cometaryorbit

Except that he set up plans for his death... that's what the storage caverns were meant for. Ruin couldn't get out with TLR alive, since TLR had the Well hidden under his palace, under a door which required an unnaturally strong Allomancer to open (or duralumin, but that wasn't known to anyone else when TLR was alive). One of Rashek's metal plate inscriptions even says something to the effect of 'if you read this while I'm still alive, don't tell anyone or I'll kill you' (not worded that way). So it was definitely planned in case of his death.

Oh, certainly. But I nonetheless think that's where the idea that "opposing force" is the Vessels comes from (whether it is correct or not).

I dunno. Patji is really scary, and if their critters are so poisonous it's massive overkill to get a human (maybe it's evolved to take down a Nightmaw... and frankly the stuff on Patji seems nastier than natural evolution could account for) your average Bloodmaker might not have enough healing to deal with it. Wayne can heal from repeated bullet wounds, but given that Feruchemical gold is apparently worse at diseases than injuries, a relatively "localized" injury like that is probably a lot easier than a systemic poison that can over-kill a human by a factor of 500 (supposedly the inland taipan in Australia is that bad).

According to Sazed in the HOA epigraphs, he knew enough to set up the Kandra as double-agents against Ruin (the Resolution - pulling out their Blessings when Ruin tried to control them), so he definitely knew Ruin could control Hemalurgic creatures. Ruin was messing with TLR's mind, granted, but unlike Vin, he had the advantage of knowing that was possible. And he was clearly able to set up organized plots against Ruin, like the Storage Caverns, so 'not creating Inquisitors' ought to have been within his ability. And even if Ruin drove him into doing it at some low point, he could have destroyed them later.

Brandon calls Scadrial an Earth analogue, so I'd imagine it's pretty much identical on a macro scale. (Obviously the distribution of continents/oceans is different.) Do we even know if Scadrial in general is metal-rich? We know the area around Luthadel is/was, but that's one tiny spot, and might even be an artificial effect of TLR reshaping the world (Kelsier thinks TLR put his capital city there because it was metal rich, but we know that's wrong).

I think the group of Vessels thing comes from this:

TLR was the most knowledgeable person on Scadrial during his time (excluding Shards, anyway - Preservation was near-mindless, but Ruin had access to his own knowledge). However, I don't think he was even close to the smartest, because he didn't do very well with that knowledge. I'd say Kelsier, Vin, and Elend are probably all smarter, in different ways (Kelsier's a planner, Vin's intuitive, and Elend's scholarly). He became arrogant and sloppy - if he'd played things smart he never would have been defeated. Vin had a chance to beat him because he fought to show off rather than win quickly. If he'd used a massive pulse of Compounded Speed and Strength, and Health to survive any air resistance/friction issues, he could have killed Vin in a fraction of a second - long before she had time to figure out what the Malatium vision meant. Similarly, with Compounded Gold (and maybe Electrum and/or Bronze to stay conscious) TLR could perform surgery on himself. Implanting his metalminds entirely within his body wouldn't have made them immune to Vin's Shard fueled Steelpush, but it would have denied her a critical clue. Also, given that TLR knew about Ruin, making Inquisitors was a stupid move. The Kandra were part of his plan against Ruin, and you could argue that another Hemalurgic species was useful to set that up/deceive Ruin, so the Koloss are justifiable (plus they were very useful in conquering the world). But the Inquisitors are just stupid - far too powerful of tools to put into Ruin's hands. Without Inquisitors, Yomen would have been the only effective opposition Vin and Elend had in HOA.

Yeah, but there are plenty of options other than taking over the world. Ruin can't change stuff written in metal, so making a ton of metal plates with the true story and distributing them widely should work. Or you could become immortal, but not actually take over, just hang around to be there when the Well fills again. Use the power of Ruin trapped in the Well directly, no - using the Well, one only touches the power of Preservation, not of Ruin. But Ruin whispered the secrets of Hemalurgy to TLR when he used the Well, so if he did the same for Vin, she could use Hemalurgy to get feruchemical Atium and possibly Gold. Whether she'd be willing to kill one or more Feruchemists for immortality is quite another question.

