robardin

It's not his status as a Cognitive Shadow that's somewhat unique, but the fact that he had Ascended to Preservation, alibeit not as fully as he would have done had he still been alive and had an attachment to the Physical Realm when it happened. As described in Mistborn: Secret History, after he released the Shard to let Vin take the power, Ruin bore down on him with his "full fury", and yet he didn't die/pass into the Beyond, because Ruin was immediately, shall we say, distracted by the problem of dealing with a fully living Vessel of Preservation in Vin.

I'd be curious to see Sliverism of Era 2 fleshed out a bit more. It is evidently the continued veneration of The Lord Ruler (who styled himself as the "Sliver of Infinity"), as propagated by Yomen's descendants, where Yomen himself is called "The Last Obligator" by VenDell, and where the religion also continues to venerate Marsh as the Last Inquisitor. Given how Harmony literally remade the world and dropped two volumes of Holy Writ at the same time that document his human origin as a Terrisman steward of the Final Empire, clinging to a veneration of The Lord Ruler must be quite the feat of doctrinal reconciliation. Basically, "The Lord Ruler PLANNED for all of that to happen! -- And look, Harmony himself says that Rashek planned very well for that day (to fight Ruin), that he had Ascended, had ultimately had good intentions, and was responsible for saving mankind, since without the storage caverns, Harmony would have Ascended to become God of a planet with nobody living on it!" (Them not having learned about the Southern Hemisphere yet, after all.)

Nice WoB addressing my exact point. We saw the train and the stagecoach lurch when Marasi used a time bubble while in traveling inside of it, so I figured a person in motion on their own power would present a simlar effect. Still... "Living thing", eh? What about Lifeless? Or a spren in the Physical Realm? I guess it's not likely ever to be explored in a Mistborn story, but hey, we can theorize.

First of all, thank you for "raising" a question instead of "begging" it. That misuse of the phrase "begging the question" has become so common that it's likely become the standard meaning now, but still, I thank you for your contributing to a noble, if losing, cause. Second, I don't think atium tracks on the spiritual level, even though atium grants foresight as directly fueled from Ruin, and even though the way Cosmere magic flows is largely through the Spiritual realm. What it grants comes from the Spiritual, but what it is used for in the Physical Realm is still physical. Recall when Vin kills Shan Elariel, she turns off her dwindling reserve of atium early to feign running out of it, drawing Shan in for what she assumed would be a killing blow; then, she turned it back on, causing Shan to pause in confusion as her atium shadows reappeared. Then, Vin used that last few moments of atium foresight to see the path of arrows in flight around them, and then to seize one at just the right place/time (with flared pewter, no doubt) to ram it into Shan's chest. An arrow wouldn't have a "soul" to track (and a "representative bead in Shadesmar" shouldn't count).

Kelsier's self-justified motivations are altruistic - "I will bring down the Final Empire, headed by the Lord Ruler who created and maintains a nobility who abuse and oppress most of humanity as skaa" - but a lot of his actions are rather egotistic. And the hypocrisy that Vin calls him out on, of "hating and killing nobles indiscriminately when he himself is half-noble, was raised passing for noble, and dresses and lives in comfort like a nobleman", goes even deeper. He set himself up as a messianic figure of "The Survivor" and "Lord of the Mists" to inspire a skaa rebellion in the North. OK, that was a self-sacrificing trump card, and he literally put his life on the line to make it happen. But how much of that was truly necessary to get a new religion going, and how much of that was about himself? Remember, that was always his backup plan, in case the "eleventh metal" didn't help him defeat TLR in person in some way, as he'd hoped it might. ("If you're reading this, then I failed to figure out how to use it when I faced the Lord Ruler.") So what was his "Plan A", had the eleventh metal been some kind of Kill Move for defeating TLR? Draw TLR out for a one-on-one showdown in public with me. Burn the eleventh metal. Down goes Rashek! DOWN GOES RASHEK! ... I hope? YES!!!.... OK, now what? NO??? ... He kills me dramatically in public view, but then OreSeur poses as me, tada, new religion! It's a little chilling to realize that his "Plan A" was likely to be something along the lines of taking over from The Lord Ruler as a figure of worship and domination. This is partly revealed by Vin's unspoken parting comment to him in Secret History. "How much was about you?" But even more revealing is the fact that instead of moving Beyond, he insisted on finding a way to return to the Physical Realm... To go South to set himself up as a very Lord Ruler-like figure of worship driven by his bequeathed use of the Metallic Arts. And just look at how the Southerners treat Metalborn in this framework! They have to create new honorifics every time they speak to one of them - that implies that non-Metalborn basically never talk to Metalborn except in rare and likely formal circumstances! So never mind "hating nobles when you really are one yourself", he dedicated himself to eliminating The Lord Ruler who set up a ruling structure based on power, domination, and Allomancy that centered around worshiping himself as a god, and then went about doing almost the exact same thing, with himself at the center.

