robardin

Yeah, it somehow needs an Allomantic "kick-start" to some kind of cycle that can run down, and consumes ettmetal. Those are the facts we know or can infer from his statements/actions. That, plus the observation that the "primer cubes" / "Allomantic grenades" are based on Allomancy, while the medallions all seem to grant Feruchemy (along with a little metalmind of the right type), even though the Bands of Mourning had unsealed metalminds granting Allomantic powers (so it's technically possible). At least, all the medallions the Southerners have seen fit to share/demonstrate to the Northerners.

That'd be funny, if it were powered by water + ettmetal = boom-boom for the combustion cycle But then they wouldn't need an Allomantic primer cube?

Another question would be how the airships can fly with Steelpushes anyway. They're going over oceans to reach the Northern Hemisphere, right? So it's not that the primer cube is storing and amplifying Wax's Steelpushing ability when it charged off of him... Maybe any Allomancy would work, and the cube is feeding some kind of Investiture cycle? But not an infinite one. After all, we see from their use of the cubes as "Allomantic grenades" that the Allomancy effect it's able to store/project is relatively short in duration, like a few minutes, even for A-steel which is one of the slower burning metals. (It was even shorter when Wayne used one to "throw" an A-bendalloy speed bubble.) On the other hand, if they function by starting some kind of Identity-free Compounding cycle (that eventually burns up the metal), that implies it's a Feruchemical property that it's compounding, and nothing in Feruchemy allows for flight. One could compound F-iron for increasing weight, but not to anti-Compound it for weight reduction. Unless it's a property of F-ettmetal?

It is something Kaladin sees in Moash as well - that in some way, with only a little bit of difference in their lives, he might have come out the way Moash did. Which conversely, means that Moash could have come out the way Kaladin did. Which is the point of the "shadow" that Moash saw at Hearthstone, the Moash that was not full of despair, that stood a little taller, with a blue Bridge Four coat, a Windrunner defending instead of killing helpless villagers, blazing with Stormlight, Shardspear in hand... And even now, it hurts Moash to think that that's what he could have, should have been. But his reaction is to go even harder in the other direction, because it's too painful to consider his mistakes and in any way to try to atone or to make amends for them. That is despicable. And by now he's gone too far.

I wonder how they "dump" the accumulated "waste weight" from the airship's ironmind then...!

There was a pair of shoulder straps for Wax to hold himself in place, while Pushing off against a steel plate beneath the pod to release it, and primer cube he needed to charge off of Wax to get the engine started… Certainly seemed like more than a backup plan for launching it.

I’d made that observation/comment before, after Bands of Mourning, that the way Allik acted and talked about Metalborn seemed inconsistent with observed facts. For example, to release Wilg (their escape pod/glider) from the larger airship that the Set had captured, he hands everybody medallions for weight (F-iron), and then tells Wax to Steelpush on the primer cube so they can take off. How was that glider supposed to take off, then, without a Coinshot handy? Either there would have to be a medallion for A-steel, or a member of the crew would have had to be a Coinshot. And yet no medallion we ever see in BoM is other than F-brass (heat), F-duralumin (Connection/translation), F-iron (weight), a combo of weight and connection (two attributes in one medallion - rare), or the F-copper coin that Hoid threw at Wax. In fact, all the “primer cubes”, aka “Allomantic grenades”, function off of Allomancy, not Feruchemy, that we have seen. So how are they charging their Steelpush primers, if that’s how their airships fly?

I was really busy back in March-April and actually forgot to read the early chapters of SP3 and SP4 when they came out; finally went and did so. Aside from the obvious questions already under discussion, I wondered who Hoid's supposed to be telling the story to. I kind of don't like the idea that "it's us", i.e., "the dear reader in the human world", which is way too much of a "breaking the fourth wall, I know I'm a ficitional storyteller" thing... But assuming his audience is within the Cosmere, who would Hoid be talking to in such a familiar tone? Someone who is familiar both with several Rosharan bases for analogies (Veden or Alethi looks to people, comparisons to a chull, mention of Design as a Cryptic without explanation, etc.), yet also "rice, as you'd call it on Scadrial" (which is not known on Roshar)? Someone actually from Scadrial, then, but who's spent time on Roshar? And who has a "modern viewpoint" of venerating people in an "essential job" like "teachers, firefighters, and nurses", and comparisons to incandescent light bulbs... So... Someone of at least Mistborn Era 2 or later. That would also fit in with us seeing Design in that noodle shop in Kilahito, as MB Era 2 is known to take place in the gap between SA5 and SA6, so Hoid being a coat rack is a minor spoiler that Hoid will be "stasisified" somewhere in there, but after getting Design off of Roshar somehow. (Possibly at the same time as he appears as a projected illusion to interact with Nomad/Sigzil in SP4, i.e., he is physically static but still cognitively active?) Could it be... Marasi? It's hinted in the blurbs for the as-yet-unreleased capstone to MB Era 2, The Lost Metal, that Marasi will be recruited by some off-world agency. (Also: seeing Hoid used as a coat rack brought back old memories of a certain long-petrified wizard in the second "Merlin Cycle" of The Chronicles of Amber books by Roger Zelazny, I doubt that's a coincidence, LOL)