I think these are talking about different things. The power in humans' souls still "belongs to" Preservation - he remains linked to it just as Honor was to his spren, before his Splintering. In a total sense Preservation isn't diminished. But that power is committed. It can't be doing two things at once: every Investiture-unit in a human soul is one Preservation can't be using to oppose Ruin.

I was writing a fanfiction on this topic, but it's stalled now because of NaNoWriMo. So I've thought about this a lot...

You don't seem to need zinc for that. At least, Bleeder could do it in Shadows of Self. That may not be entirely applicable to humans though (maybe kandra can alter their nerve-conduction velocity or something) but there's a WOB that at least the reacting to physical stuff "bullet time" aspects come from steel. I don't know how much of that is higher thought vs muscle memory/snap reactions though. Zinc is more for stuff like digesting large amounts of information / look at a page of complex equations and understand it all instantly.

Well, if she took the power to save Elend (which is by far the most plausible reason she would) I don't think that would make her try to take over the world. Vin would probably try to fix things while she held the power, and likely do damage trying, but I don't think she would have any interest in personally ruling the world. On the other hand, she'd learn about Ruin, and Ruin would probably tell her about Hemalurgy like she did TLR. The question would be whether she'd succumb to the temptation to use it (likely for Atium/Gold Compounding immortality). Even with those, I don't think she would rule directly as Empress/Lord Ruler... Vin just doesn't seem interested in that kind of power, and unlike Rashek, I think she recognizes her unsuitability to govern.

Well, I did say that it's a half-baked theory What I was thinking, though, is that the Dor still exists as a more or less "unified" source of power or pseudo-Shard in a way Honor doesn't anymore. (Come to think of it, maybe that's why it's one exception -- the Dor -- not two -- Devotion and Dominion -- who no longer exist.) Do we know that Sel's regionalized magic systems worked the same way (or indeed existed at all) before Odium? I don't think we know the timeline for Odium's visit to Sel except that it was before the book Elantris. That's possible too. I read it as, as long as the Shard exists (as an unified entity, non-Splintered) everything composed of its Investiture is still part of it, since the Shard is in the Spiritual Realm and thus Connections matter, not physical distance.

I had seen that WOB about Honor's spren, but I was reading that as them being still part of Honor because distance doesn't matter to the Spiritual Shard - not that the individual spren themselves have to be in the Spiritual. I mean, the planet of Scadrial is "part of" Ruin and Preservation, or at least they are present in every bit of it - presumably for the same reason - and it is Physical. I agree that the Realmatic nature of the spren didn't change during Honor's Splintering - but their number increased, probably greatly. Pattern says that intelligent spren were rarer at the time of the Recreance. So even with all the ones turned into Shardblades removed from the population, there are still more now than before. But, under this theory, that's a matter of the power (finding itself in the Cognitive and thus breaking away from its holder) flowing into existing channels to form spren.

Maybe so, but given that Rashek - who started as an uneducated shepherd or bearer in an early 1800s tech or below society - figured out enough to genetically engineer ash-eating bacteria in a few minutes or less while holding only a portion of a Shard's power, I'm not sure how much would be left to learn after 300 years. Now, we know other forces are working to limit Harmony's knowledge of the wider Cosmere, but I don't think that would keep him from learning how to use his own powers on his 'home ground'. It might well limit his ability to counterattack, though.

Splintering a Shard is essentially forcing the Shard's power from the Spiritual Realm to the Cognitive. Shards are primarily in the Spiritual Realm: (Shadows of Self signing - Oak Brook, IL) When I first read this, I was thinking "Hmm, that's funny." The Ars Arcanum calls spren "transformative cognitive entities", but we know they're Splinters. So if Shards are Spiritual primarily, why are their splinters Cognitive primarily? Then I remembered that Sel's Cognitive is dangerous since it's full of Splintered power. And the regional nature of magic on Sel seems to be tied to this: (Calamity signing - Seattle) OK, so in the Spiritual, there's no space or location, and a Shard's power exists as a single entity. In the Cognitive, space matters, a Shard's power is splintered, and magic is regionalized. So, I'm thinking that to Splinter a Shard, Odium forces its power from the Spiritual to the Cognitive. In the Cognitive Realm, the Shard's energy becomes attached to particular places and objects, and breaks apart. In the "realm of the mind", its pieces then develop self-awareness, making it harder to reunite. Further wild speculation: perhaps Adonalsium's Shattering was driving him from 'beyond the Realms' into the Spiritual.

