StanLemon

Technically he likely did know about Chromium, Nicrosil, Cadmium, and Bendalloy. We have several WoB implying that he does and I can't think of any that say he didn't. As far as mobility goes, Gravitation would give better mobility yes but Elsecallers can't compare to Steelrunning. And you think TLR wouldn't do guerrilla tactics against them? In fact it would be more beneficial for him to do so than them. He has so many ways he could get past their defenses and destroy their Stormlight reserves which would cripple the Radiants

And Radiants need Stormlight, lot easier to find new metal than a new source of Stormlight. Your argument is very flawed They are only undying in the most recent Desolation. Before the Everstorm when they die they go back to Braize and are trapped their until a Herald breaks and even then they need the bodies of Singers to manifest.

I myself am sick of the whole hate on Moash, he is by far the most tortured and least evil of of the antagonists. People who hate on him ignore major aspects of his character development and the constant betrayal Moash felt from his perspective. It's emotion and hatred without thought, one could say that the hate Moash crowd are under Odium's thrall.

The fact that the Desolations were even a problem is one of my big strikes against the Radiants. With so many Radiants plus the worlds soldiers (admittedly at a low tech level) they still nearly got wiped out by the end of EVERY SINGLE DESOLATION and it was common for Heralds to to die during them too. Based on what we've seen so far in this current Desolation (which is arguably worse than any previous one because of the Everstorm, constantly returning Fuzed, lack of Heralds, and barely existent Radiants) plus from the visions that we saw with Dalinar I don't see why Scadrial couldn't beat them. They were fighting monsters and magic users yes but so far we haven't seen them fight anything that Scadrial couldn't have handled and yet the Radiants constantly barely survived.

Basically it sums up that any scenario that The Lord Ruler is in play is a win for Scadrial against...well...just about anyone. The fight gets a lot more even if he stays in Luthadel during this fight though. But Scadrial has waves after waves of soldiers and Koloss to send so I'm not sure who would win. The Radiants would have an overwhelming advantage individually but against those numbers it would probably depend on how much Stormlight they had and if "living" plate regenerates faster than "dead" plate.

I'm happy I'm not the only one who has the idea that Odium's Intent can be interpreted this way. I still think that Rayse's personality has more to do with why Odium's Intent is Odium than the Intent itself. I have a post about it here Back on topic, if I were holding Ruin it would be Entropy. And hopefully it would be more along the lines of Death from the Sandman comics than Ati.

If they survived. And even then it would use a decent amount of Stormlight I imagine. A resource that depletes even when they are not using it. It doesn't matter if they see him from a mile away. He can move faster enough that a casual pace is still considered faster than the speed of sound which by the way would still be considerably faster than the Windrunners. This is a big assumption on the Truthwatchers, neither of their Surges as far as we know would make it immediately obvious to them that someone was a Kandra. Also, they likely would bring servants, armies need more than soldiers. A couple issues here, while you are right that we don't know what a full 5 Ideal Radiant will be like, but your assumption on how many there would be is greatly exaggerated. So far only Nale and maybe a couple of other Skybreakers over the course of millennia have achieved it so I doubt it's been achieved by more than a dozen people at any given time when you put all the Orders together. Additionally, your comment on Dalinar is not likely something that was common for Bondsmiths to be able to do as it's something that took everyone, including Odium who know Dalinar was an Bondsmith and what Bondsmiths could do, by surprise and Odium even said that it was impossible. I'll admit maybe he thought it was impossible because Honor was dead but I think it's more likely a trait unique to Dalinar. As far as how strong the Radiants are, people seem to overestimate them. They live on a planet with only three quarters the gravity of Scadrial so there feats of strength would be easier on Roshar than many other worlds. And Steel Inquisitors with their refined Steel/Iron sense could shoot tiny pieces of metal through eyeslits forcing the Radiant to use all their Stormlight to heal. Plus Atium would warn them of any dangers. We haven't really seen Division in play to ascertain what it can and can't do yet. Additionally, Inquisitors could use Brass/Zinc to mess with a Radiant's emotions which would have stronger effects on how well a Radiant would be able to fight than most people consider Think about just how powerful Vin was when she was absorbing the mists. She casually destroyed a city. Rashek is likely of comparable strength. He was able to Sooth tens of thousands of people strongly enough that it took burning Copper or having your emotions Rioted (which Vin described as like banging against a wall) to be able to not be crushed by the despair. He could do that to the entire force of Radiants and likely Riot them with equal strength to cause chaos in their ranks. His other Allomantic abilities are all likely of comparable strength. Then on top of all that he has his Compounding. The Lord Ruler along with Nightblood are considered the most powerful non Shards in the Cosmere for a reason.

