robardin

Hm, if the Threnodite chain from Shadesmar is what Raboniel received from Mraize, and she was stunned "rhythmless" upon seeing it, ... ...she must have recognized it and its special Threnodite properties, which in turn must be derived from more than just being made of silver, as that metal is not uncommon. No, not even on Roshar. Moash's grandparents, and Roshone, were "silversmiths" in Kholinar, right? And neither were particularly high ranking or wealthy, or cosmere-aware that the metal had high value offworld or something.

Does he, though? As in, permanently? He obviously was able to "present" as the Sovereign for a while, but then where's that Sovereign now, if we have multiple, very strong WoBs that state he cannot yet go off-world from Scadrial? Also, what Hoid says to Kelsier while giving him a beat down was "apparently, you being dead means I can hurt you." And as Zahel/Vasher states in RoW to Kaladin, a Cognitive Shadow - what he called "Type Two Invested Entity", and included the Fused, the Heralds, himself, and per WoB, Kelsier in that category - is a "dead man walking". That would imply that Hoid could hurt him, or a Fused, or a Herald, ... but maybe not in the Physical Realm? Or maybe he's just chosen not to find out? After all, he was surprised by that development at the Well of Ascension in the CR, but how and when would it be a good idea to test that boundary condition in the PR? Best just to assume he can't (as he has for all those millenia), right?

Yes, the longer you wield Nightblood (unsheathed), the faster the Investiture drains. At the end of Ch. 74 of Warbreaker, as Vasher throws NB away from him before it took everything from him:

Vasher also removes memories with Breath - the memories of abuse from the traumatized kidnapped little girl that he and Vivenna rescue, the offer of taking the dark memories from Denth, and (it's implied) siphoning off unwanted memories of his own. "I know the Commands." In fact, it's not just implied, Brandon outright admits it in a WoB: Did those memories get "locked away" or actually excised? Are they stored for later retrieval, like with a coppermind? What happens if Hoid uses Breath to Awaken (as he did in Kholinar), does he have to visualize not using those Breaths that have his memories in them?

I still harbor doubts about Hinston's "death". The "carriage accident" was staged, as a way to fake the deaths of Edwarn and Telsin. How would the only other occupant, Edwarn's wife, not also "die" in a convincing enough staging? Logically, either she did genuinely die (and Edwarn and Telsin knowingly arranged and allowed it to happen); or, she was in on the staged accident as much as they were. Now that we've found out what really happened with Telsin - that in fact, she recruited Edwarn into the Set, not the other way around - doesn't it seem far more likely that they were all in on it? Everybody in the carriage that supposedly went over the cliff edge? And while it's certainly possible they were using Hinston's death "by disease" as a "convenient excuse" for a family trip via carriage "to escape the grief" of being reminded of their son's passing by staying at home, once you think that Edwarn, his wife, AND Telsin, AND as we know Tillaume (the House Ladrian butler) were all in the Set by that point, ... it's not hard to think that Hinston was, as well. In fact, it'd be odd if he hadn't been. After all, Hinston was born when Wax was eighteen, who is around 40 years old at the time of the Era 2 stories. So Hinston would be in his early 20s. Not a child. Old enough to participate and act on plans the Set might have, to be a full agent. Now, what Edwarn said to Wax in the train car in the epilogue to AoL is this: And the way Edwarn describes his own son's "death" as "unfortunate" in the context of disrupting or altering "plans already in motion" seems really, really cold, even for him. What was this "disease" anyway? Seems like nobody knew the details, or have never given it; the only other mention of it was in Chapter 10 of AoL, when Marasi asks Wax how he came to become the house Lord: He then mentions not having seen his family in fifteen years, and this summary of events were given to him by letters... Letters written by Tillaume. And, what "plans" were "already in motion" that Edwarn referred to that would affect "searching out other options" for the house title? First of all, if Edwarn and Telsin were fully "into" the Set and he had been funneling the House funds to it over years, why wouldn't they just cut bait and let the House die off? Like, if they'd succeeded in killing Wax via Tillaume's explosion, who would have been the house Lord then? If the answer is "nobody", and they were just fine with that... Why would the "plans already in motion" Edwarn referred to be about who would hold title to House Ladrian? It was Wax's investigations into their actual plans that they were trying to stop. Second, The Set are Cosmere-aware, at least the ranking members are; they fully know that Trell is an off-world god, one with world-spanning interests. Edwarn's last plea to the "Faceless Immortal" who blows the two of them up was cut off at "But you need us! To rule, to manage civilization on --", surely meaning to say, "on this planet"? Cut off by the being responding with a reference to "removing life on this sphere" as the new plan. I think Hinston's "disease" is something magical, possibly off-world, or at least something that has removed him (for now) from Scadrial. Perhaps he was sent somewhere off-world where the Investiture makes it difficult to leave? I can't believe he's bonded a spren on Roshar, but something similar? (Maybe even a literal "disease" like the unpublished concept of magic on ruined Ashyn?)

