Millennium

The problem is that if you can only make one spike per person, then you can only make a number of spike sets equal to, at most, half of the "source" population. That works out if your "recipient" population is only half of that size, but that won't be the case unless Scadrial is in the middle of a population crisis. As the population grows, you'll also need more spike sets to accommodate that growth.

One problem I can see with this is that it requires two spikes. Can Hemalurgy steal again from a spiritweb that has already been damaged by being stolen from in the past, or would it just tear an already-injured spiritweb apart? If the latter is the case, then you've got a case of diminishing returns: it takes two people to grant the abilities to one person. However, there's another problem: population growth. Theoretically you could use spikes from one generation, taken from fresh corpses, to spike the next generation; that would sidestep the diminishing returns problem once you've got a good supply. But that only accounts for a fixed number of spikes. If the population grows, how do you make spikes for them?

It probably wasn't as good a copy as OreSeur could have done. But given that no one had had any contact with Kelsier for two years on account of him being dead, the copy didn't have to be as good. Memories fade, legends start to spring up (particularly when dealing with mythic figures, as Kelsier had set himself up to become), and more and more people would have heard of him without ever actually meeting him. In the face of all that, small inconsistencies could very well pass by unnoticed: a fact Kandra would know and depend on.

Nope; just the bones. Having more of the body on hand lets the Kandra make a better copy, but strictly speaking nothing else is necessary.

I'm with you on this: Kelsier is dead, and it would bother me if that fact were to change. But I wouldn't mind if he became a major player again through other means: for example, if some future character were to go to wherever Kelsier is (somewhere in the Cognitive Realm, perhaps?) and speak with him (his "shade"?) there.

Cadmium has other uses for space travel too. It could be very useful for putting people into something akin to stasis.

One of the big differences between Allomancy and Feruchemy is in how exactly Shardic energy is used: in Allomancy it adds to your power, while in Feruchemy it moves your power around at different rates. If we follow the Savant-as-addict model, then the dependency on Allomancy becomes a tolerance to and dependency upon Shardic energy: you have to use it more often, and in larger amounts, and because of the nature of Allomancy, this makes you more powerful. Translated into the nature of Feruchemy, this would probably involve more drastic swings: you become able to store and tap in larger amounts, but you have to. Your body has built up a tolerance to Shardic energy that means small trickles of power no longer get through, and a dependence on Shardic energy that means you can't stop using Feruchemy without going through withdrawal. The end result would be that feruchemical Savants are forced to live increasingly on the extremes. An iron Ferring Savant might go between being too light to move around effectively and too heavy to walk on most floors. A zinc Ferring Savant might alternate between genius and idiocy. A tin Ferring Savant would have to spend significant time in near-total sensory deprivation, though outside of that they'd match or even beat tin Misting Savants. Some cases, like gold and atium, are likely to kill a Feruchemist who goes too far. Brass is probably another example: alternating between borderline hypothermia and heatstroke can't be good for the body, and eventually those lines will be crossed. I'd be <i>really</i> interested to see what would happen to a nicrosil Ferring Savant. The bottom line is that being a Savant isn't really a good thing. You do get some access to greater power, but the price you pay for that is too high to really be worthwhile. The Feruchemical cycle would make this more drastic. That said, overall I'm pretty skeptical of the Feruchemical Savant concept. Keepers don't seem to be Savants, and if repeatedly storing and tapping the entire accumulated knowledge of the Keepers into copperminds over however many years it takes to train as a Keeper (or to train someone else) isn't enough to make someone a Savant, I'm not sure what could be.

Surgebinding might be able to help with that: the Three Lashings are said to be about pressure as well as gravity. As currently revealed, of course, that's cross-system, but we've got either 14 or 15 alloys of Atium (depending on where, or if, Atium counts in its own cycle of metals) that haven't been explored. It's not outside the realm of plausibility that one of them might deal with pressure too.

Thanks from yet another fan for your wonderful writing. 1) Do Honorblades have the same sort of relationship to Honor (possibly to a much greater degree) that Shardblades do? 2) Is it necessary to touch a Shard -not necessarily to become its Holder, but to at least touch it briefly- to Splinter it? 3) Some dictionaries list two meanings for the word "odium": the feeling of strong hatred, and that which provokes hatred from others. Do both of these apply to the Shard with that name? 4) Does the Shard Odium seek to separate things, much like the Shard Honor seeks to bind things together? 5) Can a Shard tell the difference between itself and its current holder?

Steel Compounding may not be as good in combat as it sounds, because it makes you faster but not tougher. You could swing a club with great speed, but as soon as you hit something that same force gets applied to the club and your un-enhanced arms, shattering the club if you're lucky and your arms if you aren't. That said, it would be great for getting into (and out of) combat situations. Pewter Compounding, on the other hand, sounds incredibly broken; almost like creating a Koloss without the mental drawbacks. Cadmium Compounding could be really useful for divers or people who had to go into oxygen-poor environments: not just letting them hold their breath for longer, but slowing down time (in limited areas) to make that breath last even longer. Duralumin Compounding could make for a scary politician or cult leader. Would Aluminum Compounding even work?

