robardin

Colors, how about tossing Susebron a fully topped up Bands of Mourning and a bandolier of vials with all the metals. LOL.

What, no love for Kenton the Sand Master?

Hmm. Well, spoilering for stuff from Tress, ...

It seems like we've seen pages and pages of "discussion" of who would win in a 1v1 (whether "on a battlefield", in an arena, with/without knowledge of the other's powerset, with/without time to fully prepare, etc.), ... ...between a "Fullborn" with access to both Feruchemy and Allomancy in all sixteen metals (excluding "god" metals), which we haven't seen in canon except in the person of The Lord Ruler, ...and a "Fifth Ideal Radiant" (which we also haven't actually seen in action yet, with Nale never even appearing in Shardplate), usually a Windrunner, presumably an Enraged Maxed-Out Kaladin. But there's no reason to pick between the two as some kind of Ultimate Cosmere Champion! What if Rashek had faked his own death (MB: Secret History notwithstanding), worldhopped over to Roshar, super-impressed Nale, bonded a highspren, and became a Fifth Ideal Skybreaker. (We haven't seen a Skybreaker use Division yet, but if it's at all like what Malata the Dustbringer could do to burn-carve a wooden table with a touch, I'm skeered.) Who could challenge or surpass him in a 1v1? Susebron, Returned of the Tenth Heightening, wielding Nightblood? Hmm!

Oh, Dalinar is also very much in play as someone who could pick up both Shards of Honor and Odium. I mean, his deep Connection with the Thrill says as much. But I am in the group of people who firmly believe Cultivation most definitely did have a good idea of what she'd done. You don't pull off a subtle "pruning" as she did, and having been Cultivation for so long to practice with it, without knowing the target very well, for both Dalinar and Taravangian. So when she uses that very specific turn of phrase in addressing the New Odium in Taravangian, just consider for a moment that she knows way more of what is going on - and yet to go on - in that moment than Taravangian would. It's just more of his "overconfidence in his own assessment/intelligence" nature coming through (which was always a character trait of his, separate from his boon/curse cycle). As for how Taravangian might be Connected enough to Honor to pick it up - he has always been "letter of the law" honorable, I think. Putting on a false face and showing people what they expect to see is not breaking any contract, and for all his lying to Dalinar's coalition's face (and betraying them on the field), he would argue that he was simply holding fast to his prior and higher contract - to save as much as he could of Roshar from Odium's inescapable wrath with the Diagram's guidance.

OK, but why fixate on Dalinar? It's Taravangian to whom Cultivation said, "all I could do was hope that if you succeeded, my gift would work. That I had changed you into someone who could bear this power with honor." Or should that be with a capital H? Changed Taravangian into someone who could bear Odium with Honor? After all, they have just discovered the Rhythm of War, the harmonizing of Odium and Honor. And the only reason Rayse had not been wont to take up Shards but perma-Splintered them instead was because he had been "ruled by the power" into hating all the others (from one POV). Just throwing that out there...!

There is wiggle room for Brandon here if he wants it: there isn't any lerasium on Scadrial as of Era 2, that people know about. There wasn't ever that much lerasium to begin with, because Leras already "overspent" of Himself in creating Scadrial with Ruin to give humanity a touch more Preservation than of Ruin. The two Shards were exactly matched in power to begin with, and this amount of extra power was described by what we would later understand to be Harmony as "not much", but it was enough that over time, Ruin could overwhelm Him. ...and the amount of atium (+a bit of electrum....) that cycled through the Pits of Hathsin represented the chunk of Ruin that Preservation managed to splinter off while trapping Ruin in the Well, leaving the two in balance (as we see in Secret History). In other words, the sum of the power of Ruin represented by the atium cycle (A) at the Pits should equal the "extra bit of power" Preservation gave to humanity (H), that present in the mists (M), and that formed into lerasium beads (L). So that A = H+M+L. Technically the mists can be "pulled back" by a living Vessel of Preservation, as all the mist disappeared to go into Vin when she Ascended, so really A = H+L. We don't know why Leras bothered to form those beads - maybe it has to do with mechanically balancing out the "bead forming" aspect of the atium cycle? - but it was not something Rashek did while Ascended, they pre-existed him and he "had to go get it". The lore of the Final Empire is that there were "ten kings" who were the first to ally with Rashek in his drive to become The Lord Ruler who founded the ten Great Houses that Vin had to memorize as part of her training to pose as Valette ("Venture, Hasting, Elariel, Tekiel, Lekal, Erikeller, Erikell, Haught, Urbain, and Buvidas"), and were evidently given lerasium beads to do so. All noble-blooded Allomancy derives from that. (It seems clear that originally, Rashek was intended to have become Mistborn via such a bead as well, but this was never explicitly stated in TFE, and later Brandon retconned this to Rashek being even higher in power level than Lerasium Mistborn by virtue of a direct modification of his Spiritweb while Ascended. You can infer this from Harmony's epigraph to HoA Ch. 22 where TLR is referred to one of the "ancient Allomancers" with power "unadulterated by time and breeding", with "nine" other original Allomancers instead of "ten"? But then one of the ten kings would have gotten frozen out of a bead? LOL!) Let's assume there were ten beads consumed shortly after Rashek's Ascension, either TLR + nine kings, or consumed by ten kings who became Mistborn and founded the Great Noble Houses. Now account for the two left in the cavern under Kredik Shaw, one taken by Hoid and one consumed by Elend at the end of TWoA. That means that Rashek went and gathered TWELVE lerasium beads... Don't you suspect there ought to have been SIXTEEN of them? Maybe four are left to find! And as for the imbalance of Harmony - we no longer have an atium cycle, but H is constant (?), and maybe as much of 4/16 (25%) of L. Yeah, that's still a problem.