That, plus how would Khriss know this Allomancer Throwdown was going on in a secret forgotten cavern beneath Elendel, dating from the World of Ash? The most likely person to be present in that room at that time who hadn't started there when the throwdown began, is someone who would otherwise have had a reason to stop by to check in on things. That, or someone senior who the Cycle managed to call in before going after Marasi himself. Either way, logically, it's most likely someone from the Set. Which could well mean, narratively, that it's NOT someone from the Set and we're being set up in some way for a bombshell revelation down the line.

So what is "Auxiliary" exactly? Not an honorspren, but still a "kind of" spren that can manifest as Shardtools, even (briefly) as a Shardblade. And can facilitate Connection-based translation services for Nomad, which is not something honorspren can do (that we know about). So far in SA, only the Stormfather has facilitated that with Dalinar's Connection-based powers as a Bondsmith - though it could be related to a variant of Adhesion, the Surge that Windrunners share with Bondsmiths. While Nomad is able to consume Investiture of all kinds, and use it to heal and to "Skip", he cannot seem to Surgebind as a Windrunner would. At least, not at will - his amazing leaps through the air do seem just a leeeetle bit like flying. Auxiliary describes themself as "dead", and Nomad describes his oaths as "ended" (not broken). And Auxiliary, despite the name, speaks to Nomad as a senior, at least sarcastically, as a "knight" does to a "squire". And despite being "dead", can manifest immediately and in different forms. I think there must be something of an honorspren baseline in there, though; it's telling that Nomad is able to "break through" his Torment briefly, for Auxiliary to manifest as a Shardblade (though thrown as a non-lethal distraction), when he maximally represents the Windrunner ideal of Protection, when he closed his eyes and remembered swearing presumably the Second Ideal ("I will protect those who cannot protect themselves"). Whereas before, when desperate for a Blade form to cut through his bindings (not to fight with), Auxiliary had commented, "I’m not the one holding you back on that count, Nomad." "Skipping" appears to be teleporting to another world in the Cosmere, though without direction (he isn't choosing where to go - and in this story, has landed somewhere he's never been before - is that always true?). Nomad has been to or is familiar with Scadrial, Taldain, and Threnody, and stayed there long enough to be able to read presumably Malwish writing on the Scadrian medallion/key. What Metalborn powers in a medallion would combine to form a key to a gateway, anyway? An "access disc"? For that matter, what Metalborn powers facilitate operating an "ancient barrier" in the form of a "large metal door"? (Assuming it's a magical barrier, and not just a honking ginormous steel door that is easiest to remove with Allomancy, as with TLR's caches?) He's also by now familiar with things like guns and hoverbikes and removable power cells of Investiture. Guns exist on Scadrial by SA5+ - as that is the same time as Mistborn Era 2 - but hoverbikes? Bwuh? And of course... Who and what are the Night Brigade? Hunting Nomad for something related to "the Dawnshard" that he is now a human shield for to Hoid/Wit, something Wit "did to him" (apparently in SA5)? And will I ever read that term "Night Brigade" without hearing that song by My Chemical Romance modified to fit it?

No guarantee that Hoid's found a way to get his spren off of Roshar (out of the Rosharan system). He could simply have found a way to put Design in a gemstone for cold storage while he's gone or something. (Or one he can carry around, but not release the spren from away from Roshar?) I dunno, he didn't seem surprised to see a seon away from Sel and even told Shallan what to do with it, so maybe there is some similar principle in play for a Cryptic bonded to him?

Miles Hundredlives said something very similar as he died, without exhibiting red eyes: "You are fools! One day, the men of gold and red, bearers of the final metal, will come to you. And you will be ruled by them! Worship... Worship Trell and wait..." I think the red eyes bit was some aspect of his having a Trellium spike at all - which may or may not "prep" him for avatar-ness, but is not actually what he was talking about: he described becoming one as being his reward for killing Marasi, not something he was already blessed with in order to kill her (after all, she was the one who stumbled into their lair). "Trell is choosing hosts,” he said. “Avatars, bestowed with his power. How would you like to be the accomplishment that proves I’m worthy of immortality, lawwoman? All you have to do is die." Besides, becoming a "host", an avatar of Trell, and "bestowed with his power" comes with "immortality", which he obviously didn't have, as he died rather easily afterwards.

