robardin

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!

And yet, surely Wax had burned pewter while holding the Bands, so wouldn't he know (not wonder) what it feels like to burn it? Maybe not? It could also have been Harmony directly fueling Allomancy (as Vin had done with Elend) as part of his promise to Wayne to "do what I can" to make sure Wax survived the explosion.

I will give this book more re-reads before making any firm statements, but overall, your first impressions matched mine very closely. At first I was excited to see more Cosmere exposition and worldhoppers, but by the time the Skybreaker hint was dropped on Steris in Elendel, I was in full rebellion mode of "oh come on already". After re-reading the passage and thinking about it more I am coming around to the conclusion that yeah, I think they ARE supposed to be Skybreakers... But that just feeds in to the reason I had the "oh come on already" reaction, which is that first and foremost, I had wanted this book to wrap up an Era 2 story arc, not just plug a gap in the Cosmere timeline and drop hints about what "happened" in the in-world past on Roshar that is yet to be shown in SA5 (as of the writing). I mean, I'm all for that, but please hit the primary target, first! Because meanwhile, just in the Mistborn/Scadrial setting, TLM actually raised as many or more Big Questions than it closed/answered! What were Wax's blue flashes? Is he Mistborn, and if he is, how can he possibly be unaware of that after having held the Bands? Which are/aren't drained? No way that was really TenSoon in that room, right? Partially Physical Kelsier isn't even a Mistborn much less a Fullborn, so... Who made them or how? And if he was on an airship "twelve hours away" on that seon chat, had he just been to the Southern Continent? Holy crap, ... is Kelsier inhabiting a kandra and was HE the kandra claiming to be TenSoon who palmed/swapped the Bands for a dead fake? Weren't we going to learn about the Excisors -- or was that lab experiment with a non-fatal "excision" of Preservation's extra Investiture on a Scadrian supposed to be a Big Reveal?

Well, ingesting harmonium obviously cannot be the origin of Feruchemy, the way that eating lerasium was the origin of full Mistborn on Scadrial (not counting Rashek's unique opportunity to do a "binary edit" on himself while Ascended). Harmony didn't exist yet! And as has been discussed in similar threads on this forum, ingesting harmonium has another obvious problem: it explodes violently on contact with water. Which includes most of what a human body is made of, including blood, saliva, etc.

It is, I think, intentionally left a gray area. We had Wax earlier thinking the not-Wax he fought was a man with A-steel, A-duralumin, and A-pewter. We then see Wax and Wayne wondering how to reach the bombship in time, and then looking down at his corpse. We then see that Wax has a spike for duralumin (explaining how they reached the bombship, with DRAMATIC MISTCOAT REVEAL!), and that Wayne took the spike for A-steel to become a Coinshot as well. And then after all that, Harmony telling Wayne straight up that "Wax has pewter now, so as long as he burns the metals in those other vials I gave him [which must contain pewter, and apparently duralumin, and who knows what else - probably all non-lerasium metals], he should survive the blast". This, just after saying he "wasn't sure" if Wax had inhaled enough lerasium to have an effect (plus, he'd have to find and burn it, as Wayne similarly drank the red-X vial and didn't notice anything until Harmony reminded him). So one obvious answer is: Harmony is not sure Wax is a Mistborn now, but is 100% sure Wax can burn pewter thanks to the third and last spike from not-Wax, because why would they harvest just two out of his three spikes? The other obvious answer is: Harmony was lying - as we see him do repeatedly - about what he knows, isn't "sure" about, or what in fact happened to/with, lerasium, atium, and the explosion residue. And really, both could be true. Wax COULD "have pewter" from becoming micro-Mistborn, and ALSO have pewter from that third spike.

For all the reasons cited I am not particularly happy if the eight flying Ghostblood "sleeper agents" sent to help Steris in Elendel turn out to be Skybreakers... Them being Rosharan should stand out more (height, eyes, etc.), unless none of them are Alethi, flying with Surges should be obviously different from Steelpushing, where's the glow of Stormlight (or are they fueled differently?), etc. But it is true, the specific concern for legality (and none other) seemed like a "tell" for a Skybreaker, coupled with flying away. And there are a LOT of hints in TLM that something has happened on Roshar in SA5 to cause quite a stir. It's not safe to go there any more. The "fairy-like, golden-haired" people on the east side of Bilming are apparently Iriali, who brought chouta along with them (the chouta stand was also in Bilming, near where the Sentinel of Truth broadsheet offices were). We don't know if chouta had spread yet into Iri, but as of Words of Radiance it had only just started gaining ground in the Alethi war camps on the Shattered Plains, so who knows. After all, in Oathbringer, the restaurant in besieged Kholinar, where Shallan meets Hoid and learns about bringing food to the leaders of the Cult of Moments to gain entry into the palace, had a sign outside advertising chouta. So maybe it had just become popular all over Roshar. Or maybe there are also Herdazians in Bilming too, haha! (Though you obviously don't have to be Herdazian to sell chouta; that restaurant owner in Kholinar wasn't described as one.) If you think all those hundreds of strangely dressed, oddly red-haired people where MeLaan arrives in Shadesmar in her epilogue to TLM are Horneater refugees... ...and the fact that Kelsier had earlier authorized not just Moonlight and TwinSoul to use the "stores of purified Dor" but had added, "Authorize the other cells to access theirs as well, and pass the Command to them"... ...well, maybe it's not so unrealistic for eight refugee Skybreakers from Roshar, heretofore without their Surgebinding while adopting local identities in Elendel after joining the Ghostbloods, to show up and be able to fly without Stormlight glowing. In fact, once you go down that route of concluding these are Skybreakers, there is an obvious answer as to how the storms there could be EIGHT Skybreakers following Kelsier, while leaving Roshar (however that's achieved): They had sworn to Nalan for the Ideal of Dedication, something Nale himself had said had happened in Oathbringer while counseling Szeth not to do likewise, who would therefore have the authority/ability to transfer that allegiance to someone he saw fit for it. Like to Kelsier. Upon something happening on Roshar to cause quite a lot of exodus.