Chromium Compounder

I'm not sure I'd want to do this actually. If I didn't think I'd already put in as much effort as I could to be the best forger I could be, I don't think I'd trust any essence marks I might make.

I was looking at these two diagrams and noticed something I hadn't seen before. It was easiest to see when switching between tabs on the same browser on these pages: https://coppermind.net/w/images/TWoK_Rear_Endsheet.jpg and https://coppermind.net/w/images/TWoK_Front_Endsheet.jpg. The symbols for the surges (the little circles) have their left sides identical, while their right sides are vertically flipped versions. The surgebinding one they're symmetrical left and right, but the voidbinding one is based on the same symbol, but instead of being symmetrical, the right half is a 180 degree rotation. Symmetry is important on Roshar. I've never heard anyone talk about it (though I'm sure it's out there), but I think that symmetry is meant to represent the making and keeping of oaths. I think these voidbinding symbols where the second half is the first half flipped on its head might be meant to represent the breaking of oaths. Oddly though the symbols corresponding to the symbols for the Orders of Radiants (the big circles) remain symmetrical right and left, though they have very different styles to their surgebinding equivalents. Maybe because they keep different kinds of oaths? I'm also wondering who the woman on the outside is, where it has the heralds on the surgebinding one. I wonder if she might be one of the unmade. Sja-anat? Ba-Ado-Mishram? I don't know.

Agreed. That’s why I worded things that way. I know it would only change myself, not the world around me, but it would have to change me in a way that could have happened.

Cool, I hadn’t seen that WoB.

No using Forgery to gain access to another magic system. I think that’s most likely impossible, and if not then it would be very difficult because of all kinds of reasons. So what would you choose to change about yourself? What untaken paths would you make into essence marks? I think I’d have one where I stuck with martial arts. I’d have another where I stuck with piano. I’d have another where I became a scientist (I’m actually a software engineer). I’d have another where I majored in English and became an author. That one would be awesome. Put the essence mark on to work on my book, then after it’s finished I can enjoy reading my own book. LOL

Agreed, and I’ve always been under the impression that his bondsmith-like powers are how he was able to bind the orders to the ideals. The truthwatchers having future sight is inaccurate though. Renarin has that because his spren is corrupted by Sja-anat. I think regular ones are only able to see the truth about the present, and possibly the past.

All interesting ideas. I feel certain it means something, but I get the feeling it hasn’t been revealed yet. I’m similarly wondering if there’s any reason that bondsmiths and truthwatchers are more towards the middle than the others. I’d be inclined to say this was artistic license, except that we know that bondsmiths are significant. Could there be something significant about truthwatchers?

I doubt it, but it is an interesting idea. I agree that Autonomy is the most likely, but it would be interesting if it was from a Splinter of something else instead of a fully intact Shard.

I was examining the diagram of Orders of Knights Radiant. And I realized the lines connecting orders have 2 more lines than I ever noticed before. Each Order has a line connecting it to the Orders on either side (the ones it shares Surges with) and also a line connecting it to the Order exactly opposite it. Those didn't surprise me, but today I noticed that there are 2 extra lines, each connecting 2 Orders that otherwise would not be. On the right there is an extra line connecting Windrunners and Edgedancers, and on the left the line connects Lightweavers and Stonewards. Does anyone have any knowledge of why there are these extra connections? Windrunners bond Honorspren and Edgedancers bond Cultivationspren, so that does make some sense that they have an extra connection. Lightweavers and Stonewards are across from them symmetrically, but aside from that I'm not sure what reason they could be connected. I tried searching around the forums and the coppermind, but I haven't found any verified reasons for this. Any ideas?

True, but those are all examples of things that were done in the past being taken to other worlds. Zahel’s divine breath is just a thing that he has. Nightblood still works yes, but could something like Nightblood be made on Roshar. I’m not talking about a fabrial, or something constructed with Stormlight. I mean, let’s say an awakener with a ton of breaths comes to Roshar and then tries to awaken something, would their breaths play by slightly different rules. Roshar is a difficult example because the commonality is complicated. Let’s say an awakener goes to Sel and tries to awaken something with their breaths. Would they need to write their command instead of speak it? Could they do it without draining colors? What about on Scadrial, would they need to involve metal somehow, even if they’re awakening cloth? The only times we’ve seen someone actively using magic from another world it was Hoid, and it wasn’t very clear about what or how he was doing it. When he met Shallan in her flashback he put metal in his drink, then apparently used it to power Yolish light weaving. When he tells Kaladin and Shallan stories he was light weaving then as well, but we don’t see what’s going on very well. We’ve never had something like this from a PoV character.

