Millennium

I thought the world the Heralds and Rosharan humanity came from was called Ashyn. That name does get used once or twice (at least in the Kindle edition), but "Alaswha" seems to be more common. Is this an older name for the world or something? An endonym used by the people who lived there, as opposed to Ashyn being an exonym? Have I just missed something?

Brandon stated what it would take for Odium to leave Roshar, and stated that it would be very difficult: leaving some part of his power behind or ripping it out. But he never actually said that Odium didn't do it, one way or another. Is it possible that his visit to Sel is what left him "broken"? This could also explain why he only went to Sel, and hasn't gone hopping from world to world on a Shard-killing rampage since then. He can travel, but it's very difficult (maybe painful?), and so he needs time to recover between trips. Not as much time as it takes for a Splintered Shard to heal, or else he wouldn't bother, but on the order of centuries.

My theory is that spren are creatures of probability. When something is likely to occur, it attracts the spren. In turn, the spren -just by the mere fact of their presence- increase the likelihood that it will occur. They cannot quite increase it to 100% -the deathspren came for Kaladin, but he did not die- but other than that, we don't really know what extent their influence has. Syl seems to think that she causes things. But she's also very new to being a "smart spren," so there is still a lot of room for her to be mistaken: this could be that special breed of ignorance that comes from knowing just enough to think you know everything. I think it's likely that smart spren can exercise some control over their influence, but can they control it to a point where they start causing things? I think that's a lot less certain. Brandon seems to be going for a quantum "feel" here. Why doesn't Dalinar have an honorspren? This may be a form of cosmic irony. The world itself has come to recognize just how harsh this world has become: it's so unlikely for a nobleman (or, perhaps, anyone?) to form truly deep bonds or hold real honor that honorspren are no longer attracted to them. Thus, Dalinar does not have one. But since he now has a man with an honorspren working for him, and spren raise the probability of their chosen concepts (if my theory holds), maybe Syl will be the catalyst that allows an honorspren to find him.

That depends on where he fell. If he were to destroy some important support structure, the building could indeed come down. The thing about Allomantic Pushing is that it's Newtonian. Strictly speaking, you do not apply a force to an object: you apply a force between you and the object. If you and the object were floating in space, you would both move, though whichever of you or the object has less mass will move faster than whichever has more. On a planet, other forces (like friction with the ground) have an effect on how they move, and can have an effect on how each object is affected proportionally. This is important, because it explains the thing about changes in mass. When you tap weight, your Pushing force does not get any stronger, but the objects you Push will "feel more" of the force you apply. This is why you can Push light objects faster than heavy ones: the actual mass of the object doesn't matter as much as how much lighter it is than you, or the reverse. It makes sense that people might think of this as being able to Push more objects, or Push them faster, but in terms of the physics behind it, that's not really how it works. Incidentally, if you are ever sentenced to execution by firing squad, a good last request would be for them to shoot you with guns that are lighter than their bullets.

Yeah, I'm not sure how reliable Shallan would be as a KR-finder. She can see things other people can't, but she can't see what isn't there, and bonded spren aren't shoulder-dragons. But even if that weren't an issue, she'd still have to recognize the bonded spren for what it is. I'm not sure how she'd do that from a single Memory, because Syl still looks like a windspren: a little more complex and detailed than most, perhaps, but I'm not sure that's enough to be especially remarkable. If Syl were to consistently hang around Kaladin in a whole bunch of Memories, that would certainly attract attention, but it would require Shallan to take a lot of Memories and draw a lot of sketches before she even knew there was something to look for. Then again, we've only seen Book 1, and Syl has already gone through quite a lot of transformation. It's possible that over time, she'll start to look even more distinctive than before, and that could clue Shallan in much sooner.

We know that Preservation altered Allomancy and Feruchemy alike, to insert atium into the systems. It's possible that other Shards have meddled in "their" own systems as well, and that what Splintering really does is to return the system to its unaltered state.

