Pagerunner

Are you sure TLR's Allomancy was more powerful than a lerasium Mistborn? Here's the only quote I could find on the subject: Source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1034#12. It doesn't directly compare TLR's strength to a lerasium misting, but since lerasium is just a solid form of the power in the Well, it makes sense to me that Rashek was just as powerful as an Allomancer. His best tricks come from using his Feruchemy, Compounding, the mysterious Allomantic Compounding (which we know is possible, but not what it is or how it works), and Hemalurgy (see here: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#38); it's not all due to his Allomantic strength.

You're assuming that Rashek knew and utilized the same techniques that Sovereign used to create medallions and the Bands (which operate on the same principles). I don't think that view is supported by the novel; everyone thought they were created by TLR before he died, but everything attributed to TLR was actually done by Sovereign. The bracers that Vin pushed away to defeat TLR were not nicrosil; they were just atium to store youth. He didn't lose his powers, he just lost his reserves. It seems you're wondering, then, if Rashek had created his own version of the Bands, would they hold more Feruchemical storage or provide more powerful Allomancy? Using Compounding to fill the metalminds would mean that a more powerful Allomancer could fill them quicker, true, but he would still be limited by the maximum amount the Bands can hold. (Sazed explains early on in the trilogy that a given amount of metal can only hold so much Feruchemical charge.) As to the power of the Allomancy... TLR was a savant in many of his metals, which caused a change in his physiology; I'm not sure if Nicrosil would carry those changes, if you could "tap savantism." Also, we don't know the source of Sovereign's Allomancy; if he got it from a Lerasium bead, then his pure Allomantic strength might have been equal to TLR. (Who did not use Lerasium himself, but achieved the same affect by directly modifying his own spiritual DNA when he used the Well of Ascension.)

Here is where we learned that Frost isn't a worldhopper: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cuu7zlb?context=1000. Also of relevance is Brandon's definition of a worldhopper, which means that Frost has never left his home world of Yolen: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/46015-shadows-of-self-tour-chicago-oak-brook-il/?p=335596.

I used to think the same as you, based on much of the same logic - that "three of the sixteen" line, especially, made me think that Odium wasn't one of the three. I was running with Vorinism, how instead of being Honor-focused (protecting others), it was all about elevating yourself, which might have come from a Shard called Glory. There was quite a bit of discussion on the number of Shards on Roshar a few years ago (you'd have to look a ways back, so that's probably why you didn't find it), but some pointed questions got us definitive WoBs (I think it was during the Words of Radiance tour, but I'm not sure) that there were no additional Shards in the Roshar system aside from Honor, Odium, and Cultivation.

king of nowhere, the original plan was 32-36 books. There's some info here: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=590#49. The way I have seen it accounted is: 7 Dragonsteel: Liar of Partinel/Lightweaver of Rens duology, time jump, 5-book Dragonsteel proper 3 White Sand 3 Elantris, each following a successive generation 9 Mistborn, 3 trilogies 2 Warbreaker 10 Stormlight, two 5-book subseries with a 15-year gap between the two 1 Silence Divine Which left space for 1 more book, which I don't think we know anything about. (Aether of Night is often given that last slot. However, it was supposed to kick off a series that involved Decay, an early version of Ruin, so I think it was replaced by Mistborn in the overall outline. Some elements of the novel's magic system made their way to the Liar of Partinel draft, but they didn't fit well, so they will most likely not stay there.) There are some places where the list could be trimmed down; Dragonsteel might be reduced to a trilogy, and The Silence Divine might have been "demoted" to a novella. But there's also plenty of growth. With the addition of the 4 Wax and Wayne books, splitting the first White Sand novel into three graphic novels, the occasional short fiction collections (first of which to come our way later this year), and potential other Cosmere projects that Brandon has mentioned (revived Aether of Night, Mistborn World War novella, other Secret Histories) and other planned series that may or may not be Cosmere (Dark One, Skybound, Soulburner), the number might reach 60 when it's all said and done.

