robardin

Yeah, I know... It's the end part of this one as logged in the coppermind: Nobody else fits the description of being a "Lord of Scars" from or on another planet than Rosha that Hoid, who cannot hurt or harm living people, still managed to "slap around" at some point prior to RoW, where we have "seen in other books" the "lengths [he] is willing to take in order to achieve his goals". I just find it disappointing that Kelsier is running an operation that casually murders Shallan's coach driver and parshmen porters as a kind of initiation test. That's not even on the level of "killing Final Empire nobles is always OK" or even skaa guards working for a paycheck when he's a hunted rebel. It's full on "everybody is expendable until they're not". Of course having lived for another couple hundred years beyond a natural lifespan might do that to him.

There's a small part of me that is holding out on the idea that "The Lord of Scars" that Hoid/Wit refers to having "slapped around" in the past isn't who the obvious designee is. But.... How is it not?

Sanderson's modus is always to leave some open questions for the reader to "fill in the blanks" on their own, even for a completed story (which also leaves him a handy back door to re-enter a series or continuity when/if he so wishes). It's why he's also a very fanfic friendly type writer. The prospect of having to spend 18 years of your life waiting for six more epic fantasy novels unnerves you, starting in your early-mid twenties? Oh, you sweet child of summer. The both of yous.

I hate to admit it, but upon the first read-through, my immediate mental image (if that is the right word for "hearing a rhythm in my head") for the Rhythm of War was of the "Jumanji" drum beats Now that you mention it, when Navani figured out to blend Honor's Rhythm with Odium's to form the Rhythm of War, my first thought was "Oh, like a really good mashup?", the latest of which I'd heard was of... "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes, and Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. Or perhaps more apropos for something involving a Fused like Raboniel and the giant suppressor fabrial at the heart of Urithiru, a mashup of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees and "Another Brick In The Ball (Pt. 2)" by Pink Floyd:

Well, yes and no. Dabbid recalls that he was always this way from childhood - it wasn't his bridgerunning injury that caused him to "go catatonic" as Kaladin had thought. We have a kind of Dabbid POV in Ch. 85 of Rhythm of War, and he clearly thinks to himself: "Dabbid had been different all his life. ... The surgeons hadn't been able to say the reason." The midwife that birthed him said later that he had been born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and speculated if that might have done damage to him to cause him to be "six when he started talking" and how he "still couldn't do adding in his head"... But I am not sure if Stormlight would heal a lifelong, since-birth condition, even if it was traumatic and not congenital.

Well, a very recent WoB strongly implies that Adolin has not sworn, or maybe even could not swear the first Ideal with Maya: I think the fact that he still has a "deadspren Blade" bond to Maya via a gem, may be a blocking factor as well. Ironically, while he refused to give Maya up as a Shardblade in order to "free himself" to form a proper Nahel bond with another spren, it could also be preventing him from forming a more true Nahel bond with Maya herself? Of course, we've seen other people form Radiant bonds while bonded to a deadspren Shardblade: Dalinar, when he bonded the Stormfather (who immediately instructed him to "divest himself of that monstrosity"; Renarin, who must have bonded his Shardblade before bonding with Glys; and Elhokar was on the cusp of saying the Immortal Words in Kholinar to bond with a Cryptic (the one that ends up with Hoid) while having just actively wielded a deadspren Shardblade in battle. So maybe that's not quite true. However, I still think Adolin's surprising survival from having a building collapse on him at Thaylen Fields, with nothing more than aches and pains, carried a strong suggestion of Stormlight healing, especially given how he had just summoned Maya in only seven heartbeats. And his being able to give "strength of life" to Maya to speak, instead of the other way around (a spren granting access to Investiture to a bonded human), at his trial in Lasting Integrity... That certainly feels like what I called a Lehan bond (reverse Nahel) at work. So even if he's not a proto-Radiant with Maya, he's... Something.

