Inquisitor #5

That's entirely fair. I guess my read on it is that the suppressor is fairly easy to cheat. I don't think Venli is particularly special, her regal form just provides enough of a connection to Odium to bypass the suppressor and I'd assume that any regal radiant would be in the same boat. Working from this assumption I think that it might get a bit more complicated is all. I wouldn't be suprised if a Preservation suppressor might not fully work on the allomancy of a twinborn, there's a different connection in there throwing it off, essentially. That's also why I think the medallions might mess with it, because "you got your connection in my connection" as it were. Though I don't doubt that it might still mess with the power, a bit like what happened with the reverse lashings. As I explained above, I think the situation might be slightly more complicated. Do you think that the suppressor would suppress warlight? I'm inclined to say no, just like Venli wasn't knocked out. In the same vein I don't think a Preservation suppressor would properly get at feruchemy. I would personally assume that as long as Harmony has two separate intents the powers remain separate enough. Oh, and a general thing I forgot to include in my last post, there was a bit of discussion of compounding and the limits thereof a while back and I'd like to pose a question based on this; what actually happens when you compound? Using Sazed's speculative figure of ten times back what you stored, for easy maths, what are you getting? Say I have a store of 50% strength for 5 hours, do I get 500% strength for 5 hours or 50% strength for 50 hours? Both of these are the same amount, but they aren't the same practically. As a sidenote, I wouldn't be suprised if there either was a fixed point where you start seeing diminishing returns (X×100% capacity) regardless of the maths of the compounded store or possibly as part of the store (50% at 50% becoming 500% at 50%, that is, exceeding the original store speed in tap speed starts seeing diminishing returns.) ¤_¤

@BenduLuke The way I see it there's allomantic strength, which is inborn and, barring hemalurgy, shardic intervention, lerasium and nicrosil feruchemy, unchangable, burning pewter always gives the same person the same amount of extra oumph for instance, defined by their allomantic strength. For steelpushes and ironpulls this would define how hard you can push/pull, that is how much force you can exert allomantically, as well as how much resistance you can overcome and how fine things you can sense/affect. Then steelpushes and ironpulls are further influenced by physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, this is where mass (or effective mass, in the case of iron feruchemy) plays into strength. Vin is noted as being stronger than Kelsier, but is still warned against engaging in pushing matches, because she'll most likely be out-weighed by her opponent, and as such she'll be flung around. So in short, mass makes your push stronger by having more, well, mass behind your push, without changing your allomantic strength in the process. You can't affect anything that didn't show up with steel lines before tapping weight after tapping. I really feel that you'd be better served by trying to explain why you think a given example is extreme or overstated rather than deliberately pulling out such examples yourself. I also wish to say that broadly I agree with you re: the discussion of the supressor a page or two back, given that the Urithiru supressor got messed up by fairly minor things (Lift's lifelight, Venli's... regal-ness[?]) and I personally think that, as a bondsmith fabrial, it messes with connection, so unless they manage a broad-spectrum one it might be hard to make a supressor that reliably gets all the metallic arts (eg. allomancy supressor might get bypassed by hemalurgy or medallion.) I'm also going to keep (infrequently as it may be) championing that, assuming the rapid dissemination of medallions, Scadrial has a higher average troop quality, because they have the potential to make every soldier eg. a pewterarm/bloodmaker, or whatever combination you desire, keeping in mind that medallions seem to be common enough in the south that everyone has one, otherwise they couldn't go outside. Given enough compounders (and with the medallions those are more plentiful) Scadrial might also have the advantage in field medicine, just strap a bloodmaker medallion to someone and hand them an unkeyed goldmind, and have the ability to alleviate some supply line problems with the same approach using bendalloy. @The Technovore (I think, sorry if I pinged the wrong person) Small pedantry, there's no need to give Roshar crossbows, they already have them, as can be seen in the Thaylen gemstone reserve, Rysn shoots a Fused with a crossbow. And finally, a small point on air superiority, a Scadrian invasion of Roshar can, as I understand it, basically not at all make use of their airforce, for two reasons. 1, their airships rely on being lighter than air, which I'm sure would make them play nice with the highstorm. 2, their airships rely on ettmetal, which explodes when wet, so unless it's in highstorm-proof containers it won't survive the first storm. ¤_¤

I know it's been brought up on Shardcast, and I support the conclusion that it's an alerter (which are typically made with heliodor, yellow gem) and polished bronze (again, alerter) fits the description of the metal. Edit: Other than that, the glow could simply be coloured by the gemstone, as we see happen with *lights in Rhythm of War.

