robardin

This is true, most atium burners we see fighting (as we never really see Yomen or Demoux "in action" when their opponent could burn bronze) could also burn copper, being either Mistborn or an Inquisitor. However my point still stands: learning to detect and identify specific allomantic pulses required months of practice for a skilled (and likely savant) Seeker like Marsh. So even assuming it was possible, I don't see how it'd be practical for an allomancer to have enough practice time being around someone they knew was burning atium to learn to detect it specifically, versus "this guys' burning something but I'm not sure what it is". I guess if you got really skilled at detecting EVERY known metal, like Marsh apparently was (able to detect and read pulse signatures for all the base metals), you could apply process of elimination; but at the end of the FE, that still might not carry over into being able to distinguish atium from other unknown-until-then metals like duralumin or electrum. And then in the end, yes, most likely the atium burner could simply burn copper to cover it up, except for hemalurgically enhanced Seekers like Vin was, as most Inquisitors were, or some super-strong Allomancer like Elend-grade or TLR being able to pierce ordinary copperclouds of Vin's time. Didn't Vin encounter a Mistborn in a fight who pretended to be a Coinshot Misting by hiding among their numbers and only burning steel until the moment was right to spring out and burn atium? That was interesting - maybe it suggests that a skilled Mistborn could burn copper in such a way as to selectively hide their pulses, allowing him to screen the burning of pewter or atium while still showing the burning of steel.

Um, sorry, I made that up as a reference to a nearly identical exchange about a different set of magical artifacts in The Bands of Mourning. I hoped the lack of a quote box of attribution was enough of a clue in case someone hadn't read that other work... Oops.

Well Scadrians (Scadrialites?), as explained in the Mistborn series, were full-on created ex nihilo with the united powers of Preservation and Ruin, "in the form of that which we'd seen before," with the conscious ability to "choose to preserve at times, but to ruin at others", with Preservation giving just a bit more of himself than Ruin did. That implies that alone of all people we know of so far in the Cosmere, they definitely are not descended from Yolen-ish stock (that place name itself being officially unmentioned as yet in any canonical work, if I'm not mistaken, only being mentioned in WoBs and unpublished works?).

"You've trained with all ten Surges?" Sigzil said to Szeth in amazement. "Yes. My people have long had nine of the ten Honorblades, until the Blade of Nin, who you call Nalan, disappeared. But even with the eight we have, all ten Surges can be used." "Amazing!" said Sigzil. "Can you hold more than two Surges at once, then?" Szeth boggled, so he continued. "Wield multiple Honorblades," Sigzil suggested. "Strap all the Honorblades to yourself, and gain all ten Surges, most of them doubled up." "I'm sorry, Worldsinger-nimi," Szeth eventually replied. "You are obviously very knowledgeable about this, and know things that none of us would ever think to try. How could we be so foolish as not to have even attempted to hold two Honorblades at the same time, or to see if merely touching all of them --" "Shut it," Sigzil growled. Then he cocked his head. "Do you... Feel a strange sense like we are echoing a conversation from another place and time?*" *Edited to add: because this whole thing is a parody/reference to a nearly identical exchange (but based on different magical items and systems) between two characters in another Cosmere work, The Bands of Mourning (from Mistborn Era 2)... Sorry if I confused people in the SA forum who haven't also read that work

If this is true, I hope it's from the POV of Maya after or in the process of fully "reviving". Or if the nature of her having been broken means she goes in and out of lucidity. Can you imagine Maya POV chapters reading like Charlie from "Flowers For Algernon"? Storms!

Hmm. Per my earlier comment, I also think she already knows that Vasher no longer carries Nightblood. But as for that being because Vasher was not, in fact, the criminal agent in question responsible for its transport to Roshar to begin with, and she knows this and maybe she's looking for him for help or something... I LIKE IT! As for who it is, then, can Nale leave Roshar, as a Herald isn't he sort of a super Cognitive Shadow tied to the Rosharan system? And the Nightwatcher strongly implies she can give Nightblood to Dalinar when he goes to seek his boon. ... Maybe a Ghostblood like Mraize or Iyatil? They do like collecting shiny Invested objects...

