are much diminished by the time of the books. (That could explain why Harmony seems to be exerting significant effort to keep that "Red Wave" away, and can't just use double power to blast the interfering Shard back to their own world.)

And I think it's not just Honor limiting the numbers "available" to humans, they seem to be significantly more numerous after he was Shattered - Pattern says "spren with minds were less plentiful then" talking about the Recreance. So it seems that Honor's Shattering created enough spren to make up for all the ones killed in the Recreance plus a bunch more. Apparently the whole spren phenomenon is why Roshar's Cognitive didn't turn into a doom-storm like Sel's... there was already an established 'pathway' or 'form' for that released Investiture to take.

This one? (Hard to find via search because it doesn't actually have the word "nicrosil" in it...) http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1179

Well, if Odium's spren are the only life there they can't really be guards. But I don't think Braize is really a "prison planet" inherently -- for the Heralds it is, but that probably isn't the original intent, and they're only ten people on a whole planet (assuming the Heralds even go to the physical planet Braize rather than its Cognitive reflection). IMO Braize is Odium's home base and its inhabitants are his spren. I guess they could be prisoners in a sense -- they might have 'inherited' Odium's desire to escape -- but they're really "natives", I'd expect. I agree with Belzedar that Odium's imprisonment is primarily because he's Invested in Braize. There's some kind of relationship that allows him to attack Roshar occasionally through his spren, but I don't think he's ever 'there' infused in everything and everyone, analogously to Ruin and Preservation on Scadrial.

Well, in Secret History Nazh talks about Cognitive Shadows as if they're a revered part of society and religion (becoming one is "an important rite", and Nazh seems shocked by Kelsier doing it as a desperation move), which doesn't fit at all with what we see in "Shadows for Silence", where they're a plague and you really want to avoid becoming one. IMO, this implies something major changed between when Nazh left Threnody and the time of "Shadows for Silence". So while Threnody having a lot of Cognitive Shadows which are known to/interact with living people more than other worlds is "natural", the fact that they're a contagious plague could totally be related to warped Ambition-bits (Ambition twisted into an urge to consume and remake in one's own image, perhaps?)

I always kind of assumed Vin had messed up her metabolism with all the toxic metals (pewter and such)...

Well, yeah. I agree it's not metabolized in the way a normal human body metabolizes it. What I meant was more like "if 'metabolized' really means that there's a biochemical process involved, rather than pure matter-to-Investiture conversion or something".

I'm thinking the conflict on the metals returning could be explained if the metals return, but not in an immediately useful form. If burned metal is really metabolized, in a biological sense, the metal atoms should be incorporated into some kind of compound and eventually excreted. So the metal isn't gone, as such, but it's not in metallic (burnable) form anymore. You'd have to do some kind of processing to restore it.