The question is to what degree Harmony can "manipulate" Wax's character, his nature. He can present Wax with environmental pressures and controls, but not how he reacts to them, is how I see it. It feels to me very similar to what Gaotona reflects upon at the end of The Emperor's Soul, with respect to Shai's "modifications" to her soulstamp of Ashravam, which were 100% stable: Harmony, of course, has a much better idea of "the him that would have been" than Shai or Gaotona while doing his "nudging". The principle is the same, though. Unless Harmony actually "checkmates" Wax into a no-choice position, he's simply "arranging things" so that Wax can - and if he's the man Harmony thinks/hopes he is, will - go in a certain direction. You could say His "arranging" for Wax's chest with his Sterrion guns to end up in the Vanishers' stolen cargo container at the end of Alloy of Law as fulfilling Wax's plea for "a little help" was much more of a tangible act of "divine interference".

And while you're waiting to catch the pop-up falling in center field, ... here comes something to blindside you from out of left field. It's gonna be our first glimpse of Whimsy. LOL. Who pulls a Shard Ex Machina to pitch in behind Harmony and make it a 3-on-2 game of Scadrialball. Epilogue But... Why? Why would Whimsy suddenly interfere with our plans? You are a new Vessel to Odium, and do not remember what Luni was like before Ascending. She was already erratic. Taking up Whimsy has made her even more unpredictable. Her name was Luni? Seriously? We tried really hard to get Cephandrius to take it. At least he would have had a purpose to his tomfoolery, infuriating as it would have been. But he refused. And her odd stutter as she left. Shouldn't Ascending have fixed it? It's... A reference. Th-th-th-th-that's All Folks! Something else only Rayse would have... Appreciated.

I have a feeling that he meant that in a technology way - the Southern Scadrians are far more advanced in using the Metallic Arts than the Northerners, despite not even knowing about them or having any Metalborn until after the Catacendre (for practical purposes). Not that an individual human Coinshot like Wax would gain power in their Pushes to the level of Kelsier or Elend or TLR, but that people (in general) would be able to access flare-level Pushing, and with less risk of carrying around vials of steel and needing to wait to swallow them, with the push of a button. Or pre-programmed Allomantic effects that are more complex, like if Wax could "code in" a cube not just a general "Steelpush From This Point" centered around the cube that works against the holder's own belt, rings, etc., but his "steel bubble" effect. And then the cube is made small enough to be placed on a belt buckle, and given enough Investiture to power it on a low draw... Presto! You have a kind of wearable "bulletproof shield" that can be activated and de-activated.

Well in the case of his turn as a driver in SA (WoR), it’s not like he was unknown or unrecognized to his passengers. They all immediately identified him as “You!” But yeah. I think he’s a driver to “overhear” conversations (and remember, as he comments to Dalinar at a lighteyed feast in TWoK he doesn’t always consciously know why he’s in a particular place; he’s moved by a Fortune-based mechanism to “be where he needs to be”). Like in “Book 2” of Era 2, he’s in a position to overhear Wax’s conversation with Sazed. Wax’s half of it, anyway.

He was also a carriage driver at least once in Stormlight Archives, when Shallan recognizes him and hugs him, to Adolin's astonishment. Maybe he just likes driving (horses or cars).

I also wonder about the earring Wax received in Ch. 5, since he already got one years ago in Bands of Mourning via Marasi, in a pouch with the note Just in case, Waxillium. Last we see him with it, Wax was rolling it in his fingers as he reflected on his... beef with God at the end of Part Two of BoM. That was the third time he was offered one, too - once via Wayne, then offered from VanDell, and then this one passed on from Marasi. I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have gotten more in the meantime, so does that mean he's still been refusing to wear one even since meeting/talking with Harmony in the CR after dying? This one is different, though, as the note reads: You’ll need to make a second, once the proper metal arrives. Huh. A Pathian earring that comes in pairs, but needs a "proper metal" not at hand? And one that Wax will be making himself, either out of that metal or making use of that metal? All sorts of things come to mind, what with the title of the book being the Lost Metal. Assuming Harmony isn't planning on just making Wax a Mistborn - which He could have done at any time, like he did with Spook, without passing metal to him - is this really from Harmony, or is he going to be slipped a Trellium earring-spike? (That seems unlikely, as he's seen Trellium before and would recognize it.)

