robardin

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”

One wonders about the first mistwraiths, then. Rashek turned all living Feruchemists into mistwraiths, being unable to outright kill/destroy them with the power of Preservation, then "restored" his friends with a few hemalurgic spikes. It would have taken even Rashek a bit of time to kill enough people the right way to create 2xN Blessings spikes (N = however many "friends" he recovered that way; at least ten, the number of First Generation surviving to Sazed's time); until then, those friends would have suffered the same constant mental state of "something is missing, something is terribly wrong!" that MeLaan experienced without her spikes in BoM. And all the other former Feruchemists that hadn't been good enough with Rashek to get spikes? Yikes!

In fact, perhaps the identity of the Shard behind "Trell" is not Autonomy after all, per your spoilered reference. I mean, we know that MB Era 2 takes place after SA5, right? Think about that...!

Well, there is Intent in the latter case on the part of the donor host - I presumed you meant you thought the "beggar stolen from the streets" was killed to use as a host, which is what I was imagining, being as I'm imagining a kandra-style use for the corpse (to assume his form). But you are right, there is a known Cosmere mechanism for a willing transfer of one's own body to a Cognitive Shadow... Even if under somewhat false pretenses (the donor host doesn't have to know they'll die, just be willing to accept the incoming soul).

I agree with those three likely scenarios, except I think it's #2. These have been "even more altered" than Paalm because she started out a kandra of Harmony (with normal Blessings), but instead were created as "trellium-based kandra" from the get-go (mistwraiths "born" with trellium). The red indicates "corrupted Investiture", which we also saw on the trellium spike that was harvested from Paalm's body - "corrupted" as in "Trell (presumed by most to be Autonomy, but who knows for sure just yet) has co-opted/redirected the magic of another Shard" And reject #3 as "really, this is the first time we see possession magic in the Cosmere, is this way?"

So spaketh the Servant of Trell (as one of the Set's "Faceless Immortals") at the end of the Bands of Mourning, right before detonating an ettmetal bomb that wiped out Edwarn and itself in a huge explosion: "Thank you for your service; it has been accepted. You will be allowed to serve in another Realm." That's "realm" with a capital R. What do you think that might refer to? Edwarn's blown up, but his Cognitive Shadow will continue in service to further Trell's goals? What, are they going to make a Suit Seon? An Edwarn fabrial? The mind boggles!

No, I would say what makes sense "given the language used" in Edwarn's inner dialogue (born and raised in Elendel), thinking to himself that "the Set had Faceless Immortals of their own" that Wax and his fools had no idea existed, is just that: they have the full equivalent of Faceless Immortals on their side, but ones that communicate with and report to Trell instead of Harmony (hence why it clearly outranks him by far, being able to speak of timelines, accepting service, and oh yes, removing life on Scadrial). If it was just a matter of "these servants of Trell can also appear as different people", well, that's only a fraction of what it means to be a Faceless Immortal, and he would probably have had a different term for it in his head. On a side note, we've also never seen any kind of "possession magic" in the Cosmere at all, in terms of an inteilligent entity occupying a human host (living or dead); having this be the first introduction of that mechanism under "Faceless Immortal" in the closing passages of a Mistborn book doesn't feel right, when we already know from Shadows of Self Trell can do a kind of hemalurgy by proxy that is invisible to Harmony.

We don't actually know this at all. After all, Edwarn reflects to himself that the form of a person "with a ragged beard and wild hair" that came to visit him while imprisoned was probably one of the Set's Faceless Immortals via "a beggar stolen off the street". So they do need a human's bones to assume a human form, just like kandra do. And the "trellium" spike recovered from Paalm functioned in same (if corrupted) way that (one of) her original Blessings did, in terms of preserving her identity and memories, so however the mechanism works, it's more like a "co-opting" of hemalurgy's mechanics than a duplicating of effect. So the question is, are the Set's FIs more "rogue kandra" like Paalm was, or (more likely) mistwraiths brought to sentience via trellium spikes? The latter would never have been known to Harmony or the others at all. And it's implied by MeLaan that mistwraiths still exist somewhere, as she refutes to the idea that former Inquisitor spikes as used by Wax for an earring (and that successfully re-double-spiked Bleeder) would work as a Blessing, as "if that worked, we'd have already used all those spikes to make new children." There are mistwraiths out there to make into kandra with Blessings, if only they had them. So maybe for the Set, they do (of trellium).

