alder24

There are many factors to this. You're right, humanity is doing much better than before. But the first problem is why they weren't doing so well in previous Desolations - time in between them. While the separation between first Desolations was very long, hundreds of years, it changed dramatically the closer to the Last Desolations you look. Between a few last Desolations, only several years was between each Desolation, the worst was before the Last Desolation, as less than a year passed after the previous one had ended. This means that humanity barely won a Desolation, had no time for rebuilding and advancing tech, and another Desolation was already starting - that's why those Desolations were so devastating, pushing technology back to the stone age. They had no time to rebuild. This time however humanity had 4500 years to advance, to rebuild, to increase their population and create stable countries with professional military. They have steel now, advanced fabrials, advanced science, great logistics and communication capabilities (spanreeds are a massive advantage) and huge cities with walls. Like Taln said "It's an amazing gift Heralds gave them, this time they stand a chance". Secondly, for the last 2000 years Singers, the primary force of Odium, were enslaved and without their mind and identity. They lost everything, and now they've just regained themselves. They are in no shape to wage a planet wide war. None of them knows how to fight, none of them was trained to fight, none of them is disciplined, none of them knows who Fused are, who Odium is and what Voidspren are. They just can't fight like that. They need to train first and be educated. To make Singers a capable fighting force they need months, if not years of training - only available teachers are Fused. This isn't something that ancient Singers had to worry about, they were ready to fight and had their minds intact. Moreover one of their Unmade - Ba-Ado-Mishram - was imprisoned as well. We don't know what she was doing during previous Desolations, but she was regarded as a Highprice among Odium forces. It's likely she played an important role back then, and her absence restricted Odium's forces to some degree. Another Unmade, Sja-Anat, is now plotting to change sides and join humanity in their fight against Odium. She has already acted directly against Odium by Enlightening Glys who bonded with Renaring (giving him the ability to see the future and cloud Odium's vision, which significantly impaired Odium's planning), and saved Shallan and Co from Kholinar trap. Third Unmade, the Thrill, was imprisoned within a few first months of Desolation, and is now lost. This effectively means that 3 out of 9 Unmades are unavailable to Odium and possibly a few more haven't been active yet. To add even more, most Fused are now insane. Repeated cycle of death and rebirth has broken their mind and they are unable to aid in most ways except for fighting (how well we don't know). This severely limits what Odium can do with them and 4500 years of waiting didn't help at all. The longer a Cognitive Shadow like Fused is alive, the more broken their mind becomes. They can't help Singers in training and rebuilding. In my opinion their presence even harms the morale of Odium’s army. Another factor is that the True Desolation just started. In OB it was said that most of Fused haven't returned yet - this is still the case in RoW as Pursuer was just awoken and got back on Roshar. As of the end of RoW, there are still 2 types of Fused that haven't returned yet. Fused weren't fighting at full force yet. As I already mentioned, modern Roshar has a very advanced military compared to what they had in ancient times. With integrated use of Soulcasters their army can march without supply trains, they have complex formations and tactics, well disciplined and trained troops with steel equipment, and very experienced commanders. Spanreeds allows them to gather information from all across Roshar instantly, which improves their scouting and intelligence to levels not present before (this is very important in a war). They are ready for war, not on that scale but they can adapt much faster than Odium's forces and mount a successful defense. They were able to predict where Odium forces were going to strike in OB, and counter that effectively. Moreover there are more than 100 Shardbearers with Shardblade and Shardplate around Roshar, while they aren't Radiants, they are still very deadly weapons, capable of instantly killing any Fused and Regals. With limited numbers of Fused who Returned, this levels the fighting field. And of course, spren are back and are forming bonds with humans again. The number of willing spren is low for now, but few individuals managed to appear early enough (Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah etc) to guid and train a wave of new Radiants, so they won't struggle as much as they did. Even Odium might be a small factor in this Desolation - he might purposefully slow down his army advances because he wanted to have Dalinar on his side, he was preparing him to join his Fused and he wanted to slowly break him rather than risk getting him killed. He attacked Alethkar first, and then dug in and waited there to show Dalinar that his home was lost. After his plan failed, he got bound to an unwanted contest, he had to be careful with his actions so he wouldn't risk meeting Dalinar again, who could enforce on him date of the contest, to which Odium wasn't ready.