Thanks for the update from the signing, I look forward to reading the "official" notes in the Arcanum! But... What? "Warriors of Fire?" What fire??!

There are a number of clues about the coppermind coin's origin or purpose. 1 - It doesn't seem ancient, i.e., Kelsier didn't create it (directly) hundreds of years ago. That, or it's been kept somewhere very well in all that time. 2 - It has "symbols similar to the ones in the pictures ReLuur took (of the temple of the Bands)" - presumably, writing from the South 3 - Wax assumed it was a "relic ReLuur found at the temple", but that can't be true, because... 4 - Devlin, the "informant" at the party, tells him that "coins like these have been moving with some regularity through black-market antiquities auctions", and that "[Lord] Gave bought a few, then immediately stopped, and the pieces he purchased are no longer on display in his home." 5 - Devlin also states that "whatever is being covered up... involves a massive building project to the northeast of here" by a group he apparently knows about to some degree (the Set). But the Set can't be the source of the coins if they're from the Temple, because they hadn't been there yet; nor had they discovered the use of the "unsealed medallions" technology yet from their Southern captives. So are the "coins like these" he mentions circulating unsealed medallions of unknown purpose that simply haven't been useful because nobody handling them knew what they might be? (Devlin, BTW, sounds an awful like like Mraize from the Stormlight Archive, doesn't he? Maybe not a physical match, but perhaps a... Compatriot?) Why would Kelsier store that particular memory of his arriving to the South, anyway? When we see Sazed storing into his copperminds in Era 1, he loses the memory he stores, needing to create an index of memories to retrieve it later while he still "remembers remembering" what was put into it. That memory in the coin doesn't seem like something Kelsier himself would need to archive as a "keep this safe for later" memory, unless a side effect of living for so long is having to offload memories that no longer fit in one's head. In fact, we have a WoB that "Kelsier did not want that information to get out", what was on that coppermind coin. So why ever make an unsealed version of it, then, instead of a keyed coppermind that only he could retrieve? Or was it meant only for "priestly use" by his followers at the Temple? After all, the coppermind coin was thrown to Wax by Hoid, nothing says it has the same provenance as the ones that had been circulating in New Seran courtesy of the Set's operations. Maybe compounding copper allows one to store memories into a coppermind without forgetting, and Kelsier-as-The-Sovereign created them as "holy relics" (a bit disturbing to see him going Lord Ruler all on his own) for his Southern priests as an origin story of sorts, but never intended for it to spread to the North. After which, copies were made.

And it's a sedan, right? How to draw Aon FourDor?

That is basically the core theme of his confessional in-world work, Oathbringer. I wonder if Moash is being set up to hear this read somehow, and be inspired to "take back his pain" from Odium in some way. I mean, why did Dalinar feel the need to write this so strongly? He feels "the other light" while he writes it. I'm thinking it's Cultivation inspiring him, pruning him further if you will, to spread the word about the true nature of resisting Odium: reclaiming one's pain, one's faults, from the "Void" that he represents.