Ah right. So no reason really ever to return to the Rock, I suppose!

Yeah, I found that tidbit from TLM rather interesting. There was nothing to prevent it pre-Catacendre, and it still works for Marsh to Compound atium or he'd be dead by now, but as of TLM, the mechanics of hemalurgy have shifted such that Feruchallomantically Compounding is now "feature locked" for a spiked person, but having more than three spikes no longer subjects one to direct control by the God of Hemalurgy. Meanwhile, in Shadows of Self, Harmony was able to "control" Paalm with a second spike (especially one fashioned from a Inquisitor's spike dating back to the Final Empire). This probably has something to do with the ongoing admixing of Ruin in Harmony's balance of Shardic power. Even Harmony Himself professed not to understand the mechanics.

I'm also wondering how they keep getting so many volunteer hosts for the Fused to return with each Everstorm. I get that they're primed with propaganda that it's a noble sacrifice to the singer cause/religion to do so, but at the same time, it seems like the kind of thing people may support "in principle", but implicitly, "to other people, right?" Like the "aettestup" of Scandinavian lore, that in the Viking era, in times of scarcity, old/infirm people would leap from cliffs to relieve their people of the burden of supporting them... Did it happen? Probably. Did it get talked about a lot? You betcha. Did it happen regularly and on a widespread basis? Not so clear. It particularly would have sucked to be the singer who gave up their life to recall Lezian, The Defeated One, just to test the anti-Voidlight dagger on him within ten minutes of the sacrifice. Sigh! My guess is, after the initial wave of Fused returning into Venli's fellow listeners who were basically tricked into "inviting" them in (including her former mate, Demid), they only need replacement vessels for such Fused as actually die in between Everstorms, which are relatively few. So they probably have some kind of devotional ritual where singers all stand out in the Everstorm praying to be "blessed" but only a very small fraction of them are, and they're all secretly relieved they weren't "chosen".

How about a case of identical twins, where one twin dies and the other one uses their sole Breath to make his sibling a Lifeless? Or if the dying twin manages to give their one Breath to their sibling first, so the survivor doesn't even end up a Drab. A Lifeless who does not trigger life sense, but can visually pass for you and can be given a Command to do something while you're not around... Could be uniquely useful.

I never thought about a Baseline Nalthian trying to do something with the one Breath they're Endowed with at birth, other than to sell it to become a drab with the "My Breath to yours" Command. But if Awakening (and recovering) that single Breath were not really feasible or effective, as you point out, they could still make a Lifeless. But just the one time. What might make someone do that, and what Command would they give such a Lifeless? ... Could someone theoretically make themself a Lifeless at the moment they died?

