Extesian

Be thankful you don't have to deal with the Royal Air Force of Oman

I believe we don't know, the most recent WoB I can find is a RAFO But I think so coz of the underlying mechanic And @Spoolofwhool I do agree with you on grammar and construction grounds. I figured because the book effectively canonizes it as a capital, that should be enough, but more than happy to foment lazy revolution on this.

Divine, @Kynedath

My head-Canon is that he gave them lerasium for three reasons. One - normal dictator activity, you can't do it all yourself so you form alliances with people strong enough to do your enforcing of order but weak enough that they can't overthrow you. Two - as part of The Balance Without allomancy the Balance could have changed too quickly, skaa revolution and such in the areas of lesser TLR control. Three - to spread allomancy to parts of the population for the end-game of allomancers burning atium (as actually happened). He could have burned it himself but there was a LOT of atium. I'm not actually certain he knew of that plan of Preservation's though i suspect so given his careful stockpiling of the stuff.

Thank you for wording that more concisely than my TWO attempts to do so but yes that's my belief, with the problem that, during the time Elantris was broken, those living in the area were unable to take it slowly, a huge but abortive change was forced on them

I gotta say Spool I agree with Connects here. Every use of the word mistborn in the original trilogy is capitalized in-world at least it is clearly a title.

I'd wondered about this before but I must admit I thought there was a pretty simple explanation. If I've missed something subtle (or obvious) let me know. I figure the Shaod is a single, transformative event whereby the Dor, trapped in the Cognitive Realm and bursting to get out, was channelled through the mega-Aon that was Elantris to suddenly change the person to 'full' Elantrian. I don't believe the Shaod pre-dated Elantris, I think what would happen was, like with other magic systems, the magic users (and we still don't know how their 'chosen') would realize they could draw Aons magically and the more they did so, the closer the became to what we now consider Elantrians - ie the increasing use of investiture by drawing Aons would invest them and make them become more powerful. I think the point of Elantris was that it accelerated this process, and made it into one sudden transformation. When Elantris failed enough of that investiture was being channelled through to begin the sudden transformation, but not enough to complete it. That was wordy. I'm saying I think pre-Elantris there was no Shaod, or at least the way we know it - there was something that triggered the ability to use Aons but it was a slow process of becoming more invested. During this time, someone realised they could supercharge it by building Elantris, which hijacked the normal, slow process. To use a stupid analogy, 'Elantrians' used to walk their way to being full Elantrian, slowly using the Aons. Elantris was like cutting off their legs but giving them a car to drive there. The Reod was stopping the supply of petrol. If that's right, it's not circular reasoning, it's just the mechanism that enables someone to use Aons went from a natural one to a supercharged one, and when that supercharged one failed, it collapsed the whole system.

Here's a couple

So to add to the great answers from Weltall and Pagerunner, there's a really good WoB explaining this, I'm spoiler for size. "but you can do other magics works anywhere, because they’re drawing the magics specifically through either the place, or they’re end-neutral, like Breath is, and don’t need any extra power" This is the easy way to understand location with Cosmere magic. If it's end-neutral, you are using your own investiture to power the magic. Because you're not drawing from an external source or simply doesn't matter where you are. This is mainly Awakening and feruchemy. For end-positive systems you're drawing investiture from a Shard directly (allomancyn Dor) or from investiture that came from a Shard but is captured somewhere (surgebinding, sandmastery). But even then that's not usually location dependent because Shardic investiture is generally in the spiritual realm, and the spiritual realm is location independent. Dor is the difficulty because it's in the cognitive realm, which is location dependent, and that's why it's the only system that is not portable. Different systems, as has been said, have complications though. With surgebinding you actually have to take your spren offworld which is hard. But with sand mastery for example, the sand (well, the lichen on the sand) will absorb any investiture (eg can be charged with stormlight). The difficulty with most systems is it's hard to access the system from one planet if you're from another planet, a lot of them are genetic, which means you then need to hack Connection ot Identity or your spirit web to access them. Breath is the easiest because it provides both the investiture to use and the ability to access the magic system because it attaches to your identity automatically, and because it's not 'leaky'. That may not add anything to the other explanations but i hope it helps.

Huh, interesting. This whole time my head-canon was that he had one eye spike so that WoB never sounded strange to me. But here's his appearance in Alloy of Law Does make that WoB kinda confusing unless one is fake, which would also be quite strange.

Just on this point @ILuvHats It seems not from this WoB He could of course have other spikes that do 'special' things but not the eye one it seems.

I'll be a bit naughty here and post my favorite quotes from Book of the New Sun, one of the most sublimely written pieces of fiction in existence. Because it has SO many pieces of divine prose I'll spoiler it.

