alder24

I think it's similar to Forging yourself to be bonded with a spren and becoming a Radiant - a sentient entity is in control, it can break the forced bond at will and it would be really hard to forged something like this - plus it would require a ton of investiture, just like in the case of Forging yourself to become a Mistborn. Moreover Aethers are more like god metals, a physical manifestation of investiture and Forging or Soulcasting god metals is extra hard, so this idea might be impossible as well, due to the nature of Aethers you grow as a Spore Eater. Of course it does. You become Invested, you grow Aethers out of your body, which is investiture, a body of an Aether. Normally that investiture is provided to you by an Aether directly for water, but just like Forging yourself into a Mistborn, this doesn't work. You need to provide a lot of external investiture for that. That's not how Allomancy works. Metals are a key, but they are not converted into investiture - they are a key for investiture being pulled from the SR which tells it what shape to take.

Well, there are several big discussions going on about the real nature of the Stormfather from SA5 prologue, here if you're interested: https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/107059-discuss-the-stormlight-5-prologue-here/ https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/107700-stormlight-5-the-stormfaker-isnt-a-cracktheory-the-official-stormfakers-support-group/ Personally, I believe that this is the real Stormfather that lies. I think we've already catched him lying in OB ch 38 (especially if you consider that Chana is Shallan's mother theory): We know Taln didn't break and if Chana is Shallan's mother then she died a few years in the past, which is a double lie from the Stormfather. He also tried to avoid answering Dalinar's question about Heralds location, but when Dalinar pressed him, he confessed that he sees Ishar sometimes OB ch 64: And we have Pattern, who lied to Shallan about being the one whom she used to kill her mother. Honorspren lied and falsely imprisoned Kalak to manipulate Adolin's trial. Spren obviously can lie, the Stormfather should be no different. The Stormfather is cagy, he always has been like that - remember that time when he tried to kill everyone without helping at the end of WoR? Yeah, if he can do that, lying is nothing big to him. The thing with Syl is also a bit weird to me. Sure at one hand even Syl said she was as dead as Kaladin's Oaths, so the Stormfather telling Kaladin that he killed her wasn't a lie, but on the other hand Kaladin still didn't break his Oath fully, she still wasn't a real Deadeye like Testament was and he was actively keeping her from returning to Kaladin, to the point that he said "she's disobeying him," which means he ordered not-dead Syl to stay with him. So was that a lie, or did he try to force Syl away from Kal and lied? WoR ch 83: It's not the words that matter, it's the intent behind them. All the times Gavilar tried to guess the Words, there was no real intent behind them, no belief, just blind guessing. That's not how Ideals work. You have to believe in the Words, mean them, live them, there has to be Intent behind them. The very first time Gavilar said words with real Intent was "give it to me," that's the only time he really meant them and he didn't try to guess - but this time his words were totally wrong. So close, yet so far.

Here is a WoB on why gems crack: Because perfect gems have no flaws at all, they shouldn't crack when Stormlight is drawn out of them, or at least they have drastically lower chances of cracking.

That's not true. Soulcasting is mostly mass preserving. Treamayne already provided the WoB, I just add that worrying that Scadrial will run out of metals is just pointless. The amount of metals on Earth is stupidly insane - 5% of Earth's crust is iron, 8% is aluminum, there is almost 3 billion metric tons of copper discovered in the crust etc. The numbers are just stupid and there are even more metals in asteroids to mine, which Scadrial will be able to do in the space era. All Allomancers are doing is just burning small flakes of metals, which have a tiny mass in total. Even if metal didn't return to Scadrial eventually (per WoB it's happening), there is no way that Scadrial will run out of metals because of Allomancy. Except for the fact that Miles was the only known gold compounder. Compounders are extremely rare and you can't make compounders with Hemalurgy. Overall yes, it's easy to get metals with Soulcasting, but that's a trade-off. You get valuable metals, but you have to use valuable gemstones. No, those are specialized it seems. Most Soulcasters are limited in what they can make, even within their Essence. So finding Soulcasters that can create metals you want will be a very difficult task.