Renarin can identify with Rlain in ways he cannot with Kaladin; ways that are important in terms of feeling an attraction that includes imagining a long-term relationship with that person. I'm sure Renarin loves and admires Kaladin, I mean who doesn't from Bridge Four (arguably even Moash still does...), but Rlain is the one who understands the feeling of being a maladjusted and misunderstood misfit, of being either completely overlooked or having assumptions placed upon them all the time, and now of course both of them having bonded "enlightened" mistspren to be some new kind of Truthwatcher.

Here are a few more fun WoBs about lerasium with questions you have have in mind: Were they "naturally occuring" expressions of godmetal, the way that atium geodes form at the Pits, or intentionally created by Leras? ... It's the latter. (Note that in other Cosmere works, all instances of "god metals" that we see are explicitly willed as such by the Shards themselves; I think what happened with the atium at the Pits of Hathsin was a cycle set in place by Preservation, to hide the portion of Ruin's power that he splintered off while imprisoning him as a natural process. I also wonder if Leras' side knife was to do with how that maneuver was achieved...) Can or will Harmony make more "lerasium" (solid Preservation)? Yes, but... (...or maybe "see more lerasium" really means "see the other 5 or 6 original beads that are unaccounted for resurface in the Cosmere"?) When Hoid emerged from the Well of Ascension in Secret History, why didn't he take all the lerasium (leaving the other nugget for Vin to give Elend)? Basically, "Fortune frowned upon it" and he didn't ask why.

As Brandon would say - because he did say just that - it's "an excellent guess" that there were sixteen of them originally! But, Leras did not place them there next to the Well of Ascension; Rashek collected them (maybe not all of them), from a place or places unknown, and left a few spare ones there:

Nothing is certain until it's written and released, but this WoB is from only a few weeks ago:

But Rock surely knows that Navani and others have been using the Oathgates at Urithiru to enter Shadesmar? Or is that some kind of state secret? Because otherwise he wouldn't say to Kaladin that they would not meet again not just "in this world" but "this life". Unless he means, "this life I get to live on Roshar".

Yeah, I was so stunned I immediately flipped back and re-read the last few pages again, starting from Odium arriving and accusing Taravangian of betraying him. Then I noticed the simple sentence "And Ascended to godhood, becoming Odium." was at the very bottom of the page, but maybe not the chapter. So I flipped to the next page to see if there was more to this (there wasn't), half expecting Brandon to break the fourth wall. Yes, you read that right. Taravangian segued from being murdered by Szeth to wielding Nightblood to kill Rayse as the Vessel and Ascending in his place to become Odium. So many RAFOs just got FO'ed in one page. And so many more have now been spawned. Heh heh heh. I love my job. And I just realized, Taravangian has thought about Hoid before Ascending - what did he glean from Rayse's memories as the shard Odium, and what more did he add from rummaging and editing directly in Hoid's Breath-store of memories? But who is the wanderer, the wild piece, the one who makes no sense? I glimpse at his implications, and the world opens to me. (--From the Diagram, West Wall Psalm of Wonders: Paragraph 8)

The original trilogy is just so tight in the ways that matter most to me. I can overlook the weaker or more awkward character elements for the epicness. But, I do wonder how Era 1 would change for the better if Brandon were allowed a George Lucas style re-edit, knowing what he knows now. Even more so with Elantris. He's definitely grown as a writer. I'd much rather he continue to write the Cosmere forward, though!

Yes to both of these - Rock speaks of "facing judgment" and "seeking justice" from his people for "raising a weapon", and doing so was something he had really not wanted to do and tried to avoid doing until Kaladin's life was in mortal danger. And whatever he's facing, Cord at least seems to know what it would likely be and thinks it's stupid (he mentions how she considered their traditions as "foolish"). I don't think it's a death sentence but of exile to Shadesmar, as we learned (double checks forum...) in RoW that there was a permanent group of Horneaters there. So I hope to find out what happened with the whole "what happened with the group left behind while Adolin, Shallan, and Pattern entered Lasting Integrity" in the Rock novella too.

"Reanimating someone turned to stone would be more easy than simply animating the stone, but animating stone is tough, so that's not saying much." So... Going cross-Cosmere magic... Does that mean some combination of a Soulstamp (a la The Emperor's Soul) to fake a soul from other people's memories of a person, plus an Awakening of a once-living, now-stone, form-of-a-person body like a Soulcast corpse, plus enough Breaths of course, could result in... Zahel/Vasher crafting a Teft's Phantom? (Not saying he ever would, and I doubt Kaladin or anybody else from Bridge Four would want it to be done, but could it be done...?)

