cometaryorbit

There are oddities in the Listener Songs epigraphs in WOR. As Spoolofwhool points out, warform and nimbleform are 'of the gods' too (" "Warform is worn for battle and reign, / Claimed by the gods, given to kill."; "Nimbleform has a delicate touch. / Gave the gods this form to many") and they clearly don't take over the Listener the way stormform does. Also there's "Stormform is said to cause / A tempest of winds and showers, / Beware its powers, beware its powers. / Though its coming brings the gods their night, / It obliges a bloodred spren." That seems to suggest that the "bloodred spren" is in opposition to the gods. Smokeform is "Though crafted of gods, / It was by Unmade hand." and " Crafted of gods, this form we fear. / By Unmade touch its curse to bear" It seems to me that can be read as the gods being the Unmade or the gods making the form first and the Unmade touching/cursing it later. And one more anomaly: " Our gods were born splinters of a soul, / Of one who seeks to take control, / Destroys all lands that he beholds, with spite. " On the surface, seems simple enough - they're splinters of Odium. Except ... Odium doesn't really seem to "take control" of anything, and when he visited Sel, he destroyed the Shards but not the land. And since Honor's Splintering was post-Recreance, it doesn't seem to have been associated with any apocalyptic damage on Roshar. Given how significant the epigraphs were in Mistborn...

The storm frequency is definitely worked out, I'd say. There's too much "timing" in WOR (mysterious countdown, highstorm dates in Diagram epigraph) for it not to be.

The Heralds having better efficiency as the true, proper owners of the Honorblades makes sense. But improved efficiency isn't going to let one Herald defeat all the KR. Maybe KR weren't all that numerous in Ishi's time, but there were enough to organize. Even if the Heralds were the Surgebinding equivalent of Lerasium Mistborn... there's no way Elend could have beat a dozen normal Mistborn. IMO he'd have had trouble with two. Give him a couple of dozen Desolations' worth of combat experience and maybe he could take on three or four. Yeah the Heralds have super-reflexes too. But there's got to be a lot more to it, either ridiculously vast Surgebinding strength or totally new powers. KR are terribly powerful. Kaladin & Shallan aren't even at the peak of their development. A dozen combat-order KR (Windrunners, Skybreakers, Dustbringers, Edgedancers, etc.) would have given the Lord Ruler a serious run for his money IMO, and quite possibly actually killed him, depending on exactly how the powers interact.

Cool idea. The only solid theory I'd heard before was the minor-spren one, but this might fit better with Kaladin not noticing anything when he touched Shardplate. It would make sense that minor spren might not be conscious enough to be screaming, but there might well still be some kind of 'weird feeling'... OTOH, I'm not sure that either theory really explains it. The Stormfather tells Dalinar he will be a Radiant without Shards. If Shardplate is just formed from stuff "associated" with a Radiant - whether Stormlight or minor spren - and has nothing directly to do with the main Nahel Bond, why shouldn't Dalinar get it?

Mmm... yeah he replaces leaked Investiture, but I don't think that means he doesn't use it to power himself too. I think while actively "feeding" he is more powerful than "baseline" and can access his full powers... but it leaks away quickly as black smoke, so he has to "feed" more to get back up to the level where he can access his full powers.

Tin's Hemalurgic property is to steal human senses. Do we know that only "human attribute" spikes can be Blessings? I'd think that any Hemalurgic spike could be, especially after SoS...

The Szeth-type revival IMO isn't an issue because it has to be done really quickly after death; it's more analogous to resuscitation in RL than genuinely coming back from the dead, though it can be done from more complete injuries. Even the Returned, which are basically undead, are Returned very promptly. I believe the only case of returning from a more than momentary death is the BOM/SH implied one of Kelsier, and that took a series of unusual things (Cognitive Shadow preserved from passing on by the Well's power, Connection to Spook, some kind of yet unexplained Hemalurgy trick).

OK, granted. But this still seems to be a relatively minor increase in strength; Vin can pierce any normal late-FE-strength coppercloud with double-strength bronze. Spook's senses are way more than double a normal Tineye, given how sensitive to light his eyes are.

Yeah, and there's also an annotation for HoA that says both Vin and Elend are at 100% of Allomantic potential, and they're the only characters who have hit that point (I guess TLR's not included because this is for HoA and he's dead by then? He was definitely at least as strong an Allomancer as Elend...) So either they are contradictory, or describing different things. I guess one way to reconcile them would be that Vin's true base Allomantic strength is normal for a late-Final-Empire-era Mistborn, but absorbing bits of mist raised it somewhat, so that she Pushes harder than Kelsier expects and Pewter-jumps higher than Ham expects. The 100% potential thing, since it's mentioned in relation to Snapping, might just mean strong enough to have allomancy without undergoing normal Snapping [Vin Snapped at birth and Elend used Lerasium].

Savantism is weird. Steel Savantism doesn't have obvious drawbacks (Wax doesn't suffer when not burning) but it seems to give you extra precision / finesse or something (Wax's steel bubble). I think that's what's meant by "Wax can do more with less" - not extra power, but he is better at using it. But Spook's Tin Savantism really does seem to enhance his tin power level, and massively so - but at the cost of severe drawbacks. Bronze Savantism is no big deal - you get more range but no dramatic effects. That could be more power, or it could be a lower "detection threshold" - your brain is better at working with your bronze-sense.

Also, atium seeing the future I think is just a part of its power, rather like how making Mistborn is by WoB a "side effect" of lerasium. The real effect of atium is to give you a Spiritual Realm glimpse - but at normal strength all that does is a second or so of future sight. Burned with duralumin, though, Elend truly saw (IIRC even mostly entered?) the Spiritual Realm.

Eh... maybe? We know from WOB that there is theoretically a way to do Hemalurgy without killing... but we don't know what is involved. It might be complicated/a magic system hack. I think Hemalurgy in its normal, "canonical" form is indeed always fatal. It might be like saying "Returned have to eat a Breath every week or they die". Technically not quite absolutely true... we know there's a hack to get around it... but it's true enough for most purposes.

Do we know that the planet in general has a different composition? The area of Luthadel is metal-rich, but the planet isn't necessarily. (Kelsier claims that's why TLR built Luthadel there, but given the whole "moving the Well" thing, I doubt that.) Scadrial is an Earth analogue, so I'd think it's the same size as Earth.

There's an annotation for WOA that says that a regular Lurcher/Coinshot/Mistborn could learn how to do inquisitor iron/steelsight, and maybe somebody has, but nobody the main characters know.

Hmmm. That's interesting. Brandon does mention the mist-burning thing, though, and Sazed's last epigraph says that that's why Vin was unusually strong: That WOB sure does sound like it means Vin is normal-strength, but I think Sazed-as-Harmony's epigraphs are meant to basically be "solid" statements on how the magic works.

Yeah she is. Her extreme skill/intuition makes a greater difference, but Kelsier comments on it in the first book (after their Pushing contest lesson, IIRC) and Ham comments on Vin's exceptional allomantic strength early in book two (when she spars and does that pewter-powered super-jump 7 feet straight up). There's no word for word explanation that this is exactly how it works... but I think it's a necessary conclusion from what we do know: -the rate of tapping isn't bounded (WOB, and Sazed may mention it too) -the rate of storing is bounded by how much you can store and survive (WOB), and you can store to zero identity or essentially so (from BOM) -outside of Hemalurgy, you don't lose anything, even though some of the energy is spent to tap at high rates (WOB, and Ars Arcanum comments about its end-neutral nature) That still allows for differences in skill, though - maybe a more skilled Skimmer can determine more exactly the percentage of his weight he's storing, or a more skilled Archivist can more precisely pick out specific memory-bits to store. But differences in "power' don't seem to have a place to go.

I think that the WOB means that a normal Feruchemist who stores 50% health gets 50% in the goldmind and 50% kept to stay alive while storing. An Inquisitor with Hemalurgic-decayed Feruchemical gold (at say 80% of normal strength) who stores 50% health gets 40% (80% of the 50% he attempted to store) in the goldmind, 10% wasted, and 50% kept to keep them alive. I think that's right for Feruchemy by itself. Feruchemy gained through Hemalurgy is less efficient, though. I don't think there is any such thing as "Feruchemical strength" the way there is Allomantic strength -- Vin is a stronger Mistborn than Kelsier and Elend is stronger than Vin, but all natural (non-Hemalurgic) Feruchemists' powers are identical. Since the only limit to storing is the amount that would kill you (or 100% for things like Identity) and there is no limit to tapping, there's no way for there to be a variable strength unless Hemalurgy introduces inefficiency to the process.

I was indeed talking about Shardblades by themselves (since that's what the OP seemed to be talking about), but Shardplate's an interesting question too. Could you by any chance find the source of the comment about bullets not working? Would be nice to know if it gave any more detail about what kind of gun. I agree normal bullets from, say, Wax's revolver wouldn't do much - but something like a shotgun with Ranette's Thug-killing ammo or an elephant gun might be quite a different matter. I don't think the speed/agility of Shardplate are anywhere near enough to help dodge bullets. I guess if you were constantly leaping around, you'd be hard to target, but Full Shardbearer fighting styles seem more "tank-like" and less "swashbuckling". Shardplate protects against Voidbringer red lightning, IIRC, so it should probably protect against other Investiture blasts. I don't know where the cut-off is ... Voidbringer red lightning seems distinct from natural lightning, and Aon Daa is essentially "pure magic/energy"; but would fire conjured by Aon Ehe be treated as hostile Investiture or as normal fire?

Yeah, exactly. Saying that mass changes but density doesn't (when we know volume stays the same) is incoherent. It's not an "impossible in our world but works in the Cosmere because magic" thing like storing muscle mass or Soulcasting, it's an inherently self-contradictory statement. I know there's an annotation, and IIRC a comment by Wax, about density not changing - but those are in the context of "bullets would still hurt you at 100x weight" so it seems to really mean that you behave in regards to other objects (impacts) as if you were your normal density.

Wow- that's a very interesting thought. Didn't occur to me, but since Shardblades cut the soul... hm. Might work. Could you kill an "only slightly Physically present" (visible, but not Nahel-bonded) spren on Roshar with a Blade? If so, it should work. Another possibility is that it might technically work but not really do much. Depends on if the Blade damages the Spiritual aspect directly (which should work) or instead relies on separating Spiritual from Physical (might not do much to a being that doesn't have a proper Physical aspect). Nightblood destroys on all three Realms, so he should definitely kill Shades. Maybe even consume them - are Shades invested?

Honestly, Shardblades by themselves, while very powerful at what they do, are also very limited. They are superweapons in close combat, but the Shardbearer has to survive to get into close combat. A gun, Steel Allomancy coins, an Aon Daa power blast, etc. trump a Shardblade. It'd be more effective on Nalthis or the Rose Empire/MaiPon area of Sel where the local magic isn't so combative. First of the Sun is low-magic, but seems to have the tech for good ranged weapons. It'd be awesome on Threnody, though, since Shardblades kill bloodlessly and thus wouldn't anger shades. Honorblades give Surgebinding, but it requires tons of Stormlight... so off Roshar, it's no different than a normal Shardblade unless you have some really special power-source (mist-burning on Scadrial, a massive store of Breath on Nalthis) and the knowledge to 'hack' the system. You need either Shardplate or Surgebinding plus access to lots of Stormlight to really be a super-warrior.

Maybe... but there may be room for more twists even on the Listener/Voidbringer thing. See I don't think it's quite correct to say Listeners are Voidbringers. -- Listener Song of Histories (WOR ch. 30 epigraph) So the Parshendi talk about Voidbringers as something distinct from themselves... at least originally. I think this is referring to the Odium-spren that the Parshendi met at one point... and when they bonded with them they became Voidbringers themselves. I think the Listeners are only properly Voidbringers when bonded with a voidspren/Odium-spren. Parshmen (slaveform) or Parshendi in normal-spren forms (dullform, workform, warform, mateform, nimbleform) are not. [And I think there will be bigger, scarier Voidbringers not of Listener-origin as the Desolation goes on...] So Listeners bonded with some other sort of Spren could be Dawnsingers.

The weird thing to me is that Hoid really seems to have Soothing on Roshar, but if he still has the Lerasium for Feruchemy ... I wonder if he just cut off a sixteenth of it and alloyed it with brass to get Soothing, and kept the other 15/16 as a Metalmind? Or could you eat just half of a lerasium bead and become a "normal strength" Mistborn rather than a super-strength one like Elend?

Something like that. Ironically, Brandon hinted that Kelsier would use Hemalurgy to return to life way back in 2012, in a "Kelsier vs Moiraine" thing he wrote for some SFF cage match article series... EDIT: My personal theory is that Kelsier's body is actually a Mistwraith, and the Spike puts his soul into the body, making him a pseudo-Kandra. He then used his own bones to turn back into himself. (I believe there's a WOB that they survived the Catacendre.)

I think we actually knew that before Secret History from a WOB. Yes, it's the end of WOR - Chapter 82: