alder24

In Cosmere we don't have atoms, we have Axi, and Axi have a third component to it next to matter and energy - investiture, which is the Spiritual component. Lerasium and Atium are investiture condensed into the physical, solid form, which exists in all three realms at once. For Atium, this investiture is tied only to Ruin, for Lerasium it's tied only to Preservation. Axi of those god metals are therefore investiture turned into matter with a very strong Spiritual component and identity, which pierces through all realms. Harmonium is the same as Lerasium and Atium - investiture turned directly into matter, a new element with one new Axon, but the Spiritual part of it is tied to and made out of Ruin and Preservation's investiture. If you take a microscope and look directly at Harmonium's Axon, you won't see Axi of Lerasium and Atium making up Harmonium, you will see one element, one Axon. That's why it's not an alloy, it's not like steel, which is made of atoms of iron and carbon, it's like iron which is just iron atoms. However, Spiritually it's two investitures mixed together, investitures that are very unhappy being together and are pushing against each other. When you separate those investitures apart, they will condense into their own separate physical forms and become Atium and Lerasium, despite those metals not being a part of Harmonium in the first place. This is because that investiture is still mainly in the Physical Realm and investiture in the Physical Realm tends to manifest as gaseous, liquid or solid investiture. The same goes with Warlight or Towerlight. They aren't made out of two lights, they are one light Spiritually made out of two kinds of investitures tied to different Shards and when you split them apart, they will become their own lights. Both Harmony and Retribution hold two Shards, those Shards are merged, their investiture seems to be merged too, but on the very fundamental level they are still distinctly separate. Honor's investiture still exists, it's a part of Retribution's investiture, but it would take an effort to separate it.

As for Lerasium, Lerasium making you into an Allomancer is a side effect of this metal. Actually, it's your body that burns it. If you want to access its main power, you absolutely need to be an Allomancer first and you need to have a proper intent (know what it does).

Rayse's vision was clouded by Renarin and because of that he couldn't see his own death, despite the power gap between them. Harmony's future vision was clouded by a direct attack of another power - maybe some dragons, Aethers or Dawnshards could do something similar to Adonalsium. Ati couldn't see his death because the idea of Preservation's Vessel sacrificing themself in a suicidal attack was alien to him and Ruin's intent and thus he didn't search for it and didn't see it coming. It's reasonable to assume that Adonalsium's future vision was bound by the same rules which exist today thus there are many explanations for why he didn't see the Shattering, or of course he let it happen for reasons unknown to us.

They are not truly dead. Maya shows it. However, I wonder if you were to somehow turn the bodies of spren killed by Ishar into their Shardblade form, would they be pure god metals that can be burned?

It gives Warlight now. Every midnight Retribution infuses gemstones left outside by people asking him for light. It was said in Venli's last chapter and Taravangian thought that he still needed to give light to Roshar. But because this time it's Retribution who distributes the light, he might choose not to give it to factions not under his control, like Azir or Urithiru. Urithiru still have Towerlight, so they will be fine and their fabrials are still working, Azir however may be left with no light at all. They have oil, just not crude oil, but they are using biodiesel. There were mentions of coal and coal mines in the book so they have some coal deposits, probably created with the world. Scadrial is Earth analog and it will progress technologically very similar to Earth's tech, Roshar will be a magic-tech world.

I didn't try to suggest that it's not survivable, just that the air is thinner in the Horneater Peaks. Rosharan gravity is 70% that of the Earth's gravity and the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is higher than on Earth, but Brandon has never said that the majority of air is oxygen (it could be toxic if that was the case). On Earth, the highest oxygen level in history was 35% so I would expect Roshar to be comparable to that. Yes, the air in the Horneater peaks is thinner, but that's relative to the airsick lowlanders of course. We don't know how high those mountains are so it's hard to find any comparison, but knowing that Urithiru itself is a 10 km tall tower build among high mountain peaks suggest that the Horneater Peaks are considerably higher than highest ranges on Earth - lower gravity helps with that, but it would also make the air even thinner than it is on the top of Mount Everest (unless the pressure at the sea level is much higher than on Earth). However, people on Earth do live on extreme heights, many climb Himalayas without oxygen tanks, it's obviously survivable and it indeed helps when the oxygen concentration is higher on Roshar. Another big helping factor is that everyone on Roshar is invested and their body has access to ambient investiture in the form of Stormlight. This makes them healthier and would help them slightly in a lower pressure environment.

I love Awakening, so give me Endowment. Ruin is tough as you'll be forced to eventually destroy everything you love, not a pleasant life.