A few ideas: Someone up top might be opposed to enslaving people. A few Regals might not be large-scale enough and it'd get harder to scale up the more Regals you had, on account of the powers. They don't have easy access to the trade routes yet, so setting up this operation would be a risk that is unlikely to pay off soon. How do you just capture some Regals? They might not want to draw Odium's attention.

Hi, I would like to point out that, far as we can tell, f-nicrosil stores innate investiture, or ability to do magic, not kinetic investiture, or magical output, as Wax and Marasi still needed to ingest metal when drawing on the Bands, iirc. So our hypothetical thugbearer friend would not be tapping a-pewter output, just enhancing their ability to burn pewter, theoretically up to the pewter equivalent of steelpushes affecting trace metals and throwing boulders. Otherwise I generally agree with the assesment that fullborn are basically the 'I win' button of the Cosmere, that most metalborn would struggle a lot to deal with a fourth oath Radiant and that third oath is still incredibly dangerous. One thing that I feel is a discounted asset in a hypothetical united Scadrial vs. united Roshar is the medallions. Assuming that the southerners, with lower rates of metalborn on account of no artificial lerasium lineages, have been making heat medallions sufficient to keep entire populations from dying from the weather, how much could production be ramped up with the higher rates of metalborn in the north? Even working with the restriction of one medallion, granting at most three attributes at a time (per Allik's description in ch. 21 of BoM) they'd be an incredible force multiplier, both for non-metalborn ground troops and metalborn eager to get into hypothetical duels with surgebinders. Assuming that the medallions can be filled through compounding, you could have a small reserve of allomancers supplying a large number of people with, finite but not insignificant, stores of speed/strength/health or whatever else might help them, like people on guard duty getting wakefulness/sight/hearing for instance. I'm not saying that this would be enough of an advantage in itself, but I do think it a plausible way to level the playing field somewhat and giving a steel compounder the ability to tap health and/or store warmth might help mitigate some of the friction related issues, for example. Also, if we limit each medallion to two attributes max, we can remain within what the regular, non-Bands, medallions have been show to do on screen as Allik mentions having seen medallions that do three twice in his life, implying they're very rare. I left out medallions that grant allomantic powers as I'm less sure about how easy they'd be to make/refill, feruchemy looks simpler from where I'm standing, as you are only refilling a separate store and not messing with the enabling nicrosil, though per Allik we can probably assume that you can make a medallion purely out of nicrosil that grants up to three allomantic abilities, plus f-nicrosil itself, though before we know more about how f-nicrosil and nicrosil compounding work, I'm not prepared to assume they're as renewable. So, that's my two cents, or more probably emerald broams, given how wordy I got. ¤_¤

Pretty sure the spren become the metal, not the gems. And yes, it's entirely possible that both a 'classical' and 'modern' variety would exist for such a fabrial. I'm not sure the enhancement metals would be used for a function that causes enhancement necessarily, the one use we know is aluminium disconecting a plane of motion in conjoiners (and presumably reversers) and based on that I'd assume that duralumin results in a magnified effect where applied. That said, if one managed to make a modern variant enhancement fabrial, it could presumably have its effect enhanced by adding duralumin to the cage, though it'd presumably go through fuel like it's going out of style.

That is a fair point, though I don't agree 100%. I do agree that the result of surgebinding with an arbitrary amount of investiture and the result of surgebinding while under the effects of a hypothetical enhancement fabrial might look quite similar.

I write these words in post, for anything not set in forum can not be easily referred to later. That aside, I wish to posit the theoretical existence of a surgebinding enhancement fabrial, the reverser to the suppressor's conjoiner. I assume that gem type matters for this kind of fabrial, based on both the portable device and the one in Urithiru being clusters of garnets and as such I assume that this fabrial would use a cluster of sapphires, the "inverse" polestone to garnet, just as ruby and amethyst are across from eachother on the surgebinding chart. Edit: I wrote this up in about 15 minutes, so it's possible that it comes across as less coherent than it is in my head.

