Inquisitor #5

Then your freedom of religion is in no way abridged by the fact that rebellion is illegal. Freedom of religion is not a waiver that lets you break the law. You are free to believe whatever you want, not do whatever you want. As an example, there are several commandments in the Old Testament that call for the death of an offender. If you tried to enforce those today you'd be tried for some flavour of homicide, but this doesn't mean that Christians and Jews don't enjoy freedom of religion. Do you believe that Catholicism (or any other religion with a head) is incompatible with freedom of religion? If nobles act against a king they might find themselves robbed of land, title or even life. The Radiants are not inherently a religious organisation. You mean the same Radiants that can't agree what constitues a good, moral or correct action? I don't believe legislation would be a problem unless following the law required breaking oath or vice versa. ¤_¤

I guess? I just can't see a known mechanism making it happen. I'll chalk it up to whatever preparations the Ring took. Oh, this is interesting: -Edgedancer, chapter 2 Here Wyndle is prepared to guess that Lift's weirdness played a part in him not becoming nearly mindless, though he does admit just a couple paragraphs earlier that everyone who actually knew how to do this Radiant stuff is long dead. This does lend more credence to the idea. I still don't like it personally and I wish to know why it'd have an influence, but it isn't as implausible as I originally thought. This seems directed at me. No, he's no longer a Bondsmith, but he is someone who knows how Bondsmithing works, someone familiar with the power, someone who wouldn't have to learn from scratch if he was granted such abilities from a different source. Yes, or at least close. It's gonna depend on whether you'd count Renarin's powers as Radiant powers, basically. I've long thought that, in general, if it goes in a Nahel bond, it goes in a gemheart, it goes in a fabrial, barring exceptions like the Stormfather not fitting in any gemheart. I've also thought that the framework of the Nahel bond is a free-for-all, any mass of sapient Investiture that you could persuade to bond you should have a valid output, subspren, Cognitive Shadows, Seons, you name it. Then I recently found a WoB that I'd somehow missed for years: So I definitely think that bonding Mishram would do something and to me it fits perfectly if her bondmate is the Voidlight Bondsmith, just like the Stormfather's is the Stormlight Bondsmith, as well as that level of power feeling more appropriate for an Unmade than something on the level of a "standard" Radiant. Add to this that she's known to have fiddled with Connection and provided Light and Bondsmith or Bondsmith-adjacent seems even more plausible. Venli's a Willshaper (sometimes) powered by Voidlight, I don't see why that'd be a problem. In RoW we even get the perspective that it's just power. ¤_¤

I don't think there's enough space for that, though I believe it doesn't always move along the bottom of the chasm, but sometimes gripping the walls. The problem isn't jumping, the problem is landing. ¤_¤

Ehh, I don't think properties of the Radiant are going to have a major impact on their Spren. If they did I'd expect a lot of things to be up with Design, as Hoid has shenanigans going on. Possibly also with Nale's spren, from his nature as a Cognitive Shadow, though we've seen too little of them to be able to tell. To me properties of the Radiant can change how they interact with their spren (like Lift) and their powers (like Lift and, per WoB, Rlain), but they can't change how their spren interact with things. ¤_¤

It makes sense if it's a reduction of gravity, as that falls within the Surges. Just like windspren have some command of Adhesion, luckspren having some command of Gravitation isn't implausible. Presumably Greatshells are under permanent partial lashings beyond a certain size. ¤_¤

I think this is a phrasing that gives Brandon way too much wiggle-room. Something like "has there ever been a significant connection between Trell and Whimsy" might serve you better. "Ever connected" could be wiggled out by saying yes, because they met once, or something like that. ¤_¤

