robardin

Oooh. I like that. I was thinking "Maybe Renarin just didn't think it was possible", but this is even better.

I was going to suggest Gaz, but I think there was a suggestion in Oathbringer that Vathah was becoming a squire to Shallan (he started putting an illusion onto himself with Stormlight, much to his own surprise), so who knows, maybe Gaz is next? In fact, if Gaz were able to draw in Stormlight, would he heal his missing eye? Has Shallan ever done one of her inspirational sketches, "Gaz As He Could Have Been; As He Should Have Been"? (Or Vathah?) Her sketch of Elhokar was described so well, and so soon before his death, it was a huge component of what made that scene extra sad.

Right. Which is why I think he WILL be a major character in the story of Nightblood. Because as far as we know, Susebron's the only guy around who could pull it off at all, yeah? Besides, it's summarized as being about Yesteel and his efforts to revive the kingdoms of Huth and Kuth, presumably in opposition or rivalry to Hallendren, which would put Susebron front and center of such events, right? Even if it turns out Yesteel has also amassed enough Breath to reach the Ninth Heightening, and whatever even more Breath would be required to Awaken a sword, and is the creator of Hank, it's hard to imagine two such beings in opposition to each other not having similarly important roles in the story of their conflict. Maybe it's even simpler - Yesteel has the know-how, Susebron has the Breath, all that's missing is someone getting the two of them on the same page. Could be Siri, Vivenna, Vasher, whoever else. Maybe whatever it is that Zahel refers to having wished he'd "made the choice that lets him sleep at night" is what results in Hank's creation. We can only wait and see.

But that's not true, because as soon as he was able to draw in Stormlight as a squire to Kaladin, he healed his legs (Chapter 37 of Oathbringer). Meanwhile Renarin was routinely healing members of Bridge Four way earlier, like after the fight against the Midnight Mother in the "pillar room" of Urithiru.

Ah, you mean "Stump" who was a Truthwatcher giving out pancakes to children, that Lift saved from Nale. As for Hobber's legs - I was going to raise that as a separate question on the Oathbringer Spoilers board - why couldn't Renarin heal Hobber's grayed-out legs (from Szeth's attack on Dalinar in the hallway in Words of Radiance)? I think he just hadn't gotten around to trying it yet, for whatever reason? Seems odd since they're both in Bridge Four... I was trying to piece together a timeline of "who did Renarin heal and when", like when did he start realizing he could heal other people (and not just himself).

Lift was the eponymous POV character of Edgedancer, and Nalan brought Szeth back from the newly dead state with a Regrowth fabrial at the end of WoR. And Nalan says that the Shin use the two Honorblades that grant the Surge of Regrowth to revive the newly dead all the time. As for Rashek recovering from a decapitation... That's an interesting question. Add that to the Questions For Brandon list, eh!

It may not be done via physical "shapechanging" in the way that a kandra would do (based on the physical nature of a mistwraith), but it's definitely implied that the Series' "Faceless" Immortals are "faceless" in the sense of being identity swappers. "A beggar stolen off the street" could be a "donor" body for a kandra-like mimicking, or a straight up possession of the body. More importantly, Suit's thinking to himself "male this time" also means he's met one of these before, possibly what he expects to be the same one, in the form of a human woman. (And maybe from our POV as well - I think I'll go back and re-read the Era 2 books for scenes with Edwarn talking respectfully to an unknown woman...) I still wonder what "You will be allowed to serve in another Realm" means. Suit as a Cognitive Ghost seems... Scary?

Think about that again. Susebron is by far the most powerful being on Nalthis right now, unless Yesteel had also amassed a similar stockpile of Breaths dating back to the Manywar and has just been lying low all this time with it. And he's the first God King with a tongue, who is well past the Sixth Heightening of being able to do instinctive Awakening (as we saw at the end of Warbreaker), and can use his Breath to do far more than just to pass it on to the next God King with a mental Command (apparently the first and only Command the now-dead priests would have taught him, under normal circumstances). I can't see Brandon just shrugging and saying, "OK, the most powerful being on Nalthis is a Returned who is now safely in power on the throne of the most powerful nation on Nalthis, entrusted with a nigh-unbeatable army in Kalad's Phantoms, is in personal and full possession of over 50,000 Breaths, is in a position to completely rebuild his priesthood's organization and mission, and now, with are more Cosmere events to play out there... he's a non-factor because he's happily married, 'nuff said!" And what about Siri? Without making any obvious iPhone related jokes, given their relationship and his extremely restricted and sheltered life, which framework is now completely gone, she is going to be a key part of Susebron's conscience and moral development. If he does Awaken a sword like Hank to be a counter to Nightblood, it'd probably be at her prompting.

