robardin

Yeah, that's what I concluded at the end, too. That was all in reply to the comment that "eventually a Feruchemist would realize what Rashek was doing", which is to say, well yes, and no. A Feruchemist could have seen what happened and said, "hey, I could do that if only I had an infinite goldmind", that's far from saying a Keeper should then be expected to infer that TLR was in fact in possession of an infinite goldmind generated by a compounding effect of combining Allomancy and Feruchemy. But it would be unreasonable, because the very idea of what what happen if someone combined the powers was completely unknown and speculative. And Rashek had engineered a generational break in Feruchemy existing among mortals, giving him the opportunity to mess with people's concepts of what was possible with it versus what he could do and why.

I believe it was "Spoiled Tomato", but small difference, really. Eventually the Stormlight in a Lashing would run out, but until then, Lift with a single Lashing on her towards the horizon, on level ground and slicked up to zero friction, would make Lift travel horizontally as if she were "falling" in a vacuum straight at the horizon, right? Roshar has less gravity than Earth. I don't remember how much less, but for simple math, let's round 1 g of gravity on Earth to 32 ft/sec/sec and assume Roshar has a gravitational constant of 26 ft/sec/sec. Let's assume that a single infuse-and-release Lashing from Kaladin would last for a full minute, or 60 seconds. At the end of 60 seconds, then, with no air resistance or ground friction due to Lift's Slick Awesomeness, she'd be going 60*26 = 1560 feet per second, which a Google conversion to miles/hour tells me is... 1063.636 MPH. YIKES. And that's from a SINGLE LASHING. Now remember that Kaladin once dide a quadruple Lashing on himself that was enough to cause cracks in Shardplate with his feet with a flying kick in the dueling arena when aiding Adolin. If he quadruple Lashed Lift on level ground, oh Adonalsium. (Note that this assumes that the Surge of Abrasion (the "slickness") defeats air resistance as it does ground friction. Maybe it doesn't. In which case we'd need to figure out Lift's "terminal velocity", a phrase that feels kind of like a morbid prediction if Lift were to collide with something big and stationary.)

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think it should be the thick pita flatbread and not pocket pita, and that the description of the meatball being "stuffed into" the flatbread just means a wrap. But what about the frying part? I wondered how the flatbread could both fried and stuffed if it was a wrap instead of pocket-style pita, and decided to go back to the sources... WoR Ch. 18: Lopen is described as "taking a bite of the paper-wrapped something he was eating" that "looked like a thick piece of flatbread wrapped around something goopy", and could be handed over by him to Kaladin (without falling part) while he fished in his pocket. It seemed to be chunks of undefinable meat slathered in some dark liquid, all wrapped in overly thick bread. Kaladin pronounces it "disgusting." WoR Ch. 46: Kaladin is dismayed to see Sigzil eating "something steaming and wrapped in paper" that he then has to ask Lopen what was in it. "Flangria," he's told, as Rock goes over to the same vendor to get some as well. Soulcast meat. Kaladin says (apparently as a negative) "Look, he's frying that bread," and Lopen adds, "you fry the flangria, too. Make little balls of it, mixed with ground lavis. Batter it up and fry it, then stuff it in fried bread and pour on gravy." (And then Rock's chouta crunches as he bites in, because he asked for deep-fried cremling claws on his.) So: The flangria in chouta, as first seen by Kaladin, appeared to be "chunks", but in fact are fried balls of ground lavis and meat. And the flatbread is both described as wrapped around the flangria, as well as fried, which is puzzling unless you interpret "frying" the bread as griddling with some oil rather than deep frying (like a taco shell), like Indian/Pakistani paratha rolls use. So it's crispy to taste on the one side, at least, but left still flexible enough to use as a wrap. So nix on my earlier suggestion of using pocket pita. Go find pictures of a "paratha roll", fill something similar with battered and fried balls of ground turkey and "lavis", and cover with a suitably dark sauce to taste! One key question here to revisit is what is our world's analog for "lavis", a "cereal crop" described has having "grain" removed for cooking that includes "steaming". Its best analog is not rice, however, which is more similar to "tallew", or to "clema" which is mushier when made into a cake or bread that falls apart easily and is cheaper than either lavis or tallew... I guess like oats are in our world (what Samuel Johnson's seminal dictionary of the English language from 1755 famously defined as "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."). I had suggested using lentil or chickpea flour for coarseness, but those are based on legumes, not cereals. But the texture is not described as particularly grainy or coarse. So maybe just go ahead and use regular wheat flour.

