robardin

Well, the "innate investiture" here is the "Spark of Life", as per the Coppermind entry: Which for the most part predates the Shattering, as do most populations of humans and other sentient species (the exception being the people on Scadrial, who were created ex nihilo by the concerted efforts of Preservation and Ruin, with Preservation putting a tad more of his power into the humans than Ruin did). The bold part is what I found curious in the Coppermind entry, because it cites this WoB from 2014, which states that Drabs on Nalthis, whose native-born people start out with slightly more Investiture than other Cosmere denizens, having that one Breath from Endowment and who have given away that Breath yet still have the Spark of Life; implying that that would be the baseline form of a human with no (other) innate Investiture. And that the people do have "innate Investiture" (beyond a Drab level) on Roshar, and that "I don't think you've seen any worlds where they don't (have innate Investiture)." Something "extra" is in the people on Roshar. And elsewhere, as of 2014 (which date would include every other Cosmere world we know of in canon right now, except for White Sand).

It's probably something Spiritual; a soul, if you will, which has innate Investiture. In Mistborn: Secret History, Ruin makes fun of Kelsier taking up the Shard of Preservation from the Cognitive Realm, saying it could not serve him fully because he's "only the memory of a man" (a Cognitive Shadow) and how it would never be as potent as if taken up by a man "with ties to all three Realms". He's only got two, Spiritual and Cognitive. Yet the Stormfather, also a kind of Cognitive Shadow, even post-Honor, is said to be unable to Ascend, with Cognitive and Physical ties. He has a large piece of Honor's Cognitive Shadow and Shardic Investiture, but nothing Spiritual, is how I would read it. It is probably related to why spren cannot do magic on their own, only grant it or channel it, even in the Cognitive Realm where they "live". Kaladin can fly and Shallan can Lightweave in Shadesmar, and Pattern and Syl have forms and bodies equal to them in Shadesmar, and Surgebinding is something born of their Cognitive (oath-based) bonds to their respective Radiants... But Pattern and Syl cannot manipulate Surges, not on Roshar and not in Shadesmar. Nightblood is somewhat unique in that he can sever in the Spiritual Realm ("vaporizing and destroying on all three realms"), which would imply he must have a presence in that Realm to do it? So if even Nightblood cannot Ascend, it's not just that, it's a quality thing not a "presence" thing.

I dunno. If he made himself uniquely useful to Sadeas and Ialai, they would want to have him around a lot. And we see Mraize frequently elsewhere. It's not hard to imagine him using Ghostbloods connections and very possibly various forms of off-world Connection forming or Soothing/Rioting-type magic to get a position in the same guard outfit as would be assigned close duty to Ialai, and then draw that day's assignment.

I remembered this chart existed but had never really studied it, then did a search for it from the Coppermind wikia to discover its source and canonicity (is that a word?)... So this has never been published in an Ars Arcanum like compilation, it's only a pic on Reddit? But it seems to be a pic of something physically made. A one-off? If it's confirmed by Brandon to be canonical, is that in-world canonical (i.e., "to the best of Khriss or some other scholar's knowledge") or full on WoB canonical ("For I, the creator of this universe, do say unto you, verily this is how it works, unless of course I change my mind before publishing it in something, and even then maybe I'll retcon it in a revised edition if I feel like it's absolutely necessary")? It is interesting that an atium spike, the metal of Ruin used in the application of the power of Ruin, is a super flexible and powerful "skeleton key" that can "steal any power"... But even more so that a lerasium spike, the metal of Preservation, seems even more powerful, in that it "steals all attributes". Why would lerasium be even more powerful than atium in the application of hemalurgy? Well, first, what's the difference between a "power" and an "attribute" (such that a lerasium spike steals "all" attributes)? And second... Perhaps the Preservation aspect kicks in when the spike "steals all attributes" but doesn't remove them from the donor? This is where I really want to know the context of this chart, i.e., is this a diagram out of Brandon Sanderson's writing notes being shared with fans, or something meant to be in-world, perhaps found in Spook's little primer on hemalurgy? Because that would mean they not only knew about lerasium - which they did after Elend became Mistborn - but had some way to discover its hemalurgic effect, presumably via experiment since Kelsier didn't look into hemalurgy while Ascended (thus the need to have Spook help him investigate) and Sazed/Harmony disapproves...