Consider that some of the most powerful Dark Side practitioners we've seen - as in Darth Vader and Kylo Ren - have still a spark of light in them that they have to continually stoke their rage/anger over to suppress... Maybe a Mistborn could duralumin Soothe/Riot them to flip them back to the Light Side. Even if that doesn't win the fight right there, it should at least cause a moment of emotional turmoil that leaves an opening for a well placed coin to the head or something. LOL But yeah, on the face of it, completely open-ended, no-balancing-cost magic like the Force and the One Power in the Wheel of Time are inherently more OP than anything in the Cosmere that we've seen (possibly except for AonDor for an Elantrian on home turf, or a Connection hack thereof)

Hoid was present at the Shattering - and offered a Shard - which he declined. At the very least, that rules him out as having BEEN Adonalsium before the Shattering, and trying to reassemble himself into such (if that was one of the things you were putting forth?). Who the "backup Vessel" was (and for which Shard) we do not yet know, but it'd be funny if that was one of Rayse's original reasons for hating on Hoid, the two of who apparently already had "specific beef"* even before the Shattering. Nobody likes being the second choice! Per WoB, Hoid has been, but is not presently, a Dawnshard. This has affected him permanently, and is the reason he cannot physically harm another living being (including eating meat). Hoid is pursuing access to all the various Shardic magical powers, but he also already possessed some powers even before the Shattering (e.g., the "original Yolen version of Lightweaving"), so that is not indicative of a requirement to "super-Ascend" to Adonalsium. For Hoid (or any other "Cosmerite"**) to be trying to reassemble Adonalsium would require knowing or learning about what Adonalsium is/was, before the Shattering - not a lot of entities other than the Shards themselves can lay claim to that. Frost is one such being: the dragon on Yolen, or "old reptile", that corresponds with Hoid in some of the chapter headings in Stormlight Archive. He has a history with Hoid that goes back before the Shattering, and from the tone of his correspondence with Hoid, knows or guesses what he is pursuing and why, while disapproving. So, what is Hoid up to? Well, he writes to Frost, "You do not agree with my quest. I understand that, so much as it is possible to understand someone with whom I disagree so completely. ... You have accused me of arrogance in my quest. You have accused me of perpetuating my grudge against Rayse and Bavadin. Both accusations are true." And Frost replied, "...I'm disappointed. Perpetually, as you put it. Is not the destruction we have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain. ... You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow. Please, hearken to my plea. Leave that place and join me in my oath of nonintervention. The cosmere itself may depend upon our restraint." The way I read it, whatever Hoid is up to, it's not to "turn back the clock" on the Shattering so as to effectively undo it (with himself at the top, perhaps? hence the label of arrogance?), but more like continuing something he was already up to before the Shattering, the fact that two of his main targets had Ascended to Odium and Autonomy being a big obstacle. My personal theory on what Frost is alluding to as "the destruction we have wrought" in that letter is that it's not the Shattering, but whatever happened on Ashyn. Hence the mention of "the worlds you now tread" (Rosharan system) that "bear the touch and design of Adonalsium" (Roshar, its Invested highstorms, and the native singers all predate the Shattering), along with the interference that involved a "grudge against Bavadin and Rayse" that "has brought nothing but pain". And the arrogance is simply that Hoid continues to think he can "make things better" when all the other times, he's only made things worse (in Frost's opinion - and implied regret of past collusion). ---- *If I ever became a rapper or a pro wrestler, I would use the name "Specific Beef". **The preferred term is not "Cosmerite" but "Cosmerenaut", or possibly, "Cosmerepolitan". I may or may not have just made that up, though.