Yes, exactly what I was thinking as well. She's "hunting" or "pursuing" Vasher for the "crime" of "Transporting A Biochromatic Type IV Entity Across State Lines For Immortal Purposes". Given her own actions in Warbreaker, she may or may not identify with the "criminal" side of the ledger, depending on whose law it is Vasher broke in doing so, but she definitely wants to get a hold of Nightblood - that's her real target, the "weapon I'm chasing, a Shardblade that bleeds black smoke", as she put it to Kaladin. I think that would also strongly suggest she already knows that Vasher/Zahel doesn't have Nightblood in his possession any more, or she'd have tried to fish out his recent location from Kaladin and Adolin, which wouldn't have been very difficult. Instead, she continued on board the honospren ship to their CR stronghold of Lasting Integrity for "an exchange of information", about her "Shardblade" that had no dead spren and the whereabouts of Nightblood.

She also twice refers to Vasher as "a criminal" that she's "hunting", before clarifying somewhat that her "bounty" is a weapon (Nightblood) "and the one who brought it to your land". She doesn't call it a "bounty" herself, but doesn't correct Kaladin's use of the term, either. So we don't really know if her search is a personal mission, or one commissioned by a higher authority that she's reporting to or is contracted by. I found it interesting she didn't press harder on exactly where and when Kaladin had learned the same kata routine that he and Adolin shared with her, that she recognized as Vasher's. She just asked them to pass the word back to "the one who taught you that kata" that she was looking for him, rather than dig for something easy to reach like asking "so when and where did you guys learn these excercises?" to find Kaladin had learned it within a few months ago from a swordmaster ardent at at the Kholin warcamp.

It seems like there should be SOME kind of pulse, since Investiture is most certainly being accessed. But a Seeker wouldn't likely be educated enough to distinguish it, due to lack of exposure. We've only seen someone ingest and burn lerasium once, when Vin have it to Elend on the mist spirit's prompting, fortuitously using one of her vials of metal flakes in an alcohol suspension. She then realized with a shock that he had begun burning pewter, with A-bronze. So either burning the lerasium didn't generate a pulse, it did but not one she recognized and so unconsciously ignored as background noise, or (most likely) she simply hadn't been burning bronze until she was curious as to why Elend was recovering in the manner of a Pewterarm. Atium is a different story. It was in routine if rare use in the Final Empire. Several times we see Vin's POV burning atium preemptively, or later electrum as an anti-atium defense, out of fear an Inquisitor or Mistborn was already burning it. If they could keep from burning their own extremely rare atium held back until they knew the other Allomancer was burning it, that wouldn't have been necessary. So the plot suggests bronze detection of atium was at least difficult or unknown (at least to non Inquisitors), since training to detect it would require practice with someone else burning it.

If you're suggesting that Aesudan was originally a darkeyes who became a lighteyes by visiting the Nightwatcher, I think that's implausible. Someone marrying the heir to the King of Alethkar (she was already Elhokar's wife at Gavilar's deadly feast with the Parshendi) would certainly have to produce more of a family background check than "lookit my eyes are as light as yours" when there are ten dahn of lighteyes in Alethi society, with a very wide base of low-ranking lighteyes. The WoB confirming that there have been people who visited the Nightwatcher to get their eye color changed is most likely simply confirming the obvious idea that, in a Vorinist society that elevates lighteyes above darkeyes in almost every social and business realm, someone darkeyed would eventually pay the NW price to switch over, as that's much easier than winning a Shardblade. What would dissuade them is the curse. If his side comment of "good question" is supposed to suggest that this has been done by a character we've seen in the narrative, while also leaving the door open for the change actually going the other way than the obvious one, it gets very intriguing. But we may be reading far more into that angle than it warrants. (May.) But sure, I'll play along with that, why not? We'd have to think of people who have exhibited some evidence of a "curse", who may act out of sync with their cohort group (a lighteyes who acts darkeyed, or a darkeyes who acts lighteyed), and whose comments or POVs (if any) don't explicitly go into a boon from the Nightwatcher (e.g., we already know what Dalinar and Taravangian got). Two obvious candidates to start with, who else is there? Narrative encountered lighteyes who may have started as darkeyes/be cursed Graves: He's unusually sympathetic to darkeyes equality, has a darkeyed wife and half-eyed heir despite being a full Shardbearer of the fourth dahn. He could have gotten his Shards from the NW, which would count as his boon "turning him into a lighteyes" after he bonded the Blade. Counterargument: So what was his curse? It could have been something hidden, like Dalinar's curse, that we never got to see. Narrative encountered darkeyes who may have started as lighteyes/be cursed Lirin: Unusually disregarding of eye color, he has been commented on several times by Roshone as inappropriately carrying himself as equal to a lighteyes (granted, this is Roshone we're talking about, but still). He passed this on to Kaladin, who also has a lighteyes-sounding name, and we have a WoB that his wife Hesina (Kaladin's mother) had partial lighteyes parentage. As a darkeyes of the second nahn he has the right of travel, so his background story given in TWoK Ch 10 about how his forebears had "bought their way" up the nahn ladder could be falsified as having happened before coming to Hearthstone to be the surgeon. Counterargument: Why would a lighteyes do this? If a darkeyes of the second nahn can be a respected surgeon, surely a "tenner" lighteyes could do just as well? Was there some reason he could not marry Hesina as a lighteyes? And what would be his curse?