I think it's a bit like how "the wand chooses the wizard, Harry!" in the Potterverse. In her Ars Arcana notes on the Selish system (in Arcanum Unbounded), Khriss observes that the bulk of the Investiture from the Splintered Shards of Dominion and Devotion are in the Cognitive Realm of Sel rather than the Spiritual Realm as is normal (gee thanks, Odium!), and that therefore: We see from Elantris and The Emperor's Soul that in all the magic systems on Sel, using the power requires intent framed in "perception and language" - in the form of a written Aon, an inscribed seal, the physical forms of the JinDo poses in ChayShan, the "twisted patterns" in the bones of the Dakhor monks. However, just as non-Elantrians can and do write Aons or perform ChayShan moves, even with the Intent to pull Investiture through them to (try to do) something superhuman or magical, nothing supernatural happens unless the person in question has a Connection - observed to be by birth - to the right location for the right magic. The shaod only comes onto people born in Arelon or in a nearby area of Teod or Duladel (perhaps they were historically a part of ancient Arelon - we don't know, just as we don't really know who built Elantris or when or how, and the people currently in-world on Sel don't even know themselves. Maybe Hoid does?) But what IS the shaod? It's like Arelon, or some shadow of the "Spirit of Arelon as it was at the time of the Splintering and CR'ing of the Dor", is doing the selection. A spren of Arelon gradually coming to consciousness, kind of like the Stormfather but strongly linked to a location.

Heheheh just having fun. Once everybody started chiming in on what they skipped on re-reads (which is of course your prerogative), it started to feel like that Monty Python sketch with the "Four Yorkshiremen" who feel compelled to one-up each other in multiple passes.

Can an Dysian Aimian gain Investiture (Breath, ingest lerasium, etc.)? Would hemalurgy work on an Dysian Aimian? I mean, it seems to work on a kandra (not just in terms of a kandra being a hemalurgic construct to begin with, but in terms of granting Bleeder metalborn powers), so not having a fixed physical form doesn't seem like a barrier. Except what would count as "blood" for one of them? If Arclo could gain Allomancy, could he spread out his "cremlings" over a wide area and form an enormous field of Soothing or Rioting? Or with A-steel, form a mat of tiny Steelpushers that could ripple and carry someone bearing enough metal like a conveyor belt?

Well, let's see, when *I* re-read TWoK and WoR, I skip POVs from Kaladin AND from Shallan AND from Dalinar! And Eshonai too, she just dies anyway. And Lift is annoying. She visited the Nightwatcher and doesn't know what a true spren is? Teft and Rock are just Kaladin's lackeys. Taravangian creeps me out. I'd read about Adolin but inevitably he's entwined with a Shallan or Dalinar plot thread that I'm skipping. Basically, I just re-read Szeth's POVs and the part where Adolin kills Sadeas. And half the interludes. I like Ishikk's POV but skip Ym. Another dead man walking. BORING! (/JK of course)

Would have done - except that Ruin no longer exists as a Shard, and Harmony doesn't form atium, He forms ettmetal ("harmonium"). I mean, Harmony could form "atium" (beads of condensed pure Ruin) if he wanted to, but it'd have to be an active, conscious decision on his part, which wasn't true of the natural and passive forming of atium beads at the Pits in the time of the Final Empire. That was more an aspect of the bit of Ruin's power that Preservation Splintered away in his little ambush when he sprung the Well of Ascension trap on Ruin. He made it part of the Allomantic table to be able to burn it (Allomancy being "his power", derived of Preservation), which meant he had to make it into something that could be burned, yet not return to Ruin proper when it was (instead, going to some other reservoir that formed the beads within the geodes). Since the Well predated the Final Empire by at least one cycle of the Well's filling, that means those geodes used to form somewhere else, that Rashek then rearranged into the Pits of Hathsin when he remade the world. Then again, we don't know how ettmetal comes about. We do have WoBs confirming that it is "harmonium", but not if it naturally occurs in physical form the way that atium did, or if Harmony is intentionally making an Investiture dump somewhere for it. It would be pretty unfair if it were only formed in the Southern Hemisphere, unless that was to make up for the fact that the Northern Hemisphere has the lerasium-descended Metalborn descendants of the Final Empire (to start with - until they begin to admix).

Yeah, and so for that matter is cadmium. So both Wayne and Marasi had better burn what they ingest in short order. Especially Marasi, as at least Wayne in particular can probably heal from any low-level bendalloy related poisoning he might incur the next time he tapped a goldmind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood's_metal Under "Toxicity" it reads: "Wood's metal [another term for bendalloy] is toxic because it contains lead and cadmium, and contamination of bare skin is considered harmful. Vapour from cadmium-containing alloys is also known to pose a danger to humans. Cadmium poisoning carries the risk of cancer, anosmia (loss of sense of smell), and damage to the liver, kidneys, nerves, bones, and respiratory system."

