robardin

Oh yeah, and notice that Axindweth, despite having the blood-red gemstone with Ulim inside of it contained in her safehand sleeve, had never simply cracked the gem and released Ulim. She gave it to Venli after sussing her out as to her attitude and temperament to finding "forms of power", and then instructed her to release the spren during a highstorm.

Just as the Fused appear to require a human to gem-trap a Herald's soul, perhaps only a singer/listener could release the gem-trapped voidspren?

I doubt such a momentous event as one of the climactic moments of Oathbringer would not be something Brandon had plotted out as a core point from early on - he's not a "discovery" writer. So the fact that a Herald could be "perma-killed" that way, yet it had never happened in any prior Desolation but the Final one, is no accident.

Consider: this was the first time Odium has had direct minions on Roshar since the breaking of the Oathpact after the so-called Aharietiam. Since then, there had only the "False Desolation" engendered not by Odium and involving his Fused, but by Ba-Ado-Mishram stepping up and giving "forms of power" (Regals) to singers, that ended with BAM in a gem and the mindbombing of all but the "Last Legion" of "listeners".

So one might conclude that Jezrien having given up his Honorblade and forsworn his Oaths has something to do with his being susceptible to the Raysium dagger. But Odium wasn't able to manifest on Roshar enough to drop Raysium, nor to get a minion he could communicate with directly (Fused or sentient Voidspren like Ulim), until enough of the listeners took stormform and called for the Everstorm: as Ulim put it when Venli freed him, "that stupid Herald is still standing strong all these years later. We have to work around him."

The Everstorm is something envisioned by a dying Honor, as he mentions it in one of his pre-recorded visions to Dalinar, which was recorded AFTER both the Heralds forswearing, and the Recreance of the Knights Radiant. That's also something that had never happened before, and thus is likely one of the "things Odium can start to push through when the Oathpact has worn thin enough".

Even so, they still had to get Moash, a human, to do it: the Fused who gave him the dagger and then watched the execution were described as seemingly "not daring to do the deed themselves".

Finally, we don't entirely know what the terms of the Oathpact were, except that Odium is bound by it to remain in the Rosharan system even after the Splintering of Honor, and that Odium was still unable to start the Everstorm without human assistance (Ulim was brought in a gem through some kind of barrier and given to Venli by a mysterious Terriswoman named Axindweth, apparently a Ghostblood since she was chased off by "another of her kind" (Terris Feruchemist) in Gereh who was hunted/killed by Mraize, who had also facilitated bringing across the stormspren to Roshar in gems).

Hmm, maybe that last bit is part of the reason for the Everstorm. It could always have been a way to "work around" the Oathpact, except it would need help from worldhoppers putting voidspren in gems in Shadesmar and pulling them across to the Physical Realm on Roshar, which until now didn't exist (presumably the Ghostbloods have a specific reason for wanting to start this True Desolation)?

17 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Small quibble - they are not the same power, just one "Misting" can burn both. And TLR likely did know about it, as that is probably how so many inquisitors were able to burn Atium (they only needed a spike to become Electrum Mistings). 

The method shown (trace amounts with a Jump scare to cause reflexive bruning) would still apply as a way to find these mistings - much easier actually than getting a reflexive Electrum burn. . . 

What I meant was, if the Steel Ministry knew about atium (overtly/publicly) and electrum (privately), what was the point of the latter knowledge if they didn't also know about electrum Mistings, even if the knowledge that they were equivalent were kept secret by TLR?

Anyway, this is all a retcon, so we're discussing the plausibility or smoothness of the retcon more than anything else, haha. It is what it is.

I mean, electrum is already an alloy of gold, so having atium "always having really been pure atium + electrum" just makes malatium even more weird. So it's an alloy of pure atium and... an alloy? So is that alloy, like, more gold or less percent gold than the electrum alloy in Pits-atium?

My personal headcanon "fix" to "how come atium isn't burnable by anybody if it's a god metal" was that lerasium is, in fact, the only "god metal" that can be Allomantically burned, because it grants Allomancy in the first place.