Yeah, this is the normal line of thought. But if a Shard's investiture can be separated from its direct control (and we know it can, because atium) then the possibilities open up, because the Shard from whom the metal is formed doesn't need to actually be directing events with the Set. That makes Dominion/the Dor or Odium possibilities, who could otherwise be ruled out since they're dead and imprisoned respectively. (Devotion and Endowment don't seem to fit Intent-wise.) EDIT: Also, I'm not sure the power of a single Shard would be such an effort for Harmony to hold back. That makes me think the Dor, the only other two-Shard combo we know, is involved.

Well, we don't know the specific spike types, but Atium steals anything.

The red eyes do seem to suggest Odium, but the Set's motives seem more Dominion-ish. I'm not even sure there's a Shard posing as Trell. We know the metal is "from a Shard we know", but that's not quite the same thing as Trell being a Shard we know - could be the Set's real leaders have gotten some Dor power to Scadrial and condensed it as a metal.

Do we know that Nale would need an Honorblade to hold Stormlight/be "awesome"? I think there's a WOB they need them to use Surges, but that could conceivably be 2 different things... do Squires get Surges, or just the ability to hold Stormlight, separately?

Well, (SECRET HISTORY SPOILERS) My theory is that "Trell" is actually using Dor power, specifically Dominion / Skaze aligned Dor power - the Set's motivations seem much more Dominion than Autonomy or Odium. We know that the metal Bleeder uses is 'from a Shard we know', which isn't necessarily the same thing as the being / organization using the name Trell being a Shard we know. Wouldn't be surprised if there are Skaze or Svrakiss (assuming they are a real thing and not just a Fjordell myth) running the Set.

Yeah, the burnlands raiding tribes would have had to be small due to the limitations of what that lifestyle could support, so it wouldn't have taken very many koloss out there. Also, weren't all the koloss stationed in distant/remote areas to keep them from killing humans 'outside of orders'? I don't think they were anything like equally distributed, so Jastes getting half or so of the total might not be that implausible.

That's a very interesting concept. There are some "in-between" systems on Earth, like the great white shark (non-constant body temperature, but kept significantly warmer than the environment by internal heat production - IIRC it's constantly X degrees above the water around it rather than stabilized at a constant temperature like a mammal.) A creature might be able to shift between a low-metabolic rate, low-food requirements state where its temperature was similar to the environment's, and a high-metabolic rate, high-food requirements state where its temperature was significantly above the environment's. There's a setup in Hal Clement's Cycle of Fire where a planet in a binary system switches between long periods (50-60 years or so) of Earthlike temperatures and super-hot temperatures. The composition of the atmosphere changes radically, and there are basically two totally different ecologies, and two intelligent species, dominant in the different phases. (During the 'wrong' season, they're dead except for spores of some sort symbiotic with the opposite kind of life.) There are small refuges (in the polar ice caps for the 'cool' species and in volcanic areas for the 'warm' species) where a few survive the 'wrong' season and pass on knowledge to the new generation. Yes... and to get the extreme changes you're talking about, planet-wide, it would have to be very elliptical. Also, because of seasonal lag (takes time for atmosphere and especially oceans to heat up, which is why the hottest time of year a lot of places is late July/early August when the maximum sunlight is around June 21), the hottest time will be after that brief closest-to-sun period.

I don't think that quote really helps narrow it down, though. Raoden just says "people from Arelon", which could mean birthplace or heritage, and I don't see how Galladon could know that Duladel people can be chosen because they have blood descent from Arelon as opposed to cultural heritage from Arelon.

Do we know that? I know it has to do with what country you're from, but is it established whether that's heritage or birthplace? (If a group of Fjorden immigrants moved to MaiPon, could their descendants learn to Forge?)