robardin

I was thinking about this while posting about Lifeless in another thread recently: shouldn't there be a Command that revives the newly deceased, in more or less the same way as Regrowth works in Stormlight Archives? In which case, it'd be an Awakener's equivalent of creating a Returned, except without adding any Divine Breath (splinter of Endowment), just using a heck of a lot of Breath to pull back the soul into the Physical body that still "remembers" it. They just haven't discovered the Command to do so yet. (They also may not have known about the Surge of Regrowth from their earlier visit to Roshar.) By extension, then, could Breath be used to heal the living, rather than to reanimate or to ressurrect the dead? It seems like it should be doable with the right Command, like Commanding the body to resync itself with its Spiritual image. If you're old enough to remember CRT computer screens, it'd be like hitting the "degauss" button on one of those suckers. Awakening a still-living creature is supposed to be impossible, and I could see why, but perhaps Awakeners could heal themselves in this way, but they just haven't discovered it yet? And, if a Divine Breath can in fact heal another person, could the same effect be done with ordinary Breath, just more of it? (Is there any WoB about the unique abilities of a Divine Breath, versus its simply being equivalent to 2000 Breaths in some way such that it grants the Fifth Heightening all on its own, plus wordless Command of its use?)

Maybe if you used more Breath or a different Command, on top of some hemalurgy? After all, it took some research to come up with the maximally efficient Command to create a Lifeless with a single Breath; prior to that, it used to require fifty Breaths to make one. We see Vasher use a somewhat complex Command to make a Lifeless squirrel, and presumably that was the one-breath version ("Awaken to my Breath, serve my needs, live at my Command and my word..."). So if a 50x improvement could be gained with the right Command, perhaps it stands to reason that a far more "restorative" Command could be created, albeit one with perhaps an exponentially higher cost of Breath. Or with the aid of a hemalurgic crutch. Here's another thought: a Returned is a person sent back to live again in the Physical Realm just as they would pass into the Beyond, with a fragment of Endowment that is a single Divine Breath equivalent to the Fifth Heightening. So perhaps, a very powerful Awakener with a lot of Breath could "Return" someone who'd just died, like performing the Surge of Regrowth would do (without the effect of giving a Divine Breath), by forming the right Command, one like "live again"... At a cost of, say, enough Breath to reach the Fifth Heightening (2,000 Breaths)? And maybe the most efficient Command would be one that doesn't bind the person to "live at my Command" but simply "live as you were"?

There are a few WoBs that he let slip (based on subsequent RAFOs and refusing to elaborate further) that indicate the dagger used to kill Jezrien was somehow specially constructed for that purpose, with suspicion resting on the fact that the gemstone in the pommel was a sapphire, the stone that matches his attributes as a Herald in the Ten Essences. Is the sapphire in the white-gold blade specifically for Jezrien? - Uh, yes. Vyre's knife that killed Jezrien, did it have to be a sapphire...? - RAFO Do the gems swap out, or are there different weapons [for different Heralds]? - RAFO So however it was made, it feels to me like it is Herald-killing specific (needs a gemstone, possibly a specific match for the Herald) and not a general At-Least-Partly-Cognitive-Shadow-killing type of instrument.

Interesting theory! We haven't seen any bendalloy feruchemy in use in the books yet, so we have no in-world confirmation, though. The Coppermind entry simply contains Khriss' notes from the Ars Arcanum, and who knows how much of modern food science or biology she knows are attached to terms like "calories" and "nutrition"? But the more direct observational comments are more valid: While filling a bendalloymind, a Subsumer is able to eat large quantities of food without becoming full. Tapping such a metalmind will allow the user to go without food. Personally, I would think that means the feruchemist must first digest (metabolize) the food in order to store its energy into the metalmind, except that right at the point when the metabolized energy would go into the bloodstream, it instead goes into the metalmind. That means eating a donut is not going to "store a feruchemical donut" into the bendalloymind that would give a sugar rush when tapped. Does that mean that what you call the "harmful effects" of eating a donut are paid at the time of the normal biological extraction of "nutrition" from the food (through digestion)? Well, not if you're lactose intolerant and it's a creme-filled donut or something, right? But probably, all the sugar being converted into energy could get shunted into the metalmind without the "rush", and then drawn out later more slowly. I think what is meant by "nutrition" being stored in the metalmind would be things like vitamins? Otherwise you'd need way too many metalminds. As long as you eat a reasonably balanced and nutritious diet while filling the metalminds, you'd have the same while tapping them. Heh, this would probably be a question out of left field for Brandon at a signing sometime: if you filled bendalloyminds while eating only bread and water, then tried to survive on nothing but the metalminds in a locked cell somewhere, would you get scurvy since none of the source food/drink contained Vitamic C?

Is it ever specified (in the books or a WoB) where the "center" of a time bubble is? I had pictured it as a kind of dome with Wayne or Marasi in the center, but I realized the other day that that would make the center of the bubble (assuming it's a sphere of effect) on a center axis at feet level. But other Allomantic effects that project from the Allomancer, like Steelpushing, radiate out from the Allomancer's center of gravity. Since being only partially inside a bubble does weird things to things in motion, this would mean the minimum size for a time shifting bubble is different depending on the answer. If Wayne wanted to make a minimal speed bubble, around just himself and as little else as possible, the radius of a sphere centered on his COG would have to be approximately half his height, to avoid leaving some part of his body outside of it. But an Allomantic dome centered around his feet would have to have a radius of his entire height, so as not to leave his HEAD outside of the bubble! Writing that, I guess I answered my own question, it's got to be centered on one's COG to make sense, right? (And to tie in with Allomantic iron/steel?) Meanwhile, have we seen either Wayne or Marasi use their time bubble in an offensive way, rather than defensive (to cause bullets to change paths)? It seems like an excellent thing to use against someone in hand to hand fighting, to flare a speed bubble that partially intersects the other person, causing them to stumble or worse. In the case of a Steelrunner tapping speed, being partially caught in a flared cadmium bubble (that would cancel out their speed) might even cause limbs to dislocate, right? Or if you made a bubble that trisected a person, so they had their head and feet in motion outside the bubble, and the middle of their body inside the bubble?

I always wonder what she pays him with. I suppose they could be in a relationship together, the bonds of love and all that, but it doesn't quite feel that way when we see them together in MB: Secret History... And I assume the prosaic answer is that they're both operating out of Silverlight these days, which is in the Cognitive Realm, where spheres of Stormlight and other portable forms of Investiture are the coin of the realm. And that's what she uses to pay him. But I like to think she pays him in knowledge, like the circus leader in "Big Fish". "Every month you work for me, I'll tell you one thing you really want to know."