Fair enough, maybe I didn't think that through, not sure I agree that Harmony is the closest to evolution, but I see the point. I'd say that this is possible but not guaranteed, I wouldn't have thought one Vessel for Honor and Odium would make War, I rather see the Rythm of War arising out of the structure of the component rhythms, when harmonised they are reflective of the nature of war, order in the grand plan, chaos on the field of battle, yet order in the formations. Ordered chaos, containing order, containing chaos, etc. Interestingly, the existence of anti-lights implies the possibility of anti-shards as well. ¤_¤

Rather than evolution in that sense which just happens I'd see the combination of Odium and Cultivation as selective breeding, if thinking along those lines. I'd be even more inclined to call the combined light Armslight (as in weapons, not as in appendages), it feels like iterative war-profiteering would fulfil both Intents and push towards a continuing cycle of vengance, cultivating hatred if you will. ¤_¤

I do want to point out that fitness for... doing anything, really, doesn't seem to factor into who is bonded. Look at Renarin, who's had debilitating seizures for most of his life, IIRC. I'm pretty sure that'd prevent someone from using any Surges at all until it passes and yet he was apparently a fit candidate. ¤_¤

Sure. Could you be a bit more specific about what bits were hard to follow? I suppose it can be hard for me to see, as I know why each bit is relevant and am working towards a conclusion that to me already exists. Also, this was an attempt to rationalise a bunch of near-manic rambling into something approaching coherency, so I can understand if it might be difficult to follow. ¤_¤

So, I've been thinking, and I believe I've come to some accurate conclusions about Roshar's ecology and Arcana. Hopefully some of the following makes any degree of sense. 1. The spren don't matter Let's start this off with singer physiology and Rosharan ecology. As we know, the fauna of Roshar has evolved to take advantage of the large amount of investiture lying around, namely spren, skyeels fly, greatshells don't square-cube themselves, ryshadium super-horse and singers attain forms. Now, the interesting part, the forms, bond to a spren, change your physiology and mentality, sure. But why do the forms of power work? Because investiture is investiture. I have seen the forms of power caller a hack, but it's honestly just inserting something new into the system. The system has a response, it still returns valid, as it were, and voila, a new form. Next up, spren and gems, we know that spren can be captured in gems. We know that voidspren can be captured in gems. We can extrapolate that voidspren could be used in fabrials. As support for this notion one might look to that fabrials can be made with enlightened spren, though they work differently. Thirdly, the Nahel bond, where we've yet to observe the commonallity I'm espousing, however if we extrapolate: Renarin's Glys is enlightened, and must reasonably have been when the bond formed, as one thinks Renarin would have noticed his spren changing. From Glys' situation we learn that not being a "regular" true spren does not preclude bonding, being partly of Odium does not preclude bonding! What I'm trying to show here and imply by the title of this section is that the type of spren doesn't matter, the systems will just plug-n-play as it were, just with a modified output. I posit that any sapient spren could theoretically enter into a Nahel bond, just like any spren (save perhaps the "Greatspen," the Stormfather, Nightwatcher and other unique and massive spren) can presumably be bonded symbiotically by a singer or used in a fabrial, you'd just get a non-standard, but valid, output. So when I say the spren don't matter, I mean that it seems that any spren can hook into any system that accpts spren, regardless of type, the kind of spren juat acts as a filter. 2. Powers that we have been forbidden to touch Now, let's look to the Eila Stele From this fragment we can learn several things. At the time of the Ashynite exodus the singers were aware of some form of manipulation of the Surges. At the time they had at some previous point had access to this power themselves, as you do not forbid that which can not be done. At the time they knew the powers were dangerous, which can be read as the powers themselves being the dangerous part, rather than who wielded them. I've long had a pet theory that the original Rosharan surgebinders bonded the cousin-spren of the true spren (eg, windspren being cousin to honorspren) and that the true spren evolved later. According to my speculaton these proto-proto-Radiants would only have had access to one surge each, because of the nature of the spren, so proto-proto-Windrunners would only have adhesion, Skybreakers gravitation, etc. I'm not quite pushing that theory here, but elements of it are present, so it's good for context. I now think that the original Rosharan surgebinders were pre-shattering (or at least pre-shardic) singers who either bonded the cousin-spren or the true spren as part of the regular symbiotic singer-spren relationship. I believe that this bond granted them surgebinding, though possibly with a single surge only. On a more baseless note I speculate that these early "forms of power" allowed them to draw stormlight directly from the spiritual, a-la Honorblades. These singer-surgebinders would then have existed until Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar and, knowing or seeing the danger such powers posed, forbade their use, possibly also telling the true spren to not bond the singers. 3. Low-fat, imitation surgebinding Now it's time to look at everyone's favourite genocidal surgebinders, the Fused. Building on my earlier speculation, I believe that the Fused are a twist on the first Rosharan surgebinders. They are the souls of ancient singers, who are invested by Odium and act as both spren and host. They are already a perversion of the symbiotic system of Roshar, as they are parasitic, but also kind of a perversion of my idea of early surgebinders. I believe that the extra investiture in the soul of the Fused is meant to mimic part of the early surgebinder forms, but obviously voidish in origin instead. So, void imput, surge output. We may also assume that being the Fused has twisted them, because they are permanently wearing a form of Odium. See Eshonai in stormform as a comparison. If we also accept the admittedly baseless speculation above, that also solves the problem of how the Fused, with their relatively low level of investiture can draw power from Odium directly, while, say Kaladin needs spheres, in that it'd be an inherent function of the form. Now, for the capstone argument: there are nine forms of Fused, lacking Bondsmith, if we assume they are imitations of early surgebinder forms this makes sense, as there wouldn't be a Bondsmith-equivalent. The Bondsmith spren are presumably too much to tuck into a gemheart. 4. Knights Enlightened? And here I'll put my thoughts on everyone's favourite voidbinder, Renarin. There has been a lot of talk about Renarin and the nature of his powers, with several people concluding that his Progression is normal and his Illumination voidish. I'd contend these assertions. My first reaction to this line of thinking was "Why? Why do people think it's so clear cut?" and thinking that his powers might be a mix, both Surges being semi-voidish. However, now I'd rather argue that Renarin is fully voidbinding, though powered by stormlight, something of an inverse to the Fused. If we assume that Renarin's future-flashes are a product of Illumination, then it seems to be expressed in a highly spiritual aspect, and I'd argue that the same is true of his Progression, Adolin gets a flash of his ideal self as he's healed, which I don't think happens when Lift heals people, but I don't remember if we've seen Lift's healing from the perspective of someone being healed. Another point of contention for me is the "his lightweaving don't work right" argument. Here I'd argue that he's a TRUTHwatcher (or close enough) and propose that they are not supposed to weave illusions, but rather show what IS, zoom, enhance and all that. So I propose that the problem is with philosophy and approach, rather than the power being weird. And I can't resist throwing my pet term for Renarin and potential future characters like him in, Knights Enlightened, it uses the same kind of terminology (Knights Radiant) while still evocative of light and using Sja-Anat's own term (Enlightening) as the light word. Thanks for reading my semi-coherent ramblings, hopefully I'll have brought something new or interesting to the table. ¤_¤