We already know most metals are "Allomantically inert" and only the right purity of metal or alloy works with the powers, so, why should god metals be any different? Atium shouldn't be burnable by Allomancers, I mean it's the body of Ruin that is the direct opposite to Preservation's power. Made sense that Leras had to twist things around to enable atium Mistings, and that that could/would be undone by Harmony - the magic derived of Preservation's power being fixed as "these eight metals and paired alloys do these things, being keys that grant access to filtered Investiture derived of Preservation, and most people can access only one metal or alloy, unless you can use all of them, but there are still only sixteen of them".

Which would mean that the FAQ (with RAFO) of "could a Mistborn pick up a chip of an Honorblade or a Raysium dagger and burn it?" would have the easy answer of "no, why would it be a burnable metal?"

But evidently that is not where things went / are going,  I guess!

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's it. Mistings can burn their base metal and its alloys with god metals. Mistborn can burn everything. So an electrum Misting can burn both electrum and Atium-electrum alloy. 

The problem with that, though, is that electrum WAS known in the Final Empire - at least to the Steel Ministry - because it's one of the metals The Lord Ruler mentioned on a storage cavern steel plate (mentioned as the one in Urteau), which is how Vin and Co. learned about it in the first place.

In fact, malatium was also mentioned on a Steel Ministry plate, the one in Vetitian, the city where Elend rescued "Lord" Fatren's people from an assault of koloss to open The Hero of Ages.

Of course maybe even the Steel Ministry didn't realize burning atium and electrum were the same Allomantic power - maybe TLR kept that tidbit to himself?

There were also quite a few WoBs over many years about how the Ministry detected and recruited Seers and kept them secret, I guess those all go out the window per this later WoB (by proxy)?

5 minutes ago, alder24 said:

That was true pre-Atium retcon but this isn't canon anymore. Now it's that Atium Mistings were simply Electrum Mistings and that's it. No Mistings were "taken out" of Allomancy or Snapping mechanism - there is no need for it now. The tables are however human constructs, so they are flawed, filtered through the understanding of the characters in books.

Pre-retcon WoB that you're talking about:

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Chaos2651

Hemalurgically, atium steals Allomantic Temporal Powers. But, that seems unlikely, since atium is a god metal. It wouldn't fit in with the rest of the magic system. Did Preservation, in addition to switching cadmium and bendalloy for atium and malatium, also switch atium's Feruchemical and Hemalurgic powers with cadmium? Because it seems to me there's not a lot of atium Marsh can use to live for hundreds of years into the next Mistborn trilogy.

Brandon Sanderson

Preservation wanted atium and malatium to be of use to the people, as he recognized that it would be a very powerful tool—and that using it up could help defeat Ruin. But he also recognized that sixteen was a mythological important number, and felt it would make the best sign for his followers. So he took out the most unlikely (difficult to make and use) metals for his sign to his followers. But that doesn't have much to do with Hemalurgy's use here.

Remember that the tables—and the ars Arcanum—are 'in world' creations. (Or, at least, in-universe.) The knowledge represented in them is as people understand it, and can always have flaws. That was the case with having atium on the table in the first place, and that was the case with people (specifically the Inquisitors) trying to figure out what atium did Hemalurgically.

Their experiments (very expensive ones) are what determined that atium (which they thought was just one of the sixteen metals) granted the Allomantic Temporal powers. What they didn't realize is that atium (used correctly) could steal ANY of the powers. Think of it as a wild card. With the right knowledge, you could use it to mimic any other spike. It works far better than other spikes as well.

As for Marsh, he's got a whole bag of atium (taken off of the Kandra who was going to try to sell it.) So he's all right for quite a while. A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood.

But this was a little beyond their magical understanding at the time.

Barnes and Noble Book Club Q&A (July 8, 2009)

Post-retcon canon:

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Xais56

Brandon has said that everyone ought to be able to burn Atium, like they can all burn Lerasium, and the fact that they can't was an oversight on his part that he would've done different in hindsight.

Maybe now he's had an in-universe reason to re-write the laws of allomancy it's back to his intended concept; Mistborn burn all 16 base metals, mistings burn one base metal, non-allomancers can only burn godmetal.

Peter Ahlstrom

My explanation for this is that Preservation somehow caused all naturally occurring atium to form as an alloy of atium and electrum. The atium Mistings were actually electrum Mistings.

Xais56

It's a very tidy solution, but it creates the maddening question of what does pure atium do?