Not sure if that applies to Spook, but the point is still relevant that there wasn't any Metalborn with more than one ability to steal that would warrant wasting an ultrarare metal to spike for "all" of their abilities. Just hold on to it. The only really good use of a lerasium spike after the Catacendre would be if they got a hold of a Full Feruchemist.

I think it's definitely the most plausible in-world conclusion - that the chart is rooted in Spook's research with Ghost Kelsier, who had Ascended and knew a lot more about a lot of things than he had as a mortal. He admitted he "hadn't focused" on the mechanics of hemalurgy (Ruin's magic) or "he'd have it all figured out", but "knew enough to be dangerous", and one of the parts of "knew enough" would likely be all the effects of "lerasium", the god-metal of the very Shard he had held. I doubt the physical metal was available to them to test, and if they did come across an actual bead of lerasium, wouldn't they have used it to make more Mistborn rather than making a spike out of it to steal "all abilities" from someone in a world where Spook was the only full Mistborn and there were no living full Feruchemists?

Burn some cadmium, it'll help

To Moash, as he's confronting Kaladin with Graves: "You owe Kaladin EVERYTHING. How can you do this, Moash?" That's exactly ten words. Ten. One per heartbeat as he summons his Shardblade, the one that Kaladin gifted to him. Ten heartbeats to revive the form of a dead spren, an embodiment of oaths as dead as his own loyalty. Ten words he's saying to himself as well, in a corner of his mind. Let him hear them spoken aloud, in open accusation, in recrimination. Could he still do it? Would he? Will he? Narratively, I suppose he must. But let him walk into Damnation with spheres lighting the way.

I don't think Rock was even proto-Radiant as far back as when they challenged Sadeas; whatever is special about him that makes him able to see Syl all the time, I don't think it has to do with Surgebinding or using Stormlight (or he wouldn't have needed to be close to Kaladin to heal from his wounds in the attack on Bridge Four that lost the Honorblade). But yes, I agree that whatever Rock was/is hiding from Bridge Four, it has to do with the nature and the circumstance of their challenge to Sadeas. He said that he came down from the Peaks with his nuatoma to make the challenge as his cook, where his nuatoma was his cousin ("My nuatoma would not come down to the lowlands without his own cook!"), which I find suspicious. But the retinue was more than just Rock and his nuatoma and the other two "who raised weapons in vengeance" (if in fact, Rock himself was not the nuatoma, or some other role that was even more senior). As Rock related while milking the knobweed in The Way of Kings, "Some were made soldiers, others serve in his household. I fixed him one meal and he sent me to bridge crews." So it stands to reason there are, or were, Rock's clansmen still in Sadeas' household or army, after he was sent to Bridge Four.

