robardin

I love Lightsong and this snippet of info won't change that, but colors!, now I can't stop picturing Lightsong as Hedonismbot from Futurama.

True, but the OP was thinking more along the lines of examples where storing the Feruchemical attribute was not a minus but a plus unto itself (albeit in a different context). Not just "I can fill a zincmind or steelmind while vegging out watching Netflix". Wax does this all the time, actually - he reflects that he usually thought of using his Feruchemy as primarily useful in making himself lighter, frequently walking around filling his ironmind at a low level while going around at 75-80% of his natural weight or to make himself fly further or faster with a Steelpush, until the times in Alloy of Law when he suddenly realized how useful being really, really, REALLY heavy for a few moments could be in the right situation. That's why I thought about bendalloy - I remembered Subsumer Ferrings being a thing that anybody who's ever tried to diet would find useful, but then found it probably wasn't worth dying over to wear a bendalloymind for any significant part of one's life.

Ettmetal flakes in a mineral oil suspension, eh? Ew. But I suppose it could work. But I hope the Allomantic effect could be put to good use from a toilet seat.

Interestingly, Feruchemy is one of the first magic systems Brandon ever imagined, and this particular attribute was the first one he thought of, as a student with insomnia issues. So you're in excellent company with this! You'd think being a Subsumer Ferring, having the ability to store nutrition in a bendalloymind, would be a popular choice - eat all you want and control your weight with Feruchemy, storing the excess calories away for those long road trips or camping expeditions when you can then skip bringing all the sandwiches and trail mix! Unfortunately, it's an alloy of cadmium that is topically poisonous for humans. Thus making Gaspers and Subsumers only able to use their abilities in very short bursts, unless they're full Feruchemists who can also tap gold at the same time!

So, I was thinking along similar lines to this. Leshwi is one of the Fused who actually lived in times before the original conflict between humans and singers. Her reaction to Venli saying she'd bonded a Radiant spren was - after demanding "What have you done?" to Destruction, a rhythm of Odium, upon seeing her draw in Stormlight - was to manifest a joyspren and immediately start to speak/hum to the "old" rhythms. "Venli, they've come back to us! They've forgiven us." She then inquires to Longing about Riah, an honorspren she once knew, long ago, that was "precious" to her. So yes. Leshwi at least, and other Heavenly Ones (if not all of them) or ones that have been following her lead in spirit as well as word, seem to have acted "honorable" with the Windrunners because they, too, had been close to honorspren in their past. And it also explains why Leshwi had been looking for Kaladin's spren while fighting, as well as suggesting that it would be good to preserve "them and their spren" after a singer victory. We know the Nahel bond, with its Surgebinding and manifestation of Shards, was something the spren did "in imitation of the Honorblades". So I think you are also correct in considering that whatever the singers used to have with the spren was not quite the same. Perhaps they bonded with them in typical singer fashion, to take on a different form? If bonding a painspren brings on warform, or a gravitationspren workform, perhaps bonding a sentient spren grants a Surge but not two of them (which would explain why the Fused each get one, not two, Surges)? (It's likely Riah is a deadeye, too. So if freeing BAM results in some kind of mass awakening of deadeye spren, well, things could get very interesting very quickly.) Leshwi's phrasing of the spren "coming back to" and "forgiving" the singers is very telling, as you say. The "oaths and precepts" and Five Ideals structure of the Nahel Bond seems to be something Ishar imposed (if the epigraphs are to be believed), which given his current insanity and repossession of the Bondsmith Honorblade is now particularly terrifying.

i definitely agree that Leshwi’s words and actions reflect what the OP is suggesting. ” They’ve come back to us! ... Forgiven us!” is her reaction to finding that Venli has a Radiant spren. And then she asks after a specific honorspren. i’ll wrote more later when i’m not on my phone

Hm. Then how would a highspren summon and dismiss what seems to be a Shardweapon? A highspren with a Nahel bond... With another highspren?

What, you mean the highspren that is bonded to the Skybreaker in the Shardspacesuit? Could a "really physical" spren still be summoned as a Shardweapon? That's kind of mind-blowing. I have the icky feeling that what Ishar was after in pulling spren into corporeally physical form is not something that has some kind of beneficial side effect for the spren...

Eh, I'd say the "average skaa" we saw was still better off than a bridgeman. Being a Sadeas bridgeman was more like being a skaa of the Final Empire... Who'd been sent to the Pits of Hathsin. You know you're going to die, and die brutally; it's only a question of when and how. "The waiting is all." Meanwhile, the silent competition to stay alive just a little bit longer is predicated on an "every man for himself" race against your fellow condemned that erodes compassion and humanity.

