robardin

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.

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!"