Isilel

Harmonium couldn't be melted down in Wax's lab - but it came close with the whole stretching thing when heated by electrical current. I am sure that it could have been melted at an industrial facility. And unless atium-electrum alloy has a much lower melting point than pure atium, we already know that it was possible to melt and alloy it in Era 1 to produce malatium.

Yes, we know that she is 5 years younger than Steris. Steris said that she was getting close to 30 in BoM, which may have been a slight exaggeration or not. Marasi then would have been about 24, give or take a year and herself around 30 in TLM.

Who would want to conquer them? Also, I very much hope that Nazh's gun doesn't literally shoot shades, which are then free to wander around, because wouldn't his using it on other planets start a shade-creation cascade there otherwise? This also may be a scary potential planetary-eradication weapon in Threnodite arsenal, if they figure out how to reach other worlds. Unless the shades can't maintain and multiply themselves longterm elsewhere, that is. We know that they can leave the subastral, after all, so there must be a reason why they didn't yet overrun Shadesmar, etc. Though it now occurs to me that Scadrians, with their chromium and aluminum allomancy and harmonium grenades may have decent chances against the shades. There is still nothing on Threnody anybody would want, though, apart from possibly the shades themselves, if people find out how to use them as weapons or magi-tech fuel.

Right, IMHO it is important to mention that their industrial base and military technology available to non-magical people were medieval when last seen. And mages are a small minority of this huge population. Also, a chance for world unity appears to be slimmer than on Roshar and Scadrial. Also, didn't the pale man who marked Shai practice a form of magic that you didn't include?

If the Set had produced atium, we would have heard about it, though. Particularly since they would have quickly discovered that, if Sanderson intends to go forward with the ret-con, anyone can burn it. Otherwise, this is an interesting idea, but there is another difference between Wax's experiment and the Set's - he was using a charged hemalurgic spike, while they, no doubt employed pure trellium. I am not sure if we can believe Harmony that he doesn't know what happened either, BTW. There is a WoB that he is capable of producing atium and lerasium if he so choses, but clearly he wants everyone to think that he isn't, and similarly he wishes to keep the knowledge of making lerasium from ettmetal to remain secret for as long as possible.

One of the things that I enjoy about cosmere books is that future sight isn't set in stone - it works off probabilities, not certainties. Prophecies _can_ be circumvented, not just misunderstood. People have real agency, their decisions actually matter. We have already seen Shards "breaking bad" and will no doubt see more in SA, given Heraldic flashbacks planned for the second arc, whatever Cultivation is up to and, well, TOdium. But if it is all we see, it will become boring and repetitive. "Powers that man isn't meant to wield", yadda, yadda, ad nauseam. So I really hope that with Sazed and Harmony we'll get something different. And "Sixth of the Dusk", ironically, gives me hope. Because "The Ones Above" are clearly trying to work around some non-interference rule that feels very vintage Sazedian. IMHO, the future of Scadrial will be shaped by the tension between Sazed's "freedom of choice" stance and Kelsier's "pre-emptive defense" one.

Could Autonomy have corrupted an Aether? Is this the source of her army? In the unpublished "Aether of Night"

The Oathpact never bound Odium - only his Fused and maybe his spren. Odium is bound "by the powers of Honor and Cultivation", which is why a Stormfather's Bondsmith, as Honor's heir, can release him.

It cannot be Spook's body, because we know from Allik that the Sovereign came to the south only a few years (a decade, I think), after the Catacendre. And from that copper metalmind that Wax viewed in BoM we know that the Sovereign was Kelsier. Spook ruled Elendel for a 100 years before stepping down, however. Personally, I think that he is using his own bones and a mistwraith, but it might also be some random body, I guess. A survivorist fanatic? Though wouldn't it age in such a case?

Ehlokar. Yes, Thaidakar is likely some Vorin name.

IMHO, if Kelsier had managed something like that successfully, he would have had his allomancy and hemalurgy would have worked for him. He probably wants to get his hands on Kalak to, among other things, figure out how bodies of the Heralds are created when they return to Roshar. Ishar likely uses this knowledge in his experiments, too.

Transcript of the rest of chapter 1 and chapter 2 has appeared on Arcanum, in the Dragonsteel Q@A and it is very juicy. I am not quite sure where to start a topic about it, given certain connections. Guidance would be appreciated, TIA.

Yes, but exactly because of that, it could have included some exploration/ discovery plots, but sadly didn't. So much of Scadrial is still unknown! In the 3rd era the world will be already known and this opportunity lost. Oh, well. Hopefully, the Nicki Savage story by Isaac Stewart pans out, it could scratch some of that itch for me...

They would if they needed or wanted to make many allomancers instead of one super-allomancer. Or, having little lerasium, wanted a strong misting instead of a very weak Mistborn. I used to think that this is how Kelsier made the initial group of SoScad Metalborn required for the medallion production, with ferrings being made with lerasium-atium-base allomantic metal alloy, but obviously this can no longer be the case. Concerning the lab explosion producing lerasium alloys, this is a very interesting and plausible idea! Though if so, this still potentially might have given Wax all metals except for cadmium, bendalloy and nicrosil. All the other allomantic metals may have been contained in various pieces of lab equipment...

VenDell wasn't with them in Tobal Copper's apartment though? He stayed with Marsh. And yes, I think that Telsin just had them followed from the police station.

IMHO, it is entirely possible that a protagonist's arc may start with a serial killer hunt. which then morphs into an international thriller and culminates in "Men in Black" style shenangians with aliens and deities. With said MiB-likes having been founded by the heroes of the Era 2. Though I really hope that we have at least 5 more or less balanced PoVs in the Era 3 trilogy and at least one of them is Southern Scadrian. I can't wait to get a real feel for their societies, after the intriguing crumbs from BoM!

Infusion of Preservation investiture via lerasium was inheritable, so logically removal of investiture should be too. Sanderson went back and forth on it in his WoBs - the most current position is that it doesn't. Maybe the remaining bits of the donor's Identity interfere? Or the fact that it doesn't really get incorporated into the person, but remains bound to a spike? “the spike instead steals the very power of Preservation existing within the soul of the people. (The power that, in fact, gives all people sentience.)” Hero of Ages, epigraph to chapter 38 “Mankind, however, had been created by both Ruin and Preservation—with a hint of Preservation’s own soul to give them sentience and honor” Hero of Ages epigraph to chapter 60. Sanderson now uses sapience instead of sentience to differentiate human intelligence, since it can be argued that animals are somewhat sentient too. P.S. Regarding drabs, they do eventually adapt to their condition and reach a new equilibrium. They don't remain weakened and depressed forever.

Yes, except that I don't think that they are drained, because it would mean that they are completely destroyed as anything other than a piece of metal. IMHO, they were either already switched previously, because TenSoon is a creature of habit and Kelsier figured out their hiding place, or some kind of dampening device, as seen elsewhere in the cosmere, was employed to make them temporarily unusuable. I also don't think that promoting conflict was necessarily Kelsier's reason - he may have just wanted them out of the hands of kandra and Harmony, who'd just hide them away forever if they could, and back in his own. We can be confident that this was not his desired result for the whole temple + rumors shenangians. We also know that at least the feruchemical part of them must have worked for him, because of the coppermind that Hoid threw at Wax in BoM, and he wants powers.

Yes, it would be significantly worse. Selling your Breath doesn't affect your descendents, as Endowment provides every Nalthian human with a newly-minted Breath. But Rosharan investiture is hereditary, so selling the excess would lower the chance of anybody of your line born after that ever becoming a metalborn. There is also the odd contradiction that in the first trilogy Preservation allegedly invested himself into people more than Ruin to provide them with sapience - so shouldn't losing the extra bit also affect that? It didn't look that way in TLM, but... The other, more intriguing, conclusion from that research was, though, that if they could take any unkeyed investiture (like the purified Dor), put it on a spike and key it to the metallic arts, they potentially could get fully synthetic spikes, which wouldn't deprive anybody of anything. I suspect that strictly regulated hemalurgy is already widely accepted in the south, where they don't have the luxury of letting metallic arts necessary for the production and functioning of their magi-tech, fall out of circulation due to deaths and random chance of whether new people with required talents will be born in sufficient numbers. I also hope that hemalurgy may become something along the line of organ donations, rather than murder or suicide, because I am with Kelsier re: democratization of metallic arts beyond the 1% of genetic lottery winners and I also don't want kandra to be a dying people with no hope of new generations. There would be enough people willing to bequeath their spikes to kandra on their deathbed, if the option existed. I am not sure why it would be so terrible in most cases? Looks more along the lines of donating blood to me. In some cases storing is actually situationally beneficial or rather neutral. I am sure that people who work in hot environments would bless a chance to not only stay cool, but also to make some money off all the stored heat. If one is lying in bed reading, storing physical speed or strength won't be a hardship. If one is doing something monotonous and dull, storing mental speed could be a blessing. Could have likely helped somebody like Steris to take an occasional break from constant over-thinking, too. Storing breath when at rest would train one's lungs to work better, which would be useful for sports or general physical fitness. I agree that storing of health, determination and fortune could be exploitative and would need some careful regulation, but the rest of it? Not IMHO.

I very much doubt that they were actually drained, i.e. turned into a useless lump of metal. Introducing such an artefact just to destroy it with so little pay-off seems like a complete waste and frankly bad writing. IMHO, they were either replaced with a fake because somebody figured out where Tensoon, who is a creature of habit, has hidden them, or some kind of supressor, like those seen in RoW, was employed to make it seem that they were drained. Personally, I think that it was a tragically mis-timed heist of Kelsier's. He had been in the south immediately prior to Daal's arrival in Elendel and might have been the force behind southern unification. If he built that temple and spread rumors about the Bands both in the Basin and in the south in order to provoke contact between the 2 civilizations, to spur on technological progress and to jump-start magi-tech development in the north, as seems likely, he must have been rather disappointed by kandra swooping in and confiscating them. So, since he had completely misjudged the timing that Set was operating under, he hatched a plot to get them back. Daal and maybe Adathwyn are likely associated with the Ghostbloods in some way, though not full members, and were acting on his instructions.

He is most probably dead. He either died on Scadrial at some point after stepping down, or he went into cosmere for Kelsier and died there. Honestly, if the old heroes hang around forever, they'd either stifle the new ones unless great care is taken, or just feel completely redundant. The way Kelsier and Marsh were sidelined in TLM, so that the 2 Era protagonists wouldn't be overshadowed by them already felt very contrived and artificial, IMHO. If Spook too was available to help with the crisis and just sat on his posterior for reasons, it would be ridiculous. And if he is alive somewhere out in the cosmere, why is the very important Rosharan operation run and screwed up by Iyatil? No, he had lots of kids - but it has been 3 centuries or so. The 4 kidnapped noblewomen in AoL, as well as Steris and Marasi are all among his descendants. He meant himself, Kelsier and Sazed. Well, if anybody can figure out how to get a spren off Roshar, it is Hoid. He'd keep her hidden, of course. And very likely he wasn't around to be questioned by Wax, after fishing him out of the sea.

Personally, I don't believe that any amount of healing would have allowed Wayne to survive this explosion, but one possible option for acquiring extra health reserves hasn't been mentioned anywhere so far - he should have checked Gertrude's metalminds. Given how much health she had, there was more than an even chance for some of them being unkeyed metalminds filled by somebody else for her, like Lady Kelesina's metalmind back in BoM.

Additionally, compounding via allomancy is a skill that requires time and experience to learn. Ruin's Inquisitors in HoA, for instance, didn't know how to compound, despite being capable of it.

That's the rub, isn't it - why _didn't_ Sazed modify Marsh when he was still new and could have easily done so? Why keep poor Marsh as a hemalurgic construct dependent on atium for his longevity, instead of either turning him back into a human or, if Sazed foresaw the need to keep him around for a long stretch in this state, why not give him longevity via Connection shenanigans, which per WoB TLR could have done while he held the power of the Well, if it had occurred to him? Kelsier, of course isn't under any strictures at at all and is surrounded by people who surely use Connection and other methods to extend their lives, yet he left his brother out to dry too.

Yes, we have already had several instances of a Shard "breaking bad" and a Vessel getting overwhelmed by it's Intent, having the same thing happen to Harmony and Sazed would be repetitive. In addition, in Sixth of the Dusk the Ones Above clearly try to adhere to the letter of some kind of non-interference law, which feels very Pathian, while violating it's spirit. It would be novel if in the case of future Scadrians, the problem won't be their Shard, but their people.