So if it's established that A-chromium would work to Leech Investiture, what about A-nicrosil to "burst" the (kinetic) use of it? You could theoretically kill, say, a Windrunner by tapping him on the shoulder just as he Lashed upwards to fly, causing him to use all his Stormlight in a massive Lashing to the sky that sent him soaring up super high/quickly, but with no Stormlight left to Lash himself the other way to slow the descent, or to heal upon impact.

But at the end of TWoK, there was no Everstorm yet (that was summoned by the army of stormform listeners at the Battle of Narak at the end of WoR) Taln seems pretty crazy at Kholinar and doesn't seem to realize very much at all And without the Everstorm being in the Physical Realm yet, has the Desolation "kciked off"? What would define that? Actually I think I get your first point, meaning the "Cognitive" storm "to the south" of Narak that Ulim said was where he'd come from after somehow being put into a gemstone, that may have been there already in Shadesmar in TWoK before Taln's arrival to Kholinar? And whatever allowed that to amass in Shadesmar, "counted" as a Desolation trigger? That fits, but is as yet in the realm of pure speculation (no evidence yet).

It's stated that Taln did not break to trigger this Final Desolation, ... And a Herald dying (per the Stormfaker's reaction in the released draft prologue to SA5) the night of Gavilar's death appears to have been relevant: But no, we have no reason to think that that required the Herald who had died to have gone to Braize and been broken for the Final Desolation to begin. For one, when Ulim talks to Venli about how annoying it was for him to FINALLY get to Roshar, he never mentions a Herald breaking as a factor; instead he mentions entering "that gemstone" in Shadesmar, the one that Axindweth had given to her to break in the highstorm. That happened a few years AFTER the "Herald has died" moment on the night of Gavilar's death, so, the Oathpact was still effective enough to prevent a "normal" Desolation and return of Fused to Roshar, but not to prevent stormform listeners to pull the Everstorm across to the Physical Realm. Of course, if Taln hadn't broken and no other Herald had returned to Braize and broken, how is it that Taln arrived at Kholinar at the end of TWoK? That was before the Everstorm, and also before Venli freed Ulim in WoR. More questions than answers!

It's not clear that the Everstorm, which is a new thing that never existed before in past Desolations (and is apparently what makes this the Final Desolation), could have happened without the Oathpact being so weakened - by the foreswearing at Aharietiam, and then by the Unknown Herald Not Taln Who Broke. I agree that it shouldn't have needed the UHNTWB to trigger, but from the way that Ulim (and obliquely, Gavilar as wel) talks in RoW ("that storm to the south... you have no idea what I'm talking about" that contained all the Voidspren and Fused souls), and the way that the spren talk in terms of wanting to form Nahel bonds again after all this time about 10 years prior to the Everstorm, it seems clear that "something" was noticeably building up in the Cognitive Realm towards that becoming a possibility. What that something was due to is yet to be seen, but it wasn't to do with Taln breaking, and unlikely to do with UHNTWB breaking under torture on Braize either, as that should have simply allowed a "normal" Desolation to begin, if that was it (dead Herald = returned to Braize to join Taln the Unbroken = other Herald breaks = Normal Desolation). I suspect it has to do with the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram, and possibly to do with however B-A-M was able to grant Voidlight and forms of power in Odium's absence before that. However it is that that event also triggered the inherited zombification of the non-listener parsh (who were Connected to Odium), the phenomenon of deadeye Radiant spren if their Radiant broke the bond or oaths, the original "rules" of the game were already being rewritten somehow, this was just the latest beta release. As to the topic in the OP - speculating on Hesina's family - I think it's simply that she grew up a darkeyed daughter of a first or second nahn Citizen father (who still needs a writ to carry a sword) who married a lower dahn lighteyed woman, one reason that Lirin and her apparently thought matching Kaladin with Laral was a real possibility. We also picked up a hint about this when Kaladin recognized the song that Aesudan was singing in Kholinar, without knowing why - a WoB where he obliquely refers to that being something due to his mother. We've seen the children of lighteyes/darkeyes unions produce a few "one-eyes" (people with heterochromia, one light and one dark), including mention of one of Graves' children, but that clearly isn't always the case (Graves has more than one child with his darkeyed wife). I wonder if there are ever "fully lighteyed" children of such a union? And how are the children counted - I guess if like Hesina they are dark in the eye, they are darkeyed (but high nahn)?

