robardin

Nah, just one of those Cosmere coincidences, I’m guessing. I mean, it can’t ALL be tied together underneath, or something, right? Pfft.

This was my immediate reaction upon reading the early released chapter of SP1 - I guess I can call it by its full title now, or at least TatES to separate it from TES as “The Emperor’s Soul”? LOL Not the “Hoid’s voice” thing, as I really liked the Wandersail, Dragon and the Dog, The Girl Who Looked Up, etc., stories that he tells Kaladin and Shallan in The Stormlight Archive, but the second point you make: the rather frequent allusions and references to our “modern” world that to me, break the fourth wall in a jarring (versus fun) way for a fantasy work. Yes, you can make the excuse that “this is set in a future context and Hoid is telling this story to someone who would know these terms”, but really it feels like Hoid is throwing around stuff that is “out of this world” for his in-world audience to amuse himself. The problem is, there is a huge difference between, say, telling Kaladin a story involving a dog (where Kaladin doesn’t know what that even is), to making outright analogies not just to “laptops” or “programming” but “vending machines” and the difference between “a team taking a time out” versus “tearing down a stadium to build a new one”. It feels like one of three things is going on to justify this: The future of the Cosmere converges extremely closely to our present-day world, The far past of Yolen did so (when/where Hoid grew up) - or both, I suppose?, This is Sanderson claiming Tolkien-like “translation rights” in reframing for us a story told by Cosmere-Hoid to Cosmere-Whoever in Cosmere Words, into Modern English words and references we would get. I say “Tolkien-like” because if you ever read the Appendices to The Return of the King, JRRT talks about how he “translated” things for days of the week, the calendar, common names like “Sam”, etc., to be more familiar to English readers, versus their actual Westron terms and Shire contexts… Kind of eye-glazing, LOL. In Tolkien’s case, it was something of a conceit of detailed world-building - but if you need to resort to that to wave away casually breaking the fourth wall in a fantasy work, that’s another level. If Hoid’s telling a story in-world, as with Kaladin and Shallan, it should come off as in-world - not Hoid telling ME the story. Which a few hints in the story make clear he is telling someone like Sixth of the Dusk the story and all these modern day terms/comparisons are Hoid amusing himself with “over their head” references, but that goes back to scenario 1 or 2 then.

We’ve seen Riina named as one of the Ire plotting to acquire the Shard of Preservation for the Ire in Mistborn: Secret History, but she appears to be on Lumar here by herself. At the end, a restored Hoid thinks to himself as he makes to threaten her with a “zapping” (I guess she doesn’t know about his Dawnshardic curse that makes him unable to “harm” another person): She’d come to this planet because nothing here could threaten her. Then she’d found a dragon living here. Then I’d arrived. She wasn’t hiding here, really, as she wasn’t keeping a low profile or working under a disguise or an alias. She comments about how “unimportant” this planet is, while taunting Tress about her hair. And by Ulaam’s assessment, Hoid is the only person on the entire planet other than the dragon who could challenge her powers. She then hightails it outta there right quickly and easily when Restored Hoid shows up to do just that. What does this mean for her purpose in being on Lumar? Sadly, it appears to be no more than an epic scale of bullying.

That would fall under the RAFO category, IMHO, being as we have yet to see what tapping a chromiummind would be like!

Well, here's the thing. We all sort of agree (I think) that Daal's true goal - with or without the GBs involvement - was to wait for a moment when the Elendel government would be in a crisis deep enough to persuade the kandra to put the Bands into play, and then to demand alternating possession to avert war with the Malwish. So, how would he have known the "bombship" was going to be that crisis? One that would happen in the near future? He'd only just arrived to Elendel a little while earlier. The timing of it all is quite suspicious to me. For such a plan to work, it feels like he'd have to have an ally, or at least a tip, from a number of groups or people involved who might be in the know beforehand; who was it? Kelsier/The Sovereign and the Ghostbloods Kandra/"TenSoon" (on his own) Kandra/"TenSoon" (under direction of Harmony) Trell and the Set (but why?) Yet Another Secret To RAFO Adawathwyn seems like a likely ally, whatever her group alliance may have been. Or maybe she was just a fairly easily manipulated patsy. TenSoon actually being TenSoon seems legit, but could also be called into question - mainly because presumably only TenSoon would know how/where to get the Bands from storage. Furthermore, the fact that the Bands were drained didn't seem to surprise Daal. He wasn't furious, only sarcastic ("perhaps it is piety that makes them work, yah?"); his initial accusation that the Basinfolk had been using the Bands all this time seemed more perfunctory than genuine.

This is my #1 beef with TLM. Sure, confirming a second Shardic antagonist in the Cosmere was neat, and all the cosmere-wide, off-planet character cameos were fun, including the official, canonical introduction of "aethers" - as well as the strong suggestion that, taking place as it does between SA5 and SA6, Something Big Went Down On Roshar In SA5 that we don't yet know about at the time of TLM's publishing... ...but that latter angle isn't going to age well past the actual publication of SA5. Meanwhile, I'm left with feeling like the Era 2 cycle is missing a LOT of loose end tie-ups. Who created the Bands and how? What is the deal with Kelsier's eye spike and physical (?) presence, but no Allomancy? What are the Excisors and how do they work to create medallions? How do/did the Southerners have Metalborn? Heck, just how do those airships fly?! I guess the whole "Wonderful World of the Malwish Consortium" deep dive was always intended for Mistborn Era 3 (originally to be Era 2) and he didn't want to jog that too hard, as their Metallic Arts based tech is going to drive a lot of stuff in the future. I get it, but I'd say this is the first time I've felt as much (or more) frustrated as awed by the end of a Sanderson novel that ostensibly capped a series. EDIT: and this hot-off-the-presses (from Dec 2022) WoB says as much!

Since we know Sigzil ends up being (and then subsequently not being) the Dawnshard that Hoid had once been, I think whatever is So Very Bad about someone having a Nahel Bond becoming a Dawnshard is what happened to him... Perhaps that's what "ended" his oaths? Perhaps also transformed his spren into "Auxiliary"? He does seem to think about summoning Auxiliary as a sword in the past, not just having summoned "a (different) spren" as one, and even succesfully does so at one point. The one prior WoB in that collection (preceding the deliberate mention of Sigzil having at one point held, past tense, the same Dawnshard as Hoid, as of SP4) is far more ominous... Nobody... What? Nobody from Bridge Four has their tattoos any more? They all Stormlight healed them off as their Identity no longer includes those Ideals? That would make me quite sad.

I kept wondering if there was an analog for the movie Raising Arizona on Sel when I realized that who Codenames Are Stupid it was. Especially when she was addressed directly as "Kaise" shortly afterwards. LOL

I don't think it's supposed to be true, but it'd be entirely consistent with what we saw in Mistborn: Secret History with the koloss and nothing in the Era 2 books have contradicted it. By mentioning the koloss, I mean how Ghost Kelsier learns about hemalurgy: he sees koloss dying and appearing in the Cognitive Realm as humans again, including an obligator who had been a koloss overseer, who told him they were created with "spikes" before passing Beyond. If people twisted by hemalurgy still have an underlying human base of soul or identity, then why would the kandra not experience something similar? At least the First Generation, who had been born human and changed into kandra, versus subsequent ones born as mistwraiths? And, if Metalborn powers are associated with the soul, a Spiritweb component - would these restored-to-human compatriots of Rashek possibly have their Feruchemy restored as well? And if THAT were the case, then even if blocked by the mistwraith conversion performed during Rashek's Ascension, could their latent Feruchemical powers be spiked out with some extremely advanced knowledge of Hemalurgy? The catch there, of course, is that the koloss of the Final Empire were all twisted FROM human INTO koloss VIA hemalurgy, while the kandra were twisted FROM human INTO mistwraiths VIA the power of Preservation in a one-time act, into a "species that bred true" (which the FE koloss were not)... And then had their "sapience restored" via hemalurgy. So the parallel is not exact.

