alder24

You should read it even earlier, at least before Oathbringer, if not even before the Way of King. There are two people appearing briefly from Elantris - in WoR it's Galladon as Grump in the Purelake interlude I-1, in OB it's Riino, the Elantrian who was put into the Shardpool by Raoden&co, appears as Rii Oracle in the lighthouse scene, OB ch 97. But in RoW the most important thing is the appearance of a Seon, Ala - that's the communication cube given to Shallan by Mraize, it's a Selish Seon, RoW ch 115: Moreover there are some Elantris related tech appearing here and there and some mention of Ire, Selish worldhopping organization. Quite major parts are also hidden in SA letters, references to the death of Aona and Skai, Vessels of Devotion and Dominion Splintered by Odium. This is important but in Elantris there is not much that would tell you they are dead, so it's not that clear reference. Overall, even including those two Selish worldhoppers who are very easy to miss, it's just some little references, more like easter eggs than something big that you really need to read Elantris before. Elantris however introduces you to concepts like Intent, which are important to RoW, but also present and understandable in RoW. Only the Seon is important to be recognized - but I would say even this can be gotten from reading Elantris after RoW without missing anything. She appears just by the end of RoW from which you can immediately jump to Elantris and realize what a Seon is. But in general Elantris is often recommended as a good start for Cosmere. @Treamayne has a good reading order recommendation starting with Elantris iirc.

It was. There was a mountain where the Tower stands but it was reshaped to accommodate the Sibling. I doubt they made the Tower, left it standing for centuries and then the Sibling manifested - the mountain was reshaped specifically for the project to create Urithiru for the Spren. So the Sibling would manifest very shortly after the Tower was created. Plus during Nohadon's times the Oathgates were already working. Spren of Oathgates call the Sibling as their parent, which means the Tower was already fully functional. Nohadon might have been a proto-Bondsmith (it was said he was a special Surgebinder among them). Chronologically Nohadon most likely lived before the 6th Epoch (#SayTheWords are documented during this Epoch, Radiants are already established and well known) - each Epoch is a period in between two Desolations, there were at least 15 but no more than 50 Desolations, and the 8th Epoch lasted for at least 367 years (WoK ch 19 Starfalls vision). Add to this that early Desolations were separated by hundreds of years, you get that the Sibling existed for a very long time. RoW ch 83:

The theory is wild but it is nicely put and well argumented, I like it. However it's just impossible. Why? Yelig-Nar. He doesn't just kill his host, he consumes them entirely with their soul, just like Nightblood does. This is a permanent death, something that even a Herald bound to an Oathpact would not be able to survive. And this is something that other Heralds feel painfully well. None before Jezrien died, sensed another Herald dying. This is enough to conclude that Aesudan was not a Herald. OB ch 118: @coolsnow7 Please avoid double posting, it's against Shard's policy. Just edit your previous post instead - click the 3 dot menu in the top right corner of your post and choose the "edit" option:

You don't really need the Nahel Bond for that. The Sibling is physically manifested as the entire Urithiru without the Nahel Bond, the same goes for Oathgates, which are physical manifestations of two Oathgate sprens, or Soulcasters or other ancient Fabrials. The Bond isn't needed. Fabrials were made by convincing spren to manifest physically. But Kelsier would have problems with that. He would need to get pulled into the Physical Realm somehow and he lacks proper Connection to it. He would need to do something else to do that. So in the case of Kelsier the Bond would be helpful to achieve that, but this would prevent his bonded partner from leaving Scadrial. Truthfully there is one question we haven't considered - can a Cognitive Shadow even manifest as a god metal in the first place, or are they just too human to do that? Sure their soul is made out of raw investiture, they are somewhat comparable to spren, but their soul remembers being alive, being a person - that might be enough to prevent you from manifesting as a god metal. I've found only one WoB about this, which is RAFO:

Minus? That's just the cherry on top

Please avoid double posting, it's against forum policy. It's better to edit your previous post - click the 3 dot menu in the top right corner of your post and choose the "edit" option. Here are some other tips for you, courtesy of @Treamayne: That can work, but that wouldn't be a Nahel Bond, that would be more like, Yumi spoilers: It would work in the same way. It's basically a very, very strong Connection with something very heavily invested that can't leave the system. Seons also have troubles leaving Sel, it takes some extra, unknown measures to achieve that (we've seen them on different planets with their "owners"), but this is just as hard for them as it is for spren and Cognitive Shadows.