Is it actually possible for a Feruchemist to achieve a savant-like condition? It seems that Allomantic savants essentially become physiologically addicted to levels of power greater than is possible for a human to achieve, but at first glance the Feruchemical cycle would seem to prevent this sort of thing. You can only tap power for so long before you have to start storing it again, which prevents Allomantic-style pewter dragging and analogous tricks with other metals. But how does Compounding affect that? Could you siphon off some of the Compounded power, store it in another metalmind, and then ingest that metalmind to Compound some more? If that were possible, then it might become possible to never go into a pure storage state, and then I could see some sort of Savant-like state. (Incidentally, the RPG hints that such an effect might indeed be possible, but only by using a Nicrosilmind to store the excess investiture, not by using another metalmind of the type you're Compounding. Then again, the same sentence also states that Feruchemists can benefit from Nicrobursts, so perhaps this should be taken with more than a few grains of salt).

This is an interesting idea: that Nightblood is not necessarily an Honorblade as we know it, but shows us what an "Honorblade" might be like if invested with the power of Endowment instead of the power of Honor (or Odium, as some theorize). If so, though, then clearly each Shard must produce something very different from the others; for example, we have no indication that Honorblades think, but Nightblood clearly does. If we extend this a little further, might Hemalurgic spikes be considered a sort of "Ruinblade" (though the nature of their magic means that they're not particularly useful as weapons)? What might a "Preservationblade" be like, and could it be related to Lerasium's "other effect"? With Aona and Skai gone, it would seem that we don't have anything on which to base a Devotionblade or Dominionblade, or could the Splinters of these Shards be used to similar effect?

That's true if the only thing Shards need a Holder for is to provide a mind. Are we sure that that's the only thing Shardholders do for their Shards?

At this point, it's not clear exactly what Adonalsium was. It might not have been a thing that had a holder. But I admit that ever since finally reading Liar of Partinel, I've been forced to wonder something similar: if it might take place so early in the Cosmere that Adonalsium as we know it didn't yet exist, and if it might end with the character we now call "Hoid" acting as something like a Shardholder for Adonalsium itself. At some later date, probably thousands of years later, Rayse and Bavadin either convinced Hoid to share the power only to betray him later, or else they outright stole it from him and something went wrong from even their perspective; however it happened, Adonalsium was Shattered. There's no supporting evidence for this: it's just speculation on my part. But it would explain the grudges Hoid holds (betrayal and/or theft on a cosmic scale; note that this assumes he wrote The Letter), why he was at the Shattering of Adonalsium but didn't become a Shardholder (he was at the center of the blast), why he hasn't lived for the entire span of years that the Cosmere novels cover (as the predecessor to the Shardholders his body was probably not intact while he held Adonalsium), but also why he's still lived many more years than a human should (he's like an uber-Sliver). IIRC, Brandon said outright once that Hoid isn't Adonalsium, but this explanation doesn't contradict that. He isn't Adonalsium, but he was Adonalsium.

I'm not entirely certain that they're mutually exclusive. We don't know what happened to the Heralds after they left; it's possible that those who were tortured might have found themselves forced to become the torturers.

Has anyone tried translating the chapter icons from the books?

A pewter/iron Twinborn who had gone savant in pewter might be able to store enough weight and gain enough strength to run a short distance across the surface of water, the way a basilisk lizard does. But the math on this seriously stretches the limits of both Allomantic pewter and Feruchemical iron -if a normal human's strength-to-mass ratio is 1, you'd have to get it to about 50- so it may just plain be beyond one or the other. This also doesn't take into account air resistance, which at that size and mass may be too much to overcome. Also, this isn't really walking on water. It's a dead sprint, and you wouldn't be able to keep it up for more than a few seconds before starting to sink: you might be able to cross a river, but you couldn't stand on the sea.

