alder24

I don't think there is any significance. If Gamma is meant to mean the third letter of the Greek alphabet, then this is probably because the books are translated to English and his real name is a third letter of some Rosharan alphabet and it was just translated to English. Or Brandon might have accidentally named him Gamma before realizing it is a Greek letter (less likely). But there is still a possibility that he's a worldhopper just based on his appearance. However, he didn't really say anything that would be out of place on Roshar and indicate that he possesses knowledge from other words.

That's called an exoskeleton, any full body armor should work for Kandra. Kandra can imitate a small Chasmfiend so they can move without an internal skeleton as long as they have an external one.

It is the blade that cuts the soul. You need a cutting edge or at least a spike to cut souls or impale the Shardblade into matter. Maces will just smash. Maces or warhammers should be more effective against Shardplates than swords, although the difference would be small. It depends what you want to achieve. The problem with Shardblades when fighting an enemy army is that bodies will keep piling up around you, thus you would have problems with standing and fighting flawlessly. Having a Shardhammer or Shardmace eliminates this problem as you would send your enemies flying instead. But it's true that a Shardmace generally won't hurt a soul without any sharp edges. However, I remember a WoB saying that if you get that Shardmace inside a soul, it could damage the soul - unfortunately I can't find it. Same. Stormlight healing is busted.

There was a map of Lumar on the floor so Riina probably did the same trick that Moonlight did in TLM. And yes, the art is not accurate:

Unsealed metalminds work similarly to Honorblades - it's the Connection to them that grants you powers from Nicrosil, you don't actually tap Nicrosil to get them. Once you remove that Connection - drop them - you no longer have the access to those powers as they are part of the metalminds and their own identity. So no, Wax didn't have to store the powers of the Bands back into them, just like Marasi didn't have to do it. The Connection was severed and the powers were no longer granted to Wax. Moreover, Wax did retrieve the Bands after dropping them, he even used them to pull the airship down to the ground. Also Wax's steelpushs in TLM were of normal strength, he didn't see the steel lines pointing towards the very Axi of everything around him, or he didn't see souls of people - something he would certainly experienced if he still had powers from the Bands. It was also noted by the end of BoM that the Bands are running out of attributes and they need to be refilled with compounding, which clearly indicates that the Bands had the powers still in them. BoM ch 30 Also, during the experiment in TLM, when Lerasium was created, Wax was the only one who went into the exploded vault and was the closest to the second explosion that happened basically on his hands. His mask was blown off his face while everyone else still had their masks on. That's probably when he alone inhaled Lerasium. Moreover, he didn't need to realize that he has a new Allomantic stores to burn, he could burn it subconsciously, just like Elend did in WoA. Burning Lerasium is what your body does and it's a little different than burning normal metals. Wax's body burned Lerasium automatically, without him even realizing it. TLM ch 17 Not to mention that Wax is also a really smart detective and he immediately realized that after the experiment something wrong was happening with his powers. Brandon also confirmed that Wax became a weak Mistborn in TLM and already knows it by the end of TLM. If he was a full Rashek-level Mistborn after BoM, he would have realized this very very quickly during the 6 year long break. It's honestly impossible for him to miss those kind of powers for so long. Lastly, Harmony confirmed that Wax inhaled Lerasium during the experiment to Wayne and he had no reason to lie to a man who was about to die. And that was after Wayne pushed Wax off the ship. TLM ch 71

Except the fact that the passive powers granted by Breaths scale up with the amount of Breaths. Sure, at 1000 Breaths you get perfect life sense, but you're not losing your life sense if give up 1 Breath, you're losing just your perfect life sense but you still have like 99.9% of it anyway. Vivenna was able to sense Vasher staring at her even with 600 Breaths. Losing perfect senses is not that big of a downside, you still have most of them. You will probably damage your car if you try to pick it up and hold its entire mass with just your hands. That's the problem with a Shardplate, you get extreme strength but you also have to be super careful as some things are not strong enough to hold its own weight with such a small contact area of just your hands. Not to mention that a Shardplate weights 600 kg so you can't wear it at home or in a car, even outside the soil might get compressed and leave small holes as you walk, ruining your backyard or cracking your pavement or concrete etc. Shardplate is an amazing tool for physical labor but it has big limitations of which you have to be wary all the time.

