robardin

The other interesting aspect of using an identity-free metalmind is that one has to know, or suspect, that that's what it is first. When Wayne was first handed Kelesina's goldmind he didn't detect the health stored in it until Wax told him so, who had Steelsight to tip him off. So that put the kibosh on an idea I had once to spike an Allomancer's metal vial with bits of an unkeyed metalmind, giving an unexpected and unshuntable burst of the Feruchemical attribute. A Tineye would be easy to stun with sensory overload; a Lurcher Pulling himself towards something heavier might suddenly find that something coming towards him instead, as his weight increased dramatically; and so on. It's not clear if an Allomancer could feel and "burn around" any accessible metalminds mixed with ordinary metal in his stomach. So maybe it'd still be a gag to spike a vial and shout out the information later.

"What's going to happen is hidden in the books already." I kind of don't want to guess it, really. Not if it takes away a 20-year buildup of an aha moment! But I can't help it. He didn't say that it was contained in the chapter eipgraphs, as it was in Mistborn, which would be kind of too closely echoing the earlier work, anyway. So I think the foreshadowing of the ultimate ending is in... The descriptions of the Recreance. It's gonna happen again. After all, Pattern has said more than once (in the second book, even), "it is inevitable." And so did the Stormfather, to Kaladin. And it will happen in a way very similar to Dalinar's vision of it from Honor in the first book. But this time, we'll know why, in full, and why it is right, and maybe, it'll play out differently (without massive spren-killing), or maybe not.

Very pretty! Saying the Words is not really a carrot of sorts from a spren to a proto-Radiant, though, at least not with a normal (fully "living") spren; it's a progression on the part of the person. And as we've seen from Teft and Lopen's Windrunner Ideals, the nature of the progression will differ from Radiant to Radiant, depending on their particular way to express the Ideal. We've seen Lift say what for her were the Second and Third Ideals of the Edgedancers: I will remember those who have been forgotten, she said, as she healed Gawx from a fatal wound. I will listen to those who have been ignored, she said (to Nalan!), as she gained the ability to summon Wyndle as a Shardblade. What then might Adolin have to do? I think it's clear from Adolin's nature, plus his hanging around all these Radiants already, that he would well fit the Immortal Words of the First Ideal, which is normally the "first step" in a spren bonding a person. It's how all the Radiants first start to use Stormlight, to heal and to start working with their primary Surge, even at an unconscious level. I wouldn't be surprised if, off-screen, Adolin had tried saying the Immortal Words out loud, hoping to attract a spren. But it didn't work. And we see no evidence of Stormlight use yet from Adolin. So, I have this theory that Adolin bonding a revived Mayalaran will be a kind of REVERSE Ideal progression, because Maya is ALREADY a Shardblade (Third Ideal or beyond) who is is beginning to form a bond with Adolin, in a way that's never happened before. It's reflective of him "listening to those who have been ignored", and "remembering those who have been forgotten", in reference to Maya herself. Listening to those who have been ignored: he's probably the only person since the Recreance who's held a Shardblade and NOT named it anew as any other weapon might be, or used its traditional name ("Oathbringer"), but respectfully waited for the spren to reveal its own name, even though he never actually expected to hear it. And regularly talked to his Blade, too. Remembering those who have been forgotten: He talked to Maya about how fighting the Thunderclast was "what you were designed for, isn't it? ... It reminds you of when you were alive", and that's when she told him her name. I think that is the moment when she even REMEMBERED her name at all. Though she'd already begun to revive some amount of independent will in Shadesmar, when she leapt to Adolin's defense against the Fused (that might have been factor in her revivial, as well - that Adolin "met" her Cognitively, something probably never done before between a deadeye Shardblade and its wielder). I think he might fully awaken Maya at some point by, somewhat counterintuitively, saying the FIRST Ideal while holding her... To immediately become an Edgedancer of the Third Ideal!

Also, didn't Preservation "hack" the Allomantic table to make atium Mistings possible by removing cadmium based Mistings or something? And Sazed restored it after his Ascension because atium was no longer "a thing"? (Of course, using atium would still "work" for Demoux, Marsh, or any Mistborn who might come across any nuggets, but no new Seers would be born?)

