robardin

There are ten Surges on Roshar, and ten Honorblades for the ten Heralds, and the ten Fools; those are the main expression of Honor's "magic number" on Roshar... The Five Ideals of the Nahel Bond represent an increasing depth, as in composition or an alloy, between the Radiant's soul and the Identity-cum-Investiture of the spren. That means fully embracing "what it means" to BE that kind of a Radiant at a deeper and deeper level. So, why stop at five? Maybe because that's the 50% mark, and to go further than the Fifth Ideal one would mean becoming more spren than human. Like, if the dial "goes to ten" for 100% where being 100% is being the spren, then a 50/50 split between human and spren is the maximum bond possible, right?

How about a Steelrunner with an Uzi circling around... Yikes! But, go too fast and fire too quickly, and the Steelrunner might actually get hit by their own fire "on the other side" of the circle.

It'd probably be difficult to aim, as the speed of travel would cause the arc of projection to skew, yeah? Though dropping the speed to fire a level shot, then flashing away to another point to fire from again, would be doable, it's something that would require a fair amount of practice. Like doing a biathlon, but at a much higher speed of travel and rate of acceleration/deceleration from a stop. Yes, if Sazed had ever figured out that storing his Identity into an aluminummind while filling another metalmind meant that Vin or Elend could burn it for a 10x burst of the attribute, it would have been a game-changer in Era 1. (Tiny unkeyed goldminds as Mistborn or Augur health pills! Hey Ham, have a SuperThug power-up!) But (1) aluminum was very rare in the Final Empire, almost more so than atium until that started getting used up with Mistborn fighting after the fall of TLR, and (2) the Feruchemical property is not obvious, nor instinctive. It makes me wonder how they were able to get duralumin so readily, as that is an alloy of aluminum that should therefore be even HARDER to have on hand than aluminum. My guess is that what aluminum they had after defeating TLR, presumably accessed from what was left from the Steel Ministry, they used to make duralumin after discovering its Allomantic property fairly quickly. Sazed probably had some amount of time to try to figure out what aluminum and duralumin stored Feruchemically, but not very much because making and using duralumin became essential for Vin and Elend in fighting and controlling koloss, and he kind of had a lot on his plate as it was.

"Sliverism" is the descendant of the religion of the Final Empire, originally centered on "The Sliver of Infinity" that Rashek proclaimed himself. No doubt the Era 2 doctrine plays up how everything he did was key to defeating Ruin ("The Deepness") in the end, and honoring Marsh as the last Inquisitor and thus a direct link to the Lord Ruler's Steel Ministry (even if by all accounts he had worked to overthrow it, and personally killed 8 Inquisitors before being seized by Ruin - a tally only Vin can claim to have surpassed). As for the "adoration of the Kandra", well you see, when Harmony Ascended there were these three Wise Men who traveled from distant Dominances but were actually kandra, who visited and brought gifts. Wait, no, sorry, I'm getting things a little mixed up... If you mean why Governor Aradel is so respectful of the kandra at the end of The Bands of Mourning - he is a Pathian! As for others like Marasi who are Survivorists, remember that they still acknowledge Harmony as "God" in their present day, and the Words of Founding as more or less true. They simply also revere Kelsier as the Survivor of Death and an acknowledged Sliver (mentioned in the WoF) who had held Preservation before Vin or Harmony, and most importantly, hold to his life philosophy over that of Sazed's. That means valuing and promoting independence of thought and action, ambition, and working for change - in a way, the positive aspects of Ruin. (As Ruin jibed at him in Mistborn: Secret History, "Why, Kelsier... You're merely an aspect of me, after all!") Yes, Survivorist mobs were riled up to riot against Pathians by their exposure in Shadows of Self. Part of that is because a mob is a mob. Another part of that is the infuriating and patronizing smugness inherent in the doctrinal relationship between the two. They work off of the same core basis: Preservation/Ruin, the Well of Ascension trap, Rashek's Ascension, the events involving Kelsier's crew overthrowing him, the Ascension of Kelsier, then Vin, then Harmony, the remaking of the world, etc.... But Pathians will always, at some level, have a perceived attitude of: "Aw, it's so cute that you skaa still think Kelsier is God of the Mists when it was all revealed to be a kandra trick! Lookit, TenSoon is still around to tell you about what both OreSeur and he did with his bones, and hey I think he may still have them stashed somewhere? Wanna see Kelsier in the flesh? Send 1000 of the box tops from Soonie Cubs to 100 Copperton Road, Second Octant, Elendel, ...." This even though Harmony explicitly forbids proselytizing to Survivorists - heck, one of the core tenets of Pathianism is not even to worship Harmony.