I am pretty sure this is something he grew/changed into. His overriding concern for his "legacy", his egomaniacal lust for power, his cold and calculated cruelty... Sounds like what Shallan's father Lin Davar devolved into, Yeah? Which has been hinted at being the influence of one of the Unmade, both by the mention of Shallan seeing that his eyes seemed to have a red glow at some point, plus this WoB:

I put that forth quite a few years ago, but specifically theorized that it'd need the First Generation of kandra to count as blocked Feruchemists - all subsequent generations of kandra having mistwraith origins, not human ones, as a race that "breeds true" unto itself and are not Metalborn by nature. But as we saw in Secret History, koloss who died appeared to Kelsier as humans again in the CR, so it stands to reason that perhaps there remained a spiritual component of Feruchemy in Haddek and the others remaining of the Firsts. Besides, where are the First and Second Generations of kandra in Era 2? MeLaan mentions that TenSoon and other Thirds are the oldest among them. Have they died of old age, committed suicide out of boredom, or did they fulfill some other purpose? I kind of would like to see a KanPaar redemption arc, LOL!

How would you force someone to tap the tinmind though? Even if you made an unsealed tinmind medallion with the "pain store" in it (like the coppermind coin that Wax gets from Hoid, but with tin, and instead of someone else's memory, you get someone else's pain), you'd still have to tap it... There's no mechanism in the Metallic Arts to "push out" a metalmind's store. And sure, if you thought the tinmind stored something else - or was just curious to see what it held - just one zip of pain and you'd be like, nah, no more of this.

That's what I would have assumed, without going back to re-read it to see if it was explicitly mentioned - that Wax had already been using, or prepared to use, the gun in battle. If indeed it was a continuity error in the writing, it's a very easy one to explain away! EDIT: Yes, I went back to re-read it and Wax tells Wayne they should switch opponents on the rooftop at the end of Chapter 62... After speedrunning their way up the building through the Set's people and talking the last resistance, the building's ordinary non-Set guards, into fleeing instead of fighting. Wax was using Vindication throughout that speedrun (along with the Steel Survivor and The Big Gun), so yeah it all checks out.

Harmony did not make Marsh immortal - we have multiple WoBs that he was doing the atium Compounding trick that Rashek had done to survive into Era 2. As for the Era 2 folks calling him "Death", that's never really explained outright, it's just something that happened over 350-ish years... I mean, they have the Words of Founding and therefore should know that "Ironeyes", aka "The Last Inquisitor", the guy with spikes in his eyes and all those Metalborn powers, is/was Marsh, Kelsier's brother, who is/was the Survivor. In fact we know that there is still a small group of people adhering to the religion of "Sliverism", a relic of the cult of The Lord Ruler (the Sliver of Infinity), that reveres him as exactly that - the last Inquisitor and thus the spiritual heir to the entire Steel Ministry. How does that become entwined with him being considered a psychopomp? Who can say? You'd think they'd know that Harmony, like Preservation before him, takes that role seriously Himself... But maybe not, because it's not like there are a lot of people who get to meet Harmony and then come back to tell about it. And hey, there is a WoB about that, too! Which basically amounts to a RAFO!

What else could it be other than lerasium? Perhaps trellium? With Autonomy's departure, ain't gonna be no more of that to be had on Scadrial, eh? Which apparently was a key component of Wax's technique to split harmonium. And it could still be atium. Since technically lerasium was never "lost", as it was not known at all to the people of TFE the way that atium was - you can't lose what you never knew existed, right? Not until Elend ingested the last bit in nearly 1,000 years without knowingly doing so... And as of the end of TLM, nobody alive on Scadrial knows that Wax's little experiment succeeded.