I don't know that TLR hindered this aspect of Preservation's plan - on the contrary, I think he was key in facilitating the necessary effect. Why? Because atium had to be harvested from the geodes at the Pits of Hathsin. Which TLR not only ran as a large scale, 24/7 operation (albeit via working skaa to death as penal forced labor), but he also did it in such a way as to hide from the ever-watching Ruin as to what was going on, which is rather astounding. Had he never run the Pits as he did, all that atium would have been manifest as beads grown inside geodes in the Pits over a thousand years of time, with no way for humans to access it all and then burn it away on short notice. Ruin would eventually have located and acquired it. Instead, most of it was mined and then directly sent to the Trustwarren in secret. To gather it in one place, specifically so it could be burned en masse by a crew of Allomancers, leaving nothing left for a freed Ruin, even though TLR may not have fully appreciated that that would be key. Remember, atium was unknown to Scadrial until Rashek's Ascension - the knowledge he gained while holding Preservation not only educated him as to its existence and use, but its location and source. Just imagine Ruin's frustration at seeing Rashek using atiumminds for his eternal youth, and passing atium beads around to Mistborn and Inquisitors (and even discovering atium Mistings like Yomen) for about 1,000 years, all a fraction of what was being pulled out, while never tipping off where all of it was going. Ruin most likely knew all along that the Pits was where the atium was manifesting; it was his "body", after all. So not harvesting it would have just left it all there for him to go get at any time. And running it as an ordinary mining operation, allowing free circulation of atium in the Final Empire, would have guaranteed Ruin's ability to get his hands on quite a lot of it (albeit in a somewhat piecemeal fashion) upon getting free, via Inquistors.

(Secret History spoilers galore) Apparently, Kelsier is "bound" to Scadrial similar to spren on Roshar because of the way "it" happened, and "the level and the type of Investiture involved": https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360-legion-release-party/#e10799 So, theories about Kelsier going worldhopping and running the Ghostbloods are killed, I guess, unless of course the GBs are reporting to him by traveling to Scadrial, or meeting in Shadesmar somewhere in its vicinity. I wonder what he meant by "it" is here, though: What Preservation did to "spren-ify" him so he would no longer be pulled toward the Beyond while a Cognitive Shadow? The expansion of his soul in taking up Preservation for a period as a Shadow? The "Connection Bomb" thingy from the Ire that he used to be able to do that in the first place? Whatever it is he's done since Secret History to re-enter the Physical Realm that involves an Inquisitor-like eye-spike?

Hmm, and Ravens were symbols of Inquisitors in the Final Empire, and Odin as well (Huginn and Muninn in particular), where Marsh the Last Inquisitor is still around and aware of (and possibly in cahoots with) Kelsier

A cleverly laid trap would be worth a thousand live bodies rushing at an Inquisitor. Consider how Yomen managed to de-fang Vin; he could have killed her if he'd wanted to. He prepared a large stone cavern with no Allomantic metals in it, with an enormous stone boulder ready to roll into place to block the only entrance/exit, and then could just wait until she starved or dehydrated to death. For quicker killing, if killing had been the goal of such a trap, one could build in some other means of either pumping out the air, poisoning the air, or filling the chamber with sand or water - all made with stone and wood. (Presumably the boulder rolled at 90 degrees to the entrance, otherwise Vin could have tried doing a double Steelpush with two coins, one on the boulder and one on the wall behind her, like how she Pushed out the window at Keep Venture when rushing out to prevent Elend's assassination.) Same thing with an Inquisitor, then; it'd just be harder to safely lure one into such a location. That's in dealing with a standard issue Final Empire "vanilla" Inquisitor, not the Ruin-enhanced ones with Feruchemy. Being able to tap a large pewtermind and ironmind would quickly resolve a boulder problem, I think, unless it was greased? In which case, the Feruchemist could possibly pulverize the boulder, as long as there were a suitable tool at hand that could scrape at the rock. Well, that's not quite fair. We're talking about assembling a team of ordinary humans! A (Full) Feruchemist who has had the time to prepare a large enough set of metalminds, which only requires time, patience, and a period of relative discomfort, is pretty OP in a short burst and at close quarters. More so than a full Mistborn, due to F-steel and F-gold, as range attacks and flying maneuvers are out of scope. Taking down an Inquisitor would only require an element of surprise and an arranged situation, so the Inquisitor couldn't quickly Steelpush away into the air to escape or something. Dump-tap a steelmind for inhuman speed, run right up behind the Inquisitor, then dump-tap an ironmind for weight (leverage) and a pewtermind for strength, and literally rip the head off before the Inquistor can react. Having a stone axe or just a big rock in hand would only make it easier. So, why didn't Sazed do this with the Inquisitor he saved Vin from at Kredik Shaw? My theory is that in the time of the Final Empire, their offensive potential was limited by the fact that Feruchemists were all Terris Keepers who were keeping a low profile to protect their brethren, and could not be open with their Feruchemy. Meaning that their metalminds had to be in the form of jewelry, limiting how much could be stored in them. In HoA, we see Sazed storing a week or so's worth of speed in the large steel padlock of his prison in the kandra Homeland, then tapping it for two bursts of "blurring speed" to attack his guards with two (maybe three) swings of a large hammer. There's no way he could have worn a piece of steel as large as a big padlock and passed it off as jewelry. And I suppose wearing lots of small steelminds wouldn't work the same - that one could not "parallel tap" ten small steelminds for a huge burst of speed, you'd need to empty or half-empty one relatively large steelmind in one big tap to get the "blurring speed" necessary to overwhelm an Inquisitor who could burn pewter. Besides which, doing something as flashy as killing an Inquisitor that way would be a dead giveaway, and surely lead to a massive manhunt and stepped-up purging of Feruchemists in the Terris community. So they'd be taught/trained to use physical Feruchemy in very low-key ways. It's not like Keepers were walking around with huge and invested metalminds of steel / gold / pewter at the ready all the time, even though if I were a Feruchemist in RL, I totally would be.