Bit late on this but here are my thoughts. All Scadrian magic requires fairly little in the way of Intention. I think Feruchemy is like Allomancy in this regard when it comes to sleep. When unconscious Mistborn and Pewterarms can burn pewter as needed because the unconscious mind is providing the Intention needed to use it to survive. I don't see why a Feruchemists unconscious mind couldn't do the same with Traits that it will need to survive. I think that if unconscious a Feruchemist would be able to tap, albeit slowly probably, just enough stored Traits to keep it going.

Stick: Be Fire

As a Utahn who isn't LDS but was raised in the culture, I can say that that is pretty accurate. I personally enjoyed it the first time I read it, though the beginning of the book was fairly slow it wasn't too bad. Vivenna's whole arch is about how she was a bit self righteous and moving past that which I figured was going to be the case from the start of the book so I didn't really have issue with her parts except that it barely felt like they were advancing the plot at first. Overall I think the biggest flaw is that their is too much build up and then the climax passes too quickly. Other than that, I love the setting and concepts it introduces into the Cosmere. Most characters are understandable and generally enjoyable, and the way it twists the themes of Mistborn was nice as well. Lastly, awakening has become my one of my three favorite magic systems.

Sandlings just don't make sense. If water would just melt them then they would avoid and fear humans rather than try to eat them. I like this theory as an explanation for why they behave the way they do.

Really liking the Sandling theory, it explains the inconsistency pretty well. Water seems to be the key to Taldain magic to some extent.

Savantism occurs because of a regular and constant influx of investiture right? I think the reason Feruchemy wasn't part of his original outline is because of the storing then tapping aspect so it would never be a constant infusion into your spiritweb of that traits investiture. But with compounding you can tap nearly continuously thus constantly have an infusion of that trait's investiture into your system so following the logic we know of how savantism works then yes it should be possible. On the other hand, there is this. This however was a statement he made before he decided that he was going to change how savantism worked. So I think it's still too much up in the air as to whether one can exist or not. Based on the logic of how savantism work that we know about, I personally think it is and should be possible. Hopefully we will have a more definitive answer in the future.

I view it as a hybrid but more of Preservation than Ruin. In the same way that Scadrian humans are more of Preservation than they are of Ruin

I think all would be dangerous to stop but particular ones are probably these. Steel, Tin, Pewter, Zinc, Bronze, Brass, Gold, Cadmium, and Bendalloy I could see a person's body becoming very dependent on these

Just because she's a descendant of a Returned doesn't mean Endowment planned for her existence when she created her Returned ancestor. That's like saying Preservation planned for Wax. The assumption that Endowment has planned so far ahead into every interaction her Returned cause is itself a rabbit hole theory. I'm sure that she has agents on Roshar and maybe influencing a few actions. That is not the same as having a gigantic plan that so many of you believe. That relies on many assumptions that have little backing from either material in the books or from WoB. In fact there is this WoB. This implies she doesn't have any strong influences with what's going on on Roshar. Likely meaning that all the things Vivenna and Vasher are doing aren't something she's planned out in any capacity

That's just what people in world assume, Cultivation has never said she's not involved.

