robardin

Since removing hemalurgic spikes isn't fatal except for hemalurgic creations (like when Spook un-Thugged himself in Urteau and then removed Quellion's spike for A-bronze), my "wild theory" after finishing the original Era 1 trilogy about hemalurgy was that by Era 3 or 4, they'd havve advanced medical technology to the point where they'll have hemalurgic "jacks" that can be surgically implanted the the right bind points in a person's body, with sieves for blood to flow through them and some kind of sterile cover over the skin surface that can be removed or retracted as needed. Then, hemalurgic spikes of standard size - about the size of a six inch needle maybe? - would be kept in blood-filled syringe-like tubes with plungers, to be put into people on an as-needed basis, then extracted afterwards back into the same blood-filled tube. (And with some quick sterilization process in between to prevent the spread of disease from "sharing needles" this way.) And some kind of government agent could go around with a small case of such syringes, being authorized to use up to 3 of them at a time. With the introduction of the Southern Scadrial "medallion" technology though, this all seems unnecessary. Though it could be more portable than medallions that needed recharging or refilling with Investiture, eh?

So it's confirmed that Hoid is a Lerasium Mistborn, then? We already saw him performing what seemed likely to be some kind of Allomancy while visiting Shallan's father in a WoR flashback (when he dumps some kind of powder into his own drink and consumes it, and then looking at Shallan - bronze? brass?), and now we know he can do any Allomancy? I wonder what he would see if he burned gold?

Has he? Odium never actually throws that Pokeball and says, "Dalinar Kholin, I choose you!" He has agreed to the contest of champions, which as Taravangian states (and Odium neither confirms nor denies), this means that if he meets again with Dalinar, who "as Bondsmith and bonded to the remnants of Honor" can make that deal, Dalinar can hold him to fulfilling it (i.e., to formally name a champion for a contest for the fate of Roshar)... That therefore implies that if he doesn't meet with Dalinar again, he can dodge it indefinitely, and can continue to fight the proxy war which the Desolations appear to represent. If his putting Dalinar through the Nergaoul wringer counted as choosing him as his champion, then yeah, all Dalinar would have to do would be to surrender to himself. If Dalinar had fallen to the Thrill Odium would have won by default, not by naming his champion but by Honor's champion surrendering to him immediately after making the deal. Odium didn't really have a Plan B, and why would he? Every one of his future visions - if what Renarin/Glys sees are the same - told him that if Dalinar reached this decision point in this place and time, he would surrender. He got blindsided by a Cultivation Time Bomb. If Odium ever does meet face to face with Dalinar again, it will be because he HAS found a champion he thinks has a fighting chance against Dalinar. Maybe someone in his service who wields an Honorblade. You know who I mean. That said, Dalinar never explicitly named himself as his own champion, either: And that's all. The only person named is Amaram, when Dalinar asks if that is who Odium will name, and Odium dismisses him as "hardly suited to the task." "No, I need someone who dominates a battlefield like the sun dominates the sky... Someone stronger than Amaram, a man who will win no matter the cost. A man who has served me all his life. A man I trust. I believe I warned you that I knew you'd make the right decision. And now here we are... Take a deep breath, my friend, I'm afraid this will hurt," as the Thrill descends fully and solely upon Dalinar. Obviously, Dalinar the Alethi Warlord imagines "A contest of champions" to mean ritual single combat, like Shardbearers in an arena. I suspect this "contest" could be twisted by Odium to mean a variety of things.