In Oathbringer, we see Rock's immediate family - his wife and children - arriving at the Shattered Plains from the Horneater Peaks, in response to letters he sent them after entering Dalinar's service with Bridge Four. But he originally came to the Shattered Plains with others of his clan, including his brothers, to challenge Sadeas for his Shardplate, with him and all their retinue (minus the brothers that Sadeas dishonorably killed, according to Rock's account) becoming the property of Sadeas in forfeit. For his creative use of chull dung, he was sent to be a bridgeman. But the rest of his clansmen are still with Sadeas' camp, now under Ialai's control, right? Earlier, Ialai had asked Elkohar to name Amaram as a regent highprince of Sadeas as the Torol's heir, his nephew (never named or seen), "is too young", while Highmarshal Amaram was one of the highest ranking and most respected figures in their princedom's forces. Which he did. After Amaram and the forces of Sadeas "go Odium", with Amaram himself actually bonding an Unmade, we are only told that "Ialai left Urithiru in disgrace" as Shallan prepares for her imminent wedding. I suppose Ialai could say (possibly even truthfully) that she and the rest of House Sadeas had no part in planning Amaram's treachery at Thaylen Fields, as the penalty for that kind of treason should be more severe than that. So that means Torol's nephew is now highprince, with no regent, right? Or does Jasnah's becoming the ruler of Alethkar set up a precedent for Ialai to simply name herself as the regent? And with a large part of their princedom's army gone(?), what's left to them?

I think we can rule Rock out as a Radiant (so far) because he was hurt pretty badly enough when the Diagram attacked Urithiru and stole Jezrien's Honorblade from Bridge Four that he had to be carried to the Oathgate to Thaylen Fields, but once he went through and Kaladin was nearby, he immediately began to draw Stormlight and healed up. That sounds pretty squire-y to me. It's hard to imagine anyone intentionally suppressing Stormlight healing in a mortal situation - it would probably even be an unconscious thing. When we see him glowing while or after using the Shardbow he's presumably glowing with Stormlight, but as Kaladin thought to himself, that's not enough to explain how he was able to draw it. There's definitely something more, and it's almost certainly related to the "lies" he told Bridge Four about himself and his past, but it's not Radiancy. (My guess, as mentioned elsewhere, is that he is actually the leader of his clan, and now that he's a Full Shardbearer, can claim to be some kind of Horneater High King.)

I put this in another thread somewhere, but I think that (a) Odium is only able to do his splintering thing with the aid of another Shard, presumably Autonomy from what we've seen so far in the Cosmere (and I'm not the first to put that idea forward), and that (b) this scepter is somehow a conduit or token of that "power boost". He uses the word "we" when reacting with shock to Dalinar's (temporary) Ascension to Honor ("No! We killed you!"), and perhaps even more tellingly, there's a WoB where Brandon describes Odium setting off on his Splintering Tour starting with Devotion and Dominion on Sel primarily because he located them the easiest, and that his real "top of the list" target was Ambition, who took more hunting down: He was afraid that this Shard that would rival him. And so he's like "This one is number one on the hit list. We're taking down Ambition." Obviously Brandon is phrasing this from Odium's POV, so the question is, who is or are the other parties in the plural "we" that Odium refers to? He doesn't use the "royal we" in speaking to Dalinar, Taravangian, or to any of his Fused minions, so it seems unlikely he'd suddenly use that very formal mode of speech when surprised, or in what appears to be an internal POV comment. All Shards started out exactly equal in power, and Vin as Preservation had to pay a cost of her own destruction as a Vessel to do the same to Ati as Ruin, so it stands to reason that for Odium to go a-hunting for Shards expecting to survive, he has an edge. Represented in that scepter!

Right-o! -- it just occurred to me while reading this one, is all

"We're" taking down Ambition? And he exclaims, "No! We killed you!" when Dalinar Ascends? Who's this "we"? Is that Odium using the Royal We? But he never does that when talking to Taravangian later, or to Dalinar earlier, or when addressing his Fused minions at Thaylen Fields. It feels like Autonomy is giving Odium a boost to be able to splinter other Shards, as all of them are naturally exactly equal in raw power to each other, no? And for Vin as Preservation to destroy Ati as Ruin, the price tag came with her own destruction as a Vessel as well. Maybe that scepter he's always waving around represents that boost. As to why Autonomy would do such a thing: perhaps the ultimate fulfillment of "Autonomy" as an Intent would be to free all people from divine (Shardic) control or influence, leaving only Splinters like AonDor on Sel or the Stormfather on Roshar. So he/she's leveraging Odium as a tool of destruction, with some longer term plan for suppressing or eliminating him when he's done with his hatchet jobs.