Making a weaker coppercloud would expose you to any Seeker and Mistborn in the area - they would be now stronger and would be also able to piece your coppercloud. Moreover your seeking would be weaker even if you pierce your cloud - Vin felt weaker pulses from assassins than normally. You can do it, but there are downsides to it which makes it less useful. Coppercloud is like a wave absorbing material, like a silent room - while inside you can't hear anything outside and inside it as well (as a Seeker), if something inside a cloud emits waves, you can't hear them outside. So you can't make clouds like you described, they are uniform in the area they affect. You can make stronger or weaker clouds (as every metal can be burned on a sliding scale - WoB), but you can't make it "stronger around you, weaker outside" - it's uniform strength. So if you make a normal cloud - you can't sense through it with bronze. If you make a weaker cloud, you might be able to pierce it with bronze and sense everything weaker, but you will be susceptible to Seekers and Mistborn as they would also be able to pierce your cloud (even Rioters and Soothers might be able to break through it and manipulate your emotions slightly).

I don't think he will ever be able to produce Lerasium from splitting Harmonium with Trellium. I believe that intent is needed - not any intent, but a very precise one forcing people not to change or use products of reaction in any way - Wax had that intent, he realized that if he succeed it would change nothing about him, because he already held power of gods and didn't want to used them again. No one else had that intent. Moreover I think only one god metal can be produced in a single reaction, if you meet this intent of Preserving, you get Lerasium, if you don't, if you want to use products of reaction in any way, you get Atium. That’s why Set has never got Lerasium, that's why Kandra weren’t able to replicate Wax’s results because they wanted to use god metals for something, while Wax didn’t want to. This also guarantees that Kelsier will never be able to get Learsium this way, because he would always want to use it to change something, to spread Allomancy among Scadrians.

I don't think so. I think Sazed learned to lie and Kelsier believed him that Lerasium was fully destroyed in the explosion. There was no suspicion in Kel's mind, nothing like what was shown to us in SH, and for me that's a confirmation that Kel won't realize the truth anytime soon.

This WoB:

The shield being a diamond shape has no sense if you look at its purpose. The big, bulky diamond shape of the shield, which is described as a kite shield, covering the entire side of the soldier, from head to toes, is just waaaay too big for it to be used against a Shardblades. Kite shields are this big to protect against ranged attacks, to cover your entire body so no arrow would reach it. There are better types of shields that can be used to block a melee attack, smaller, lighter, more maneuverable - something like a heater shield or even a small buckler. Those shields would be far better options to use for Half-Shard, reducing their bulkiness, giving soldiers the ability to effectively fight against a Shardblade. That's why I think their shape is an essential part of the fabrial - without it, a Half-Shard wouldn't work. But the shape of metal is a factor, important way. A fabrial must have specifically shaped wire cage - that's why suppressors fabrials looks all the same, that's why all Soulcasters looks the same. Placement of aluminum in a wiring determinantes how will it affect a fabiral. You're missing out that spren can be attracted to certain individuals from extreme distances. They don't need to be there - they could be attracted by Kaladin's needs from Shattered Plains or something like that, and instantly appear next to Kaladin. If there is a size requirement, Radiant will just attract a specific spren towards himself from far away. Is it? How does Silajana see through it? However, from RoW we know that the entire gauntlet, is seemingly just one spren. One spren smashes to the hand, gauntlet is in place only translucent (which full Plate can be made to be, so that is no evidence for gauntlet being incomplete). Per WoK chapter 26 where we get the description of putting on a Shardplate: Sabaton encases the entire boot of Dalinar, and military boots are typically nearly up to knees. Greaves go on next, and they cover the up to and over the knees, locking on to sabatons: Cuisses after to cover thighs So to entirely cover a single leg you need ~3-5 pieces of armor (Sabaton, greaves, cuiss, the last twopossibly doubled if they are attached one from front and the other from back). So legs require just 6-10 armor pieces. He already has culet, faulds, skirt goes over them next, so that is 4 pieces for torso and lower body. Breastplate is a single piece based on description (but could be two so lets go with that). For arm we know have rerebraces, vambrace, continuing with gauntlet: So that is just 3 pieces for a single arm, so arms requires 6 pieces in total. Finally, goes gorget, pauldrons and helmet: This puts the total of distinct armor pieces for the entire Shardplate at 22-26. So 30 just for limbs is clearly not correct. 3-5 for each leg 3 for each arm 4 for lower torso (culet, faulds 2x, skirt) 5 for upper torso (breastplate 2x, gorget, pauldrons 2x) 1 Helm Yes, @therunner is right. I didn't want to suggest that that's how many spren is there, but just that there are different ways in which you can count the number of spren needed, and you can get way more than 12 depending on how you count. Giving it more thought I think that each piece of plate is a separate segment made out of a single spren. So going back to the knight image there would be 5 segments per arm, 5 per leg (including Tassets), a breastplate made out of 5 segments: Cuirass, Plackart, Faulds and two sides segments (per Gavilar vs Szeths fight), a back side with Culet, made out of 2-3 pieces (upper and lower, or upper-left, upper-right and lower, I don't think it should be a single segment, it's too big), a skirt 1-2 segments, a bevor or gorget for neck and a helmet. In total that 30-32 segments, each made out of a single spren. WoK ch 58: ch 68: It's even better shown in WoR ch 56 and 57 - Adolin and Kaladin's duel against 4 opponents. I don't have an english version to quote, but pieces of named armor are cracked (like vambraces, rerebraces, pauldrons), Kaladin's lashed jump crack the plate but not on the back, but on sides and shoulders, proving once more there are side segments of plate, separate from frontal breastplate and back side.