I don't see how Honor, or Honor's representative, is involved in the oaths, beyond Dalinar bonding said representative. If I have the timeline right the Recreance and Honor's death are almost simultaneous, and in any case the Recreance probably came first. By your logic there would then not have been any Radiants of the Fifth Ideal before the Recreance. If this is true, the only known data point is Nale, and Ico (I think, been a while since I read that bit) asserts that the bond between Kal and Syl could be forcibly broken, so long as the Fifth had not been sworn, and unless the spren tried to force Nale to break his bond how would they know? Honor obviously acted in some regulatory capacity, but I don't think that the Ideals went via him for approval. I could however believe that Honor could act as a check on the spren, possibly as part of Ishar's "precepts and laws," possibly in some other capacity. ¤_¤

If we look at what happens when Kaladin jumps into Adolin's duel in WoR the shardhelm he steals holds together under far more strain than it probably should, seeing as it's described as being crisscrossed with cracks (or something like that, don't have access to the book right now) which seems to imply that shardplate, at all, holds together better with a radiant there to power it, rather than infused gems.

@SwordNimiForPresident Yes, I will agree that they are still responsible for their actions, each rape, each murder, is usually willful. (Though I guess you consider Elend an immoral character then, for not refusing, to the point of death, to sleep with a skaa prostitute on Straff's orders when he was twelve...) And did the nobles have any realistic choice when it came to being slavers? They didn't have ultimate authority over "their" skaa. Need I remind you that the Final Empire is also a big fan of punishing anyone connected to known rebels, or just random people, to make a point? Would you risk your family, your friends, your countrymen, for a chance to take the moral high ground, even if they were in no way complicit in what you were doing? What would be the point in dying heroically? You have the moral high ground and are dead. I'm sorry if this comes off as overly harsh/confrontational or a personal attack. I do however fundamentally disagree with what I'm interpreting your moral stance as, if nothing else how you seem to favour a view of moral absolutes. ¤_¤