Not really. We know Urithiru existed during Nohadon's times - and that was mostly likely before the Radiant Orders were even established. The Stormfather is very old, predating Honor's death (it changed him, before that he was like a child, less aware) and maybe even predating Honor's arrival to Roshar (Highstorms predate even the Shattering). You can theoretically argue that the current Stormfather is only around 2000 years old and that would mean he is the youngest of them all. We know nothing about Nightwatcher's creation. OB ch 113:

It's relevant because you're talking like it is fully Spiritual, like Connection. But it isn't, it's a mental thing. It's not in your spirit web, it's in your mind. I'm not talking about the Feruchemical Table. Disagree. You understand things based on your memories, that's learning. Remove those memories and some other memories about you using that knowledge and your understanding is gone. We can go on and on but in the end we have to agree to disagree.

Hello, welcome to the Shard! It's a very interesting idea, I haven't seen that one yet. This topic probably should have been posted in the Cosmere Discussion section, to avoid spoilers from SA. Have you read the Stormlight Archive? I assume you have for obvious reasons. Edit: I've asked mods to move it to the Cosmere Discussion section. However I see a few problems with this idea. First one is that if Kelsier IS the spike (just like Spren manifests as a Shardblade) then why does the spiked person look like Kelsier, behave like Kelsier and even think he is Kelsier? The Nahel Bond doesn't work like that. If you suggest that Kelsier's body is his manifested body with a Shardspike then that doesn't work as well - spren can't manifest two physical bodies, they can't become a Shardblade and be a human figure at the same time (and they can't have a physical human body, a Shardblade is their physical body). Moreover Bonded Spook (Sixteen) can't be on Roshar, because his Nahel Bond with Kelsier - a highly invested Cognitive Shadow (Kelsier) that can't leave Scadrial, he would prevent Spook from leaving Scadrial as well. That means Sixteen has no bond with Kelsier otherwise he would be stuck on Scadrial with Kelsier. OB spoilers WoB: So while this is an interesting new view on this problem, it can't really work. However Kelsier manifests as a Shardspike and someone using it to Hemalurgically pierce another person, overwhelming their spirit web with Kelsier's spirit might kind of work. But that's not a Nahel Bond, that's advanced Hemalurgy. And from TLM epilogue 4 we know this is a Hemalurgic spike holding "his" body and soul together: Kelsier's body seems to be a mistwraith who ate Kelsier's bone. Those WoBs stronly strongly this: RoW spoilers WoB: But in the end I don't think we have any indication what his spike is made of, what its charge is and how this works, we can only speculate for now. A Shardspike is a great, somewhat possible take on this.

But intent isn't Spiritual like Connection, it's more mental. Intent is tied to your understanding - remove that understanding, you don't have an Intent anymore. That's why I see Intent as a combination of two things - your understanding and your will. Your will is affected by determination, that determination is F-electrum.

Just saying, it's theoretically possible for a natural Fullborn to be born: But overall you're right. However the closest thing there was to a Fullborn was Wax holding the Bands - the Bands are there, they grant powers of a Fullborn, it's possible to make more of them. It's not impossible to think that in the future artificial Fullborn will be present on Scadrial.

Once you know it, you can simply store all your memories of that knowledge and that's it. You no longer know it.