I think the very low probability chance Harmony was referring to was "the other option" - for Wayne to use his new powers to Push hard enough against metals on shore to keep the ship from hitting anything, to keep it in the middle of the ocean "treading water" while we "figure something else out". That would not only be difficult to do Allomantically, but also rely on "figuring something out" in that extra time that they didn't have a plan for already. It's not like they had a Plan B to go to, "if only we had more time", and maybe he could Push the ship away from shore long/hard enough to effectuate it; going that route, all they might end up with was the bombship detonating a half hour or so later than it would have originally, and Wayne being too exhausted to do his super-time-bubble Plan A.

I don’t think she could drain the Bands of all powers and metalmind stores with just a touch. As I’ve theorized in another thread (or two), I think she is at the center of what happend to the Bands, along with Daal the Malwish Ambassador - a switcheroo, a two-person job where Daal’s staredown was the distraction allowing her to do the swap of the Bands for a dummy one that of course was “drained”. Why would they be doing that together? Because they’re both reporting to Kelsier. She’s a Ghostblood and he’s from the Southern Continent, where The Sovereign had just been returning from, after laying the foundations for a plan for him to regain the Bands. Because Kelsier hasn’t been Mistborn all this time, and really misses having Metalborn powers, oh yes he does.

Yeah, that was one of the reasons for my original instinct rejecting those guys as being Skybreakers. "How would they be living undercover in Elendel as sleeper agents?" I was however allowing for the counter-points, that they could be flying on Dor not Stormlight, and could be similar refugees or escapees (...or agents?) from Roshar the way we see suggestions of a new Iriali presence, plus mention of something having happened on Roshar, and the MeLaan epilogue hinting at a large mass of "lost" Horneaters in Shadesmar. As for being noticeably Rosharan in height, looks, etc., the counter-point would be that nobody said they had to be Alethi Skybreakers?

No, he expected them to be drained in my conception - that he's in cahoots with Adawathwyn for swapping them out. He wouldn't be close enough to the box to do the switch. His dramatic staredown ultimatum and explicit threat of war was the distraction ploy (doesn't mean it wasn't sincere, too). Adawathwyn said she was a Ferring of a mental metal, that could be a lie and she's a Steelrunner trained by Kelsier to do very rapid sleight of hand? Oh, and why not just let Adawathwyn use the Bands, and then claim them per agreement? Well, Wax had already used it extensively, what if there was only one use left without compounding to refill it? Ultimately I think Kelsier will have them... "Again"... However they were created originally.