Peter Ahlstrom

That answer has already been revealed canonically. RAFO.

Footnote: It has since been clarified that the effect was revealed on the Table of Allomantic Metals poster and seen at the end of The Hero of Ages.
General Reddit 2021 (Nov. 2, 2021)

Wow, I had not seen that second retcon WoB. (Well, "WoP" but as the Mouth of Brandon, haha.)

It's a bit unsatisfactory, though, as we do see Elend and Vin both burning electrum "the normal way" (as an alloy of gold), calling it "poor man's atium" in that it enabled shielding from an atium burner, but did not enable the "see what another person will do" feature against a non-atium burner. Both of who were well familiar with burning "regular" FE atium.

Or are you saying, atium Mistings were simply Electrum Mistings, but that Electrum Mistings could burn "regular" (and more easily accessible) electrum as well as the atium+electrum "alloy" that was beaded up at the Pits?

I guess that does make some sense, atium providing the "godly" aspect seeing another person's future, and of course only available in that alloy per Leras' dictum.

On 1/29/2024 at 12:57 PM, Lunamor said:

Wax’s earring was made from melted down Steel Inquisitor spikes and Vin’s was made by spiking her Seeker sister, so I don’t think that it’s possible for them to be the same. That would be cool, though!

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CrazyRioter

The earring that Wax has. What is it made of?

Brandon Sanderson

That is an excellent question. That is a really good question. You've been reading very closely. How about this: it is made of... what you're trying to figure out is, if it has a Hemalurgic charge? It does have a slight Hemalurgic charge to it. So I'll give you that. It does have a slight Hemalurgic charge.

Brandon Sanderson

[Inquisitor spikes] got melted down and turned into earrings.

Alloy of Law Vancouver signing (Nov. 12, 2011)

 

In addition, it's heavily implied by a few scenes as early as in AoL that the "slight Hemalurgic charge" residual in the earring Wax wore, that was made from a former Inquisitor spike, was a spike for A-pewter, as Harmony's mists are able to fuel an Allomantic reaction in him while he wore it that is extremely similar (identical) to the effect of unconsciously burning pewter, even though Wax hadn't ingested any.

On 1/27/2024 at 6:58 PM, KelsierFortnite said:

I believe there was some note in AoL about removing Ruin's metals (atium and malatium) from the table of Allomantic metals.

They were always "false" entries on the Allomantic table, anyway - where that table is a shorthand for "all naturally occuring Allomantic powers", one interpretation of which is to say, "Mistings exist for this metal".

The idea (can't remember where I read/saw it, though) is that part of Leras' "trick" was to modify the behavior of Allomancy so that there would be such a thing as an atium Misting (Seers like Yomen and Demoux), with the extra duration of mistsickness in producing them as the "hint" that This Metal You Can Burn Now Is Special.

That bumped some other metal off the Table in order to accommodate that hint, since there had to be sixteen types of Mistings for the hint to work, which was rooted in that "number of power". (And perhaps, also requiring a necessary paired Misting to burn a designated alloy, "malatium", that we never saw.)

That insertion of atium into the Allomantic Table was then undone by Harmony, so that the "two metals" unknown to Era 1 that he alluded to in his note to Spook were restored to Cadmium and Chromium, along with their alloys Bendalloy and Nicrosil, which generate their proper set of Mistings in Era 2.

There are no more atium Mistings after Harmony's Ascension, and no more "malatium" Mistings, either (assuming there ever were).

It's also a minor retcon, BTW, that what the Final Empire called "atium" was never the "pure god-metal and body of Ruin", which should have been equally as universally usable as lerasium would be, but rather an alloy composed of "pure" atium alloyed with a bit of electrum as part of the process that Leras set up to "precipitate" that Investiture as geode-wrapped atium beads at the Pits of Hathsin.

20 hours ago, Wits instant noodles said:

So the question is if I you took a spike and stabbed it through two people at the same time what would happen 

I ran it through a simulation and this is what happened. I suspect it's pretty accurate.

11 hours ago, Lego Mistborn said:

Guys, this is Brandon we're talking about. We know he has hinted that Shallan is Chana's daughter, so either he is, or he wants us to think that she is so he can pull the rug out from under us with an amazing plot twist that makes perfect sense at the last moment.