He couldn't because Vin and Elend didn't want to return - they wanted to pass Beyond, as most people do. It's what Kelsier did in somehow resisting passing Beyond that's unique. Preservation noted that he was a "runner" in Secret History, so there are others who try, but apparently he was the only successful runner ever, because Preservation (or his shadow) pushed him into the Well of Ascension.

I agree - that's why I added the part about having the robot's algorithm needing to incorporate the Allomancer's actions (the one burning atium) to seed its random number generation. Let's say arms 1 and 3 are set to attack, and when the Allomancer moves to dodge to avoid arms 1 and 3, those arms immediately deactivate and two arms randomly activate, seeded by something about what the Allomancer just did. So at "time zero", the initial atium shadow from the robot would be very clear (that arms 1 and 3 are going to attack)... But unless the Allomancer always moved in a very predictable way himself, as soon as he moved to dodge it any variable possibilities among his actions ("maybe I'll go left / right / up / down to avoid or block arms 1 and 3") would result in a cloud of his own making.

In Mistborn, we see that the way atium works (with respect to using its "future sight" in combat) is that you can see what other people will choose to do a few seconds ahead of time, and adjust or react to that choice before it happens. Specifically, it works on the premise that a person's actions are completely determined by their nature/character, and the information known to them at that instant in time. Therefore, anything that complicates, pollutes, or delays the information known to that person - or I guess, the identity/character of that person - in those same few seconds, while still allowing that person to change his/her actions in that window, results in "atium shadow splitting". Burning atium in response to an atium burner reflects back infinite recursive shadows, as each Allomancer's future path adjusts to account for the other one's adjustments, and so on. Burning electrum lets the Mistborn or Oracle see, and avoid, the specific actions that would lead to their own immediate demise. It wouldn't let them see the other Allomancer's future choices like atium would, but simply having information about their own potential futures that shifted with the choices made would cause the "atium shadows" to spring up for the attacker. What Vin did with Zane, despite not burning either atium or electrum, is the third way: she delayed making any choice at all until she saw her own (singular) atium shadow's prediction, as reflected in Zane's reaction to it, then did something else. For that to work, you'd still have to be very quick in physical reaction time (burning pewter is almost a must), to gain even a split second in which to react, and also have an unerring killing instinct that would immediately know what best other course of action to take (don't stab from the right - jab in the throat from the left). Any indecision along the lines of "OK, well, now what?!", absent a tappable Feruchemical zincmind as a crutch, would make it useless. There's a potential fourth defense, too, I guess, involving randomicity, but it'd be difficult for a human to do. Imagine a robot with six arms attacking an atium burner, each armed with a poisoned tip, where at any given instant of attack, two of the six arms would jab at the Allomancer. There would be 15 possible combinations to defend against. If the robot predicated its choice on a simple internal random number generator, it might not be enough to generate atium shadows since it'd be operating on deterministic software. But if the robot predicated its choice based on something related to or predicated on what the Allomancer was doing at that instant, it could generate shadows. Sure, if the Allomancer knew this was going on he could just stand perfectly still, but without forewarning, such an algorithm could probably confuse an atium burner for a bit, probably enough to let a poison jab through.

