Chromium Compounder

Odium He’s so evil, and totally doesn’t think he is. I feel like he’s a very impressive version of the devil. He deceives everyone, including his own people, and sees nothing wrong with that.

There are tons of awesome characters in the cosmere who are divided by space, time, and possibly death, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be awesome to read a conversation between them. And as we know none of those definitely mean that we won’t get to see them meet. For example, I would love to see Shai meet Shallan. I picture them getting along really well and talking about Realmatic Theory. I’d also love to see Wayne and Lightsong together. They’d make fun of people and Wayne would steal something worthless, like one of Lightsong’s shirts, trading it for an aluminum bullet. Kaladin and Wax would be good as well, but far more solemn as they talk about how hard they try to help people.

Agreed!

I agree. I think that there are multiple spren for multiple essence soulcasters.

Cool. I hadn’t seen that before. Doesn’t quite address what I was saying, but it does support the theory.

A new thought occurred to me. Listeners only ever talk about mating when in mate form, but we know that parshmen (slave form) are capable of breeding. I think of slave form as being like the default form. I know there’s more to it than that. They lost something more than just the ability to bond spren, but what I mean is that I don’t think there’s anything that they would be capable of in slave form that they wouldn’t be capable of in every other form. Which means that while they may not be inclined to mate when not in mate form, that they should still be capable of it. So that brings up this question: What if the different races of humans with singer ancestry come from couplings with singers of different forms? That could explain why their singer heritage manifests in different ways. I picture horneaters being from a warform, or perhaps a work form. Not sure what the herdazians would be from. Also I’m wondering if Thaylen eyebrows might be a sign of singer heritage. They could be from nimble form maybe.

I always figured that the soulcasters had a gem/gems for holding spren and others for holding stormlight, and that the stormlight ones are the ones that crack and get replaced.

I was just listening to Kaza's interlude in Oathbringer, and it got me thinking about soulcaster fabrials. We know that regular fabrials work involving metal being pushed against a gemstone containing a spren. Different spren require different types of gems, and the spren consumes stormlight in the process. The effect of the fabrial is primarily based on the type of spren, with the details of how it works being based on the design of the fabrial. Surgebinding is similar except that it comes from the spren bonding with the surgebinder, allowing them to access 2 surges. Only true spren are capable of the bond, and I expect that this is part of how they're able to access 2 surges. Lesser spren are different, only being able to access the thing they're associated with (flamespren can create heat, etc.). Some things Syl said always made me suspect that the surges the true spren have access to comes through an agreement between that type of true spren and the spren for that surge. Like there's an agreement between Honorspren and Bondspren and another between Honorspren and Gravityspren. For soulcasting however it seems like there would be a different type of spren for each of the 10 essences. That's why lesser soulcaster fabrials are only able to use one essence. The greater ones can do more, but I suspect they have multiple spren. The lesser ones can only do 1. So does that mean that Inkspren and Cryptics have agreements with a bunch of different types of soulcasting spren? Or am I just completely misunderstanding something here?

I think it’s technically in the spiritual realm, but it’s in the spiritual component of the metal.

I actually disagree. I think that he is a force of passion, just as Ruin was a force of change (sazed calls it that at the end of HoA). I explain it more fully here:

Before Oathbringer when we learned more about the heralds I thought kaladin would end up becoming a herald. I could still see that happen, but honestly I think I’d rather see him either take up Honor or pull a Sazed and take up both Honor and Odium, becoming a shard that balances the passion of Odium with oaths. Not sure what it would be called though, and I don’t think he currently has enough connection to odium to be able to take it up. I know everyone keeps saying that if someone takes up Honor it’s going to be Dalinar, but I don’t think so. I don’t think he could be Honor. I could see him taking up Ishar’s position as Herald of wisdom, but not Honor.

Explosive rounds could help with Reverse Lashing since they have to maintain contact with the item being lashed. Wouldn’t really help with basic lashing though.

Shai, Kaladin, Aedolin, and Wayne.

While relistening to Oathbringer again, I was on the part from Rock’s POV, and I was remembering that I heard on shardcast that Brandon confirmed that there are part human singers. I couldn’t find it in arcanum, but I thought they said that these include the Herdazians and the horn eaters. They listed the herdazian fingernails as evidence of their singer heritage. Anyway, so in Rock’s POV there’s a part where he is cooking and thinking of when he would cook with his mom and she would hum. He felt like he could almost hear her humming sometimes. I think he’s faintly hearing the rhythms. Any other signs you guys have caught?

