robardin

Yes, I've always pictured Lurchers being able to do the Spidey-thing in a modern steel skyscraper filled downtown type area (which Era 2 Mistborn is well on its way to becoming). But that requires the anchor point to be fixed - either far heavier than you are, or bolted in place somehow. Which is what I'm commenting on, how often Coinshots can fly off after dropping a small coin, versus making use of heavy ingots shallowly buried in the ground like the "steel highway" between cities in the Final Empire specifically to facilitate Coinshot/Mistborn flight without being obvious (the way an array of overhead metal frames in the middle of nowhere would be, to faciliate Spider-lurching between cities). Any angle to the coin relative to the person's CoG should result in the coin being shot away, instead of propelling the Coinshot. The only reasonable answer is they're practiced enough to drop it between their feet for "pure" upward propulsion, and are usually implicitly using some other fixed or heavier anchor point nearby behind them to push themselves forward (in one scene, I think that turned out to be some unfortunate guards with steel breastplates, who were indeed pushed over a wall while Vin shot up and away, somewhat regretfully). After a while you just assume it. I remembered one of the scenes that bothered me this way the most - the beginning of The Hero of Ages, when Elend arrives at Fatren's city to save it from a koloss attack - the skaa on the wooden gates and ramparts see him arriving on horseback, riding up the gates, dropping a coin, then springing "straight upward" to crest the gate and land on the rampart. Which would require some forward momentum as well as going "straight upward". In the case of a full Mistborn, of course, he could be silently Pulling as well on some metal inside the city once he reached or neared his apex or iron bolts in the gate (even if the gate had no metal bars, it probably wasn't pegged together with wood), so I'll have to find some example of "Wax in the Roughs" as a more squidgy example of "exactly how would a Coinshot manage to propel himself instead of the coin in this situation", though he also has that weight-storing Feruchemical ability that could also be a cheat (imagine if he momentarily made himself literally as light as a feather).

But as we saw in the very opening scenes of Warbreaker, "taking Breath" from someone is not possible. If unwilling, they have to be... Encouraged... To give it up with the Command, "My life to yours, my breath become yours". I think a hospital that gave people 1,000 Breaths and expected them to just pass them back to the clerk by the door on the way out would soon be 1,000 Breaths poorer. If not via a scammy patient, then simply by having the clerk by the door eventually give in to temptation.

Yeah, Jak is a hype machine. For example, he makes dramatic statements about how those koloss would regret it if they triggered in him "the fury of an Allomancer enraged", but he's a freaking Tineye, what's he gonna do, stare them to death? OK, snarky comment aside, does being a Tineye make one a more accurate marksman? I don't see why it would, unless paired with the "power and grace" of pewter (as when Spook was briefly a two-powered Allomancer courtesy of a hemalurgic spike). You could see farther and more sharply, but that wouldn't improve the fine motor skill needed to make use of the range. Though if you were made of the right stuff to become a sharpshooter in the first place, being a Tineye sure would help.

As I understand it, we've seen this ascending spectrum of relative Allomantic strength (probably not a linear progression); do I have this right? Mistings in Era 2 (Wax/Wayne) Mistings/Mistborn at the end of the Final Empire Era 2 Misting, flaring their metal Mistborn/Misting at the end of the FE, flaring their metal Vin, Zane: last-gen FE Mistborn who were "stacked" with Allomatic Hemalurgy (Vin with enhanced Bronze, Zane with enhanced Steel), can do things even flared Allomancers of their time cannot (pierce copperclouds, easily balance on coins) Elend: first-gen FE level Mistborn (directly consumed lerasium), who can Riot/Soothe control of koloss and kandra without duralumin (as was apparently also true of close-to-first-gen Mistings). Ordinary "last-gen" Mistborn with duralumin (this is how Vin is able to control kandra and koloss) - presumably, Kelsier (Mark I) with duralumin could have pierced a coppercloud, too. Rashek as Lord Ruler: directly twiddled his own spiritweb while briefly Ascended, and was evidently even more powerful than that. (Elend-level Allomancer flaring ... and Elend-level Allomancer with duralumin go here) (Rashek flaring, and Preservation save us, Rashek using a duralumin flare to burn one of his Feruchemical stores) An Ascended entity (Preservation, Vin, Kelsier) directly fueling a Mistborn with mist

Is this thread meant to be "open spoilers"?

I think Shallan's a great character. She lies, yes... But even, and most importantly, to herself. Her entire order is based upon that: Lighweavers "make no oaths beyond the First Ideal", instead, to advance, they must tell truths. About themself. TO themselves. That's kind of deep. There's a reason why Syl is an "honorspren" and Pattern is a "liespren". But it's not nearly as simple as "lying is bad, being honorable is good".