[Note: References to events from Warbreaker, Oathbringer, Alloy of Law, Bands of Mourning] In Vasher, we have a person from Nalthis who (a) is being hunted down, and (b) is a worldhopper on Roshar. On Roshar, there is Stormlight (an internal effect) and the Surge of Regrowth (an external one). We've seen Kaladin and Shallan use Stormlight to heal serious, even fatal injuries so quickly they use it tactically: Kaladin uses multiple Lashings to kick Shardplate so hard that it cracks, breaking his bones, but heals in time to land on his feet, and Shallan literally walks away (for shock effect) with an arrow through her head that stays there for so long she healed around it (and had to re-injure herself to remove it). In this, it is very similar to Gold Feruchemy, where Bloodmakers with access to a large enough goldmind can make tactical use of fatal self-harm, as with Miles exploding dynamite in his own hand, or Wayne implementing "Rotten Tomato", with the destroyed body parts regenerating. We've seen that Stormlight can regenerate missing body parts, even after many years, as seen with Lopen's arm. In his monologuing to Vin, we hear from The Lord Ruler that he'd used his massive goldminds (derived from Compounding) to survive beheadings - which means he literally grew a new head. Multiple times. (I like to think that he kept at least one of them in a pickle jar for the shock value, it fits right in with his show-off nature.) And we've seen that Lifeless are Awakened corpses, needing only one Breath for their Command, but that Vasher could also Awaken little straw men, too. So there's probably no requirement for a Lifeless to all be the body of one person - it could be an assemblage of body parts that are just as much "in the shape of a human" as a single corpse would be. I mean, why waste body parts if you have the body of a solider missing a leg, just get a leg from another corpse and fit it together? It might take an extra Breath or five, but it seems like it should work? So, if Regrowth can do pretty much the same thing to another person as Stormlight could do for a Radiant, and if Regrowth also matches F-Gold in most respects in terms of what it can do, all Vasher (Zahel) has to do now is: Find a corpse whose torso could pass for his own Brace himself and cut off his extremities in turn, with Renarin or Lift on hand to instantly regenerate them as they come off Stitch his limbs and head onto the torso Worldhop back to Nalthis (possibly having to pickle the Frankenvasher for the trip) Get enough Breath to Awaken the Frankenvasher as a Lifeless Result: "Look, Vasher's as dead as the Lifeless Clod/Arsteel, because here's a Lifeless Blockhead/Vasher!" In theory you could do this just with Vasher's head, but that might be too obvious. Unless the Lifeless Awakening would work better with fewer combined parts, he'd have more work to find a body with the right height and coloration beyond a torso that could pass.

Yes as Inquisitors demonstrate, you don't have to literally see with eyes for steelsight, but Inquisitors still turn their heads to look at things at various points... So it's not like a non-directional sense, I think it's basically a visual plug-in

I don't know if that was intentional, but that is a great way to refer to the Kandra Not Of Harmony!

Well if you could just "feel out" metals with Allomantic iron or steel, what's the point of the detailed description of the blue lines? The first time we see this kind of allomancy is when Kelsier burns steel: If the "blue lines that pointed at metal" weren't a key part of it, Brandon could just have written "Kelsier reached out and felt for his coin among the many metal objects of different sizes within his range" or something very "standard fantasy" like. Even more so, reread when Vin first burns iron (ahead of Kelsier's instructions): she doesn't gain some kind of new metalsense; she sees lines she can Pull on. If the lines were just indicative of sensing it... Why add that they were BLUE, which is a purely visual thing?

Nah. Like I said, I've given way more thought than is reasonable as to "what if I were Lurcher instead of a Coinshot living in Manhattan?" and the answer was, "I sure as hell wouldn't try flying - I'd be a human subway car". Note: I would probably "fly" by staying below the height of the shortest buildings with metal frames, which in midtown Manhattan at least, would still allow me to fly pretty routinely and safely at a height of up to about 5 stories high, and even higher (much higher) in many stretches. I wouldn't be flying above the buildings, but definitely above the street. But getting out to the suburbs would be a literal downer.

I tried to give a clearer example in my near simul-post just now. You DO need a "line of sight" to begin to Push on a specific object, that's clear; Wax's "bubble" being something of a weird special ability to do a general Push instead of a selective one. You don't always need to "hold" the Push. In fact Kelsier mentions this as something a Coinshot should learn to do when firing coins as a projectile weapon, to let the instantaneous initial force of a sharp, hard Push do the work, and leave the constant Pushing for when you're intentionally trying to use a coin as an anchor for Pushing off of (like with the horseshoes). (Vin's first ever Push was like that, she Pushed on a coin until it hit a wall, then she flew backwards.) So, same thing for Pulling, except now, what you can achieve with a Pull is different from a Push, because of the "line of sight" bit to start the directed and specifict act of Pulling. (Leaving aside the concept of a "ironbubble" of generalized Pulling.)