There is no doubt that the evidence points to Shallan Chanasdotter though.

See, I could totally believe (more than 70%) that Shallan’s mother is/was the Herald Chanarach.

But I don’t think that’s necessarily the reason Shallan’s Lightweaving can do more than others’. The most notable thing about her, that we know for sure, is that she has two Nahel bonds, both to Cryptics. And the effect on her Lightweaver Surgebinding should be similar to what we see in Mistborn when an Allomancer gains a hemalurgic spike for the same metal/power, giving a constant boost factor.

Yes, having a Cognitive Shadow Invested enough to be made flesh again as an ancestor has been seen to give their descendants some residual magical effect or inclination towards magic ability (e.g., the Idris royal family from Warbreaker). But that is not really making them “stronger” in what they can do with the magic.

Perhaps being the daughter of a Herald - and Chana at that - is what attracted Testament to her as a child, but that’s going back another step or two in the chain. Certainly what attracted Pattern to bond her, even though she had already killed one Cryptic already, was because her lies to herself about her past and her nature were just too delicious.

Hey, who knows, perhaps deep down she KNOWS her mother was Chana. Behind Formless is I Know What Mom Did Last Desolation. LOL

I'm pretty sure the "obvious reason" that we have seen her do things beyond what other Lightweavers might ever be able to do, as early as Words of Radiance, is that she's a double-bonded Lightweaver to Pattern and Testament. And WoR is when she began forming that second bond with Pattern.

On 12/2/2023 at 3:56 PM, ..... said:

I agree with you. But I think they would have feruchemy because I think that Connor still have the s dna for feruchemy but that it's suppressed by Being a kandra but I think that mixing them with a human would unlock at least part of it so they could maybe be a ferring but I think they'd be a full feruchemy

Assuming our friend Connor is a kandra on Autocorrect or voice-to-text, I’ve wondered this as well.

Has the sDNA for Feruchemy been passed down in mistwraiths to kandra, or at least was still latent in the First Generation (which we don’t know what happened to them in Era 2, nor any of the Seconds, we only read that the Thirds are now the most senior kandra around)?

As I tossed out there in the “How To Make An Era 2 Fullborn” thread, if a kandra-mimicking-human has enough simulated biology to produce offspring via the human biomechanics involved, and if it’s not a one-directional pairing (i.e., a posing-as-male kandra could impregnate a human woman, but not vice versa)… how about TWO kandra mimicking a male/female pair making a bio-human-made “kandra”?

Put the two concepts together - “mistwraith/kandra have physical sDNA for Feruchemy, but not expressed in shapeshifting goo bodies needing Hemalurgy for sapience” and “hey lookit, two kandra made a physically hooman form offspring” - and maybe we get a somewhat blobby human Feruchemist!

Anybody wielding the Bands of Mourning is effectively a Fullborn, and can use Compounding to refill its attributes, as long as they’re not drained of said attribute in one of the metallic powers.

The fun part would be if such a wielder discarded the “unsealed” aspect of the Bands by Compounding the attributes without removing their Identity (assuming that would have to be done by filling an aluminummind at the same time), thus converting the Bands into a personalized Fullborn Engine.

The downside to being a Fullbander (note clever neologism) vs. living Fullborn (Rashek) would be the need to pause to refill/recharge the attributes granting the Metalborn powers before they ran out; not sure how frequently that would need to be done.

As for creating another Rashek, that would be harder, as lerasium only creates Mistborn. We have no knowledge of how to create a full Feruchemist at all, other than a Terris person being born one.

I suppose Harmony could upgrade any Ferring of Era 2 to be one - but once you say “Harmony could intervene”, that’s besides the point as He could just make a Fullborn out of a raccoon or something if He wanted to, except that’s too unbalanced.

So really, we’d need for a full Feruchemist to be born among the Terris again, and then to give that Feruchemist lerasium.

Or, if the mistwraiths/kandra still carry some kind of sDNA for Feruchemy due to their distant origins as “Preserved” Feruchemists, part of the answer to the question of what his most recent WoB meant in response to “what if a kandra mimicking a human crossbred with an actual human” is that we might see Feruchemy in one as well?