Well, only "slightly" different. I assume we'll learn more as SA continues. My theory is that the Ten Surges granted by the Honorblades were then imitated by the spren on Roshar while granting them to bonded humans, and that humans sought this out or were otherwise predisposed to it because they were used to using very similar Surges via a different mechanism. Whatever they did on Ashyn with Surges maybe didn't need a spren bond, but on Roshar they do? In the chapter heading quote in Words of Radiance, Ch. 41, it quotes the in-world WoR (ch. 2, page 4, LOL) that he "understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws." Actually the timing of all this get interesting, and only makes sense if the "Surges" the humans used to take over Roshar from the Dawnsingers were not the same as the Ten Surges we see now from spren bonding on Roshar, because the chronology would seem to be: Roshar exists, even before the Shattering of Adonalsium, populated by spren and Dawnsingers, who are "forbidden to touch Surges" Humans arrive to Roshar, after destroying their former home "with Surges", are granted refuge in Shin Humans wield Surges to aggressively take over more/most of Roshar The Dawnsingers resist, and end up hooking up with Odium for Voidlight and Fused to fight back against humans and their Surges Humans hook up with Honor, ten of who become Heralds with Honorblades, and form the Oathpact The cycles of Desolations begin, linked to the Oathpact After at least a few Desolations, ten of the "higher spren" on Roshar mimic the Honorblades, grant the same ten Surges to men, and forming physical Shards Ishar imposes "precepts and laws" on them, forming the ten Orders of Knights Radiant, each with Ideals required to gain Surgebinding or to "level up" Something about the nature of Surgebinding (that Jasnah knows) triggered the Recreance, the en masse forswearing of Ideals and yielding of Surgebinding by all but the Skybreakers 9 is a number of Odium, I can't leave it there. When the Recreance happened, Honor was already dying. According to the Stormfather's account, instead of "supporting that generation of knights" to hold fast despite learning whatever that secret was (as he apparently had done in the past), he "raved, speaking of the Dawnshards, ancient weapons used to destroy the Tranquiline Halls". So the Dawnshards are related to non-Roshar-spren-bonding Surgebinding, similar to what the Honorblades do, but connected to whatever Surges were used to "destroy" Ashyn. Also interesting is that apparently, through mentions of an unpublished/planned work The Silence Divine and some tidbits from Khriss' field notes in Arcanum Unbounded, Ashyn is a planet not completely destroyed as people still live there, and now described as having disease-based magic. That's not very "Surgelike" at all. Or is it? Is that the effect of a Shard "leaving" Ashyn for Roshar or Braize? Or is this tied to Brandon's comment about how "the plague" spreading out from the Purelake is simply the common cold, brought to Roshar by sloppy worldhoppers, but it's triggering panic because "people on Roshar normally have greater health than elsewhere in the cosmere because they are more invested (stormlight and all)"?

I agree with this concept of Cosmere magical mechanics; I'd only quibble about calling "General Cosmere healing magic via Shard-filtered access to the underlying Spiritual power" as "the Surge of Regrowth" because to me, the whole point of having the term Surge is to refer to the Ten Surges on Roshar. Yes, we have WoBs (at least) that highstorms and spren existed prior to Honor and Cultivation arriving to Roshar, and it seems gemheart-based bonding for chasmfiends or listener forms did as well. But I think humans forming higher level bonds, involving conscious choices and ideals that linked with more abstract spren, is what enables Surgebinding. That mechanism seems strongly implied to have required Honor. Though it's valid that Ashyn being in the same system as Roshar and Braize, could mean human Surgebinders were already doing that before coming to Roshar. But then where are the spren on Ashyn? Hard to say since we've not had any POVs there, only mention by Khriss in AU and a few WoBs, right?

I guess it depends on what you mean by what the "Surges" are. "The Surge of Gravitation" can be said to be one of the "fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe" in that gravity exists everywhere in the Cosmere. But the "Surge of Gravitation" in the magical sense, that Windrunners and Skybreakers use to fly via so-called Lashings, as "Surgebinders" who have command of that Surge, is what I'm talking about, "Surges" the way the Eila Stele talks about the humans who came "using dangerous powers of spren and Surges". In other words, (a) "Surgebinding" is specifically using magic that requires a spren bond to manipuate "the forces of nature", and (b) In no context other than "Surgebinding" is the term "Surge" properly used, other than "Surgebinding". Per my terminology, other magic systems that do similar things, such as (say) tapping feruchemical gold to heal in a similar manner to the Surge of Regrowth, would not be a case of "an Allomantic way of accessing the Surge of Regrowth." Why? Because there are exactly Ten Surges, two per Surgebinder type, and there are many more ways of expressing magic that we've seen in the Cosmere.

Ashyn being "close enough" to Roshar to share Surgebinding magic, at least in the past, is possible; we haven't seen anything "on screen" about Ashyn yet, and they are in the same system with Braize (Damnation) and Roshar. But the Surges that we've seen are not manifest across the Cosmere, only on Roshar, because it necessarily involves a Nahel bond with a spren, which in turn now only exist on Roshar, as I read this WoB: That's not to say a Surgebinder who traveled away from Roshar couldn't use the magic, if they had Stormlight or a means to "translate" a local Investiture the right way; but one would not become a Surgebinder without bonding a spren of Honor or Cultivation, we have not seen these "spren" except on Roshar, and we have another WoB that these spren would have a very tough time leaving Roshar ("There is a connection between spren and Roshar that normally prevents spren, even dead ones, from leaving the planet.") We do see Hoid the worldhopper bonding one at the end of Oathbringer, but exactly what that means for his leaving Roshar with a spren bond is still an open question.