Upvote for you, OP, for the questions you raised. I strongly disagree with the overall point you're trying to make - I don't think they are plot holes or evidences of poor planning. However, the first three points you make are questions that I feel engaged readers are supposed to come away with. Comparing BoM to the past books and saying, "Hey, some of the things as presented in this book don't make much sense!" Which really has to do with where this book fits in with the larger Mistborn saga as a whole. Despite being book 6, Bands of Mourning is actually the second book in a trilogy, which is itself the second trilogy of four planned trilogies. To explain: Final Empire, Well of Ascension, and Hero of Ages was the first trilogy. Brandon had two more trilogies planned in different eras of the world (a "modern" trilogy at a 1980s tech level, and a sci-fi trilogy), to have nine total Mistborn books. He wrote Alloy of Law as a side-project, which would stand alone while also laying some groundwork for the "modern" trilogy. He wound up liking Alloy's characters and setting so much that he reworked the overall plan to include a fourth trilogy. Shadows of Self began that trilogy, Bands of Mourning is the second book, and there will be one last Wax and Wayne book, tentatively titled "The Lost Metal." Some of these books are designed to have satisfying endings. Final Empire, as the first book in the whole series, needs to be largely self-contained to satisfy new readers. Hero of Ages closes a trilogy. Alloy of Law was not written with sequels in mind. These books can be largely self-contained, as you mentioned above. I suspect that The Lost Metal will not leave us with a lot of unanswered questions, since it will be closing the book on Wax and Wayne. However, "middle" books don't need to answer every question that's raised in them. Well of Ascension doesn't stand on its own by any means - imagine reading that without being able to read Hero of Ages immediately afterward. What's this crazy thing saying it's free? Why are the texts changing? Who's speaking to Zane? What's the Mist Spirit about? All of these unanswered questions point towards Hero of Ages; just because the questions haven't been answered doesn't mean they are plot holes. Same with Shadows of Self; sure, Elendel was saved from the riots, but the greater question of who was behind it all was left unresolved. I was frustrated in Bands of Mourning at how quickly everyone seemed to forget about the unknown metal that Paalm was using for her spikes; it didn't come up at all in the book, despite being a major cliffhanger from the previous book. But it obviously is pointing towards something in the future of the series. So, there are things in Bands of Mourning that point towards the eventual finale of the trilogy. The questions you're asking are great ones, ones that I also wondered about when I was reading through. How could Rashek have survived? The powers attributed to the Bands early in the novel didn't match what we had previously seen from The Lord Ruler; what was the deal with that? How did the Southerners survive when Sazed remade the world? When the heck did Kelsier hold the Power of Ascension? They are not questions that the author is ignoring, or that he is rewriting the in-universe history, but he is laying the groundwork for the future of the series, as he has always done. Specifically with the Southerners coming out of nowhere, that is helping to bridge the gap between the empire-scale stories we've seen thus far and the global-scale stories that will be coming in the "modern" trilogy and "sci-fi" trilogy. We're stepping out of the relatively small world of Mistborn we've seen thus far into a much larger one, where other continents and other gods come into play, and eventually other worlds. The entire Mistborn Saga isn't just building on the events of the original trilogy; there are pieces and concepts that were outside the scope of the Final Empire, and we're beginning to zoom out and see the larger Mistborn world. The Mistborn series has always had unreliable narrators and things coming out of left field. But if you pay close enough attention, you can catch the hints left behind. Vin had a spike through her ear and heard voices. Non-human intelligences (Inquisitors, Kandra) only come about through spikes, so the Koloss must also reproduce using spikes. The Hero of Ages held the future of the world "on his arms," referring to Sazed's bracers. Those are the kinds of things you're picking up on - intentional "errors" in the narrative. Rashek couldn't have saved the Southerners - he was dead! (The mysterious figure might have been TenSoon, Spook, Kelsier.) How did the Southerners survive, and how did they get there in the first place? What's the deal with their cubes and airships? (From interviews, we've learned that the title for the next book is a reference to ettmetal, so we'll definitely be learning a lot more about the Southerners in a few years.) How can the Bands give people Allomancy? (They use the same phenomenon as the Southerner's medallions, which is a new way to use Allomancy and Feruchemy, and we'll be seeing more details in the next book.) So, I don't view them as a bug, but as a feature. You're supposed to ask those questions, you're supposed to catch those "mistakes," because they're not the author's mistakes, but the mistakes of the characters and the in-universe historians. It's something that's also a major aspect of Brandon's other big series right now, The Stormlight Archive (two books published, The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, and eight more on the way), where the stories and legends the characters believe are suspect, and what is "known" about the world cannot be taken at face value. So, Bands of Mourning almost took over as my new favorite Mistborn novel (still didn't manage to beat Final Empire), in part because so much was left hanging about who Sovereign was and how he did what he did. I'm exicted to see what happens in the next book, because I saw, like you, that too many parts of the "official" story didn't line up. We get to try to catch the lies and mistakes before the answers are handed to us on a silver platter in The Lost Metal. When we find out the details behind the true history of the Bands, instead of saying "Oh, it's cool how the author threw everyone a red herring, and the Bands of Mourning weren't made by The Lord Ruler at all," you get to say "I knew it!"