Let me describe it this way: if I were a Lurcher, I couldn't just sit here in my office chair and "feel out" to discover and then Pull something to me that's on a shelf behind me and have it hit me in the back, even if I knew the shelf had lots of metal stuff. I'd have to turn and look at the shelf to see the blue lines pointing to stuff, and then pull on one of them. Or, look at the stuff on the shelf, pick a particular item, retain the ironline with a very light Pull, then I could walk around the room at will with that line still in place, and Pull it as necessary. But if I let go of that ironline, I'd have to look at it again to re-estabish it. As for a Lurcher who could do an "iron bubble" analagous to Wax's steel bubble, it still wouldn't allow him to pull on a specific, large piece of metal that outweighed him, to use to slow down or stop him from going in the opposite direction. It'd be a general Pulling of metal towards him, somehow excluding specific items on or near his person.

Yes, I know. I'm talking about Pulling, not Pushing. And I think Wax's "bubble" is something unique to him and not Coinshots in general, right? At least, Kelsier (the master of Pulling and Pushing combinations) didn't exhibit it. You don't have to see "the end" of where you're Pushing, just the coin you're Pushing on. You can Push on a piece of metal until it hits something, and then it starts pushing back with resistance (as Suit did in dropping a coin behind/below him as he and Wax fell together, to slow down, which required the coin hitting the ground long enough before they did for the resistance to work). But you'd always have to see "the end" of where you're Pulling on to start Pulling on it in the first place. That's my point, is that using Pulling as a way to fly in the city isn't practical: that effectively "slingshotting" like Spider-Man with A-iron would require staying below a line of metal that you could use to Pull yourself up with (if you went above it, you'd have a lot less control). Also that Pulling on stuff behind you to slow down would require a constant Pull (you started Pulling on it lightly before you went past it, then kept Pulling but harder after you were past it), a kind of fine control I think would require practice to do right. In short, if you want to fly in the city, including going above rooftops and landing on them like Spider-Man does, that's the realm of a Coinshot - for a Lurcher to do the same seems to me to require a lot of practice that would be pretty deadly. However, put the Lurcher indoors or underground, where there's metal in all directions, and now he's the master of his domain.

Yes, but after knowing where to anchor the Pull and then maintaining it. At least that's how I imagined it. Like affixing a tow line to a ring in the wall. Once established you can turn around, but it'd be much, much harder to reach behind you to clip the line to begin with. I don't think the iron/steel sight lines are like ESP where you "just know" where the metals are around you, they are lines you need to follow visually to their source. Kelsier could "see" people hiding behind (thin wooden) walls who were wearing belt buckles, but he had to be looking in that direction to do so, right?

Heh, I was kidding about the birth order thing. Mostly. Just pointing out that all the information we have about Horneater society comes from Rock, who is definitely hiding something, and by his own admission to himself, has outright lied to Bridge Four. How much was true, how much was crem, and how much was left unsaid, we don't really know yet.

I think if a Lurcher always stayed below a line of metal, he or she could shuttle around very well - just not fly, as in with open air above. A Lurcher in the subway tubes, for example. Or if there were trolley lines around 20 feet up, the Lurcher could be a human trolley as long as he stayed below 20 feet. Arguably, a steel cage match is like the absolute most advantageous scenario for a Lurcher!

But Ironpulling is still based on the "blue line" from your COG to an object, right? Which in turn is described as something the Allomancer sees with their eyes, or eye spikes for an Inquisitor; you can't feel behind you to find anchors, at least that hasn't been shown in any POV of a Lurcher or Mistborn. With Steelpushing you can imagine it like having variable length tripod or N-pod legs supporting you as necessary, with different degrees of strength in each "leg", that radiate out in front of you. Or in the case of pushing a coin down to slow your fall, you just Push until it hits bottom, and there's your leverage point, sight unseen. Ironpulling around would be not like using ropes or grappling hooks, so much as telescopic "suction cups" with variable strength retraction. So to "swing like Spider-Man" you'd have to maintain a smooth Pull, you couldn't release a Pull and then Pull again on the same anchor once it was behind you without turning around to look at it. And if you pulled "backwards" too hard, which would be easy to do without a visual cue as to how far you'd gone from the anchor and at what angle, you would fall short of your mark - and if you had been trying to land on a roof ledge, that could be really bad. Yes, you could Pull forward on another anchor ahead or above you, but that would speed you up. Hence my thought that slowing down and landing right would be difficult to master. Not impossible to do, but to get to the point of having a really good feel for it would take a lot of mistakes first... Possibly deadly ones.