I'd imagine that any muscle mass gained from working out while pewter-enhanced would transfer proportionally to the non-enhanced self, but only proportionally. Using the time-honored tradition of numeres ex recto for my numbers here, you might have to bench press 500 pounds while pewter-enhanced to get the same benefits as bench pressing 100 pounds while non-enhanced. In other words, you could do it, but it wouldn't really provide much in the way of extra benefit.

I'd guess that much like Allomancers, Feruchemists have some limited protection from the toxic effects of the metals they use. Eating them would certainly be a bad idea: even Allomancers can be poisoned by metals they ingest but don't burn, and most Feruchemists don't have the burning option. It might even be a bad idea to handle their metalminds unless actively storing or tapping. But as long as they're engaged in Feruchemical stuff, they probably don't have to worry about toxicity.

IIRC, there have been hints that sDNA is at least partly about literal, physical DNA. But even if you have the right physical genes, there might still be a spiritual component that regular genetic engineering cannot transfer. As for the differences in terminology: before the Lord Ruler, there were no Mistborn. All Allomancers were Mistings, and "Allomancy" was the generic term for burning a metal. It was only after the Well of Ascension (and, more to the point, lerasium) was discovered that people needed a new term to describe those who could burn more than one metal, and since "Allomancer" was essentially already taken, the name Mistborn was coined. With Feruchemy, though, it was the reverse: until the death of the Lord Ruler, there were no Ferrings. Any Feruchemist could use all metals (though some metals hadn't been discovered), and so no separate term was needed for them: one Feruchemist was much like another, except for varying specialties. It was only during the time of Harmony, and the subsequent weakening of the feruchemical bloodlines, that a new term was needed for people who could use only one Feruchemical metal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but have we actually seen a Skaze at this point?

This. Shadesmar exists in empty space, it's just very small. The gulf between worlds might be so small in Shadesmar that Hoid can just jump over it: literal worldhopping. One thing I found interesting is that where there is land on Roshar, there are seas in Shadesmar, and vice versa. I would imagine that the Cognitive aspect of a body of water is reflected in Shadesmar as land. That's an interesting counterpoint to the concept of a Shardpool: the Cognitive aspect of a Shard, reflected in the Physical realm as a pool of liquid. But there doesn't seem to be any liquid in Shadesmar that we've seen: the seas are instead made of these small glass-like beads. Why is the Cognitive aspect of a world so large in Shadesmar, when the Cognitive aspects of everything else are so small there? Or are there larger Cognitive aspects of things, and we just haven't seen them yet?

Well, I've got a new question for Brandon now: If you had to place all 16 Shards into a chart, what shape would you find most informative? A square? A wheel? A star? A tesseract? Something else?

Yeah, but they didn't specify which weapons. Lan would slice Tam up into a million pieces, then look down and notice that he'd been shot 16 times before Tam went down. End result: draw.

Many kingdoms have been de facto ruled for a time by the king's advisers, while a mad (or bad) king dithers about looking like a king and not doing much else. It's not the greatest thing for a kingdom's health as a civilization, but it is survivable, and depending on how problematic the actual king is, it can be better than the alternative. Kharbranth is probably set up to look like this. No doubt the advisers believe that it is. For some specific advisers with especially demanding tasks, or responsibilities that Taravangian considers lower-priority than his own projects, it might even be true (though not for the reason they think). Meanwhile, Taravangian manipulates the other advisers from behind the scenes, getting them to do his will while thinking it's all their own ideas.

Last I heard, none of his young-adult works (Alcatraz, Steelheart, Rithmatist, etc) are part of the Cosmere. That might change in the future, but I don't think it has as of now.

Maybe, though the Nightwatcher might not see things that way. It's possible that when she decided to give him that curse, she did so knowing what he would do with his boon.

I believe that Brandon has actually stated that outright: the metals correspond to the Physical aspects. My theory is that we actually have seen it, but wouldn't have noticed, because for most things, their three aspects manifest in the same object. Hold a stone, and you hold not just its Physical aspect, but its Spiritual and Cognitive aspects as well. Part of what makes Shards unique, then, is that their aspects do not manifest in the same object. Instead, they're broken into parts: you might say they've been shattered.