And if Brandon Sanderson ever calls you out on it, say: I will use your proper name if you insist. But every man I've ever called by his proper name has betrayed me. A few men I've called by a nickname still have my trust to this day. I use one more reverently than the other. Sandman.

I have a "shaggy dog Dad story" for you all. It is a story about Gaz. After Kaladin's stunt with the disastrous side-carry maneuver he taught to Bridge Four, Gaz was temporarily elated to be free of his "debt" to Lamaril, who had been executed as the lowest-level lighteyes in charge of the bridgemen. He had already felt guilty for being bullied into mistreating the bridgemen so much; could he find a way to salve his conscience, now that he was free of the burden of blackmail? Unfortunately for him, Brightlord Matal and his wife Hashal took over. Lamaril had been a lighteyes of rather low rank, eigth dahn, while Gaz' new bosses were both of the seventh dahn: someone viewed as a more senior officer, now pressed into the not-insigificant task of bringing the disturbingly inspirational crew of Bridge Four back to ground without making anybody a martyr. They had originally been eighth dahn themselves too, but had worked their way up by impressing Sadeas with their political wrangling and ruthlessness, gaining this appointment. Hashal usurped all of Gaz' actual duties as a sergeant, directly assigning work and alloting people into Bridge Four herself. As for Gaz, she had him doing menial household services for her like a butler: work usually relegated to darkeyes of the seventh or even eighth nahn. Not ninth or tenth nahn or parshman level menial, true, like scrubbing the floors or emptying chamber pots, but still below his station as being of the sixth nahn. But he dared not complain, lest even worse happen to him (like ending up a bridgeman in Bridge Four himself). Being newly elevated lighteyes of the seventh dahn who were eager to continue the climb upward, they would periodically throw parties, with only people of the sixth and seventh dahn invited. (Well, and also the fourth and fifth dahn, but those snooty folks never even bothered to reply.) They didn't limit their invitee list to just Sadeas' camp, either: they were very willing to network with lighteyes from other camps, because at their level, it was possible to get "traded" to another highprince's service at a higher rank, if it were recommended by a senior enough person. Of course, everybody was playing the same game at these parties, and threw their own parties of a like kind, where everybody dressed and acted to impress just how important they were, and how much more important they deserved to be and were going to be, and soon! One of Gaz' new duties was to operate a cloak room for their guests, who were often even more condescending and demanding to Gaz than their hosts were. As bad as it was to be sixth nahn but to frequently get treated as eighth nahn by his bosses, it was even worse to have rank-obsessed visiting lighteyes assume he was eighth nahn to start with, and then to treat him as barely deserving of even that. They would hand their cloaks to Gaz with comments like: "This is real whitespine tusk in the buttons, darkborn! It's worth more than your nahn, if you break or lose one off of it!" One evening, a lighteyes Gaz had never seen before arrived, evidently hailing from a particularly distant warcamp, as his riding jacket was covered in road dust. It was of a fine material and cut that Gaz had never seen. As the man handed it over to Gaz at the entrance, he said imperiously, "You, darkborn! Can you get this jacket cleaned for me by the time we adjourn? That means when it's time for me to leave." Gaz was angered by the veiled insult, but was also too cowed to say anything other than, "Of course, Brightlord, it will be done," even as a small voice in the back of his head shouted, you fool! He gave you a chance to say no! What will you do now? Don't you remember what he said...? Remember? Remember what? What who said? "Very well," said the lighteyes. "I will be leaving in three hours. I expect this jacket to be spotless!" Gaz was busy for the next half hour taking other people's travel garments, after which he went around to the household staff to see who could clean the jacket. But they were all busy servicing the party. After an hour of unsuccessful wheedling and pleading, he realized he might have to try to clean the jacket himself. How hard can it be? It's just dust. First, Gaz shook the jacket as hard as he could, getting a cloud of loose dust off of it, much of it landing on himself. He then went to the closet and selected a small, hand-held brush, normally used to clean shoes. He rinsed the brush in a bucket of water, shook it, then lightly combed the surface of the jacket, soaking up surface dust in slow, easy strokes, dipping it into the water again periodically. This isn't so bad, thought Gaz. I can do this! This took him about half an hour, after which he hung the jacket up to dry in the breezy night air - just in time for Big Shot Lighteyes From Another Camp to come out. "Ho there! Darkborn! Where is my jacket?" Gaz handed the jacket over apprehensively. The lighteyes held the jacket up and examined both sides of it closely before putting it on. "Not a bad job, dark one. You are to be commended!" he said, tossing a clearchip at Gaz' feet. Furious at having to stoop for the insultingly small amount, yet also not willing to pass it up, Gaz bowed to the lighteyes, but waited until he'd turned to leave to bend over to fetch the sphere. As he rose with the chip and turned to go back into the main room, however, with his head still down, he collided with a lighteyed woman who had come out to get her cloak to leave. Gaz stumbled back, apologizing, but it was too late. A large, Gaz-shaped patch of gray dust now covered the front of the woman's black dress. Right at the rockbuds. "HASHAL!! MATAL!!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR SERVING MAN JUST DID?!!" she screamed. A man quickly came into the room, apparently her husband, who was not to be outdone in righteous fury. "You've made a grave mistake, darkborn! I'll have you made ninth, no, tenth nahn for this! I'll see you branded! You'll be licking a parshman's boot! No, a bridgeman! You'll be front and center, running at the --" Gaz didn't wait to hear any more. He ran out into the night, into the waste towards the Frostlands where nobody would pursue him - if he could survive, that is. But anything, anything was better than ending up in Bridge Four. And as he ran, he finally remembered the words he'd heard from that odd white-haired lighteyes who drifted about the camp, the one they called Wit, who had clapped him on the back one day and said something to him before running off giggling, words that had made no sense at all, until now. Don't brush anyone who's peers with Matal! Even the smallest grit can drain a nahn!