First things first - I suggest you take a few weeks away from Oathbringer, then give it a re-read. Somewhere here I posted how disappointed I was at first, and how disjointed I found it, but my enjoyment of Oathbringer has increased with every re-read. Maybe that's because I can skim the parts that bothered me and focus on the "good stuff", which would not invalidate the initial judgment of "it feels disjointed to me"; but it would also mean it's still a highly enjoyable book, and there is no doubt it's chock-full of stuff that is critical to following the wider Sanderson Cosmere saga to its fullest. I won't go into details lest I alter your reaction one way or another, but there are several scenes in Oathbringer that I ran through or ran past the first time without it sinking in, that on re-reading have become very powerful to me. That said, I think you are being a little too incredulous in saying Shallan should have suspected Jasnah's miraculous return from death as possibly being another Lightweaver illusion type thing. Other than Szeth, Nobody had not yet seen any Surgebinding done by "enemies" yet - i.e., the Fused - and even at the end of OB even Dalinar cannot really conceive of a Radiant secretly working against them (despite the Skybreakers nearly all following Nalan, yes the Herald, in going over to Team Odium). So immediately considering Jasnah as a Lightweaver seeking to work against Dalinar is maybe asking a little too much. On top of that, bear in mind that Lightweavers are not kandra. Shallan can fake identities that are generic (the disguises she slaps on Adolin, Kaladin, and Elhokar in Kholinar), an alternate strain of herself ("a confident, darkeyed version of me named Veil"), or very briefly to pose as someone specific (Amaram, when dismissing one of his staff)... But successfully posing as someone who is well known to Dalinar, Navani, and herself would be a completely different level of impersonation, one nobody on Roshar has ever seen. Use a Lightweaving to get close to Dalinar's inner circle? Yeah, maybe. Actually posing as his niece, and Navani's daughter, interacting with them for days and weeks on end? Inconceivable. And then there's the fact that a Jasnah-as-Lightweaving-disguise would have require a constant supply of Stormlight to keep it going. Just being in someone's presence for a significantly extended period of time is likely enough proof that it's not a Lightweaving. (Shallan nearly gets caught herself a few times in Words of Radiance when her illusions die for lack of Stormlight.)

Hmm We have it directly from one of the Shards, in one of the reply “letters to Hoid” in the chapter headings, that he was offered a Shard at the Shattering but turned it down. I guess he still could have been a human catalyst of some kind though, perhaps either unwilling or unwitting.

You’re not kidding. Ettmetal explodes in contact with water, like Cesium does in real life (check out the youtube videos). Hemalurgic spikes need contact with blood in the body to work, and blood is mostly water in composition. Kaboom!

The Vorin "feminine arts", which include music as well as art and writing, go hand in hand (well, hand in safehand) with the concept of modesty in covering the left hand, such that the ideal application of those arts are done with one hand. So... What music can be played with at most one hand free? The only passage in the Stormlight Archives where a woman speaks of personally playing music was very early on, in TWoK Ch. 5, when Jasnah asks Shallan about her musical skills (the very first area she evaluates her in). Shallan replies, "I have a good ear, Brightness. I'm best with voice, though I have been trained on the zither and the pipes." (Jasnah then asks Shallan to sing the refrain from a ballad, "Lilting Adrene" - I guess there were no zithers or pipes at hand.) To play a zither, one could grasp a pick through the safehand's sleeve, or use the right hand to pluck while a sleeved left hand presses or slides on the strings to make notes; this is a technique used to play one of the oldest zither type instruments in our real world, the Chinese guqin. In watching that video clip, I could imagine the player's left hand being covered in a loose sleeve, and still managing to play (or holding some kind of tool through the sleeve that facilitated things). It's pretty hard to imagine someone playing any kind of fingered pipes with one hand covered by a sleeve. Panpipes, then? Though in our world there is such a thing as a one-handed bagpipe player who cannot use his left hand, and it's kind of funny to imagine Alethi "pipes" being Scottish Highlander pipes, so storm it, that's what I'm going to picture in my head from now on.

I guess it's obvious that the answer has to be "yes" - I was mostly responding to Weltall's comment about how "Sazed could do even though he's not physically equipped for it". He would be "physically equipped" for it, all he has to do is want to be. In addition to possibly being able to simply create a Scadrian human ex nihilo as Harmony, the way Scadrial and its population orginally were by the concerted efforts of Preservation and Ruin, or forming some kind of avatar as Autonomy appears to do, he could also de-Ascend to mortaldom after healing himself, if he had some kind of plan for the Powers he holds afterward. Or if he could "background suspend" the Shardic Power to dip in and out of mortalness, in a kind of reverse Well maneuver.