Maybe another related question would be, would someone with the Second Heightening or further, which grants perfect pitch, be better able to pick up on the Rhythms - if not to hear or attune to them innately, at least to be able to recognize and duplicate what a listener tells them is a given Rhythm ("ah, this is Amusement, I can do that"). Then again, rhythm is not melody. Maybe you need a higher Heightening for Perfect Rhythm, haha.

Haha, yes, I suppose X-ray technology would eventually arise on Scadrial. It would be funny if this was the impetus, rather than surgery, because it looks like they'll have access to unsealed goldminds not long after Era 2 (right around when they have developed automobiles and radios), but hey, cheating at sports is something people would think to do as soon as they could do it, as long as professional or prizewinning contests were a thing!

That's why I said "ingestion-hidden", the old Swallow The Metalmind trick that is even mentioned in the Words of Founding (if Sazed put that scene in there, when he went to rescue Vin from Kredik Shaw before they confronted TLR). Such metalminds, especially if small (even if not filled with Investiture), would not be detectable to the ordinary strength Misting.

Yes but while all of Sadeas' bridgemen were darkeyes, that's not at all the same as saying all darkeyes were as badly off of bridgemen. And remember, running bridge crews the way that Sadeas did was something only Sadeas did. Because he was a monster that way with casual disregard for human life, you know? No doubt in my mind, being a darkeyes in Alethkar, even of low nahn, was overall better than being skaa in the Final Empire. There were exceptional skaa craftsmen in Luthadel, equivalent to first and second nahn artisans and skilled professionals like Lirin, who warranted better treatment because of the rarity and utility of their skills; more curious is that there were not a similar group to the Alethi "tenners", skilled craftsman nobles of low or fallen houses or families who have to work for a living. (Of course, there is not an easily spotted differentiator between noble and skaa in the FE the way the lighteyes and darkeyes have.) What we don't see more of is what the life of a skaa was like further away from Luthadel, at least the ones in the cities (I get the feeling that plantation skaa had it pretty rough no matter what Dominance). It was said that in the further areas of the FE the skaa were able to live much closer to normal lives.

Well, addressing your original topic first - as a standalone topic of "what unsealed Feruchemical metalminds would be valuable to have as a commodity", the obvious answer would be the unsealed goldmind in an emergency medical kit, yeah? The only ethical question there would be how the goldminds got filled. Was it thrrough clean, harmless Compounding, or through a number of Bloodmakers being paid for their "down time" while storing Identity-free health (however the yet-to-be-shown Excisor technology for Identity removal is achieved), or through a number of unwilling or captive people somehow having their health leached from them, like caged hens in an egg factory? And small unsealed metalminds of various types could be the Scadrial version of illegal PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs) in any professional sports. Especially since Seekers have not yet been seen to use their ability to detect Feruchemy. It's implied by numerous WoBs to be possible, but that is different from anybody in-world having figured out exactly how it's done yet, which surely would require extensive practice time that's hard to come by. So imagine being a prizefighting boxer or wrestler. There would probably be Seekers on hand to try to detect an Allomancer secretly burning pewter to gain an illegal advantage, but unable to detect a quick tap of an ingestion-hidden pewtermind, steelmind, or ironmind, just a small quick burst, at one particular moment of time. And forget Adderall abuse around exam time, you know it'd be all about the zincminds.

Also: pew pew pew pew vrrrrr pkow!

Not so. They must exist, because to release the "shuttlecraft" Wilg from the mother airship Brunstell, Allik required Wax to Steelpush on a square to release the craft, and then again to charge the "primer cube" as well. It's not clear if Allik needed to capture Wax's Steelpushing in the cube specifically, or if any ol' Investiture would do, to then use the cube to power the continued flight of Wilg. It could be that it flew basically by replicating the Steelpushing effect against metals in the earth (which as a point of objection, it seems like it'd need some intelligent agent to select the right anchor points); or, whatever is powering the engines is converting Investiture to ordinary physical kinetic energy and just needed a kind of "seed energy" to start firing. But in terms of getting Wilg to separate, there had to be a medallion for A-steel somewhere in Wilg (and a handy vial of steel) or only a Coinshot could ever use it. Maybe Captain Jordis was a Coinshot and keeping the ability hidden? But that would mean her crew avoided using the apparently requisite O Honorific One type of address for her at all times, as a subterfuge, even when talking only amongst themselves. (Not that Jordis does that with Wax, actually; but Allik also talks to Jordis directly without that language feature when giving them warmth medallions and guns.)