Why did Moash cross to the other side? -- To get to the other chicken!

Yeah, I seem to recall an early WoB that hemalurgy was how TLR pulled off his most spectacular effects, when it seems like it was really compounding plus being beyond a first degree lerasium Allomancer in strength due to having Ascended. So at one point he imagined hemalurgy being a component of TLR's portfolio, which thus made him open to hearing Ruin for a thousand years, which would drive even Vin to do bad things eventually.

So Hoid is "unimpressed" with the Ghostbloods, eh? Seems like a put-down, but then again, what IS he impressed with? Let's see, I remember him being impressed by Dalinar's passion in quoting The Way of Kings about the true meaning of the right to rule. Just before telling him that "our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me." When else?

Ah, I see. Got it, spike herself for F-atium, eh? But if she'd taken the power of Ascension, couldn't she have rewritten her sDNA to be a Fullborn just like Rashek had done, just for the "other half" of being Fullborn?

"Would have had to make herself immortal with Hemalurgy to make that work right?" I didn't remember TLR needing hemalurgy for his immortality trick, which was a matter of compounding atium, wasn't it?

Well, that's hardly "special knowledge" that the priests would have to effectuate "how it's done". That's what intrigues me, based on what was saw (or didn't see) the priests do in terms of instructing Susebron on "how it's done" with Siri. Of course, it's been around 100 years since the last time a God King fathered another God King, maybe longer, so maybe the priests have "special knowledge" but were holding it reserve only in case Susebron and Siri didn't seem to get things working naturally?