Heleran may have been (or become) a Skybreaker, but not based on anything we've seen him do - it'd be based on Mraize saying he "sought out the Skybreakers" at some point, presumably intending to join them. The Shardblade he waved in his father's face was definitely a "deadspren" Blade. That was also definitely the same Blade as wielded by the man that Kaladin killed, who also wore Shardplate. So either Heleran was the one killed by Kaladin; or he gave his Blade (at least) to some other Veden youth to get offed by Kaladin, whether or not that was because he bonded to a spren (which would be AFTER leaving home with the deadspren Blade). We have not seen any other current-gen Radiant with both Blade and Plate, not even Jasnah who's been one the longest of any we've seen, so that would put Heleran ahead of the curve as well as being mysteriously off-screen. Or, if the Skybreakers are (as a group) more "advanced" than Jasnah, Shallan, Kaladin, et al., because they've been continuously organized in secret under Nalan since the Recreance, he'd be one of the most senior ones, since in Edgedancer,

We still don't know why Nightblood is sentient, with a Command of "destroy evil". What if you gave a far more vague Command, like "live a good life"? Or like Pvt. James Francis Ryan was given - "earn this"? And not while Awakening steel, but a corpse (trying not to create a Lifeless, but a Life..ful?)

Heh. I would imagine a "rude Awakening" very differently. You could give (in)suitably shaped objects all sorts of naughty Commands. In fact, I bet only a lack of prurience keeps Brandon from revealing that there are definitely specialty Awakener shops in T'Telir, with names like "Le Chat Noir" or whatever the Hallendren equivalent would be (maybe "Kalad's Pant-ums"), who hire their skills out by taking whatever object you give them, Awakening them for the 5 or 10 minutes you're allowed in a private booth in the back, followed by taking the Breath back from the object. Very discreet. No names, no pictures, no questions, just an Awakening charge and a potential clean-up penalty surcharge.

I don't know if this has been discussed before, but doesn't Syl say a few things that suggest she has bonded a human in the past, and is starting to "remember" how things work in a "oh yeah, I've done it before and it's coming back to me now" kind of way, rather than Pattern or Wyndle talking like they're trying to remember what they were taught "on the other side" before bonding?

I agree, when I read Mraize dropping that nugget to Shallan that her brother had "sought out the Skybreakers" as something she didn't know, and especially after reading the section in Edgedancer showing that Nalan's Skybreaker followers were, indeed, Surgebinders, I suspected that Kaladin had killed someone else on that battlefield. Whether or not Helaran actually managed to join the Skybreakers is unknown. I don't think any red-haired guys were mentioned among his followers in either WoR or Edgedancer, I'll have to go re-read those parts later, that would be a pretty big hint.

So yeah: Nalan doesn't really need ten seconds to summon his (Honor)blade, and Szeth and Shallan just thought they did. Which means Honorblades are not "dead like the Oathpact is" the way deadspren Shardblades are with respect to their original Knight having broken their oaths.

Right, a "ten heartbeat" summoner is used to the delay, and would probably have practiced to "summon first, and hold out hand to receive the Blade only at the last heartbeat or two", for the coolness factor if nothing else. In fact we see Adolin, Sadeas, and Amaram doing just that, summoning and dismissing their Blades repeatedly just for kicks like playing with a yo-yo. But why would Nalan have it in his head to wait ten heartbeats? Szeth maybe, but a Herald? Probably not.

Yeah, I like this. It's just harder to do with fewer Breaths, not impossible, and the closer you are to it, the more aware of the possibility of what you could do at the next plateau you are, as well as being incrementally closer to being able to do it.

Well with atium, you can see "the" future - not just your own, but what goes on around you - along with the mental ability to understand and make use of the information instantaneously. With electrum, a Misting could, with practice, pick out the best (or avoid the worst) possible outcomes in your multiple near (and uninformed) future paths, and act accordingly to "make it so". But doing crazy things like Vin grabbing an arrow in mid-flight to jam into Shan Elariel, I think that's only really possible with atium. That's because an electrum burner can "only" see their own near future, so they can do very atium-like things but only relative to what would directly affect them, or which they themselves would directly affect. It's not clear that an Oracle burning electrum could pull off the same stunt as Vin, as that would require finding one of a huge number of your own possible futures to find the really, really tiny possibilty that you would randomly (without foreknowledge) grab at the air just as the arrow passed through it, AND have the reaction time to realize hey, I can use this arrow as a weapon, and stab with it. Maybe a Twinborn with Allomantic electrum and Feruchemical zinc (speed of mind) who flared both? Whoa.

