robardin

Well we don't know what kind of spren those were that were bound to the gates. Odium had specifically mentioned not damaging the gems. Also, the "binding a spren to a fabrial gem is just like harnessing a chull" sentiment was first expressed by Dalinar in his conversation with Taravangian. The Stormfather rumbles in his mind when he says that, and Mr. T replies by telling him the half-shards are made by binding radiant spren, as if to say, "oh yeah, and what about that, Bondsmith of the Knights Radiant?" Or, since Taravangian seems to Know A Lot More Than He Lets On even to us the readers, it's possible he was alluding to a kind of cousin or auxiliary spren that form Shardplate as the kind that might "at another time, might have blessed a Knight Radiant". Many of us (myself included) suspect that windspren are involved in a Windrunner getting Plate, rather than honorspren, and hje also says that what's bound in the half-shard fabrial is "the kind of spren that gives things substance, the kind that holds the world together". That sounds like the bindspren that Kaladin saw with Syl when first consciously using the Surge of Adhesion in the chasms, which perhaps are the "auxiliary spren" to whatever the Stoneward spren is.

Remember that at the moment he talks to Dalinar about that, he's aware that Dalinar is a Bondsmith who has formed a Nahel bond (with the Stormfather, no less). He specifically compared the use of flamespren in making a common heat fabrial, to how they discovered how to capture "a spren that otherwise might have blessed a Knight Radiant" in making a half-shard. That's not a blanket description... It's a pretty specific one.

So do you think Mr. T was lying in that moment to Dalinar, or simply himself misled? (Both are certainly possible) Remember that he does know quite a bit about Nahel bonds. Not only because they managed to get a Dustbr- er, a Releaser from Kharbaranth in their ranks of the Diagram, but because he spoke at length to Adrotagia et al. about Ideals and Surgebinders of different orders when Szeth mentioned fighting Kaladin when he went to assassinate Dalinar at the "warcamp palace", and he already knew Jasnah was one. I personally don't think he was lying. It would make sense that a "half-shard" capable of blocking a Shardblade, which is generally a dead radiant spren that had once formed a deep enough bond to manifest physically, would be an intermediate form of the same.

There certainly is a gray area. For example, Taravangian tells Dalinar that the "half-shards" are fabrials created by trapping not a "dumb" spren like the flamespren or painspren, but one that "under different circumstances might have blessed a Knight Radiant" - one of the ten kinds of sentient spren that can form Nahel bonds. Think about Syl being captured before bonding Kaladin and put into a fabrial, eh? Or worse... What if you could still catch one in a fabrial that had already formed or begun to form a Nahel bond? What would that do to the human holding the bond?

Now that I think about it, Venli appears to be unique in this regard, hey? All the "singers" who are not Fused, to her knowledge, are awakened parshmen who needed quite a bit of time to come around to being "proper singers", retaining strong cultural and linguistic ties to the human nations that had enslaved them. There are hints of some unknown number of "listeners" who had refused to stand out in the Everstorm and escaped the resulting transformations, but neither Venli nor Rlain know for a fact that they exist. Both Venli and Rlain reflect on how the listeners, "their people," were now gone, but did all of those who bonded with the red spren at the Battle of Narak die, or are some number of them still in the singer ranks?

...until you find out it's the name of a chicken "We came to Aimia, through all, through all of that... To find a Dawnshard... And it's just this?" Rysn sputtered. "Don't be so disappointed," the scarred Thaylen replied calmly. "He's not a Dawnshard, just simply Dawnshard, and he's a good widdle chick-chick, isn't he? Oh yes, he is." He stroked the chicken's head, which cooed softly. "Besides, Dawnshard's actually harder to find on Roshar than what you are looking for. He's the only one of his kind here, but the Dawnshards that came here in the days before Heralds, ah, that is a different story... As well you would know, Sleepless One."

Thanks for that; I had seen the Kickstarter front page for the 10th Anniv. leatherbound version of TWoK, and (a) was not going to drop $100 for one, and (b) saw that its goal of $250,000 was presently at well over $5,000,000 (!), and figured hey, this Kickstarter is closed, isn't it? I went a step further and saw that a $10 pledge would still get me an electronic versions of the novella plus the artworks, and for $50, physical copies thereof. I figure the novella will eventually get put into a hardcover compendium the way that Edgedancer did, so I just went with the $10 pledge. At this point it should just be in his online store at his website!

Will one have to have had to have ... Umm... That seems like way too many auxiliary verbs, let me start over. Will Dawnshard be available to people who didn't participate in a leatherbound Kickstarter? Those things are out of my price range for what they are, gorgeous though they be.

I don't think Kaladin could use Lashings to deflect or to throw back metal objects Pushed at him... Lashing something requires infusing it with Stormlight with intent, i.e., touching it. He can't just stand there and Reverse Lash something flying in his direction, only use a Lashing on himself to get out of the way of it. Which with multiple, small objects would be much harder to do than with a single, large object or opponent. I still think Vin, as she is by the end of Well of Ascension and having mastered the "horseshoe" combo of Pushing and Pulling on the same objects, what Elend later called "a cyclone of potentially lethal chunks of metal with Vin at the center", would be really, really hard to beat in a fight. She had also witnessed firsthand how Kelsier used a similar combo to shrapnel-cloud and shred an Inquisitor, To me the most terrifying Surgebinder of all to face, though, would be Perpendicularlty-fueled Jasnah,, as we saw her at Thaylen Fields. She demonstrated the ability to Soulcast at will, and at a distance. Summoning walls out of thin air? Oil slicks and lighting them at the same time? Are you kidding?