Here's another very basic question on this topic, with apparently conflicting answers: we know that male Returned can father children (we haven't any mention of a female Returned bearing one), and that the Royal House of Idris are descended from Vo, the First Returned. Vo died seven days after he Returned, but in that week, he had the Five Visions of Austrism, and also married and fathered a child (though the Royal House of Idris, devout followers of Austre, seems to have forgotten this, remarkably). So, is the child of a Returned father also a Returned? Or a mortal? You would think that Vo's wife going on to establish the Royal House of Idris, with the Returned-related Royal Locks associated with those in line to be a true heir, means that the answer is "mortal". But, we have it from canonized annotations to Warbreaker, chapter 44, that a God King is ideally supposed to father his own heir: So it has happened for a God King to be the physical, conceived heir to the previous God King: at least once for them "to know how it is done". Yet Susebron is only the fifth God King in the approximately 300 years since the Manywar, and was not the conceived heir of the fourth God King. And only after 50 years of his tenure has an infant Returned occurred again, signaling the time for a changeover. But the God King of Hallendren must himself be a God, i.e., a Returned, right? They wouldn't have a mortal human holding Peacegiver's Treasure for 50+ years, who would be at much greater risk of dying before an infant Returned happened? Eh, on second thought, a human holding the Treasure would easily surpass the Fifth Heightening needed for agelessness, so that would be no more risky a situation than having a Returned heir holding it. It'd be more a matter of how the entire Court is built to scale around the larger physical dimensions of a Returned, and how it would kind of stand out if the God King were of ordinary non-godly human stature, eh? Not what the religion is based around. The logical conclusion is that Vo's "trick" to father a child resulted in a mortal with a fragment of unpassable (?) Divine Breath, as evidenced by the Royal Locks, but that the "trick" known or used by the Hallendren priests that "doesn't always work" is a different one that results in an infant Returned being conceived. And maybe that's the "doesn't always work" part of it: the priests have to realize that conception has happened in exactly the one week window necessary (whenever that is) to start feeding Breath to the unborn child, which is not easy. Personally, I hope that's not it. Firstly, from an IRL standpoint, getting into the "what is the boundary point for sentient life after fertilized egg conception" question is a nuclear zone I'd think Brandon would keep well away from even in a fantasy setting. Secondly, there's a much more basic explanation for "it doesn't always work" at hand: given what they told Susebron about the, um, mechanics of fathering an heir on his new wife Siri (absolutely nada, zilchorama, bupkis), their "trick" may not involve physical coupling at all, while the version that resulted in the Royal House of Idris did. On the other hand, Brandon specifically wrote about "how it is done", not "how it could be done", which would more suggest there being multiple ways for a Returned to father children.

When the Stormfather states that there can only ever be three Bondsmiths, bonded to himself and his two siblings, Dalinar guesses "...Cultivation?" as one of the other two, and the Stormfather just laughs. So, no. A Shard cannot be bonded to in a nahel bond, as a Shard is way, way beyond being a simple spren; basically, bonding a Shard is to Ascend to become its Vessel.

No, they specifically said Tyn had not been admitted to the Ghostbloods while outlining some things Veil would have to do to be admitted herself, otherwise her killing of Tyn would have been grounds for a fatal reprisal. Interesting point about the how the GBs would act to balance the scales if Team Dalinar gained a clear advantage. Yet they don't know or see everything, otherwise wouldn't they have acted to aid Team Dalinar in some way at Thaylen Fields? Since if Dalnar had indeed become Odium's Champion, I think it would have been Game Over for the Radiants. Where did Mraize say that, by the way? I am having trouble finding the passage in Oathbringer. I did, however, note that it was Mraize who lured Ash with a portrait of her by the Oilsworn master, and then telling her where Taln could be found, in effect sending her to Dalinar's camp at Thaylen Fields. So maybe they are working to bolster the losing side for now.

Ah, right. I was speculating that Shallan would have some pull in trying to get the Ghostbloods to even the ledger on Jasnah by claiming chits on her behalf. I haven't seen evidence that the Ghostbloods have tried to turn Shallan against Jasnah, where was that? Shallan has rebelled against Jasnah's strictures, sure, and suggested that maybe her "wardship" under her could be considered over now that she was a "Full Radiant" (To which Jasnah replied, "where's your armor?"), but that's just her being a normal young adult coming into some power and self-confidence. Not a "I'm gonna keeeelll you" level of "turning against". We really don't know what Ghostbloods Jasnah killed or why. However, I don't think Jasnah did so unknowingly, as if she'd offed some obstructive type people, only to discover that one of the side effects of doing so was enraging some secret society against her she had never heard of before. She knows about the Ghostbloods and that they're out to get her at Kharbranth even before she meets Shallan. Having seen how Jasnah operates, I'd assume it was the reverse order of events, that she discovered something about the Ghostbloods first, and consequently decided This must stop/not happen, so I will make it stop/not happen. So the way I see it, the primary reason the Ghostbloods would have to continue to try to kill Jasnah now would be to fulfill a kind of blood vendetta, for her having killed "a number of our members" - the True Desolation has happened, despite Jasnah's attempts to head it off. Jasnah's goals may no longer be in opposition to the Ghostbloods' any more, though that's hard to say for sure since we don't know what the GBs' goals are... So I was wondering if the "blood vendetta" of the GBs against Jasnah could be offset by "exceptional service to the GBs" on Shallan's part. So, would Shallan want to do that? I think so, she admires Jasnah and I think would definitely act to save or preserve her life.