If Susebron could be healed in Warbreaker from having his tongue removed from childhood with immediate facility, and Rashek could upgrade his Vessel while only temporarily Ascended at the Well to make himself a Super Fullborn, why couldn't Sazed heal his own Vessel of castration at a similarly young age?

Kharbranth, especially if I could marry a native, because Odium has promised to spare "the city itself, and any humans who have been born into it, along with their spouses. This is whom I will spare." So even if I found a way to work for the good of Team Radiant, the backup plan would still see me come out alive. Bah, you just have to get a Nahel bond and Bob's your uncle. If not Dalinar.

I dunno. I would be really intrigued if a Lopen POV revealed that the way he thinks/talks to himself in internal dialogue is nothing at all like how he talks to everybody else.

When was that? As far as I can remember, the first time we see an Oathgate activated is when Shallan figures out the way to get the Alethi forces to Urithiru from Narak at the end of Words of Radiance, and the first time Kaladin uses an Oathgate is to get to Urithiru after defeating Szeth, arriving (to her and Dalinar's relief) with Jezrien's Honorblade over his shoulder. Which of course happened after he swore the Third Ideal and rebonded with Syl. Only after they get to Urithiru do they realize they can use the Oathgates in other locations throughout Roshar to reach Urithiru, and vice versa, once someone goes to them to unlock them - the only one left "unlocked" had been the one at Narak. So it's not like there was any possible use of an Oathgate before then, in Kal's lifetime. It's interesting to wonder what it would be like for a forsworn Radiant to use an Oathgate, or to travel itno the Cognitive Realm. I also wonder what an ordinary fabrial looks like in the CR, or one of those "half-shards" of Taravangian, who said they were made with "spren that might otherwise have blessed a Knight Radiant", implying they were not "dumb" spren like in Navani's painrials or levitating platforms, but sentient ones that could form a Nahel bond. Using an Oathgate that works properly isn't like using the corrupted one in Kholinar that dropped them into the CR, though - people who were bonded to deadspren Blades, ordinary non-Radiant Alethi Shardbearers, were able to use the Oathgate to get to Urithiru. Like (say) Amaram.

Yes, but an Allomancer would stop burning atium until Kaladin was in range and a threat or legitimate target. And there is a big difference between an atium Misting like Yomen, and a Mistborn with a mean streak like Kelsier. About the skies being Kaladin's vs. Kelsier's domain: I suspect Kaladin can get much higher up than Kelsier, as increasing one's altitude in the sky using A-steel involves constant Pushing on a more and more distant anchor (which gets harder and harder to Push against), while with a Full Lashing you just fall upwards, faster and faster (with natural acceleration as from gravity), until the Lashing is released/altered or the Stormlight runs out. Which would give Kaladin the fabled Advantage of High Ground (well, High Altitude)! How long these Lashings last, though, versus how much Stormlight Kaladin would typically have on him, is another question. Without special preparation, like his flight across Roshar to Hearthstone when he'd requisitioned most of the Emerald Reserve (and which was still insufficient), I suppose a few large spheres' worth would be normal? Here, I suspect the amount of metal a Mistborn would carry around on a typical day (multiple vials, especially of the basic metals which are cheap and easy to get) would prove an advantage in total Investiture.

Well... When asked which of his Cosmere characters, not counting Shards/Slivers of Adonalsium (e.g. The Lord Ruler) "would win in a fight", implied to be one-on-one combat, he picked "Kelsier with atium": The biggest challenge he could think of offhand for Kelsier with atium (excluding Shards and Slivers) was Vin with atium. The only times he'd allowed that Kaladin would beat Vin or Kelsier was "on a battlefield" - which I would take to mean with his team of Bridge Four behind him and with coordinated attack patterns. (This also must mean Bridge Four as Windrunner squires, since for Kaladin to have a chance at all he needs to be able to summon Syl as a Shardblade, which means the version of Kaladin that has sworn the Third Ideal.) After all, if you consider the biggest "battlefield showdown vs. a massively Inversted opponent" scene we've seen with Kaladin, that would be in Oathbringer against Yelig-Namaram... Where he needed help from a Stormlight-holding Rock using a Shardbow to defeat him. Which isn't "cheating". It's who and what he is. Windrunner powers are very combat-oriented (as seen with Szeth as the Assassin In White), but the way Windrunners operate when spren-selected remind me of Kipling's Law of the Jungle (from The Jungle Book) that Mowgli learns to recite: For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

