robardin

Well it's kind of two separate legends rolled into one, with Kelsier in the middle of it (the whole question of "where did the Feruchemical abilities requires to make the Bands come from?" being set aside for now). First, from the Southerner's POV, "the Sovereign" came to them after the world froze over, and saved them from freezing to death by giving them "Excisors" and beginning the Firefathers and Firemothers (who we can infer are the source of brassmind medallions for body heat that apparently, all Southerners must use at least part of every day just to leave their well-heated homes, "all five peoples" of the Southern Hemisphere). The Sovereign had told them he came from the Northern Hemisphere, which region Allik referred to as "the land of the Sovereign", where he had been "your king and god" (speaking to Wax and co. as Northerners). He somehow engendered Metalborn among them (lerasium?), teaching them that they were "pieces of God" "though we didn't have any of those at first", as well as giving them with the Excisors, before leaving them... ...To create this Temple in the Northern mountains and a legend that, hidden there, he would leave his "Bands" that granted both Metalborn powers in all sixteen metals. Why describe them as Bands when they were in the form a spearhead all along? How likely is it that the word "band" a pun for the Southerner's languages the way it apparently is for Wax and Marasi, such that it could be used to describe arm bracers (which TLR was known to have worn) as well as interwoven stripes of metal? My thoughts and theories: 1) Legends or stories about The Lord Ruler's "bands" were already circulating in the Northern Hemisphere shortly after the Catacendre, or perhaps even before (shortly after TLR's fall). 2) It's strongly suggested by the ending to Mistborn: Secret History that Kelsier needed Spook's - er, The Lord Mistborn's - help to reincorporate in the physical world. 3) We have a WoB that Kelsier is not "possessing" Spook's body to become the Sovereign, though that would otherwise be the simplest way to explain how the Sovereign could describe himself as having been both "king" and "god" to the people in the North (Spook having led as King or Emperor for almost 100 years, and Kelsier a god). Besides, The Sovereign came to the people of the Southern Hemisphere "about ten years after the Ice Death happened", so unless The Lord Mistborn was prone to disappearing for months or years at a time just ten years into the rebuilding of society, he's ruled out as a physical medium. No, as with describing his "Bands" as armbands, Kelsier was already sowing the seeds to misdirect any Northerners who/when they learned of it to associate it with The Lord Ruler when he claimed to have been "the King in the North" (or else engaging in some Game of Thrones roleplaying). For whatever reason. 4) The Bands not only contain unsealed metalminds for Feruchemical powers, but the very creation of them requires using Feruchemy as well (for nicrosil and aluminum), which Kelsier did not naturally possess. My theory is that "The Sovereign" never achieved Feruchemy, not even with hemalurgy, but relied on the Bands himself to do all the Excisor creating stuff - then left the object at the Temple, perhaps as part of an agreement required by Harmony or whoever else assisted him in creating it in the first place. Harmony having a role in its creation would explain why the Bands grant such powerful Allomancy, and even caused mists to form and to swirl around Marasi when she tapped it. My pet, fringe, and unsupported theory is that the First Generation of kandra (who alone among all Generations had been born as human Feruchemists) were somehow able to provide some kind of Feruchemical assistance to Ghost Kelsier in the Cognitive Realm on their way to the Beyond, inasmuch as we see that hemalurgically transformed creatures revert to their original human selves in the CR after dying (koloss). (The catch there being that technically, kandra were not hemalurgically transformed but physically transformed with the power of Preservation, with hemalurgy used to restore their original cognition.) Think about it. A full Feruchemist, provided with all sixteen metals and taught about creating unsealed metalminds for Feruchemical abilities as well as for Feruchemical attribute stores, could create "half-Bands" that granted anyone the ability to be a full Feruchemist, all on their own. Then a Mistborn like Kelsier or Spook could pick it up and add Allomancy for all sixteen metals to the metalminds as well. Or sixteen Mistings of each metal. The only "full Metalborn" you need to make the Bands of Mourning is a Feruchemist. (And of course having one set of Bands, you could now create as many of them as you can make 16-metal-unioned metalminds... A terrifying prospect).