We have literally no information about that. Nothing. Aethers are fairly new in Cosmere, they were widely introduced just in TLM, and that's it.

I don't think this is a matter of his own perception. It's because people don't know about this new Dalinar. They only know Dalinar the Blackthorn, not Dalinar the Bondsmith. They know Dalinar who is violent, eager to fight and constantly awaiting a war, not Dalinar who wants to talk, use nice words and diplomacy to gain allies. Kings and Queens were just confused, because this wasn't the Dalinar they knew about. They couldn't recognize him at all, therefore they suspected a plot. They thought that Dalinar the Blackthorn just wanted them to open their gates before his army using nice and soft words, and then he would conquer them from the inside. That's what they all feared, because they never met Dalinar the Bondsmith. They don't want Dalinar to get bloody and violent, but that Dalinar is familiar to them, they know him and understand him, they're more comfortable with that Dalinar the Blackthorn, then with Dalinar the Bondsmith. It's best said in Dalinar's first meeting with Queen Fen in his vision. She didn’t trust his nice words, they were fake to her, she only began to realize this is the new and real Dalinar when he started to shout at her. OB ch 32: Other than that I agree. He can't find a way to diplomatically unite Rosharan leaders quickly, because of his violent past and reputation. He doesn't know the way of diplomacy, only the way of war. He was just learning how to unite without starting a fight.

and Sounds like the purpose was to obscure the truth about the Hero of Ages and the past generally (and to remove the Terris Feruchemists as a source of religious authority), nothing about Feruchemy mixing with Allomancy. It was said in books. I think it's fair to assume that there are multiple reasons why Rashek turned Feruchemist. One is to prevent Fullborn from getting born, another is to control information. It was said in TFE epilogue, epigraphs which were already quoted above, and HoA ch 62: If his children were Feruchemist, they could travel south themselfs. I think the effects would be very similar to pure Lerasium - after all that's how strong his kids would be, the genes would be the same. If only 9 Mistborn were to travel to the Southern pole, Malwish would have as many Mistborn as in the north, and possibly much more Feruchemist (because no suppression program would breed Feruchemy out of them). Even a single kid of Rashek would still considerably increase the amount of Metalborn in that region - which isn't true. Allik said before Kelsier arrived, Malwish didn't have any Metalborn among them (BoM ch 21). That's why Rashek's kids couldn't go south.

Those are the best Yes, it depends on shapes of both a Shardblade and the spearhead, their curvature and the angle of a strike, etc.