You may as well start speculating on What If A Returned Got A Hemalurgic Spike for Allomancy. That's more likely than if a Scadrian Allomancer somehow got to Nalthis and was Returned by Endowment (very unlikely to happen to a non-native of Nalthis), or that Denth got his hands on a bead of lerasium to become Elend-level Mistborn (no way). (Side note: Vasher killed Arsteel relatively soon before the events of Warbreaker, not hundreds of years ago in the Manywar. I think this is in the Annotations on Brandon's website somewhere.) There is no evidence in my view that Denth was anything more (or less) than a Returned, who is indeed therefore faster/stronger than a normal human and was probably pretty quick/strong as a baseline, and was simply convincing/charming enough to manipulate a naive Vivenna by virtue of having been a guy "who everybody liked" who then turned dark over a couple of hundreds of years as a mercenary. No need for emotional Allomancy, there are people like this in real life, after all. At the same time, Allomancy could be useful to a Returned for another reason: it's end-positive in Investiture. A Returned needs to consume one Breath a week of Investiture to survive. While Vasher can subsist on Stormlight on Roshar as a substitute (not sure what the "exchange rate" of Breath to Stormlight is, for this purpose - one infused clearchip a week? A skymark? What?), carrying infused spheres off of Roshar through the CR sees them "leak away" unless in a rare "perfect gem". But a Returned that gained Allomancy could burn metal anywhere in the Cosmere to net-gain Investiture, which if it's good enough to feed Nightblood, is probably good enough to feed the demands of a Divine Breath. Sounds like that could be something the Nightwatcher would offer a Returned. "What is it you wish for, little god from another world?" "I want to be able to live without taking Breath from another person, and without having to stay on this world for its Stormlight." "I can give you the ability to sustain your spirit by ingesting metal. But you will have to face yourself each time you do so." "Face myself? Like in a mirror?" "Like looking into your own soul, what you might have been, or could have --" "Sounds great, let's do this." *spikes Vasher with A-gold* Now every week, not only does he need to procure some gold dust (not cheap), he has to see his gold shadow who hates him and he hates back. Bwa-ha-ha. "Storming spren. Like blue on green! I can't do this every week! Storm it, I'll just stay here as an ardent."

So you're saying a Keeper could have realized TLR as a fellow Feruchemist if he Hulked out, as Sazed himself did while fighting koloss in defense of Elendel? They'd be familiar with the effect of tapping a pewtermind at a high multiplier, so even if they didn't realize that he was Compounding pewter for nigh-infinite metalminds, recognizing "hey, this is Feruchemy, isn't it?" should come to mind. In that case, his spectacular display in the "Square of the Survivor" should have been a tell for any Feruchemist who saw or heard of it (like Sazed). The ability to heal up immediately upon removing spears from one's body is not one granted by any level of A-pewter, but would be recognized as possible with a goldmind. Or going further back in history, given the stories of his invulnerability, surviving burning, flaying, or even beheading, that could have been a pretty big tell for any Feruchemist. "He's God, based on that? Pfft, I could do that too, if only I had like decades of time to store health first in a big enough goldmind -- oohhhhhh...." To explain this canonically, I'd surmise that centuries of Ministry religious doctrine about TLR being God and attributing his invulnerability to divinity would seem pretty convincing, as would any tapping of a zincmind for speed of thought ("he's divinely intelligent!" - I bet his ability to discern lies from physical tells was from tapping zinc rather than some kind of subtle mastery of powerful Allomancy, despite what Kar said). Plus, given his longstanding apparent hatred for the Terris and the break in continuity of the community of Feruchemists due to the mass transformation into mistwraiths, thinking that TLR himself might be a Terris Feruchemist was very, very hard for them to conceive of. Much more easy to accept his own account as having gained divine powers that exhibited themselves as having infinite Feruchemical attributes (without being a Feruchemist), because that certainly seems impossibly godlike, doesn't it? But hey, TLR was obviously the most powerful Allomancer in the world, once you consider his powers could be Feruchemical in any way, might someone not think of Compounding? Not really; that's only easy in retrospect. The mechanics of Compounding was first realized by Sazed when Vin explained that TLR = Rashek = Feruchemist from Alendi's log book before becoming Mistborn while Ascended. It was then relatively easy for him, as a Keeper educated in the theory of Metallic Arts, to sit there and say, "so, if he was both, he must have been able to burn metalminds to gain net-positive Feruchemy!" as an after-the-fact explanation for his powers. But without a practical example in front of him, there really was no way even for an expert in such matters to realize that would be the resulting effect, as it'd never been possible. For all they knew, burning a metalmind might simply give you the Allomantic effect and you lose the Feruchemical store.

