alder24

Just remembered, there is this WoB confirming there was at least one failed attempt to kill Adonalsium before the Shattering, so there were others that shared the idea the Vessels and Hoid had:

Seems like it. Some definitely did it for power (Rayse probably), but others saw the Shattering as a necessity, Hoid included. And because according to Tanavast Adonalsium didn't fight back, it's possible that Adonalsium himself also shared their opinion. Which begs the question: what did Adonalsium do to make them want to kill him and to make them think they could do a better job as gods? Tress ch 56: SH ch 3-1:

Just perception alone won't be enough. He's still a sword, his soul is bound by this and his Command is also tying him up as a sword. You would have to modify his Spiritual DNA directly, but because he's an artificial creation bounded by his Command and body, I don't really know how you could even attempt it. His Command gives him life, but it's tied to him being a sword and it wouldn't work without it, so changing him into a human would mess up with his Command, which might kill him. Not to mention that any investiture that touches him would be consumed by him. It has an effect on him, but he probably doesn't view himself as a god so for now he can counteract those changes. This effect of how others view Cognitive Shadows is especially visible in Heralds who went insane and all became closer to Ten Fools, and this is something Kelsier desperately wants to avoid. However, such a change won't be visible in Kelsier after 300 years he lived as a CS, it takes thousands of years for that to happen. Returned also are influenced by perception of people, their bodies slightly change to make them appear more wise, more old, more beautiful etc.

No, Cosmere Identity (big I) is not the same as normal identity, in Cosmere Identity is a bit like an encryption key that tells investiture who it belongs to and who can access it (there is much more to it, but for the most part we don't know what Identity really do). Blanking Identity wouldn't change the fact that Nightblood is an Awakened sword with a Command, and a Lifeless with Nightblood's Identity would still be a totally normal Lifeless both in the Physical and in the Cognitive Realm. I don't think you can make Nightblood into a real human because his soul is engraved into the sword he is and his Command is giving him life, Command that ties him to being a sword. Not to mention he views himself as a sword and storing his Identity won't change any of those things.

The difference is not in papers, but in the work put into gaining those papers and finding those criminals. That's one of my main problems with what Jasnah did - she just left the palace searching for anyone to attack her, just so she could kill them. And yes, in her mind she wanted to kill those robbers from this alleyway, but she had no idea who they were as she did no prior investigation to figure out their identity. The people she killed might have been just some random opportunistic thieves tempted by her massive gemstones, who would have never committed that crime if she hadn't brandished her soulcaster and noble clothes left and right (even though the soulcaster was hidden up until the end, the light was visible through her cloaths). Of course that doesn't make their attempted theft any less wrong. She was just lucky that people she killed were actually the murderers she was looking for and even in the end, she still couldn't have known that for sure and that is something we must assume, but it's still possible real criminals got away. A Skybreaker would have found precisely who they were and what laws they'd broken before they would try to kill them, thus minimizing the possibility of hurting unrelated people. The morality of this situation simply exceeds the question whether or not those criminals deserved to die (yes, they did), you have to judge Jasnah entire mentality and her actions leading to their death: her walking around town with murderous intent, not knowing who are the people she she was looking for, dragging defenceless Shallan along with her, recklessly risking her life for some stupid lesson, risking killing unrelated thieves and finally mercilessly killing those four footpads even when they run away, without even thinking if there were other ways in which she could have handled this situation. She could have easily immobilized them and handed them over to local authorities and if she was worried about corruption, she could have involved palace guards, who would have investigated corruption further (Skybreakers would have punished corrupted officials too btw, Jasnah just did a sloppy job). The end result would have been the same, but she didn't even think about other possibilities than murder, she wanted to play the role of judge, jury and executioner, a vigilante outside of the law and the restrictions it provides in order to prevent innocent people from injustice. Her desire to prevent further murders and punish those responsible for them was just and morally good, however, her actions are just extremely immoral and wrong, exposing her twisted sense of morality and her dangerous philosophy "the end justifies the means," which is in total opposition to the First Ideal she'd sworn. And while her plans to assassinate Aesudan, Renarin and Fen are also morally wrong, in the end she didn't kill any of them, thus those actions pale in comparison to what she did in that alleyway.

Nightblood already exists in the Spiritual Realm, just like everything else does. His soul resides there and it's a place where Shards and investiture exist. However, there is a religious belief that after death, people go to the Beyond, which is separate from the Spiritual Realm. According to this belief, Nightblood would go there as he is a person - if you find a way to actually kill him, which is much harder than it sounds.