Random thoughts: I wondered if we were meant to recognize what the "chasm" with a fallen ancient bridge spanning it might have been from the Fallen Empire. Like, maybe it's a section of one of the "dry canals" from Urteau ("streetslots")? It was, after all, the site of one of the "storage caverns" in which people rode out the Catacendre (including Spook, the Lord Mistborn himself). The Cycle had four spikes, one Trellium (removing which alone was enough to kill him); what were the other three? For hemalurgic stealing of Metalborn powers - F-gold, F-pewter, and ...what else? The Cycle must not have had a lot of health stored up (no Compounding, or pre-filled metalminds like a Set operative like Kelesina had, that Wayne inherited for a while in BoM) - it should have been able to heal from a gunshot wound to the head a lot faster than Marasi could find, and then to dig out the Trellium spike from his body. Though as Marasi noted, he didn't seem very practiced in the use of Feruchemy, so maybe he'd only acquired the spikes very recently.

Curious that Marasi seems to know more about the Set than we left them knowing at the end of BoM - like the number and names of their ranks, that a "Cycle" reports to a "Suit" and so on. I guess they have interrogated Set members to get this type of info? Interesting that they still have such a large hierarchy, as we had from Trell's own representative that the new "timeline" was building up to eradicating life on this sphere (Scadrial) instead of having the Set ruling over it for Trell, such that it "will no longer require the Set to have its full hierarchy". Marasi's thinking to herself that the guy in a suit was "a" Cycle who reported "to the Suit above him" in the manner of Miles Hundredlives having reported to Edwarn - who had always being addressed simply as "Suit" - was one among several Suits. If that's reducing the "full hierarchy", how big had this operation been? And Irich had been "Array", implied by action to be below Suit, yet deeper in the workings of the Set than Miles had been. And Edwarn reflects on the "Series" being in charge above all of them, as he rehearses how he would propose "accelerating the timeline" in the wake of Wax and Co. getting hold of the Bands. (The red-eyed "Faceless Immortal" who comes to him apparently being one of the Series, or a representative thereof - definitely plural, as he had thought about how "even the most careful of the Series would be distressed..."). So, Series > Sequence > Suit > Array was the known chain of hierarchy before; now it ends in "Cycle" and there are multiple chains? EDIT: I did a quick re-read of the end of BoM, and while Edwarn thinks of himself as just "Suit", when he's about to try to escape in an airship with the Set after Marasi literally blew him and Telsin away with the Bands before flying off to find/rescue Wax, a technician "bearing the red uniform of the Set's Hidden Guard" (another rank?) asks him, "My lord Suit? Aren't we waiting for the Sequence?" as he gives the order to take off immediately. So Telsin was "the" Sequence... Perhaps of the local chapter? But they didn't know about the Southern Hemisphere, and Edwarn is busy working with tensions between the Basin and the Outer Rim settlements in the Northern Hemisphere, so wouldn't that imply "the" hierarchy of at least all of Scadrial?

Welcome, and stay away until you've caught up. Spoilers are thrown around here like, well, I'll just say food is thrown around in a monkey cage.