Technically Bands are 16 separate full metalminds, investiture from one metalmind doesn't mix with investiture in another one. That would mean that Bands are like 16 Half-Shards in your hand. Every Shardblade strike hits only one metalmind, and can break only one of it at the time. And because more than one hit is needed to break a Half-Shard, you can switch sides of the Bands to prevent a metalmind from breaking. Therefore the Bands are 16 times better than a single Half-Shard

The whole kite shield is made out of metal, which isn't something that was done with shields of that size. I see no other reason for it than the metal being an integral part of the fabrial. A plate's piece isn't a segment. A piece is the same as in real life plate armor, but a piece is made out of several segments. A breastplate is composed of several segments combined together. So the whole breastplate is put on a Shardbearer as a single piece, but each segment of this breastplate can be shattered separately. Each segment is one lesser spren. Whole piece, like a breastplate, is composed of multiple lesser spren making up individual segments. Plate armor from late middle ages... You can clearly see the similarities between those two, and even see how many separate segments are on a Shardplate. The upper breastplate segment of the Shardplate is separate from the lower segment, but still both are a part of the same piece, a breastplate, but they protect different parts of the body. Greave, which covers the lower leg, is made out of several segments, combined together with a sabaton, but there is still a clear distinction between frontal greave and back side of it. I don't want to suggest that each small plate is a separate spren (which might be the case), but there are a lot of pieces, fragments and segments of a Shardplate to count. Shardplates are far more detailed and decorative than plate armor, which gives it more room for separation of pieces into smaller distinctive segments.

There is only one person that we know of, who has a spike in one of his eyes. That's Kelsier for sure. And WoB confirmed it: Edit: @Bondsmith-Edgedancer about theories, Kelsier as CS reattached himself via a spike to the mistwraith's body, who consumed his bones and recreated Kelsier's body - that body isn't his, it's a mistwraith with his bones. That's a theory at least, WoBs support it:

Fabrial is gem + metal caging. Gemstones alone aren't fabrials. Metal is an essential part of most fabrial - without metal wiring, it wouldn't work at all. Half-Shard's metal wiring is the whole shield - without it there is no fabial anymore. It's possible that the gem itself is destroyed with the shield, because of the sheer amount of light which would likely be drawn out of the gem when the shield is being broken - if the gem loses light fast, it can crack. But the pieces of the plate are separated into smaller sections, like Szeth destroyed a side of Gavilar's Shardplate, which by piece would be considered a part of a breastplate, but only the side of it was damaged, not the whole breastplate. Each of those big pieces have smaller segments which are made out of lesser spren. The biggest section of a Shardplate is the front of the breastplate - cuirass, which holds gems inside of it. Not to mention that each piece of arm or leg armor must be counted twice - at least 5 for one arm and 4 for leg - 18 in total. You can separate most pieces into front and back pieces - that's 9 for one arm, and 6 for a leg - 30 in total just for limbs. At least. Dozens of spren seems fitting quite well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medieval_armour_components

The difference is that Aethers is constantly fed with fresh investiture, while dead Shardplate has only 10 gems worth of it - when Kaladin grabbed Shardplate's helmet (Adolin's duel WoR), it fed on his Stormlight and was able to heal several hits from a Shardblade, much more than it should have under normal circumstances. Twinsoul spends 2 pages growing his golem, while having conversation. He could quickly grow new Aethers in places chipped by gunfire, but bullets aren't a Shardblade, an arm cut off by a Shardblade would take time to regrow. A full metalmind and a Half-Shard are both moderately invested - you're right, metalmind should be shattered or broken after a few hits. But does a Shardblade damage investiture stored in that metalmind? If yes then a Feruchemist can gain a bit more space to store more attribute in it, and make it withstand a few more hits. Nightblood striking Ishar's Honorblade also created some sort of explosion, I agree, this seems to be a nature of Shardblades and invested objects. Personally I think that if it's just a person with a Shardplate, without a Shardblade, Prasanva would win, as he can grow his own weapon and even trap his opponent in Roseite for some short time. He has more advantages than a Shardbearer. But give a Shardbearer a Shardblade and he would win.