Yes, my point is that if they didn't identify with Sadeas (and therefore "buying in" to the way he operated things), they'd have been relieved rather than angry with his being removed. He had inculcated a unity of attitude, not of purpose. That attitude did not feature "honor" in the way that Dalinar tried to instill ("I would not ask my men to do something I would not do myself"), but instead featured personal loyalty ("it's us vs. them").

Exactly, that quote says it all. "Sadeas trained good soldiers. It’s just that where Father used discipline, Sadeas used competition." Sadeas himself, personally, is far from sloppy - quite the contrary, he is up to the latest fashions in dress, with rich fabrics, and tweaks Adolin (who would love to do the same) that he is always going around in uniform these days, after Dalinar "got religion" about the "Alethi Codes of Warfare". Because the subtext there is, I am not Dalinar Kholin, I reject his position as idealistic posturing. Same thing with the spit-and-shine, pressed-and-clean look that Dalinar's army is well known for. By having highly effective forces that look sloppy but do a lot more in the field in comparison, Sadeas sends the message, "I get the most gemhearts and the greater military glory despite being the opposite of Dalinar: my troops do what's expedient and what works, not what sounds and looks good." And I don't think it's true that he didn't build a common sense of pride in his troops, or they wouldn't have cared so much about his assassination that they were on the brink of rebellion that made them so easily taken by Nergaoul at Thaylen Fields. They were trained not in a "believe in a higher cause" spirit but a kind of short-term results-based meritocracy, as seen when Sadeas reluctantly promoted Hashal for the success of Kaladin's bone armor maneuver. His officers and troops genuinely felt that to be the best meant getting the best results, by any means necessary, and were proud of collectively doing just that. Suddenly having their leader murdered and themselves exiled to shameful drudge duty, both due to Dalinar as they saw it, mattered more to them than some greater cause to retake Alethkar or to fight against Odium.

Oh, good one, I skipped over thinking about J! Also possible: Jedal, Spook's father who wanted to kill him when he discovered he was a Tineye.

Don't feel too bad, it was kind of dropped out of the sky in the first book and Sazed's explanation that "[The Lord Ruler] effectively created a new metal for himself" was pretty confusing. Rashek didn't create a new metal chemically, but Allomantically - in terms of the Allomantic effect of it. If you're an Allomancer, you can burn some brass, say, and gain something you didn't used to have at all: the ability to Soothe emotions in other people. Which you can dial up or down with "flares" to influence emotions to a greater degree, or to a wider range. That "gained something for free" is an "end-positive" result, and that extra-ness derives from the power of Preservation. If you're a Feruchemist, you can store body heat into a brassmind, but with a net-zero effect. You can store X units of heat into it, whether a lot at once or at slow rate over a long period of time, and then later tap it for the body heat back, again either in a large burst or slowly over time. Feruchemical metalminds are stamped with Identity (by default...), so that only the Feruchemist who stored that attribute into the metalmind can then tap it to get it back out. As Sazed describes it, another Feruchemist trying to tap his metalinds would only sense the attributes therein (know that something' there), but not be able to access it - which was the same thing that happened when Vin tried to Allomantically burn one of his small pewterminds. Compounding is achieved when you CAN access the Feruchemical attribute in the metalmind, AND have the Allomantic ability to burn the type of metal it's stored in. Now you get the "net positive, get something for free" behavior of Allomancy, but instead of the ability burning the metal normally gives you, the effect is redirected to give you more of the Feruchemical attribute as the "something for free". Brandon's called it a "magical hack", which probably is a direct reference to the Magic: The Gathering card Magical Hack (as he's known to be a big MtG fan). He's said that Feruchemy is one of the first magical mechanisms he's ever come up with on his own, going back to when he was a student with insomnia and wished he could store up wakefulness to use later. So I wouldn't be surprised if playing a blue deck featuring Magical Hack while coming up with the mechanics of Allomancy made him think, hey, what if you could hack one magic's mechanics to get the effect of another one? It's never actually stated in the books just how much more you get for free via Compounding, since Compounding ability is so rare that nobody's really done any research and documenting of it (those we can do it, keep it a secret), but we have WoBs that give the factor as about 10x. In all of Scadrian history, Rashek was the first person to be able to do this, and he worked very hard to ensure that he'd be the ONLY person able to do this.

I'd change a few of your original ones: B is for Bendalloy rather than Breeze? OK, I guess. But then shouldn't C by for Copper? E is for Elend, no? More so than "Elariel, Shan?" G is for Goradel, and T is for TenSoon! And K is for Kandra! (Or Kelsier!) I'd change a few of your original ones: B is for Bendalloy rather than Breeze? OK, I guess. But then shouldn't C by for Copper? E is for Elend, no? More so than "Elariel, Shan?" G is for Goradel, and T is for TenSoon! And K is for Kandra! (Or Kelsier!) N is for New Seran is OK, how about Noorden? As for your blanks, I see others have come to the same conclusions on: Q is for Quellion U is for Urteau W is for Waxillium Ladrian X is for ... Y is for Yomen or Yeden Z is for Zane X is the tough one!