My wildest theory has to do with the fate of the First Generation of kandra in Era 2. [And may be proven or disproven to whatever degree whenever The Lost Metal is released...) At one point, MeLaan says something about how TenSoon and others of the Third Generation are their eldest leaders now, because most (not all?) of the Second Generation had taken the suicide route after the Catacendre (out of shame, or inability to adapt to a post-FE world). But that doesn't take the FIRST generation into account - wouldn't they have had their spikes restored by Harmony, along with all the other kandra? There is a big difference between the First Generation and all later generations of kandra, though, of which much is made in The Hero of Ages: the First Generation were originally human, friends to Rashek and fellow Feruchemists from before his Ascension, twisted into Spiritually and Cognitively blocked mistwraiths, requiring hemalurgy to unblock. (Note that Rashek's offer of making them into kandra, hemalurgic constructs, was done by "speaking to them directly to their minds", something Preservation cannot do but is a power of Ruin...) After having their minds restored, they use their original human bones. Also unlike unlike all later generation of kandra, who were born as mistwraiths, they can't (or don't) completely transform into human form using those bones, as their flesh is still translucent. And they retained their original Terris/human names, like Haddek (echoing "Rashek"), instead of the more typical two-syllable kandra names of later generations ("KanPaar", "TenSoon", "MeLaan"). As we see in Mistborn: Secret History, koloss who are killed enter the CR as their original human selves, freed of the hemalurgic staples to restore their cognitive self-image en route to passing Beyond. So it stands to reason that, come the day the First Generation passed on (suicide or otherwise), their spirits would arrive in the CR restored as humans as well. Humans who are Feruchemists. Full Feruchemists. Of which there were none left in the world after the Catacendre. So my theory is that however Kelsier managed to forge a Connection back to the Physical Realm with a hemalurgic spike, and then created "excisors" that clearly involve using or granting Feruchemical powers by proxy, involved the First Generation. Maybe the "excisors" are the Scadrial equivalent of a Rosharan fabrial, trapping the "spren" (cognitive shadow) of a Feruchemist into servitude? Perhaps one who was willing to enter such service, i.e., talked into not passing Beyond long enough to encapsulated in this manner?

Yes, and also for my money, the idea of a big sister figure turned Ruin's Pawn and Main Inquisitor seems particularly terrifying. Especially if there were very few, may no other female Inquisitors at the time, and then being the one to say to Sazed at the Well, "You spent the last two years teaching, but I spent them killing. Killing so many people..." A great parallel to Vin being the "best Mistborn" and Heir to Preservation. And to be honest, I also promoted bending Marsh into "Marsha" because I immediately had a mental image of Kelsier griping like Jan Brady from the Brady Bunch. "All I hear, all day long, from the skaa rebellion is Marsha's so smart, Marsha's so honorable, Marsha's so dedicated... Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!"

If we're going to discuss genderbending the core members of Kelsier's crew, I think the best candidate would be Marsh. Instead of being Kelsier's brother who's a Seeker, he's his sister. Either keep the love triangle thing with Mare in there (implying that Mare was bisexual), or make it that "Marsha" (sorry not sorry) was les/bi and had strong but unrequited feelings for Mare. Or find some other reason for Marsha to quit the skaa underground rebellion after Kelsier and Mare were sent to the Pits. In general I think there should have been at a few female Inquisitors, since as we saw with Shan Elariel, even among the nobility and the government of the FE, the usefulness of Allomantic power trumped gender roles. So Marsha becoming an Inquisitor and Ruin's prime pawn would fit right in, as well.

