robardin

This is kind of an ironic question to pose, actually, since Mraize was apparently trained by his master (babsk) Iyatil, who it seems was trained by "his master's master" in The Way of the Ghostbloods by Thaidakar himself.

It's also worth asking how long of a gap between reading Mistborn Era 1 and AoL the OP took. I also found Alloy of Law very disappointing on my first read - both "sketchy" in structure (which as it arose from a "unplanned writing exercise", kind of showed) and more deeply, felt disappointed in the break in "feel" from the original Mistborn books. It was hard to read "Mistborn", well, without a Mistborn! And both Wax and Wayne came off less as real people, and more as "plot device" characters. I also found myself scouring it for hints of "what happened to Spook, Breeze, Ham, etc." of the original crew as remembered history or legend. I think this was not helped by AoL coming out literally the same week as I finished reading the original trilogy, so I went straight from the amazing climax of The Hero of Ages to The Alloy of Law. I consider this a mistake (an easy one to make), and now strongly recommend people who finish Mistborn and loved it, to take a break and read other things (Cosmere or otherwise) before embarking on Era 2 and not just plow into it immediately. You need something as a reader to create an effect like the distance of time the in-world characters themselves have to the World of Ash, and the legendary nature of Mistborn. On re-reads, and especially after Shadows of Self when Wax visits his grandmother in the Terris village, and of course his little "talk with God" in the carriage, things flesh out a lot more for Wax (and to a lesser degree, Wayne). Bands of Mourning has been the best of the Era 2, including where it goes with exploring Scadrial's "magical technology" as well as the question of "the rest of the world".

Heh. The funny thing is, we assume this is true but what we saw of her in The Well of Ascension was her doing the opposite: "beating" humility OUT of Elend. I'm sure she could have walked him to the realization that he eventually started walking himself to, when his true concern for his people and his country started to come out on top of his concern for his own image and reputation: he could only be the best kind of leader that he can be, not the kind of leader someone else already is. Empathy, intelligence, insight - he always had these qualities. Force of personality, the charisma to inspire others, a strong moral conviction and an iron will that engenders respect - these he did not have, as his father and his uncle did, and Kaladin, yet he tried to act like he did. And when someone pretends to qualities they evidently do not possess, that engenders a lack of respect.

OK, that is more accurate, it was right before the Recreance happened - which event was also ascribed to Honor "dying" and "raving about the Dawnshards" instead of "supporting" that generation of Radiants when they discovered the truth (which evidently had happened before)

It's like the "Chewbacca Defense" If the Sibling is an Unmade trapped in a gem... Why have they also bonded Navani, granted her Towerlight, and made her a Bondsmith? It doesn't make any sense! None of it makes any sense! So, if the Ba-Ado-Mishram is actually the Sibling... You must acquit. ...Joking aside, I think you are just picking up on the clear implication that Ba-Ado-Mishram somehow ties in with a deep power of Connection, though how that came to be for the first time only during the "False Desolation" is still a mystery. Suspiciously, it was after the death of Honor...

"Ever since he broke his leg going onstage for Macbeth, his confidence is shattered!" "Why'd you say that name? You promised me that you would never say that name!" "What? Macbeth?" "Aaaggh!" "Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!" "I'm not listening!"

It's named after Lutha. Who lived on the second floor. Which is where The Lord Ruler put his little Terris hut within Kredik Shaw. Soon there was nobody who remembered pre-Ascension Khlenni pop music to get the reference, but Rashek still giggled every now and then.

And yet he could still be suckered by what was essentially a sleight-of-hand maneuver by Ghost Kelsier. Because he could see things, but not the hearts of people. The things they were likely to do, if he made things happen a certain way, but not always why. So the most unlikely of future paths could suddenly become THE path of the present, with the right emotional levers. In a way, that was also why Odium's foresight "failed" him with respect to his plans for Dalinar. Oh I doubt Nighblood will just be "chilling". I'm thinking more like, incorporated into a Allomantic Mecha or Hemalurgic cyborg!