If Kaladin is really the first Knight Radiant in centuries, he would have little choice but to lead the order: he's the only member. But what does that make Szeth and Jasnah, who had their powers long before he did?

The similarity between Hemalurgy and Feruchemy on this is interesting. It seems to imply that stolen Spiritweb-fragments and stored attributes may work along similar lines, despite the obvious differences for access. But thinking back to the "linchpin spike" thing, I wonder if that could be considered a link between Hemalurgy and Forging, which also requires a "linchpin" (in the form of a stamp) for especially complex work.

I don't think there are quite that many, but didn't Brandon once say that there were somewhere around 50?

It does everything but pretty pictures, but that was enough to make the devs revolt, because that's all they want to do these days. The Wii could easily have done everything for an awesome Mistborn game: it would have done it in 480p instead of 1080p, but nothing of value is lost there. But it's an academic point, since third parties basically killed the system.

I think that we may be dealing with center of gravity here, not center of mass. In a uniform gravitational field like Earth's, the differences aren't really significant: in the real world you have to start dealing with non-uniform gravitational fields before the centers of gravity and mass diverge to any significant degree. But we already know that Cosmere-gravity is different from Earth-gravity. The end result is close enough to feel familiar in mundane situations, but the differences can be important when magic is involved. I forget exactly which of the Ars Arcanum sections mentions that Cosmere-gravity has something to do with spiritual bonds between objects, but I think it was the one in The Way of Kings. The ironlines seem to point to the user's heart, as do Pushes and Pulls. That's not the center of mass by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the sort of thing that may have great importance to spiritual bonds. It's certainly common as a literary trope, but the role it has long been thought to play in emotions is not a coincidence: it turns out that they actually are governed by some of the same systems. As such, the heart might also function as a spiritual "center of gravity," which would explain the apparent discrepancy. None of this, in and of itself, completely explains torque. Others here have already floated the possibility of Pushing and Pulling on different points of objects, and that may make sense for objects, but Zane applying torque to himself is another matter. Is it possible that Zane's control is so precise that he can Pull or Push based on specific locations in his heart, rather than simply the center point, and spin himself that way? This doesn't sound like a safe thing to do, but Zane's sanity is suspect enough that he might try it.

We only ever hear of spikes being "placed into" mistwraiths, rather than of them being spiked the way people are. Given mistwraith physiology, it also doesn't really make a lot of sense: mistwraiths don't have a definite shape to map bind-points to. Besides, the kandra's religious devotion to Preservation makes it seem unlikely that they'd want to practice Hemalurgy the way the Lord Ruler does, even if it's necessary for their survival. But this scene with TenSoon may show another way for things to work. Perhaps mistwraiths instinctively self-spike: when you put two spikes into a mistwraith, it reacts by forming organs around them, and those pierced organs create the bind-points necessary for a Blessing to function. As the kandra shapeshifts, its body retains enough instinctive knowledge to keep the Blessing intact, shifting organs and creating new ones as needed so that the Blessing continues to function even in non-human forms.

At least according to the RPG, spikes never decay completely: over time they can become so weak as to be almost useless, but never to the point of becoming ordinary pieces of metal again. It's possible that even a pair of very stale spikes is still strong enough to serve as a Blessing. We never hear of one Kandra having stronger Blessings than another, and in the RPG it's not even possible. It could be that the Lord Ruler only ever sends weak or stale spikes to the kandra, while saving the "best" spikes to make koloss and Inquisitors. From a kandra perspective these spikes would never decay, but it's actually that they just can't decay any further.

Not really, for two reasons. Because cuendillar doesn't deform, it also can't absorb any energy of the blow. The end result is that it transmits more force to the user, and while this is perhaps spread out over a wider area, a helmet isn't all that much larger than a mace head. How much the force gets spread out, I don't know, but the greater force transmitted may be enough to cancel that benefit. Also, we're talking about head injuries, so you have to consider both coup (the initial impact site) and contre-coup (the point opposite the impact site, where the brain bounces back from the initial impact and hits the skull wall again). Contre-coup takes place entirely inside the wearer's head, where cuendillar (or any helmet) can't be of help: cuendillar is no worse than other metals here, but neither is it any better.