That's Ghostbloods doing. They are using electrolysis to manufacture aluminum and sell it. TLM ch 40:

That's a very complicated way of obtaining Breaths. I have a different proposition - Stormlight is the most easily obtainable investiture in Cosmere as far as we know. Navani's experiments have proven you can convert Stormlight into something else via rhythms, in her case it was anti-light. Brandon has said numerous times that it's possible to convert one type of investiture into another, but also it's possible to just Awaken without using Breaths (the Father Machine from Yumi). Therefore the easiest way to gather more Breaths is to convert Stormlight into Breaths, which requires expanding on Navani's discoveries, or just Awaken with Stormlight, if you just want to Awaken something. This isn't immoral, a sentient AI is thinking and feeling, it's just like a person is, so forcing it to give away their Breaths and later killing it to "recycle" their investiture is as bad as creating Drabs and then killing them because they're of no use to you anymore. A true AI can think and feel just like a human can. Instead all you need to do is to advance science and get free Breaths made out of raw investiture - both Scadrial and Roshar are just a few steps away from that. Scadrial with their advancements of creating power spikes out of raw investiture, Roshar with their discovery of anti-tones. But that's just my tangent about sentient AI from the WoB you've posted. What you are proposing is making an artificial spiritweb, which we know is possible. The problem is to trick Endowment into giving Breaths into that fake spiritweb, which isn't an easy task. You don't just need to be born on Nalthis, you need to live there for several generations to be considered a Nalthian. Nalthians that leave the planet will have a weakening of their Breaths in future generations until it fades completely from their bloodline. And because you're making a fake spiritweb, it's not being born naturally, I think Endowment would not give it her Breath. You might be able to create a spiritweb with a Breath already in it (by infusing it with more raw investiture and converting it to Breaths), but this is just converting investiture with extra steps. Just take raw Stormlight and turn it into Breaths, no artificial spiritwebs required. Not to mention how would you even extract Breaths from those spiritwebs? Breaths have to be given willingly, Commands have to be said, if it's just a spiritweb, with no mind or body attached to it, how could it give you its Breaths? You would have to steal it with Hemalurgy, which is even more unnecessarily complex. Find a way to convert investiture and you will have all you want.

It's a contest of champions, so no. Odium can't name himself. He has to designate a champion that will fight in his name. Dalinar doesn't fight in his own name, he's representing Honor. For Odium to die he would have to be either Splintered (like Honor) or Taravangian would have to be killed, which is probably impossible to do by Dalinar alone (unless he will have Nightblood) - Odium is much stronger than a Bondsmith is. That's an interesting idea. That should work. Or rather Odium would be able to still win the contest but that would mean a broken oath to Taravangian, which would expose him to attacks, just like if he were to break his word to Dalinar. Shards can break their oaths but there are deadly consequences of doing that. But finding someone willing to align with Dalinar from Kharbranth, a city which just declared neutrality, is probably not possible anyway - unless he finds someone who was just born in Kharbranth, as Odium still can't harm them. RoW ch 112: OB ch 112: Dalinar would not harm or allow Taravangian to get harmed. Dalinar had every opportunity and reasons to sentence Taravangian to death, but he didn't do that as he wanted Taravangian to witness Dalinar's victory and prove him wrong. Dalinar even said that he wished for Taravangian to be there on the day he will win against Odium. He still treats him as a friend. RoW ch 66: Both champions are meant to be unharmed by either side's forces. If Odium wants to provoke them through intentionally harming the people of Urithiru, it will count as Odium breaking the terms, not Dalinar. RoW ch 112: Spren are main participants of the war with Odium, they've been fighting him from the very beginning. Every spren that has joined Dalinar's side, or supports him, will be counted as his ally - that includes all Cryptics, most Cultivationspren at least 50 Honorspren and many others. Some spren factions are neutral in this conflict, like most Honorspren or Inkspren. Those, like Shinovar or Tukar, are most likely not treated as a part of the terms (as neither side can represent them). Plus Odium is meant to maintain peace, so I think he might be prevented from fighting with anyone after the contest is over, even if they weren't a part of the treaty. RoW ch 112:

This is SA forum, spoilers from other series and books should be hidden. I don't think drawing her is enough. Perception can do a lot, but Testament's soul is broken, something was ripped out of her and that needs to be fixed. Drawing her doesn't fix her soul, at most it can just affect her physical form, but not the soul as Testament's perception of herself is more important when it comes to healing. Shallan just needs to reswear her Oaths to heal Testament. Shallan's drawings are magical because she's touching SR and Connections when she does that.

I'm not really that much shipping, but I want to finally see Tarah on pages (don't forget about her). We know almost nothing about her, yet she's a very important person to Kaladin. She left him because of his struggles with not wanting to let go of those that he failed. He's over that now after swearing the 4th Ideal and she will show up in her own interlude in KoWT. There is almost no foreshadowing for Kal's ultimate relationship and one angry argument with Jasnah, while it was fun to read and see them interact with each other, is no basis for a good relationship. Azure has better chances than Jasnah, but there was nothing in between them. She didn't look for anyone and they separated on bad terms. I was disappointed that there was almost no Laral in RoW, so I think that ship sank with that as well. From all people suggested over the years, I think Tarah has the biggest chances of ending with Kaladin, again. Personally however, because of this total lack of foreshadowing in all 4 books, I don't think Kaladin will end up with someone in KoWT. OB ch 112:

Yes, that might work. Complicated way, requiring you to have a spike ready (not a medallion as those don't grant Allomantic powers) and those aren't easily available. You can't mass produce spikes containing A-aluminum just to have one of them ready when your buddy got hit with an aluminum bullet. Not to mention that if your buddy isn’t a Bloodmaker, such a bullet hitting the right point would kill him in a matter of seconds giving you no chance to help him. And it’s hard to perform the precise act of Hemalurgy in a chaotic environment of an active gun fight. I deem this possible but highly impractical. That's a good point. However, you still can burn impure metals, when they are close enough to Allomantic proportions, even when they won't give you any powers. The question now is how much of other things are in this alloy used for guns and bullets. Because it still acts as pure aluminum and can't be pushed or pulled, I think it's within limits to be Allomantically valid, even if impure. You might get a little ill, but that's better than being dead. TFE ch 7:

Another theory of yours in which I don’t see any flaws. Yup, this certainly can work and it would be much easier than making a random person into a full Mistborn. It seems like you won’t have to provide additional external investiture to make you into a Metalborn as you already have it, you just rewrite it to do something else (per this WoB). Nice. That’s a lot. I don’t know if that would work, it may be that because it’s a Forged piece of your soul, the Forgery would collapse as soon as you try to interact with it using other invested arts - like storing it in a nicrosilmind. Just like burning a Forged metal collapses the Forgery, because it disrupts its Spiritual nature. But unlike in burning, you don’t really destroy that piece of a soul, you just story it so it might work. However based on that WoB I think compounding the stored Forged powers in Nicrosilmind is out of the question because you stored Forged pieces of your soul there and burning them Allomantically would for sure collapse the Forgery, just like when you burn a Forged metal. It would be very hard to utilize Forgery to create another Bands of Mourning as you can't compound nicrosil (you can other metals), so you are forced to store all your Forged powers in real time. Just to have stored a day with each power, you have to store them for a mouth, everyday with each power. If you want to tap nicrosil with diminishing returns, you will burn through that day in the matters of minutes.

There already are symbols for every planet, we know some of them. They've been revealed in the Arcanum Unbounded. Those would be central features of those flags. The Scadrian symbol is the same as the symbol of Harmonium, the Rosharan symbol is the Double Eye of Almighty, the Nalthian one is the Tears of Edgli, Selish is some kind of Soulstamp, Taldain has a black and white sun. Threnodite and Drominad symbols were also featured. Edit: @Treamayne

C'mon, Wax hit a bullet, while shooting from a speed bubble and deflected it midair into Tarson's head. There is no competition here.

Kandra aren't human, it works well on them. Cosmere spoilers: There are much easier ways to achieve that, just stick it in a piece of steak. Post Catacendre Hemalurgic decay is a thing of a past. Poor chicken. It totally didn't have to join the brotherhood of Inquisitors as spikes left in a dead body will prevent a decay from happening anyway. It's a waste of good meat! There is no need for Kar to rush to extract Bendal's spikes.

While it's a hilarious and possible idea, for a chicken (or any animal) to use powers, you need sentience. A normal animal won't be capable of using invested arts like Allomancy, even if granted by Hemalurgy, if they themselves aren't sentient and have above animal level of intelligence. So a chicken with a spike through its eyes would be a case of extreme animal abuse, no fancy inquisitor would come out of it, unless you increase its intelligence first by for example a couple of H-copper spikes. Cosmere spoilers WoBs:

This isn't about supporting life, it's about the star's age - Rosharan system was created by Adonalsium around 13,000 years before the events of WoK. That's a really young star - too young for life to evolve on its own, not to mention form planets in the realistic way. That's why Brandon said what Earth's astronomers would say about the star. They would say the same about Scadrial or Nalthis. But Adonalsium could have just handwaved any real problems and created an already stable star with stable planets in stable orbits. Roshar is a world with a lot of investiture everywhere and that means Rosharans are more invested than elsewhere. Being more invested and having a lot of ambient investiture improves Rosharan's immune system and fastens healing.