So here are the moving parts, in chronological order (sorry for the info dump and recap, skim read since I'm sure you're well familiar with everything in it): The Southerners esteem "The Sovereign" (Kelsier) as someone who came to them after the Catacendre to save them all from freezing to death. The Southerners laid claim to the Bands as something "The Sovereign" wielded or created while with them in the South At the end of BoM the Bands were entrusted to the kandra, in the presence of Jordis (Allik's captain). Jordis evidently recognized the kandra as something their Southern lore knew about - but we don't know what that was: Allik removed his translation medallion to launch into a "furious explanation" in their language MeLaan "cocked her head" (receiving transmission from Harmony?) and, as if on cue, flashed translucent Jordis then apparently accepted the Bands as being effectively "out of reach" for the Basin's everyday use. Six years later, Aradel had stepped down from being governor "two years back", replaced by Varlance. The varying nations of the Southern Continent have united in a Malwish Conferedation. Varlance has a Terriswoman for Vice Governor, Adawathwyn, who Wax thought "looked familiar" from the Village, but without recognizing. Varlance, a former military man with a cache of unexplained medals, seems very compliant to Adawathwyn. And then, in the several days' timespan of events in TLM, The Malwish Confederacy has sent a new ambassador to Elendel. An apparently imminent disaster causes the Elendel government to demand to use to Bands. A constable "Gorglen" is spotted by Steris and identified as a kandra because: MeLaan said there were multiple kandra among the constables Harmony had "promised help", which generally means sending a kandra, if not Wax and Friends "Gorglan" looked awkward with using a "two-legged body" He identifies himself as TenSoon. Adawathwyn is the one who suggests getting and using the Bands to Push the bombship away Daal immediately "stood up straight, his masked eyes fixated on Adawathwyn". "TenSoon" pauses to "check with Harmony" and then says, "I will fetch the Bands" He leaves and returns with a box containing a spearhead of many metals. Daal demands that the only way to avert war with the Malwish is to agree to alternating possession of the Bands: "We had dire need of this power to deal with our own problems, but couldn't use them; so, after you use them now, we get to use them". TenSoon had "this distant expression" in reaction to this demand, then accedes. TenSoon opened the box he'd brought back... And the Bands therein were "drained". Daal takes them anyway, saying "our scholars will know if you are trying to pass off some fake." Steris felt like everything Daal had said and done was somehow rehearsed, ... but how? TenSoon says, with the apparent Voice of Harmony, that "you agreed to this". Everybody starts leaving to room to evacuate themselves from Elendel, including Adawathwyn... ...but Steris convinces Varlance to stay and work with her to evacuate the unwary civilians of the city. Shortly afterward, TenSoon notes that with Daal and the senators having fled the city, "News is spreading"... Once again with that distant expression, "they took the Bands. I shouldn't have brought them out... I didn't know they had been drained. I feel we were played somehow. I don't do... human very well anymore." --- We never see TenSoon or Adawathwyn again in the book after Daal walks off with the Bands, except to learn that Varlance fired Adawathwyn as his Vice Governor after the crisis was over. My primary assumptions/gut feelings: The Bands were not drained by the kandra, nor by secret use of them by agents unknown. Daal was in Elendel - and present at this meeting - expecting the Bands to be "put into play", with the express purpose of demanding their "return" after its (attempted) use. And what we also know or can infer contextually from other events in TLM, Kelsier was on an airship some distance away from the Basin, flying over the ocean - sounds like he was just in the South, where he is the Sovereign. Kelsier is NOT a Fullborn nor even a Mistborn or Allomancer of any kind at the end of TLM. Either he created the Bands and then lost those powers, ... ...or he only had those powers to bequeath to the Southerners via the Bands, and then had to give them up. Kelsier is the head of the Ghostbloods, had a good idea that Autonomy and the Set were about to do something terrible, and doesn't trust Sazed to be able to act in Scadrial's best interests any more. And my thery to explain/tie this all together boils down to this: Adawathwyn is a Ghostblood agent, in cahoots with Daal with a plan crafted by Kelsier to engineer a crisis such that she could manipulate Varlance and the Basin senators to demand to use the Bands. They didn't know about the "bombship" threat, but simply the state of imminent civil war with the outer cities vs. Elendel would probably have been the original plan. Daal would be present at the high level meeting where this demand could be issued (note that she had tried her best to exclude Steris from this meeting), to demand the "alternating possession" arrangement. The "TenSoon" kandra may or may not be the real TenSoon - I am suspicious and disappointed if TenSoon has become so clumsy and "can't do human" any more after 350-ish years of mostly being a dog, but maybe it's true, he was also kind of stiff/unnatural as Brettin in AoL, but that could also have been just that he hadn't had a lot of time to prepare for the role (I mean, how and when did Brettin die in AoL?). Let's assume he really was "Gorglen" and actually talking to Harmony when he freezes and goes distant from time to time. He was the most likely one to be able to fetch the Bands from wherever the kandra kept them, after all. When TenSoon brings the box in and puts it on the table, Adawathwyn is eager to use them at once, Daal stands up stares down the governor (not Adawathwyn!), there is tension all around, all eyes are on Daal, the governor, and on TenSoon, who says "Harmony is preoccupied, but I'll agree if the humans do..." The perfect time for Adawathwyn to swap the real Bands for a fake one. Her getting fired after the Bombship Crisis mattered nothing at all to her. Daal walks off with the fake Bands, Adawathwyn with the real one. Does she give it to him later? Who knows. She probably just gives it to Kelsier. The point is that now the Basinfolk will not surprised to no longer have the Bands - they will believe they'd yielded them up legitimately. Kelsier may or may not have had a way to forestall the bombship without using the Bands - he may not have realized how big of a threat that bombship was. In any case, his plan was always to maneuver Daal into being able to leave with the (fake) Bands while Adawathwyn obtains the real ones, and that plan predated knowing about the bombship.