There is a difference between an AI like Chat-GPT and a self-aware AI. Chat-GPT is just a program and nothing more, it doesn't have a soul or an identity, but a self-aware AI is no different than a person and consciousness in Cosmere requires investiture. Brandon even said that in Cosmere making a true AI is very similar to making a child. You don't just need to write a code for that AI, you need to give it investiture to make it think and feel. Thus, a true AI will have its own identity and its own soul and in the Cognitive Realm it won't manifest like objects in beads, but like people in flames. WoBs: Yes. The 1000 Breaths used to Awaken Nightblood became his soul. Hard to say. An Awakened entity like Nightblood is an artificial spren. Their souls are driven by the Command given to them during Awakening, which is something a normal soul doesn't have. An Awakened entity is also influenced by the object that is their body - Nightblood thinks like a sword because he is a sword. But they both have Connections and Identity and stuff like that. They both are not that different from each other but at the same time very different depending on how you look at them. Obviously the Stick.

So she would continue walking around town exposing her gemstones until someone would try to rob her. There is also a huge difference between actually killing 4 people and not killing Aesudan. If a Skybreaker would do exactly what Jasnah did I would also criticize them. But that's not how Skybreakers do things. They try their best to find people who are proven to commit crimes and have all legal paperwork required for their execution. They know who they are searching for and what their crimes are. They don't just wake up and decide to kill some randoms in a dark alley while dragging a defenseless person with them like Jasnah did. It's the quote from WaT I put in my first post. It literally says that Jasnah spared Aesudan out of love - so it was the decisive factor when she made the choice not to kill her, although she made it unconsciously at that time as she was not aware of her true feelings and so it wasn't shown in her thoughts in WoR prologue. My reasoning is that because it was said that Jasnah never liked Aesudan, she must have spared her because Elhokar did love her and would have been hurt, if Jasnah were to kill her and that's why I said she didn't do it out of love for him.

A Shardblade cuts because it vaporizes the matter it strikes and also because it has a sharp edge just like any other sword. Aluminum can't be vaporized because of its resistance to investiture so it has to be cut with Shardblade's sharp edge, which is hard even though aluminum is much softer than steel and most likely the god metal that makes up Shardblades. Being able to visualize a much sharper Shardblade would definitely help.

A spren, Cognitive Shadow or a self-aware piece of investiture can become a Vessel, but they would have certain limitations because of their nature and Connections. To exploit Shard's full potential, its Vessel needs to have proper Connections to all three realms. Spren are an idea that exist primarily in either the Physical or Cognitive Realm and lack the proper Connection to the other - Radiant spren need a Nahel Bond to anchor themselves to the Physical Realm, while Windspren rarely appear in the Cognitive Realm. Therefore, they would be weaker compared to a normal Vessel who was a living person before. Unmades are a bit weird, from Sja-Anat interlude in RoW we know that most exist partially in between realms, but they don't fully exist in either one. This certainly would reflect in their ability to hold a Shard, they would be in a better situation than spren as they have a Connection to all realms, but still lacking compared to a normal person. BAM would probably fall in this category, but it's hard to say exactly what was her nature and how Ascending at the Well of Control changed her. As for their ability to see the future, we don't know if their nature would influence it at all, but they would be able to see, that's for sure. RoW I-2: Honor developing self-awareness and becoming its own Vessel is a totally new situation. Because a Shard has ties to all realms, self-aware Honor might just get around those restrictions. However, we don't know how it would compare to a Vessel who was a person and if there would be some other limitations because of its nature as sentient piece of investiture. And we can't say anything about its skill and ability to use the power of the Shard - right now Honor's consciousness is still developing, it's but a child unable to wield the power of Honor, so it's too early to say anything as all would depend on how it will develop. Mistborn: Secret History spoilers:

It might be a strategically correct action to take, but it still doesn't make it morally or politically right. The example of Vichy France isn't that good considering that they were de facto a puppet state of Germany in control of the French navy, thus it did pose a threat to allies and that's when the plan to attack them was drafted. But the British attack was still a betrayal and strained relations between them and France. Strategically a good choice, but this doesn't make it moral. But who can blame the British, they have a tendency to blow up docked ships of a neutral party so they just couldn't resist. That's a different betrayal from Taravangian's one that nobody could have predicted since nobody could have known at that time that Rayse would be replaced by Taravangian. And even if Dalinar knew about it beforehand, there was nothing he could have done as the problem lied between the Azish emperor and the treatment of his subjects. Assassinating them all would certainly not be the solution. Well thank you. I do not intend to be deeply engaged in this discussion as others has said enough, I just wanted to point out how her past trauma caused her trust issues and how WaT recontextualized all her actions discussed here. Yes, the reasons for assassinating Aesudan at that time were a bit far-fatched and I do agree that such plans are not moral and that's why she didn't do it in the end and chose to spy on her instead. But there was more than enough evidence not to trust Aesudan so while I don't think it was moral, I also don't think it was wrong to spy and plan to kill her if she starts causing trouble. No, cold blooded implies Jasnah had the intent to kill them from the very beginning. She went out of her way to find anyone willing to rob her just so she could kill them using self-defence as her justification. She didn't even know that those people were the same ones who had robbed people in that region before, they could have been completely unrelated and innocent up to that point. She didn't know at all who they were and her right to self-defence disappeared the moment she killed the first robber, after which the three others fled in terror. Nothing about what she did was moral. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know US law, but this whole situation is so bad that you could probably argue she committed 1st degree murder on at least 3 counts. She went out into the streets hunting for someone to kill - that's just wrong no matter how you phrase it. Public executions were a punishment for people lawfully sentenced to death and yes, an educational tool as well. However, being a vigilante is not legal and she's not a Skybreaker to act as an executioner. And I disagree with you. It's not because of Ivory, WaR prologue said she wasn't certain if Aesudan was a threat to her family worthy of assassination. But WaT clearly states that her true reason was because she unconsciously knew it was wrong and out of love she decided not to. She loved her brother too much to hurt unnecessarily and Aesudan was a part of her family, even if she didn't like her that much. And while Renarin's vision showed her killing him, she didn't do it for the same reasons. Judging someone for actions they didn't commit just isn't right. And her plans to kill both Aesudan and Renarin were born out of her trauma, which is something I can't even blame her for.

You don't plan to kill your allies just because of what ifs without any reasonable evidence of their betrayal. Just by having those plans it means you don't trust them, so how can they trust you when they learn about those plans? It will cause a massive rift in the alliance that can eventually lead to them leaving your side, not because they wanted to betray you in the first place, but because they think you betrayed them first with your assassins acting as a blackmail. Assassins in the shadows are not a foundation upon which you can build a strong alliance, trust is and having those kinds of plans shatters this trust into pieces. That's why this is politically wrong and I hope I don’t have to explain why assassination plans are morally wrong. Compare that to the way Dalinar handled Taravangian and Jah Keved before they switched sides. Dalinar had valid reasons after OB to suspect that they had already betrayed them and they would betray them again. Yet instead of assassinating Taravangian and risking the coalition breaking apart, he prepared himself for his eventual betrayal so it wouldn't hurt that much. His troops in Jah Keved were positioned in such a way that they couldn't be backstabbed and could retreat safely, Taravangian's troops in Emul were always surrounded and watched carefully so they wouldn't be able to surprise them and Taravangian was also always in Dalinar's grasp, ready to be captured. Sure, Taravangian planned for this and was ready to be taken and Urithiru fell anyway, but even without Taravangian Urithiru could have been captured in the very same way - Odium just needed Vyre to fly there and open Oathgate to Kholinar. Dalinar's plans were a direct result of Sadeas' betrayal in WoK, after which he promised himself never to be caught exposed like this again. This doesn't mean you have to plan to assassinate everyone around you and risk breaking the very foundation of the coalition Dalinar just formed, just being careful and watching your back is enough to minimize any risk without making your allies distrust you. And what message would it send to other members of the coalition if Dalinar were to assassinate Taravangian? That they are expandable? That they have to obey Dalinar's will otherwise they will be replaced? That Dalinar is a tyrant forcing everyone into obedience with the threat of assassins? It would be the end of the coalition because nobody would be able to trust Dalinar and believe that he won't send his assassins against them if he wants them gone. That's a very bad way to do politics when everyone is walking on eggshells around bloodthirsty Alethi, thinking they might want to dominate other members of the coalition or even conquer them, as that's what Blackthorn and Alethi do the best.