I like the idea that Nightblood is somehow linked to Ruin - I think we can all sort of sense that - but the question has always been how, and why? We know it wasn't something planned by Shashara or Vasher; but was it a conscious act of Endowment, of Ruin, the two of them in cahoots, or (as you suggest) Just Something That Happens mechanically with such a Command? We do know that Nightblood was constructed of ordinary steel before being Awakened, so we can rule out some kind of "secretly alloyed with atium" angle... Other questions: why were 1,000 Breaths used for Nightblood? Did Shashara explicitly experiment with that as a starting figure, ascertain a priori that that would be the cost for the desired effect, or were a thousand of her Breaths just pulled out of her as she spoke the Command (being as she had to have had at least 20,000 Breaths to be of the Ninth Heightening, to do the Awakening in the first place)? After all, 1,000 Breaths is what in a person is the threshold to reach the Fourth Heightening, at which stage "Life Sense is perfected". Perhaps that was required for sentience and the ability to detect (if not to clearly discern) what "evil" was in a target, in order to fulfill the Command to Destroy Evil? We don't know what Vivenna's sword's Command was, but one can imagine the effect of draining the target of life/color rather than the wielder was somehow explicitly stated. Remember "Lolan", the priest of Mercystar in the Court of Gods in Warbreaker, who starts to draw Nightblood when Vasher left it out as a trap but is interrupted by Vasher knocking him out and re-sheathing NB before it could devour him? His hand had gone gray, but he still retained the use of it (unlike a limb that "goes gray" and is severed from a Shardblade cut). Oh, and Szeth's hands and face have streaks of colorlessness as well, from having drawn and wielded Nightblood with too little Investiture to give it (borderline death). Szeth later drawing Stormlight doesn't heal that, either. So an early stage of being "destroyed" from wielding Nightblood without a sufficiently large "endowment" is to be drained of color. Isn't that suspicious? Perhaps it is something recursive that ends up "linking up" to another Shard's Intent and even power? I mean, isn't that one of the basic moral principles in the foundational work of epic fiction in the English language? "Deserves [to die]! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement..."

Hmm, this is true. Unlike with Dalinar, who fought his own way out from surrendering to Odium's offer of "taking his pain", Kaladin was shaken out of it in direct contradiction to Odium's command (relayed through Vyre/Moash) to leave him catatonic until he either surrendered or killed himself. "Don't touch him," Moash said. "If you interfere, it will awaken him to vengeance." And that's exactly what happened. In fact, when Kaladin went HAM, his eyes glowed not the pale blue of a Windrunner, but a "yellowish-red".

Well, at first he was. A new kind of Fused who could teleport (the Voidish equivalent of the Surge of Transportation, evidently) combined with a physically huge body, built-in deadly weapons in his carapace, and representing a warrior with thousands of years of experience in killing Radiants (especially Windrunners), that's pretty scary in concept. But he was a monologuing braggart from the very first time we see him in RoW, even comically so, which subtracted from his perceived threat as a reader, and only kind of annoyed instead of terrified Kaladin in-world. The thing is, if Brandon had been serious about writing Lezian the Pursuer as The Ultimate Radiant Killing Fused, he wouldn't have done that. I think all along, writing-wise, Lezian is an example of the Fused "becoming like spren": perhaps in the past, Lezian was more "business-like" and truly terrifying, but he's so unhinged now that he's become a caricature of that. Even the other Fused like Leshwi and Raboniel roll their eyes about his obsession with "pursuing" and noting that it's gone from being "something he did if he ever got killed" to "something that drives him completely".

Um, horses (IRL) also have horizontal "rectangular" pupils, as do goats.

Until you crack the core of the pun. Then the yolk's on you!

I would just like to observe that there are no such things as "bad puns", only puns thought of by other people.

Good observation! What I wondered about in that final scene was how come T-O had not given El back his Connection to the rhythms. Is that loss permanent? Raboniel seemed to think it was an indicator of her soul being "nearly all burned away", that it meant future rebirths would have her be insane. I mean, being given one of the first anti-Voidlight daggers ever is a huge mark of favor, and from his Musings of El we can see that Taravangian's newly divine butt is as polished as a candy apple on a teacher's desk on the first day of school from all of his kissing: So inasmuch as The Defeated One had become a liability as a "sapient spren of violent vengeance" with the powers of a Fused, is El one step away from something similar, but still useful to Odium? A "high-functioning sociopath", to steal a line from Sherlock?