See, I find it a bit problematic to label some religions "serious" and others "folklore." It can too easily be used to disregard the minority simply for being the minority. I'll happily agree that several of the mentioned are the major or majority religions of the North, just not that that makes the rest "not religions" or unworthy of consideration. I had not considered that angle, I like it. I think that's an unfair comparison, Hoid is not a Shard, the dynamic between him and Sazed is going to be different than that of Sazed and another Vessel. He might have happily hosted Bavadin if she rang the doorbell, introduced herself, etc. instead of sneaking into his garden to pour weedkiller on the roses. This is quite possible, yes. I'd still argue that he's an autocrat at heart. How so? Dalinar shared what he'd heard directly from Honor and instead of all of Vorinism bending to him immediately it got him excommunicated. Vorinism, a religion deifying Honor, did not end up as agents of Honor. I'm sorry, I can't quite follow exactly what parts of what you quoted you're saying what to. Are they then divine? And this makes them worthy of being called gods in your eyes but not in mine. I don't think we'll ever see eye-to-eye on this, but it sure is a lot of fun to debate. Is it then not resonable to think that any miracle is just something that I don't yet understand, but that falls wholly within the laws of the natural world, rather than thinking it to be outside those laws? Physics of the gods would be one heck of a title. So, what makes these extradimesional beings gods rather than sufficiently advanced aliens or things beyond mortal ken? Yes. I honestly can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. In the cosmere there's also an understood mechanism by which such miracles can be wrought, just pull some investiture from the Spiritual, convert it to energy, perform multiplication of bread and fish, or whatever. There's nothing here that contradicts known laws of the cosmere, while Jesus performing the same multiplication has no understood explanation, physics doesn't work like that in reality. As I said earlier, I don't find their unique capabilities to make them divine. No harm, no foul. We're debating fairly complicated things on the internet and having to keep our thoughts straight as all the words fly. Oh? I genuinely don't know why. How so? No arguing that, though I don't believe that's the point. It's not a debate over whether her actions (or inactions) are honourable, but if she leans toward anarchism. In any case, she wishes that the Singers had the option to not serve Odium, they were healed and pressed into service pretty much immediately, no-one asked them how they wanted to live, they just had Odium's rule thrust upon them. He's spent 300-odd years with mental capacity far beyond a human and with a different perspective on time than we have, I think he's had ample opportunity to think about his approach. I'm not saying I agree with him, but I think I understand him. Should he have made Scadrial a world of no consequences? Should he have elliminated free will? Should he have taken control of all the kandra, koloss and of Marsh and spoken through them, installing himself as the most enlightened despot, God-Emperor Sazed the Harmonious? I don't know the right thing to do in his position and I'm not sure there is a right thing to do, nor do I know what I'd do in that position. If he eliminated all disease anything from the outside could become a pandemic, made worse by the fact that the people would never be pressured to develop medical science before this point. If he healed all wounds medical science would be similarly stunted. He already worries about the rate of innovation in the Basin, thinking he made life their too good, limiting pressures to change things. And keep in mind that he knows that his position is not a safe one, other Vessels have died before him, Vessels of his very powers in fact. If he were to die, having prevented all disease, having healed all wounds, having held everyone's hand all through their lives, Scadrial would be unprepared and exposed to whatever came their way. I don't mean this to be moralising, I'm not sure either path is moral. Phew, that took a lot out of me... Which, to be fair, we don't know if Sazed knows. Yeah, fair enough. Maybe I should have said an unknown threat or something. I believe that one's in the category of "in the Words of Founding" as, if I recall, that's the dump of what was in Sazed's copperminds. ¤_¤