If you're proposing that infinite Determination, Connection, and Identity could allow a massively spiked creature like the Marshquisitor to resist external control through the "hemalurgical flaw", I am not so sure. When Vin did it in Fadrex City, she needed to draw on the power of Preservation by using the mists, as she was uniquely able to do. Once we're talking using the Ascendant power level of a Shard, as "mist-fueled Allomancy" appears to be, I think that trumps a lot of barriers. As to whether compounded Determination would make Marsh more able to resist "max mortal Allomancer" Soothing from Elend-with-duralumin or an Era 2 Soother aided by a Nicroburst, that's an interesting question, but one we won't ever really know for sure. For my money, if Vin needed to use the mists to Push through to the Marshquisitor, then I don't think even Elend+duralumin could have managed it, any more than he could have Ironpulled the bracers off of TLR, had he been there. And definitely not a Nicroburst-aided Era 2 Soother, which I would think would still be weaker than Elend burning duralumin and brass. As for the Marshquisitor ever resisting Harmony's direct control, forget about it. Hemalurgy is "his power", as it was Ruin's. The only thing holding Harmony back from literally living through Marsh is that he doesn't want to, both because he was friends with Marsh in life, and because his Intent now requires him to allow Marsh free agency. A scenario where Marsh single-handedly decides to go on a Compounding-enabled rampage is another interesting proposal. How would Harmony react to that? For someone to skew that far to the Ruin side, might he act to intervene? The kandra that Wax talked to in Shadows of Self (VenDell) seemed to imply that Harmony would have stopped Paalm doing what she did via direct control if he could have, except that she'd pulled a spike out, and was in fact invisible to him because it turned out that her one remaining spike was of a metal "not known to Harmony" and likely from another god. But if it turns out the Set and its operatives are actually advancing that red mist of encroachment around Scadrial that Harmony is working to defeat as agents of another Shard (Autonomy being Suspect #1 right now), perhaps letting Marsh slip off the chain would be exactly what he'd allow. As long as He didn't put Marsh up to it in the first place, or have done some direct act to cause it to happen, he could feel that Marsh is going about doing something of his own accord.

Ideally one would have read Warbreaker after TWoK and before WoR, TBH...

You should do this simply because of reading things both in publication order and in in-world chronological order. There are references in OB to stuff that happens in Edgedancer. May as well pick up Arcanum Unbounded for extra goodies in there versus the standalone novella.