It’s been a while since I’ve been on here, but I remember something about how the Magics are partially defined by the shards and partially by the shardworlds. On scadrial Magics are metal related, but the arts themselves are somewhat designed according to how ruin and preservation wanted them to be. On Nalthis the magic is all about giving, which seems like that comes from Endowment, but the color part I expect comes from Nalthis itself. On Sel the Magics all seem like they have varying degrees of Devotions and Dominions intents, but the symbol based magic seems like it’s probably from the world itself. (I think of Chay Shan as being akin to sign language. That’s the only way I can get it to fit with the others.) On Roshar it’s harder to define. I’m pretty sure the oaths are because of Honor, which is why not all rosharan Magics use oaths. It maybe that it’s hard to define because we haven’t seen enough of the other Magics to know what the common factor is. Maybe light? Anyway, my real question is does anything different need to be done to use a magic system off the world it originates from? The only cases of it happening at all that we’ve seen have been from Hoid, and then not much and he never takes the time to explain. I guess maybe the thing Kelsier got from the Ire could be another example, but there’s not much explanation there either.

Very well put. I've been out of college for six years, but that really reminded me of some of my upper level math classes. And it made a lot more sense than how most of those professors talked. Up vote for that alone, but it also makes sense to me logically and realmatically. I hereby support this theory.

Do we have WoB on that? I know that's what is responsible for the appearance of Twinborn. You have to have Terris and non-Terris blood in order to have access to both Feruchemy and Allomancy, but if there were still some pureblood Terris they could conceivably be full Feruchemists. Unfortunately, at the beginning of AoL Wax says that the most anyone can have is a single metal from each art. That would mean that Twinborn and Ferrings would be all of the Feruchemists in modern Scadrial. I've been wondering about that. We know that Spook was the last Mistborn, and Sazed was most likely the last full Feruchemist. Why? Did the Allomantic and Feruchemical bloodlines both get too thin at that point? Or did Harmony do something to intentionally prevent any one person from having too much power?

Ooh, good point, though I doubt it would really be like Agent Smith. I would think the character would physically and mentally change a little to become like the person from the spike. Eventually this would lead to complete insanity.

I seriously hope genetics has nothing to do with it. I've felt for a long time that magic being a genetic trait is boring. That gets used EVERYWHERE. While I love Mistborn, I hate that the abilities are mostly genetic, and I love that the other cosmere books mostly don't do that. Sel does it to an extent, but your genetics seems to determine more what type of magic you can gain access to rather than if you can. Nalthis magic is one of my favorites because everyone is given the same potential (yes, I know different breaths have different strengths, but it's not a significant amount. The number of breaths you have is far more important than their quality). Roshar doesn't look like it cares about genetics at all either. It's all about who you choose to be, the choices you make.

I know WoB says that not all shards have opposites, and that Ruin and Preservation are the exception rather than the rule, but I think that that's largely a matter of perspective. If you look at it a certain way you can think of Endowment and Dominion as opposites. Endowment is about giving while Dominion is about acquiring.

Rashek? I wouldn't think he was a champion at all. He was a complicated man. He had quite a bit of bad to him even before Ruin started influencing him, though he did always try to fight against Ruin. Nevertheless, he was never a champion for either shard. I think the only champions were Elend and Marsh. The argument can be made that Vin was, though personally I disagree with them. But Rashek, I can't even see a valid argument. The only special thing about him was that he once used the Well of Ascension, but I'm pretty sure WoB says that anyone can use it, so long as they don't have a spike in them at the time. The Well called out to Vin and Alendi, but that's different, and it never called out to Rashek.

Yes, exactly. Vin had been set up to be Preservation's heir, not Champion. Being the heir meant she had the ability to draw in the mists, which would eventually lead to her taking the shard itself. While Vin held Preservation she made Elend her Champion during the last battle, which is when Elend was streaming mists and had a limitless supply of the standard metals. At that same time Ruin did the same with Marsh, who was streaming black smoke. I've never heard that WoB, and it doesn't sound right to me. If that were accurate then Vin and Kelsier would both have been as powerful as Elend. Neither of them were. They both had far more training and talent, but Elend blew them away raw strength wise.