Fair enough. I could see the Ire taking that position as an alternative to trying to get themselves a Shard, yes. I think we interpret Sazed differently then, I think he'd be fine with open, mutual cooperation. That is probably true, as I'm not trying to represent young Dalinar at all, I'm trying to represent RoW Dalinar. His reaction to Jasnah's proposed reforms is that limiting the power of the monarch is a bad thing and he thinks that queen Fen is held back by the Thaylen system as she can't just make a decision and see it carried out. The man's not just a proponent of monarchy, but absolute monarchy. Or at the very least a de jure absolute monarchy, if not a de facto one. Fair enough. I did say that it might be pedantic. Question, which are the serious religions? This is another point where I think we've interpreted the text differently. We also know too little about the prevalence and view of minority faiths to make declarative statements about them. I believe the best we get is in Alloy, when Wax being Pathian comes up in the context of the engagement to Steris, with Lord Harms, IIRC, calling it a "respectable faith" or something similar. Would you not be if an unkown entity, with unknown goals, tried to get into your house without you noticing? Sazed has every reason to be distrustful of the unknown entity taking unprovoked action with no warning. In any case, none of these things contradict the possibility of freedom of religion. Sazed's actions aren't motivated by people renouncing worship of Harmony, nor is he responsible for how Scadrian religions have evolved since his Ascension, he does not mandate from on high that Harmony must be worshipped, nor that Trell must not be. Sazed's motivation is not to keep another god out, it's to keep a possible threat out. And looking to real life again, a state can have freedom of religion enshrined in its constitution, but still take umbrage with a different state supporting armed insurrectionists within their territory, being territorial is not the same as not having freedom of religion. Hmm, mostly fair. I have already said that I feel unable to find an objective criterion of godhood. If power is the measure of divinity, where's the line between god and non-god? During the Cold War, were the leaders of the US and USSR gods? They held the power to end modern human existence. I think I just hit on why this doesn't work for me, and please correct me if I've misunderstood you, but this implies to me that divinity is a function of power. Under such a reading, any sufficiently powerful being is divine, which is a problem to me. Then what is a miracle? Is not our modern world filled with miracles? We can do things with the press of a button that would have been unexplainable 2000 years ago. As it goes, is there a difference between sufficiently advanced technology and magic? Then space/time independence can only be a property of gods within an existence where space/time independence is broadly possible? You can also solve this by saying "gods are not part of the Universe." Yes? I don't understand why this is a problem. I'm not saying "the Bible is true but Jesus is not the son of God," I'm saying "Jesus is not the son of God." My illustration hinges on that I can deny the divinity of Jesus, just like I can deny the divinity of Shards, without denying their existence. Well, that's unverifiable, if that is true he could obviously do some things that were beyond the people of the time, but even if it's true I don't have to chalk it up to divinity. Me being ignorant of the mechanism is not cause to immediately say it's divine. Or are you trying to say that Shards do verifiable things that would look divine to us? Because in that case I've been missing it the whole time. In that case I'd say that Shardic "miracles" are perfectly consistent with the rules of the cosmere, there's no need to ascribe to them divinity. Ah, thank you for explaining. I think they might mean the Venli who's trying to build a new future away from the war and the fused, the Venli who wants freedom for her kin, the Venli who's trying to be better. Aww, thanks. I hope I didn't come across as too snappy. Ah, I misunderstood then. Oh, OK, I can see where you're coming from. OK, thanks for clarifying. ¤_¤

Indeed, the man's an autocratic demagogue, he builds things out of charisma and willpower. I believe the current situation is a result of him feeling that the intrusion of another Shard is a threat to the world under his care or the people of said world. So, basically the same problem as right-libertarian ideas? Fair enough, though I mostly wanted to highlight how preposterous I found the idea of the man who argues for an absolute monarchy being an anarchist. I'm not sure how nihilism is related to anarchism. Is it simply a nihilistic approach to power structures? Something like "social hierarchies lack intrinsic value?" Fair enough. I don't find it to be a realistic goal with our current knowledge, nor nessecarilly a desirable goal, but not one that's entirely unlikely as such. This might be pedantic, but wouldn't a society that achieves anarchism by definition be a non-state? The same Sazed who has no problem with Survivorism, Sliverism, the Southern faith(s) or any of the religions recorded in the Words of Founding. I don't think he's motivated to defend against Trell on grounds of Trell stealing Sazed's worshipers, but something more akin to Trell coming into his house and smashing all the furniture. Trell is a threat, or at least an unkown power, who is messing with the world Sazed feels responsible for, the beliefs of the people on that world are not a factor. You say they claim divinity based on verifiable facts, I can't see it. (And you're likely right that this may descend into infinite quibble territory.) What is the measure of divinity? The way I see it, power alone can not define what is divine. If power alone defines it, is a bear divine? It is more powerful than you. Is the Sun divine? It has a lot of power. How about the Universe? It is infinite and contains everything. In fact, I don't think I can give an objective criterion for godhood. That would require finding something that all people would universally agree makes a god. Unless you went with the infinitely recursive; the property of being a god is being a god. Which isn't helpful. I'll readily agree that the Shards are godlike, but not that they're gods. I don't think that is knowable. I'm not arguing that no-one would or should term them gods, I'm just arguing that denying their divinity isn't unreasonable. As for the last part, there are many real religions where neither the attribute of creator nor space/time independence are categorical attributes of godhood and while they might both be true of the Abrahamic god, that doesn't mean they are automatic divine qualities. Space/time independence is just a matter of physics in the cosmere, there's a perfectly adequate naturalistic explanation, the Spiritual Realm workslike that. And as for being creators, the only known time Shards made a world is Scadrial. Also, they are beings with access to functionally infinite energy, there's very little that's theoretically beyond them. On which note, if humanity manages to construct a Dyson Sphere, would that make us gods, by the amount of power we could wield? Yes, so as to illustrate that I can believe that there was at least a historical person who inspired the Jesus that shows up in the Bible, without believing any of the supernatural claims about him. That is, I can believe that there was a Jesus without believing that there was a son of God. In the same way someone in the cosmere can say that Preservation is real, but Preservation isn't god. Well, no, as one requires the other. If God has a son, then God has to be real, otherwise God couldn't have a son. But nothing makes me inclined to believe God had a son. If God is real, but Jesus not his son, then there's no logical problem. If God isn't real and Jesus not his son there's no logical problem. If God is real and Jesus is his son there's no logical problem. If God isn't real and Jesus is his son there's a logical problem. I don't understand your question, as it seems to presuppose that I accept "Jesus is God's son" as true. If I don't accept it then claiming "Jesus, not son of God" is still internally consistent. And I suppose to be vaguely on topic, (and as I was trying to say) to me godlike does not equal divine and a claim to non-divinity is not the same as a claim of non-existence, so I would sit in the camp of affirming the existence of these entities, Jesus/Shards, but denying the claims to goodhood made for either. Ah, what you wrote seemed to imply that people with powers would use those powers to claim, err, power for themselves, thus tyranny. ¤_¤