You recall quite accurately except that it was Leshwi talking to Venli, including the term "Isolation" that she uses in Ch. 14 of RoW (specifically, how it was that Lezian the Pursuer was able to "kill any enemy who'd killed him" each Return): So Fused could and did return repeatedly with each Desolation, not through the Everstorm but via some other means implied to be a direct act of Odium (as Lezian is surprised to have happen to him, coming back "the old way", at the end of RoW). And the Heralds could and did "give themselves to Braize to activate the Isolation" with Fused still left on Roshar, as Lezian would immediately kill himself to avoid being in the position of needing vengeance with no way to pursue it until the human was long dead (unless the time to the next Desolation was within that person's lifetime, a rarity until near the very end). What is not clear is if or how the Heralds were able to "come back" within a given Desolation. In the Prologue to The Way of Kings, Kalak is the POV who seems stunned not only that "I actually survived this time", and that "when he died, he was sent back, no choice. When he survived the Desolation, he was supposed to go back as well. Back to that place of pain and fire. What if he just decided... Not to go?" And then later, Jezrien told him, "You might call it a miracle. Only one of us died this time [Talenel]. ... A decision has been made. It is time for the Oathpact to end. ... Ishar believes that so long as there is one of us still bound to the Oathpact, it may be enough. ... Our Blades must be left. The Oathpact ends now." It's clearly implied that any Heralds who were dead when a Desolation was over was automatically enrolled in the Oathpact's Isolation Shield. And Jezrien's wording - "only one of us died this time" - strongly suggests that each Herald had only one life per Desolation, versus "only one of us was dead this time [at the end]". And the expected act for the surviving Heralds was to meet at the designated, pre-agreed upon point and then to kill themselves, to go lend support to those Heralds already on Braize. So when was a Desolation "over"? Per Leshwi's description, it was possible for one to end, and the Isolation to begin with all ten Heralds on Braize, with Fused still left on Roshar (with humans and Radiants tasked with "mop-up duty"). And that until the Isolation was invoked, Odium could summon Fused back to Roshar. Yet per that Prologue, it seems like the Isolation was auto-triggered - maybe that was something dependent on all Fused being killed at the same time? We also have it as a WoB that Taln "didn't break" to start the Final Desolation. Which is very interesting.

It's described like so in Mistborn: Secret History in a conversation in the Cognitive Realm between two beings witnessing Sazed's Double Ascension (which I take it you haven't read, or you wouldn't be asking, so I'll spoiler it):

OK, so this is the Warbreaker forum, so my first answer will be limited to what we know from that work alone... Passing Breath along requires Intent, not just speaking the words of the Command "My life to yours, my Breath become yours", so if the subject is initially unwilling, either bargaining ("I'll make it worth your while...") or torture (physical or mental) is in order. Or deception. I wonder if hypnotism would work? People have already speculated on using Hemalurgy or Allomancy from Mistborn, but I'll still spoiler Stormlight-based magic suggestions:

I saw the thread title and was not expecting 3+ pages of argument based on the physics of our world, about the physics of magic that breaks the physics of our world, LOL. Par for the course here, I suppose No, what I was expecting was a discussion of the creation of more fabrial aircraft like The Fourth Bridge (possibly by the Fused and the singers, now) and how that might play out, especially for the "back five" books of Stormlight which will be set about 10 years after SA5 (?), in facilitating large scale travel and transport between parts of Roshar that have no Oathgate (or have them disabled/inaccessible due to hostile forces controlling them). "Good morning, welcome onto Airsick Lowlander! I am Gift, your ula'makai for this trip, what you call "captain." We stop first at Narak, pick up some people and things, then return to my Peaks, then come back to Urithiru a week later. Please, no spitting over edge as we fly, is disrespectful. I should have to thump you!"