Realistically, I would immediately freak out seeing Shades, accidentally scratch myself on some stick (curse you the Stick), spill blood and get overwhelmed by Shades. Dead within one minute. But just for fun: Body: doesn't matter really, average guy's body or whatever Skill Set: Khriss Power Set: Aluminum Gnat, Savant: WoB1, WoB2 Item: A Hemalurgic Spike containing a Divine Breath My plan is to just build a hut, live quietly and peacefully in it, separated from all this nasty important stuff happening elsewhere, doing some science work in my free time. The forest and farming would be enough to supply me. Khrisse's knowledge would give me high Cosmere and Realmatic awareness so I know what's going on with all those Shades and what they are doing to souls. Being an Aluminum Savant is enough to fully protect me from withering and even cleanse my soul from it, so I don't really have to fear Shades. A Hemalurgic Spike with a Divine Breath gives me the 5th Heightening as a bonus to make me super invested (and give me immunity to toxins and illnesses) - investiture resist investiture, the more invested I am, the harder it is to turn me into a Shade. Plus stolen Divine Breaths doesn't need to feed on investiture so I don't have to worry about being eaten by my Divine Breath: WoB3. Oh yeah, that's brilliant!

Theoretically it might be possible but I doubt it's Awakening. There is one WoB about it: That's what we know. It's a megastructure built for a specific purpose. You don't need conscience for that, gemstones capture investiture and Stormlight with no conscience involved, Canticle can work in the same way. In the case of Threnodites it's the donors that have to have conscience - Nomad was using the same mechanism to transfer his Torment to a Sunheart. Canticle is the receiver of investiture, it doesn't have to be Awaken, it has to just capture it from the sunlight. But because we have nothing about it and this seems to be a far future project, we will have to wait a long time for answers. Until then this theory is as likely as others.

Well, the Stormfather is the Cognitive Shadow of Honor, which means more or less that - Honor's mind/afterimage merged with the Stormfather after his death. Heralds and Fused are Cognitive Shadows too. The Stormfather seems to not have all memories of Honor, but he might have some of them. Italics and small caps gives you no indication of who is speaking in the prologue, because there are only two sentences spoken in caps, at the very end (bolded): It doesn't make sense for the entire conversation to be spoken by one entity, and the goodbye part be the other, after which the first one spoke a few more words when Gavilar was dying. No. Stormfather's opinion of the Nightwatcher is not good. And I doubt they would be able to give boon and curse to entities that invested - investiture resist investiture, the Stormfather is more invested than the Nightwatcher. OB ch 43: Honor is dead, that's clear. Cultivation is very unlikely to help Odium hill Honor. Firstly, she was romantically involved with Tanavast, secondly she was fighting against Odium this whole time.

Right, we know how "determination" is stored - you can get over 100%, you can get into a manic state, it's stored like speed in steelminds. But that doesn't make sense for an Intent - you either have it or not. It makes no sense to "have more intent to burn metals" than normally. If there was an ability to store Intent directly, it would work like storing memories in a Coppermind. Agree to disagree. For me that's will, not Intent. Will is a part of Intent. Understanding what you're doing is another important part of Intent. You won't burn metals if you don't want to - you have to have a will to do that in that moment, but you also need to know you can do that to begin with. That knowledge can be stored in a Coppermind and to have Intent storable separately makes little sense. From Elantris Ars Arcanum: It seems like it doesn't require minimum Heightening - Lightsong's priests were able to Command Break Vasher's squirrel, it took them weeks to do that and I highly doubt they had the 8th Heightening. The 8th Heightening allows you to Command Break instinctively. Warbreaker ch 38: Warbreaker ch 58:

Couternitpick:

Thanks @Duxredux, I couldn't find this topic as well. I stand by what I wrote there. It doesn't make sense for me. Intent isn't something Spiritual, it isn't just about investiture, it comes from your mind. Intent is a combination of your will to do something, with the knowledge of how things work and expectations of certain outcomes. This second part about knowledge is just your memory, it can be stored in a Coppermind. Store your knowledge about burning metals and now you have no intent to use them, because you don't know it is even possible (just like Wax was unable to use a Coppermind medallion until he realized what it is). The first component is your will and this is just determination. You are willing to do something, you can have an intent if you have a proper knowledge. And that will comes from sentience - that's it. So F-electrum is related to intent (because it changes your will), but doesn't store Intent directly (because you would need to store your knowledge and that F-copper so repetition like this is useless). We see people with great will - with great determination - doing impressive stuff in Cosmere - Marsh. He was determined to resist Ruin's influence, to preserve his mind and remember who he is. This strong determination paid off and eventually allowed him to overcome Ruin's rule in the most crucial moment, allowing Vin to Ascend. Without that determination, without that strong will, this wouldn't have happened. Tapping determination should allow you to resist emotional Allomancy and Hemalurgic control better. HoA ch 66 epigraphs: Command and Intent are related - a Command is a focus for an Intent. They aren't separate, a Command doesn't exist without an Intent. And Intent is more about understanding - something that can be stored in Copperminds.

