Fakeout

I just read my copy today, and while I agree that the new art style in chapter six was much cleaner, it was so much more cartoonish and it really bothered me. The art style before had its issues but I much preferred it to the new style. The pace picked up more though, and we actually got to know some of the characters a little better, and I’m excited to see some of the loose ends start to be tied up in the third graphic novel. I really hope White Sand can get a written version in the future though to smooth out some of the issues. The graphic novels don’t really feel canon in the Cosmere, even though they are currently the official published story.

Is there some kind of maximum capacity to a spirit web that would require a hole to fill to gain power? Maybe the hemalurgic spike isn’t just stapling on a piece of spirit web from someone else but completely replacing that section of your own spirit web with the other persons, like a forced snapping. That epilogue just has too many questions needing answers, I’m really excited to figure out what happened next with Kelsier and Spook I honesty think I’m just completely misunderstanding nicrosil here, haha. So in Feruchemy, does nicrosil just store Investiture in its basic form that you can then put into other things to enhance them? Or does it store specific uses of Investiture? For example, if you had a nicrosil medallion (medallion being a F mind that is unkeyed so it can be used by anyone) you could get it to hold Allomantic steel and tap the medallion to gain the ability to burn steel until the medallion ran out.

Okay, makes sense. Actually, I did have one more question about Lerasium, how does it make you a Mistborn without requiring snapping? The lord ruler reforging his body to be an Allomancer beyond Lerasium strength makes sense, since he could fiddle with his spirit web while ascended. I think there was a misunderstanding here, I was thinking of compounding duraluminum’s strength for a basic metal and seeing just how far a steelpush or something could be taken. Okay so was Ruins influence indirect then? Like with Kelsier, where he had a strong spiritual connection to him and could influence events around them? also, very cool tip about the Pathian earrings, I hadn’t thought of that. You got that from secret history’s ending right? I did get that Sazed was more referring to TLR’s immunity to beheadings and age, but it was what started me thinking about all the stuff I threw into my post so I included it. Also, while not lending him deity status like immortality, his Allomancy was pretty legendary I did know that haha. What I meant is that nicrosil could have been the way by which he gave access to the Allomantic powers, as well as made them so strong through nicrosil compounding. Does nicrosil in feruchemy work in the way I described though, where you can store a power in it one at a time, similar to tinminds storing one scent per mind (before melding the metalminds together of course) ————— I don’t think Allomantic nicrosil can be used on yourself though. Also, using nicrosil on someone else is basically like making them burn duraluminum afaik so it would burn up the metals you enhance in the process, like an Allomantic Leeching with benefits. One benefit of using duraluminum from out of a metal mind is it wouldn’t run out in one use I don’t think. It would burn up the Allomancy metal you use though, unless you also pulled that power out of a nicrosil mind.