True, but a lot of that 300 calories happens just because you're alive - I was talking about the increase from a resting state to a "CPU-pegging" level of thinking, and then tapping zinc is like super overclocking the CPU. A lot of what the brain does, it does even while you sit there drooling, making your heart pump and processing your sensory inputs and so on.

I think the "tapping a zincmind made you hungry" bit is simply based on the fact that doing sustained, heavy duty thinking actually burns more calories than sitting on a stool, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed. In ordinary life it's not at all close to the same extent as physical exertion, but if you tap a zincmind and are suddenly thinking 16x faster than normal, then compressing 16 minutes of serious thinking into a single minute might well be a sudden drain your sugar levels.

Obviously the Dalinar Dollar would end up getting contracted to the Dollinar, or "thorns" as the slang term, for obvious reasons (saying "ten thorns" would be like "ten bucks" in our world). And the Jezrien Cent => Centzrien => "zri" (for both singular and plural). (Those graphic images were awesome, btw!) That could be a complete coincidence... But as soon as I wrote that, I was like, nah, that's exactly the sort of oddly mundane background detail that ends up being significant in a work like Stormlight, isn't it? I hadn't read or thought of this theory before, so you definitely get an upvote for that one! As for the relationship between spren, stormlight, and economics on Roshar/Shadesmar... What about fabrials? Can one carry a fabrial into and out of Shadesmar? I mean, the Oathgates are giant fabrials, right, but on the CR side you can see the spren. So whab about something like an ordinary portable fabrial, like one of Navani's painrials, or the one for Regrowth that Nalan used to revive Szeth? Or one of those "half-shard" shields? Taravangian described the process of making a half-shard as "trapping" and "enslaving" a spren "that under other circumstances, might have blessed a Knight Radiant", implying the kind of spren they used to make them was a sentient one (versus a painspren or rotspren), and I would imagine the fabrial for the Surge of Regrowth might involve a spren that would grant that surge. Might a fabrial brought into CR end up looking kind of like Adolin's deadeye Shardblade? But a fabrial's spren is not "dead" as in having been bonded and broken, simply trapped and forced or frozen into some kind of useful state.

Not only should you not stop reading, you should push through, take a break, and then come back and read it again. I initially found Oathbringer a bit disjointed and disappointing, but on a re-read it was much better (and yes, I skimmed the Rageaholic Dalinar chapters a bit). And while it doesn't appear to be true in your case, I think a lot of my finding it "disjointed" came from having read many of the "Raging Dalinar" POVs as previews in the Unfettered II collection, and also reading the first part of OB in the weekly chapter release on the Tor website leading up the full novel's release. I don't think I'll do that again, if it's an option, but it'll be hard to resist... Maybe I'll just say, don't judge until a second read-through. On the whole I would still but WoR ahead of it, but the big scenes in Oathbringer are among the best in the Cosmere works.

Technically, the default answer would be "no" as unlike (say) The Wheel of Time, the Cosmere setting it is never meant to imply any kind of link to our modern world, with figures or symbols having similar names or backstories to histories or legends we know from real life. That said, there are definitely names in Stormlight specifically that he admits to having been "inspired by" various elements from IRL legends, histories, etc., like with the names of the Unmade, plus the straight up homages or name insertions that fantasy writers do for fun. The Hessi/Hesiod similarity may be one of those homages, but that reference to "lister's oil" is a very nice catch: it seems too much of a topical coincidence to not be intentional, while most people wouldn't pick up on it (I certainly didn't!).

Do we need to spoiler Cosmere quotes in this forum? OK then.

"I am Truthless. I do as my master requires, and I do not ask for an explanation."

I'm gonna say Jezrien was the lead singer, as his association with the Stormfather going back to legendary times was likely based on their #1 hit, a cover version of the Scorpions' song Rock You Like A Hurricane (localized for Roshar to Rock You Like A Highstorm). Taln = Drummer Ash = Lead guitar And on bass... None other than Nalan, who "used to be able to feel" not just compassion, but The Groove Line.