That's right! It's in Chapter 18 of the first book, when Shan Elariel beckoned Vin over to talk to her, Shan's Terrisman steward headed to the table when Elend had been sitting next to Vin, having left some of his books there. Vin quickly excused herself to get back, then pretended to read one of them to dissaude another nobleman from asking her to dance. The first passage immediately smacked of heresy and sedition: It was a book Elend had carefully disguised as a book titled "Weather Patterns of the Northern Dominance". When Vin described reading from it, Kelsier recognized it as the "Book of the False Dawn by Deluse Couvre" ("Any Keeper can quote the entire thing to you"), who "went on to write some books that were even more damning" for which the Ministry eventually strung him up on a hook for. But that book on its own was only "moderately dangerous" if foolish to carry around with him: "It's an older book, and it didn't actually encourage rebellion, so it might slide." In fact, technically False Dawn wasn't even banned, like his later books evidently were. "False Dawn is a stuffy volume, and by not forbidding it, the Ministry doomed it to obscurity." And then there is this, too. An old and rarely read book that mentioned the "metalminds of Feruchemists" would probably be interpreted as describing things that no longer existed in the Final Empire of their time, long ago purged with the same vigor as the context of "banned texts" they were described alongside, or like the Renates people (who? *shrug*). It doesn't mean they know what the terms mean in any great detail (a Terris person holding gold, pewter, steel, copper...).

I was thinking the same thing, but re-reading the first chapter N times would probably get annoying. Maybe Fibonacci style? Re-reading the last two chapters with each newly released chapter?

Ohhhhhhh storms. I'd promised myself I'd wait for the full release this time, as I felt my initial disappointment with Oathbringer's pacing smoothed away on re-reads, and I concluded it was because I had done the "Dickensian one chapter a week" thing for a work that was not intended to be read that way. But like Teft says with the firemoss, the longing is still there.

Yeah, Lopen jumped the gun a bit in proclaiming himself a "full Knight Radiant" to Kaladin, seeing as he had only just sworn the Second Ideal - what Kaladin did at the Shattered Plains to rescue Dalinar, and what Teft did off-screen. With the Second Ideal he has gained more efficient use of Stormlight for surgebinding, but won't be a Knight Radiant until the Third Ideal when he gains a Shardblade, nor (per Jasnah) a "full" Knight Radiant until Shardplate is gained as well (Fourth Ideal). With the Third Ideal, a Windrunner gets Blade and also "squirepower".

From a writerly perspective, I'd be very leery of overplaying the "shapeshifters are all around us serving unknown causes/masters!" angle, that's kind of terrible. IMHO. It is logically consistent with the Cosmere storylines we know of, I would just think it's bad storytelling.

Perhaps you misunderstand my point, or I yours...? I agree that getting a GB tattoo is intended to "prove recognition and status" as a full member to other GBs and any other who would recognize it, exactly as you say, "like a gang tattoo". That seems obvious. We have no evidence to think the pendant would be a "higher status" marker than a tattoo, as this pendant is the only one of its kind we've seen. Kabsal was also a "field agent" who had the tattoo on the inside of his arm (where it would be hidden in his clothing), so there's no reason to think a full GB operative would be exempt from the tattoo for that reason alone. (For that matter... Veil hasn't gotten one, has she?) Scadrial-related spoilers,

Fascinating theory! A little too "deep" for it to seem likely, but I still like it. Though it doesn't really explain the use of the pendant - if the scenario were as you say, getting a tattoo would not have been a big deal. And it's not like Tyn, the only "Ghostblood wannabe" we've seen in direct contact with them and working for them (not counting Ishnah working for Veil/Shallan) had a pendant like this as a symbol of wannabe status... It still feels like the pendant may have been a plant by the assassin.

The WoB about backtracking on the mechanics of Allomantic savantism aside, it's also not obvious what it would mean for Leeching anyway. We can only speculate. Savantism a la Spook constantly flaring tin is the original model, and what do we see? He's hyper-enhanced when burning tin, basically able to flare with less tin (already a long burning metal)... But he doesn't retain the effect of burning tin if he shuts it down, in fact it is the opposite - his normal senses are numbed. It's like he would need to burn tin at an ordinary low burn just to be normal, and flaring tin gets him above a tin flare would have before becoming a savant. A savant Seeker burning bronze mostly gains range on their Seeking, and not so much a power gain that they can always pierce copperclouds, though that is possible based on the relative strength of the Allomancer (I would interpret that as "Final Empire savant Seeker can pierce Era 2 copperclouds due to their diluted power, plus the slight boost to effectiveness and ability to interpret very slight signals from being a savant" - and maybe the same for FE savant Seeker vs. an Inquisitor who gained copper though an inefficient hemalurgic spike). So it seems more probable to me that a Leecher savant would mostly gain range, and a measurable but not dramatic step-up in how much they can Leech out (down to the Spark of Life). Where they do gain a natural boost, it's like their normal level Leeching is equivalent to a flared Leeching before becoming savant, and their flared Leeching would reach a bit further. If anything, I'd suspect the "boosted savant" expression of a Leecher is like how the "allomantic grenade" that Irich throws at Wax was able to drain him from a distance: he didn't have to pick it up for it to Leech him, it was just tossed "just outside the doorway in which he crouched" on the train when he realized his steel reserves were gone. The really interesting expression of a savant Leecher from a storytelling POV would be draining from across a room or through a wall or door.