How could they have been the same "surges" as on Roshar, though? I thought the manifestation of the Ten Surges, and the association with the bonding of specific spren, was a result of the interplay of Shards present on Roshar, and with the spren found (only) there. Yes the humans destroyed (or broke) Ashyn with some kind of magic, implied to be something involving the Dawnshards, but if that is also something related to Surgebinding, we don't know yet.

Yeah, my assumption is that they were not unmanned drones being given commands remotely via cytonic transmissions that Spensa and her dad (and presumably, were she not blind, her grandmother) could tap into. And probably other descendants of the Defiant engineering crews who genetically have "the defect". What they were instead, then, is something to discover in the next few books. The "jailkeeper" pilots that Spensa encountered when she flew out of the debris layer seemed quite terrified of a physical encounter, yet they only said that "[being face to face with a human pilot] is a job for an unmanned drone", instead of something like "OMG get one of those Kerplotchians* in one of their black fighter ships out here, now!" (*Of course I made that up.) It would be interesting if it turned out the "Kerplotchians" were humans, brainwashed or not. We don't know what the official decree was from the "victorious coalition of aliens" with regards with what to do with defeated humankind, other than they were not genocidal, yet exclusionary: "too brutal, too uncivilized, and too aggressive to be allowed to be part of the intergalactic community. They demanded that all human fleets... surrender to their authority." The independent fleet of the Defiant had fled rather than surrender to this collective judgment, but were "cornered" - upon which the engineering crew, led by Spensa's great-grandmother, defied orders and crashed on Detritus instead of wherever or whatever else the official orders had been. So there could well be humans still out there, and in the years that have passed since then, who have been "rehabilitated" into working with the Intergalactic Community. I don't think they'd need to be cytonic humans, or aliens, to be fighter pilots any more than anybody else in the DDF, as the aliens clearly have non-biological cytonic transmission technology to control the drones. The "hateful eyes" that Spensa senses when opening herself up to "hyperspace" (that term isn't actually used in the book, is it?) seem both sentient and hostile and are likely a component or a driver of the alien coalition arrayed against humankind, though.

I don't know that "resisting Odium" is a real driver for the spren to want to bond humans (again). They're seemingly linked, but maybe cause and effect are reversed. If the words on the Elia Stele are to be taken at face value, Surgebinding came with the humans to Roshar ("They came from another world, using powers that we have been forbidden to touch. Dangerous powers of spren and Surges"), from wherever it was they were before (Ashyn?). Yet the spren bonds that grant Surgebinding on Roshar now cannot leave Roshar's CR except with some loophole that Brandon has yet to depict. So it would seem that humans began bonding with spren, and gaining Surges, pretty much immediately upon arriving on Roshar, thus gaining a significant advantage over the Dawnsingers in subsequent fighting. It's also been told that Roshar went through several cycles of Desolations, with humanity led by the ten Honorblade-wielding Heralds against the Unmade and Odium's Fused-led armies of singers and Thunderclasts, before Honor was surprised to find that the spren had learned to imitate the Honorblades. So that must mean reaching higher Ideals and forming physical Shardblades, not just granting Surgebinding, which is doable with just the First Ideal, or even less (since Kaladin was unwittingly Surgebinding in The Way of Kings even before he heard the actual Immortal Words from Teft). Then of course we have Malata's ashspren and all the Skybreaker highspren who are "just fine" with their bonded human serving Odium's purposes. Spren definitely "want to" form a bond with a Physical mind, and humans are much easier to do this with than singers/listeners. Though that "forbidden to touch" phrasing on the Eila Stele is curious, given that Venli has now bonded a spren. Who or what exactly forbade it, and how was it enforced (until now)?