True, and my sketching out of what a "Partial Radiant" effect might be like is, in some sense, also "obvious".

I voted #1, that I wanted Adolin to bond a revived Mayalaran spren, but that's not 100% the same as wanting him to be a full Knight Radiant/Edgedancer. I think it'd be more interesting if reviving and bonding the Spren of a Broken Oath had some other implications, that he wouldn't become a "full" or "normal" Radiant, but something else. That way, like the not-dead Renarin, or the "pruned Dalinar", he'd be a hugely impactful "something else" that neither the Diagram nor the "consensus forecast" Odium Futurevision predicted. (Or us readers!) My personal prediction, if it goes that route: no Surgebinding, but he gains use of Stormlight (there are hints he healed, though not fully, to be able to walk so soon after a wall fell on him and seemingly shattered his legs, before Renarin healed him soon afterwards), "spren alerts" like when Maya managed to give him warning about the thunderclast, and low latency (<10s) but non-instant Shardblade summoning. Use of Maya as an Oathgate key. And who knows... Maybe even the ability to "advance" to gaining Shardplate, as he's kind of giotten a sidestep into the "Third Ideal" level with a partially bonded living Shardblade. However, I'd find an Edgedancer Adolin and a storyline of "so dead spren CAN be revived!" satisfactory, also - just a tad predictable. I'd prefer it over a storyline of "well what we see at the end of Oathbringer is as revived as Maya ever gets, she's just a talking sword to a never-Radiant Adolin", which has only the benefit of not being the predictable storyline, while having all the drawbacks of being extremely uninteresting (while leaving room for Sanderson to MAKE it interesting, of course).

And as I said, I don't interpret Wax as having had the Bands when he inspected the statue. Basically, until I'm proven wrong, I'm putting forth the theory that the "aluminum belt" on the statue of the Sovereign at his temple was not just a decorative belt, but an aluminummind (the only other thing it could reasonably be that's "special"), and that Wax simply hasn't thought about that yet because he's had a lot of other stuff to deal with. I admit he COULD have inspected the aluminum belt for a feruchemical store with the Bands. I just don't think he did, and I don't think he thought enough about it to realize he might need to do so. I also think the text supports that, as he doesn't really have enough time to do it while in possession of the Bands. You'd have to be inferring all this investigation of the belt before giving the Bands to MeLaan as off-screen activity that was deeper than a simple, normal, everyday-Wax-type inspection of a metal object (visual, scientific, and Steelsight) meriting a casual POV thought from him that results in "Eh, not another Bands of Mourning, and it holds no kind of charge".

Well we'll just have to disagree. Sazed was a Full Feruchemist; I don't think Wax, as a Ferring for iron (Skimmer), could sense a metalmind that wasn't an ironmind. The way I understand it, it's not true that a "feruchemist can sense a metalmind having a charge even if they can't use it themselves" - it has to be a sense for the power that is inaccessible due to the Identity keying, whereas a Ferring wouldn't sense anything in any other metal than "theirs" any more than a non-feruchemist would. But neither is made clear in the text, as far as I know; if there's a WoB about this, I'd be interested to read it.

One reason could be thematic to the order of the Radiant, if that is the right word to use. For example, both Shallan and Jasnah have Transformation in the form of Soulcasting, but Jasnah is far more attuned to using it offensively, while Shallan seems to use it most naturally to make her illusions more real, to put little pieces of herself into them, like mini-splinters. Or in her inspirational sketches, which sometimes have the power to Transform a person into a more idealized version of themselves. So it could be that while Illumination for a Lightweaver is about weaving illusions, for a Truthwatcher it would somehow relate to "illuminating" in the sense of uncovering, rather than covering up or changing, the nature of something. Which is why the Odium-corrupted version of Glys imparts a vision of the future, "which is of the enemy". Perhaps the ordinary version of a Truthwatcher's illumination is similar - they see scenes played out before their eyes - but of the past or present instead of the future, or revealing disguises or subterfuge.