That's a paradox, except for the fact that Ruin could change memories in a coppermind, so I guess Harmony could do the same if he wanted to - though that's not the same as creating the memories wholesale in a blank coppermind.

You bring up an interesting point. I can't remember any Cosmere scene involving people singing songs in a cultural context. Only instrumental music, as for ballroom dancing, much less Mistborn specific. There are times in other Cosmere works when a certain "worldhopping" character does some expository saga-type singing, but it's either stuff of his own creation or stuff new to everyone listening. No examples of some people striking up and others joining in on a rousing barroom chorus of "The Lurcher And the Coinshot", a fiddle-rippin' stomp of "Ruin Went Down To Urteau", or a beggar/busker mournfully wailing "The Luthadel Skaa Blues" for clips.

Heh, it's my "headcanon" that just as in our world, the now-quaint interjection "zounds!" derived from the Shakespearean "'swounds!" which was a euphemism for the blasphemous "God's wounds", maybe by Era 3 someone on Scadrial will drop a "spalls!" Hey, maybe that's the distant origin for the term "slotnze" in The Reckoners books, which Sanderson originally intended to fit with his Cosmere works (until he decided definitively not to have any alt-Earths in the Cosmere). A corruption of a Scadrian curse from "God's lost nuts", LOL.

Well if this does happen, I hope he goes after a worldhopper from Scadrial whose name begins with an A, just so instead of referring to "SKA" as a triangle we can talk about the "SKAA" problem.

But Amaram doesn't "side with Odium" until after meeting him at Thalyen Fields, and discovering that what he had been working towards as a member of the Sons of Honor - triggering a Desolation to bring out the Heralds to lead humanity once again - had been a lie, as the Heralds themselves had spent millenia actively hiding and avoiding a Desolation. I also don't see the Ghostbloods giving a molted cremling shell about Kaladin's beef with Amaram. I'm sure when Mraize told the not-yet-accepted-as-a-Ghostblood Shallan that Amaram's "life belongs to another", that was in reference to another Ghostblood, whose name she did not need to know. We do know the GBs have a "hunter/prey" ethic whereby specific members are actively "hunting" someone with "dibs", and towards the end of WoR we see Iyatil trying to shoot Amaram with a poisoned dart (which Taln saves him from), so it's evidently her he was referring to. Exactly why Iyatil had "claimed" Amaram's life is as yet unknown, but it was a claim that was already "in" well before Amaram turned to Odium (well before Torol Sadeas' death, for that matter, which resulted in Amaram becoming the acting Highprince for House Sadeas).

I looked it up with a Kindle search. This invocation is used only once (so far), by Wax early on in The Alloy of Law (Ch. 3), exclaiming over some really good tea ("Preservation's Wings, man! This is good."). The only other Era 2 invocation of Preservation beyond simply using that name alone ("Oh, Preservation", "for Preservation's sake"), or in reference to the actual Shard, was in Shadows of Self (Ch. 26), when Reddi curses: "Pure Preservation... They're going to turn into a lynch mob." Saying "Pure Preservation" is probably a nicely alliterative light blasphemy in separating out a component of Harmony, similar to the more common "Rust and Ruin!", without going as far as cursing by Harmony himself ("Harmony's Bands", "By Harmony's lost testicles", and so on). But "Preservation's Wings" does sound oddly specific, and to something we (as readers) had not associated with Preservation otherwise. I'm going to guess it's some kind of imagery used by Pathians, maybe a poetic way to refer to the mists?

I guess it's never said one way or the other, but if he had been a Mistborn at least, he'd probably have reflexively defend himself from the onslaught of Inquistors that killed him. He could have been a Seeker or some other non-physical Misting, though.

Somewhere else on this board I once speculated on the possibility of making a Lifeless from multiple body parts (from different people) stitched together. How many pieces would you need? Since there are one-armed living people, shouldn't you be able to make a one-armed Lifeless? For that matter, what about chimeric Lifeless, like constructing a four-armed (and two-legged) Lifeless, or a Lifeless soldier with giant bat wings? Maybe taxidermy would be a really useful skill to pick up on Nalthis.

That's how I understood it. After all, Kar gives as evidence of Vin's descent that for a half-skaa to be a Mistborn, the noble blood must come from a very pure bloodline... While looking meaningfully at Tevidian, the High Prelan, who is not an Allomancer at all.