OOOOH my bad, spoilering. (I don't think the speculation about Maya's "reawakening" or comparing deadeyes to the Shaod is new, people including myself were saying as much since reading Oathbringer what with the term "deadeye" being introduced and Adolin's Blade telling him her name and whatnot; though as should not be a major spoiler as everybody expected it, there are indeed Further Developments in that direction in RoW)

This is the part we don't have a clear explanation for yet, though some pieces of the puzzle are being sketched out. For one - in the vision that Dalinar receives where he witnesses the Recreance first-hand (or at least, part of it), a large number of Windrunners and Stonewards, together twice the number of known sets of Shards in all of Roshar in Dalinar's time, arrive at Feverstone Keep in Plate and summon their Blades, and then leave them as they walk away from their Ideals. They stick the Blades into the ground, and then drop their Plate, and then walk away. Did their "deadeye" Blades and Plate appear as they abandoned their oaths, or did they intentionally first summon their Shards in order to lock them in Physical form, as if to allow them to continue to be used by people? Shouldn't there be a lot more Blades than Plates, then, as only Radiants of the Fourth Ideal or higher would have Plate, but it seems pretty standard for Radiants to reach (and often stop at) the Third Ideal to gain the Blade? Where are they all? And for another, ... [oops - RoW spoilers...!] And the whole "deadeye" thing feels a lot like being locked/trapped in an in-between state, like the unfortunate way the Shaod had suddenly started going wrong in Elantris. They are "normally" locked into a Physical form as a Blade, being some kind of self-image as a Blade that either their last Radiant or the spren themselves had, but spending a week bonding to one with a gemstone Connects to a new person enough that the Blade can be dismissed to the CR and re-summoned after the "ten heartbeats" revives it again, inasmuch as the wielder thinks of it as a Shardblade (and not as a spren). What's reviving Maya must have to do with Adolin thinking of her as a spren and not just a weapon - forming a deeper Connection.

Yes, the way I read it, the "holes" that left him open to receiving Odiumvision broadcasts on Soulchannel 9 were the links he had to Moash. As we saw in their confrontation in Hearthstone, even as he despises what Moash has become, he also feels a kinship to the darkness - he himself had taken steps in that direction, even initially agreeing to go along with Moash's plans to kill Elhokar - and moreover, a responsibility for not having saved Moash from it the way he avoided it himself. That's a lot of holes, man. Or maybe only two or three, but storming big holes of painful Connection. It's also why the specific nature of the visions are what they are: of him failing to protect those he wants most to protect. Odium isn't appearing before him with a golden sceptre and all that, the way he does to Dalinar, Venli, or Taravangian; he's fueling a vision that is predicated on what Moash knows would be the source of Kaladin's despair and pain, what would most push him to the brink of giving up on life (either yielding responsibility for it all to Odium, or to end himself).

The whole "This Shard of Hatred suits me perfectly, I don't want to be influenced by taking up another Shard so Imma splinter them all instead" attitude was a Rayse thing, wasn't it? I don't see that as being a Taravangian attitude at all. So what if "Odium" is no more, because Taravangian sees a way to absorb Honor as well and become the Shard of War? And that Shard would be free of Roshar, because only "Odium" was bound to it... And by some act of Honor, no less.

We don't know how Leechers would operate with Feruchemy, do we? It might only leech away what is being actively tapped by the Feruchemist? If a Leecher could drain a metalmind, would it need to be worn by a Feruchemist keyed to it first?