So at the end of Rhythm of War, we see a bunch of Fused collectively turn away from Odium and "go listener". Earlier, in Ch. 111, after Leshwi and her band of followers fought to keep Lezian's followers from slaughtering the human civilians and unconscious Radiants, she tries to convince the survivors to surrender to her so she could find a way to "explain to Raboniel" (to talk her way out of her betrayal)... And then Rlain "channels Teft" to set everybody straight how a line had been crossed that could not be un-crossed, which she soon realizes is the case: Leswhi goes unconscious when the Sibling re-erects Urithiru's Odiumshield against voidish powers, but revives when they transfer her and the others to Narak via Oathgate, where she "hovers over" to talk to Kaladin before going off with Venli. So Leshwi didn't lose her ability to fly via Voidlight, nor even her access to Voidlight, due to her betrayal, yet Odium had sent Fused and Regals to execute them? Well we can assume that once she dies, as a Fused like Lezian she'd be returned to Braize, there to stay until either a listener/singer host in the Everstorm is open to her, or if Odium directly summons her back to him on Roshar (as was done "the way before the storms", as El called it, to pull Lezian back after only a day on Braize). She thinks Odium can block access to her coming back via the Everstorm, senttencing her to eternal torture as the Heralds were (and without the release of breaking sending her back to Roshar)... ...but Odium (Rayse) claims he could not do that while talking to Dalinar in setting the terms of the contest in Ch. 112! Unless Odium was lying, that suggests that he has no way of keeping a Fused on Braize against their will if a willing host in the Everstorm were available. (Not that Leswhi would know this.) At the same time, at Thaylen Fields in Oathbringer, when a Fused named Turash sasses him about having to follow Dalilnar as Odium's chosen champion, he calmly threatens him into submission with "you will follow me, Turash, or I will reclaim that which gives you persistent life." So maybe Odium can't block the Fused from cyclically returning via Everstorm (assuming a willing host), but he can "de-Fuse" a Fused? If so, why weren't Leswhi and her followers "unplugged" on the spot? Did he intend to torture them for a few days and then unplug them before the Everstorm? I mean, all these penalties are in their heads, controlling or cowing them with fear. I'm starting to get the feeling Raysodium wasn't the most forthright about what he could and couldn't do, LOL, and why would he have been!

Well, the next time we see a Venli POV in I-7, she reflects that "Odium's grand purpose for her meant turning her into a showpiece", telling the "version of her story" that "Odium had instructed her to tell". Whether or not that was a direct instruction via Odiumvision or indirectly through a Fused, that should suggest that Odium was not surprised by her having Envoyform, and had a specific reason for her being in it. Besides, I suspect that unlike bonding a "normal" Rosharan spren to take on another form, the "forms of power" that require a voidspren have those voidspren specifically sent by an act of Odium. They don't seem to occur naturally on Roshar, and is one of the reasons the Radiants of the False Desolation were so shocked to find that somehow, despite there being no "real" Desolation with the Fused and the return of Odium, that Ba-Ado-Mishram was able "to grant the parsh forms of power and Voidlight" in his absence.

Yes, it's a voidspren. In I-6 of Oathbringer, Venli stands out in the Everstorm with eight others (all of them in stormform after the Battle of Narak) following Ulim's instructions to "accept the power that comes", but alone emerges with her body not dispossessed by a Fused, but instead transformed into Envoyform - which requires a bonding voidspren. The Fused that has taken Demid's body, Hariel, recognizes her form and says to her, "Unlike the witless Voidspren you bonded - which resides in your gemheart - my soul [the soul of a Fused] cannot share its dwelling." (Thus foreshadowing the fact that her gemheart CAN share space between the Envoyform voidspren and Timbre...!) The voice that speaks in all-caps had the authority/power to dismiss the spirit of the Fused from trying to take her body - the warm, ancient, paternal voice saying THIS ONE IS MINE - which must be Odium, and is also what Hariel says or thinks happened: "You were to bear a soul I have fought beside for thousands of years. She was turned away, and you were reserved. Odium has a purpose for you." However, it was apparently a last minute decision by Odium ("WHAT IS THIS?"), as He hadn't bothered to tell Ulim (addressed by the Fused as "The Envoy") about him creating an Envoyform singer. Ha ha. No wonder Ulim was annoyed. We don't know exactly what kind of "voidspren" it is that grants Envoyform; we never see Venli talk to it the way she did with Ulim, who seems more on a par with a Radiant spren. Thus Hariel calling it a "witless voidspren" more like the regular spren that singers/listeners bond to for other forms, like painspren for warform. However, it's bonding a voidspren (of some type or other) that grants a singer a "form of power", a gift of Odium, and the title of "Regal" instead of just a being a singer with a form (workform, nimbleform, artform, etc., who we see at work in the singer-controlled Kholinar). I suppose that means it's an act of Odium to select which "witless" voidspren to be sent to a singer, versus the normal way for a singer to assume a new form by bonding the appropriate spren of their own volition in a highstorm. And during the False Desolation, it was something Ba-Ado-Mishram became able to do (for the first and only time), in the place of Odium.