Let's also not forget that Shallan sees "a handful" of Horneaters at Lasting Integrity who were "apparently" part of "a clan of them who lived in Shadesmar"; she didn't say (or know) that that "handful" of people were the entire clan. One doesn't normally term a handful (five or fewer, technically) of people a "clan", The Mandalorean notwithstanding. Shallan's use of the word "apparently" indicates she was surprised to learn there was a clan of Horneaters living in Shadesmar full-time, but also that perhaps this handful was just a subset of them who happened to be in LI before the lockdown and for whatever reason, preferred to stay. In other words, if those "hundreds" of oddly red-haired and strangely dressed (to MeLaan) people were indeed Horneaters, they could just be that "Shadesmar clan" rather than refugees bespeaking of some kind of evacuation event at the Peaks in SA5. And if we do get the Rock novella "Horneater" before SA5 (the way we got "Dawnshard" before RoW), I'm thinking we'll see Rock exiled through the perpendicularity to join them (that's what Rock meant by "When we meet again, I suspect it shall not be in this world, this life") - he will start a new life in Shadesmar. Especially since he thanks Kal for saving him from the chasms and not to be sad that he now chooses to "live that life" (not to "give up my life as I see fit"). MeLaan thinks they are "lost" but who knows? Maybe they're just camping out en route to somewhere they think they need to be at in Shadesmar.

Even if he had fully loaded goldminds, given the extremely powerful blast, I think everything on that ship was basically vaporized. When Miles Hundredlives was seen to have blown himself up with a stick of dynamite to escape a net, it wasn’t nearly as powerful a blast - it just had to be powerful enough to break open a large enough hole in the netting for him to come out of it. That, plus I believe there has to be one body part that’s >50% of the original body to form the “root” of the healing, even if you’re tapping gold continuously as the damage is inflicted… One can’t tap a goldmind that’s already just little gold specks intermixed with a non-existent body.

I don’t think the Bands - the real Bands - were drained at all. I think that the kandra claiming to be TenSoon was not TenSoon, at least not the one that came back with the box with the so-called Bands of Mourning in them, already drained… The drained Bands were swapped in while the real ones were palmed. TenSoon’s erratic behavior, speaking… as if… forced… at every step… Not to mention being in human form… And immediately agreeing to Daal’s suggestion of “alternating uses of the Bands” with the Southerners… Very suspicious. That, or Harmony Himself wants the Bands to go South, where TenSoon didn’t, and had to be forced to do it? Combining that scene with the info that Kelsier had been on an airship over the ocean not long before - presumably meaning he had been in the South, where he’s The Sovereign - makes me put the chances that the Bands, in kandra hands, were somehow drained and now useless but Daal took them anyway, at exactly 0.00%.

Hmm. Now that you mention it, "Max" is like the PERFECT name for a Nicroburst, isn't it?

I believe Allik alluded to them already in BoM Ch. 21: If the Set, a ruthless group brimming with Metalborn powers that had just captured and tortured Allik's crew, were "just barbarians" relative to the Deniers of Masks, who were so dangerous that they were desperate to find the legendary Bands of Mourning to fight them... Egad!