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Questioner

Given that kandra can replicate human organs, is it possible for a human and a kandra to have a child? And if so, would that child be purely human, or some kind of combination?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a yes, and it would be some kind of combination.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

What if a kandra-as-human interbred with a Ferring in Era 2?

In fact, my mind also goes to the question, “what if TWO kandra, mimicking a male and female human respectively, had a human-simulated-bio-created child?”

9 hours ago, Walter The Moral said:

I have an important question! Dyel's mother is a radiant, and therefore can't leave Roshar because of her Connection to it. What did those Iriali do? Did they break their oaths, or did they stay on Roshar?

We don’t know yet. We see her mother crying and whispering to her spren, “We will try… We will see, see how far you can go.” (That was not to her daughter!)

Indeed we shall see. My guess is that either she will have to release the bond (without killing her spren?) or stay behind on Roshar.

We know it can be done, somehow, based on WoBs and glimpses from later-in-time Cosmere works with either directly in view or mention of the possibility of “oathed Radiants” being outside the Rosharan system.

Of course, that could depend on Things That Happen In Stormlight 5 After The Duel of Champions.

Given the timing of other published Cosmere works, I would imagine the Fifth Land they are departing for is Scadrial, because in The Lost Metal,

It’s just too bad the interlude shows Ym’s family using his former shop to sell tea. It’d have been a lot funnier if they sold chouta. Well maybe they do, to go with the tea? LOL.

Overall, I liked Defiant and the way it wrapped up the main original story arc set up by Skyward.

I was far less surprised by the twists than in any of the earlier books or novellas, though; I remember being completely gobsmacked when it turned out Jorgen figured out they could teleport the entirety of Detritus - planet, platforms, and all - to another scudding solar system.

But for me, there were no Big Reveals, just minor ones or plot wrap-ups, in Defiant.

“Chet” being the Touched Delver from the end of Starsight was a big surprise to me in Cytonic; his “surviving” being “reintegrated” with the other delvers towards the end, another surprise development to me.

Given that, M-Bot becoming a self-aware AI - well, I kind of assumed that could happen, and thus probably would happen, because HOW COULD M-BOT REALLY BE DEAD?

Similarly, once we found that delvers entering the Somewhere automatically formed a “familiar shape” as an avatar in spacetime, I immediately had wondered if “Chet the Touched Delver” would now appear as “Chet Starfinder the Mustachioed Pilot”, and if “M-bot The AI Elevated In The Nowhere” would just reform a spacecraft. (Both of which happened.)

The fact that Brade was puppeting Winzik seemed apparent to me in Starsight - the only real question was “why is she willing to destroy humanity to gain behind-the-throne power in the Superiority?” An obvious answer was “not all humans, just Detritus and Spensa’s group”; and the “why” being “to fulfill the ultimate potential of a Human Conqueror of the Universe” is actually not bad.

If anything, I was a little disappointed at the end when Brade was just trapped and zapped. I mean yes, that’s what should have happened, but IMHO it would have been more in character for Brade to feign surrendering and “turning a new leaf” once she realized escaping to the Superiority was completely impossible, with the idea of then trying to take over the DDF from the inside by undermining Spensa…

It wouldn’t have worked, because Brade the Lone Human Wolf underestimated the nature of the bonds of trust between Skyward Flight, but Brade should have at least tried to play that card instead of bolting and thus drawing Spensa’s fire.

Gran-Gran’s end was awesome, and so was the “verdict” of letting the taynixes - full equal members in the alliance between them and humans, UrDail, and kitsen - judge when the abusive, formerly intergalactic “advanced” species could go off-world. As well as the delvers reaching their own accord directly with the taynixes and claiming dominion over the Nowhere.

But those were more or less logical outcomes, not surprising twists.

I would say the most “huh, wow” developments in Defiant for me were:

• Hesho being unwilling or unable to resume his former life/role and becoming Masked
• There being a faction of the Superiority already working with/for Brade in the Winzik charade
• Things that are likely to be setup for the next cycle of stories in the Cytoverse:
  • There were TWELVE “human preserve” planets?
  • Earth just disappeared at the end of the last war?
  • Who made all those “cytonic traps to Nowhere” and why?