Right, it's not "speed up time for yourself" it's "speed up your physical motions" (not including your thought - that's F-zinc). Tapping a steelmind allows someone to move faster than someone burning pewter would, but to do something really extreme - like Marasi moving so quickly as to generate a sonic boom effect - probably also required tapping a goldmind or burning pewter to withstand and to heal from the physical damage of wind resistance based friction.

As far as Kelsier's mastery of steel and iron goes, for him to get so good with those metals so quickly must mean he had a natural prodigy-like affinity for them, but not a "savantism" resulting from long use of the Investiture... That should require a LOT of time burning a metal, and he's a Mistborn who only burns them part of the time (versus a Coinshot like Wax who burns steel all the time, when he's burning any metal at all). Plus, he only even Snapped as a Mistborn after several months at the Pits of Hathsin. We don't know exactly how long ago that was prior to the events of the first Mistborn book (do we?); given the time he spent training with Gemmel in the far Northern Dominance and planning his scheme and all that, that had to taken years. But still, compared to most Allomancers who Snapped as children (the noble ones getting a professional beating to see if it would happen if they hadn't already by a certain age), he's actually had a lot LESS time using his powers than usual by the time he does his Allomantic duel with the Inquisitor.

And behold!, instant noodles have come to Roshar at last!

niiice

You know, now I feel extra bad for the duralumin Mistings. Their aluminum gnat-brethren suddenly discover a dramatic use for their ability after all, but the duralumin gnats will still be gnats. Maybe they could operate Riino's Oracle as they would be Invested, just not in a way that would be standalone useful.

Hmm, but Wax noticed the brawny Coinshot who attacks him on the train to New Seran in Ch. 7 of The Bands of Mourning (the one who kept wanting to fistfight with him) was also doing the steel bubble thing. And that guy was very, very unlikely to also have been a Crasher Twinborn. The guy did seem unusually physically strong, though, beyond simply being big. Exceptionally strong Allomancy, too. Since the Set have access to hemalurgy, perhaps he was enhanced with a spike for A-steel (increasing his strength), and maybe also for A-pewter? With a mission not to kill Wax, but to distract him with a mystery and a challenge?

And we'll find out about that stuff, either in flashback or simply as characters talk about and deal with What Happpened. Things don't have to be presented in POVs, pushing some things to the realm of "back story" is what lends depth to world building, and in this case pushing a year's worth of critical developments into a skipover time lends a certain urgency. Those events were interesting and important, but inasmuch as they led to what's happening NOW which is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT.

If there are only a few spren together I'd call it a sprenkling.

Not in D&D it isn't, LOL!

Well not greed for wealth, but certainly greed for power, specifically of the Invested kind. And of knowledge. As to what end - well, it's not greed for for its own sake. Mraize spoke to Shallan about how "good" and "evil" are not dimensions that interest them, and they certainly don't hesitate in casually killing complete innocents (like Shallan's coach driver and parshmen while trying to test/kill her before her being admitted as a Ghostblood). But in talking to her in Urithiru at the end of WoR, he also says, "You don't know who we are. You don't know what we are trying to accomplish." If the GBs are "trying to accomplish" something, that usually speaks to something beyond resource acquisition. He could be leading her on, of course, saying things that he knows will intrigue her - dropping knowing hints about her family, suggesting some kind of long-term goal. And of course, saying to a Lightweaver "let her find truth (with us)" is like throwing candy at a toddler.

You can think of it as "translation license" from in-world Scadial to our-world text. Kelsier is thinking in semi-archaic and formal/poetic phrasing that would echo religious texts, as we might echo the King James Bible, to recognize that Sazed is now divine, and doubly so... To contrast it with the fact that even so, he has the same "tell" that he did as a man.