It's about power, how much you can fuel with it (liquid can fuel a lot, solid does one specific thing, potent vs rigid), not about investiture density. Physical investiture, like matter, is the most dense in solid state. Edit: For resisting a Shardblade investiture density matters the most, not potency.

Steelpush has a very limited range. No more than the height of the Luthadel wall, dozens of meters at best. It would be so much to reach the bottom of the sea. Slowly sinking down would work without any coins. You shouldn't sink into the sea, you might not be able to get out, especially if land is far away. Even with F-pewter or A-pewter, you wouldn't be able to move very fast (especially with F-pewter, the stronger you are the slower you get, and pushing the weight of the entire ocean above you requires a lot of strength) so that’s no so practical.

I did also provide one quote from HoA! Not a theory, just a point. I think there are more WoBs or quotes, but I just didn't have time to find them back then (and now too, it's midnight here). That was a fun and engaging discussion. And horrifying idea of yours. This is worse than turning Miles into a spike factory. Way worse. If someone were to do it it would be Straff Rashek.

How about another Shardblade? Nightblood. Spine and skull soulcasted into aluminum or replaced with it Wolverine style. Half-Shard. Any highly invested weapon or object. Full metalmind. Aluminum in general. Allomantic Atium. Kandra are even better - they don't have a brain or a spinal cord, so Shardblade won't be able to just cut them and burn their eyes out. They are almost Shardblade immune! To kill them you would most likely have to cut most of their brain matter spreaded across their entire body, so you would need to hack their body like a butcher.

Yes, we don't know, but Rashek was said to always remember every face in the blink of an eye - he recognized Kelsier immediately. No matter how it works, he wouldn’t be able to forget in such a way. I highly doubt he would store this important, Well gained, information in coppermind if he would forget it. Both are storable in copper - knowledge is dependent on and influenced by memory. Ok, possible then, but I don't think it is that likely he would "not think about it" when flirting with a woman. It's too essential for him to do such a thing. No, I'm not (about your spiking kids idea): Yes, if you look at it in that way, that's true. But I don't think that's contradicting the WoB, not the most important part for us ("The Lord Ruler created koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors during his time holding the power."). But on the other hand Mistwraiths are people (kandra) with mental blockage in them, Blessings remove that blockage allowing them to access their full sentience. It would be like classifying a mentally ill, but curable, person as a different species. By this logic I think Kandra and Mistwraiths are the same species.

I think it has to be invested, it's the Prime Aether essence. Silajana was able to see through it, it must be invested, but likely not a lot. TLM ch 47:

I don't think it would be that easy to walk on the bottom of mists, easier than beads, but still hard. On Scadrial you need something invested to swim on mists, a full metalmind and incredible balance should work. A-steek F-cadmium Twinborn won't work - coins would sink to the bottom of mists seas, no anchor to push. F-iron might be useful, store as much of your weight as possible and you might be able to walk on mists seas, because your body is invested, just too low and too heavy so it sinks. The best idea is to stay on land.

SotD:

That is possible but unlikely, so I agreed to it. This is "would". "Can't" was about different situations which I argued were impossible to be true, because of quotes, WoBs and logic I presented. I wanted to emphasize that this is impossible Which I think would be impossible, because he knew he could make Fullborn kids. And he can't forget, compounding copper. Mistwraith and Kandra are kind of the same race. It was said several times in books that Kandra are adult Mistwraith.

I want to say what you wrote isn't true. Yes, it can work if Rashek would use his kids as a spike factory, which I don't think he would do. If he didn't kill his friends but instead turned them into Kandra, TenSoon said "You call the Father a monster, but he was not an evil man". I don't think he would kill his kids (what would Lutha, his alleged wife, say?), even if they could pose a threat to him in the future. No, but you said: which doesn't matter as I explained. It only matters that he would pass Feruchemy and Allomancy onto his kids. HoA ch 68: He didn't just learn how to do it, he created them directly: Preservation can power and mimic Hemalurgy: While Rashek couldn't kill with Preservation's power (he tried to kill Kwaan), he should be able to create spikes with raw Preservation's investiture in them, taking a shape of specific hemalurgic charge, which is something that Set partially did in TLM using Preservation's fragment, and what Moonlight suggested can be done with Dor instead of people.