Mulk

I'd think that if anyone ever tried to recombine all of the shards into a new Adonalsium (if that's even possible) Odium would probably have to be just about the last one picked up. Maybe that's what Hoid is after, why he has sought connections to the various forms of Investiture? I don't know. I'm still missing a couple of parts of Misborn Era 2, haven't read Aether of Night yet, nor the whole of White Sands so I'm probably missing some pieces.

I think you're trying to grant too much knowledge to Ruin. He was just a man, ultimately. One who lived thousands upon thousands of years and had his powers, capacity and abilities ramped way up, but in the end, he was nothing like omniscient. No one on Scadrial made use of anything beyond the original 10 metals we first knew of for the longest time, no one on Scadrial aside from one specific guy had access to both Feruchemy and Allomancy, so no one on Scadrial knew what all of the combinations were capable of. As Ruin was trapped, he couldn't test for himself. As Ruin did not invent or power Allomancy or Feruchemy, he was limited in his knowledge of what could be done with the various combinations of them to whoever he could get his hands on and really, that was a very small number of people until right before the end of Mist Era 1.

I'm not either. Brandon, per one of the posts above, seems to treat the Old Magic as a thing apart, so I'm guessing the NIghtwatcher is a spren who predates the arrival of Honor and Cultivation on the planet and not truly akin to either. It is noteworthy though that Wyndle's people know who she is and find the fact that Lift visited her to be a compelling reason to pursue the bond with her.

A few items I really want to see: Hoid and Zahel face to face Jezrien taking back his Honorblade (I mentioned this one elsewhere) Eshonai point of view where the part of her that enjoyed the power fights with the part of her screaming in terror about it - like the Gollum scene in LOTR I think Obligatory Vivenna mention here Kaladin/Amaram fight Kaladin meeting Gaz and Tvlakv again...I'm really curious how that would go over.

@overpaid_hack one thing about creating your own world is it can be literally whatever you want it to be, as long as it makes some sort of internal sense. So you have algae living in this lightless area...fine, but they don't need photosynthesis because in this world that's not what algae are Or, you can make a new word for them and describe them as a sort of algae that does not need light. So long as it makes internal sense alongside the rest of your setting, I'd say have fun with it. I mean, seriously Brandon has a world where people eat metal and it makes them strong in one of a number of different ways...that would never work on Earth, but it works on his world because he has thought through the rules for it, and it is a coherent whole. Good on you for posting this. I have my own made up world (spent something like 20 years on it) but I'm not brave enough to post it here yet.

Maybe the "don't mess this up" stuff is foreshadowing and maybe it's a red herring. Won't know which till the end. Not that this should stop the theorizing mind you... I find their relationship to be pretty much exactly on par for the first serious relationship either has had. Yeah yeah, Adolin has dated half the camp but the way he changes women is rather legendary and while he has liked all of them, I rather doubt he ever looked at anyone the way he does Shallan. I rather doubt either of them knows what love actually is, but neither does anyone who really falls in love for the first time. They are cute and sweet, and yeah, they have a lot of hangups and issues, but those things, for these two, seem like they will mesh pretty well. They have both murdered, both have hidden it, both want the relationship to work, both are smart, both are fascinated with each other, both are full of passion and admire each other...it's a decent list for a new couple. The main reason it may not work is newly in love people are notoriously bad at understanding what love actually is. It's not that feeling of attraction and magnetism, it's the commitment of the will to care for and seek the best for someone; and the real kicker is that real love is independent of whether and how well they respond. It has to be, or no marriage would ever survive as we all have times where we do not love our S.O well. That core misunderstanding is why most people don't really grasp what committed, unending love is until they have children, and also why they tend to love their kids more than their spouses - they don't realize that in their vows they promised all of those things with no qualifiers. It's not to have and to hold if you do, in sickness and health if you do...it's just the vow. I'll be fine if they end up together and fine if they don't - at this point either track is eminently believable, and can be interesting assuming Brandon gives it the time it deserves (and I believe he will). With respect to Adolin - he seems to be attempting to lose himself in the things he loves most to avoid thinking about the murder he committed. So I don't find him carefree, I find him to be burying himself in things to keep from freaking out. He nearly lost control when his father gave him the investigation. Eventually he will confess and I won't be surprised if it is to Shallan first. He doesn't have the...hm. I guess the temperament or whatever to handle keeping that kind of thing a secret. He's an outgoing, honest young man and this (hiding a crime) is unlike anything he's done or had to do. While I don't have a crime in my past to point to, I have been the same way after traumatic events in my life - I dive into whatever keeps me from thinking. Ultimately, I guess what I'm saying is Brandon does a fantastic job of writing believable people. They react like real people do, and it's not neat and organized as people are messy and unpredictable.

I have a slight quibble with this. Kaladin is a tremendous spearman - Teft notes this in his observations of Kaladin after he takes the second oath, that Stormlight can perfect, but it cannot grant what is not already there. So his fighting ability is not of the bond - his speed, reflexes, and ability to literally flip the battlefield are of the bond, but his ability to fight was already there.

my knee-jerk off the wall theory is that the third bondsmith spren will turn out to be the unique spren that Axies ran across in his interlude.

Slow going today for me, it had taken me most of the day yo read to this point. I don't have a lot to add as mostly what tickled others tickled me and what piqued my interest or concerned me also has been splashed across these responses. I ran actoss one thing in here talking about Adolin being born under the sign of the nine. i just picked up WOK to reread it. In it, Szeth notes the statues of the Heralds and then sees that Shalash is missing do there are only nine. That brought to mind both the whole sign of the nine thing and wondering why Shalash is not present. Maybe in the East they only revere nine heralds? I would therefore theorize the sign of the nine would mean the nine heralds depicted in Kholinar. Does anyone know why Shalash isn't accorded the same honor in Alethkar?

was not aware of the WoB stating the 99 is made up. Makes total sense. As a relative newcomer to the Cosmere, I've not had time to sift through all of it or all of the multitudinous Brandon QA's and interviews.

likewise. I really want to see what he knew, see some stuff about Shinovar and how they do things, and probably most importantly, see why it is he agreed to be Truthless when he knew the truth all along. I'm convinced part of the reason he hears the screams of the dead is because on some subconscious level he is convinced he is right and the shamans were wrong and is therefore culpable in every life he ever took.

I get that and it makes a certain amount of sense, explaining just about everything exceptional about it except for the lack of decay. We don't know (at least if we do know, I haven't seen that information) when exactly the Recreance happened, but it was a long time ago, long enough that no one knows why it happened and if Urithiru was abandoned the whole time, it should be a mess. Based on Honor's visions, I think Honor died sometime after that (no idea how long after, but I assume it was still a while ago), so maybe he kept things up until then. It could have been as recent as the time period right before Gavilar started having visions, or as far back as the day after the Recreance. That leads to another possibility in my mind. Did, by abandoning the Oathpact, the 9 unfaithful Heralds leave the way open for Odium to attack Honor and kill him? Maybe his relative silence since then has more to do with the fact that he had to spend more effort fending off Odium's attempt on his life. That part of the reason Taln lasted so long wasn't just that Odium took it easy on him - it was that Odium was spending all of his energy trying to finally get Honor out of the way, now that he had access to do so. Therefore, the reason Taln finally broke to the point that he has a busted mind is he alone bore the full fury of Odium for however long it was after Honor died until he finally capitulated with no support from either the other nine or from Honor himself - as I would theorize part of the reason the Heralds could survive the torture is the direct support of Honor. Maybe I should dump this in another thread...I can get a little stream of consciousness thing going when I start replying to something.

I'm of the opinion that it had to have been cast or created whole by Tanavast, with some detailing and personalizing left up to the Radiants. Without heavy cranes and things of that sort, I think it would be VERY hard to create a tower like Urithiru without divine guidance and support. Even with the use of Gravitation, Friction and the rest, it's hard to imagine a bunch of warriors suddenly being able to fine tune lashings to carry and place rock slabs weighing hundreds or thousands of tons with the precision needed to construct a tower in the fashion described. To put it in perspective for today, the first 100-story+ building in Earth history was completed in ~1930 or so. The oldest extant complete and LARGE structure in the world I would guess is the Great Pyramid in Giza - it's been guessed to be ~4500 years old. We need to place that in the context of Roshar, for whom a year is approximately 1.1 Earth years according to the Coppermind wiki. Thus, the Great Pyramid of Giza is almost as old as the time lag between Aharietam and the current Stormlight times. As we know very little about how long the Heraldic Epochs lasted and whether Urithiru was built at the beginning or not...well, Urithiru could be anywhere from 15,000 years old (assuming 100 year lags between Desolations, which is as short as I dare make it) or as long as...perhaps 105,000 years old, if there is a 1,000 year lag between Desolations. I'd submit it defies any human explanation for a human-contrived residence to survive anything like that long, particularly in light of the fact that it seems to be in no need of any sort of repairing. Even if it's in a benign climate (as it seems to be), the erosion of years even without highstorms would suggest it should be ruinous, not completely whole. If Urithiru is subject to freezing (and it should be given its relative altitude), well, that does a crap ton of damage over time. Freezes if they are severe enough can break steel-reinforced concrete and cause trees to shatter spontaneously.

In no particular order, I'd love to see any or all of the following as PoV Interlude characters: Rlain - I really want more Parshendi point of view stuff Jasnah - SO MUCH stuff I want to know about how she knows what she knows and what all she actually knows Zahel/Vasher - I really think at some point he has to figure into the bigger world in a bigger way. Rock - I just love the guy Taravangian on a stupid day and on a brilliant day - both for comparison to him on an average day and for more illumination on who he is and how wildly he varies. Lots of others, but those are (right now) probably my top five... at this particular moment.

or Jezrien himself... I almost envision this Excalibur (or something like it) moment where he picks up the sword, you see the glint in his eye and everyone says oh, &^%$

I wonder if it would be proper to say then that being Returned, the cannibalization of breath that prioritizes the non-Divine breaths and the Divine Breath as a last resort instead of being hard-coded to Breath is instead hard-coded to Investiture of any sort and not specifically Breaths - meaning it can feed off whatever Investiture the Returned has to offer it. Whatever the ratio is, clearly Vasher already knows it and can plan for it. So, in theory, if Vasher had eaten a bead of lerasium and could store and burn metals, it could cannibalize that instead of Breath as well. Interesting. I'm curious to see how that works on screen at some point. I'm also curious how Vasher figured out how to make use of Stormlight for this purpose without having the necessary spirit web cracks to invite a Nahel bond - or if he is properly cracked, without having yet bonded a spren to allow him to inhale and make use of Stormlight. I'd agree with Yata about stockpiling of Stormlight - clearly that is not something that can be done, not in the amounts that Breaths can be done. I like the terms Kinetic and Innate - I don't know if they are something you invented @Yata or if you got them from somewhere but it's a fantastic way to differentiate it, or so I think.

technically I think they would be uncertaintyspren, though a case could be made for catspren I suppose. I hear they are fond of boxes...

Can you imagine a game of hide and seek with these things about? Hidespren AND Seekspren? Sounds like sardines might be the better game...

The biggest problem we have is we don't know what all Jasnah knew or how she knew it - most of what we know, we know from Shallan's discussions with Jasnah or with others about Jasnah - aside from the WOR prologue which fairly obvious predates her swearing any oaths as a Radiant, it's really hard to say where she got her info from. It seems to be pieced together across multitudinous works, a line here, a paragraph there, a sentence from over that way. Though, from her notes, it is interesting we know for certain at least one thing she got wrong - she refers to the Unmade as "clearly" being fabrications. So, while she is trustworthy regarding nuts and bolts and a lot of down to earth factual details, she's probably not a trustworthy resource (at least, prior to her Elsecalling into Shadesmar to escape death) regarding the supernatural aspects of the conflict. If Navani was correct and the city was destroyed during Aharietam, then that is by far the most likely explanation for that gate not being locked - no one lived there, no one went there, and there was no reason to go to the trouble. If the Recreance happened long enough after the Last Desolation, the door to where the fabrial itself is located would be too crusted in crem to be recognized as such by anyone who wasn't looking for such a thing, and maybe not even then, given Jasnah was about the only one on the planet who thought Stormseat was located on the Shattered Plains. That leads me to a sideline though. How much crem accumulates per highstorm and how long does it take for accumulation of crem to begin to render a structure unrecognizable as a human habitation to the casual eye.

so very many possibilities... sneezespren badhairdayspren arthritisspren glacierspren (REALLY slow) stinkspren (specifically, not rot-related bad smells) beardspren (mentioned in another thread :D)

I did...and that's unusual even for me. I tend to read at 120-140 pages an hour, but something about that book...sheesh. Thus, why I got addicted. and I lol'ed Thankee, if only I were a rl mistborn instead of just a bendalloy misting!

I'd not put it that Urithiru is above ALL storms, just above high storms and I think the Everstorm. While we don't have highstorms on earth, it's pretty easy if you ever go to the mountains to see that some storms reach the peaks and others do not. I've had the singular experience of standing on top of a 14er in Colorado while rainclouds blew through beneath us and then having to descend down through it. I've also had the experience of being in high passes or a peak and have it be pouring down rain, so while I think we can conclude that based on its height rain is relatively rare at Urithiru, it probably does still rain. Just not as often. I would agree though that the presence of Radiants who can grow plants minimizes the need for water, which leaves more water for the human and animal population up there. Which leads me to another question: does the Weeping affect Urithiru? I'm gonna have to go reread some stuff as I just can't recall off the top of my head.

Good afternoon, all. I'm a long time lurker who just joined a couple of days ago as I've reached the point where I have to have someone to talk through Cosmere stuff with! As for who I am - Texas boy born and raised, now living in Austin with my family. My wife and I have three kids widely separated by age, with the oldest in his senior year of high school and the youngest still almost three years from kindergarten. My oldest is autistic, something of an artist and a connoisseur of all things Cars and VeggieTales. My middle (and only daughter) is a voracious reader and dancer, talker extraordinaire who never met a stranger, ever. My youngest is a hybrid giraffe/dinosaur/lion who knows the names of most of the kinds of animals already and is working on species. He's also a bulldozer dancer gigglemaniac. My wife and I (23 years!) are both bookworms and into music - we had just met at church and she needed a piano tutor...and the rest was history! I do IT work during the week and pastor youth on the weekends. We love to travel when we are able and have a to go list that is so long I don't think I could do it all if I were a billionaire, but such is life. I -love- reading works that challenge and fire my imagination. I even drew up a map of a fictional world out of my head, complete with history and all that I hope eventually to turn into a written work. When I have time... As far as how I got into Brandon's work...well, I grew up on all manner of things but what stuck to me most was Tolkien's entire legendarium - I kinda cringingly admit that I know the Silmarillion as well as I know LOTR. That let me into Riftwar and other Feist works, Terry Brooks, Melanie Rawn, and a whole slew of other things that culminated in the Wheel of Time. When Robert Jordan passed and the announcement that Brandon Sanderson would be picking up his work and finishing it, a friend loaned me Elantris so I could get a feel for him. I didn't read anything else by him aside from the WoT titles until after that was over and done. Somewhere in there I picked up one of the illustrated trade paperbacks of Way of Kings at a Half Price bookstore. I devoured that in about 5 hours; when Words of Radiance came out I got a hardback and read it something like four or five times in the first month I had it. My wife got me the first four Mistborn books for Christmas, did those in about 12 days, which led me to Warbreaker and White Sands and the Arcanum Unbounded collection. In all of that I'd been kind of peripherally aware that the Cosmere overlay the whole of Brandon's work, but it didn't really click for me until one of my rereads of Words of Radiance, when something about Zahel twigged my attention, as well as an odd blade late in that book. Which led to me theorizing who Zahel was, who Darkness was and what the sword was and whether I'd seen some people before which led to me finding the copper mind wiki and this site and I'm hooked!

When Kaladin was using it, he was using it to block and absorb shardblade hits, so the piece he is using is taking a lot of damage. I would assume it is feeding on stormlight from Kaladin in the same way it does from gemstones in order to regenerate/maintain itself. I would theorize that this is part of the reason the shardplate has gemstones with stormlight in them - so that their primary resource for maintenance and regrowth is internal to itself. It would then move to feeding on any other stormlight that is in contact with it.

You are right of course. I meant something more than substantive. His one point of view in that interlude isn't enough to cast much light on anything at all. Does he know he was betrayed? Probably (I can't see Odium withholding that bit of torture intensification), but we don't know. What does he recall of the times before? How the hell did he endure for so long - even if the theory I read elsewhere is true (I'd cite if I remembered who first proposed), that Odium slowed down in the torture of him to extend the time for humans to forget him and fall into war and stupidity, 4500 years is a stupidly long time to endure. He's kinda been set up as the most badass of the main badasses, at least where humans are concerned. at some point in time there has to be a meeting between him and Jezrien, Nale, Ishar and the rest, right? I can only imagine how that is going to go down...