And yet he posits that Dalinar might be a nessecary tyrant. He also doesn't exactly balk at getting himself ever more superhuman powers. Kelsier is the man who set himself up as a god multiple times and who might not have had an actual idea/philosophy for what government should look like, barring that it shouldn't feature the Lord Ruler. Could you expand on this? Yes, Jasnah is a reformer. Why? I just can't see why they in particular would turn to anarchism. He holds actual power from his very position, but I don't think he has any political power. Or do anarchists have a problem with people being differently strong as well? Why, does the anarchist need to justify stars as well? Shards are just things that exist. As for the idea of a justification for the Vessels holding their positions, there isn't one, it's right of conquest. The man who is a king and argues that absolute monarchy is the right way to do things is an anarchist at heart? I also find the ascribing the virtue of questioning yourself to a single ideology to be iffy at best. Most people don't even know that the Shards exist, much less if they are part of any plans of theirs. By what mechanism could this happen? Shards seem to be rather all or nothing. If you leave them alone you risk someone else Ascending to them or them developing their own sentience. You'd need to kill all Vessels and splinter all Shards, somehow. In that case does people being of unequal physical and mental ability not undermine anarchism as well? I feel that this is wrong, there is empirical proof of some objects of worship, not of their actual divinity. Sazed would like a word. And yet Thaylenah is in the coalition. Are they deities though? Power does not make a god. What makes a Shard a god? They are a natural (for a given value of natural) part of the cosmere, one that has immense power, but not one that, by definition, is divine. There is no requirement that these existences are gods, any more than there are requirements that gravity or stars are gods. Thus one can deny the existence of gods while accepting the existence of Shards. Non-belief in a thing's divinity is not the same as denial of the thing itself. For a real life example, I can accept that around the start of the first century CE there was a Jewish preacher who was persecuted by the secular and religious authorities of the time, without accepting that he was the son of God. In the same vein, one can deny the divinity of Shards without denying their existence. I do agree that an anti-Shard or even anti-Invested movement looks futile without some equaliser, but there's also no rule that Invested people must become tyrants. Also, there are Shards that don't actively intervene, Sazed's personal philosophy seems to be one of mostly non-intervention, at the human level. He does not wish to lead the peoples of Scadrial and would presumably allow them to experiment in a lot of ways (society, politics, technology, etc.) before he'd feel moved to intervene. I could see him trying to avert things that are very likely to be a threat to the population of the planet, like all out nuclear war, but he's obviously made peace with conflicts that don't threaten extinction of Scadrian humanity. He allows for self-determination outside of extreme circumstances, even when that self-determination leads to results he wouldn't want happening. Which is amusing, because that would be him asserting authority over other people. IMO it also sounds like an absolute waste of people, as he's responsible for any damage the mob inflicted, as well as any injury by the mob or to the mob from people defending themselves and theirs from the mob. What a disregard for the wellbeing of people! Remind me, what's the definition of insanity? ¤_¤