We don't know what any of the TW oaths are, whether normal TW like the Stump, or enlightened mistspren TW like Renarin and Rlain. But we do have a WoB that the latter being "touched" will change things:

Again, I like where this is going... #1 - Does the Vessel's body get destroyed? We see a physical body dropped each time a Shard is... Released. So far only dead bodies because the Vessel was killed, but that's because the only voluntarily released Shard we've seen was given up by Ghost Kelsier, who didn't have a body to drop. Any more. At the time. *cough* It's theoretically possible that a voluntarily released Shard by a fully living Vessel "with ties to all three Realms" would have that Vessel reappear physically, but expanded Spiritually from the experience. That's the Rashek Model (Lord Ruler), except that his Ascension to Preservation was partial and designed to be temporary (he couldn't have retained being Preservation even had he wanted to). #2 - A Radiant spren is, by nature, a concept from the cognitive realm that becomes Invested to the point of sentience. If you change the concept, is it still the same spren? Well, we do see spren corrupted - excuse me, "enlightened" - by Sja-anat, so that Glys is no longer a "mistspren" but a something-else-spren, but that happened before forming a Nahel bond. And we have a WoB that her doing that to a sapient (Radiant) spren required some kind of willingness on the part of the spren: So you're saying, what if picking up a Shard had like a Sja-anat like effect on the spren, with respect to their "concept"? That could happen. And hey - maybe the spren would be like a "predefined macro" Splinter of that Shard, like a ready made Unmade of Odium!

Those are some great questions! #1 - Can holding a Dawnshard be "spiked out" with hemalurgy? I agree the answer seems to be, "Sure, why not?" We have evidence that holding a Dawnshard (or "being" one) is something that can be given up (Hoid used to be one and isn't one any longer, and didn't have to die to do that), though the Sleepless didn't seem to know how to force or even to instruct Rysn on how to give it up. Which usually implies some kind of Spiritual twiddle or Connection mechanism, both of which hemalurgy can steal (the first as we see with Metalborn powers, the second with WoBs that one could spike out a Nahel bond, which in turn we know is Connection based because Crazy Ishar was poised to steal Dalinar's to the Stormfather). #2 - Can a Shard (or, a Vessel that has already Ascended to hold a Shard) form a Nahel bond? I think that is more clearly a "no", as bonding a spren requires "cracks" in a soul in a way that that I suspect holding a Shard will already have filled. #3 - If a person with a Nahel bond Ascends, what happens to the spren? This is more interesting. Aside from the Spiritual aspect of "what happens to the Vessel upon Ascension?" (Like, would it saturate the person's soul to the level of "squeezing out" the spren?), we know that a Shard's Intent can and will eventually overwhelm the Vessel's own personality: "Ati was once a kind and generous man" before becoming Ruin, and Sazed "loathes suffering" but as Harmony, "must allow for the possibility". But the Ideals involved in a Nahel bond emphasize certain personality traits that align with the spren's cognitive form. What if Kaladin Ascended to Harmony, and could no longer "protect those who cannot protect themselves" because, like Sazed, he "had to allow" for them to suffer? Or if he Ascended to Ruin? It seems like even if Syl survived Kaladin's Ascension, it's almost certain that the Shard's Intent would supercede any Ideals he had as a Radiant, which would "kill" the bond. Now you may say that Kaladin couldn't Ascend to Ruin because he wouldn't have the Connection necessary to take it up, but we also saw from Mistborn: Secret History that there are apparently ways to force Connection, that the Ire were planning to use (and Kelsier did instead) to take up Preservation. So we're talking about that kind of scenario, I suppose. And that also raises the question, how DID Ati take up Ruin if he had been a "kind and generous man"? Because he was "at peace" with death and decay?

I was wondering how there could be confusion on this point, but then I realized... That's perfect! Spensa saw his name in print first, right? On the paper she picked up of the cadet admissions examination she hadn't been allowed to sit for? Another reason for Jorgen to reset his cruel nickname, haha. As if he needed more. BTW this caused me to go back and re-read "Skyward" for the first time in a while, and man it is a fun re-read (and a bit heart-wrenching) after fairly recently reading Evershore!