I didn’t say they weren’t related to their powers. I said they aren’t directly related to either power. It’s more that they’re tangentially related to both.

Ever since I first read Shadows of Self, I've had an interesting thought. I hadn't heard the term resonance applied to mixed investitures yet, but I had this thought that won't leave me alone. I mentioned it on here a long time ago, but all of the replies basically said I was an idiot and that I was looking at it wrong. I don't think we have enough data about this yet for the idea to be fully fleshed out, but I still think that I'm on the right track. So, we know that when a person possesses two types of investiture it creates a resonance in them which allows them to do things that aren't directly related to either investiture, but together they passively give the person a new ability. We don't have all of these outlined to us. Stormlight references a few of them with radiants. For Lightweavers its their mnemonic abilities, and it's believed that the Windrunner resonance allows them 'strength of squires', which is generally believed to mean they get lots of squires while others get few. I don't think we've definitively heard what any others are, but Khriss in mistborn era 2 ars arcanum mentions them in relation to twinborn. Anyway, my theory is that while there are these passive (not directly powered by investiture) abilities that come through resonance, but I think there may be a psychological effect that comes with resonance as well. The idea stemmed from a few things in SoS. When Wax talked to his grandmother she says that it's dangerous to combine Allomancy and Feruchemy. He says it's only dangerous when they can compound, but she disagrees. She implies that it's why he kills people. He disagrees, but what she said got me thinking. We've only seen a few twinborn, but an argument could be made that they all have psychological issues. Name - Allomantic Metal - Feruchemical Metal - Possible Psychological Issues Wax - Steel - Iron - Obession with doing what's right Wayne - Bendalloy - Gold - Cleptomania Miles - Gold - Gold - Megalomania? God complex? Sociopathy? Forch - Steel - Pewter - Homicidal Mania (tortures and plans to kill a little boy. Probably did it before.) Set's twinborn on the train - Steel - Pewter - We don't see much of this guy, but he's working with the Set, and seems like he certainly enjoys killing. Could be homicidal maniac like Forch. It's possible that these issues were all pre-existing or developed as a side effect of having a different world view brought about by having more power than others, but it seems odd that every single twinborn we've seen doesn't think like a normal person. It's possible that this isn't really connected to resonance but instead to a threshold of investiture. You could make similar arguments for Vin, Kelsier, and the Lord Ruler despite the fact that you're not supposed to only get resonance with 2 types of investiture, and that the effect goes away with larger numbers. That would make sense with how vessels lose more and more control of their choices over time, and simply become manifestations of their shard's intent. For mixed investitures with mortals this effect would be less predictable and smaller in scale, but still noticeable. It's also possible that these issues being pre-existing could be why they're able to manifest two types of investiture, similar to how Syl says that all the radiants were broken. For radiants their psychological issues seem related to the ideals of their order. I could see that as a point against my original theory. It may be in line with some aspects of it though. Anyway, that's what was in my head today.

Interesting theory. Sounds reasonable to me.

As far as I can see, all the shards are forces that a creator god should value and work with. The problems come from the fact that they should all be together, tempering one another, but instead each is held by a different person. The only exception being Harmony, who is the most balanced of them all. Without them to balance each other their force gets taken too far, and I feel like the names for the shards are sometimes meant to point more to what happens when the force is taken too far rather than naming the force itself. That’s not always the case, but sometimes. I say force for the lack of a better word. A lot of it is cognitive and or spiritual, so the forces can be pretty abstract. Stability leads to stagnation (preservation). Entropy destroys everything (ruin). Love leads to obsession (devotion). Order leads to rigidity (dominion). (I could see this as a different force, but we know very little about dominion.) Growth leads to chaos (cultivation). Generosity leads to inequality? (Endowment) (I feel like generosity is the right force here, but not sure how to express its downside.) Integrity leads to robot like life (honor). (I know that isn’t worded well, but I couldn’t think of a good word for it.) Independence leads to loneliness (autonomy). Desire leads to strife (ambition). (Again, we know very little about this shard.) Passion leads to hatred (odium). A number of the shards are very similar forces but are just done a little differently. So that brings the question to what are other forces and what could they lead to. I could see a force like curiosity or intelligence leading to a shard like Enlightenment, Wisdom, or Remorse. Any of those could conceivably be the ‘survival shard’.