I was picturing the latter. Taking an existing army of Lifeless and arming them with Nightblood-like weapons would simply involve giving them extra Breath and telling them to go somewhere or to someone, on some condition, then to draw their NBlade and start whacking. You could probably even Command them well enough to sheathe the NBlade when they got close to running down, to then come back to base for more Breath.

Well, I'd imagine that Nightblood could rip out the one Breath used to Awaken the Lifeless... Ordinarily that is too "sticky" to remove with "Your breath to mine" from its creator, but I bet Nightblood could get at it. Then it'd collapse and all you'd have left is a corpse, same as if Nightblood "ate" a human wielder of all Investiture, I suppose. So it's not like the Lifeless could continue wielding Nightblood, but by definition a Lifeless is expendable and reusable, so yeah, pumping Lifeless with hundreds of Breath and setting one loose with Nightblood would be terrifying.

Well at the end of Hero of Ages, Elend burns duralumin and then flares all his remaining atium... And he saw it. He saw it ALL.

Ooh the audiobooks convey this too? How about the way he sounded in TFE as a human?

Sazed arrived to TLR's throne room after Vin removed his metalminds, in time to witness Rashek's last words and Vin's killing him with a spear through the heart... And also to hear Marsh speak to Rashek as well, before his death: "Your obligators will forget you. I will see to that. The other Inquisitors are dead, slain by my own hand. Yet, the gathered prelans saw you transfer power to the Canton of Inquisition. I am the only Inquisitor left in Luthadel. I rule your church now." And later, he had time to chat with the both of them as well about the nature of TLR's power, making an educated guess that the mechanism revolved around compounding Feruchemy with Allomancy, before Marsh left to try to take up control of the obligators. The next time Sazed meets Marsh is in The Well of Ascension, when he was in a skaa dwelling teaching - forcing - some of the children to learn to read and write, when a woman comes up to tell him "The Lord Ruler" had "come back". Instead, it was an Inquisitor, Marsh, who had been actively looking for Sazed, to bring him with him to the Conventical of Seran (for reasons still not yet revealed): It didn't have to do with Ruin being close to escaping; it was a sound that Sazed already associated with Inquisitors, but had NOT yet associated with Marsh. So whatever caused Marsh's voice to change in timbre, it hadn't happened yet in the throne room. That was relatively soon after Marsh's Inquisitorization, so maybe it took a bit of time, somehow? Given the time delay it can't have just been a side effect of the hemalurgy involved in making him an Inquisitor, which should have happened at the same time as all the other changes to his body, so I wondered if it was a Cognitive thing, like with Kaladin's brands. Maybe Marsh had not yet "accepted" himself as an Inquisitor by nature yet then, but had done so by the next time he saw Sazed? But then, in Era 2, Marasi meets and speaks with him at the end of Alloy of Law, and later gives feedback to Wayne on the accuracy of his accent when imitating him as Death, in The Bands of Mourning: So Marsh is back to sounding fully human again, albeit with his native accent which is now over 300 years out of date and unrecognizable to Marasi! Brandon's pretty careful with his choice of words, and I doubt the statement of Marsh NOT sounding "grindy" was a coincidence, when he'd also written in an explicit mention of how shockingly "grindy" his voice had changed to become before (long before).

Per the label on the empty display case at Lady Kelesina's party in BoM, "the lost metal" is obviously atium. Which is why, in terms of the book title reference to conclude the Era 2 story arc, it will obviously... Not be atium. Because when you think zig Brandon doesn't just go zag, he goes... Um... Ziggity-zag? Or he might make it so the characters in the book think about atium a lot, like maybe it turns out one of the nicrosil bands in the Bonds of Mourning grants A-atium and they're like, what the heck can I do with this if there is no atium to burn? And then some kind of twist reveals why or how this is A Thing. Or maybe someone just full on mugs Marsh for some atium. Yeah, I'd like to see them try!

Now that Venli's formed a Nahel Bond and sworn the First Ideal, we can look forward to dancing to the beat of the Rhythm of the Knight. (Maybe only after the Third Ideal?)

Soulcast a computer? Or Awaken it with a Command?