Yes and I believe that her past trauma is the very reason why she behaves like she does and why she has trouble trusting people including her family. Those deep-seated trust issues are what made Jasnah hire an assassin to spy on Aesudan, to try to kill Renarin without talking to him first, or to prepare assasination plans against Fen and other members of the coalition. Jasnah was scarred so deeply and has learned that people she loves can hurt her the most and now she is afraid to go through this again. What's worse, she's afraid to lose her sanity like she did in her childhood. She is a broken person like other main characters, but unlike them she hasn't started her redemption arc yet. Only at the end on WaT did she realize that she is a hypocrite and she was in the wrong all along. OB ch 47: I don't see Jasnah as a monster, only as a flawed person with a twisted sense of morality, deeply traumatized by her past. I have no problems with her actions against Aesudan as she was already known to be an unpleasant, detached and a power hungry individual who might become a threat to her family, thus observing her and potentially removing her was a right choice to make - and as books later proved it, sparing her was a mistake Jasnah made. The cold-blooded murder of thugs in WoK was the worst thing Jasnah has done so far. Her self-defence might be justified, but it was an excessive use of force and the whole situation borders on entrapment so much that it's hard for me to defend her. She went out of her way to get robbed just to teach Shallan a lesson and treated those people like educational tools, killing them even when they were running away. This is just morally wrong, even if those thugs were dangerous criminals. Jasnah chose not to kill Renarin even though for all she knew, Renarin was either a willing agent of Odium, or was his puppet, either way he was a direct threat to all humans on Roshar. She has more than enough reasons to distrust Renarin and talking to him could have been a deadly mistake if he was on Odium's side. I think her trust issues originated from her trauma are especially at fault here. Jasnah was not an emotionless monster, it hurt her to even consider killing him and she chose not to because she was driven by her emotions, not logic. Killing him would have been a disastrous mistake and a crime she would have to be punished for. The whole situation with Ruthar in RoW is not even worth considering, I find it neither brilliant nor wrong. But her assassinations plans against Fen and other members of the coalition are morally wrong and even politically wrong. Although personally I didn't consider it to be such a big deal I can see why others could think otherwise. But this again is probably a situation highly influenced by her trauma. In the end Fen took the deal with Taravangian not because she learned that Jasnah had plans to assassinate her (which just saddened her), but because it was uncovered that Jasnah was a hypocrite who was talking about greater good, while she was always considering her and her family's well being in the first place. In fact, she loved Renarin and Aesudan (or Elhokar) too much to kill them, proving her hypocrisy and proving that she's not a monster. She was deceiving herself into believing that she would do everything that's necessary for the greater good, while in reality she couldn't withstand the pain of doing so when it comes to her close ones. Her family is in fact irreplaceable, unlike Frustration has claimed. This whole debate showed us Jasnah was only a pretend monster, whose plans against Aesudan and Renerain born out of her trauma were just a lie to maintain the illusion she crafted for herself, while deep inside she knew how wrong it was and that they mean too much for her to kill them. WaT ch 116: Out of all actions Frustration has listed in his first post, only the one he dismissed was truly wrong, while the rest is the evidence of her having a morality, having a compassionate and caring heart for her close ones. She didn't even kill Fen when she betrayed the coalition, so even in this moment her plans were just a lie and in the end Fen was too close to her family to kill her. She's flawed, deeply traumatized person, she's a hypocrite who just realized she needs to change. She may not be the best or most moral character in the books, but she's not the monster.

Journey before destination! You took away the whole joy of flying through space!

Storms, you guys are thinking about making billions, I just want to fly into space. We're not the same.

It's possible, but I still believe that Wax's thoughts about what he was going to do with godmetals, if he was successful in creating them, gave the intent needed to split Harmonium into Atium and Lerasium. Wax had this very specific mindset, that neither the Set or Kandra had, as both wanted to use god metals, while he didn't and knew the experiment won't change anything about him. TLM ch 15: However, Sazed said to Kelsier that Kandra did manage to create Atium after replicating Wax's experiment, but I don't know if I trust Sazed's words at that moment because he clearly hides from Kelsier that Wax created Lerasium. Maybe you get Lerasium only when you don't want to change and you won't use god metals (Wax), Atium if you do want to use them to preserve (Kandra), but you get pikemetal if you do want to use god metals to ruin (the Set). TLM epilogue 4:

We don't know much about Dawnshards yet, especially how they can be used. Hoid's Dawnshard is "Exist" and I have no idea how that Command can be combined with Nightblood's "Destroy evil" command because their commands seem to be polar opposite. Assuming Hoid can hurt others, he would be able to supercharge Nightblood's command with Dawnshard's Command. At the extreme end I'm guessing that Nightblood can do something similar to what we saw in Yumi, spoilers: Probably nothing. By now they are all aware of the danger Nightblood himself poses, they all pay attention to Hoid, so if he were to get Nightblood, they would all get almost instantly aware of it and they would simply stay away from him. Without being able to get close to one of the Vessels (like Taravangian did in a vision made by Odium), he probably won't be able to hurt them even with a Dawnshard. Afterall, even though there was a Dawnshard on Roshar and very powerful Surgebinding it was never used directly on Odium, and even though on Ashyn it caused the destruction of the whole planet, Shards were totally fine, which suggest it's not that easy to use a Dawnshard directly against a Shard and its Vessel.

Ohhhh, it’s in the tags, I didn't see it. My bad. I was expecting it in the name itself as that's usually when its placed.