Dalinar’s Feverstone keep vision makes it clear that there should be a lot more shards out there. That’s a mystery that will be revealed eventually. Interesting idea with the written descriptions, but I have a hard time imagining that being how the shards became frozen like that. I think they don’t change simply because they are ‘dead’ (I think it’s actually more like being in a coma). I suspect that Adolin is going to awaken Maya fully when he starts swearing oaths. And I think that he actually does fit with the edgedancers. He remembers those who are forgotten, like Maya herself. And I think part of being an edge dancer is being a good judge of character.

Yeah. I’m not positive it’s part of identity. I think it is, but I’m not positive. It could be connection. Definitely something magical. We know so little about both of those. We know connection can be used for languages, but the ars arcanum in era 2 talks about using it to make friends. Identity is related to keyed investiture, but that’s not all it is. They’re both abstract, so they could each have multiple seemingly unrelated applications.

Interesting theories. I’ve had similar thoughts. A couple problems though. You got the surges for the different orders mixed up. Bondsmiths don’t have division. Division belongs to skybreakers and dustbringers. The second issue is that the circles with half the symbol flipped represent surges, not orders of knights. I've been thinking that Renarin may have the voidbinding version of illumination but the surgebinding version of progression (regrowth). Not positive on that though.

I considered that as well, and I get that argument, but I still think Identity is part of it. I don't think that WoB is actually about this. I think the question was poorly worded and confused Brandon. He ended up answering a question more about whether crystal or bones are better for a Kandra body, and I don't think that's really what they meant to ask. I think the bones do give them access to some of the person's Identity. It's partially physical, but I think it's spiritual as well.

I'm sure it's going on. We just haven't seen it yet.

I was thinking about Kandra in Bands of Mourning and something occurred to me. In Bands of Mourning it talks a lot about Identity, but it's all in reference to Feruchemy and Allomancy. I was wondering if Identity could be important for Kandra. Specifically, I was thinking that it may be part of how they are able to so convincingly take the forms of other people. This eventually lead me to thinking about other shapeshifters as well, but first I'll talk about Kandra. Young Kandra are only able to shapeshift into the form of a person after consuming their body. After a lot of time spent taking on various forms they're eventually able to take liberties, mixing and matching, adding, subtracting, adapting, etc. But at first they're only able to consume a body and then turn into a copy of that body. Once they're in a form they have a hard time not acting like the person that form belongs to (like when MeLaan takes on the form of the Governor Innate at the end of Shadows of Self, she knows she's supposed to be placating the crowd, but that's not what Innate would have done. This could be from training and practice, but I think that would only take you so far. Particularly when she didn't actually know much about Innate.). Anyway, so I'm proposing that when a Kandra consumes a body they are able to consume a portion of the person's Identity. This helps them to not only copy the person's physical appearance, but their mannerisms, their speech patterns, etc. It wouldn't give them the person's memories, but they would instinctively be able to tap into the way that person would do things. This is similar to when Shai is testing pieces of the pattern for Ashravan's essence mark on Gaotona. This effectively gave Gaotona a copy of a small portion of Ashravan's identity. Sometimes Shai would incorporate actual memories into the stamps as well, but like with the part about how his favorite color was green. I feel like that had more to do with Identity than memories. For a Kandra I feel like they would get more of the person's Identity than Gaotona was getting, though not the whole thing. For a Mistwraith I bet they get the bits of Identity as well, but without sapience it doesn't do them any good. So that brings me to other kinds of shapeshifting in the Cosmere. Here's a list of all the kinds of shapeshifting I can think of: Kandra/Mistwraith, Aimian, Dician Aimian, Forgery (minimal, but it does still happen), and Returned/Royal Locks. Aimians and Dician Aimians we don't see enough for me to judge how much has to do with Identity, but I suspect that it does play a part. Forgery you're only changing to different versions of yourself, but I still think that your identity is changing. Returned we don't see too much of it, but the parts we do see seem to me like it's totally about Identity, and the Royal Locks we already know work the same way, just on a smaller scale. Illusions aren't actually shapeshifting, but I think Identity frequently plays a part in them as well. Anyway, I thought this was interesting. Thoughts?

I thought that at one point too. Back then I figured the woman was supposed to be Cultivation, but WoB says it's voidbinding.