No takers for sand mastery? Anyone? Hello? -- Oh come on guys, what if you lived on Waikiki? My instinctive reply was Feruchemy (as in, a full Feruchemist) because even without Compounding, being able to tap prepared metalminds for up to sixteen different things like healing, speed, strength, speed of thought, and wakefulness (just to name a few) would make it much more versatile than even Surgebinding would be. Sure using the Surges with "unlimited Investiture" would be more powerful in effect, but only two effects! (Besides, would that "unlimited Investiture" carry over to pre-filled metalminds? I'd assume not, but if so, oooh baby!) However, being a Radiant with a Nahel Bond would give access to one power unique so far to Surgebinding: Progression as an external healing power (also less commonly used, as a quik-gro power for plants). A goldmind can only be used to heal myself. Having seen people close to me get injured and get terminally ill, the idea that I could have the power to heal not just myself but others... How could I not choose that? So, yeah. Imma be a Truthwatcher, then, because I'd rather have Illumination than the slickness of an Edgedancer, and "standard Lightweaving" more so than the "visions of the future" that comes with bonding an "enlightened" mistspren. Besides, I'm pretty well suited to being a Truthwatcher by inclination, anyway, based on the description of the ten Orders.

Sazed searching and searching, and finally finding, Tindwyl's frozen corpse at the Tin Gate of Luthadel. Even centuries after his double Ascension to become "a god among gods", I would bet that if He could, Harmony would trade godhood to be able to live out a mortal lifetime with her.

Oh, the irony of a Venli vs. Moash contest. A listener for Honor and a human for Odium! Or instead of Venli... Leshwi! Who knows what will happen in SA5 to lead up to the contest. Dalinar "intends" to be his own champion. I bet that doesn't actually happen. Well, maybe not "bet that doesn't happen" - but I would actually be more surprised if it did happen, than if something else happened. FWIW I also don't think the contest will end up being Kal v. Moash, even if that is what Taravodium is going to try to engineer - knowing Brandon, it's going to be none of the "obvious" configurations. Or if it is, it'll have a as-yet-not-obvious twist to it. For example: maybe Dalinar sends Shallan in for Team Honor against Moash, but with a Lightweaving to make her look and sound like Kaladin. Then, at the very moment Taravodium plays his emotional trump card to paralyze Kaladin, withdrawing his voiding of Moash's conscience and causing him to drop the Honorblade to mist while begging "Kaladin" to save him from his pain, ripping his sleeve to show his Bridge Four tattoo... ...Shallan blinks, drops her disguise, and runs Moash through with two Shardblades, saying, "I believe you once told Kaladin, this is a mercy. Well, is it?" However, there is no doubt in my mind that Moash having a Bridge Four tattoo on his upper arm, and having retained his B4 badge, will come into play between him and Kaladin before his arc is done. As well as what we see of Moash's inner dialogue when Odium's influence is withdrawn or pushed away, and what that would do to Kaladin to witness, if he ever did so.

That scene... Even when I first read it... A board with a list of crazy goals, and a leader writing on it saying "YES WE CAN!" -- it felt too much like my real-life workplace, LOL.

I'm just imagining Kelsier's reaction to Hoid's taunting him as the "Lord of Scars" at the end of RoW, admonishing him to worry about "his own planet" and threatening to "come over there and smack him around again"... ...combined with this being a goal for him now, to reassemble and to Ascend to Ambition... ...Hoid probably wanting to prevent this (wouldn't he? -- what does Hoid even think Kelsier is after with the Ghostbloods?)... ...and Kelsier's boast to Ati/Ruin in Secret History: “I could always. Force. People to choose. The card I wanted them to.” Awwww yeah.

Yes, but a ghost - a Cognitive Shadow - that had Ascended to godhood by taking up the Shard of Preservation. So, a Holy Ghost, if you will. EDIT: actually on re-reading the scene, Leras/Preservation hadn't died yet. Darn!

And in another twist, it turns out that the more advanced Southern Scadrians have been intentionally feeding the Northerners technology in such a way as to cause them to burn lots of biofuel, specifically to try to cause planetwide warming! Northerners: "And all along, we thought that covering the skies in ash would make our world cooler, the way the Words of Founding describe the Lord Ruler as having used the ashmounts of old!" Southerners: "Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"