And it's not even specific things, it's often non-specific actions I think it really is just language construction. Many European languages use gender nouns, my Czech lady does it ask the time. Rock seems to use he and she for a range of things. And Rock can see Spren, sure, as Calderis says it seems to be him particularly But i guess it could be all Horneaters, we'd need to meet more to know, but they are after all part Parshendi. Either way though i think the reference to the HonorBlade is probably just a language gender thing, not to do with Rock actually seeing the source of the investiture in an Honorblade AND identifying that source as distinctly Honor AND realizing that Honor's now-dead Vessel was once male.

Yeah I've become a lot more interested in him since finding out this. The fact there's something magical going on says to me he has something already, but I've struggled to figure out what. He's my most likely candidate so far for voidy-influence but it would be nice if it's not.

Yeah that's a good point I actually find it very hard to imagine what future Truths could match up to patricide and matricide, but maybe they don't need to.

I'll just point out that in Edgedancer it was a deliberate policy to imprison them or put them out in the Everstorm. That was by order of the prince. So clearly they were worried enough about the warnings about the parshmen to worry that something bad would happen if they were free amongst the population, but not worried enough to execute them instead. I actually agree that a warning like Shallan's, if taken a bit seriously but not seriously enough, probably led to this result elsewhere.

@Thanatos you may have misunderstood the Coppermind website. It is not a source of canon material, it is a wiki run by members/administrators of this website. Not every article is updated constantly or with the latest information. They administrators do an amazing job but it isn't a decisive source. Canon material and wording is anything in a published Cosmere story. Words of Brandon are pretty authoritative but even they can be misinterpreted or changed by Brandon. The Coppermind is an outstanding source, and way to find proper canon sources, but it's not the final word. I'm any case I think the issues here are more about your terminology, and what a focus is. But I just wanted to explain the Coppermind's purpose. And I'm sure someone will correct me if I've misunderstood.

I think Kelsier went there largely selflessly. His actions fit his survive! philosophy, helping the people who were vulnerable. The Basin is too perfect, as Harmony has said (they haven't developed radio or advanced farming techniques because they haven't needed to, life has been easy). Southern Scadrial is the opposite, life was extremely hard and by giving them some way to keep going, they're forced to develop technologies to make life easier (necessity is the mother of invention). I think Kelsier went there either at Harmony's suggestion or by his own initiative to balance things for the Southern Scadrians, to have two different civilisations developing different ways for the betterment of Scadrial. I think that's why ettmetal is only found there, too give the Southern Scadrians a chance to develop technologies that rival, in different ways, the magics and technologies of the Basin. That's not to say Kelsier wouldn't also capitalize on the opportunity by having access to his own ettmetal.

Sorry, you're completely right, and I just had to point this out on my own separate thread. I realised someone you missed (unless I missed it). Iyatil. Mraize's babsk. She's from Silverlight and off Southern Scadrian descent. But I can't remember if she had a distinct accent? May be one worth checking.

Thanatos the point is that, yes, the spren gives access to Investiture, like Lerasium, but that with Scadrial that alone lets the allomancer access investiture from an external source. With Roshar it's different, Stormlight is then needed as an intermediate way to access the external investiture. It's referred to as a lightbulb to the Spiritual Realm. A focus is the thing that determines the way that investiture is used. So on Scadrial once you're an allomancer the way the investiture is used is determined by the metal you burn. On Roshar, the Stormlight does not choose the way investiture is used, it provides access to the investiture. The thing that determines the way it is used (the focus), the thing that determines whether you lightweave or change gravity bonds or soulcast things, is either the TYPE of spren (inkspren, honorspren etc) or the type of bond to that spren. If it's the type of spren, the spren is both the equivalent of lerasium and the focus. But any nahel bond is the lerasium equivalent, the particular spren that bond is with is the focus. For other systems the focus is your own willpower, you choose how the investiture is used (awakening for example). And you should probably make a new thread if you want to discuss this further, my original post here has been derailed a fair bit, I want it to be about perpendicularities on Roshar more specifically

So Vasher can draw Stormlight to feed his need for one Breath a week (to keep his Cognitive Shadow stapled to bus body). But he cannot convert it to Breath. And he got separated from Nightblood after coming to Roshar, which he did to feed his weekly Breath requirement.

One property would be that it would take a looong time to draw. Unless you can generate chalklings by mathematical function. Otherwise it's a fractal so, um, I'm not sure, perhaps dazzle the enemy with the beauty of a structure of increasing complexity? I may need to brush up on my Rithmatics

Yep his intelligence varies according to a probability curve

We need a spren who forms into paper. You know, coz of the Thunderclasts. Shard-scissors will lose every time.

If the many Mormons on this site are any way to judge Mormons generally, they're one of the most open, non-judgmental religious groups I've met. A lot of religious people I know are beautiful people with deep held and positive beliefs, but are afraid to go into real detail or examine the foundations of their beliefs. I've seen far less of that with Mormons on this site. I do have a question for our Mormon friends here. And I hope it's an ok question, and I don't want it to get into a debate about accuracy, but...did those who have seen it enjoy the Book of Mormon Musical? Or maybe a better question (because that's a matter of taste), was it offensive?