Yep, Nalthis is kinda weird. As for Fifth Ideal, beyond the information that the bond could be forcibly severed as long as it's not yet attained, we don't really know anything. I will agree to it potentially being Spiritually damaging, but I don't think the damage would have to be extensive. I'd say that's probably quite relevant, my read is more so that it's metaphysical agony, soul pain if you will, though I don't think the damage was severe, as Teft still functioned. I hope so too. I have trouble agreeing with "Drab," I just don't see the mechanism for it. Most of them seem to be beings of instinct anyway, so I'm not sure how much of a mind a subspren has to lose. Yeah, there are forum rules and such. Here's the Code of Conduct, it also has some other links, like the Etiquette Guide up top: Line breaks are your friend. ¤_¤

Hmm, interesting idea. No, we don't know, though based on how transitioning Realms doesn't have to lead to a loss of cognition (see Wyndle retaining knowledge), I'd say that at least initial loss is because of how the transition happened. I also don't see why they'd ve saddled with two negatives (Deadeye-ness and lost cognition in the Physical), rather than one blanket negative. Seons are also hecka weird, all things considered. They apparently aren't "tethered" to their system, unlike spren and cognitive shadows, even though they're from the one place where location matters to the magic. Their form in the Physical is the same as in the Cognitive. So they obviously don't follow exactly the same rules as spren, for some reason. Cognitive shadows seemingly can't even transition realms without something to anchor them on the other side, so it's hard to draw conclusions based on them. I don't think that they could have entirely lost their Connection to Roshar, in fact I'd say that Connection is why Radiants can't worldhop (yet.) They were definitely damaged somehow, but I don't think that's it. Also, if that were the case, why is Design functional? Hoid doesn't exactly have the Connection of someone born on Roshar and as far as we know Nale was born on Ashyn, though I'll admit that in the latter case the whole Honor-fueled ghost thing might be muddying (creming up?) the waters a bit. ¤_¤

I don't think being closer to the Physical would help them think, judging by several of the Nahel spren I'd say rather the opposite. Assuming this is a general rule and not just a musicspren thing, spren like being in/being drawn into the Physical. As for the old-style fabrials, we know they are spren somehow convinced to manifest as devices, we don't know what convincing them entails and we don't know exactly what kinds of spren can be convinced. However Voidspren are generally unwilling to do so and Enlightened spren can also do it, assuming Rushu's ID-ing of the suppressor fabrial's spren is correct. I also feel like most of the non-Sibling Urithiru fabrials should be subspren rather than true spren, being a lift feels like waste if you could make a Radiant. ¤_¤

Oh, thanks. That's what I get for not double-checking, I'd say my point still stands in general though. Just swap in Nale instread of Jezrien, Nalan rather than Nelen. ¤_¤

My personal standpoint is yes. If it goes in a gemheart, Nahel bond or Fabrial, it goes in all three, theoretically. Spren would escape, possibly being somewhat traumatised, otherwise fine, I think. Possibly forcibly severing it, at least de-powering the Radiant if they got too far away, but I think option one or something close to it most likely. No, bonded spren don't provide extra investiture in the same way as a Breath and barring potential Fifth Ideal shenanigans nothing should be lost by the Radiant in that way, were the bond removed. Ehh, I'd guess an honorial would primarily deal with direct expressions of the Windrunner Surges. We do however need more information, we don't know if emotionspren (or conceptspren) can be made to manifest their corresponding emotion like a phenomenonspren like a flamespren can. I don't think that'd work, again, we need to see if emotionspren even work like that and I'd think something like "calmspren" would serve such a purpose much better. Add to that that even if all your soldiers were nudged to be more hounorable, it'd depend in their personal concept of honour, so some might be more likely to cause trouble out of their personal sense of honour. And it would presumably be a lot like emotional allomancy, you can make people more amenable to what you want, but push too hard and people will notice. Oh, and a tip, at the bottom of your post you should have a button labeled "Edit," you can use that to avoid multi-posting in the future. ¤_¤