This is going to be such a long, long, rambling post, with lots of spoilers. Sorry Its for my benefit though, so people can correct me where I’m wrong So I’m re-reading all the Mistborn books currently, I’m on HoA. I’m just going to outline some thoughts and ideas I have and then end with some questions. So Lord Ruler has incredible power from compounding. As I understand it, for TLR to compound, he would go chill in his hovel in Kredik Shaw. Let’s say he’s got a bowl full of beads of the metal he wants to compound, like atium. He takes his first atium bead, stores a little age in it, then swallows and burns it, flaring it and artificially pulling more anti aging power out of it. He takes out the next atium bead and stores the resulting youth in it, then burns that one and and stores it in the next bead. Ultimately, once he has multiplied the power to his satisfaction, he would store the last bead’s power in a bracer that he would then wear. This is the hypothetical way he could compound. Other than his compounding abilities, TLR is a full strength Mistborn in the same vein as Elend in HoA. However, though Elend certainly had great raw Allomantic power, he doesn’t seem to compare to TLR’s strength of Allomancy. TLR could push on Vin’s metals in her stomach and throw her around the throne room even though she had no external metals on her, and if I remember right his pushing also pushed on the trace metals in the windows and walls and shook the room. His soothing could pierce copperclouds and affected the entire city of Luthadel. So this is where things start breaking down into questions and ideas for me— Sazed says in the epigraphs of HoA that TLR had incredible allomantic strength but that most of his most spectacular feats came from compounding. So my first thought was that TLR used compounding to somehow increase his allomantic strength. I’m going to go off on a tangent about nicrosil, because I think this is the only way one could increase Allomancy power with feruchemy, however I’m pretty sure the TLR didn’t know about or have access to nicrosil. Nicrosil minds can store investiture, so if a Fullborn were to burn steel for example, they could store steel in a nicrosil mind similar to how tinminds hold one sense at a time (I’m pretty sure this is how nicrosil minds work lol). Through compounding, you could massively increase the amount of Investiture being used for steel’s effect of pushing metals, like an artificial flare that isn’t gated by the amount of metal or strain on the body or even how fast you can pump out the power. This is how I think Kelsier/the Sovereign could make a person a Mistborn through the Bands of Mourning, by having unkeyed nicrosilminds that held massive amounts of the different metal’s Investiture shapes. Inquisitors can see more metal through steelsight than normal Allomancers because of their spikes giving them greater steel power. When Wax used the Bands for steel, so much steel investiture was used that he could see that metal and people and everything were all made of the same thing— Investiture. Wax is already on his way to becoming a savant of steel but I think while using the Bands he became a temporary super-savant of steel, which is what allowed him to perfectly modulate how hard he pushed to fly above the ground rather than jump repeatedly. A smaller example of this would be Zane. With a steel spike, Zane could float down on a coin with concentrated effort. I know he isn’t technically a savant, but savantism is the same thing but on a small scale/through a different cause. It’s a side effect of pumping more power through yourself. This is supported by the fact that a persons mind is expanded when they take up the power of a shard. One final thing about nicrosil, a cool thing you could do is compound duraluminum in a nicrosil mind for the most godlike burst of power to one of your other metals. So while you could increase Allomantic strength with feruchemy, I don’t think that option was available to TLR. So, question time— Were TLR’s bracers hemalurgically charged? Ruin influenced him through the spikes, but wouldn’t they need a hemalurgic charge for him to do this? Or can ruin influence anyone that has piercings of any kind? I know he can influence people with mental illness, so maybe Rashek was just loose in the head. Also, this brings up the question of, are Pathian earings hemalurgically charged? I would assume they are because Wax used it for Harmony to regain control of Paalm in Dhadows of Self. If they are, then who are they killing to give earrings to everyone in the church???? If TLR wasn’t hemalurgically enhanced, then was his greater strength a result of him usIng the power at the Well? Vin didn’t become a stronger Allomancer because of the Well, but she didn’t Ascend when she went because she gave it up before anything could be done with it. So TLR could have been spiritually stretched by Ascending and thus have even greater capacity for lerasium to fill when he burned a bead of it to become a Mistborn. aight ramble over

Yeah I don’t know how exactly they would figure that out but it and the shardbow have similar hurdles to overcome, so I’m sure someone could figure something out. If I’m remembering right, there was a wob about shard guns and Sanderson said “rafo” or “you’ll see some cool stuff in Mistborn Era 3” or something along those lines.

You know, I’m super pumped for a sci fi Roshar in Mistborn Era 3. Summoning a pistol or automatic rifle out of no where and firing in one smooth motion is gonna be soo slick so hidden vote for shard gun from me

I had thought about this concept too in the past, and I can definitely see it maybe being experimented with in the last Mistborn trilogy (Scadrial vs Roshar space fights anyone??? ). Unless Brandon decides it’s too OP, like with speed bubbles and red shift.

Yeah I did think about that afterwards, large investiture amounts causes things like color refraction on Nalthis or mist on Scadrial, and no white hair.

What makes you think Vasher was the most heavily invested we've seen a character in a book? The God King had far more breath than Vasher did in the same book, and excluding characters taking up shards, I'd say Wax using the Bands of Mourning is highest investiture since he was using so much Allomancy and Feruchemy he literally had mist pumping out of him.

Yeah I did understand the oddities of magic on Sel, I meant that like in Forgery you can unstamp and restamp things on the fly, once the stamp is made. I'll check that out, thank you.

that is actually a good point, the breath isn't consumed so perhaps the color is the sacrifice necessary. The only investiture system I can think of that doesn't seem to consume any fuel is AonDor magics like Forgery.

Oh I had thought that the focus in Awakening was the color. What is the color for then, since the Breath would be the fuel right? You invest it into the object with a Command.

Yes, for sure. I really wanted to see that fight between her and the Fused, but alas. I wonder what purpose wrapping her cloak around her arm had though. If it was her sword arm, perhaps it just added speed or accuracy to her dueling, since strength wouldn't really be necessary. Her sword doesn't require Investiture to unsheath, however, since she let the spren on the ship hold it and it didn't eat him or anything so.