Yeah, despite that WoB, I think an Essence Mark either creating or changing a Radiant's Nahel bond would be really, really hard to do, because it'd have to also affect or create a sentient spren as a component of it.

The latter of which may not even be possible, since the sentient spren kind of has its own cognitive "soul" separate from the Radiant, and its "type" is a core part of that identity (i.e. there is no "historical what-if choice" that, had it been different, would have made an honorspren come out as a cultivationspren - they are "concepts Invested to the point of life").

If at all possible, it'd probably have to be a Forger who's already got a Nahel bonded spren creating a Soulstamp for themselves, and not for another person; as we saw in TES, making a Soulstamp for another person, one that "takes" and lasts long enough to be restamped (indefinitely permanent), is REALLY hard.

And one that affected the soul that conformed to how that person's soul "fit" with a spren's, to the extent that it also modified the spren's Cognitive identity, would be way, way harder.

It'd be far easier, I think, for a Nahel bonded Forger to make a stamp that resulted in them being a higher (or lower) Ideal.

On 10/11/2023 at 9:55 AM, Treamayne said:

Hmmm. . . Maybe RBAFMQS?

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Read Brandon and Find More Questions Sanderson

 

Well he is fond of the maxim, there's always another secret.

The "Continuity Chain" is very likely the same thing as Mraize gave to Raboniel, described in her notes as "a chain from the lands of the dead, said to be able to anchor a person through Cognitive anomolies" (which fits with the term "continuity" in the name of it).

It's probably also the same chain in a locked-down and guarded display case that cost a thousand broams of Stormlight in the cultivationspren's shop in Celebrant in Oathbringer.

The real question is, what are "Cognitive anomolies" that one might need "anchoring" through?

If they are indeed all the same thing, one was displayed in a weapons shop in Shadesmar (the cultivationspren was otherwise selling axes, knives, etc.), and being described as a "silver, whiplike weapon rolled up and hung at the hip" of the Admiral of the Night Brigade.

A weapon against what? Not against "sentient spren" but "anomolies" like Shades, Kelsier, or even Returned?

But, Raboniel's notes refer to its use in "anchoring through" and not "defending from" or "use against" Cognitive anomolies - as if they were some kind of Shadesmar weather-like phenomenon.

Wow, some deep references I'd totally forgotten about in Shadesmar! I agree then, it's possible - and perhaps Sigzil "met" the highspren in Shadesmar to begin with.

The incurring of weight without the corresponding "strength to move at a normal speed" isn't what struck me as the most surprising thing about the obviously Feruchemy based mechanism of the Scadrian manacle.

After all, he WAS able to stand up after being knocked down while wearing it, time and again; nothing was ever said before (I don't think) about tapping an ironmind for weight allowing for "normal speed of movement", only that one would still have the strength "to stand" (like when Sazed massively tapped his ironmind to hold fast a gate at Elendel against all the koloss straining to knock it down from the other side).

No, the big head-scratcher is that such a metalmind was able to "push" weight onto Nomad instead of giving him a reservoir of weight to tap (with Intent). And even without him knowing what it was (a necessary component to using an unsealed metalmind as of Wax and Wayne).

AFAIK, the only Investiture we've seen so far that could be "pushed" onto an unsuspecting or unwilling target is Breath, as in Warbreaker. Unless you count Marsh's forced conversion to being an Inquisitor, I suppose.

And even then, what was given in that way was Investiture that granted abilities, not an attribute or effect.

I wonder what other Feruchemical attributes so pushed might be considered an unwelcome burden? A tinmind that blinded or stunned someone with light or sound sensitivity?

Could you make a similar device to enable, and also to force someone to put up a very narrow cadmium slo-time bubble around themselves as a kind of imprisonment? LOL. I guess that'd have to come with some sneaky or forced pre-ingestion of cadmium.

5 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Anyone else get the feeling that Nomad met Aux off of Roshar itself? Maybe Braize or Ashyn? 

The way Nomad described meeting Aux on another world made of obsidian seemed odd to me. I know Shadesmaar was described as obsidian, but I really don’t think a Nomad would consider Rosharan Shadesmaar another world. 

We also know that Nomad has at least been to Ashyn, so it is possible Aux was living on a different planet in the Rosharan system. 

