Vortaan

Ten Essences, ten Orders... I have to wonder if the Ten Deaths aren't tied to the nahel bond in some fashion. A KR somehow breaks the bond in a fashion that causes the spren to splinter into evil smoke filled monsters of doom... Eh, maybe not.

Don't removable souls sound an awful lot like Awakening? Hrm... mechanical Hemalurgy, anyone?

This is kind of my point though. Either they are invincible, or they are vulnerable through some kind of corny method. I don't see many other possibilities for Shards manifesting as a physical body. I don't know, maybe I'm the minority here but if, for example, the Odium plotline ends with an actual physical fight between Rayse and... I don't know, Sazed or whoever, I'll feel a little let down. More on topic, does anyone else think that a consciousness that has become accustomed to a Shard, like for example Sazed's now, would do at all well limited to a physical body? Wouldn't that limit awareness? Function follows form, after all... limiting oneself in a physical body, one would have to follow at least some rules of being in a physical body, no?

But the allomantic ability of Aluminum is to wipe out all of your reserves... so wouldn't it burn out the stored Identity as well?

I've always likes Carrot from Discworld. "Personal isn't the same as important."

I usually reread for quirks in character, honestly. Discworld is a great example for me, I can read those books many many times because I pick up on minor quirks in characters that I didn't notice before that are just extremely well done. Brandon's books have a lot of that too, in particular I enjoy every scene with Spook since I know where he goes and the kind of foreshadowing that he's going to get there.

Seems like a possibility... although if Franky was just a double aluminum Twinborn I suspect that burning his metalminds just wipes them out for no good reason. I wonder then if pre-Ascension Feruchemists did something like this? Presumably they'd know about most kinds of Feruchemy, yes?

I suppose I'm seeing the Well as substantially different than a normal Shardpool in that it functioned as a prison and was imbued with more of Preservation's power to allow that to be the case. I still don't like the idea of Shards manifesting physically though. Every case we have is either a Shard being weakened substantially or a Shardholder dying and leaving it behind. (Side note, this could be why having Ati and Leras' bodies could be useful for Sazed. Maybe by studying them he could figure out how to manifest physically while maintaining his powers). The part I really don't like about Shards manifesting physically is... well, human bodies can take a lot of punishment in the Cosmere, depending on what magic system you're talking about, but no one is actually factually immortal. It adds to every non-Shardic villain that he is, in fact, some type of human and if the hero is clever enough to find the weak point, the villian is no more powerful than an average person. But Shards, manifested into actual human bodies... how do you fight that? Or kill it? Or frankly even resist it? The loophole that "Oh, well they are human now so they can't use their powers" is just bad writing, not in line with how the Cosmere has worked so far. The other alternative of "Oh, well, they have a weakness and normal people can defeat them THIS way" kind of trivializes Shards. So it's a personal preference to me, backed by a bit of theory. I think I'd have a problem if a Shard could manifest fully on ANY realm, actually... Odium strolling through Shadesmar bothers me as much as Cultivation hanging around Shinovar.

Does Shu-Kessig predate the splintering of Dominion and Devotion? Can you store Breath in metal without the Eighth Heightening? Does mechanical Feruchemy draw from the user or the machine?

I think the danger is more about the unharnessed Shards than the fact that Elantris was rendered impotent. In the grand scheme of things, one region-locked magic is pretty unimportant Cosmere wise. I also disagree with Odium not necessarily being a cold planner. Hatred can be a cold thing, and Odium's shown, to me at least, a capacity for planning and marshalling resources that rivals Preservation. He killed two Shards, but didn't expend the power to destroy their world, probably because he didn't see a need. He then goes to Roshar and does his deal there. He didn't interfere on Scadrial because it appeared that there was no need, which turns out to have been wrong, but even the best laid plans go awry. I honestly don't think he's throwing power around unless he needs to, because his ultimate goal (being the strangest Shard around) requires an extremely long and careful game.

Kind of follows my point though. Preservation had leached off a large amount of his power, into the Well, at least a few beads of Lerasium, and into humanity in general. With all of that, he was only able to create a misty, half-physical avatar. Compare that to Vin, who had the majority of Preservation's power and was basically vaporized by it. There's also a quote somewhere about Investiture tearing troughs in people in larger amounts... I'm not great at finding quotes, but that one in particular makes me think that if someone was holding a whole Shard's worth of power, then manifesting a physical body might be beyond them. I'll concede though that if Cultivation did leech off a lot of her power, into spren or a Well-type arrangement or something, that it would be more likely.