This, or gold. It's close. Objectively, having a goldmind would probably the most useful as it could literally save my life in an emergency (I've been hit by a car while on a bike in my life in an incident that could well have turned out much worse for me), but being able to tap a zincmind would make my day to day life so much more interesting. And filling it wouldn't be as annoying as filling a goldmind - just do it while I'm watching "Nailed It!" on Netflix or something else relatively mindless. ?? You find yourself wishing you could remember stuff in greater detail a lot?

No, she knows who he is - they'd met before, in Yeddaw, as depicted in Edgedancer. She also immediately recognized Glowing Afterimage Szeth, Bald Shin Guy With a Shardblade, as the starvin' Assassin In White!. So she definitely would recognize him again at Thaylen Fields. That said, it's true that she interacts with Szeth the most normally, because she's Lift.

Somewhere in the back of his mind continues to be his "failure" to reach/speak the Fourth Ideal. Kaladin knows what it is. But unlike with his Second and Third Ideals, at the moment he was close enough to saying it, to realize what it was while fighting the Fused in Shadesmar in Oathbringer, he wasn't able to do it ("Could Kaladin do it? Could he really say these Words? Could he mean them? ... He wasn't strong enough.") And he hasn't approached that point again. (Or perhaps he has, in The Skipped-over Time, and still couldn't do it.) And shortly after he got back, Teft swore the Third Ideal and Lopen the Second... And by RoW Ch. 5, a year or more later, we see Lopen and Drehy both with Shardspears, so they too are of at least the Third Ideal. If it hasn't already happened, there's a very real possibility that another Windrunner will swear the Fourth Ideal before him. That must weigh on him as well. I have the feeling that Teft, Lopen, and Drehy would no doubt still look to Kaladin as their Captain and leader even if they advanced in Ideals ahead of him, given their history in Bridge Four, but still - nobody likes to feel like they've "failed" in some way they were supposed to advance. With Kaladin's combination of leadership mentality and depression, and his self-phrasing of that inability to speak the Fourth Ideal as "not being strong enough", that's very likely a huge part what's keeping him up at nights (consciously or unconsciously).

Huh. Yet I recall reading other WoBs about how decapitation could be survived with a large enough goldmind (and a quick enough tapping of it)... This is about F-gold healing specifically, the answer to which frames it (tapping a goldmind) as being a typical "spiritual template" based cosmere healing magic, And then separately, in a question about Hoid and his "cosmere healing magic", So I think it is plausible that TLR could and would have survived beheadings, provided he was prepared for it and was not wearing his goldmind on his head. Personally, I like picturing him pulling a "Gawain and the Green Knight" type of stunt on some of the kings of Scadrial that he convinced to join his side.

The word "chicken" is just one of those inherently funny words (what do you know, Wikipedia even has an entry under that heading). I used to make my children laugh when they were pre-schoolers just by staring at them and solemnly intoning it with a long, dramatic pause. "Hey, <T>." "What?" "....Chicken." After a while they'd just start giggling madly when I stared at them silently, and then exclaim "CHICKEN!" themselves. Ah, little kids are the best. (They're college aged now... sniff) Even better was when one of their uncles did a call-and-response type of joke with them. "Guess what?" "What?" "Chicken butt." Combining "chicken" with "butt" is beyond preschooler comedy gold, it's platinum!

Well it's like that story that Hoid alluded to, yeah? That implied that Adonalsium allowed himself to be Splintered in order to experience things in his own universe in a multiplicity of ways and POVs. Kind of like that story by Andy Weir, The Egg, from before he wrote "The Martian", the work that made him famous.

Exactly - it's like in Stephen Crane's short poem, A Man Said To The Universe, but in reference to a "god" like Honor, Odium, or even Adonalsium. The people of Scadrial, now, are potentially in a bit of a slightly different position with respect to their God(s)... But this being the SA forum I'll leave that thought for a different discussion.