Before you get to the question of "who" swapped in a deadspren Blade for Taln's Honorblade, you have to first ask: wouldn't Taln have had to unbond his Honorblade to allow it to be taken (versus simply dismissed)? Who could persuade him to do that...? Especially when Taln is basically crazy and wouldn't recognize almost anybody (though he went a bit nuts when he saw Shallan Lightweaving in front of him, "One of Ishar's Knights!!")? So yeah... Seems like it'd be a fellow Herald? But, even if you go "Aha!" in thinking that if Liss = Vedel it fits all the pieces - She had a dead Blade on hand to swap in for Taln's She has the face/lies to convince Taln to unbond his Honorblade in exchange for it Assume she has a motive to want his Honorblade... Most obviously, to regain Surgebinding? But, if a Herald could have a bond with an Honorblade while forswearing the Oathpact, and any of them wanted to continue Surgebinding, wouldn't they just have kept their original Blades back at Ahrietiam? Then the question is still open, why bother to "swap in" a deadspren Blade at all? It's not like the people at Kholinar believed he was the Herald Talenelat when he showed up; so it's not like giving him a Blade "for show", that wasn't his Honorblade, would prolong the charade. Especially since that dead Blade was not even gemstone bonded to him (Dalinar was able to bond it just by carrying it around for a week). Team Radiant knew what the Honorblades were (after Kaladin brought back Szeth's Windrunner Honorblade) by the time Dalinar realized the "madman at Kholinar" now in his custody had really been the Herald Taln all along, and that therefore someone out there had taken it from Taln before he reached Kholinar... So swapping in the dead Blade achieved nothing useful except in providing Dalinar a test for Amaram (probably not the reason whoever did it had done so). Maybe it functioned as a kind of "pacifier" Shardblade (LOL) for Crazy Taln to carry around? Like Liss/Vedel said "let's swap" and assumed Taln wouldn't notice he couldn't seem to bond to "her" Honorblade? And Crazy Taln never muttering "where's my Blade?" or "where's Vedel's Blade?" like you'd think he might, just shows how far gone he is? (He might have said something to Ash while lucid, though. "We gave them thousands of years without a Desolation! How wonderful! And oh... Vedel's gonna kill me, I seem to have lost her Honorblade, we swapped while I was nutso.")

A Herald (or anybody, I suppose) who has bonded their Honorblade does not need ten heartbeats to dismiss or to summon it; we can infer this because Syl says the delay "is primarily something of the dead", to sync a dead spren's essence to a living person to be able to manifest in the Physical realm, and an Honorblade is not a spren made physical but the very metal of Honor (Tanavastium). We can see this because Tezim is able to fight off five Windrunners at once in Rhythm of War, including skillful use of the technique of "skepping" his Blade, dismissing it and summoning it back again nearly instantaneously, as a way of evading a parrying move. Something the Radiants could only do with living Blades, and have only just begun to experiment with, but he has thousands of years of practice doing. We can therefore assume that Nale could also "skep" if he wanted to, with either of his two Blades. However, that scene with Lift was not the first time we saw Nale summon his Blade (presumably his Honorblade) in such a way that it "dropped" into his hand, the way a dead Blade would do. And he had just enough time to monologue a bit - ten heartbeats - before delivering his blow of execution to Ym, and each time he'd tried to get Lift as well. Sure, part of it could be that monologuing is the closest Nale gets to having a normal conversation with a mortal nowadays, but my guess is that over thousands of years of masking the fact that the Skybreakers were still extant, he and all the other Skybreakers of the 3+ Ideal have practiced delay-summoning to pass their Blades as "being like all the others" to the point where it's ingrained. It's one thing to leave Azish ministers wondering "when did we start letting marshals requisition Shardblades?" and another for them also to be wondering, "...and how come he was able to summon it back again impossibly quickly, and upside down or vertical or in a different shape, etc.?!" Which is also the explanation for why Szeth needed ten heartbeats in TWoK: he thought he needed them. (Which may tell us something about when or how the Shin acquired custodianship of the Honorblades?)

I dunno. In Warbreaker, while wielding NB to vaporize guards and to cut through walls to reach Vivenna and Denth, Vasher is able to physically cast Nightblood, unsheathed, into a corner of the room to avoid having the last of his Breath - and then his final one - drained out of him. On the other hand, at Thaylen Fields, Szeth was unable to release his hold Nightblood (or vice versa) once the Fused had taken the aluminum sheath away. So there is something we are missing in the equation, still.

I assume it does... But if it's a question of whether or not a Lifeless has enough "there" to even simulate intent by proxy (Command), you can reduce that further to the question: could you give a Lifeless a store of Breath? If so, could you then Command it to Awaken something else? (Like, if you wanted to disguise your own ability to Awaken?) Also, as far as "squiring" goes, there also has to be a Connection to the specific Radiant, right? At a Spiritual level? That's a bond I'm even more uncertain a Lifeless is capable of forming.