Well, the whole "deadeye" thing was revealed to only have begun with the trapping of BAM. Whatever Roshar-wide Connection Entanglement Melishi engendered in so doing not only zombified all the parsh, but made it so that forsworn Ideals didn't just sever the Nahel bond but trapped the spren in a half-death, kind of like the "something done broke with the Shaod" effect in Elantris. In Elantris terms, all those deadeyes are probably like hoed spren Yeah, but Kaladin didn't just re-swear his earlier Ideals. He had to "find the Words" to his NEXT (Third) Ideal to revive Syl. So assuming that Shallan had/has reached the Third Ideal with both Testament and Pattern, being as both can be summoned as Blades (one silvery/dead and the other one glowing garnet/living), does that mean she needs to reach the Fourth Ideal to revive Testament? But which spren would the Ideal link to? Or does her bond to both of them "level up"? This has got to be a component of all the RAFO type dodgy answers Brandon has given out over which Ideal Shallan is up to. She can do things like summon a Blade and Soulcast the goblet to blood in Kharbranth that suggest she already has an advanced bond, without having sworn the requisite number of Truths yet to Pattern... But she does also say Truths to Pattern, and can also summon a Patternblade for Kaladin and to operate the Narak Oathgate despite only saying a third Ideal (second Truth) to Pattern later in Urithiru, about killing her mother. So it's as if her having been a 3+ Ideal LW in the past has carryover effect to a second bond (and maybe the fact that she's bonded a Cryptic both times is relevant, as well). That's based on inferring that that admission about her mother in Urithiru was her Third Ideal, since she hasn't ever manifested Shardplate yet. Except that her self-image as Radiant at Thaylen Fields did have garnet glowing Plate. Not that Radiant's ever done that since. And hey, Radiant's the "construct" that Shallan still has around, where Veil considered herself "poofed away" after her primary duty - to veil Shallan from her memories of bonding and then renouncing Testament until she was ready to deal with it - was fulfilled. Storms, this girl's a mess.

I must admit, I did a double take to see one Ookla apparently gloating over another Ookla over possession of leatherbound Cosmere books. And there are more Ooklas coming on board in the Welcome forum, too. What's going on here? Did Thundarr and Ariel discover a Star Wars style cloning vat? LOL. For "fun" I checked on eBay for what the secondary market might have in terms of Cosmere leatherbound volumes. The good news, yeah, they're out there for sale. The bad news is, for $500 to $1200 each! https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=brandon+sanderson+leatherbound&_sacat=0

He also said something about how Skyward 3 would not be "plot advancement" so much as "fun action stuff", with him expanding the series arc now to four books to allow for this, so I'm guessing the "fun stuff" is simply fun (and quick) to write, if not to edit :).

I agree, Mraize saying "what do you (think you) know about Thaidakar [beyond my occasional name dropping]?" would have made more sense; then again it's not like Shallan's ever perked up and asked, "Wait, who's this Thaidakar?" before. He may have noticed her lack of reaction (even curiosity) to that name and had previously assumed it was out of ignorance ("yet another tidbit of mystery Mraize will eventually talk about"), and now suspects it might be due to some other source of information. And Lightweavers, of course, make excellent spies, as shown by Shallan's multiple identity switches in the mission in Kholinar, and then later gaining access to Ialai. What Shallan is bad at is lying when she hasn't pre-planned out a reason or a way to do so. She isn't cagey-sneaky-crafty by nature (while another LW in Ishnah probably is). Remember, a Lightweaver's fundamental character trait, what moves them along their Ideals, is that they must confront deep lies they have told to themselves, about themselves. Which makes me really curious what it is that Vathah, Gaz, and Ishnah have had to admit to themselves in forming a Nahel Bond. Or what Childhood Shallan had told Testament as her Truths. (I guess we don't know what Ideal any of Vathah, Ishnah, or Gaz are on - they don't seem to have Blades, or at least, haven't shown them).

Yeah, Laral raised her eyebrows at Kaladin saying to her "I imagined coming back and saving you from all of this" (what a very Kaladin thing to say), when she was apparently relatively happily married - running the town as citylady for Roshone, and having a family (her two children must have existed already in that scene in OB, given their ages in RoW, he just hadn't any time time to learn about their existence or to meet them). So on top of having to re-establish an emotional bond between the two that goes beyond "we used to have a mutual childhood crush on each other", and her reaction of "stop viewing me as an object of rescue when I'm a capable citylady", and her being in sincere mourning over the death of a man he's hated for pretty much all of his adult life in Roshone... Can you imagine Kaladin wrestling with being the stepfather raising Roshone's kids?

