Isilel

But then, why are medallions limited to having max 3 powers? I used to think that this meant a Twinborn + 3 spikes, because beyond that disapproving Harmony could interfere with a person. Which would explain rarity of the max ones. However, it doesn't quite work out since A-Nicrosil, F-Nicrosil and A-Aluminum only leave room for 2 additional powers. But if spikes can be moved around between different Metalborn, why are there any limitations to the number of powers in a single medallion beyond just availability of corresponding Mistings and Ferrings? For that matter, why do different medallions interfere with each other? I suspect that Connection must be involved somehow, not just blanking of Identity.

It very much mattered in case of TLR - he has been unable to discover any new applications of Hemalurgy on his own in a thousand years of trying. All he ever had was what Ruin had spoon-fed him in the Well.

Being a Sliver of _Preservation_ shouldn't give one particular insight into Metallic Art of _Ruin_, quite the opposite! TLR had been tricked by Ruin and given all his hemalurgic "discoveries" by the same. Which is why he was unable to come up with any new applications of it after he left the Well, despite centuries of experimentation.

I wonder if he could have reached it if a Nicrosil Misting boosted him. Naturally, Wax wasn't going to bring it up. IMHO it is very likely, yes. Additionally, the medallion-making method may not be "one size fits all", but has to be adjusted for each metal, which would require a lot of experimentation and would be greatly helped by having more people to try it with. Or, given the secrecy, maybe to charge lots of ettmetal, which is then transported back south and used for experiments there. But couldn't they charge primer cubes to start a skimmer from the engine of a big ship, which is always left on on the lowest setting or something? And I also believe that there is a way to stop or greatly slow the charge deterioration. Southerners being technologically ahead probably could produce much cheaper aluminum for some time. I get you about the straps-and-plate, but are they even part of the original design? Wasn't there a period of cooperation between the Malwish and the Set - maybe it was installed during it?

Ok, so it belatedly occurred to me that with Kelsier being the Ghostblood leader _and_ him being the creator of the Bonds of Mourning, he surely equips his senior agents with superior medallions that can have more than 3 abilities which are the max for SouthScads and are otherwise free of their limitations.Which would very tidily explain Mraize easily insinuating himself into various circles and passing as one of their own, despite not being particularly convincing as an actor according to Shallan and having a very memorable appearance. He may also be using F-Tin for spotting suspicious cremlings and such. Anyway, maybe that's what the clinking stuff in a sack that he bribed Raboniel with was? Presumably the medallions are known among the denizens of and travelers through the Cognitive realm by now.

Maybe the southerners have a way to prevent deterioration which they didn't share. Like, keeping it in an aluminum container, for instance. Maybe unused primer cubes are normally sealed and remain full. Judging by Allik and Co. reaction to Our Heroes in BoM, they didn't have a Coinshot among the crew. What bugs me about all this Trell stuff is - where is Kelsier in all of this? Or Marsh for that matter? Why didn't he/they put a stop to a movement aimed at destroying Scadrial?! And also - why didn't he share medallion technology with the northeners, which used to be led by his dear friend Spook? Are limitations of southern medallions something that he imposed on purpose too, or did the makers do so to get payed not just for producing them, but for upkeep too?

I see this sentiment a lot, but there is a fundamental difference between the 2 of them - Kaladin is a highly empathetic person, while Moash has always been extremely callous and self-centered. He didn't and doesn't actually care about the Darkeyes, just about how their situation affected himself. Otherwise he is A-OK with them being enslaved or killed. So no, I don't see even a dark vengeful Kaladin being like Moash. Except that this person was Roshone. If Moash had tracked him down to Heartstone and killed him, I would have been sympathetic. Ehlokar was only guilty of negligence and Moash fixated on him out of sense of self-aggrandizement, IMHO. And possibly because he was right there.

Corollary to this - shouldn't the northeners have come up with muscle-powered flight for Iron Ferrings at least? I mean iRL the main obstacle is the person's own weight - if you can abstract that, it should be a snap. Now that I think about it, it might even work for pewter Mistings - their extra strength should allow for brief periods of gaining height, followed by gliding. I am speaking of gliders equipped with rotors powered like bicycle-wheels. Of course, we also didn't see any bicycles in Elendel so far, oddly. It doesn't seem entirely believable to me that people would be so reluctant to leave the basin and seek their fortune outside it, now that everything has been claimed and some ended up empty-handed or with less than they'd like. You'd think that the poor and the ambitious would dare to take risks to improve their situation. In particular I'd have expected a lot of expeditions searching for ettmetal after the events of BoM. It is very interesting that the medallions apparently are one-way only for users - you can either tap or fill. Is it a real limitation or is it something that makers introduced on purpose to retain control over them? I also very much suspect that Trell has been busy in the south, too and exacerbated the tensions.

Honor was splintered 2 millenia _after_ Taln had been abandoned on Braize, though, so that wouldn't work.

It has been mentioned many times that the situation now is very different than was the case immediately pre-Recreance. Both humans and spren lost nearly all institutional knowledge of the Radiant Orders and the way things used to be done. So, it is entirely possible that back then most Radiants only bonded their own spren when they were ready for or very close to swearing the 3rd ideal. There was no need for spren to go search for a bondmate far afield when they had a wealth of candidates to pick from in Urithiru, who were already steeped in the Ideals and had sworn some. Isn't there a WoB that being connected to a Radiant in some way makes it more likely that a person would be considered by spren, even those of different species than that of the Radiant in question? BTW, squires of an Order can bond spren not of their Order too, if they are better suited. We know that the Recreance was preceded by a large and swift mobilisation of spren, which is why all honorspren bar Syl ended up bonded at the time and subsequently dead-eyed. This quick expanding of the Orders makes it even less likely that the spren would have looked outside the people who were already squires - there just wasn't time to bring newbs along before whatever prompted said expansion happened. Modern spren act completely differently - in part intentionally so, to try to avoid mistakes of the past and in part because they are ignorant of the past. There is an epigraph in WoR about a straightforward warrior somehow bonding a Cryptic and being unable to progress, but it seems likely to have been a rare occurence and probably a battlefield bonding of a spren that was "orphaned" immediately prior. So, yes, there might have been a handful of spren who "died" in some other way. There is also even more reason to think after RoW that the soulcaster devices were Radiant spren manifested in ways other than blades during the Recreance and affected somewhat differently by the breaking of Oaths. I also hope that some Radiants figured out how to take their spren off-world, rather than subject them to dead-eyeing. But Dalinar's vision of the Feverstone Keep showed hundreds, if not thousands of Windrunners and Stonewards of at least the 4th Ideal (because of armor) committing Recreance, so there _should_ be heaps more of shardblades and plate around than we have seen so far in any case.

The squire system and organized nature of the Radiant Orders in general may have prevented this, though, with spren willing to bond always having their choice of candidates on the cusp of the 3rd ideal. IIRC, there was a great mobilisation of spren willing to bond relatively shortly before the Recreance due to whatever was going on with BAM. Which is why the honorspren were completely wiped out.

Since I learned that Zahel was Vasher (didn't pick up on it myself), I thought that he was going to heal Talenel. And yes, I assume that this is the reason for his Return and part of Endowment's long game. An out of the left field option for his miracle could be BAM.

IMHO, on the contrary, the narrative suffers somewhat due to Kaladin hogging the limelight and continuously saving the day. I like him well enough, but I really would have preferred a more equal 5-6 PoV ensemble cast. In such an epic tale it feels very contrived when a single character or a couple of them are present and essential for every important event. IMHO, after him having the lion's share of "his" book WoK and an equal part of supposedly "Shallan's" book WoR, the space he had in OB would have been perfect for the remainder of arc 1. But then, Jasnah instantly became my favorite in book 1, despite her limited space on page, and I don't really like how much we saw the singers through human PoVs, with their own ones being relegated to an after-thought. Now Kaladin is set up to take over much of Szeth's plot in the book 5 too... I really, really hope that he finally takes a backseat in the second arc and doesn't stifle the projected PoVs for it to the same extent. I am not worried about Dalinar and Shallan - Sanderson has no problems dialling them back when appropriate and I think it likely that either or both of them may actually die at the conclusion of arc 1. But it looks like he just can't help himself re: Kaladin. Here is to hoping that he ascends to a Shard or something, so that he can't get plugged everywhere again to the detriment of the new main characters of arc 2...

Ginger Vedens, while definitely a minority, do exist. This is specifically mentioned a few times in the text - Davars are not unique. Sadly, yes. Personally, I dislike the idea and it doesn't make any sense to me that a Herald, for whom it is supposed to be difficult to have kids (and for women it should have logically been even more difficult than for men), would have been able to pump out 5(!) kids within a decade. In fact, Lady Davar had more children than any other Vorin woman shown in the text. Only Rock's wife has more! Which also doesn't make sense, BTW, because the attrition through constant wars among the Alethi needs to be counteracted through higher birthrate, but everybody has like 1-2 children, which wouldn't have been enough to maintain a 100% peaceful population. Shallan's surviving brothers seem pretty unremarkable too, and the jury is still out on Helaran. I also don't see what piling even more guilt on Shallan brings to her story. But it sure does look like Chana Davar is where Sanderson is going... sigh. I still hope for an extra-red herring though.

Indeed. Personally, I think it's most likely that modern Iriali only came to Roshar after Aharietam. Why would they have stayed through the Desolations? The last wars of the Heraldic Epoch were supposed to be utterly devastating and there logically should have been a lot of vacant real estate. I am also convinced that Iriali in Stormlight are about to decamp to the next world and are cooperating with Odium so that he would help them or at least not hinder their departure. BTW, there is already an example of a Silver Kingdom having a completely different population than in Heraldic era - Dalinar's Midnight Essence vision takes place in Natanatan, but people look completely normal rather than being blue-skinned. Their kingdom may have been called something else too, I don't remember. As to why they would have still called themselves Iriali - they had lived on Roschar for a long time, but my impression was that they didn't spend more than a few centuries on Lumar, so tradition? Alternatively, Iri may have been called something else before Iriali took it over. What we know of the Silver Kingdoms comes from post-Recreance, after all, a couple of millenia after Aharietam.

Late to the party, but here are some thoughts: I am glad that Gavilar, while certainly a highly functioning narcissist, did show some shades of gray and wasn't nearly as inexplicably "in the know" as he seemed in RoW. I also feel vindicated in my belief that Nale wasn't working with him in any way and that in fact it was only Gavilar being king that prevented him from getting executed personally then and there by said Herald. There is still no confirmation that Nale's highspren led the listeners to Szeth IIRC, but it is very likely at this point. P.S. Had a brainfart, all of this was, of course, explained in RoW and it was Ulim. Anyway, re-reading the relevant RoW chapter Nale oddly said that Gavilar "...lures us with promises, then breaks them by seeking that which I told him was forbidden!". But it doesn't seem in this prologue that Gavilar made any promises that Nale could have been interested in? Kalak just wanted to leave Rosharan system, but it wouldn't have been in character for Nale to do so. Nor did he forbid the king anything previously, since we now know that this was their one and only interaction. I also don't understand why Kalak thought that moving voidlight between the planets was a big deal, when it is clear that moving Seons between different star systems is a routine matter and that should have been closer to what is required to move a spren or a Herald. What am I not seeing? It did stick out to me that while Gavilar privately acknowledged Navani's talents and seriously considered bringing her in on the secret, he didn't entertain any such thoughts about his daughter, who was already widely acknowledged as a genius. Which is odd, IMHO, as it is now clear that he couldn't care less about heresy. Additionally, Aesudan doesn't merit any mention and wasn't one of the women present when Eshonai stumbled onto the meeting, as I used to believe. She also seemed to have known something of what Gavilar was about and appeared to have been working for him in the previous 2 books, so that's strange. I am disappointed that Kelsier was facilitating an apocalypse on another world. I don't understand why he is unable to world-hop when this problem was obviously already solved for Seons. Is a cognitive shadow really so different? And why was he interested in Kalak in particular? It isn't like the latter was able to crack the puzzle either. Is it because his affliction interferes with his fighting ability and he _can_ be captured by normals? Because wasn't Nale also involved in BAM's imprisonment, but good luck kidnapping him. And why is Kelsier so interested in BAM and later Sja-Anat? Concerning Chana being Shallan's mother, it seems rather likely at this point, sadly. Even though it makes very little sense that a Herald, for whom having children was supposed to be difficult, would have born more kids than any other Vorin woman we have met so far! Which, btw, is another plot hole. All those constantly warring Alethi really needed to have bigger families for plausible survival. Also, a Herald wouldn't have needed a "friend" to hold down her husband. And I really don't see what it brings to Shallan's story. Oh, well. Regarding the Stormfather's odd behavior, I am in the camp that it was Tanavast's cognitive shadow and that it interacts with Dalinar seldom and covertly, for instance maskerading as Nohadon or occasionally saying things that the Stormfather is unaware of. "I am the _thing_ that has miscalculated" doesn't strike me as something that Ishar would say. The prologue to WoK also suggests that the Heralds can't feel each other die a "normal" death. I have always found it odd that while we were told that Honor's cognitive shadow merged with the Stormfather, there was never any sign of it in his personality - he was all spren. It makes a lot of sense to me if it actually exists as a separate hidden consciousness within the Stormfather that only emerges rarely. It may seem odd that it could lie - but then, we have seen slivers of Preservation be quite destructive and murderous, so there are precedents. And maybe this was the weakness that allowed Honor to get splintered. We already knew that Honor tried to keep the secret of humans being invaders from the Radiants and helped them "to reconcile" this truth with their mission statement when it got rediscovered, which already skirts dangerously close to lying, so... Regarding the words, there is this in chapter 38 of OB: "THE HERALDS WENT TO HONOR AND HE _GAVE_ THEM THIS RIGHT, THIS OATH.", - that's what "give it to me" is close to, IMHO.

I wouldn't say so, in general. Odium is somewhat restrained by Honor's bindings on him, as mentioned in @Jondesu's third quote, so it is true for him, but for Ruin, a person being psychically imbalanced was enough to allow interference. Preservation did hear people's thoughts, without spikes. Admittedly, there was a particularly strong Connection between the Shards of Scadrial and the humans they created, so it may not have been possible for a Shard that settled on a planet where intelligent population existed before the breaking of Adonalsium. We still don't know that for sure, though. Odium is clearly a Shard that can talk to people, once they become sufficiently attuned to him, but not hear their thoughts. Honor may have been the same - hence the custom of burning glyphs to tell him people's concerns. But Cultivation may be the one who hears - in fact, it seems most likely that she is, because she only talks to people in her valley where she manifests - and that, only very rarely. I wonder what Honor's restrictions on Odium using his powers "on most individuals" entailed. I mean, a lot of people died in the Everstorm, and he directed that. So, smiting Hoid may not be out of question even for TOdium. He may be just prevented from talking to people uninvited and yanking them into his visions, unless they are already attuned to him and/or welcome it.

A very nice tidbit anyway.

Also, the northern Scadrian population is very small compared to that of industrial countries iRL in late 19th - early 20th century. 5 - 10 millions all told, IIRC. Therefore, they also have a rather limited talent pool. It is entirely likely that there never had been a zinc Ferring scientist, because what are the odds that these 2 somewhat rare talents coexisted in a single person and that person actually had an opportunity to get education? Particularly since the they apparently went with the anglophone tradition of an expensive independent university, rather than cheap/free ones funded by the state like in other countries.

Well, the answer is that you'd need to find a way to transform stormlight into solid state. That would be Honor's god metal and you'd be able to produce it in small enough chunks to burn.

They need be neither full Feruchemists nor even natural Ferrings as long as they have access to the South Scadrial medallions. Or spikes, I guess. We only saw Axindweth use Connection - both to speak languages and to quickly worm herself into the confidence of strangers, so she may have been a Connector and different kinds of Connection would have required different storages. But she could have also had a medallion or three, or a spike or three instead of or in combination with it. BTW, we saw a number of rather murderous Ferrings in the Second Era books, so they aren't all pacifists.

But Moash isn't some champion of the Darkeyes rights - in fact, he is perfectly OK with them being enslaved - as long as it isn't by the Lighteyes. He casually murders some in RoW and if the Fused decide to massacre the "useless mouths" among them I wouldn't expect him to object either.

Maybe some Elsecallers and Lightweavers and their spren decided to transform the spren into soulcasters as an alternative to the Recreance? After seeing the havoc that the deadblades unleashed upon the world and wanting to leave behind something useful for peaceful endeavors instead. BTW, unlike the healing fabrials the soulcasters don't appear in Dalinar's visions, so it is entirely possible that they didn't exist before the fall of the Radiants. The soulcaster spren don't look like deadeyes and seem to be sleeping, so I wouldn't expect any screaming even if a Radiant touches them.

How is this different from normal damaged people who do or don't become Radiants? You postulated that child of a Herald would be something like a child of a Returned and that was the reason for Cryptics' attraction to Shallan. Except that Shallan had 4 siblings who were ignored and weren't special. In Warbreaker the whole Idrian royal family has the same abilities derived from their heritage. What is more, there is supposed to be some difficulty with Heralds procreating, but Lady Davar popped out 5(!) kids in fairly quick succession. And why would a Herald chose to have a ton of kids, who'd all die in the blink of an eye from her perspective? Not to mention that a Herald, of all people, would have known that a Radiant might summon their spren as a shardblade and couldn't be easily killed with a knife. There is also the fact that Tien was only a couple years older than Shallan when he began to attract a Cryptic, so I am not sure why she needed to have some special background? Spren picking children to bond may have been the result of Skybreaker persecution, for instance, since it would have been harder to pin crimes that warrant an execution on them. The appearance of Radiant might have been inspired by religious ikons of Chanarach, but I don't see why it should prove any biological connection. Also, didn't Radiant become blonde at some point? From one of your earlier posts: Well, of course Testament escaped the safe - that's what Shallan concluded back when she still thought that it was Pattern. Now that we know about the Seon, it is much more likely that it was the entity that remained in the safe (maybe Lin tried to stick Testament in the same box?) and also what little Shallan equated with her mother's soul. It all got muddled in her mind due to selective amnesia and trauma. Why Davars of all people were involved with all of this is still a mystery, of course. I suspect that there is a connection between them and one of the Unmade, due either to location or to family history. That may have made them interesting to the Ghostbloods and other secret societies. Finally, Taln may or may not not have been responsible for the current Desolation, but I always found the notion that just because he had never broken before Aharietam he never would, to be completely illogical. That's how it works with everything, doesn't it? It wears out until it breaks. Nothing is imprevious. I am also not sure why the Last Desolation needs to be pinned on Shallan, when we know that Venli was already largely involved and that she was manipulated into it at a fairly young age.

My problem with this theory is that Shallan isn't an only child, but one of 5 and the other 4, who are her full siblings, are fairly undistinguished. Nor does it explain why a Herald would have chosen to marry Lin Davar, of all people, and pop out 5 kids in quick succession. The only connection between Chana and Shallan is that both have red hair if the picture is to be trusted, but that's not enough, surely? Concerning "mother's soul" shining in the safe, now that we know about liitle Shallan's interaction with a Seon, this is what it likely alludes to. As to Lady Davar's secrets, I now suspect that she was the first Ghostblood in this family. And that her attack on Shallan was an attempt to force her daughter to demonstrate her abilities for an associate. Veil's experience may not have been completely fictious, after all - Shallan may have been groomed into a Ghostblood operative by her mother.