Vortaan

The only time Ruin is actually trying to kill Vin, she's drawing directly on the power of Preservation. I don't think it would matter at that point how powerful an Inquisitor was, he or she would still not be able to mimic the raw power of Preservation. As I said before, a lot of how Vin killed Inquisitors was completely crushing heads, removing spikes, or dropping giant spires atop of them, something I don't think even Miles could have survived.

Couple of things here. 1) Allomancy doesn't have a frequency in order to be able to sense a Feruchemical reserve. Vin can sense the one Sazed gives her, she just can't access it because it isn't hers. I imagine that if you stored the reserve, you'd be able to access it, no matter if the Allomancy came from the person whom you got the Feruchemy from or not. 2) TLR would likely not have given Inquisitors gold-Allomancy spikes. It doesn't do your fanatical priesthood of uber death and limited humanity good to look back on the people they were before they had eight people shoved into them. Again, it's a built in weakness so that the Inquisitors would be easier to control. That said I wouldn't be suprised if Ruin found a few Augurs and supplemented a few Inquisitors with gold to allow for compounding. The way Vin killed off most of the Inquisitors wouldn't allow for healing to save them

Why would it require both? By burning Steel, you release your Feruchemical storage in a large amount. Since you were the one to store it, you should be able to get it back, as long as the speed stored is yours to begin with. I thought Marsh was compounding atium as a way of staying young until AoL times.

Hemalurgy can create compounders. If you only kill one coinshot and one steelrunner, you have unlimited speed matched to the ability to use any piece of metal as a bullet. So... yeah, Hemalurgy for the win.

Because they don't know how. The annotations for Warbreaker indicate that it's possible.

Hm. Not bad. Why would Shards seek wielders then? It seems like if, for example Sazed unites all the Shards, then there would be two cognitive presences vying for control of the entire power of creation.

Really kind of baseless. Spren are mentioned by Nohadon way before the Recreance. There's no evidence that I can think of that spren aren't around in their current concentration in the far past. Not trying to shut you down, I'd like to hear some evidence to back up any points.

It does state that humans aren't native to Roshar, they were driven from the Tranquline Halls. I've always figured it was literal, not figurative. All humans coming from Shin is a rather interesting idea.

Tapping luck seems like a big gamble anyway. IF you end up lucky, who says that it's going to work out great for you anyway? I refer you to a Wheel of Time reference where Mat has a wall fall on top of him. Turns out it's lucky since he doesn't have to face an army that would likely have killed him, but... wall. On your head.

And Ruin didn't save Spook, Spook did. He just talked Spook through it. There was no expenditure of Ruin's power beyond what was needed to talk to Spook.

Or they could have visited Sel when AonDor was powerful, prior to the Reod. That would give the person a pretty good idea of what AonDor could do. It could also be that the person visited Sel right before Scadrial, and so it was on his or her mind. I'm curious why you think the AoL Ars Arcanum person is unfamiliar with Scadrial. The entries seem pretty knowledgeable, and in the case of nicrosil Ferrings seem to hint that the author knows more about the process than the Terris people do. Certainly they at least know something beyond Sel, since the term Investiture is never mentioned in Elantris.

Where does Ruin preserve anything? Hemalurgy destroys individuals to grant more power to another individual. I can't recall Ruin saving anyone that didn't stem from someone else's untimely death (and generally lead to MORE untimely death down the road)

Mentioned before, Ruin never Preserved anything. All Hemalurgy Ruins at least one life to empower another, and the power you receive is less than was taken. It's an end-negative art that ALWAYS Ruins.

Could be a lower class light eyes, could be from a non-Vorin region. Strange enough to mock isn't the same as completely unknown. It's an interesting theory but I don't think there's more to it than that one incident. Watch me be wrong though, and Kasbal's actually from the Tranquline Halls or something

Hrm. I'd like to point out that the other characters we see aren't exactly the most spiritual people. It might be more common among lower classes to glance upward like that. I'd wager it's at least known since Shallan doesn't make more of a fuss over what he was doing.

To be fair we've seen Vorinism, and tiny hints of other cultures. Also, you don't think the Hierocracy could have been Odium's work? Religious authority gone wild has a hateful feel to it in my eyes.

I'd think until there was actual irreparable damage, you can't really call a wounded person Ruined. Elend was able to be healed, by either the Well or pewter, and both those options were available to Leras. So while the action on it's surface seems like Ruining, it's a step on the way to Preserving Elend.

It seems like if Ruin was working to kill people before they Snapped, more of Elend's army would have died. It also always seemed to me that Sazed didn't do any kind of autopsy on the corpses he found, so he actually has no idea what killed them. Maybe some of the "healthy" people weren't really, all that much. At the very least, since most of those who came down with mistsickness were skaa, they likely suffered from malnutrition in their early years which could have led to all kinds of problems later in their life.

Probably not, actually. Or at least, not in the same way... Ruin effectively Ruined the knowledge in those texts, didn't really have to stretch outside his Intent much to do it. Odium... hates the texts to change? I find it a lot more likely that Odium actually has more influence with people and cultures. More big picture than little picture, to put it another way.

That's actually interesting. So the original doses he gave would likely have killed Jasnah over a longer period, perhaps a few days? The whole jam-antidote thing works a lot better in that case.

Seems to me like there's already a wave like effect to Stormlight. The highstorms are almost like tides.

I still don't think so, but I honestly can't put into words why I think that. Something about the nature of Commands versus the nature of what Shards seem to represent. I almost want to say that Nightblood is a good example of what I mean, but I can't seem to get the thought process right to explain it. Also I wouldn't necessarily agree that splinters of Honor remain Honor. Certainly so far that would seem to be the case if spren are splinters of Honor, but how do flamespren, windspren, or rotspren figure into Honor?

I thought the reverse of Wax would be nifty. A Lurcher/Steelrunner could Pull on something strongly, then move to change the trajectory. Or, using guns for example, shoot a bullet past someone, tap steel to get to a good trajectory, and then Pull it into their back.

You know, I would wager that fighting Odium isn't the overall storyline. Just like defeating the Lord Ruler/the armies/Ruin, I imagine that actually defeating Odium will lead to large problems for Dalinar and company, with Cosmere reaching consequences. After all, someone probably needs to take that Shard up if Rayse dies...

.. Huh. I think I forgot something in my argument here. The magic system feeding spren and Nightblood are different from each other. Assuming that Honor is the power behind most spren, it makes complete sense that they would require a bond with a human(ish) being to be sentient. Honor binds things together, making the whole greater than the sum of it's parts. Nightblood, however, is powered by Endowment. This could be very important because Endowment wouldn't require a continuous bond to provide sentience, but would deliver it in one shot. It could also be why the number of people is much larger for a Nightblood than a Syl. I still don't think that Shards and Nightblood have much in common... but I'll concede that spren and Nightblood probably have a lot more in common than I first said.