I agree with this - Breath and Heightening are not exact figures for exact, discrete, quantum power levels. It's more a sliding scale, you start to see effects similar to the next Heightening as you approach it, and different people or different quality of Breath may get you the full Heightening slightly sooner than another person's stockpile would. So going in the other direction I'd think it was the same - you gradually lose the effects of a Heightening if you used to have it, but have dropped in Breaths. That's summarized in the Coppermind entry on Heightenings thusly: And so, dropping below the Fifth Heightening would indeed resume the aging process that that much (quality/quantity) of Breath had prevented, but not so quickly as TLR "snapped back" to his proper age when he basically dropped to zero on the anti-aging dial. Besides which, the immortality mechanisms are very different. Rashek was constantly tapping an atiummind with a steady draw of youth, which is like constantly revving a car engine in reverse gear backing up on an increasingly steep slope, and where losing his metalmind would be like having the ignition of the car cut out (followed by a rapid descent down the slope). But the way the Breath is preventing the aging is essentially through syncing the Spiritual and Physical selves with the Cognitive version via a very large staple made of Investiture (enough to grant the Fifth Heightening, whether a single Divine Breath or a large stockpile of ordinary Breaths). And if you picture a staple starting to weaken, what it was stapling together starts releasing a few sheets here and there, but it would take some time to fully release what was bound. (Though maybe having a LOT of years behind the "staple" would have a weight or a pressure effect that would make the aging speed up as the "staple gap" got wider and wider.)

Or, if they haven't been exposed to this particular concept yet, you could try to perpetrate Nalthis' first ever Ponzi or pyramid scheme. "Give me your one Breath today, and you can join our network of Breath Builders as a Team Lead! Recruit your own Team who give you THEIR Breaths, but you only have to pass up to me one Breath per month to retain access to our marketing materials, keeping the rest as profit! One of the first people in Hallendren joined my Team just three months ago, and now she is of the FOURTH HEIGHTENING!"

I wondered about this too. I assumed the "I'm sorry" was his death at Szeth's hand - how could he foresee Raysodium's Death by Nightblood and Taravangian's subsequent Ascension with Odium's power of foretelling, where Raysodium himself couldn't see it because of Renarin's clouding his Futurevision? Seems circular if his derived foretelling could not only interfere with Odium's, but also be more accurate. Oh, and another excellent way to deliver the blindsided punch was when it happened. I had already thought that Odium could well "go down" in SA 1-5, and that Cultivation's manipulation of Taravangian would be key to that, with Weepy Taravangian being the real "hero" (the other possibility being Moash pulling a Gollum, or as an assist)... But therefore assumed some kind of climactic moment in Book 5, you know? Not just a few paragraphs at the end of a chapter that didn't even begin with Taravangian's POV - it began with Navani final-killing Raboniel in Urithiru and labeling her body that of "a hero". And was sandwiched in between what otherwise would have been REALLY HUGE SCENES (and still were) in Kaladin leveling up and Dalinar confronting Tezim/Ishar So in the middle of that was a kind of public service announcement. "Hey guys, while all that's going on, somewhere in a corner of Roshar near the Azish/Temul border, Rayse got snuffed and Odium, Inc. is under new management. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming!" Wait... Wh... What?

That's right, Felt was a son of a "minor nobleman". Still, his "working for a living" wasn't working with his hands, as a craftsman or a laborer, but as a spy and a scout. I wonder about the dressmaker that Vin goes to see about her ball gown after she's "Lady Vin", where the tailor comments that he was used to making hidden pockets and E-Z-Tear seams for Allomancers and Mistborn. And of course, how did Marsh, ostensibly raised by a posing-as-noble mother with Kelsier as secret half-skaa (though we have conflicting accounts/information on this from Kelsier in TFE, Marsh, and Ghost Kelsier in Secret History), learn whatever trade it was that allowed him to run a shop (I don't remember what kind of shop - Clubs was the "skaa carpenter of some skill" whose shop was also a Smokehouse, what was Marsh)?

Huh, I didn't think it was out of print! Apparently so. Interesting. Vol 2 and 3 are easily available, so I assume it's only a matter of time before Vol 1 is reissued. ...Or, maybe not, come to think of it. According to this WoB from just over a month ago, they (Brandon/Dragonsteel Entertainment) are finishing up on an omnibus of White Sand (all three in one bound book) that will also expand and clean some stuff up. So I'd say, wait for that. If you want to read White Sand NOW, get it from a library or buy it as an e-book (Xomicology) to view on a screen until the omnibus comes out.