Well, both Era 2 and SA 5-10 will happen at more or less the same time so it's quite possible both Retribution and Harmony will become a triple Shard simultaneously. However, I think Taravangian will do it faster as he's actively pursuing this goal, while Sazed is content with what he already has. I think Sazed will change into Discord than into something more stable, that fully merges Preservation and Ruin under a new Shard that's not about balance or imbalance (like Creation or something like this).

Most likely Warlight would be used as a replacement without any issues. However it's possible that to use it you might need Corrupted Spren or something like that, or you might need to use Navani's method to separate Warlight into Voidlight and Stormlight and use Stormlight. Fabrial technology will definitely develop further as Brandon often said that Roshar will develop alternative technology based on Fabrials and magic, while Scadrial follows a more Earthly tech tree.

Yes, it's possible that the Horneater Peaks are above the True Everstorm, thus they should be mostly unaffected by it. However, the lack of Highstorms and nutrients it carried will certainly affect them and travel between villages or outside of the peaks might be impossible as they would have to walk through the storm clouds, which would be very dangerous. I don't remember if Urithiru peaks above the True Everstorm now. If it does then the Horneater peaks most likely do as well, if it doesn't then the Everstorm covers the peaks too. No. Perpendicularities aren't a heat source. There was only one Cultivation's perpendicularity in the mountains, in one lake, there were many lakes on each mountain top, each of them generate their own heat. They seem to be not dependent on the perpendicularity, they're hot probably because of some geothermal activity. Also the air is much thinner up there than on the surface level, there isn't anything there that would maintain a higher pressure.

Shardblade can't be used as a Hemalurgic spike because it's too invested and it can't hold more charge, so it can't be used as a mealmind for the same reason. All Shardblade are considered the same alloy, even though their composition vary slightly. They would all do the same thing. Those two things would probably be equally as hard. You can't burn a Shardblade because it's alive and thus it's not considered as metal by your body - that's the reason why you can't store in it or use it as a spike. If you were to strip life out of Shardblade, you would be left with pure god metal and thus you could use it in Metallic Arts.

Technically, it can. You can Command an Awakened object to rub itself on something and gather static electric charge, which could be later discharged with an arch. Not a real lightning, but still something like Van de Graaff generator. The Surge of Division breaks the bonds between atoms in molecules. Those bonds are due to electromagnetic force, so Division already manipulates the same force responsible for creation of lightning. I think it's highly likely that Division can create lightning directly.

No, Ishar said that while decades will pass on Roshar, they will experience just a few months, not more. I don't think so. The big part of their madness is that they've lived too long so that even their soul can't handle it as it wasn't made to live that long. The more time they will experience, the worse they will get. And they will also have more memories and that also causes their mind to deteriorate. It doesn't matter if they’re in their physical form or they are in SR, they’re still living and experiencing that time as it passes, so it's best for them not to spend there a lot of time.

Yes, WoB:

Atium was made during the clash between Ruin and Preservation and it was a kind of Splintering:

FTL is built into Allomancy and it most likely involves speed bubbles and the Spiritual Realm in some way (which is already involved with speed bubbles as there is a transfer of energy in and out of the Spiritual Realm to prevent irradiating people, this loss of energy is the key to cracking the Allomantic FTL). It is confirmed that they will travel FTL in the Physical Realm. The Spiritual Realm breaks causality so investiture is already breaking the rules. We should probably expect something similar to the Alcubierre Drive, which works by bending spacetime itself around the spacecraft and so it happened that Allomantic time bubbles also work by pulling and pushing on spacetime around the Allomancer - that's probably how we'll get FTL. WoBs:

I think there still will be a lot of combat and killing. The name of the third era is Ghostbloods and they are a secret, underground organisation with a very specific goal in mind - protect Scadrial from all threats. One of those threats will most likely reappear - Autonomy. One of Brandon's ideas for Era 3 was to tell the story of the Allomancer SWAT team, they seem to still be a part of the series so this tells us he planned to have a lot of action and shooting in Ghostbloods. And of course, Kelsier is a troublemaker. And after doing a very quick google search, the homicide rate in the USA was at its maximum in the 1980s-90s, peaking in 1991 despite the popularization of surveillance cameras. The Ghostbloods trilogy has a big potential for a lot of action and shooting happening in it.

Warbreaker ch 53:

This is most likely the case but we don't know for sure.