What I take the meaning of "Vin was tainted by hemalurgy" to indicate is how the mists of Preservation were repelled by her while she had her earring in, because it was a spike. It does not mean that Vin was forever changed by ever having used hemalurgy, i.e., that her "spiritual hole" where the spike had fit in had changed her nature permanently, because the mists are once again attracted to her once her spike was removed. Similarly, when Spook pulls free his spike for A-pewter, Ruin just disappears from his perspective; he wasn't "permanently torn" spiritually by the act of having been spiked the one time, otherwise he'd at least hear Ruin as much as someone who was naturally mentally unstable (pre-spike Zane or Vin's mother). Of course, it IS still "Ruin's power" and it does still operate by killing and spiritually tearing the donor, which Sazed the personality within Harmony would find abhorrent. The question is how much it (still) warps or mentally affects the recipient of a spike after the Catacendre. I would think that Ruin now being incorporated into Harmony might modulate things like the way Inquisitors and koloss were driven so powerfully to kill, in terms of how having three spikes may or may not be influencing Telsin's or Edwarn's POVs versus what they were before or would have been without them (they were in the Set before acquiring them, so their ruthlessness was already there). If Allomancer Jak's accounts are to be believed (....Er, as I wrote that I literally laughed out loud, but bear with me...), the "full koloss" of Era 2, the koloss-blooded people who accepted the spikes, are not quite the rage-filled kill machines they were in Era 1.

Hemalurgy has two parts: - Creating a spike (which requires a piece of the right kind of metal going through the heart(?), plus the intent to make a spike) - Placing the spike in one of the right bind points that would work with that kind of spike The second part is where the lore would be, as Sazed as Harmony reflects in the chapter heading (Ch. 43) of The Hero of Ages: "The art that is unique to Hemalurgy, however, is the knowledge of where to place the spikes." I would assume that failing in Part 1 would render Part 2 irrelevant: the existence of hemalurgy does not mean that someone putting an ordinary, non-hemalurgic bit of metal into their earlobe (a well-documented bind point) would have any effect other than keeping an earring in. And, we have a WoB that the intent is necessary for Part 1, but not Part 2 - that a "spike gun" is possible, where a weapon loaded with hemalurgic spikes (created with Intent) that then fired the spikes into the right locations would have the hemalurgic effect forced on the target. (A spike creating dart gun would also work... Eeek.) What we haven't really seen illustrated is what the effects of putting a hemalurgic spike in the wrong bind point would be, or if the same spike placed in a different point would have different effects. Imagine if putting a hemalurgic spike in the wrong place killed you or warped you instead of, or in addition to granting power? If Vin accidentally jabbed someone accidentally with her earring pin at a random place on the body? It seems very likely it could do something bad. Maybe like those monsters Wax and TenSoon saw in the kandra Homeland in Shadows of Self. So yeah. I would want a hemalurgist to know what they were doing... At this point (since we're talking about after Spook wrote "his little book") it'd be Harmony being able to talk to you, not Ruin, so calling Him an "eldritch horror" is a little insulting! The "mental instability" introduced by hemalurgy, the hole in one's Spiritweb made to allow another bit of Spiritweb from the donor to be jammed in, is a one-time cost (per spike), one that doesn't seem so bad for a small number of spikes. Vin loses and replaces her earring multiple times without ill effect, and I would assume she's not tearing her Spiritweb each time she inserts it so much as reusing the hole that was already there from the first time she put it in. Edwarn and Telsin both have three spikes each and don't seem very different than what they would otherwise have been as people. Though I guess Harmony could, if he wanted to, pester them non-stop with mental whisperings, it appears He does not.

It's not funny, Szeth thought to himself, how many things begin with me intentionally getting thrown into prison. Wow, thought his strange, black Shardblade. Vasher used to think it was funny! Who is this 'Vasher' the Blade has mentioned several times? Szeth wondered. But before he could pose the question to the sword, one of the guards looking through his possessions pulled it out to examine it, undoing its clasp as he did so. Suddenly, the other guards began to fight to seize it from him...

OK then, I'll say that in my opinion, Harmony presents a good defense to charges of unnecessary cruelty.

You'll have to judge for yourself. I won't spoil it.

Oh my yes. But The Bands of Mourning will, ah, revisit this.

maybe... or is sja-anat planning to be a double agent?

Mr. T categorizes Moelach as one of the "mindless" Unmade, along with The Heart of the Revel, versus Sja-anat who is quite intelligent. Being mindless probably means lying around like an unused hammer in between Desolations. Nergoul (the Thrill) is in between, but more mindless than intelligent. It must have to do with the kind of spren they were before being "Unmade" by Odium.

Now that I'd like to see!