Not just palindromic title initials, but also with each book's title being the name of an in-world writing. I wasn't sure how Rhythm of War would be an in-world writing, well, now I know. Basically the title of a scholarly fabrial research tract by Raboniel and Navani. So, for a "KoW" title it seems inevitable that the "o" will be "of", eh? Or maybe "on"? If the fifth book is the Szeth/Skybreakers book, "Knight of W*" makes sense, but "Winds" seems to me to be took evocative of the Order of Windrunners, despite the Skybreakers also being flyers. Also not sure how it'd be an in-world written work. Maybe "Knock on Wood." LOL

The atium would indeed start to reappear again at the Pits of Hathsin with the passage of time... If "Ati" still existed as the Vessel for an independent Shard of Ruin, and if the Pits still existed as a Perpendicularity. Neither is true after the Catacendre. Atium won't form naturally, because there is no Shardpool or Perpendicularity for Ruin on Scadrial any more, only one for Harmony, wherever that happens to be (and there might be more than one). So the "approximately 300 years" thing and the timing of Era 2 story The Lost Metal being set approximately 300 years after the Catacendre, I think may be a red herring. (Or if it dovetails, will be in a way that is going to be A Big Twist.) Indeed, there is a WoB for that, but basically a vague one-liner RAFO type of response: Here's another thing to consider: while net of all things there would be slightly more "leftover Ruin" for Sazed to account for due to Leras having given more of Preservation to humanity than Leras had of Ruin, at the time of his double Ascension there was less than Full Ruin for him to pick up. At the very least, enough of Ruin was missing that it balanced out the "extra Preservation" given unto the humanity of Scadrial (apparently not enough was missing that he was actually tilted towards Preservation). Why? Because of all the atium that Elend and his squad of Seers burned away. It was power that Ati "had wanted very, very badly" - power that was separated from and now external to him, as a result of Leras' treachery. Power that, once recovered, would give him the definitive edge over Preservation, because of the original imbalance. But also power such that the act of burning it away Allomantically meant it was inaccessible to him: burning atium didn't return that Investiture to the Shard of Ruin, otherwise he'd have been very pleased with Elend's act instead of being ragingly furious. (And I would assume the geodes that Kelsier shattered with Allomancy that destroyed the atium beads within them had a similar effect.) So When Sazed Ascended, he picked up all the Preservation dropped by Leras/Kelsier/Vin, which included that which had been used to trap Ati in the Well and had then been released into the mists; and also all the Ruin that Ati dropped, which didn't include the portion in the atium of the Trustwarren. That's the portion of power that is going to return to the Shard from whence it came, slowly over time. Not in the form of atium beads formed at Ruin's Perpendicularity, any more, though, but in furthering the imbalance of Ruin within Harmony. And so "What could Sazed be doing with that extra power" to maintain the Balance of Harmony within him is the question. It has to be something he's had to do over the past 300 years, possibly "venting out" atium beads for Marsh to use or something (but not at the Pits), or maybe something else. I used to wonder if Sazed somehow managed to Invest Nightblood with that portion of Ruin, but that doesn't fit the Cosmere Timeline as presently worked out (as a fan theory, admittedly, and not canon?), which places the Nalthian Manywar considerably before Sazed's Ascension.

There's a recent WoB that finally confirms that Progression, as applied to another person, is not the same nor as powerful as a Radiant "healing" themselves. The latter is equivalent to "syncing" to the Cognitive image the person has of themself, and so is capable of healing even things like Shardblade severed limbs, regenerating long-amputated body parts (Lopen's arm), or in this case, "correcting" a body/self-image gender mismatch. But Rysn's legs not being something healable by Lift or Renarin is not because Rysn now fundamentally views herself as "not supposed to have functioning legs any more" (clearly not the case, from her POVs); if she ever gained the use of Stormlight, or tapped an unsealed gold metalmind, she could almost certainly heal from it. And the same would apply for using Progression to do other "deep sync healing" things that a Stormlight or goldmind self-healing would allow for.

I did feel the Shadesmar plotline was underserved, but the book is massive enough and I'm not sure what more depth was needed there. Certainly not 3-5 more chapters of plotting Adolin's legal defense in Lasting Integrity, LOL. Mainly what I felt off was that, after all that angst Shallan went through - and Veil's unusual override - to select her LW crew to accompany the Stump, Zu, and Felt, all of them were just sent off to "bring word back" to Dalinar of what Adolin, Shallan, and Pattern had agreed to do, unmentioned for the rest of the book. I'm hoping the 4.5 novella (Horneater) sees Rock entering Shadesmar (possibly exiled there, to join that clan that is always in Shadesmar, maybe as a kind of honor guard on the CR side of Cultivation's Perpendicularity?) and doing something with them that was simply off-screen in RoW. Though even in that case, I'd have liked a kind of hint as to that having happened (like how in RoW they obliquely refer to the trip to Aimia that earlier acquired a cache of Soulcasters and Cord's Shardplate, that are depicted in the Dawnshard novella.)