If you take Spook in HoA as the best (only clear) example of an Allomantic Savant exhibiting the damaging consequences, it's that he's hyper-sensitive all the time, and when he finally turns off his tin, his senses are all but completely off (rather than restored to normal human levels). So a Copper savant would probably suffer from being hyper-susceptible to emotional Allomancy if they ever turned it off. A Bronze savant? Hard to figure that someone with Bronze would become one, as there is little obvious reason to be "constantly flaring" one's bronze.

So, I pulled up the scene I referred to in WoR where Lift talks to Darkness before he gets his Blade to kill her (is it crazy that I have many of Sanderson's books in both my preferred physical hardcover form, and in Kindle form that I can read on my phone or tablet devices at any time?) - So unless his heart rate had been really high, the pause is only long enough for an exchange of two or three short sentences.

Yeah, I've always mentally linked the Recreance to the breaking of the Oathpact - like Ishar telling them "guys, it's all over, go home", but in far more dramatic terms that caused them to "kill' their spren en masse. Just a suspicion, which has grown stronger with reading in Edgedancer that . Thanks for the WoB links again, Spool, there's just so much to read in the Theoryland archives, even though I've skimmed them all at some point, my reading most of them predate me reading the Stormlight Archives. I guess I should go back and try to digest them again.

No support for this theory, but I LIKE IT On the one hand, names that sound alike (across different worlds and languages) could be nothing more than coincidence, like "Kaladin" on Roshar versus the "Kalad" of "Kalad's Phantoms" on Nalthis. (Which is just coincidence... Right?) On the other hand, that would be hilarious. A nice glimpse into the original "happy, funny man that everyone loved" that Denth was (whose sense of humor has taken a dark turn as Denth).

That's an interesting thing to say about Szeth's summoning the Honorblade - after all Shallan has the same mental block at some point, doesn't he? So it's definitely possible. But is that your opinion, or is there some WoB somewhere indicating that? I don't think it's in the book text, and without digging out the books, I seem to recall Nalan also having to wait for his (Honor)blade while going after Lift in WoR. It's not explicit, since it's from Lift's POV and not his own, but he clearly puts his hand out to summon it to kill her with, and she has time to exchange words with him before it "drops into his hand" the way a deadspren Shardblade does (as opposed to what happens when Kaladin or Shallan summon their living Shardblades, which appear "in place" quickly enough to kill with even when the thrusting motion begins just as the Blade is summoned). I suppose it could have been for dramatic purposes, though it seems a bit out of character for Nalan to "pause for effect" before killing someone. As for the breaking (abandoning) of the Oathpact - do you really think it's a coincidence that after resisting what were apparently numerous attacks from Odium (if that's what the Desolations were, in some way), that Honor was Shattered in between Desolations after it was broken, AND the Recreance? When the nature of both acts were breaking with honor, with both the lower and uppercase H? I'm not saying it was a direct effect, but I've always felt it was clearly a factor, and have yet to read something indicating otherwise. (Of course that's one of the reasons why I'm here on this board - to find out if I've missed something :))

Yeah, but how would a Returned know that Command? IIRC, accounts of Vo, the First Returned, say that he died after a week due to lack of Breath. He never passed his on. (Though he did pass on The Five Visions, which Hoid states in his story of the origins of the Returned Gods, Awakening, and the Manywar, so they're probably not some kind of ascribed-to-legendary-figure thing.) Being of the Fifth Heightening based on the one Divine Breath grants a lot of things, but "instinctive Awakening and automatic understanding of the basic Commands" is something of the SIXTH Heightening, which would require another 1,500 Breaths or so beyond the baseline Fifth Heightening. It seems likely that Awakening was taught to humans by a Returned, though, based on the timeline.