This sort of discussion presupposes both parties know of the other one's abilities, though, doesn't it? A "prepared Steelrunner" should win or draw almost any kind of encounter: with careful planning to make sure of an exit, a quick escape would always be an option, in the worst case. But even if the Steelrunner has the ability to tap so much speed that time all but freezes for the opponent, he/she still needs to realize that the time to do that is now: even a Compounder can't really function in society walking around all the time, 24/7, at max speedup. If you told the Steelrunner, "an atium-burning Allomancer looking to kill you is about to drop from the ceiling!", yeah, he could max-tap and ensure his survival or victory. But even without forewarning, the atium burner should be able to see that some of his actions would result in the Steelrunner doing the max-tap thing and getting away or winning, and not do them (i.e., "don't drop dramatically from the ceiling - walk up casually like you're a random passerby, then WHAM!"). So in a vacuum, versus a prearranged duel, I'd say the Seer has the natural advantage.

In-world we see that there are Era 2 laws about the use of Allomancy; and even in the Final Empire, obligators were trained to detect "misuse" of Allomancy (and the Steel Inquisitors had a duty to, ah, "punish" the misuse of Allomancy). But restriction on the use of Feruchemy has not (yet) been mentioned. Maybe it's because it's largely a Terris Community thing, with Feruchemists outside the Village apparently being somewhat rare? And what with God Himself (Harmony) being of Terris origin, and a Feruchemist originally, there might be some unease about restricting the use of copperminds or something, when the Words of Founding are literally a divine coppermind dump. There's also the fact that while you can have a Seeker on hand to try to detect Allomancy (if there's no Smoker blocking him/her), they haven't figured out a way yet to detect the use of Feruchemy, even if a WoB suggests that it would be possible for a talented Seeker to do so. So the best you could do would be to ban known Sparker Ferrings from chess tournaments, and trust that the Terris wouldn't let a Sparker "cheat" in that manner (since from what we see in Shadows of Self when Wax visits his grandmother, they don't share their information on who is what kind of Feruchemist with non-Terris folk except in special cases). Medallion technology would make enforcement of such laws difficult, in any case. I might not be a Soother, but I could use a medallion to Soothe and then chuck it and there'd be no way to trace the Soothing back to me, and so on. Same thing with F-zinc. More interesting would be Ferring-only matches to see who was more skilled with managing their resources. Like Brute-on-Brute wrestling matches with identically sized empty pewterminds issued to them at the start, and the same short amount of time to fill them before the match began.

My first thought was "Crafted Truthless", but a character count shows that this is 17 including the space. So close. I guess you could go Vanity Plate style, CRAFTD TRUTHLSS, but that seems contrived. Maybe "Crafted Weapon", since the Diagram actually speaks of Szeth as TheyarewiththeShinWemustfindoneCanwemaketouseaTruthless. Canwecraftaweapon. But I liked the ring of "Crafted Truthless".

This is a good point - Moash was not present for any of the scenes where Elhokar demonstrated maturation as a king, as a leader, and as a person. Doubtless he would not have given such growth any weight in his quest for vengeance, considering what else he'd already put on the other side of the emotional balance pan. I think part of what drove him to kill Elhokar in the end was the price he'd already paid to do it in betraying Kaladin, which he did feel very badly about... But instead of trying to recover that relationship with Kaladin, he decided to go all-in on the vengeance side, with his guilt as a kind of sunk cost. I never expected Moash to "get over" his hatred of Elhokar. That's not what I find despicable about his betrayal of Kaladin. It's that he put that above the loyalty I think he owed to Kaladin above anything else in his life. Which has nothing to do with progressing as a Windrunner or embracing the Immortal Words, but simply being a decent human being. But from the reader's POV, we were turned around from not liking Elhokar very much into rooting for him; or at least, we were meant to be (it seems there are those readers who were immune, heh). I really liked his reaction to seeing Shallan's idealized drawing of him. It echoed what she did, unintentionally, with Tklav the slaver, and she's since advanced as a Lightweaver, so her power to transform at a level of self-idealization is going to be very interesting in terms of having people attract spren (what would she draw Adolin to be?).

Well, the kandra surmised she was doing that whole "pull out and fall on another spike" thing to change powers. We never see anyone else speculate otherwise. But that's exactly what I think was going on: she had just the one spike, and somehow did both F- and A-steel. I was just about to write a separate post pointing out that that should mean she could Compound steel, and burn her metalminds even when spiked for just A-steel. But if she was unable to store the "extra" speed from the 10x boost in one Allomantic burst, she'd have to spend quite a bit of time running around to burn it off. She also did run out of speed in Ch. 22 and leave a drained steelmind in Ch. 23, so there's that to account for.