Nah. WAY too obvious for a guy like Sanderson

Interesting that the title is Dawnshard, and not Dawnshards (plural). Maybe it turns out to be the name or nickname of a person or an object - like, some really pretentious Alethi highprince named his Shardblade Dawnshard the way Dalinar's was Oathbringer. Or that it's the name that Mraize gave to his "chicken".

Actually this is an interesting question, Cosmere-wise. Since he and Nale both had their "sanity" restored at moments - during highstorms or Everstorms, and especially when Dalinar did that UNITY thing and brought the Spiritual and Cognitive Realms very close, even overlapping for a bit, with the Physical Realm - it would seem their insanity can be cured with a Spiritual Alignment. It might take something more than a simple application of Progression, as perhaps Lift unconsciously did to Nalan on that rooftop in Edgedancer (which if that was what did it, was only temporary). But it's possible.

Especially since the Fused have always had accesss to the Surges, and presumably all of the Surges, via Voidlight.

Yeah, but Hogwarts is protected against Apparating and Disapparating directly into -- d'oh!!.

I am FREE! (-Ruin, when Vin released the Power of Preservation)

Wow. I had never heard of or read that theory - and it does tick a lot of things tidily...! As to what atium would be worth on Scadrial after the Final Empire, that is an interesting question. Since there are no more Seer Mistings being generated now that Harmony restored chromium to the Allomantic Table (right?), and of course there hasn't been a natural born Mistborn since Spook, the only person alive to burn it would be Marsh, or someone like Hoid from off-world who is now confirmed to be a Mistborn thanks to that lerasium nugget he snagged. It'd be something of great interest for academic reasons, especially if someone realized its flexibility in hemalurgy.

Isn't the timeline for Stormlight 1-5 after the Catacendre on Scadrial (Mistborn Era 1)? And that is the only example of canned food we've definitely seen in the Cosmere, as it's officially canon that Rashek personally filled all those storage caverns with canned food by tapping his infinite steelminds and bronzeminds as a hobby when not busy brutalizing skaa or presiding over Ministry squabbles (at least, it's now my head-canon). As to the availability of a Perpendicularity to Scadrial after the Catacendre, there must be one, as Hoid shows up to mess with Wax and Wayne in Era 2, and one of the broadsheet articles suggests it's some kind of blue pool.

That is inferred from hidden details, eh? Anyway it's one thing to take symbols and to assign numerical values to them, and another to say their everyday counting system was based on the same set as a basis. It could be that using the Steel Alphabet for indicating numbers was only done in contexts like what the Steel Ministry originally enforced, like maybe dates or shorthand for map coordinates, but not for ordinary counting or accounting.

I asked about the fate of the First Generation of kandra. Specifically, if they would appear in the CR as human or not.

Hmm, I got an email saying I could submit a question for Brandon by midnight tonight Central Time, and fired one off that has been on my mind for some time... Hope I didn't waste it! LOL! I can't be the only one though?

That's funny. Telling someone who's hesitant about reading a book that "hey, it's actually THREE books" is usually not a winning strategy, but it depends on the person, eh!

Or The Emperor's Soul

It is true, while reading TWoK the first time I felt it kind of dragging - more accurately, "where is this going?" - for at least the first third or so. Each book is a trilogy unto itself, and the first third deals with a rather unlikable Elhokar framing Dalinar as he tangles with a slimy Sadeas, Kaladin just gettting crushed again and again, and Shallan acting kind of insane with her "seeing those figures" all the time and whatnot. If he's past the halfway point, and past Kaladin surviving the highstorm and Jasnah zapping the thieves with Soulcasting, I can't see how that's not intriguing. But I definitely skim the Dalinar parts when re-reading TWoK because so much of it is annoying interactions with Elhokar, Sadeas, or both, or constantly repressing himself around Navani. The visions are the most curious things for the reader for his chapters. Is this his first Cosmere work? I wouldn't use TWoK as that entry point, not that it's a bad work by any means, but it does require more commitment.

That's the part I'm fuzzy on. I thought the thermoelectric generators used in space probes were not doing it through a moving metal part? And same with solar. Could sufficient heat as from one's body from a brassmind power that sort of thing? I imagined it could be hacked, but really I have no idea. So on a comic book level, yeah, but in actuality, who knows. (Well, rather, I don't know.)

I was more responding to Karger's assertion that if we could easily turn heat into power (IRL), we wouldn't have an energy crisis - which I took to mean efficient conversion of waste heat, not sure if that is what he meant. Because otherwise, solar power is effectively turning heat into power, as is the kind that powers Curiosity. And that by compounding brass, a Metalborn could personally generate excess heat power to a large degree, only needing a suit to capture it, convert it to electricity, and then to power "stuff". Not necessarily steampunk, maybe it'd need Era 3 tech, but it'd be cool if medallion-enabled brass compounding resulted in Iron Man type power armor!