I think Lift must have a curse to go with her boon - that's how the Old Magic appears to work. "That is how things are done", as Cultivation herself said. Coming to request a "pruning" evidently is required in order for her, or for her proxy the Nightwatcher, to touch a person - providing the Intent, similar to a listener or singer having to "invite" a Fused's soul into themselves. The "a boon and a curse" pairing seems to be mechanical. When the Nightwatcher handles it by proxy, the curse can come out seemingly random or disconnected to the boon ("here's some bolts of expensive cloth" / "now you see everything upside down"), because she's an unbonded spren. As Cultivation notes, she usually lets the NW "hold court" in the Valley, as "it helps her understand you". But when Cultivation Herself comes out to do it, she has a REASON and a plan involving her foresight, and her larger goals or fears. She can be more subtle, as when She does it (where the NW has not been known to bother), the curse may not have to be permanent, in balance with the boon being permanent or not, as with Dalinar (both wore off at the same time). However, as with the only other case of Cultivation's Pruning we see - Taravangian's - not only is her pruning highly strategic, it is also symmetrical. In Lift's case, we don't even really know what her request to Cultivation was. She herself remembers it to herself early on as asking "not to get older", and then later, when Wyndle asks her directly in Urithiru when she's grouchy about entering puberty, she says: "I asked not to change. When everything else is going wrong, I want to be the same. I want to stay me. Not become someone else." That's her "best I can remember" phrasing, but we can assume (as does Wyndle) that the exact wording is quite relevant! To me, her "boon" is her ability to see, and even to touch spren in the CR as if they were physical in the PR - climbing on the invisible "vines" Wyndle grows - and to be able to enter/exit visions in the CR or related "Godvision Bubble Universes" at will. These are unique and possibly borderline OP abilities that have surprised or baffled even Shards and Splinters. And her "curse" is "having" to power this with Lifelight that parasitically feeds off of her own body's metabolism, putting her actual survival at risk to use her abilities. It's not that she can only do the "special stuff" with Lifelight, she is incapable of drawing in Stormlight to power ordinary Edgedancer Surgebinding like Abrasion or Progression. So, how would that either the boon or the curse effectuate a request "not to change"? Coming from a Shard whose very Intent is to promote growth and change, no less? And how might they be symmetrical? Thinking about that might yield some insight into what mechanism, or purpose, the "boon" really will have, for Cultivation's long game.

I'm sure that's the right answer to address storytelling concerns; I'm just objecting to the WoB as quoted above, where Brandon said "[Steelrunners] can't ignore wind resistance and friction. They will burn up if they start running too quickly." Well, if they can't ignore friction for concerns of "burning up from too much speed", they also shouldn't be able to ignore traction for concerns of "ordinary street shoes would just fall off" - they'd need specialized really sticky and over-the-ankle shoes at some point.

"They can't ignore wind resistance and friction" brings another question to mind: TRACTION. As anyone who's ever struggled to get a vehicle moving on a slick surface knows, all the power in the world doesn't matter if you can't grip the ground and transfer it into propelling motion. F-steel stores "physical speed", the speed at which one moves one's body - not the speed at which one's body moves. You can't tap a steelmind after jumping off of a cliff and go faster through the air, but you can tap it to run towards the edge faster and thus leap farther out. But speed of running by foot? The magic may bypass physical limitations like joint wear, strain on tendons and muscles, etc., but unless you have really good shoes that are really well affixed to your feet/ankles, you're just going to fall down as you slip from lack of traction, as your legs/feet move faster than your shoes (in fact, you'd probably literally run out of your shoes, as if you were to run without your shoelaces tied). You can't outrun the limits of traction - unless the F-steel magic covers that too? That would seem to go beyond "stores physical speed", but then again, we saw Marasi tap the steelmind in the Bands of Mourning to move so quickly she left vacuums of air popping behind her as she swiped vials of metals from the Set people around her. (I know, the right answer is "you become like The Flash" and I'm overthinking things, which is fine, I can suspend the disbelief/analysis to enjoy the stories. But it's interesting to set some friction-based limits but not considering others, LOL)

Headcanon that will never be challenged, and has no basis in anything: Chouta was actually created on Roshar by Felt, the Scadrian worldhopper, who missed the "baywraps" with a vegetable and barley filling we see in TFE. He tried making a version with local ingredients, and eventually settled on spiced soulcast meat mixed with lavis as the closest thing. He stewed and steamed them like baywrap fillings were, but a cousin of Lopen's modified it with deep frying, and the rest is history (and has now come back to Scadrial that way in Era 2)!

Maybe. I have always imagined the later verses of the later books of the WoF as being like the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings at the end of The Return of the King, full of lots of nerdy world-building details that only the very hardcore geek fans ever read seriously (like, the kind who end up practicing how to transliterate and to write their name in Elvish letters in the Tengwar style... cough). I mean, he did say he'd dumped all the information from his copperminds - including the bits about pre-FE religions - into those books, and that's how Marasi knew about "Trell" as the name of a god from one of them. But full on debating himself, by Himself and with Himself, as to their relative merits, like making a black and a white sock puppet go at each other? Books 80+ of the Words of Founding is exactly where such things would be, right? Only Pathian priests and theologians would ever be likely to read that far.