This is worth emphasizing. In light of what we eventually learned is what Really Happened with Spensa's father at the Battle of Alta, what Ironsides did - and the DDF as a whole, really - in its aftermath is actually quite restrained and compassionate. First, consider that the whole "Chaser, the coward of Alta" storyline, as painful and ruinous to his family as it inevitably was, was still a much better storyline than "Chaser, the traitor and murderer of Alta". Next, consider that the whole prejudice against "the defect" in the original engineering crew has been there for generations, across most of the clans. Imagine if, directly after the battle of Alta, it got out that Chaser, one of their most heroic pilots, openly talked about feeling compelled to act in response to "hearing the stars", which soon included turning on his own flightmates. There could well have been an enormous backlash, very likely a murderous pogrom, against not just his immediate family, but anybody known or suspected to have this "defect". To prevent this, the DDF has worked to suppress this knowledge. Note that retrieving the holo recording with the original events and communications logs clearly isn't particularly difficult for anyone with access to the DDF archives. And Jorgen's reaction while comforting Spensa after she viewed it showed that what really happened with Chaser was not news to him, as the child of two very First Citizens. The "Coward of Alta" story is meant for the general population of Igneous: DDF leadership, and likely NAL leaders, have always known the truth. Yet they couldn't really say that Chaser was KIA by the Krell. Too many other pilots saw what happened for that to be plausible; moreover, it would be disrespectful to the memories of the two flightmates that he killed (callsigns: Rally and Antique) to include their traitorous murderer in the same category as them, of "martyr to the cause." So creating this story of a pilot who didn't come back because "he turned coward and had to be put down as an example" is pretty much the only other option, one that elevates killed pilots and their families without including Chaser in that number, while also not inciting unreasonable and very likely violent prejudice. Now that they have much better insight as to what the "defect" actually is, and how Chaser had had his visual field "overwritten", things can maybe start anew... If they can now detect who has abilities like Spensa and her father and grandmother, thanks to the brainwave monitoring they'd done on her during cadet training, I'd expect that to be significant in the next few books. By the way, I don't think the "overwriting of vision" had to do with Spensa's cytonic ability. I think it's something they would do to any human who ventured beyond the debris field. They should probably start digging like (scud) for more craft like M-Bot hidden away on Detritus, or similar technology, especially if they can now see what the shielding consists of. That shielding is probably the most important tech the Defiants could get their hands on right now. Consider that there is a shielding effect from the "debris" orbiting overhead, such that Spensa could only "hear the stars" well when the gap in the debris lined up all the way. Perhaps in addition to scavenging acclivity rings all this time, they could also have been scavenging the metal shields needed to break out, if only they knew how to identify it. And maybe that was the true reason the Krell were going to mega-lifebomb them this time, after the last Really Big Scavenger Prize was taken, because they knew that particular piece of debris had something even more dangerous than a large number of acclivity rings for harvesting.

Consider what we saw about Hallendren's code of justice in the very first pages: they were likely going to hang Vasher for simply striking a priest from the Court of Gods in a tavern brawl, where the other participants (who'd had "better sense than that") would only spend a night locked up. For someone who spearheaded and advanced a plot like Bluefingers', there really can't be any doubt as to the sentence. I suppose a betongued Susebron ruling over a Court of Gods depleted of its highest ranking priests would have the power to overrule things, but why would he, all things considered? Unless BF's got some kind of redemption arc in his future? (Which would be a "writerly" reason that would need some justification in-world, IMHO) I'd be more worried about the knock-on effects of the plot on any innocent, uninvolved Pahn Kahl citizens, which has to be the majority of them, suffering from an inevitable "collective punishment" type of thing. Especially if they'd worked for the government in some capacity, albeit outside the Court of Gods.