I would say that "very thick flatbread" = not tortillas, but middle eastern style pita. I would think not the "pocket" kind, but the flat kind they wrap shish kebobs and souvlaki in, except that the description then says "stuffed into the fried bread", so perhaps it is pocket-style flatbread? "Ground lavis mixed with soulcast meat, formed into small balls" = sounds like chickpea flour, as used for falafel balls, or maybe a rice/lentil flour, mixed with ground meat and some binding agent (egg whites?) like when making meatballs. Just don't use bread crumbs or flour for the flangria balls, it's supposed to have a grainier texture. As for the meat, use Deviled Spam if you like, haha, or something more bland/tasteless the way Soulcast food in general is supposed to taste, like ground turkey (I think ground beef or pork, or even Spam, would be flavorful on its own). Then batter and fry the balls, like hush puppies. That reminds me: In real life, I have had delicious "crab filled hush puppies" which could serve as a stand-in for the "cremling claws" version of chouta, if you assume that "cremling claws" means "the meat extracted from the claws" (only Horneaters eat the shells along with the meat, right?). Given that, I would assume Soulcast meat would not replicate the crustacean meat they already have naturally and relatively cheaply, but something that would be cheap but bland blocks of protein like the pork "steaks" or the "chicken" meat they have, meaning ground turkey as a stand-in is perfect. (Or even "Tofurkey".) After all, if Soulcast meat was basically the same as cremling meat but produced with Soulcasters, they wouldn't mention two different "varieties" of chouta, right? It'd just be chouta, made more cheaply. Chouta is "flavorful, but not spicy". So salt, black pepper, garlic, cumin, a dash of powdered ginger and white pepper, but not chili, paprika, or cayenne pepper (or Old Bay seasoning). I'd add a few dashes of Accent (MSG) into the gravy, as well. Now stuff the balls into "very thick flatbread" that is itself fried. The "stuffed into" aspect makes it sound like pocket pita, which of course needs to be thick enough to be sliced into a pocket. So, after deep frying the battered hush puppies with crab/meat fillings, drop opened pocket pita into the fryer, stuff with the balls, and fill with "dark gravy." The gravy is the tough part. Not sure what "dark gravy" would go with the cremling (crab) version, seems to me that would really work best with a tartar sauce, mayo, or dill-yogurt-like "white sauce." But as far as the meatball based ones go, you could go with your basic turkey gravy like for Thanksgiving.

Haha, yes, I think I even posted a picture of an old can of SPAM in a discussion of flangria and what a real-world equivalent of "Soulcast meat" would be. Even more flangria-like would be... Deviled Spam. The can even reads, "It's SPAM... That SPREADS!"

I found the beginning of Warbreaker difficult to get through, for similar reasons as I did the beginning of The Way of Kings: the internal dialogue was too expository, it felt forced and unnatural. It was off-putting to me to have Vasher think things to himself about how "losing one's Breath was not fatal", or "but of course, that was the way it was always supposed to work", and so on. If he was such a master practitioner, he wouldn't be thinking things like this to himself, especially not while he was preparing to bust out of a jail cell. Similarly, for TWoK, in the very first chapter we have Szeth's POV of using a Blade, wielding Stormlight, and doing Lashes in his mission to kill Gavilar, where in the middle of his fighting he's thinking things to himself about how the multiple different kind of Lashings were defined and worked, and so on. It doesn't seem natural to have that as internal dialogue. I don't know what the right writerly answer is to be able to give that kind of background info while also beginning the book with an action sequence, but this feels inelegant. On re-reads, this objection dissipates, to be replaced by the enjoyment of mining the details for clues to things only hinted at later in the book(s). Brandon does take care to lay those seeds for later reaping. It's the first read-through that suffers. Mistborn didn't suffer from this, because we see Kelsier's Mistborn murder spree "off screen", with the details of what he did and how he did it to follow more slowly later in the story as we learned more about Allomancy, in the context of Vin herself learning about Allomancy. That was much more natural. And the fact that what Vin then learns from Kelsier is, in fact, not entirely correct, caught me by surprise (in a good way). It wasn't just an info dump via a character's expository monologue, as so often happens - it really was a person telling another person the standard received wisdom of his world/time, which was actually inaccurate.

Hmm, that makes a lot of sense, then. If every time Wax has felt "stronger" in the mists a pewter-like way coincides with when he's known or likely to have put in his kandra-delivered hemalurgic earring, that would fit the idea of it being a fractional and degraded spike for A-pewter that Harmony is fueling directly when he wants to. That raises some interesting ideas, if it was an earring made from a former Inquisitor spike. They mentioned that earrings are commonly put in by Pathians while praying. Of course, many if not most of them would not be hemalurgic spikes, probably just ordinary earrings symbolic of one, but it's not hard to imagine similar kandra-delivered "real" spikes for specific Pathians, which could then be passed on to others over time. And one Inquisitor spike could make several earrings. So Harmony could also be creating more "mistfuelled" than just Wax, even if he is Harmony's "Ruin" to TenSoon being "his Preservation". And, if so desired, with other powers. Imagine if Wax's new earring, given to him in BoM, was actually a spike for atium, the Lost Metal! Vin couldn't fuel Elend's allomancy with atium as Preservation, but Harmony, holding Ruin as well, certainly could.