Leeching will prevent summoning a Shardblade, so I highly doubt a Coppercloud will have any effect on it other than hiding that a blade was summoned.

Breaths, I'll always choose Breaths because I love Awakening the most of all Invested Arts in Cosmere. Being a Mistborn is super cool and powerful, but I don't need most of those fancy powers that much in my day to day life. Shards are certainly awesome, if you need to fight. Except for some situational uses, they would just sit in the corner and collect dust. Breaths on the other hand are always useful. 1000 Breaths not only gives me immunity to most diseases, it gives me life sense, perfect pitch and color recognition and allows me to automate most of my day to day tasks. I can also use Breaths to store memories, just like in Copperminds, so I can either use them to perfectly recall certain moments, or to forget them (I can reread Cosmere for the first time once more). Breaths are such a versatile and practical choice that I'll be using them all the time and when not in use, they still provide me huge benefits just from Heightenings.

We actually have WoBs on this. Any similarities between Kaladin and Jesus aren't intentional. However, Kelsier from the Mistborn series was deliberately written as a Christ-like figure.

Either by Ishar or Honor's hand, the Radiants were formalized and bound in a restrictive structure that prevented new Orders from appearing. Ishar however, was crucial in the creation of Knights Radiant, there is a reason why they are often called Ishar’s Knights. WoR ch 42 epigraphs: RoW I-1: WaT ch 120:

Highly unlikely and probably impossible without a new type of True Spren and some Bondsmithing work. The problem is that the Radiant Orders were formalized and bound by Ishar, thus the system wouldn't allow anything new to arise and become part of it just like that.

Welcome back, it's been a while.

We know that just after the Shattering, Shards made some kind of agreement to settle alone and don't interfere with each other. I think it's very likely that they also made a similar promise about Dawnshard, so that all those who were Dawnshards drop them or give them to someone else like Sleepless or Dragons for safekeeping. Hoid was one of the Dawnshards there and he didn't pick up a Shard. We know that at some point Hoid gave up his Dawnshard and then picked it up in secret. We also know from WaT what happens when two Dawnshards get close together so it's unlikely that Hoid, who already was a Dawnshard, would be able to steal and hide the other 3. Well, Adonalsium was dead so he couldn't do anything at all and from WaT ch 113 we know Adonalsium didn't fight back. He let them kill him.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t really followed the entire discussion here, but I’m surprised it’s 4 pages long. There is no way for the USA to conquer and occupy the entirety of Roshar. They failed to establish control over Afghanistan for 20 years, they will for sure be unable to do better in a completely hostile alien environment, with no satellites, no infrastructure, no roads (which is super important), no electricity, no ability to communicate with natives, with different atmospheric and gravitational conditions and so many other problems that it’s hard to list them all. If the US were to be engaged in a big scale battle over some location on Roshar, they would probably win it due to their superiority in numbers and technology, but the only thing Rosharans have to do is to start a guerilla warfare and avoid engaging directly with the US army. Rosharans need to just hide, attack their logistical, supply or communication centers and disappear into an unfamiliar land and soon Earthlings will be stranded, starved and demoralized. Not to mention that the USA has no numbers to occupy the entirety of Roshar, they would be quickly overextended and exposed to surprise attacks, not to mention that their entire logistical network would be super fragile and would eventually collapse. It’s just impossible to do. But if the USA wants to, they could surely destroy the whole life on Roshar with their stockpile of 5000 nuclear warheads. They could nuke large population centers several times over and wipe out most Rosharans in the matter of minutes and there would be nothing that Rosharas could do to stop them from doing that, as they simply lack the numbers in Radiants to do so. It takes just 100-300 nuclear bombs to cause global nuclear winter, which would wipe out most of humans on Roshar by blocking sunlight, dropping temperature and massive crop failure causing years lasting global starvation. Urithiru itself won’t be immune to nukes. Sure, a single nuke won’t evaporate the whole Tower, but it doesn’t have to. Just drop a few of them at the base of the Tower and through the atrium and the detonations would destroy the load bearing structure of the Tower, which would simply collapse on itself. Most of the Urithiru population lives on the lower levels of the city, thus a few well dropped nukes would wipe out most of the people living there. Not to mention that it’s likely that shockwaves or earthquakes created by nukes would damage or maybe even shatter the crystal column in the basement of the Tower, which would cripple or kill the Sibling and thus disable the functionality of Urithiru. Although the current crystal barrier around the Tower is a problem, I assume it works like the glass bubble from RoW (which could be penetrated), thus it’s probably possible to overwhelm it with some kind of bombardment and create a hole for a nuke to be dropped through, or use some kind of penetrative warheads - honestly, it’s hard to tell as we don’t know how this crystal barrier works and it would be a tough nut to crack. Ignoring the nukes, the USA has no realistic way to fully occupy and control Roshar at all. A successful planetary invasion is simply out of reach for any army on Earth or even the combined might of the entire Earth. Oh, and the assumption is that there is a portal in the middle of the ocean, thus a huge navy is needed for transportation and an amphibious assault would have to be carried out. This would create a massive bottleneck for the invasion force that could be easily exploited by Rosharans. Because of that the USA can utilize only a small fraction of their entire military force, just those that can fit on their ships and only aircrafts with large ranges can be launched from the ground as a support, because the portal is in the middle of nowhere and planes can’t fly indefinitely. The odds of a successful invasion are even worse than impossible with that in mind. Rosharans just need to sink their landing ships and the whole invasion is over before it even begins. Btw, you guys want this invasion to happen before or after WaT? Because as of the end of WaT the Highstorm and the Stormfather are gone and the Everstorm turned into eternal rain over the entire continent and isn't much of a storm anymore.

Ships will always be useful, but I think airships are the way to go on Lumar. Even with modern ships, you're always in danger because of spores, so you have to deal with them getting onto your ship, you have to be careful with water and avoid rain (which is impossible on the Crimson Sea). Not to mention there are periods when seethe stops and no modern ship can deal with that. There are simply too many risks with ships so the best way to avoid all those risks is by going into the air. You can use Zephyr and Sunlight spores to create air and heat and with them you can easily go airborne. There are little to no spores in the air, you don't have to worry about them getting on board, rain isn't dangerous anymore and seethe doesn't matter to you at all. And because islands are small, you don't even need large spaces for runways that planes need, you can just land your airship right next to islands. Airships are ideal on Lumar, they are probably the very next major technological milestone they should achieve. Unfortunately, because Lumar lacks big open spaces and is confined to extremely small islands, large scale industrialization isn't possible there. Unless they master spores like Xisis did and create safe living spaces under the sea it would be hard for them to find places to build their factories, not to mention that they probably have a severe lack of raw resources like iron and coal, because it's most likely buried deep under the seafloor. They first have to learn how to fully control spores before they start thinking of modernization. They can definitely replace some of raw resources with spores, like using roseite as a construction material, sunlight and zephyr as a substitute of fossil fuels etc. Thanks to spores, Lumar will most likely develop a magical technology similar to that of Roshar, so we won't see Earth-like tech that is present on Scadrial. However, Lumar is already far behind other places in Cosmere in terms of technological development. They are just at the early stages of the early modern period, when others have spaceships. It's far more likely that instead of developing their own unique technology, they will receive technology directly from other space fearing civilizations like Scadrial or Roshar in return for spores.

If you ask about one singular day of brilliance, then Rashak probably wins because he Ascended, but taking all their lives into consideration, my vote goes to Taravangian. During the whole of RoW he was at his lowest in terms of intelligence and yet he managed to create a plan, execute it and outsmarted Odium on the day he was the stupidest ever. That's quite impressive on its own, but you have to factor the Diagram and all his plans that led to this success. Taravangian was actively deciphering his Diagram and he was figuring out what to do as the time went on. He didn't just have that one day of brilliance, he also had to use his intelligence as much as he could every day to win in the end. And even before he went to the Nightwatcher, he was already quite intelligent. Rashek on the other hand got most of his knowledge handed to him by the power of Preservation or by Ruin (Hemalurgy) during the Ascension, that's also the moment when he most likely created the plan to hide Atium. He spent most of his 1000 year regime sitting and doing nothing in particular, while his empire was stagnant and suffering from internal strife. He also got himself killed by Vin in a spectacular fashion. Sure, he could access raw processing power unmatched by anyone using F-zinc, but that's not quite the same as intelligence. His strategy against Ruin was successful, but it not only relied on plans made previously by Preservation, this was just his back-up plan in case he died and couldn't Ascend again. Even Rashek himself saw no way of defeating Ruin, all of his plans with caves and Atium were meant to delay Ruin to give people more time to live and maybe, just maybe find a way to defeat Ruin on their own. But Rashek didn't plan to win against Ruin, he was content with keeping the Scadrian status quo indefinitely. Taravangian on the other hand threw a gauntlet into Odium's face and won.

We have WoBs confirming that there is no Shard present on the First of the Sun, except for Patji who is the Avatar of Autonomy. Plus, the Arcanum Unbounded essey states there is no Shard in the Drominad system and we know the perpendicularly on the planet is of Autonomy. Moreover, her behavior doesn't fit Cultivation at all. Cultivation avoids meeting people as much as possible, we know only of 3 people whom she met with and that was only when they came to her. Her meeting with Dalinar in WaT was so secretive that not even the Sibling could sense her. She's not the kind of person who's gonna sit around park whole year telling stories to people. Mother Frond also lacks the feeling of infinity in her eyes that Cultivation had, something that Dusk wouldn't have missed. I highly doubt she's Cultivation.

This should be posted in the IotE spoiler zone, I'll ask mods to move if. Nightblood holds investiture, the Evil is made entirely out of anti-investiture, I'm guessing if they were to ever touch, they would be annihilated explosively, as Nightblood's investiture is stuffed under immense pressure. It wouldn't end well for either of them. The Evil doesn't consume investiture like Nightblood does. Because it's made out of anti-investiture it annihilates it, turning investiture into pure energy (just like what happened in RoW). Nightblood and the Evil seem to be unrelated. In fact Leechers and Larkins behave in the same way as Nightblood, they all drain investiture - they are more related than the Evil and Nightblood are.

Yes, the Night Brigade is that powerful, in fact Nomad knows no force more dangerous than them. It was said that the Night Brigade is capable of destroying life on planets and Nomad was too afraid to risk the life of his friends and loved ones to return to Roshar. No matter if they could destroy Roshar or not, just the threat of bringing a devastating war to it was enough to keep Nomad at bay. Plus Roshar would be the one place the Night Brigade would be watching very closely, so the moment he sets his foot there they would know it immediately and come right after him, therefore he would lose any time advantage he had while being on the run. TSM ch 27:

Rogue planets are fun. There is a type of ocean planet with a very thick hydrogen atmosphere, which theoretically can sustain liquid surface even as a rogue planet (Hycean world), so we can have a fun sunless planet in Cosmere with people and technology on its surface, although breathing would be problematic as there is no oxygen, plus surface pressure would be insane. But hey, it's possible! Honesty, I would love to see more crazy worlds on Cosmere, just like Roshar, Era 1 Scadrial or Cantile. They are just so fun and a rogue planet would fit Cosmere perfectly. I'm confident we can easily have such a world in Cosmere because investiture can simply solve all our problems. A few years back we engaged in fun Cosmere world and magic crafting in one of the topics and I came up with the idea of magically sustained ecology with civilization on a surface of a rouge planet. If you're interested in reading about this world of mine (or other fun worlds created by others), you can find it here: https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/133873-combined-shard-names/page/5/#findComment-1538987

This question is kind of meaningless because the Vessel and the Shard both exist in the Spiritual Realm, where space doesn't matter anymore. The power of the Shard is everywhere in Cosmere, it's omnipresent, the Vessel can be everywhere because of it, but their mind is not infinite so they can only be in a finite amount of places. It's one spirit web peering into multiple places at once. You can't do that as I explained in my previous posts. The spirit web of your creation and the Vessel would always be separate. In the same way, if you were to somehow create a perfect copy of yourself with all Connections, Identity etc, it would still be a separate entity, with its own spirit web and killing it wouldn't kill you. Dalinar in WaT kind of did what you're talking about, he infused a past memory of himself with his memories and made it sapient and self-aware, he created a spren of himself, but that spren was fully separate from Dalinar, with his own individual spirit web. Dalinar's death didn't affect this Blackthorn-spren at all and spren's death wouldn't affect Dalinar as well.

I cannot use your terminology because your terminology is wrong. The mask is the Shard, it's a body manifested by the Shard to interact with the Physical or Cognitive Realm, it's not separate in any way from the Shard/Vessel, it's just a piece of them taking a material form. An Avatar already has a definition and it can be either born without any direct action from the Shard, or be created by the Shard as an Avatar. An Avatar is a semi-autonomous aspect of the Shard. The Shard and the Vessel are two different, yet intertwined things. The Shard is a well of infinite power with its own will and Intent, the Vessel is the mind that holds and controls this power with their own will. The Vessel's mind is greatly expanded during Ascension, allowing it to be focused on several places and interact with many people at once. That's why Sazed can create a body to interact with Vin while actively reshaping Scadrial and Taravangian's mind can do all those tasks simultaneously - it's called multitasking. However, even with a greatly expanded mind, this multitasking has its limits. You can see it clearly in SH - Ruin is reaching to his agents everywhere on Scadrial, but he's focused mainly on Vin, which allowed Kelsier to influence Spook and freed him from Ruin's control, which turned Ruin's attention back on him. Vessel’s mind is not infinite, even if the power of the Shard basically is. Those things aren't masks, they are the same Vessel being in multiple places at once, doing multiple things simultaneously with the power of the Shard. And because the Shard and the Vessel exists in the Spiritual Realm, where space and distance is meaningless, the Vessel can create bodies in many places in PR at once.

For me Moash crossed a point of no return as a redeemable character when he tried to convince Kaladin to kill himself in the beginning of RoW. That moment sent shivers down my spine. To tell someone you call a friend to kill themself, who you know suffers from extreme depression and suicidal thoughts, is the most evil thing you can do to them. He's a well written character though and I like the conflict and contrast he provides, but I don't like him as a person and I don't want to see him getting redemption after that.

The mask IS the Vessel. It's his own body created out of his own investiture and his Spirit Web is attached to it. You can't make a fake mask for an already existing Vessel, the Vessel has to create its own body - the mask - for you to be able to stab it with Nightblood. That's why Nightblood can kill it, it's not because Nightblood severs any Connection, it's because he's stabbing directly into the soul of the Vessel, which is present almost fully there and he's consuming it all. If you were to try to create a mask of some sort, like take a bunch of investiture and connect it to the Shard or the Vessel, it wouldn't become the Vessel's body and wouldn't have their soul. At best it would become something like a spren, fully independent from Vessel's control, or something like a Hemalurgically controlled entity - it would allow the Shard to take control over it, but harming it won't harm the Shard or the Vessel. It would always be separate with its own Spirit Web, just like a spren is separate from their Radiant despite sharing a very strong bond - killing that spren doesn't kill their Radiant, just harms them as their Connection is ripped out of their soul. The Vessel needs to create their own body out of their own will for you to be able to stab it with Nightblood. You can't do what you propose, unless you find a Vesselless Shard, give a bunch of investiture sapience and connect it so strongly that it Ascends as the Shard's new Vessel (it would be even more problematic that what Kelsier did) and then stab it with Nightblood at the moment of Ascension, killing the newly formed Vessel before it disappears. But this is pointless as you're making a Vessel for a Shard with no Vessel, just to kill it for no reason. As for severing the Connection between the mask and the Shard, it depends on what you mean. If you're thinking about the body created by the Vessel and want to break the Connection between the body and the Vessel, nothing would really happen to the Vessel, but if you're thinking about the mask as the Vessel themselves and you try to break the Connection between them and their Shard, it might be almost impossible as the Vessel and the Shard are intertwined and combined at such level, that breaking them apart forcefully might result in Splintering and the death of the Vessel. You should avoid double posting, as that's against the forum's policy, use the edit option instead. It can be found in the three dot menu in the upper right corner of your post.

There were no Shards before the Shattering as the Shattering created them, they are Shards of Adonalsium and there are only 16 of them. Adonalsium is a god who created Cosmere on its own, almost all investiture in Cosmere came from Adonalsium, so for all we know there were no beings like him otherwise it would have been plainly obvious. The quote refers to dragons, who till this day are worshipped as gods. However, there are other entities that could be treated like gods, those are either some kind of god-spren similar to those created on Roshar, Avatars who we know from WoBs Adonalsium created, Aethers who are self-proclaimed co-equals of Adonalsium and some kind of Cognitive Shadows who are often worshipped as gods (just look at Heralds, Fused, Returned or Kelsier).