I'm starting to wonder what the limitations on it are. It feels a bit OP otherwise, if it can do anything and the effects are permanent/ongoing... Are there at least different "power levels" of users, like Riina is especially powerful due to her age/length of time with the powers? In Elantris, when we first see AonDor in action, the big limitation is the requirement for the Elantrian to be physically in or near Elantris - the further away, the weaker the effects or the harder it'd be to do. Like when Raoden teleports to Teoras to help head off the Fjordell invasion of Sarene's homeland, it was easy for him to use AonDor to teleport there (though he needed to know the exact distance), but it was so far away that he couldn't effectively do the same to get back (or to use AonDor in combat). We had WoBs that there were ways around that limitation, and saw that the Ire had figured at least some of that workaround in MB:SH. What Riina does on Lumar is even more like Elantris-level use of AonDor. In which case... Whoa. I would have expected some limitation like "needs feeding Investiture to maintain the effect", the way a Soulstamp needs daily renewing, or a Lightweaving needs feeding Stormlight. Like, if it meant Riina had a constant draw on her "bandwidth" to AonDor (similar to having a background process running on your computer that sucks up 10% of your CPU/memory), where she could only juggle so many curses like that at a time. But no, the curse kept operating even after Riina admitted defeat and left the planet, and she and Hoid agreed that there was no way for the curse on Charlie to end except by meeting the built-in conditions (which Hoid, however, could modify enough to make possible). If it represented a "constant draw" on her abilities, you'd think Riina would have been motivated to do something similar, since she wouldn't be around to enjoy seeing a cursed Charlie suffer any more anyway.

Yeah, this is something I'd like WoB'ed at some point - AonDor is looking more and more OP.

Ahhh right! I should have re-read the ending when I asked that question, LOL.

Addressing just the boldfaced points you raise, for now: I suspect AonDor lets you do nearly anything, including transforming/transfiguring another person. The really unique thing is that Riina's magical transformations were reversible, which something like a hemalurgic Ruining is not. So they are more like a really long-lasting Soulstamping, one that doesn't require plausibility to stick but just plain ol' AonDor. Why might the Shattering have been in Adonalsium's best interests ("own good")? Maybe the Iriali have it right, about the One, eh? Which decided to become Many, to experience all things, before reassemblying into the One. Whether or not Charlie could assert his claim on being heir to the dukedom of The Rock, at the end of TotES he clearly has no desire to do so. He's set sail with Captain Tress as her valet, though they may put in at The Rock to say hello to Tress' family every once in a while. If anything, Charlie probably has a vested interest in making sure his chinny cousin lives to inherit the title and to have an heir of his own, lest the King at some point require Charlie to take up the position or something. I do wonder what Tress will rename the Crow's Song. Maybe The Rat's Curse?

I suspected it early on - mainly when I started thinking of reasons for why Huck would obviously be lying, or at least saying very implausible and inconsistent stuff, about where he came from and how there was a whole clan/family of talking rats that he somehow split off from. ”No way,” I thought, especially when he let slip that he - or all talking rats of his kind - had some connection to the Sorceress. “This isn’t Discworld. There’s no Clan of the Loquacious Rodent. It’s a curse.” From then on, it wasn’t hard to conclude the obvious reason a person cursed to be a talking rat would latch on to Tress was… That it was Charlie. And then, “Chuck -> Huck” did come to mind. That didn’t explain the specifics of his curse and how he was supposed to lift it, though. Clearly needing Tress to give him True Love’s Kiss was just too, too cliche, but what, then?

Yeah, what do we know about him? He was a Terrisman and a Feruchemist who had worked as a miner in Tinweight, and died when Wayne was young (by the time he was eleven, as in the prologue to TLM). I think that is literally all we know? Not even a name, or (assuming Feruchemist means Ferring) what his metal was.

Ah, good catch as well! Fort executed the “trade” but it was at his captain’s prompting to do so. As for trading Hoid to the dragon - it’s probably true that Mad Hoid has no fear of spores, but I’d be a little leery of passing off an obvious lunatic to a dragon as a useful servant. Though in this case, should that have happened, Xisis would actually have recognized Hoid and laughed and laughed and laughed. (And would have done who-knows-what!) I guess I’ll go back and edit that timeline later for these two corrections (plus any others that come up). I’d like to add this reply into my prior post but can’t figure out how to do that, so, oh well.

That’s a pretty good point, and is reinforced by another one I just thought of: if Hoid had been nutty the first time she’d met him a year or so prior, she wouldn’t have been startled by his odd behavior, she’d have thought “that’s just how he acts”. Which really tightens up the timeline for everything. Hoid and Ulaam haven’t been on Lumar all that long.