The difficulty would not just be in "attracting" a different spren, or even a second spren of the same type (why not? - if hemalurgy can "stack" boost Allomantic power, you'd think the same would be true of boosting Surgebinding with stacked Nahel bonds for the same power). It'd be that a Nahel bond links a spren to "cracks" in a person's soul, where increasing the bond with advancing Ideals results in a tighter mesh (like an epoxy bonding level). If a spren bond has already formed, the person's "soul cracks" would already filled with spren-epoxy that can get tighter, but still fills the same gaps, right? So where is Spren #2 going to find purchase? I would think that in order to bond two live spren, either the Surgebinder would have to bind both at the same time; or to get seriously spirit-cracked in a new way that the first spren hasn't filled in (and for the mechanics of the Nahel bond to be along the lines of "the bond fills in cracks at Stage 0 and then deepens the adhesion with each Ideal", where the first spren bond wouldn't "seep over" to cover the newer cracks). In Shallan's case, I think (think?) her "split personalities" are manifestations of the same original spiritual cracks that Pattern is filling, the "intentionally lying to and about herself" cracks that kind of define a Lightweaver (or at least, defines her as a Lightweaver). I don't think "Veil" could become a Dustbringer separate from "Shallan" or "Radiant" the Lightweaver, because they are in fact still the same soul.

True, Ruin couldn't touch anything with his power off Scadrial - not even on Scadrial, not while imprisoned by Leras' perfidious little trap. But I think it's possible he still could know of events going on. For example, we have WoBs that Odium is scared of Harmony the Double Shard. He's been "trapped" in the Rosharan system since before Harmony Ascended, right? Yet he knows of a major event like that.

No, the guard attacking Spook was not being "controlled" by Ruin, at least not in the same way as a kandra, koloss, or Inquisitor would count as being under his direct control. Ruin was, at best, whispering in an advisory role to someone "spiritually cracked" enough to hear him, which we have no evidence of most people being who aren't spiked or insane. And even if that guard was somehow "hearing' Ruin like Vin's mother did, it's still clearly enough for Ruin to know what's going on and to want it to be an act of hemalurgy for it to be one, even when the physical agent doesn't know. I find it more interesting to question if that would apply to another non-agent human with knowledge of hemalurgy as well, or only to Ruin as the source of hemalurgy.

Yeah, that's basically what I mean. In my scenario, it wouldn't matter if Shashara herself had no understanding or concept of hemalurgy - if she'd stabbed someone in the heart with a steel sword as part of Awakening Nightblood, it could still have involved hemalurgy as long as Ruin would have wanted it to be so. And oh yes, I'm sure Ruin would have loved to have Nightblood turn out exactly as he did. But your WoB that nobody died in the creation of Nightblood seems to put the kibosh on that idea. Unless it's one of those "non-fatal acts of hemalurgy" he's also mentioned as possible... Or that whatever, or whoever, the steel sword pierced at that critical time, was alive enough to count as hemalurgy, but not to count as "killing" when spiked - like a spren, a scenario which another WoB has hinted at will be "gotten around to".

Darn, the second bit does kill my theory, doesn't it? On the first point, though, I think "intent" must be allowed to include "someone else's intent (other than the physical agent of the creation of the spike)", otherwise how does one explain Spook's spike for A-pewter in Urteau? Or for that matter, Vin's mother killing her Seeker baby sister to make an A-bronze earring for Vin - she couldn't have known about hemalurgy. In the case of Vin's mother she was getting "whispered to" by Ruin, but I doubt that whispering consisted of a primer on hemalurgy, more like twisting her around to commit the deed. I've always thought that those two spikes indicated that "Ruin knew what was going on and wanted it to happen" counted as "intent for hemalurgy". The more interesting question is if that "someone else's intent" only works for Ruin, or if anybody who knew about hemalurgy and manipulated someone else into stabbing an Allomancer (or other magic user) through the heart with a piece of metal to that end would end up with a spike.