How do Whek now that? I'm guessing it's a WoB I haven't seen. It's interesting to me that Preservation would give people a power which is of both Ruin and Preservation. And it's also interesting that they're the only Scadrians we know of who don't naturally have the potential for Allomancy.

I would say that's a pretty good guess, but we don't know anything about Feruchemy's origins. We know awfully little about Allomancy's origins. What we know about Allomancy is that it's stronger and more common in the bloodlines of those who have ingested Lerasium, and only through Lerasium and the bloodlines from it can someone become Mistborn. However, we know that Lerasium is not the origin of Mistings, and that the rules about Allomancy only being in noble families is not true. Allomancy can happen among pure Skaa, otherwise the rule of 16s which they noticed in HoA wouldn't have been possible. The only exceptions to the rule of 16s are the Terris people. Pure Terris people cannot have Allomancy without Lerasium. I think to understand why we would need to know more about the origins of Scadrian humans and Scadrian Investiture.

Actually, that's not a good way to measure Stormlight. In the beginning of WoR Kaladin and Sigzil talk about it, and I think Lopen suggests the same thing, but Sigzil says it won't work because every sphere has different amounts of stormlight they can hold, depending on the exact size and the quality of the cut of the gem. And even assuming that all diamond chips got the same amount of stormlight as every other in every storm, and assuming that they all lose stormlight at the same rate (which is also likely not true), you would have to take into account how long its been since the chips were infused. The day after the storm they're going to have significantly more stormlight than a week later. Quantifying the amount of stormlight in something is pretty much impossible from our point of view. Perhaps Navani could make a fabrial that could measure that kind of thing, but until that happens, there's no good unit of measurement for stormlight. As you said above, the only good unit of investiture is breath, but even that the book talks about the differences in strength for individual breaths, so they're not all the same.

While I agree that the principles behind them are certainly related, I think they come at it very differently. When Shallan soulcasts the boat she has to argue with it about WHY it should change. When she soulcasts the goblet it doesn't seem to have any emotions about its form, so it doesn't need to be convinced. I've heard it said that the stormlight given is like a bribe. I'm not sure if that's what it is, or if they need the stormlight to power the change. Either way, you apparently need to convince them to change. How much convincing is required depends on the strength of the objects identity, but I wouldn't be surprised if the stormlight required is more related to the size of the object than to the strength of its identity. Anyway, the main point is that with soulcasting you are arguing with the object about WHY it should change. Forgery on the other hand focuses on HOW you want it to change. I think that what you're actually doing is twisting the identity of the object into a slightly different shape. I think of identity as being like a super strong piece of silly putty. Forgery lets you twist it, squish it, stretch it, but never cut it (that's more the realm of shardblades) or break it (that's more the realm of Soulcasting). The object's identity can only be twisted so much before it would break. Identity refuses to break for Forgery though, so instead any change you ask it to do will refuse to take. You could never Soulcast a beat up, splintery, old table into a well maintained ornamented masterpiece. But you could also never Forge a goblet into blood. The changes involved in Soulcasting are at a much more fundamental level, and any details you want to put into the result make it far more difficult. Forgery however is all about details. Yes, those details may seem huge, but you can't forge something into something that is fundamentally different. Soulcasting is like convincing someone to change religions, while Forgery is more like suggesting that someone try a new flavor of cereal. Yes, they're both conversations, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

While I do hope to see Honor get reformed and taken up by Kaladin, Dalinar, or Renarin, we don't have any proof that that is possible, or that putting the shards back together would recreate Adonalsium. As Wit says in WoK, if you take a man apart bit by bit, emotion by emotion, and then put him back together, he's probably not going to be the same as he was before. Doing that with Adonalsium might allow you to create someone of power roughly equal to what Adonalsium had, but it would likely be very different from the original.

Each has its limits and strengths over the other. Forgery is slower, more limited in the depth of the changes, and the changes aren't permanent. Even stamps that take can be broken. However, forgery lets you do much more with details than you could ever do with Soulcasting, and there isn't a significant investiture cost. It's like the difference between a jackhammer and a chisel. The jackhammer (Soulcasting) does big drastic changes and takes a lot of energy. The chisel (Forgery) does small finely detailed changes and takes a lot of time. Personally, I would choose Forgery over Soulcasting.

I think it is actually Tanavast who trapped Rayse. That's the feeling I got from the response to Hoid's letter. Tanavast knew he couldn't beat Rayse, so he did what he could to limit him. He couldn't keep him from dominating greater Roshar, but he could force him to get so invested there that he couldn't leave.