Was he wearing that earring each time he felt that boost? I don't think he kept it in all the time, he only put in it to "pray" to Harmony as a Pathian. He definitely was in that scene from Alloy of Law, as he was just chatting with Harmony, Not so sure about that scene with MeLaan in Shadows of Self. Now that Wax knows about hemalurgy, maybe he'll try a vial of pewter with that earring in, if he puts 2 and 2 together... ETA: Ah right, he made a bullet out of the first earring to shoot Bleeder with, and we don't know what his new earring may or may not be a spike for. Though it stands to reason Harmony would do the same thing again as last time.

Yeah, that's what I meant by Harmony twiddling him (directly) via the mists. He's holding back out of Balance from outright healing him or making him Mistborn as he had Spook upon first Ascending, but he does appear to be temporarily giving him a little flare of a pewter effect from time to time. And I was willing to consider that his steel bubble thing might've been a permanent, Wax-only twiddle from Harmony, like boosting a resonance effect to savant levels, as a "minor but useful nudge" that fell within the bounds of his Shardic Intent.

And he even thinks about it in those terms himself in Shadows of Self, Ch. 11, the first time he meets MeLaan:

It's not explicitly stated, but at several points, Wax mentions how not only did his Allomancy seem to work better in the mists, but he felt stronger and pain receded. Like he's being directly fueled by the mists a little bit like Vin had been, but in a lightly pewterific way. For example, after the first time he has a mental conversation with Harmony, in the final fight with the Vanishers in Alloy of Law:

Do resonances happen naturally/immediately, at a Spiritweb level if you will, or does it require some use, possibly regular use, of both forms of Investiture to manifest? Like Wax with his steel bubble: he reflects at one point that he hadn't always been able to do it. There are conflicting or vague WoBs as to whether this bubble ability is A-steel savantism (i.e., any Coinshot who practiced enough could eventually do it), his Twinborn resonance between A-steel and F-iron, or even a kind of savantism of the resonance effect. Or something twiddled in him by Harmony, for all we know, similar to the way he seems to be able to draw an A-pewter-like effect from the mists. In which case it's possible that a Twinborn like Miles might use the Compounding effect so much that the one dominates the other to the point where no resonance emerges. If 99% of your use of allomantic ability to burn gold is to overclock tapping a Feruchemical store, does that "count"?

But if Dalinar Ascends to become Honor, poor Navani will be left in the lurch!

This has been bothering me as well. The Eila Stele informs us that Odium arrived to Roshar with the first humans as their god, who came from Ashyn using Surges “forbidden" to them, forbidden by the gods the Dawnsingers already had at the time on Roshar - who also told them to allow the humans to stay. Which gods sound like Honor and Cultivation. Now the mortals (human and singers both) have switched gods. But it seems the Oathpact was formed in reaction to the Dawnsingers going to Odium, and getting Fused, Thunderclasts, and Voidlight-driven Surgebinding. So why would Odium switch pawns? What would be in it for him? Or H&C? Were both sides just game pieces being exchanged on a board to the gods ("OK, this time you take black?") Odium is only after one thing: release from whatever bonds Honor and Cultivation managed to place on him, freeing him to splinter Cultivation and the remnants of Honor, change Roshar "substantially" in so doing, and then continue about his plans to be the Last Shard Standing. Dalinar guessed that destroying humanity on Roshar wouldn't free Odium from his bonds, and Odium didn't challenge that - but neither did he confirm it. His actions speak louder: the Final Desolation has a reason to be called that, and he has a reason to want to destroy the human kingdoms, led by Heralds and Radiants, in that conflict. I guessed in another post about the Dawnshards that the vision Dalinar had where he was instructed to try to get Odium to agree to a contest of champions was in fact a vision tampered with by Odium - that a CvC is, or was, the easiest victory condition he could get (especially with his idea of coopting a Thrilled Dalinar). The same vision where the god bemoaned that Dalinar would be "without the Dawnshards"... Even as the Stormfather said that Honor raved while dying about them, and how the Radiants would destroy Roshar as they had Ashyn, in response to that generation of Radiants learning of humanity's origin and the dispossession of the Dawnsingers. And what did shatter the Shattered Plains, anyway? I think the Final Desolation is the equivalent of the shot clock running down. I think Dalinar does indeed have the Dawnshards available to use at some point, but that using them would be massively dangerous. Hoid, who may know the victory conditions in play, and is terrified of Odium, once told Dalinar that their goals "do not completely align", that "if I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.” Not "watch humanity get eliminated from Roshar", but watching the very world crumbling and burning. Is that a Dawnsharding? And that would get Hoid what he wants, the hard way?