TLDR: Investiture is magic. Literally, the stuff that results in magic effects happening in the Cosmere. Since the Cosmere is a fictional universe that has operating magic, people in-universe consider it to be equally fundamental to their reality as physics, chemistry, etc., are to us, and a subject fit for study, research, and manipulation. We get hints of these terms based on the in-world "science of magic" done by characters like Khriss, an in-universe scholar who writes the Ars Arcana footnotes in each book, and other in-universe figures from other works (notably Warbreaker, The Stormlight Archive)... Who Brandon warns us don't always have things 100% correct. The confusion comes from figuring out the context. "Investiture" can refer to something that "makes it possible for a character to do magic" (e.g., Investiture involved in making someone an Allomancer, like a Coinshot); what powers the magic effect (the "Investiture that comes from Preservation" that makes a a metal object actually fly through the air when a Coinshot Pushes on it); or some kind of "power storage" like an Allomancer's "metal reserves", or a Feruchemist's metalminds. And yet, at some level they're equivalent. Which is how the medallions in Bands of Mourning work: it's possible to store the Investiture that gives a Metalborn power, in a metalmind as a store of Investiture (presumably via a nicrosilmind), along with a metalmind of that power next to it (e.g., Wax taps the Bands both for the power to use Feruchemy for gold, and accessing a goldmind pre-loaded in the Bands). This is what makes the Cosmere so attractive to technically minded people - it's "hard" magic, with rules and properties, and you can extrapolate and combine already known rules and effects to try and predict new combinations, limitations, and effects that would make sense. Brandon loves this stuff too, obviously, and refines this with concepts like Spiritual based Investiture (the "piece of the soul" that can be spiked out that grants a Metalborn ability), "kinetic" Investiture (it's only magic while you're using it, or "making it go", like tapping a metalmind - a Leecher can't drain a metalmind sitting on a table, but could prevent a Feruchemist from tapping it), and so on. And then there are some grounding things, like the "spark of life" that every living soul has got that has some baseline amount of Investiture, which is why you can staple four ordinary humans into a koloss, and stuff like that. But if all of that is "too much" for you to parse out and think about, that's fine too. Just accept that "it's magic" the way people can accept that their iPhone can order pizza via an app without wondering about how exactly Lithium Ion batteries recharge, or satellite based cellular data relays, TCP/IP stack protocols, etc., etc. You can stop thinking about this stuff at any level of complexity you enjoy - this is fiction meant for fun! - and finally, even Brandon Sanderson reserves the ultimate trump card at need (like when people objected to aluminum bullets never being possible as a projectile weapon): "this is fiction, and when plot advancement collides with everything you thought you knew before about the mechanics real or magical... Plot wins, and it's just magic is the explanation."

"What is wrong with you?! You were a scribe, Lightsong... A Colors-cursed scribe. You were an accountant for a local moneylender!" "You were as much an idiot then as you are now! ...and every time, I get in trouble with you. Nothing has changed! You become a god, and I still end up in prison!" Oh, how I laughed at that reveal of Lightsong's past! And then, not long after: "...You were a scribe. And you were one of the best men I'd ever known. You were my brother. ...And then you died. Died rescuing my daughter... "I knew it at that moment. I knew that if a man like you were chosen to Return - a man who had died to save another - then the Iridescent Tones were real. ... You are a god. To me, at least. ... It has to do with who you are, and what you mean." Oh, how I teared up at that reveal of Lightsong's past.

I've wondered about this - obviously the Five Scholars explored very high levels of Heightening, and the priests of the Court of Gods probably know a fair amount they keep secret about Breaths, Heightenings, and Commands. For example, they possessed the technique for "wordless Command" as well as the proper Command and visualization for a Returned to pass along "stacked" Breath without giving away the underlying "Divine" Breath, which Susebron would have to know to be able to use the "temp space" method of partial Breath transfer (store all but 2,000 Breath into something, use the standard "My Breath become yours" Command to give that to Siri without dying, and then to reclaim the Treasure back to himself). Even without learning some more advanced "partial transfer" Command, which he also doesn't know. But, most or all of the senior priests were killed in Bluefingers' plot, and there are just two left of the original Five Scholars. So while Susebron might well WANT to raise Siri to the Fifth Heightening, he may not be ABLE to do so until they learn more somehow about Commands. ("A Command to give Breath but not the Divine one" is not the sort of thing you're likely to experiment with as a Returned, as you can never get it wrong and try again a second time...) If it's going to happen, it's most likely going to happen in the sequel to Warbreaker and we'll see either Vasher or a version of Vivenna who's gained "higher education" on Breath instructing Susebron on how to do it.

If the goal was just to strip or to drain someone of Breath rather than to steal it, there are a number of Cosmere ways of doing that that should be "investiture agnostic" (i.e., worked in Mistborn and Stormlight Archives, and WoBs suggest they'd work similarly for other Cosmere Investiture). If the goal is to leave you with most or all of the Breath so taken and the ability to use it, that is a more difficult task. For all the talk of Hemalurgy (which btw, means maybe this thread should be moved to the Cosmere Discussion from the Wabreaker forum, I don't think that works because that steals "abilities" not "investiture" (as a store). We even have a WoB where Brandon says hemalurgy could not be used to steal the Divine Breath of a Returned, nor Peacegiver's Treasure from the God King: Though you could, if you wanted to, read his comment of "it is not" as referring to the means used by the Hallendren priests to "extract the Divine Breath and hoard" from the God King (the original question), versus "it is not [an option]" (the most recent refining comment from the questioner). But that would be cheating, since clearly the questioner meant to ask "could hemalurgy be used for that purpose". We already know from the story itself, as told by Treledees right before he died protecting the God King from Lifeless, that the priests had a special Command and instructions on framing its Intent, ready to teach to every God King, to wordlessly pass on the Treasure without killing himself.