No, because Harmonium is not an alloy, it's a completely new element so it's just one Axon (atom), which spiritually is made out of two opposite investitures mixed together. But microkinesis might be able to do it, it can cause fission and something like fission was what split Harmonium into Lerasium and Atium when Wax performed the experiment in TLM. Edit: Well, apparently now Division can do microkinesis so if it's true, then it may be possible, at least in my opinion. Previously Brandon said that Division can't do it and per Ars Arcanum it was Cohesion that was the closest to microkinesis.

I honestly don't even know how to respond to it. Engaging in a discussion and correcting someone else's mistakes and factually incorrect claims was somehow wrong on my part. Did I go too far or did I offend you in my post? If I did then I would want others to point this out to me, so that I would know this and correct my mistakes. I can see it now that you're not seeking a logical discussion, you want to express your disappointment in SA without being criticized for it. In that case you should change the title of this topic and add [Support] to it, to let us know that you don't want to be proven wrong in a discussion, you just want to find others who share your opinion. I think I'm not wrong saying that nobody here wants to force you to like SA and its characters against your will. Iit's fine to dislike it and have problems with how things developed in the books. Most of us probably have a thing or two that they didn't like in SA and fair criticisms pointed against WoT are quite numerous here. Introducing Topic Tags: [Support] and [Discuss]: And last thing, you can either take it as a nitpicking proving your point, or a ray of hope shining upon you, or you can just don't look inside at all:

Well, I've been lurking in this fascinating topic for a while and decided not to engage, but here we go. I don't know if I'm gonna respond much in the future, I'll probably go back to lurking again if it's too time consuming. Aliroz, your whole argument on "no surrender" is based on factually wrong assumptions and then for a historical comparison you pull up Blackbeard? Come on, I had to respond! Starting, I must say that calling all humans on Roshar as "the children of Ashyn" is just wrong to me. By doing this, you put the blame for any ancient crime on currently living people. Children are not responsible for wrongdoings of their ancestors, especially those living thousands of years ago! It's like blaming modern Americans for the bronze age collapse, because why not. By calling humans "the children of Ashyn" you also deny them the right to inhabit Roshar. RoW not only addressed this issue, but also with Navani hearing the pure tones of Roshar, it proved that humans are just as deeply tied to Roshar as Singers are - they have the right to call Roshar their home. Are modern Americans "children of Europe" who should be blamed for conquering both Americas? Not to me, they were born there, just as natives were. You do you, but every time you use this phrase to me it just looks like because you are dissatisfied with SA in general (which is fine), you're just looking for reasons to hate it more (which is fine as long as your arguments are based on facts, which often than not is not true). How would Alethi surrender to Listeners in the first place? The battlefield was cracked and broken by 100 foot deep chasms, to cross them you needed dozens of people carrying bridges. No single person or a small unit of army could have made it to Listeners and surrender to them, even assuming that they would accept them as prisoners, which isn't true, because they are already struggling with feeding their own people, they have no food to spare for prisoners. Not to mention there is a huge language barrier between Alethi and Listeners and a pure hatred between both nations - Alethi hate them for killing their king and Listeners hate them for decimating their population. Because of this Alethi knew that anyone who tried to surrender would be either killed on spot, or left to be killed by Chasmfiends and Highstorms - Parshendi left no survivors just like Alethi did (but you don't blame them for that). That's why people who wanted to unofficially quit the army decided to become deserters and there are plenty of them roaming among Unclaimed Hills and Frostlands. Shallan met and recruited them in WoR, Gaz was one of them. As for why would Listeners not want to surrender to Alethi, you've already explained why - Sadeas set up a precedent of killing any who tries, thus Listeners have no reason to believe that anyone who tries to surrender wouldn't be killed (honestly, I think he killed just their envoys, but I don't remember). They didn't understand that Alethi aren't as unified as they thought they are and that other Highprinces might have accepted their surrender, especially as time progressed. However, the biggest reason why Listeners didn't try to surrender is simple - they could always run away from a lost battle due to their superior mobility and ability to jump over chasms. They were never caught and surrounded in a battle - Dalinar and Sadeas tried to do it during the battle of the Tower, but Dalinar got surrounded instead. The Tower was the only battlefield on the Shattered Plains on which such a tactic could be executed with large enough armies on both sides. The presence of Shardbeares on Parshendi's side, allowed them to rescue an army that was surrendered and let them escape to safety - something that Eshonai confirmed in her thoughts in WoR. And the same goes for Alethi - as long as they have bridges and even a single Shardbearer, they can escape from encirclement. We do see from Eshonai PoV in WoR that some Listeners had enough and took a Dullform wanting to surrender and become slaves of Alethi, who as they argue would inevitably come and defeat them. While most Listeners were fighting for the survival of their people, some did have this fatalistic view and were waiting to surrender when the war would end. Also, keep in mind that from the perspective of Alethi, there were no civilians among Parshendi, all they encountered were warriors. And when Dalinar finally reached Narak, he ordered to spare all civilians, children and those who surrendered - he went there not to slaughter them all but to end the war with as little casualties as possible on both sides after negotiations were broken by Eshonai weeks prior. I do admit, as far as realism goes, not having prisoners at all is a big error. However, this is a fantasy book, it's not realistic when you have crab people fighting over giant crab eggs with non-crab people in a planet wide hurricane on a world with magical powers and fairy-like creatures. I don't remember your exact words, but you basically said you want your fantasy book to be detached from reality and modernism - here it is and you don't like it. Books give enough reasons to suspend our disbelief on this matter, I don't see the need to paint humans as pure evil because of that, especially when Parshendi are doing the same. Bridge Four surrendering to Listeners? That's a stupid idea because you do know what happens to PoW? They are exchanged. Slaves have no value, they wouldn't be accepted as PoW in the first place and if they were, they would be returned to Sadeas who would then execute them immediately. Moreover, Kaladin was aiming for freedom, being a prisoner in hands of Listeners was not freedom and bridgemen were unwilling to fight for them (not that Listeners would want humans to slow them down with their bridges), so joining them is not an option. The other reason why surrender to Listeners wasn't even considered is that the location of their base wasn't even known, but they knew they would have to cross countless chasms, avoid Alethi scouts, Chasmfiends and Highstorms - impossible to even attempt. Surrendering during the battle was not an option because they couldn't just run away from Sadeas' army - they would be cut down in an instant. They never considered surrender as an option because they knew it wasn't and that Parshendi wouldn't accept surrender at all. Why? Because Dalinar knew that Parshendi, just as Alethi, were seeking a way to deal a decisive, moral breaking defeat in hopes of crippling the enemy's ability to fight and gaining the upper hand during negotiations. Of course, Listeners didn't know that such a thing is impossible to achieve for several reasons, like huge manpower available to Alethi, army divided into ten camps and the