Here's a thought: is it possible that this is from Odium's perspective, referring to the Splintering of Honor? Shards seem to have something like a mind behind them -at the very least, some force to power its intent- but the level of actual thought and awareness is still subject to question. They may very well seem like newborn babies to someone with more complex thought patterns, like an adult human (or, on a much higher level, a Shardbearer). Thus, Honor -not Tanavast, who is probably already dead by this point, but the actual shard Honor- could be "the suckling child." What does it mean to Splinter a Shard? We know it's possible to kill a Shardholder without doing that. It seems likely that Splintering would be traumatic enough to kill a Shardholder who is not already dead, but is this even possible? Odium doesn't seem the sort to confront other Shardholders directly unless absolutely necessary, but thus far he's killed the holder of every Shard he's Splintered, so perhaps it is necessary. What if the way to Splinter a Shard were simply for its holder to command it to Splinter? This would certainly necessitate killing any existing Shardholder first. You would then have to pick up the Shard briefly without bonding to it -another thing that we know is possible- and this could be "holding the child in my hands, a knife at his throat." People don't usually commit atrocities without perceiving a reason to do so (even if, from an outsider's perspective, that reason is seldom if ever a good one). Has Rayse convinced himself, possibly under Odium's influence, that this is for the good of the cosmere? Or is he perhaps a kind of solipsist, believing that he (and Odium?) are the only things that truly exist, or are at least the only things that matter? Either line of thinking could easily lead a person to "know" that "all who live" deem this course of action necessary. It is interesting that Shards are never spoken of as destroyed, but "Splintered". It implies that they are not truly gone, but that their power is dispersed. If we take blood to be a metaphor for power in this case, then it is indeed "spilled upon the ground, over (Rayse's) hands," though it does lead to a curious inconsistency where a Shard whose "blood" is spilled still does not truly die. Metaphors, by their nature, can only be stretched so far. And lastly, there is the matter of "giving us further breath to draw." It is possible that this is about survival: Odium may think the other Shardholders wish to kill him, and since his name can be taken to mean "that which should be hated," this is might not be the most unreasonable thing to fear. By striking at them first, he hopes to survive: thus, by their deaths, he gains further breath to draw. But he also seeks to set himself apart from the rest of the cosmere by being the only entity at his level of power: as such, every Shard he defeats puts him further away from the rest oc the cosmere. That could be said to give him more breathing room: "more breath to draw".

He claims at one point that Hoid isn't his real name either, but the name of "someone (he) should have loved." I suspect that this person may still be alive, and may even be the intended recipient of The Letter. EDIT: Or not. That's what I get for not finding the Liar of Partinel stuff online. Oh well.

There's more to the way Hemalurgy messes with your head than just letting Ruin in, though. Quite apart from that, some kinds of spikes -for example, the ones used to make Koloss- are worse for the psyche than others. Depending on what type of spike Miles has -I forget exactly which would be necessary- he might be hearing very different voices from Sazed's, not because anyone is trying to contact him but just because he's going insane. His habitual use of allomantic gold could very well make things worse.

Didn't he say there was going to be another novel (perhaps series?) set on another world in the same solar system as Roshar?

I was thinking that Honor could fit as the counterpart to Odium: it binds things together, while Odium seems to drive things apart. It doesn't go out of its way to break things apart -that's Ruin's territory- but it's not averse to doing that, and war is a spectacular way to do both. We've generally been thinking of the word "odium" as meaning "hate": even in TWoK, that's how Kaladin thinks of it. It can indeed mean this, but there's a second meaning: that which provokes hatred, or perhaps more to the point, that which should be hated. This second meaning is where the word "odious" comes from. If honor is taken to mean that which should be respected and/or followed, then it could indeed be said to be the opposite of odium. The big weakness I see in this theory is the fact that Odium isn't native to Roshar. Although unpaired Shards (as Honor and Cultivation seem to be) can inhabit the same world, it seems far less likely that paired Shards would wind up on different worlds. Of course, if Odium is indeed that which drives things apart, then if any paired Shard were to start apart from its opposite, it would be him. But also worth noting is that Brandon hasn't said anything similar about Honor/Tanavast yet: perhaps it wasn't native to Roshar either, and it began with Odium on a world long since abandoned (and probably broken by Odium's wars).

In Stormlight, although we think of the Three Lashings in terms of gravity, the TWoK Ars Arcanum seems to state that it's actually a matter of spiritual bonds between objects. In particular, the Reverse Lashing gives an object a gravitational pull, which allows the object to create spiritual bonds with the objects around it. The catch is that things on the ground are bonded so much more strongly with the planet that Reverse Lashings don't pull such objects very well: it's much easier to affect objects in flight. In Mistborn, Cadmium and Bendalloy time bubbles are said to be immobile once created, but once again it's not really what it seems. They do move, but they move with the planet they're created on. If gravity is a kind of spiritual bond, and planets have strong spiritual bonds, then this makes a kind of sense: the bubble bonds to the planet. So, if you put a Reverse Lashing on a spaceship (allowing it to create spiritual bonds, and giving it "artificial" gravity as a bonus) and then someone on the ship put up a time bubble, would the bubble move with the ship?

Not really a "common grouping," per se, but perhaps worth noting is that on the Lerasium symbol, and only the Lerasium symbol, one of the spikes is bent. A bit of a jab at Hemalurgy (or its master), perhaps?

Wouldn't you just fall out of the bubble? Your own perception of time doesn't change, and the bubble's position is more or less fixed (relative to the surface of the planet, anyway). Though I guess you could buy some time for rescuers to put something under the bubble that could catch you as you fell out, before you fell too far.