A glove, yes... So for darkeyed women, no problem. But for a lighteyed lady expected to wear a formal havah (with the buttoned over sleeve for the left hand), less so

ohhhh yeah

Elhokar was seeing Cryptics as far back as The Way of Kings, when (in Ch. 58) he rants a bit after the "assassination attempt" that was the cut saddle strap, in what Dalinar and Sadeas think is paranoia about Szeth: "We go war for years and years, never noticing the real villains, working quietly in my own camp. They watch me. Always. Waiting. I see their faces in mirrors. Symbols, twisted, inhuman..." As for what drew Cryptics to him, there are two things: one, the "general attraction" of the true spren to the Kholin Khrew that started with Gavilar, and two, like with Shallan, the lies he told himself, about himself. That he deserved to be king. That he was a good king. That he was, in fact, even really in charge, rather than Dalinar or Sadeas. I think there's a WoB about that, in fact - that had he survived speaking the First Ideal at Kholinar, his second Lightweaver Ideal would have been admitting to himself that he was a bad king.

The early parts where he annoys Llarimar by being frivolous was so much fun! And the middle parts where he suddenly thinks he was a detective was fun (meanwhile, Llarimar clearly knows who/what he was before Returning, but doesn't give anything away) And then the bomb when, while caged with him and Blushweaver, he explodes at him that he used to be a "Colors-cursed scribe" for a moneylender, who "was just as much of an idiot as you are now" who always got him (Llarimar) into trouble and was doing it AGAIN, that was comedy gold! ...And then suddenly, immediately, instantly after that, the shocking murder of Blushweaver, which destroys Lightsong, and his never-firm belief in a divine reason behind the Returned... ...and Llarimar's emotional revelation that Lightsong had been his brother, recounting the day he died and Returned saving his daughter. I must say, I didn't see that coming. What's with all this dust in the room suddenly, it's making my eyes water.

So if Rashek truly wanted to keep Ruin from ever recovering his body, instead of stockpiling it over centuries in the Kandra Trust, in the care of hemalurgic creatures that Ruin could seize control of unless they were immediately able to pull off their Resolution with 100% success... Shouldn't he just have burned it all himself, personally, as soon as it was produced at the Pits? Setting aside some of it for his atiummind compounding of youth, and maybe some small amount to keep the "trappings of a reserve system" as an economic lever in The Final Empire, as he did? Or even just to withhold atium from the Final Empire altogether, keeping it a complete secret, as he did other metals! Maybe a glimpse of Preservation's Plan he saw while Ascended stayed with him as an echo, like with Kelsier in SH, an echo that told him he should stockpile the atium instead of burning it.

I did a text search of the Stormlight Archives books so far to see what was described as being done with the safehand while wearing a formal havah (described as contained in a buttoned sleeve) to have some examples as to what a Vorin lighteyed woman of rank might be able to do with it in general, in an intentional and public way. While traveling to Kharbranth on the Wind's Pleasure, Shallan "held her sketchpad with her safehand, hidden fingers wrapping around the top". Multiple times, Shallan is described as holding onto a backboard for her sketching with her safehand, and Navani or Shallan as closing doors or grabbing a ship's railing with the safehand, through the sleeve. Even holding a lit sphere in the safehand to be able to see while doing something with the freehand. After accidentally (and uncomprehendingly) Soulcasting the goblet in her room to blood, Shallan "went to her knees and grabbed a shard of the broken glass pitcher in her safehand through the fabric of her sleeve", then cut herself on the right arm with it to make it look like a suicide attempt. (Instead of using her freehand to cut her left arm.) Similarly, in the chasms with Kaladin, she grips her satchel through the fabric of her safehand sleeve. So it's loose enough to grab things securely, even with a safepouch also inside the sleeve. And Navani is able to toggle on a mechanism through her safehand sleeve that releases legs from the painrial when she demonstrates it to Renarin. (This is before she later moves on to wearing a glove to do her fabrial work.) What can we discern from all this? Well, clearly one can grip objects through a safehand sleeve, and press things or hold things down, but not manipulate something that requires individual fingers. In terms of what Shallan says she was taught to play, a zither (which is laid flat to play) can be played with the left hand pressing down and possibly plucking occasionally; fingering a two-handed flute with holes seems like it'd be right out, but a pan flute would be OK. That, or perhaps playing fingered flutes/pipes is only done in all-women settings, as the Vorin safehand modesty thing is only with respect to being in public or in the presence of men (at one point in Oathbringer, Shallan was fine with Paloma entering her room with food while she was "exposed" but not when it turned out to be Adolin, who she accuses of having knocked "in a feminine way" because he used one hand instead of two to do so. LOL.) Other than that, stringed instruments that require horizontal fingering of strings on a fretboard like a violin or guitar might be awkward to play well with a loose safehand sleeve, but not a vertical style instrument like the erhu, or a cello or bass. Brass instruments and drums would likely be considered "masculine" to the Alethi, due to their martial association (trumpets and horns being used to sound plateau runs and incoming attacks, as they were in our own world). And maybe they have ensembles of ardents for any large scale orchestral arrangements.