fact that most Highprinces were more interested in gemhearts than in the war itself by the time of WoK. Nonetheless, Alethi knew they wouldn't be taken as prisoners of war and Parshendi didn't leave any survivors in the past, so they didn't even try. WoK ch 66: Not true at all. Surrendering was a normal thing for Alethi. OB ch 3: The battles on the Shattered Plains aren't fought till the last man, they are fought till a gemheart is secured and then both armies disengage and retreat. The situation that favors surrender happens rarely and when it does, soldiers don't believe their enemies would accept their surrender, nor do they want to surrender so they will fight till death or till rescue comes. Don't get me started on history. Not taking prisoners is a common tactic in warfare, as old as history itself and it's especially prevalent in siege warfare. Slaughtering and plundering an entire city was an accepted strategy during war and its goal was to break the enemy morale and send a message to any other city and castle of your enemy - know when to surrender, or you will share their fate. Sieges were expensive, very expensive. If defenders are causing too much trouble for attackers, they can't hope for mercy because attackers don't want to engage in a prolonged costly siege every time they get to a castle, fort or city. That's why usually the attackers won't massacre the defenders as long as they surrender early during the siege - before their situation becomes hopeless and the siege becomes too costly. After that commanders often let the victorious soldiers relieve their built up stress and tension as much as they want - rape, murder, plunder for days, do as you like because defenders deserved it. Obviously, I'm not claiming that common people weren't outraged or horrified by such acts, they obviously were and that was the whole point of this strategy. It worked because people were afraid they would fall victim to it. Often during a siege, besieged citizens rebelled against their garrison and opened the gates to the invaders because they were terrified they would be sacked and killed by them. Of course, sometimes this tactic backfired and it only stiffened the resistance and people rallied together against the attacker. And there are also examples of pure genocidal insanity like the annihilation of Carthage in the third Punic War. There was only one accepted outcome of this war - Carthago delenda est! Around 0.5 to 0.75 mil of its inhabitants were mercilessly slaughtered and only a handful were taken as slaves. The world not only didn't care that much, many Romans and their allies were celebrating the end of their mortal enemies. In comparison, on Roshar we have Dalinar burning Rathalas down to the ground with all its inhabitants. As books are presenting it, at least to me it seems there was no massacre on a scale of the Rift outside of Desolations or the Sunmaker's invasion of Azir. The very fact that almost all of Roshar uniformly condemned this as a heinous and evil act and fears and hates Dalinar for it, tells me that wars on Roshar, even waged by bloodlusted Alethi, is more civilized than wars in our history. The Rift was the only tragic massacre done since the Sunmaker, the history of our world is full of such things that weren't even as harshly condemned. And because of that when I read the book I wasn't moved by this at all (death of Evi was a crushing moment for me). It's hard for me to believe that everyone would hate and fear Dalinar so much for destroying a single city to the point that even his own soldiers left him afterwards. Because they expected Voidbringers to be monsters, but saw normal people. Don't forget there are Fused who wanted to fully annihilate humanity on Roshar, Raboniel was one of them and almost succeeded with her disease. Except that's not true. Nobody removed surrender as an option for Listeners, in fact we saw in WoR that more and more Listeners wanted to surrender even if it meant becoming a slave. Dalinar and Adolin even went as far as begging Eshonai for peace and she also wanted to negotiate peace before she took Stormform. Parshendi soldiers didn't want to surrender, they didn't accept surrender from Alethi and they weren't starving yet - Alethi could only try to inflict higher losses to force them to surrender, which is a completely normal and reasonable strategy. You really did forget that in WoR was Dalinar wanted to negotiate peace and end the war without further death? Or how Dalinar ordered his soldiers not to harm anyone without a weapon on Narak? It happens, you warned us, but your entire argument is voided by this simple fact that humans tried to end the war and didn't want to kill all Parshendi. Many Alethi really had enough of this war after 5 or 6 years, but Parshendi stubbornly refused to even engage in peace talks. The war of Reckoning wasn't to kill every Listener, it was to win it and force them into a humiliating position to get revenge for killing their king - a totally normal reaction. The Listeners turned this war into a giant siege and mobilized their entire population, that's what killed them. It wasn't a planned genocide, it was a war of attrition turned into gemstone hunting. Parshendi could have tried to negotiate earlier, but they were intentionally prolonging the war in hopes of either inflicting a crippling blow to Alethi or discovering a new form that would turn the tables for Listeners. In fact, there were even some comments wondering how Parshendi are still able to field an army after suffering such high losses. And before you say that Alethi in their peace talks would have wanted to enslave all Parshendi, we don't know this. Sure, some Listeners were believing in this outcome, but Dalinar as the leader was willing to hear their proposal out and he never stated that they would become slaves - in fact that wouldn't be good at all, they would be bad slaves compared to Parshmen. The treaty would cement Alethi possession over south-western side of the Shattered Place, limit the territory of Listeners, execute more of their leadership, maybe even full subjugation to Alethi rule or something like that. Those are mine speculations, but the fact remains that Alethi would most likely not enslave all of Parshendi. And? What's the problem? That's how you do sieges. That's how you force them to surrender. They didn't surrender, they weren't starving, although their food situation wasn't that good, but they could still feed themselves even after Parshendi abandoned plateau runs weeks before the Everstorm was summoned. And to be fair, Alethi stopped caring about the siege and cared only about getting rich by hunting Chasmfiends - denying Listeners the means to produce food was a nice bonus.