In one sense, I found the "time jump" if anything to be surprisingly short. Meaning, given all the implied events and developments that happened between the end of OB and the first several chapters of RoW, it feels like that could/should have been at least 18 months if not 2-3 years... Designing, testing, and building Roshar's first flying barge fabrial, going to Aimia and back, building up to 50 full Windrunners and a couple hundred squires, Dalinar becoming a walking highstorm perpendicularity, that was all done in just one year or so? I mean, I know the Final Desolation going on around you certainly imparts a certain urgency of time to everything, but wow! But that's why I find the early released chapters of RoW such compelling reading. Every chapter drops hints of what will surely be explored further as flashbacks, all of them huge. Like, they've learned so much about the Fused from Ash (but not Taln, who I guess is still mostly catatonic), but not about the Sibling and the Secret of Urithiru? Does Taln regain sanity when he's close by to Perpendicular Dalinar like happened at Thaylen Fields? If so, why isn't he traveling with Dalinar on the Fourth Bridge, or maybe he is?

And even then, it increases your stamina and healing factor. It'd probably be hard to resist burning it pretty much all the time, which is basically what we see Ham doing in Era 1, walking around without a vest in winter weather. (So "increased stamina" there might also include fortitude to cold, or maybe Ham would always have been one of those don't-feel-the-cold types of people that do exist anyway.) Speaking of Master Hammond, I always wondered how he got away with being both an open Pewterarm (it's mentioned that he was in high demand as a bodyguard in that capacity) and evidently a known skaa (he didn't have any kind of "cover story" to provide a false noble background)? He was even asked to join the Luthadel Garrison, wasn't he? Perhaps his value as a pewter Misting led his employers (even the Lord Ruler's own Garrison?!) to overlook investigating his background, but that feels like a dangerous line to tread with the Steel Ministry's Inquisitors.

And even then, it increases your stamina and healing factor. It'd probably be hard to resist burning it pretty much all the time, which is basically what we see Ham doing in Era 1, walking around without a vest in winter weather. (So "increased stamina" there might also include fortitude to cold, or maybe Ham would always have been one of those don't-feel-the-cold types of people that do exist anyway.)

Not that Kadash has been a Son of Honor all along, but I could see (possibly) that he's thrown in with a group he views as more Purely Vorin than Dalinar. I mean, if you think about it, Dalinar is basically posing as The Heir of Slyth -- I mean, Honor, what with challenging Odium to a contest of champions and opening up His Perpendicularity and renewing spheres and Radiants with Stormlight, while talking about how the Heralds (not the Radiants) forsook mankind. There are sure to be deeply Orthodox Vorin people who cannot accept that idea, while of course having to admit that hey, there sure are a lot of erstwhile parshmen running around taking over countries and whatnot. It doesn't jibe with what we saw of Kadash the last time we saw him talk to Dalinar, though. He seemed to be cracking a bit in terms of admitting the validity of what Dalinar has been saying. But it's an interesting idea.

Now that is an interesting angle Not sure how "inside" Kadash is in terms of providing information, though - I don't think Kadash is with Dalinar on the Fourth Bridge, is he? And that is where Dalinar has been and will be for some time, given its rate of travel and the distance between Urithiru and Hearthstone.

I was thinking this as well. I would say there are two possibilities: 1) They really are complete dupes, and their "inside info" on Dalinar is actually someone planted by the Ghostbloods to feed them tiny truths mixed with whatever falsehoods the GBs want the SoAs to have on their minds 2) They are actually the masterminds (via Gavilar) for freeing Unmade and bringing about the Everstorm and the True Desolation so on, as they claim, are fully aware of what Shallan is doing with her infiltration job, are stringing her along, and this "Kholin attack!" she was not expecting to have been cued yet is going to be a reason for snagging her away with them "to safety" but in fact, capturing the main Lightweaver from Team Dalinar who just walked right into their hands.