Wait a minute. Maybe Rock IS the nuatoma, the eldest, for who "fighting is beneath him"... And Kef'ha was his FOURTH brother, who would be the "fighter?" Heck, how do we even know they do that counting in birth order. Maybe "first brother" means "most recently born brother", which would make a bit more sense as that would mean brothers numbered 4th and higher were actually the OLDEST ones. LOL.

Whoa, that's far darker than what I was imagining (which I've already described). But plausible. We only know that when his wife Song notes that "Kef'ha is dead [evidently the nuatoma who challenged Sadeas], but what happened to you?", then asks after Tifi and Sinaku'a, he says that they are dead after "raising weapons in vengeance," and she says in surprise (raising her hand to her lips), "Then you--" Which could mean she realized maybe he killed them. But, I think her surprise was more something about Rock's status or role in the wake of their deaths, because he immediately shuts down what she was about to say with a firm statement, "I am a chef now. ... I cook." As if to prevent her from saying what ELSE he maybe should or could be. Then, his wife Song goes on to say: It was only after saying that that he reflects on how had someone in Bridge Four understood Unkalaki, "they might have picked out the lies that he had told them..." Such as the subtle detail that even before, he was considered a wise leader, one who apparently had the authority to prevent Kef'ha from challenging Sadeas. And is the "us" that Song refers to him as "ushering" only his immediate family, or a wider population? In other news: he was in the bridge crews and then Bridge Four for "almost a year", yet the "something is wrong" in the Peaks is news to him, so it happened recently. (Moelach?) And finally: what can we tell about Horneater society from Rock's own family? He said "only the fourth son fights", as if only the Horneater males were fighters; but when they find Rock's family, it's his wife who's is defending a makeshift fortress. With a bow. And Lunamor (to use Rock's shortened name in Unkalaki) is not surprised by it, but proud. His children, apparently in age order: Fraternal boy/girl twins, Gift and Cord The next son is "smaller Rock" Third son is Star Second daughter, Kuma'tiki ("kind of shell, you do not have here") Last daughter, Beautiful Song so, he has exactly three sons. But I don't think we see Gift or "smaller Rock" cooking, eh?

Working as I do in midtown Manhattan, I have given thought - far more than I ought to have - to the question of What Would It Be Like To Be A Lurcher In The City (because being a Coinshot would be obviously awesome and much easier and more natural to use to fly around). And this problem is the one I keep coming back to: how would you land? You'd have to Pull from above and behind you - which means, Pulling on something you can't see, at least not with your eyes. You'd look pretty funny flipping yourself around at or near the apex of your flight arcs to look up and backwards to Pull yourself to slow down. That, or try some kind of technique to maintain a very light ironline to your initial anchor the whole time, such that you could still "feel" it above and behind you as you came down, if Ironpulling worked that way. And you'd have to be very fine with the control on it, or you'd land too short of where you wanted to go. (Though of course you could probably just Pull on something ahead of you to adjust.) Now, you're positing a Twinborn who's an Iron Compounder, so they could reduce their weight to help slow down, and would have an easier time of it than an ordinary Lurcher In The City. But to me, a Double-Iron Twinborn in the city would do much better off simply skitching a ride on moving land vehicles. And if you were about to miss a bus or a train, you could tap your infinite ironmind for weight while flaring a Pull and literally catch it.

In general I'd advise people to read books in published order - not just Cosmere or Sanderson works - in any long running or crossing-over type series, because that way you get all the "easter egg" revelations as they were designed, or as they actually happened (without benefit of retcon), and all the geeky fan love/angst they can engender. But in the case of the Mistborn books, I would personally recommend taking a break between Era 1 (books 1-3) and Era 2 (the Wax/Wayne books), and read something else in between. I happened to read the first Mistborn trilogy about two weeks before Alloy of Law was published, tore right into it as a result (spending much of those two weeks re-reading Mistborn), and... Felt disappointed in ways I don't think I would have if I'd read it more "on its own" with time in between, and after going back and re-reading it for when the later Era 2 books came out, found myself liking AoL a lot more. I knew it wasn't a "continuation" of Mistborn, as it took place hundreds of years later, but I was still too invested (not with a capital I) in the milieu of the Final Empire and kind of couldn't "deal with" there not being any Mistborn in a Mistborn novel.

"Sparks" and "slontze" are from the non-Cosmere Reckoners series, not sure if those count, much as I like them. Scadrial (not sorted by Era): Lord Ruler, Rust and Ruin, By the Forgotten Gods!, Harmony's bands (I actually find myself saying By the Forgotten Gods! IRL, at least in my head. I mean, if you could use a swear invented by (a) God while he was mortal, why wouldn't you?) Roshar: Damnation, storm you, Kelek's breath, Ash's eyes, (you're of the) Ten Fools, Damnation Nalthis: Colors!, by the Iridescent Tones!, (Oh) Austre God of Colors