"The rocks here were dark and glasslike. Obsidian, maybe. It reminded him of another place, another world he’d once traveled. A place where he’d met Auxiliary."

When I first read this, I took it to mean Braize: as an unbonded highspren he'd have been bound to the Rosharan system, implying it was Braize, unless however it is oathed Radiants can now leave Roshar by this time also allows unbonded sentient spren to do so as well.

I don't think he was referring to Shadesmar, as by then he'd be super familiar with the Cognitive Realm and would just have thought "this reminds me of the sea of glass beads in Shadesmar". Besides, the "glassy beads" there are not only small and numerous, they are not dark (like obsidian) but glowing with the spren of the physical thing or being they represent.

He might have met Auxiliary somewhere else on Roshar where the landscape is similarly dark and rocky, but then as a native of Roshar, he'd most likely think of the location's name on Roshar as opposed to "another world he'd once traveled".

On 10/2/2023 at 4:51 PM, therunner said:

[The Scadrians] should not have empowered Cinder King in the first place. They already did pick a Tyrant for another people, and then hid behind interplanetary law (which they probably broke when they provided him with knowledge of creating cinderhearts).

Scadrians are quite hypocritical, providing people of Canticle with one discovery (cinderhearts and their creation) while holding back another (how to recharge sunhearts), while claiming they cannot interfere, after they already did.

Refresh my memory - what is this you're referring to?

Also remember that Nomad mentions there are multiple factions on Scadrial:

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These were TimeTellers, one faction among the many Scadrian political movements. Theoretically they were neutral in the current conflicts. A group of scientists, seeking to “understand the various mysteries of the cosmere.” And they were absolutely not, of course, an arm of the military working in secret to develop tech that would let Scadrial stay ahead...

9 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Not providing a destination may precisely be the way to specify a new place. The question you are asking seems to me to be indirectly be the question about the size of the Cosmere. In fact it is combinatorics.

Complicated by him possibly not knowing the answer. Suppose he landed in the Final Empire and again on Southern Scadrial. Would he know that he is on the same planet by the time he needs to skip away?

I think you and I are basically asking the same question/thinking the same thing, maybe from different directions.

We have only seen him arrive via Skip twice, and both times it's somewhere new to him, and neither time is he surprised by that. But he wonders where he has Skipped to "this time", suggesting many previous Skips - this is not his first, or second, Skip.

So I wondered if it might be that Skipping ALWAYS takes him "somewhere new", because if it was random - even allowing for the Skip mechanics to guarantee him arriving somewhere on a habitable, and inhabited, planet with available Investiture - he should eventually end up somewhere he's been before, including Roshar, or eventually back on Canticle.

Or, it's only semi-random - he can use anti-Intent to rule out destinations, or Vague Intent that has the same effect (i.e., "take me somewhere the Night Brigade hasn't and isn't trying to look for me").

Or, yes, he may someday Skip to Roshar or Canticle, and he's steeling himself to make as quick a getaway as possible in that eventuality, and to resist checking in on those he cares about.

6 hours ago, The stormfather said:

Aux was the best character. I also like how we know that you can bond two spren as long as the oaths don't break each other, because he was a windrunner, and Aux is not an honorspren.

According to Sigzil's recounting of his past to Rebeke, he'd given up his Windrunner oaths before (perhaps as a part of) taking up the Dawnshard, and somehow bonded with Auxiliary while holding it.

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

No, [Skipping] is not random. If it were he'd long since drowned or frozen to death in some planet's equivalent of Antarctica.

However it is not controllable either. If it were, we wouldn't have seen Hoid actually travel through the Cognitive Realm.

Let me rephrase - it's clearly not "random" for the reason you mention. However, he clearly is not picturing a destination in mind - i.e., providing Intent - because he ends up on Canticle where he's never been before to start the story, and ends up in yet another place he's never been before at its conclusion.

And yet, at the end, he thinks to himself how he'll never find out if Rebeke, Elegy, and the other Beaconites survived or not, because he could never afford to bring the Night Brigade anywhere near people he actually cared about.

Perhaps he's doing unconsciously doing some kind of semi-Intent thing, like thinking "take me anywhere safe and far away from the Night Brigade (instead of closer to them), but not Nalthis, and not anywhere I might put people I love in danger like Roshar and now Canticle"