Again I have to ask: why? What is Odium's profit? How does he benefit? He disrupts one of a multitude of region-locked magic systems on a planet where Worldhopping is pretty dangerous. What exactly does the earthquake do to further the being the strongest being around plan?

Heh, funnily enough I take this another way. I think the Nightwatcher is actually what Nohadon made to limit nahel bonds. Considering the quantum nature of spren, seems likely to me. I'm not sure I like the concept of Shards "maturing" to the point where they can assume a physical form. The other instances we have of Shards being taken up be people show that the power of creation is too much to be held within a human form, and basically vaporizes it. It seems like in order to go backwards, you'd need so splinter off a large amount of power.

I'm not a huge fan of the school of thought where the Old Magic can basically change the perceptions of... you know, everyone. There's a lot of evidence in Dalinar PoV that he grew up with Gavilar and that he was always envious of his older brother, even as he loved him. I can't really agree with your assessment that forgetting his wife was Dalinar's blessing. I really feel like it was his curse, but we'll see I suppose. Also it seems odd that this wouldn't have come up as a jibe from Sadeas. "If Gavilar had adopted a REAL man to be his brother, he'd still be alive!"

I don't know about that. Ruin and Preservation are still Intents that Harmony has to deal with. I think if he went too far one direction or another, he wouldn't be able to maintain both Shards without serious reprecussions.

Can't be the Doctor, no companions! But is it bad that I imagine a Harry-Saxonesque Hoid running around the Cosmere messing with people?

I wonder if by storing Breath in a piece of metal, you'd lose some on retrieval. Organic materials hold Breath better because it lets them mimic life. With a sword, it can't mimic something it never had, so even retrieving the Breath might result in a net loss, since the sword may not hold it as well... like a bottle with a small hole in it.

Why would Honor be that concerned about other Shards being killed though? I suppose it again comes to what is Odium's end game. After all other Shards are dead, does he start killing worlds? He hasn't (so far as we're aware), done anything to destroy Sel even after killing Dominion and Devotion, so... what's he up to?

Note that the catch with Dakhor might be finding people who are WILLING to sacrifice themselves. Doesn't seem like you can just use anyone, or else why would they spend a very powerful Dakhor monk for teleportation when they could have used an Arelon captive?

Fair enough. I think we'll have more to base this on when we see more Shards doing things. I also think some more knowledge of the Oathpact might shine some light on the limits of Shards.

I think this heads into my earlier example though. Ati, after just taking up Ruin, could probably do what you're saying. But Ati, having had Ruin for centuries, may not even be able to see that as an option anymore.

What I think Kurkistan is saying though is that if 100% of the Investiture of the sacrificed person is used, you end up end-neutral. You ALWAYS lose something from Hemalurgy, the Investiture never carries over 100%

I believe that it works better if you think of Ruin and Preservation, and perhaps all Shards, in terms of what you end up with at the end. For your example, I doubt Ruin actually could do that because at the end, there would not be less sticks than there were before. If, however, some of those sticks were sacrificed in the building of the bridge, burned up to make it stronger... then yes, I'd agree. For the same reason that Preservation needs to have at least what he started out with to work, Ruin can't end up with more than he started with. To take this to Honor, I wonder if Honor, at the end of his process, needs things to be more cohesive/united than they were before. So far his magic system seems to focus on bonds, and while we're not sure about the powers of most of the orders of KR, I wonder if bonding in general is the theme that runs throughout them. Kaladin creates bonds, and it could be argued that Shallan and Jasnah change them, so that something that is many different things becomes one continuous thing. This thread has gone an interesting direction, hasn't it?

We also have an epigraph that states straight that Ruin needed Preservation to create anything, hence the whole bargain. Twisting existing stock is different from making something new, which would be against Ruin's Intent. This actually makes me think that Scadrial humans had to have been created not too long after Leras and Ati took up their Shards, since the bargain between them seems to run a little counter to both Intents.

With the qualifier that the longer that someone holds the Shard the fewer options you have that don't counteract the Intent. For example, I don't think Honor could lie in the pursuit of Honor, but Tanavast probably could shortly after taking up the Shard. Ruin didn't create anything, he warped something that already existed and in the process turned normal people into bloodthirsty, superpowered monsters...