Undoubtedly, languages experience drift. That's entirely fair, though we can possibly see traces of how it happened. Taking the example of Cephas, it's borrowed into Ancient Greek from Aramaic, presumably as a result of this hot new religion that Paul is talking up all over the place, taking the form Κηφᾶς, or, roughly, in Latin letters Kephas. This is then borrowed into Latin, which at this point renders the K sound with C, as in Cincinnatus (roughly kinkinatus) or Caesar (roughly kaysar, err, the ay sounds roughly like English I, whence German Kaiser and Russian Tsar), becoming Cephas. Then either through drift in Latin or through ending up in English, we get Cephas (seefus). Or something like that anyway. I'm still not convinced that Cephandrius needs to be inspired by Cephas, but at least this solves my pronounciation issue. Also on this note, we do see some prominent drift in Alethi, they have an E drifting to an A, Kelek->Kalak and, presumably, merem->maram. I'd love to know why which sounds have drifted though, as Jezrien has become Jezerezeh and not Jazarazah. Then again, one day I might write a post complaining about Alethi phonology and orthography. Heh, good one. ¤_¤

Huh, I could have sworn... Maybe that's something that my brain invented from fragments of Trelagism and the fact of their holy grottos. Well, I retract that then. Now, that's an interesting line of inquiry, where can a Vessel be said to "be?" The being is dissolved in the Shard and I'd argue that the only place they can be said to be is where their focus is. Though this runs into a bunch of weirdness with things like Investing in a planet binding the Shard to the system and how Shardic confrontations even happen (if you're losing, why not move your focus somewhere else?) Fair, fair. Especially considering how oddly common permutations of "Trell" are. If the idea that Shardic Intent affects future sight aptitude holds, I'd guess that Whimsy would be incredibly short-sighted, as Shards go anyway. ¤_¤

Spoiler for length. I assume this braintwister is the WoB in question? The way I see it, Shards are functionally infinite and omnipresent, suffusing the cosmere. Vessels on the other hand are finite, by their nature as mortals. While the vessels are magnified greatly by the trancendent power of their Shard, having a much greater capacity to remember and process, to name just two, as well as the ability to split their focus, being able to be in multiple places and talk to multiple people at the same time, they are still fundamentally limited. They can not percieve all of existence at once, nor focus their attention on all places at once, because they are not infinite beings. I'd argue that we see two ways a Vessel can focus their attention from Rayse, one at Thaylen Field, manifesting a presence, similar to what Ati does when he makes Vin chase a phantom mistborn, a presence that appears as a physical person without much impact on the world around them, the other whenever he decides to dial up the drama, this being the overwhelming, burning beyond sensation that he pulls at a few points. Both of these could be simply a difference in how much the Vessel lets the Shard bleed through to the point of focus. My take on this is that generally a Shard visiting a place is as simple as the Vessel focusing their attention at that place, since the Shard itself is present everywhere that's what makes sense to me. As someone who lives far North enough that it never gets truly dark at the height of summer (and conversely it looks like nighttime in the morning and at three in the afternoon in winter), I can confirm that the day-night cycle wonks up at more extreme latitudes, and that's before you enter a polar circle. True, though deification of the Sun has happened many times in our world, so I'm not sure how much stock I'm willing to put in that. The Sun as the bad god is also shared with the purelaker religion. I could see the Sun as bad as having been possibly influenced by exiles from Taldain or somesuch, though I feel that'd require both the knowledge of the Dayside star being Invested and a beef with Bavadin. Huh, I'd only seen the word mastrell before, I did not think it split there. Personally I'd have broken it down as something like mast-rell rather than mas-trell, though seeing them together is pretty convincing. It could break down as ma- and les-strell, though that creates a rather unwieldy double consonant in the latter. Neat. ¤_¤

Huh, neat. So, wikipedia gives Cephas as having a soft C, but the Aramaic root has a hard C sound and the Greek rendering uses a K, but the sound seems to have shifted somewhere between Greek and English. I find myself agreeing with the Roman teacher who complained about the existence of the letters C and Q, as it made spelling harder for his students because C, Q and K all represented the same sound. Heh. I will note, I'm not a native speaker of English, which probably informs my reading of names and understanding of words (knowing Cephas as kefas but not in English, for instance) and I feel like some of my readings would elicit an "excuse me?" from people who go in with an English sound inventory. I'm for instance very inclined to believe that C followed by a front vowel is soft, S, and followed by a back vowel is hard, K. Which seems to be true for English as well, call vs cell. Me being a non-native speaker is also why I was never tripped up by Jasnah being Yasna, roughly, because my native language (Swedish) doesn't do J as DJ but closer to English Y, including in the word jungle, which we spell djungel and pronounce roughly like yung-ell. Anyway, I seem to be rambling, better wrap this up. ¤_¤

Oh yeah, true. Yeah, that's fair, though I personally wouldn't think that it would do anything to keep the charge in the spike, just inside the box. I don't see it, that seems at odds with it blocking investiture to me. ¤_¤

I'd argue that this could just be that they placed their concentration there, not bringing their power, if that makes sense. Like, Edgli could visit without bringing the Shard Endowment into the Scadrian system, which is presumably bound to Nalthis by way of being invested there. Hmm, I knew some of that, neat. I'm not very good at Taldain, so other than the significance of stars (and I suppose the vibe of "think for yourself") it's not a connection I can make, my personal association is to the purelaker religion, which has some standout similarities to me, but that might of course be Bavadin doing her thing in both cases. Heh, Dadradah even fits the Nalthian pattern (T'Telir, D'Denir, Dedelin, Vivenna, etc) and has the same cadence as a lot of them. ¤_¤

Hmm, re-reading the Allomancer Jak story we don't have any actual confirmation of if the box was made of aluminium or not, Jak claims it was, but he claims a lot of things. I'm also not sure of the logistics of how well sealed an investiture preserver box would need to be. Does it work like a faraday cage or a watertight seal? I'm inclined to believe that you'd need to have an unbroken layer of aluminium to fully seal investiture in, but I'm pretty sure the secret Soulcasting room in Kholinar wasn't aluminium plated, so... In any case, it feels like the box might keep the charge inside itself, but I see no reason it would keep the charge in the spikes, unless it had an internal vacuum. Now there's a thought, could a hemalurgic charge disperse in a vacuum? ¤_¤

Well, we know that there's a minimum charge of sorts, just like Wax's ear ring carries a faint charge still, and I'd assume for this all you need is four charged iron spikes, it'll make a koloss no matter the level of charge, it just won't impart as much supernatural strength as a fresh spike. ¤_¤

Ehhhh, I'm not so sure about the cosmere aware part, their focus on astronomy is shown to be very litteral and we only know of star charts relative to Scadrial, as they are what Sazed uses to judge the correct orbit when restoring the world. I also find both the labeling of an entire population and the implication of all adherents of a specific faith as cosmere aware to be a stretch, it just sounds too unlikely. The descriptor of whimsical might be as opposed to concrete, with it being a religion that doesn't provide direct answers or claims to truth. I don't think that the assertion that the concept of "ask [god name]" implies an actual entity being there holds much water, do people in the real world not ask beings of worship for guidance/answers? Er, I don't mean that last part as an attack on religion/religious people, just the observation that there's not exactly an abundance of empirical evidence for anything supernatural and people still seek interaction with a supernatural existence. My take has always been that it's imitation atium, as it seems to fill the same function, with the discolouration and spots being the manifestation of the typical red for corrupted investiture. Also, small nitpick, it's officially era 2. I believe this has to do with how different and conflicting the information we get about the Nelazan religion of Trellagism and Miles' Trellism is. They seem to be very different belief systems and it's very possible that they are entirely different people, one a god of unknown reality, the other a Shard using the name of an existing divinity to do... something. As I said further up, I don't think that the original Trell has to be a Shard/avatar/splinter, and I find it odd if Ruin and Preservation would have let another Shard gain a foothold on their world, with no hints to Shardic interference in all of era 1, nothing in Secret History, nothing from Ruin, nothing from Sazed, so I think Trell being associated to a Shard is recent, as these things go. I like that, even if I vehemently disagree that the historical Trell had any Shardic connection. ¤_¤

Huh, I don't think that should be the source for Hoid, based on the morphemes, conchoidal doesn't split in the right places. Also, isn't Hoid originally his master's name? As for Cephandrius being derived from Cephas, (like Adonalisum probably deriving from adonai) I find it not unlikely, but I don't like it for pronounciation reasons: I say Cephandrius as sefandrius but know that Cephas is kefas. Actually, pulling Cephandrius apart you'd get ceph and andrius, the former being a plausible derivation of Cephas, the latter a related to andros, man, giving you a possible reading of stone man or rock man. Or it's just a fantasy name of no provenance. ¤_¤