Kind of, but no. Both Vin and Wax used Mists to power Allomancy, Marasi and other metalborns in TLM used unkeyed Dor and Autonomy's perpendicularity as the fuel. Using Mists as the fuel requires a special Connaction, while to use any investiture you must first unkey it. But that's to fuel your Allomantic powers, god metals are different as they each are pure investiture in a metallic form, thus as metals they each have unique effects. You can't. Pieces of Shardplates or Shardblades aren't treated like metals by your body, they are alive thus they are treated as living beings and that's why you can't burn them. You would need to kill the spren and remove them from the god metal, which is hard as the god metal is the spren. Pure god metal, like Tanavastium or Raysium is a different question, they can be used by any Allomancer - a piece of Ishar's Honorblade chipped by Nightblood in RoW is burnable and acts as pure Tanavastium. However, we have no idea what any other god metal beside Atium and Lerasium does, even Lerasium turning you into a Mistborn is just a side effect and a Mistborn burning it might get a different effect.

Neither Syl or Pattern reacted to Szeth during that night, they both sensed the presence of Odium nearby because at that very time Eshonai was acquiring the Stormform and Odium was watching her. That's what they both sensed. The chapter in which this happens is called "the one who hates," which is a reference to Odium and in a dream Kaladin had at the beginning of that chapter, he was talking to the Stormfather who has shown him the incoming Everstorm and talked about someone who's coming for Kaladin. We're left believing that the Stormfather was talking about Szeth, but what he spoke of and what Kaladin felt in the vision indicates that the Stormfather meant Odium. The very next interlude I-5 after those events is the one in which Eshonais transforms into Stormform and has a short talk with the Stormfather, so we know this happens at the same time and that's why the Stormfather suddenly warns Kaladin. It's nearly a coincidence, or a stroke of Fortune that Szeth tried to kill Dalinar at the very same moment as all of this was happening. WoR ch 32:

Easy, he's just a Cognitive Shadows with no powers, more stable than a Returned and closer to what Fused are, so he probably feeds directly on Preservation. Killing his body won't kill him, his Cognitive Shadow will remain in the Cognitive Realm. Just keep damaging his soul until he loses enough investiture to start fading into the Beyond. Either a Shardblade or a constant Hemalurgic spiking stealing raw investiture with nicrosil will do the job. Maybe stealing his Connection to Preservation would starve him of power and make him fade into the Beyond. And because he's basically a normal human with no powers, once you capture him he can't really defend himself. You could probably nail his soul with a spike to the wall like Ishar did with spren in WaT, so he won't escape even if his mistwraith body dies, or trap him in a room covered in aluminum he won't be able to pass through as a CS. Anti-light sure is a way to do it, but it requires rare resources and knowledge from another world, which might be hard to get for the governments of Scadrial (Shardblades too tbf). Hemalurgy is easier and the imprisoned scientists of the Set already have experience in stealing raw investiture (and you can steal all his Mistborn powers too, it would be a waste not to). Or you could capture him in a gemstone, put it in an aluminum box and throw it overboard in the middle of an ocean, he's not getting back from that in any reasonable time. But for that once again you need stuff and knowledge from Roshar that's hard to get - Raysium and how capturing CS works. The hard part would be capturing him, while he's surrounded with Ghostbloods agents and Seons, with lots of weapons, investiture and invested arts at their disposal, then evading Ghostbloods for long enough to kill him. Kelsier must also be immobilized to prevent him from pulling out his own spike, which would probably separate his soul from his body, freeing him in the Cognitive Realm, which would allow him to escape. But once this is done, a good ol' spike will do the job. RoW ch 15:

One of the primary causes of Manywar was in fact the invention of a single Breath Command for Awakening Lifeless, which allowed Awakening whole armies of Lifeless. It was Shashara who disclosed how to do that and she bears partial responsibility for starting the war. This sudden huge technological progress sparked the war, Nightblood could have easily thrown everything upside down again. Keep in mind that Manywar was the stage for the Awakeners’ arms race, new technologies and Commands were in constant development, things were changing drastically as the war was progressing. You say that there weren't many people out there capable of wielding Nightblood, I say it's probably not true. During Manywar many powerful Awakeners were engaged in the conflict, uncountable amounts of Lifeless were created and who knows how many Breaths were lost in total. Just Vasher alone left 50000 Breaths for safekeeping AFTER the war had ended and after he Awakened 1000 Phantoms, each requiring at least 50 Breaths to Awaken - in total Vasher left more than 100000 Breaths in T'Telir and probably even more counting normal Lifeless he left them. That's Vasher alone after the war. Shashara had to have at least 20000 Breaths to Awaken Nightblood, other Scholars probably also had tens of thousands of Breaths available to them and regular Awakeners were probably casually fighting with thousands of Breaths. There were a lot of Breaths everywhere so creating and using multiple Nightbloods wouldn't be a problem. And if Nightbloods were to become widespread, Lifeless would become obsolete overnight. The very invention that started the war, in which kings and Awakeners pour their fortune into, would be just useless, which the Battle of Twilight Falls has proven. However, that’s not exactly what Vasher feared. Nightblood himself was just an accident, he wasn’t supposed to end up like this, he was meant to be like Honorblades and Shardblades - they don’t eat their own wielder. Shashara knew she Nightblood wasn't what she wanted and she probably was going to make improvements to the design and if the knowledge of that became public, new and different Commands would be used to Awaken Nightblood-like blades, each would have an unpredictably different result. They would soon discover how to make safe blades and Yesteel is the proof of this, as he knew how to do this during the events of Warbreaker and OB spoilers: Sure, if more blades identical to Nightbloods were created, they would be rare and dangerous to use, but they would surely irreversibly change the war. However, Nightblood was just a proof of concept, the beginning of new technology. New Type-4 entities would soon be created, like Awakened shields, armors and new swords. All this sudden influx of sentient metal weapons would escalate Manywar once more, and with both sides having access to them it would be impossible to stop the war like Vasher did. Nightblood alone caused devastation during a single battle he was used in, just imagine how much more destruction all those potential new Awakened steel objects could have done, if the knowledge of their creation were to become public. Warbreaker ch 53: