Nepene

Name. Alfie. Gender. Male. Age. 2 years. Species. Feline. Breed. Mixed, probably. Unknown. Description. Red brown fur with black stripes, very thick coat which is soft and warm to the touch, a fierce look in his golden eyes. A thick bushy tail which remains thick and furry to the end and medium sized paws. Spikes. The usual 8. Above that, he has spikes for allomatic powers with zinc, brass, steel, tin, and electrum. Savant with electrum, able to see approximately one hour into the future and commune with future self. Made to control crowds and influence populations for any politicians who had a lot of cash and not enough votes. Zinc and brass to enflame and soothe crowds, steel to push metal, tin to see and hear everything, and electrum so he can get information before he hears it from the crowd. Personality. Very lazy, very satisfied with himself. Sees himself as much more important than anyone else because he is truly an amazing cat. He loves manipulating people to get what he wants because he deserves it and his slightest touch makes people happy so why not? Low tolerance for pain, not very into violence or conflicts. He has always got what he needed through friendship and manipulation and has a rather dark history with any sort of fights and so would prefer to avoid them. He doesn't trust anyone and believes all people will abandon him eventually (with reasonable cause from his history) and so seeks to get whatever he can out of a situation and be ready to leave and run at any time. He has a habit of hanging around food places begging for food and nuzzling against people's hands. He tends to sleep very erratically, and is normally slightly on edge. Skills. Excellent diplomat. Very good at convincing others to do what he wants. Can mouth read perfectly, can read emotions excellently. Proficient with all available metals. Very flashy and fashionable room. Extremely skilled gambler. Terrible fighter, doesn't like hurting people. Poor financer. Spends any wealth or food as soon as anything comes up. Low agility/sense of balance. Low pain tolerance. Really did not like being spiked. Poor reputation among cats. History. A long time ago he was a happy house cat. He would nuzzle, kiss and play with his outland family. He knew all the best routes and places to play in their little abode. They were not an especially rich family, but they were a happy and quite good family. Their moral purity was not that helpful when a very dangerous and murderous criminal organisation decided to take whatever they had. That family paid the local officials off, paid everyone to look the other way and sent a trained team of psychopaths in to destroy and kill. Only Alfie survived, running away. He hit the road and found his way to Elendel. After that he survived on the streets, scrounging, mewing, and avoiding anyone dangerous. He pissed off a lot of cats, betraying many when he felt worried or insecure. Until a researcher found him purring for food outside their door...

You are right that the people are afraid of them due to them being socially isolated, a massive transnational organization, they violate Vorin gender roles as with Kaladin. The thing is, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. I imagine being a servant of Odium would make you socially isolated from mainstream society, good at unifying as hate is a powerful unifier, and distrustful of Vorinist, aka Honor, religion. I think it quite unlikely that there is no magical component to Stormwardens. They are, after all, peering into the actions of the Highstorm, which is likely from the gods. The gods are magical sentient beings (or shattered sentient beings) and so predicting their whims would be difficult to do without magic. And people do repeatedly say Stormwardens are predicting the future, that may well be foreshadowing.

My name originates from the Edgar Allan Poe poem, the raven. I was in a rather poor mood from a long in the past breakup with a lovely lady and was reading online quotes and poetry to relieve my poor mood. At the same time I was trying to think up a new name for an irc chat because xchat asks for 3, and I at the time only had two. "Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!" This line appealed to me, respite from memories, and so I made a name based on Nepenthe, the "drug of forgetfulness".

Who are the Stormwardens? Beings who can predict the future of the Storm with maths. Kaladin's father can do whatever they do. The storms are widely believed to be manifestations of the Gods in some way or form. They interpret the Almighty's will. At least one stormwarden is aiding opposition against Ghostbloods. The Ghostbloods are trying to kill Jasnah, possibly due to her research on Voidbringers. They use Glyphs, which you can supposedly use to commune with the Almighty by burning them, which cover the Radiant Shardplates. Glyphs which you see on the front cover as the essences of Surgebinding. Aka, things which probably have magical and religious properties. Voidbinding is centered around divining the future according to Vorinism. Based on all this, I would guess that the Stormwardens are agents of a God, probably Odium but potentially Cultivation who Honor notes is good at prophesies. Cultivation is splintered so she's not a major candidate in my mind. If they are of Odium they may be his priests, there to bring about the final desolation and do whatever things need to be done. In book 2 we should watch them carefully, as most people do- they are regarded as suspicious by most as they predict the future, but used because they are so useful. They may currently be using the power for good purposes, but you should not trust them. Their books of glyphs may allow communion with Odium, similar to how people burn symbols to send their symbol's Souls to the Almighty or how people used metal piercing in Mistborn to commune with Ruin. Those with an appropriate sDNA may be able to do voidbinding using the glyphs contained within to guide them or aid them. Kaladin's father could do the maths of Stormwardens, and so Kaladin may have inherited his sDNA from him.

He does not say at any point that he couldn't figure anything out about the other shards. He has said he doesn't know what Adonalsium was. He implies he can sense other shards on other worlds, which is rather bad for any Shard trying to hide. Cultivation likely powers Fabrials. Honor likely powers Surgebinding. Odium likely powers the ten levels of Voidbringing. Ars Arcanum had this to say about Old Magic. "Perhaps the Old Magic fits into those, though I am beginning to suspect that it is something entirely different." That very curious comment from the Ars Arcanum makes me wonder if it is powered by a fourth shard. The curses don't seem hateful, many are quite benign. Edit. Where would I hide? Somewhere without any other shards, or any major shardic influence. I wouldn't hope to evade Odium, just try to go somewhere irrelevant. My main concern would be to not interact with any other Shards and hope whatever treaty or agreement I had with Odium lasted. I imagine teleporting to another world would be a galaxyshattering event and would notify everyone where I was.

Odium can probably will himself anywhere in the universe as Brandon has said Harmony could, being in a different solar system is not a great defense against him.

The one who just wants to hide may be the silence of the divine shard. It is silent and divine. I vaguely remembered he said it was a disease based magic, so it may have an Intent like pain or sacrifice. Both very 'man is god' attributes, what with Jesus doing all that. SoD shard may have hid after Odium came and an aspect of it called the Nightwatcher may be all that remains. Unlike most godly magics it is localized in one being as SoD left. http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=692#11 Expanse of the broken skies. It is mentioned that rock souls of the gods fell in TES. Perhaps the Expanse of the Broken Skies is Sel. The gods broke up and that did something to travel. http://coppermind.net/wiki/File:Shadesmar_%28TWoK%29.jpg

If I was to guess, being made to resist damage increases the efficiency of resisting Shardblade strikes. More bang for your buck. Even a soul is capable of resisting pushing by allomancy, despite it not being designed to resist allomancy. A shard might well be able to ignore shardblades. Shardblades are seriously powerful so it takes a lot of metaphorical bucks to resist them.

10 billion is the most powerful. You can hire people to do magic for you. Short of that, Feruchemy is the most powerful. It allows you to enhance yourself in many non combat ways, for example becoming smarter, having perfect memory, being faster and stronger, being luckier. You could win the olympics, win any game of chance, be charismatic. All this just at the cost of acquiring some metal once. In certain circumstances surgebinding could be more useful. The transformation surgebinding magic in particular allows you to make food or cure people of deadly diseases. Legion transformations can be very useful to you. Behind that, non transformation surgebindings, allomancy, being twinborn, being returned, and 10000 breaths. They are useful in certain circumstances. A shardblade or shardplate on its own isn't that effective. Neither is a half shard, or a sword. Having a gun is more effective than any of these. Being Brandon Sanderson is costly, in that you have to spend many of your early years not getting published and working a crappy job. It's good once you get the payoff, but not so good until then. He is an excellent author and I am happy to let him do all the hard work for us.

Brandon strongly implied Wyrn was a splinter there with temporal abilities, and also directly says he can see into the future here. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/90/elantris-Chapter-62-1 Aka, Brandon has stated directly that Wyrn can see, limitedly, into the actual future. The book strongly implied, as Brandon said, that Wyrn had temporal magics. As a Splinter he is likely quite limited in his power. You note his many failures quite accurately. Ah yeah. I apologize for the misunderstanding. I was suggesting that the Skaze may exists there and may have taught some magics to the Bloodsealers (as they may have taught the monks). The actual source of power would of course be the powers of creation and Dominion. Their existence there is not that important to my theory though, it's simply something someone could ask Brandon sometime. What do you think of Bloodsealing being from Dominion?

Scadrial magics are fairly low powered compared to Roshar as Brandon said, and a metal mind is not that heavily invested. For example, Marsh is able to push Sazed's metalminds at the end of Mistborn book 2. A metal mind probably wouldn't be able to resist damage, even fully charged.

Brandon Sanderson disagrees. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/01/your-questions-for-brandon-sanderson-answered I know it’s a RAFO, but how the eff did Wyrn see into the future? That seems above even a Shardholder’s abilities! I bet that sucker’s tapping into the Shadesmar. But I digress... 
Ha, wow, that is indeed a RAFO. Note that we have seen temporal abilities in the Cosmere before. Most of the time these are related directly to the pure essence of a Shard or to a Splinter. I never believed Seons and Skaze were the sources of any magic systems, and my theory is not dependent on them being so. I was, at most, suggesting they may be knowledgeable about the magic (e.g. knowing that Elantrians are not indestructible) and may be present in a certain region. I'm not aware of Brandon stating they stay in Fjorden, but sure. If you wish I can rephrase it. I believe that based on the earlier noted evidence, bloodsealing looks more like Dominion based magic. It is similar to how the monks bend their bones to gain powers. It involves control over one's own body. It is thus separate but similar to forging.

I was working under the assumption that the Seons and the Skaze are intimately connected to the magic system somehow, and thus suggesting that the bloodsealers's magics were like forging, but they came from Dominion, perhaps due to the influence of Skaze in the Bloodsealer swamps. Bloodsealers control bones, as with the Derethi monks, and I think that is a large coincidence that is unlikely to be coincidental. The normal forging we see would be the magics of Devotion. With regards to Dominion over the dead, I was referring to the Bloodsealer controlling the dead with magic. Edit. Wyrn has a prophesy. That suggests he is a splinter at least, and that Jaddeth's religion has a real shard splintered around them.

I can imagine some sort of situation similar to the Mistborn scenario that would add a fun twist. Perhaps the Parshendi had prophesies from Cultivation warning against a Desolution. Odium may have twisted them slightly, as Ruin did, to try and stop them from reviving the knights radiant e.g. "When the honored king breaks the black ball the black gods will return and the knights will return" from "When the honored king breaks the black ball the knights will return and stop the beginning black gods". Whatever Gavilar was doing may have been for the greater good, contrary to what the Pashendi believe.

Hoid was there when Adonaslium shattered and was on the same world for a while after. It's quite likely that people on that world, Yolen, were the original shardholders. He likely knew some of them, edit. some by reputation some personally. Corrected, as I was unclear.

We know that Fjorden magics involve twisting bones. It may well be that the skeleton magic is a manifestation of the Skaze. He has dominion over the dead. It is a similar magic but with a very different Intent. Forging involves you being so devoted to an item's history you understand it intimately and can change it to make it better. Dominion involves sacrifices and blood and control over the human body.

Most of the Heralds are still around. Brandon said we saw five, i believe. He may be aware of such, and so know that official Vorin theology is incorrect.

He does talk about it a bit. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/146/mistborn-Chapter-Twenty-Three http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=690 So he had ideas from his past, some sort of thoughts on which metals were more or less common or significant, stuff like that. Importantly, aluminum, cadmium, gold, and chromium were rare metals and so it was quite feasible for most people to have not heard of them. This meant he could use them as story elements. Aluminium and Duralumin were important hidden metals that only inquisitors knew about them and so they could surprise Vin, and later Vin could surprise people with Duralumin pushes, Gold and Electrum were rare enough that Skaa and most nobles weren't aware of Electrum, allowing Vin to use Electrum as a atium counter. Cadmium is rare enough to not appear until the alloy of law series. Chromium is rare enough to be a magical metal with super awesome properties for the second series.

You could probably make a carpet walk to earth, but as far as I am aware they can't fly. They adopt humanoid forms from the cognitive archetypes stored in the spiritual realm or from their own memories of being human, not avian forms. Plus the physics of flying would be rather difficult without a huge carpet.

Real hearts would presumably be internal, and so it would be hard to affect them as they would be protected by the people's spirits. Spirits resist magic to some degree, as in Mistborn.

I can imagine some potential uses for forging. Perhaps a stamp to get you dressed in the morning? A stamp to make it so you wiped your bum after using the toilet? Burn atium to get the highscore on pacman. Use shardarmor to jumpstart a car. Use illusions from elantris magic rather than getting dressed. Use a weak reverse lashing to knead dough.

I remember that the voidbringers could store stormlight perfectly with no loss. I would assume that Shardplates, being a creation of Honor, have the same property and can eternally store some stormlight.

It may well just be variants of the normal abilities, just as atium alloys with allomancy just produce time magic effects. For example, atium pewter alloys might let you store your strength from the future. Or even, the strength of someone else's future.

It would be an excellent strategy if the shardbearers could unite. All of the shardbearers together could easily defeat any immediate opposition or escape from a Pashendi army. One on its own could easily be overwhelmed.

I know about the White Sand and Aether thing, yeah. I have emailed him about that. One day I hope he replied. As you have said, Dragonsteel will likely remain beyond me.