OK, let's unpack this one, shall we? Even disregarding the stuff about the children being equally guilty, no. TLR conquered the entirity of (what became) the Final Empire and instituted his own system of government, with himself as the absolute authority, etc, etc. He rewarded those who sided with him in a way that fits his character (making them superior) and punished those who resisted by making them litteral property with seemingly no rights. My issue here is that you blame the people having grown up wholly within TLR's system of codified, institutionalised racism and oppression for being shaped by the circumstances they have lived under their whole lives, circumstances that include an eternal (as far as they know), god-king who can easily get rid of any troublemaker who catches his eye, if it ever even gets to that because some other noble might just pounce on the "weakling." As far as the people of the Final Empire knew, the system was just and moral, their god instituted it and probably deserved ultimate authority anyway, on account of saving the world. Also, what could the nobles have done if they wanted things to change? TLR would always say no to freeing the skaa/making conditions less horrible. Organise their skaa and rise up? Great way of getting killed. Freeing the skaa? Great, the other nobles would see them as up for grabs and TLR has a case against you since the skaa are his property. Are the original nobles to blame for the situation? Yes. The current nobility are only perpetuating a system that's "always" been in place and to blame them for creating it is like trying the great grandson of a murderer for the same crime. Point is, the nobles are also stuck in the system. ¤_¤

@IronBars I see, it seems we interpret the visit to the Nightwatcher and Cultivation's "pruning" of Dalinar fundamentally differently, also possibly Dalinar's character. I see a man who wishes to, for whatever reason, set out on the path that eventually leads to the Dalinar of the present day, yet isn't strong enough to do so because of the trauma weighing him down and therefore what Cultivation does is block out that trauma, allowing him the strength to walk that path. There's also this quote: Dalinar still remembers (most of) his past and I personally read his change as a desire to honour the memory of his brother. His meeting with Cultivation didn't, in my opinion, turn him into a fundamentally different person, just a person capable of walking in the direction he wished to. I conclude that I vehemently disagree with you but I will try to stay civil and reasoned in this discussion, I know myself to both like arguing against and being personally dismissive of, theories and opinions I don't agree with and if you check my most recent contributions to the forums you may find that I like kicking hornets' nests. I do hope that you'll enjoy the next entry in the Stormlight Archive though, even if it doesn't go in a direction you expect or want. ¤_¤

So, I'm a bit late to the party and apologise if posting now is seen as bad form. Having skimmed the thread in full I'd still like to make my own arguments regarding some of the points raised in the OP. Oh, and full disclosure, Dalinar is literally my favourite character in the entire Stormlight Archive. So, in somewhat coherent order: Dalinar: You claim, repeatedly, that who Dalinar has been for the past two books has been a lie/fabrication/what-have-you, I disagree. While his getting into the situation where he became that man was magically assisted the same man would presumably have come out of who he was, all other things being equal, if he'd have naturally suppressed his memories related to the trauma rather than having it done for him. I also get the impression that you interpret Cultivation's touch to have imposed the Dalinar we know on top of the bloodthirsty Blackthorn, whereas I see it as just certain memories being suppressed and Dalinar choosing to walk the path toward the man he became to try to honour his brother and his brother's legacy. As for your claim that the reason he sought out the Nightwatcher was weak, he was a man so wracked with guilt and so traumatised by it that he could barely function. Tying into my previous point, his memories being suppressed just served to make him able to function and pull himself together, becoming the man we know. Also, his entire character arc in OB revolved around him actually being Dalinar and not the Blackthorn. I also want to make a point about Alethi culture and some assumptions you seem to be making, you may have noticed that Alethi culture is severely dysfunctional, being a warrior and fighting is seen as the highest of callings and the Blackthorn to us might seem a horrible, bloodthirsty butcher, but the Alethi don't see him that way, he was basically the perfect Alethi man on the battlefield. Just look at all the lines about Dalinar having gone soft, Adoling thinking that it would be glorious to fight alongside the Blackthorn! It's a ridiculously martial society where nothing the Blackthorn did, except the burning of Rathalas and the sparing of the child (which should really really you something), would be perceived as WRONG! You also seem to make the assumption that a prerequisite for being Radiant is to be a somewhat moral person and I'm not sure why you'd think that. I assume that each order has one or a few fairly wide criteria for attracting their kind of spren and I'd assume that the Bondsmith criterion would be something along the lines of "one who unites" which Dalinar did with (literal) brutal effectiveness back when he was the Blackthorn. Another thing you seem to assume is that people don't already know who Dalinar used to be, sure not everyone would know all the details but the only people that Dalinar's past was news to was the readers (and partly Dalinar himself, but even then it was just the memories concerning Evi and Rathalas.) Adding to this, it's not like Dalinar would go around giving everyone a detailed account of his life, which would negate the problems you propose should arise with Dalinar and Kaladin/Szeth. I'm also not sure why you seem so intent on judging Dalinar solely for his past and being unwilling to forgive the better man he's become. Szeth: His swearing his third Ideal to follow Dalinar could be said to have been sworn to the ideal of Dalinar, Szeth interprets Dalinar, by fame, reputation, fact that Taravangian wanted him dead possibly, to be a man worth following. Renarin: Renarin healed people, Renarin discovered the gem archive, Renarin fought in the battle of Thaylen Field, Renarin saved Adolin's life. Also, I think calling Glys bad is incorrect, but the future will tell on that one. Jasnah: Jasnah's power level seems to be a question of experience plus pragmatism plus the fact that soulcasting got way easier immediately following Dalinar's pulling the Realms together. I would like to know what signs you picked up that made humanity being the real Voidbringers so obvious to you, sorry if you already addressed this, if so I've missed it. I do agree with you on Lift and partly on Moash. I also have my own criticisms of the book, I feel like it wasn't as tightly plotted as the other two for one. ¤_¤

To add to this, Vasher would have had perfect colour recognition when Nightblood was made, so he should have been able to tell if the metal looked even slightly off.

1) Investiture resists Investiture, were it made of atium (or any god-metal for that matter) it would be harder to Awaken than, say, plain old steel. 2) The blade is presumably black from the Investment, very colour-heavy. 3) Type I BioChromatic entities (aka Returned) already consume Investiture, just like Nightblood (albeit on a smaller scale), presumably without any overt connection to Ruin. 4) We know Nightblood is somehow special, there might have been more to its creation than we know (1000 Breaths seems an oddly small number for instance), but I would not think a god-metal was involved (other than maybe edglium). 5) Nightblood seems to be a unique entity, on that scale we only know of it, so it's hard to generalise from that single data point.

Odium's not been trying before this point, he pursued a victory through deceit rather than force of arms. And even then the Singers are mostly under control, they're not disobeying the Fused en masse from what we've seen. However, now that his plan's been foiled he's probably going to be bringing out his full military might. Also on this point, an army can't just exist, it needs infrastructure. An army needs supplies and rather than just committing ill-/untrained soldiers to a battle where they might choose to run at the sight of slaughter he has them building up a support system first. And even when he's not been trying he's: Caused economic damage/turmoil to his enemies with the removal of the free Parshman labour, which should lead to internal dissent and unrest. Cut the Alethi army/armies off from the vast majority of their economic base and their supply of manpower. Subverted an entire Alethi army to his side. Deprived the human alliance of the best hope of a fleet they had. Caused untold economic and infrastructural damage through the Everstorm. Caused the loss of much of the Alethi army through the Everstorm. There might be more that I can't presently think of and in any case, the bulk of his army is presumably here, the Singers. Just because they might want to coexist now doesn't mean they'll want to coexist once they've been through Voidbringer bootcamp. The army is there, it's just that it consists of raw recruits, basically. Also, Odium has organised a search for Radiant-spren, presumably as a means to limit the number of new Radiants and he's gotten the king of Jah Keved (kinda) on his side. And there are still things like Thunderclasts, the inkmonsters, the imitations made by that Unmade and presumably other voidish nastyness that he'll bring forth now that the sneaky plan failed.

Do you mean when they became Cognitive Shadows? When they became the Heralds? (Assuming the two aren't one and the same.) When they were born? Kings and queens mostly, it seems. Probably quite a bit. Ash says "Oh, God. Oh, Adonalsium." or something like that, which I feel either implies a lot of Cosmere awareness, ancientness or both. Indeed.

True, true. I myself have a theory hinging on that. My personal idea is that while he swears himself to the Singers' law/the Singers he'll fight Odium if, say, they/their lawmakers/the majority/the most influential of them turn against him.

Point. That actually makes a lot of sense, from one perspective. Hadn't considered that. Though if we remember that Shardic Intent isn't self-referential (i.e. Ruin isn't about self-ruination, Preservation isn't about self-preservation, etc.) I'd think that she'd only be more likely to decide on doing it (on account of her mind probably aligning pretty closely with her Intent at this point), rather than her 10 times out of 10 doing it just to change/grow. Yes, yes it is. ¤_¤