There are different levels of "accidental". You can certainly do it without personally knowing what hemalurgy is. Consider Spook getting spiked for pewter in Urteau. A guard killed a Pewterarm by stabbing him through the heart with a steel sword, a sword that then ran him through entirely and pierced Spook in the arm, and then snapped off. That length of steel that pierced and killed the Pewterarm hemalurgically transferred A-pewter to Spook. Did that first guard know anything about hemalurgy? No. Nor was that guard spiked himself, or crazy in the head and hearing voices. But Ruin "wanted it to happen", and set up the parameters for it to happen, and that was enough. So in the case of Nightblood, perhaps simply being able to watch the events from afar (being imprisoned as he was in the Well) and rooting for it to happen counted for intent.

We have a few hints about the creation of Nightblood, and the comment that it was a fairly unique convergence of conditions not known or intended by its creator that would be difficult to replicate. One thing that's unusual about Nightblood is that it "contain's Ruin's investiture". So how can Nightblood contain Ruin's investiture without being composed of atium? Simple: he's a hemalurgic spike. But how is that possible? To be a hemalurgic spike, he'd have to be created with Intent, and furthermore, a hemalurgic spike steals from A and staples onto B - who's the A, and where's the B? Here's my thinking: Hemalurgy works anywhere in the Cosmere, as Ruin's power is "everywhere" at the Spiritual level. It requires intent, the right metal for the spike, and the right placement of the spikes in the donor A and the target B. Before being Awakened, Nightblood was simply made of steel (per Warbreaker itself, ch. 53, cited in the Coppermind wiki). Now imagine Shashara, a leading figure in the Manywar, going about creating the first Awakened sword, a Shardblade equivalent. She amasses thousands upon thousands of Breaths from her followers, as Vahr did, but drawing upon a whole country. Breath retains a bit of the identity of the donor: Vahr's large stash collected from his rebel followers gave him a sense of resolve stemming from their common cause. She then either takes a dark turn, or acquiesces to a dark suggestion from someone else, to do a standard symbolic gesture when making a sword of war: quenching it in the blood of an enemy. Hemalurgically, steel steals human physical ability (it's what goes toward making a koloss). She takes that newly forged steel blade, and stabs it through the heart of a living person. Ta-da, inadvertent hemalurgy! She draws it forth and Invests it with thousands of Breath to Awaken it with the Command, DESTROY EVIL. The effect of hemalurgy seeks for a Spiritweb to attach onto, but it finds only Breath. But, lots and lots of Breath. Lots and lots of Breath with a common cause: GATHER INVESTITURE. Perhaps enough to form a kind of "Spirtweb canvas" for the hemalurgy to staple onto the sword itself? ...With a bit of extra Endowment? What do you think?

I don't think simply invoking "ruin as a concept" while doing powerful magic in another magic system would draw on Ruin's power. I think I have a new theory about Nightblood, though, and Ruin is certainly involved. I'll start my own thread about it

I was just thinking of that particular pairing this morning on the way to work. Like if the Beggar met Veil in a city alleyway and got into some kind of conflict, so they go around the corner and come back as Shaizan and Radiant who'd be more prepared for a head-on physical confrontation. They are each puzzled to see the other but proceed to have in a tense face-off, testing each other out in a non-lethal fist fight (no Shards, but holding Stormlight) before both withdrawing in some confusion. And then much later, "Shai" meets "Shallan" in a formal introduction "for the first time".

I've been pondering how someone in Era 2 could re-create Vin's "horseshoe trick" to travel long distances, which involved both Pulling and Pushing. Either Wax gets spiked for A-iron (and then could compound F-Iron, as a bonus), or heck, why not harness together a Coinshot and Lurcher to pull it off, as if they were operating separate legs on a speed skater robot? It'd just be practice and coordination to get it down, right? Now that you bring up the idea of a "Metalympics", that'd be one event I'd pay to watch: tandem paired "two-legged races". When the Set sent the two Allomancers with Miles that were code-named "Push" and "Pull", I was sure they would coordinate to do something like that, but no, Pull just got shot with a gun and then Push got ceramic-tip-shrapneled by Wax.