Here: Kaladin arrived at the Shattered Plains at the year 1173, 7th month, 9th week, 3rd day (1173.7.9.3), the Battle of the Tower happened at 1173.9.6.4 - 86 days in total. A month is 50 days, a week is 5 days, there are 10 weeks in 1 month.

Sun's tidal forces are half as strong as those made by the Moon.

Sure, you can travel that way towards the Origin, it would be better using the Highstorm as it will continuously provide you with Stormlight, be faster than the Everstorm (200 mph I think?) and it won't try to kill you as much as the Everstorm. But good luck finding a small island in the middle of something like the Pacific Ocean by sheer chance with a stormfront that's more than 6000 km wide. It's practically impossible. The best chance of finding the Origin is to go to space. You're a Skybreaker, you control gravity, you can lash yourself into the low or even high Roshar orbit where there is no air resistance at all, which means nothing will slow you down, which means far less Stormlight used up (there is no comparison between going 100 km up to space vs 35,000 km around the entire Roshar circumference within its atmosphere). Stormlight would keep you alive for a few hours (Fused were trying to get to Braize, they survived only for a few hours in space) and if you have a Shardplate, then that's even more survivable as it will trap the atmosphere inside and provide you with oxygen for some short time (but you won't have to heal the damage done by being exposed to the vacuum of space). Just go to space, fly above the ocean and from there you have an excellent view of a huge fraction of the planet. With that you will easily find the Origin, even without needing a Highstorm to point it to you, as the clouds would obstruct your view. Then just gently land on it, if you want to investigate further. The royal gem reserves that Kaladin took to fly to the Hearthstone in OB would provide you with enough Stormlight to achieve all of this. No fancy parachutes needed, no preparations needed, just yeet yourself into space and you'll be back home in just a few hours.

Aredor said it all, the 10 Surges came from Honor as that's the number associated with Honor. 16 is associated with Preservation, that's why there were 16 base metals. The Surges on Roshar came not only from Honor, but from Cultivation and Odium as well, as their interaction with Roshar itself cause the magic system to form in such a way (that's how all magic systems are appearing in Cosmere), plus perception of people have a little effect on what is actually considered a fundamental force (Surges are representation of fundamental forces in Cosmere). It is possible for more Surges to appear but that would require a Shard to most likely heavily invest into Roshar, messing up with the entire system. WoBs: All Surges are natural. Surge means power of creation, fundamental forces of Cosmere. Surgebinding means binding powers of creation. Allomancy is also a form of Surgebinding, but generally speaking Rosharan manifestation of Surgebinding is the one we all call Surgebinding. Ashynite Surgebinding was disease-based - people were falling ill and with that they were gaining powers. This is mostly a Cultivation-based magic system, but it changed in some way since the destruction of Ashyn.

That's a great question. Hemalurgy steals spiritual DNA, so the portion responsible for Metallic Arts is missing from a victim of Hemalurgy. This might mean that their powers and potential will not be transferred to their children as their sDNA doesn't contain that part anymore. The bloodline would be weakened. On the other hand we don't know how the spiritual ideal fits into this. Will it somehow be imprinted in their kids sDNA, giving them back the potential they once had? I doubt it but that's possible. Disagree. "I'm a Metalborn" part of sDNa should be contained of all powers you have. A Misting has only one part that tells which metal he can burn, a Twinborn has two parts, a Mistborn sixteen parts of that “I’m a Metalborn” fragment of sDNA. You can spike one of it out, but the rest will still be there. And that fits in as your Metalborn abilities are coded into you at birth:

Yes, every Nalthian will get a Breath when born, it doesn't matter that their parents are both drabs.

Taldain's star is a "blue-white supergiant" (per AU, which is clear on the star system art), while Rosharan sun is in fact bigger and younger than our Sun, which would make it white. I would assume the color doesn't say anything about Shards or investiture, but just like in our world, it's an indication of its size, temperature and type and Brandon does know a little about astronomy, his assistant Peter minored in it. Rosharan and Drominad's stars are comparable in size so I would guess they are type F or A main sequence stars (which are whitish), while our Sun and the Scadrian star are type G stars.

That's a matter of an individual perspective. I don't see ranks as any kind of "social ladder," or an indication of "being better." For me it's just a fun thing to aim for. And I've already achieved the ranks I wanted to have, without specifically doing anything to get them and any new ranks aren't giving me as much fun as having a yellow text saying "sentient awakened object" under my name. I don't judge people based on their post or rep count, I wouldn't expect many to do so, some people whom I respect a lot on the Shard have much lower rank and post count than I do. In the end rank doesn't mean anything, it's just fun to be called a certain name from books because of your contribution. Removing ranks because some might take them too seriously? That's not a problem with the system, that's a problem with people. You remove ranks and they will still find a way to turn something else into competition to boost their self-esteem, either by getting more responses to their SU then you do, or by getting more views in their thread than others do. You can't fix that by removing ranks or rep points. Ranks aren't the issue here, they're here to be funny, not to make you better.

I don’t agree with this idea. Yes, I agree there is a problem with overexploiting the reputation system - mainly the leaderboard - but the reputation points themselves are a valuable tool of expressing gratitude and appreciation that are needed. I think that this is more of an individual problem than the problem with the reputation system itself. Most people probably don’t compete for rep points and treat it as a tool. I don’t like writing useless things, I don’t like repeating the same stuff that was written before by someone else. If I don’t have anything new to add to a discussion, I don’t write a post. It’s much better to just give a rep point and engage when I have something new or interesting to add to a conversation. Writing “I like this/I agree” adds nothing of value, nor is it engaging in a discussion. Not everyone has to have something to say, but they still want to show their gratitude in some way. You don’t have to write a lengthy essay to engage in a conversation. Giving a rep point serves the same purpose, but it’s a cleaner way of showing appreciation. Just imagine a popular and interesting theory with no rep - most of the posts would be “I like it” with barely any new perspective brought to the discussion. It’s not a conversation, it's a spam in which insightful comments disappear. Having to scroll through 2 pages of “Hey, I like this idea" removes most of the potential participants from this conversation as they simply can’t find proper responses, or don’t want to waste time scrolling through all those posts that add nothing new. I don’t want to say that those posts aren’t appreciated, they are, but only in moderation. A few people saying “I like this idea” is good, but if there is no other way of showing appreciation, then it turns into a spam when everyone does this. This isn’t a solution for problems with reputation, it’s replacing them with an even bigger problem. I don’t read SU, I don’t spend much time in the lower section of the forum, I mainly engaged in the Cosmere area, so I don’t know how much broken reputation is in SU, but I can see it clearly from the leaderboard, seeing the same person winning every day for a month straight. Does this bother me? Nope. I don’t really care about the leaderboard that much, it brings some fun, it's an interesting tidbit to me when I’m bored, but that’s it. I did win a few days, which I’ve learned weeks later and my reaction to this was “huh, nice” and then I kept going with my day, forgetting about it. I don’t feel any need to compete to win a day, to get the most likes to show up in the leaderboard, to write posts specifically to win a day, or anything like that. There is no urge to compete within me and I think most people on this forum feel the same. There is a short moment of “nice” when I show up in the leaderboard, but nothing of real value to me. If you think that winning a day becomes an unhealthy competition, then the problem isn’t with the reputation system itself, but with the leaderboard. Just remove it. We won’t lose anything important, just a one minute of feeling nice because you’ve won another day, but it will remove all this unnecessary rivalry from the Shard. But reputation points are still a great tool to have and getting rid of them will be more harmful than beneficial. Engaging in discussion is fun and great, it’s the main purpose of the Shard, but not everyone has time to spend half a day on the forum reading and responding to all new threads, not everyone have something new to say, many of what you want to say was already said by someone else, so writing a post isn’t needed to engage in conversation, giving rep points is a valid way of engagement and showing appreciation. Removing that takes away a way for many people to engage. Removing rep points from SUs seems like a good idea, but I don’t read those so I can’t really say much about it. For me, SUs feel more personal and restricted to a closer group of friends and observers. It’s much easier to get a rep point for writing anything in SU. It’s not the content that matters, it’s the person that’s writing it, so it’s easy to “farm” rep points, even if that’s not your intention. I feel that treating SUs more like PMs and disabling rep points there is a fair approach. You will get more engagement you want with no rep points. But again, I don’t spend time there to contribute a valuable opinion to that aspect of this problem. I don’t agree. I think that might lead to a situation when you give rep points to people who gave points to you just to pay them back, rather than to appreciate the content of a post. No, not ranks, ranks are fun and unique. I don’t think they bring any kind of competition, I haven’t seen any. They should stay, even if my rank would be only visible to me and nobody else, they are just fun in a positive way.