Then if you read Band of Mourning, I highly recommend Secret History to you. It explains a lot of stuff.

I disagree. That's not a big issue conflict for Dalinar at all, Sure, Dalinar doesn't know the truth about Gavilar, he certainly doesn't know that he was bonded with the Stormfather, but that's mainly because Navani has never tried to actually argue with him why Gavilar was so bad. I went through every 104 mentions of "Gavilar" and 55 mentions of "brother" in RoW and only 1 or 2 were made by Dalinar, not in the context of "how great, idealistic and honorable Gavilar was" or stuff like that. Dalinar doesn't struggle with this anymore, there is no internal conflict regarding Gavilar and he has already decided to disrespect Gavilar's name by courting and later marrying Navani. I don't think Dalinar will struggle to accept that Gavilar was a two-faced monster because Dalinar himself was a two-faced animal. I don't see this as being significant to Dalinar's character arc - it's absent from RoW, it's barely mentioned in OB (mainly in flashbacks), it doesn't contribute anything new and grand for Dalinar to overcome that has meaning on his current progression. It doesn't change much. That reveal won't bring much. But the reveal that the Stormfather is lying to him, hiding important facts from him or even manipulating Dalinar changes everything. Their relations would be questioned, every bit of knowledge gained from the Stormfather would be questioned, Dalinar's trust would be broken. How can he unite Roshar when the very entity he's bonded with that essentially gave him this mission to unite can't be trusted? This actually would raise issues very close to and even necessary for Bondsmith's progression. This problem still exists with or without the Stormfaker - Dalinar was lied to, used and manipulated by Odium for decades, just like Gavilar was by the Stormfaker. It changes nothing. Dalinar doesn't really struggle with the idea that he's only badly filling the shoes of his dead brother. He partially knows how dangerous Gavilar was, that he can't be trusted - he warned Venli about this in RoW ch 58. He isn't idealizing Gavilar to that extent. So you're saying Dalinar needs to confront the idea that Gavilar was a monster, but then you still give him an excuse to make - that Gavilar was just manipulated and wasn't so bad? Doesn't work for me. It's not "Gavilar was manipulated" Dalinar needs to confront, it's "Gavilar was a crem" that matters. The same excuse exists with or without the Stormfaker. This isn't needed at all. Knowing that Gavilar was plotting and scheming the return of Voidbringers behind everyone's back, that he abused and disrespected Navani constantly, that he disregarded his kids and Dalinar, lastly that he was manipulating everyone around him is enough for Dalinar to accept that Gavilar was a crem. Just the knowledge of how he treated Navani is enough to make that judgment. Dalinar himself is the example that even if you are manipulated, you still have free will to make your own choice and do what’s right and honorable - Gavilar didn’t do that at all. However Dalinar knows that Gavilar wasn't perfect, they all together schemed and conquered Alethkar with fire and threats. They bullied nobles to join their cause long before Stormfather even appeared in their lives. Overall while the Stormfaker brings not much to the story. In no meaningful way it adds to an existing conflict, internal struggles of Dalinar and his character development. It's just a twist for the sake of having a twist. A lying Stormfather actually adds a lot in every way. It focuses on Dalinar's relation with the Stormfather, turning its dynamic upside down, where Gavilar is just a background, not a major part of it. It contributes to Dalinar's character arc as a Bondsmith.