Well yes, their immediate short-term goal on Roshar is to draw out the battle to "gain the most from it", but I would infer from the statement that they "have a greater purpose" that that purpose is greater than merely the accumulation of power. They want to extend the Desolation to bring out as many pieces onto the board so they can swipe some of them, but ultimately they have plans to use those pieces for something that we don't know yet. That's not why they tried to kill Jasnah, though; their stated reason to Shallan was that they had moved to do so "after she, in turn, had assassinated a number of our members." And that ledger obviously hasn't changed, unless she's gone and killed yet more Ghostbloods.

I wonder what their attitude towards Jasnah is now that she's resurfaced. They probably know she survived Tyn's assassination attempt with Stormlight healing and Elsecalling, she's already displayed her ability to summon a Shardblade, and at the battle of Thaylen Fields, openly used Soulcasting as a weapon and it would seem, semi-openly summoned Shardplate. In short, they may not have known she was a Surgebinder before, but they must now know she's an Elsecaller of at least the Third if not Fourth Ideal. As well as Queen of Alethkar. Will that end the Ghostbloods' attempts on her life? Or will they step up their game somehow? She "killed several of their number", and they are "protective of each other", so that vendetta must be hard for them to set aside. Would Shallan being admitted as a Ghostblood and her attachment to Jasnah change the equation? Could Shallan demand they pull back on the Jasnah front in exchange for some kind of exceptional service that on top of what she's already done must outweigh the debt of a Soulcaster, like following through on subverting Sja-anat?

What do they want? Why, the same as anybody else: that which they cannot have. But they do have some kind of goal, as Mraize says to Shallan when she first admits to killing Tyn to get in with the Ghostbloods, "We are not like others you may have known. We have a greater purpose, and we are ... protective of one another." And then later when they reach Urithiru, "You don't know who we are. You don't know what we're trying to accomplish." They're not just a worldhopping Mafia outfit. And I wouldn't be so sure about them being Roshar-centric, given the eclectic collection of Invested objects on display in a random meeting house in the Alethi war camps (probably not their HQ), and Mraize casually walking around with an Aviar on his shoulder while reporting to a babsk who was born in Silverlight and who has origins in the Southern Continent of Scadrial. Even if Mraize is himself Thaylen.

Here's one possible objection: I don't think you could Awaken an object to fly that couldn't already fly. A certain amount of self-propelling is evidently allowed in an Awakened object, such as Vasher's command to the little straw man to "fetch keys", to the scarf to kill Vahr ("strangle things"), and later Commands we see to "become as my arms"; or in the likely example of Awakening we see in Oathbringer mentioned by @MountainKing. But that's converting or acquiring the energy for propulsion from a resting state, as if thrown or moved by a person, not "flying" where flight was physically not possible before. I wouldn't think you could Command an anvil to "float above this X except to fall on a coyote" (except maybe on the world Lunituun, where the Shard of Hilarity has settled). A crane-like apparatus that was essentially a glider minus the engine, which was Commanded to "flap like a bird and take me where I must go" or something, that is intriguing. But it'd have to be something that WOULD fly well enough bearing a passenger, if only no-added-weight flapping was enough, and I'm not sure that's something that exists? Maybe it does?