So in Awakening, you need three things: a clear Command, sufficient Breath, and color to drain. I've seen some discussion about the color draining part as being the focus of awakening, but what is a focus exactly?

Brandon has said that though Vasher can use stormlight to feed his Divine Breath, he can't use it to awaken. Also, afaik only people on Nalthis have Breath, the color part is separate. Everyone is born with an Investiture "spark of life" or soul that Nightblood eats, but the Breath is separate and only something that people born on Nalthis have (for example, Nalthians don't die when they give up their breath). You can also see the color drain phenomenon when Nightblood starts to eat Szeth, he is grayed out in the places that Nightblood touched him.

@The One Who Connects thank you for giving me a very complete response. I didn’t know that Ruin had told TLR how to make the things he did, I had assumed that he had learned it while he held the power or something like that. I think I had read a WOB that had said the power at the well was relatively small compared to the full shard, but you did explain it was more about the stand off between shards and the mystery rules that bind shards according to Honor. Also, I do like the explanation that it was because Preservation went against his intent that he was hurt so much. On Roshar, it does seem like spren allow for lots of experimentation. Do we know if the shard specific spren were created by the shards of if they have simply been influenced and are originally of Adonalsium’s design? Thank you again

So Brandon was in Houston today, a half hour away from where I live, but I wasn't able to go so I wanted to see if anyone had any answers or theories about some questions I have after reading Oathbringer, specifically ones I have relating to the shards. I compared a lot of what Odium was doing to what we have seen from Preservation and Ruin in the first Mistborn trilogy, since that was previously where we had seen the most direct Shardic involvement. Now I'm really confused about the capabilities of a shard though. t seems like Odium is much stronger/capable than Preservation of Ruin were. Here's what I noticed-- So Brandon has said in the past that shards don't control what magic system arises from their investiture, but their intent does influence how you obtain that power. Preservation "preserves" people by fueling the power for them, Honor requires sworn oaths, and Breaths must be "endowed" to the person who uses them. However, Odium seems to be able to create an expanding repertoire of different uses of his investiture. As far as bonding Fused or with trying to corrupt Dalinar and Amaram/Amaram's soldiers, he seems to need the individual to accept him and "give him their pain" before he can influence them and give them his investiture, so that would be they way they gain access, and what stays constant between both Honor and Odium is that they gain access to the Ten Surges. So this would be the natural magic system that manifested on Roshar. But Odium also has other unique things he creates: the Unmade, each having their own unique abilities, and the Everstorm, a new construct of his Investiture. Why couldn't Ruin do things like this upon escaping the Well? All we saw him do was manipulate the Inquisitors and Koloss in to expanding their numbers, and directing them as his army. However, they were both designed by TLR. Shouldn't Ruin be a master of his magic system and been able to create new horrors like the monsters in Shadows of Self? And why couldn't he have found new uses for his investiture? Also, why does Roshar have so many Spren, and could the other shards do something similar in the Cognitive Realm of their planets? Also, where was Odium this whole time? He didn't interact like at all until this book where he seems very present and involved in everything. Another thing is shouldn't Odium be weaker than he is? He has splintered off a lot of himself to create so many spren, the Unmade, and the Everstorm, and he has fought and killed four shards that we know of, and those battles have left him weakened. Comparing this to Preservation, he put a piece of himself into the planet and every human to provide sentience, created the mists at night, and locked ruin in the Well. This left his mind broken and him dying. Odium seems to have used much more of himself without the same kind of consequences. And finally, are there restrictions or something to what shards can do? The Lord Ruler held only a small piece of Preservstion and was able to rearrange continents and shift the planets position in orbit around get sun. With only a small amount. Full shards like Ruin, Odium and Honor should be able to just destroy planets and the like on their own, and sweep away armies. But they don't. Kelsier describes Ruin as ripping open the Ashmounts and causing earthquakes in SH, but couldn't he have just destroyed the whole place in moments, or at least just destroyed Vin or someone? Yeah, that's most of what I've got, and is pretty indicative that I'm missing a lot of Realmatic knowledge, but hopefully you Sharders might be able to help me out with some of it

Good idea. There was a topic somewhere on here where someone theorized that for Szeth to gain powers/access to Stormlight he would need to bond Nightblood by unsheathing him and surviving, which is how Vasher gained the ability to hear Nightblood in his thoughts without holding the blade (if I'm remembering correctly). So maybe Seth could find someway to feed Nightblood with a fabrial to achieve the bond and gain whatever powers Nightblood would grant. Alternatively, he could draw it only in a moment when a Surgebinder attacks him, killing the Surgebinder in a single hit and sheathing it before it can begin eating Szeth's soul. Otherwise, I don't think Szeth should be able to access stormlight unless the OP is true.