I don't know about Odium's influence on Vorinism, which retains strong taboos against "seeing the future" as something evil (of "the Voidbringers", which is to say of Odium, without naming him) But I definitely feel like there was Nalan's (via Ishar?) influence, in the way they sought to vilify the Radiants and to suppress any knowledge of Surgebinding or Nahel bonds Nalan wasn't hunting down Surgebinders until AFTER the Recreance, but we also know that he and Kalak were PRESENT for the trigger event (the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram), so between Ishar telling Nalan that new Nahel bonds would trigger the Final Desolation and Nalan continuing in secret to lead the only order of Radiants left operating (the Skybreakers), that can't be a coincidence, right?

Wow, I heard my kids talking about trying to find "allays" in Minecraft and did not make this connection at ALL! -- Doing the "knobweed finding" thing Syl! ...And, do you think it could be a reference to the seon named Ala (pronounce "a-LAY") when Shallan opens the box that Mraize had given her to communicate with him?! At this point, Rhythm of War has been out for quite a while!

I think it's clearly implied they're not, if you picked up on it - in Ch. 3 of BoM, VenDell and MeLaan object to Wax's innocent question as to why they couldn't use Inquisitor hemalurgic spikes in place of kandra Blessing spikes: The reason there have been no new generations of kandra is due to there being no new Blessings and the impossibility of inheriting or reusing them, not because there are no more proto-kandra (mistwraiths). And in fact, they are ready, willing, and able to raise new kandra, but for that limitation.

Oh of course, how did I forget that! So I would not say Fused on Shardless mortal is in any way a fair fight, any more than ordinary soldiers had any chance against Szeth the Assassin in White (Shards or no). Especially when all but Moash were killed from behind and above. But there is some kind of battlefield honor in them, at least as much as the listeners (before the Everstorm) exhibited, that Kaladin noted while rescuing Dalinar's forces: they didn't attack the wounded or already down, and as you say, they respect giving a completely outclassed opponent (on paper) the honor of a one-on-one fight. Later on in Oathbringer, Leshwi breaks off her duel above Hearthstone with Kaladin to let him stop the Pursuer from brutalizing "civilians", though - perhaps Graves and Moash were leaving the warcamps disguised as (ordinary) soldiers, at least?

Well, the ones that fly with Leshwi, anyway. As we saw in RoW, there were still Heavenly Ones who attacked the unconscious Radiants and their all-but-unarmed human shields; plus the ones that ambushed Graves and Moash fleeing the warcamps at the beginning of Oathbringer. Sure it turned out that they had Shards hidden in the cart behind them, but I doubt they had known that (they exclaimed in surprise/delight in examining the cart); looked like they simply attacked a small party of people fleeing "with stuff" to loot their stuff. Ch. 60 of The Way of Kings, the vision of Nohadon that Dalinar has (where he was Nohadon's advisor) where he said words aloud in the Dawnchant while in his trance that Navani was able to transliterate, and then to match up with what he remembered saying: "To be human is to want that which we cannot have." Before that, Nohadon looked out over a war-torn Kholinar, saying: So Alakavish was a Surgebinder who had formed his bond between Desolations and initiated some kind of war between human kingdoms; one who pre-dated Ishar or another Bondsmith imposing "precepts" (oaths and Ideals) on those who would form Nahel bonds?

In the only examples of it we'd seen in Mistborn Era 1, hemalurgic spikes are typically created by piercing the victim/donor through the heart with a piece of the appropriate metal. Magical/spiritual effects aside, that is generally pretty fatal, unless surgical techniques rather than brutal/manual ones were in play in later Eras; after all, TLR, Inquisitors, koloss, and Ruin (all the known "spike creators") had no inclination even to try to have the donor survive. Quite the opposite.

I have theorized this in the past myself - initially as a joke, but then in a huh, actually... kind of way. Moash is certainly passionate, and full of anger/hate... But at this point, largely at himself. And if he were the Vessel of Odium, he wouldn't be able to have Odium "take away his pain", he'd just be giving it back to himself! And a Vessel of Odium that by nature is not seeking to eliminate all the other Shards (Rayse), nor to "fix" the Cosmere that is so broken (Taravangian), but has a large component of regretful anger, would be quite interesting.

That’s a good point - however, TLM may not “spoil” anything in SA5, but instead, drop something that doesn’t make sense until SA5 Where you read a passage and just shout on the train, “What?! Brandon blew my mind AGAIN”