So, in one of the other threads in the SA forum, someone mentioned how Honor's color is blue, Cultivation's is green, and Odium is white-and-gold or simply gold. I forget exactly how these associations are given in the books, but they seem familiar. I then recalled that in re-reading the part from Ch. 75 of The Way of Kings where Dalinar has his OMG moment that the visions are a one-way playback, the part where he is first told that getting Odium to agree to a "contest of champions could work for you" and that they'd be "without the Dawnshards", the words come from a regal, divine figure who speaks these words after he climbs to high ground overlooking a destroyed Kholinar, a vision he remembers having had before, but not having heard these words before. And that figure, the one that first tells him to get Odium to agree to a contest of champions and also first mentions the Dawnshards (as something he'd be without), is dressed in gold. The relevant parts from that vision he has in Chapter 75, with my commentary in brackets: What if the idea that this vision was actually a repeat of the very first one he'd ever had, which is why he remembered it only fuzzily but the familiarity was kicking in at a subconscious level, was suggested/implanted by Odium, who has shanghaied one of Honor's visions into a little side vision of his own? Which means... The whole idea of a CvC fight, was actually something Odium wanted and manipulated Dalinar into offering. Except it's backfired on him, in that his checkmate move, choosing Dalinar as his champion, has blown up in his face. Which also means, as Dalinar surmised, that simply destroying humanity on Roshar wouldn't free Odium from his bonds. He needs something else as a victory condition, which is hard to achieve, OR the CvC showdown, which he thought he'd cleverly wangled into a no-lose scenario, until he lost his main piece. And also means, I think, that the Dawnshards ARE available to Dalinar and company. And that perhaps the Knights Radiant, with no Honor and no Heralds, will indeed destroy Roshar with them, as the Stormfather remembers Honor raving about as he died.

Hmm, where do we get that Honor is associated with a blue color? Because in the other thread where I recapped what we've read about the Dawnshards, and mused that something didn't add up about Honor's words in his vision to Dalinar in Ch. 75 of TWoK versus what the Stormfather says he said to the Radiants during the Recreance, ... I now remember that in that vision, of the destruction of Kholinar, he sees who he assumes is Honor when he climbs to high ground, who speaks to him about getting Odium to agree to a contest of champions, as they'll be without the Dawnshards. That figure... Is dressed in gold.

Alas I'm in NYC. However I may have office colleagues flying in from London next week. Hmm... To get it 7-10 days earlier... But then the graphic novel would have British spellings, wouldn't it? I wouldn't want to read about "Sand Mastres" all of a sudden or something.

My Amazon order info says Oct. 1st for the hardcover release. Not gonna double pay for the e-book version of a graphic novel (for a book book, maybe, because ad-hoc re-reading and searching for passages is so easy with a Kindle book) So... Two more weeks for us hardcopy folks!

That's just it. Who does Lopen hate? He seems to get along with everyone. Even when he was consigned to the bridge crews, he wasn't overtly bitter or angry about it. He was ridiculously cheerful and upbeat (which is obviously a kind of a front or a face for others as much as himself, which is why his Second Ideal was colored that way). The amputee soldier he was bucking up for his Second Ideal was receptive to his efforts, though. Maybe for his Third Ideal, it'll be him dealing with someone who is actively hostile and rejecting of his chipperness, insisting on wrapping him/herself in despair or self-loathing. I will protect even those who don't want to be protected, if they really need it. Plus, we still don't know how he lost his arm originally, or how it is he ended up as a slave in Sadeas' camp. Maybe it'll be something to do with that.

Ooh, nice catch. Innnteresting.