The question is who's better. Per your Atium example, that's not quite true. Preservation was able to take all of Ruin's plans into account and manipulate the events that happened so it very much gives an advantage dependent on how good they are.

While her first person account implies that she isn't worried about Odium. To me that comes off more as arrogance than anything else based on they way she words the whole conversation. As to why I say Ruin has shown better future sight than Endowment, I base that off what we know for sure of Endowment's future sight. Of the Returned, most who do survive give up their Divine Breath within a few years and the moments we know for sure she has predicted have been only a handful of years after the person has Returned. Contrary to that, we know Ruin has planned at minimum decades in advance with his manipulations with Zane, Vin, and Kelsier and it is entirely possible his spanned into centuries with his manipulations of The Lord Ruler. Also, no I wouldn't say Cultivation is shotgunning it. Why? Because she's not the one doing most of the boons and banes. The only ones we know for sure she were involved in were Dalinar's and Lift's. Both were very deliberate. As far as the effect the Returned have, your first one is within the couple of years I specified earlier. As to the others, while they have had a big impact on Roshar that doesn't necessarily mean that that is part of any plan of hers. While I fully admit it is possible that she has planned out so much and it would be a nice level of chessmastery, it doesn't necessarily mean she's planned the actions of every Nalthis native including how they affect things around them. That's like saying that everything going on on Scadrial in Era 2 is still part of Preservation's plans.

Except her lover died. Her and Honor were two Shards against Odium's one, unless Honor's death was part of some big plan like Preservation's sacrifice then I call that a big failure. Except as you point out, that's you reading a lot into it. Most Returned die within a week and Endowment is bound to get a few things right from time to time with how often she creates the Returned. But look at it this way, of all the Returned we know about only two have fully successfully found their calling for why they came back. Blushweaver managed to have a round about success in a way though so let us bring that tally up to three. That's still pretty low success rate. Of the court of gods, most have become decadent and selfish and even the ones that aren't still don't particularly do anything. Then you have the five scholars. Vasher became something of a tyrant at least for a little while and though for a while after he has tried to do good he eventually abandoned Nalthis, his wife wanted to spread knowledge of how to make the Cosmere equivalent of a nuke to everyone, Denth became pretty selfish and evil, and Arsteel and Yesteel are implied to not have been very good either. We can conjecture all we want into how much of these events was her plan but considering what we have seen she in no way deserves to be considered the best. In fact based solely on what we've seen, Ruin has displayed better future sight than she has.

I personally believe it is a mix of the Shard's Intent and the holder. The Shard itself likely determines the maximum level of future sight you can have but how good you are at getting to that level and utilizing the ability is dependent on the Shardvessel Edit: Or alternatively, the Intent determines how natural and easy it is to see the future and the rest might be down to the Vessels

I don't pick Endowment for a couple reasons, one biggie is that she seems to be taking the shotgun approach with future sight rather than the scalpel that Preservation and likely Cultivation do. She seemingly creates the Returned to cover a large amount of possibilities (though admittedly we only know what two of the Returned's visions have been) without any care if they succeed their goal. We can conjecture all we want about how her goals might not be the same as the reason the person chose to Return but based on what we have seen, I don't have much confidence in her ability. At least compared to other Shards.

I voted for Preservation. Of the future sight we know about for sure has happened, his is clearly the best. Now we don't know enough about the other shards and what they've seen and planned I will still make my case for Preservation. His future sight was good enough that he was able to perfectly predict everything that was going to happen across at minimum a thousand years (and likely much further) after he died. To keep this in perspective, that requires understanding all of the variables to the outcome he desires and take into account the future sight of another shard and account for Ruin's actions. And then on top of that, all of the little things that add together over the course of centuries that could have derailed his entire plan. Hell, he technically even played Kelsier.

So the AonDor version of AI? Oh no, the AonDor version of Nightblood