The terms end-positive and end-negative refers to where does investiture come from to fuel the magic. In the end-positive system, the investiture is gained from the external source, in the end-neutral it's gained from the internal source, while in end-negative investiture is lost in the process. Feruchemy is end-neutral, because investiture comes only from your body and what you store is what you get back. Hemalurgy is end-negative because you're stealing investiture and losing it in the process. Allomancy is end-positive because investiture comes directly from Preservation, not yourself, not your soul and not the metal itself. You do not use innate inherent investiture in your soul to fuel Allomancy, you do not use the metal you burn to turn it directly into investiture, it does not store investiture. Instead, when you burn a metal it opens a conduit to the Spiritual Realm and Preservation from where it draws the power and shapes it in the specific way related to the molecular structure of the metal. Metal is not a fuel in Allomancy, it's a door for investiture to come through into your soul. That's why this magic system is end-positive, investiture is gained from the external source - Preservation. The fact that the metal is lost when you burn it doesn't matter as the metal itself is not powering Allomancy. Matter is energy and investiture in Cosmere and they can't be destroyed, they can only change forms. Burnt metal changed form into energy/investiture and it will eventually return to Scadrial in one way or another.

Modern combustion jet engines can be easily replaced by Allomancy. What does this engine do? It compresses and heats up the air to push it from the nozzle at the back with high speeds, which gives thrust to a plane. How is this compression achieved? By spinning a fan which sucks the air into the engine and compresses it. Then in the combustion chamber the air is mixed with fuel and ignited. Simple, right? Well, Malwish airships already have the first part of this engine developed - they are using steel Allomancy to spin the fans to generate lift. How about putting those fans inside a horizontal, cylindrical tube, wide at the front, narrow at the back, with a chamber inside of it? In that chamber you need to heat up the air - they have heating metallions, why not just use them to heat up the air inside the engine? Hot air expands and thus hot air in the pressurized chamber will want to escape and it can through the nozzle at the back of the tube, which would generate thrust just like in modern jet engines. It's very easy to design using Metallic Arts, does exactly the same thing but you don't have to carry tons of heavy fuel with you, thus it's much more efficient. A jet engine was not built in a day. The very first planes were extremely slow, hard to maneuver and with a short range. It took almost 4 decades from the invention of the first plane to the first flight of a plane powered by a jet engine and all of those massive developments were done because of two World Wars pushing technology forwards faster than ever before. On Scadrial the aviation was just developed. Yes, it's already a few decades old or more, but there was no global conflict which would force them to innovate new technology to win the arms race. The arms race has just begun and the airships we saw in BoM and TLM will soon be replaced by faster, more maneuverable ones that can easily compete with modern planes. Metallic Arts can be used for that very easily. This doesn't mean the normal combustion technology won't be used on Scadiral, but claiming it is more powerful than what you can do with Metallic Arts is a little bit too much. The magic on Scadrial can do what technology does very easily, even more efficiently. It just needs a little innovation to push it in that direction.

This is all based on Kaladin's self-perception. If he now considers himself as missing fingers, he won't have them, if he considers his ideal self as having fingers, he will have them. This is the same as it was with his scars and tattoo - for such a long time he was unable to heal his brands because he saw himself as deserving them, until he finally let go of his guilt and realized he can't save them all. He's a Herald now, a Cognitive Shadow, more like a spren than a person, but the same rules still apply. It's still a form of healing and it will all depend on how he views himself. Because he just lost his fingers a few minutes ago, it's highly unlikely that his mind incorporated that loss with his image of himself. Additionally, he's not at his darkest moment anymore so he won't feel like he deserves this wound. He probably already has his fingers back when investiture recreated a body for him in the postlude vision based on his self-perception.

I just looove seeing someone read SA for the first time I’m glad you're enjoying it.

This is a Stormlight only forum, spoilers from other books are not allowed here. Please edit your post and hide them in a spoiler box. It's not that easy. There were multiple factors that contributed to this situation, the biggest was the conflict between Rayse the Vessel and Odium the power. They were in conflict, Rayse had troubles controlling the power and partially Ascending gave Mishram a strong Connection to Odium. The power liked Mishram and thought of her as a better fit Vessel and that's why Mishram rivaled Rayse. Because of this Rayse fully lost control over his Shard and was able to only prevent it from rejecting him, nothing more. The power chose Mishram and that's why Mishram was a rival to him. Mishram is still a threat to Taravangian, the power still likes her. Mistborn spoilers: WaT ch 122: WaT ch 145:

It's not his seat of power, it's his Shardpool. Just like Mishram and Ishar did, someone can take up the power of his own perpendicularity and potentially rival his claim to Odium. The power of Odium liked Mishram so much that it considered her as a better Vessel than Rayse and it wanted her as her Vessel, which made Rayse impotent and almost resulted in him losing the Shard. Taravangian wanted to make sure this would never happen to him. it's not about ownership (as the pool itself grants no ownership over anything, it's not Odium's capital or anything like this, it's just a place where his investiture leaks into the Physical Realm), it's about power and Connection to Odium this Shardpool can grant.