Also, there's a WOB out there somewhere that says the metal that Plate and Blade are made out of is the god metal of Honor, so it's as much a real metal as atium or lerasium.

So if this applies to any person with sufficient damage to their Spiritweb, what would they gain from the Stormlight? I think without a bond of some sort to shape the usage of the Investiture, they wouldn't be able to use any specific Surges/powers but would gain the benefits of holding Stormlight, namely healing, strength, speed, and the urge to take action.

Good points. The original theory though still has potential. Brandon said, "The more investiture clumped together, the more likely [it is for Investiture to gain sentience] -- and the closer to human-level intelligence it is likely to obtain." Would having Investiture at least equal to sixteen times the amount of the Shards before they separated to their different planets give it greater intelligence than humans? Also, I agree with Ciridae: Brandon does like doing the unexpected, and having Adonalsium just be a "bigger shard with balanced intents" seems too much like the simple answer that I'm sure Brandon has some kind of unique twist on it. It would speak volumes of the original sixteen and those involved in the Shattering that though they might have thought they were doing the right thing, they had the naïveté to interfere in what would essentially be a natural process/force of nature/God and split up the power between themselves believing that they could do the job better. It kind of has an element of man vs nature in it. I really like the idea personally, though there isn't really any hard evidence. I'm excited to see what Brandon has in store for us.

I see what you mean, but the Shards (that haven't been killed by Odium) aren't sentient Investiture though, are they? Because they are held by a Vessel that directs the powers actions. I took what Brandon said about Honor in the OP to mean that if they knew Honor had been killed and was a Cognitive Shadow, they would call it a spren. They might confuse Odium or Cultivation for spren but so far that hasn't happened with Odium, and they would be technically wrong since the Investiture doesn't currently have sentience on its own for those two Shards.

You did a much better job of explaining my points concisely, I was having a hard time explaining what I meant by Adonalsium being sentient without a Vessel because I'd forgotten about that term. Spren are referred to as male or female so I don't see Adonalsium being a him as a problem. Adonalsium would be similar to the Stormfather but with vastly more Investiture, excluding the influence of a Cognitive Shadow.

I was browsing through forum discussions on here and I found this quote in a topic about the Nightwatcher: What stood out to me more about this quote though was the bit about Adonalsium at the end. Maybe I've just missed this or something, but I personally believed Adonalsium to be the original Power of Creation that was held by a person similar to how people hold the Shards. I believe Brandon referred to Adonalsium as a "he" at one point, which may not necessarily have been a reveal of any sort. However, there was also this quote from Khriss in Secret History: So it's seems Khriss also believed Adonalsium to be a being holding the power. However, the bit at the end of the WOB seems to be Brandon slipping out that Adonalsium was the original, whole Power of Creation that had become sentient, similar to a Splinter, which is a known property of Investiture when not held by a being for a time. This idea seems very cool to me, as when Brandon writes the Dragonsteel books and we learn more about Adonalsium, it would be very interesting to see what kind of mind a pure force/energy like that would have, especially when not influenced by the intents of the sixteen Shards. I would expect it to really be a God figure in temperament, because Brandon has said that the intents of the Shards were loosely inspired by attributes of deity. The fact that Adonalsium would be a sentient being of pure energy from the Cosmere rather than a human or other mortal being given that power could also lend Adonalsium credibility as a true God figure in the eyes of some. And from what we've seen of The Liar of Partinel potentially implying that Adonalsium was destroying Yolen through the fain life, it would be interesting to see what potentially went wrong in its mind, since it could be some effect of the Investiture. This could also be the reason the sixteen Shattered Adonalsium, because its Investure mind went wrong somehow and they believed that humans/other species needed to hold the power to prevent this. I think it could ultimately go either way (Adonalsium being a being or sentient Investiture) but if Adonalsium really was pure sentient Investiture, I'd be very excited to read more about that. Let me know if this was already commonly accepted information though.

For the first one, it could potentially happen but you have to remember that when the coppermind is created, the Feruchemist making it would have to experience whatever brainwashing/madness inducing event in order to remember it and then store it away. This makes me wonder, however, if a Feruchemist could actively store in his coppermind as the torture is happening and thus have no memory of the events or have any negative effects on their psyche. This would essentially turn them into a vegetable while it was happening though, I would think.