Ishar is the initiator of the breaking of the Oathpact, as seen in the Prologue to WoK (Jezrien to Kalak: "Ishar believes that so long as there is one of us still bound to the Oathpact, it may be enough"). And as seen in Edgedancer in Arcanum Unbounded, So it seems clear that Ishar is the Betrayer (of the Oathpact). Meanwhile, summoning an Honorblade requires "ten heartbeats", just like a human summoning a bonded deadspren Shardblade does, something which "is primarily something of the dead", as Syl explains. Probably because Honor is dead (Splintered). Those Blades are formed of "dead" spren bonded to Radiants who abandoned their oaths after summoning them in Blade form, and that's just what 9 out of 10 Heralds did to their god in the Prologue. And Honor was Splintered AFTER the Oathpact was broken, after (narrowly?) managing to fend of Odium in multiple prior Desolations. Probably because of the Oathpact's breaking. So, I don't think Ishar is "turning on Honor" as a result of the Splintering of Honor, it's the other way around (breaking the Oathpact likely led to it). I think it's that Ishar was (is) all about "I'm never going back to Damnation again, ever, ever, ever". (And isn't there a WoB that simply states, "All the Heralds are (now) insane."?) There is something special about the Heralds themselves, though, as what happens to their Honorblades is the reverse of what happens to a (non-Radiant) human bonded with a (deadspren) Shardblade. If not already present, the Shardblade appears next to the body of the slain wielder, unbonded, while the Honorblade (like Taln's) disappears with the Herald. You mentioned Dalinar bonding to a "godspren" as a Bondsmith - he certainly received visions of the Almighty imploring him to "lead them, unite them" - sent by "the memory" of Honor in the Stormfather. Does that mean Bondsmiths used to bond directly with Honor before his Splintering? What other "godspren" are there left now?

I kind of hope so. I like Adolin, and I'd imagine it would be a little upsetting to him to find literally everyone in his immediate family were Radiant but him. I like the idea that him "snapping" and killing Sadeas could be him... Snapping, so to speak. I hadn't read that Brandon mentioned that action being in line with some other Orders.

As I recall it, Steelpushing is based on a line of force from one's center of gravity to a piece of metal - visible to the Allomancer as a blue line, whose thickness/strength was relative to the mass of the metal object in question, and distance from it. You could push with varying degrees of power on the object, but the force would always be along in that straight line. When Vin first tries it, she shoots straight up, and manages to balance at the apex. When Kelsier joins her, he explains that the body's sense of balance (that lets you just stand on one leg for a while, for example) translates to Steelpushing, so balancing on a Steelpush isn't that hard, but "move too much to one side, and you'd tip over like a weight on the top of a very tall pole". I get that later she finds embedded parallel sets of iron bars in a kind of path going between cities, that Coinshots and Mistborn can use to "fly", using the pairs as "course corrections". And that Wax, living in a more modern age than the Final Empire, with steel structures and lampposts all around, could REALLY get around the city (and that a Lurcher could probably do about as well as Spider-Man in flinging himself around town). What always struck me as dubious though was the way Elend, Vin, Zane, Wax, etc., can just drop a small coin - a clip - and launch off into the air. Unless they dropped it directly between their feet and stood very still, wouldn't the effect be just to shoot the coin away? Like if I were to jab my finger at an angle on a coin on my desk. Some or most of the force would be transferred directly into the desk (downward), depending on the angle, but some horizontal force would remain to shoot the coin away from me. And if they did manage to drop it straight down, wouldn't they just shoot straight up, like Vin did in her initial exercise? Yet we often see someone drop a coin and flying up to land on a rooftop, go over a wall, etc., which seems to require some horizontal movement to do, otherwise instead of dropping down onto the roof or on the other side of the wall, you'd just come down exactly where you started from. I didn't let this detract from my enjoyment of the Mistborn books by any means, but it's one of those details that has always been niggling me, and if someone could explain it away for me, I'd like it that much better For example, in a city or somewhere with a lot of metal attached to structures nearby, you could always "push off" a bit on SOMETHING near you... Like door hinges or whatnot. Is that always the unspoken assumption?

So Dalinar is a Bondsmith. Renarin is a Truthwatcher. Jasnah is an Elsecaller. And it seems pretty likely that Gavilar had been getting the proto-Bondsmith treatment with the visions and all, whether from the Stormfather or another spren. Elhokar mentioned to Kaladin that "when he [Kaladin] came, the shadows went away", which could be a spren like what Shallan perceived Pattern to be early on (maybe moving on to a different target person?), similar to the "shadows" that Gaz thinks he sees in his blind spots (due to missing an eye, or is it...?), or something else entirely (...of Voidspren...?). But Adolin seems unlikely to be a KR, who were all "broken" before bonding a spren, as Syl put it, and as WoB have implied. We'll never know what Gavilar may have gotten broken over (guilt?), and any darkness is Jasnah's past is as yet unknown, but Dalinar was certainly "broken" by the loss of his wife, and then his brother. Renarin has epilepsy and all sorts of self-image problems as a result. And we can see from his drunken ramblings to Kaladin at the end of WoR that Elhokar has massive (well-earned) self-image issues as well. Adolin, though, seems the epitome of "I'm sexy and I know it". (Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle... Yeah...) What's to become of him? Can he be the only Kholinar (by blood) who is not potentially a Surgebinder? His spontaneous offing of Sadeas in a side corridor is certainly something neither a Windrunner or Skybreaker would condone.