Hello, welcome to the Shard What other books have you read? Have you read Mistborn Era 2, or The Secret History? A Shard is made out of two major parts: a Shard, which is the power and a Vessel, who is a person holding that power. A Vessel is the mind of a Shard, they control the power. Sazed is now the Vessel (the mind) of both combined Shards of Ruin and Preservation, the Vessel of Harmony. For Preservation to give up his mind it means he used the essence of his own mind - the soul of the Vessel you might say - to trap Ruin's mind. This mind, this soul is made out of the same stuff that everything else is made out of, it's the same thing that Shardic power is made out of, the same stuff that powers Metallic Arts - investiture - which basically is energy. Preservation, or rather Leras - the Vessel of Preservation - used up his own soul, his mind, to trap Ruin's mind, or rather Ati - the Vessel of Ruin. Releasing Ruin from his prison didn't bring back Preservation's mind. Leras was gone, he was almost dead at this point and his mind was used up as power - there was no going back from that. When Vin Ascended, the former Vessel of Preservation, Leras, had finally died, leaving just empty Shardic power with no mind to control it (this happened just after Elend talked with the Mist Spirit, after taking over the new Koloss army on his own). Vin provided a new mind for Preservation, becoming the new Vessel of Preservation. Some WoBs, Words of Brandon from Annotations to Mistborn: HoA epigraphs ch 55: 57: 79:

I get it, you think you have to steal it first to grant it. I disagree. I theorize that any Hemalurgic spike in eyes will physically change them enough to replace your normal vision with steelsight. Go back and read that epigraph from HoA where Sazed talks about changes done to the body by Hemalurgic spikes. And because steelsight is something bigger than Allomancy, other entities like Shards or Awakened objects use it as well, that's what Hemalurgy is replacing your vision with - it's not about the charge of the spike, but the placement of it. That's at least my little theory. You don't steal steelsight, you get it by changes done to your body from spikes. That explains why Kelsier has it but doesn't have any powers. He specifically said that Hemalurgy ONLY pins his soul to his body. I further theorize that his spike contains no charge at all, it dragged his soul and stapled it into his new body. Alternative theory is that it contains his whole soul. But it doesn't contain Metalborn powers, nor steelsight, this is given to him to replace his lost vision because of the nature of mutations associated with Hemalurgy. Inquisitors' spikes were all charged with powers - that's for sure. But if you look at the Hemalurgic table of HoA you will see that eyes are binding points for granting ANY physical Allomantic power - you can place there A-pewter if you want and you would still get steelsight replacing your vision. The steelsight isn't stolen.

We don't know that. My point is that Gavilar is not a reliable narrator. We don't know if the Stormfather told him those things, or if he just assumed that himself. I don't trust Gavilar, I don't trust him to reliably tell me what the Stormfather told him off pages. The Stormfather responded: "you assume too much for what you don't know" - for me it looks like this was the correction you are looking for. This clearly suggests that it was just Gavilar who assumed Heralds are on Braize, not that the Stormfather directly told him this. It depends on the circumstances of swearing an Oath. If both of them have the same Intent and understanding of the bond, it is binding and I do believe that the Stormfather was honest when bonding with Dalinar. But even Oaths can be misinterpreted, RoW ch 116: Honor isn't an idea set in metal - every person can have a different interpretation of Honor. We don't know what Tavavast's interpretation of Honor was, but apparently it was loose enough for him to imprison Odium on Roshar, despite allowing him to settle in the system. It was also loose enough to betray his own people - Dawnsingers - and switch to humans for unknown reasons. If Tanavast intended to imprison Odium when he allowed him to settle on Roshar, I see no reason why the Stormfather can do something similar with Dalinar (which I don't believe happened at all).

No, that's a big RAFO. We know he regrets something he has done in the past, he will be a main character in Mistborn Era 4 and in Dragonsteel and that's probably most that we know of. His current main goal is to keep Odium imprisoned, but judging by his actions in all books, he interferes a lot in all worlds when very important stuff is happening - like on Scadrial. I doubt he's just there to witness a story worth telling or get some new powers.

Steelsight isn't exclusive to Allomancy. Steel lines manifest Spiritually, Connection is involved, you can see investiture, down to the very axi of all things, or even fundamental forces of Cosmere. Kelsier said it's the way Shards see the world. Steelsight has more to do with your soul and how it perceives the Physical world than just with Allomancy. Warbreaker spoilers: