Observer

Welcome to the 17th Shard! If you haven't been introduced to the Cosmere already, I highly recommend you take a look at this thread here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/491-cosmere-101/ As a quick rundown, all of Brandon's books (Most actually, but whatever) take place in a shared universe, ruled over by sixteen pieces of crazy power called Adonalsium. The thread should cover things better than I can. Feel free to peruse the boards, ask questions, and have fun! Also, don't accept spikes or cookies from the admins under any circumstances. You do not need to see how sharp or how tasty they are.

I'll edit my post as I go to make it be more helpful instead of kind of nitpicky and idiotic, but I'm pretty sure Leras (Preservation) was a guy. It seems like the Shards split into very precise and almost totally even pieces totally to sixteen, likely having something to do with Adonalsium's cognitive influences. But since that's just errant speculation, I'll say it this way: Whatever caused there to be exactly sixteen pieces of shardic power also has a place in shards themselves and in their nature. In Scardial, the humber sixteen, as well as its disected pieces, show up in nature a whole bunch, not just limiting itself to the metals, likely because practically everything on Scadrial bears the mark of Shardic influence. It's just a number than seems to happen whenever they're around. Likewise, there are ten major shardworlds in the cosmere, and for some reason the Shards keep on leaning towards that number. Nalthis, Roshar, and possibly Sel bear the Shardworld number all throuhout their natures. I think it has more to do with Adonalsium's remaining cognitive influences than it does with the Shards themselves.

Seems calling people by their last name is a sign of respect towards their status. Dalinar's first name being used seems to either be disrespect, which I doubt, or, as stated above, because they can't tall him by the name of the King's family.

Happy first upvote! This Legion of puns is pretty Classy, but then again, what did we Aspect? Edit:

Sell, we're probably saving knowledge of that for either Dalinar or Lift memories.

I think WoB said that he wasn't being truthful there. I can see this happening, since losing the head would disconnect you from your source of gold, and screw you over. The solution is, of course, to implant gold metalminds into your skull, which should be enough to regrow at least the vital organs in a pinch.

It was probably so far on the awful side of the scale that you'd need nearly fifty Lashings on the other side to Lift it back up to the awesome side again.

Buy. I thought they would be from the moment they were introduced, they're Checkhov's guns loaded and ready, safety switches off. Kaladin's slave brand is going to keep being important and annoying for him, causing all sorts of problems until it gets healed.

I'm reasonably sure that Hoid could shave off a piece of Lerasium and eat it for weaker mistborn powers, and then use the rest of it as maybe a tiny little spike as well as a feruchemical metalmind. I'm just wondering if he hasn't found some way to duplicate the effect it has using Investure from other sources.

Okay you just won the internet.

You want your arm back? There's a few spren that can give you a hand with that.

When you watch Star Wars and tell the person next to you how much cooler Shardblades are compared to lightsabers.

Sell, let's save that for the next trilogy. When Dalinar's book rolls around, it won't tell us the name of Shshshshsh until the final flashback, and it will be a crazy revelation because it's somebody important that we know.

It wouldn't be hard to partially awaken a lot of things to give most of it away. Divine breaths won't be used up in awakening IIRC, and he'd just have to be quick about getting a few more later on. Also, this title is visible from the front page. I know I'm basically being "that guy" for the fourth time this week and I'm guessing it's me being the problem here, but could you make the title less spoilery? Vasher being Kalad is a pretty big revelation.

Alright, I guess tone carries poorly through text, so I could be wrong, but I'm getting a rather rudely sarcastic tone from this. No need to get so snippy. I won't bother going into Kaladanst. Yes, he could just go up and fix his problems, but he was paranoid and broken, and honestly taking the route most obvious to the omniscient reader was never a realistically likely thing for him to do. We've said this all before, so I won't go into it. Moving on to the king for a bit, Honor is not the only Shard on this planet. Yes, Elhokar isn't a perfect king. He's a vacuum, which makes him neither good nor bad for the most part, as he his pushed around more or less equally by both sides. Cultivation is still on this planet to some extent, and I'm reasonably sure that he can grow. But he's kind of a difficult topic to work with, since we know a surprisingly small amount about his exact situations past present and future. Instead, Dalinar. His Destination is to have a truly united Alethkar, get revenge on Sadeas, and possibly to lead the KR. As a quick sidenote, yes, the KR believe that saving ten is not worth killing one. So, by extention, avenging one at the cost of a million isn't worth it either. The war on the Plains is worthless. What else is new? With this in mind, getting revenge and pulling justice on Sadeas IS NOT worth the potential deaths it would cause in trying to bring him to justice, and certainly not worth ruining the shaky united nature Alethkar already has and turning it into a bloody civil war. A quiet assassination of Sadeas on Dalinar's part would also be a problem. There's another reason why Dalinar didn't just kill him the instant he had a chance. It's not only illegal and would screw him over, but if Sadeas died with his betrayal of Dalinar still fresh in everybody's minds, they'll all turn right at Dalinar and ask him what the heck he was thinking, and yes we all know it was you. Another decision that would shatter Alethkar, breaking the oath of uniting them, killing a bunch of people, just to bring Sadeas to "justice", an endgoal, not a journey, and not a very honorable one at that. Whatever, I'm rambling here. Point is: Uniting people isn't a bad oath, and sounds like a Bondsmith thing. Civil war isn't in line with the first ideal, since it kills a whole bunch of innocent people just to bring a single guy to justice, and, as a parting note of potential agreement, I'll say that we should EXPECT characters to still be screwed up on some levels. We have eight enormous tomes to go. If people weren't still wrong about a few things, we'd be done already.

Considering his power, it's unlikely he has breaths for anything other than convenience and whatever other reason he's collecting them. This will not, however, stop me from sometimes believing that he dumped fifty-thousand breaths into his clothing and told it to protect him, and that it's now so stupidly invested that it can block shardblades.

Nice ideas! I agree with your opinion on Sadeas, the guy had it coming after all of that. Same goes for Kaladangst, but not only was that basically inevitable in a meta sense, but Kaladin has serious problems and him sitting down and taking things calmly is beyond him most of the time, whether or not it would help. But enough of that. Dalinar has more oaths to swear, I think that's what we have here. I agree that he is probably heaping a little too much on himself instead of passing it along to the others, and I agree that he seems to still be taking shortcuts. However, I don't think this is the fault of any of his oaths. He just has part of the picture, like Kaladin wondering if it's okay to just not protect the king. On that note, the guy is trying to be a good king, and even if he's sucking at it, there aren't a whole lot of other people who can rule, and IDK how abdicating the throne works with the Alethi. What the king needs is a firmer hand, which is basically what's being tried now. Somebody to keep him from being a stone-cold retarded idiot. In the name of Cultivation, I'm sure he can be allowed to grow. The Dawnsingers thing seems fair enough, though we don't know a whole lot there, and yes, none of this is nearly as well articulated as your post, sorry for the textblock, I'll shut up now.

Because if you pull somebody apart piece by piece, bloody chunk by bloody chunk and all that jazz, odds are you won't get the same thing when you put Humpty back together again. Depending on what Adonalsium was like when it was around, Hoid's point could either be for or against its reassembly. I honestly can't help but wonder if every member of the Seventeenth Shard doesn't want to throw themselves in, make a mind strong enough to resist being molded. No matter what, their name has a much deeper meaning to it. Solid theory, I like it.

Yeah, as much as I love Sazed, I don't think that he'd be able to hold back something like Odium for a variety of reasons, from being new to the Cosmere, to the efforts of shardic travel. The response letter is pretty good indication that it was Honor who trapped Odium there, and I have no reason to doubt it. Also, less spoiler-y title maybe? Not everybody who enters the forum knows about Harmony.

Well, crap. I could have sworn they were the same person :/

I'm pretty sure plate and blade are totally different things with very little in common. Plate runs off of gemstones, and unlike a blade is capable of breaking. It's either something Cultivation made with time, or it's actually man's own invention.

A slight interruption, but remember the line about how easy it is to underestimate the average man? If, and I do consider it an if after all this, his intelligence and compassion are indeed opposed, he would need a smart day to arrange things, a dumber day to put everything emotional in order, and then an average day where he can pull it all together, or something like that. Smart Vargo either knows something he isn't telling us, or he's doing everything in a pointlessly hard manner thanks to a still-present inability to understand people.

He's a lot like the Lord Ruler, except he's on the wrong Shardworld if he's hoping to be considered right. If he can get all the squabbling, retarded nations under one "benevolent" banner, he can find a way to survive the desolation of all desolations. He doesn't particularly care who dies, because in the long run it doesn't matter at all.

Nice work Tempus! I don't have much else to add, other than to point out that the Shin have their own stone-related gods that they rely on to warn them of desolations. It's what got Szeth named Truthless IIRC.

Shardplate is undoubtedly a totally different animal. Shardplate cracks and breaks if you hit it enough times. Shardblades are expressly mentioned as being completely indestructible. I'll take Pengwin_Lord's theory most likely.