This is one of two places Vax has been mentioned. The other was in the Elantris 10th Anniversary Ars Arcanum, where we can infer that it is a planet. There's been some discussion already as to what it means: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52570-secret-history-spoilers-last-words/. But, the short answer is: we don't know. Peter has been his typical cryptic self on the matter: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/49440-idaho-falls-is-coming-up/?p=362712.

Hmm, it's an interesting thought. You're right, since we have seen definitive conflict between Threnodites and the Ire, that there could be deeper connections between the two worlds. However, I think we need to clarify between the Evil (which destroyed Homeland) and the Shades (which had always been on Hell). The Forescouts, including Silence's grandparents, left Homeland to colonize Hell before the Evil occurred, and they still had to follow the basic rules. So, we can take away that in the ~80 years since Hell was colonized (a generous estimate, but since William Ann was the daughter of one of the original settlers, it gives us a small upper boundary on the time), the Shades have always been aggressive towards the settlers. The Evil happened sometime between the original colonization of Hell and the time of SSFH, and it affected the Homeland, but not Hell (which had already been called Hell, and was referred to by that name in Silence's old book). The Evil is not responsible for causing the Shades to act as they do; the Ire could very have been behind the Evil as some kind of response to the Shades, but not to cause the Shades to act as they do. Furthermore, I think Nazh's use of the term "Shadows" means that Secret History is after the colonization of Hell, which means the Shades had been violent since before he was born. To spell it out step-by-step: There were no Shades on Homeland, so Nazh would only curse as he does if he was born on Hell. Since Nazh was in Secret History, the story occurs after Nazh's birth, and therefore after the original colonization. As mentioned above, Hell was always known as Hell to the original colonists, so the violent Shades precede Nazh's birth, and therefore also precede Secret History. Also, even though the Ire and Threnodites are in conflict, I'm not sure that their war is the primary goal of the Ire. They were looking for a Shard to pick up, and there are no Shards on Threnody. Roshar might be on their radar, since there is another dead Shard. (I wonder if we'll see any of them lurking around Shadesmar, waiting for something to happen to the Stormfather.) However, I agree with you that the Ire seem like more than a one-off group of villains; they have grand goals for the Cosmere, and I expect we'll see their touch elsewhere. Just maybe not with Threnody.

Good analysis. Two quick questions: 1) You say that ancient fabrials don't bind spren. That's a new one for me; was that mentioned anywhere in the books or in a WoB? (It's possible I just may have missed it, but I'd like to find out where it came from.) 2) Do you fit Ryshadium in there anywhere? That's where my mind went when I saw that that original WoB you posted; that Surgbinding is a "Bonding Spren" system, while the different "Capturing Spren" systems like Ryshadium (and Purelake fish, possibly), fabrials, and Parshendi forms operate on a different way of getting spren.

Here's the quote that Frost isn't a worldhopper: And here's Brandon's definition of a worldhopper:

Last update I've seen was on their Facebook page on Feb 16:

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm proposing. The names don't necessarily have to be the plainest description of the attribute, though - if you recall, before we were given Devotion's name, we were told Aona's Shard was a synonym of "Love." These names might be chosen because they don't carry connotations and weight, letting the Shards' actions speak for themselves. (And also are much cooler names.) Wow, great point; I hadn't even considered that, but it does fit perfectly with the way I propose to view Odium. Secret promises with Honor, but if they pay lip service to Odium, he won't come after them. Thanks for pointing that out.

While looking up WoBs for an unrelated topic, I stumbled across something you might find relevant: Source: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7051-philadelphia-wor-signing-reports/?p=116457 So, looks like they aren't after Hoid because of what he can do for them, but to make sure he's not acting against them.

The third race on Yolen is something called "Shodel." We don't have any other info on them, so it might just be another name for Parshendi. Source: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7051-philadelphia-wor-signing-reports/?p=116457 EDIT: Also, I doubt Frost is on Roshar. In the WoR Letter, he asks Hoid: "Please, hearken to my plea. Leave that place and join me in my oath of nonintervention. The cosmere itself may depend upon our restraint." If he was on Roshar, I don't think he'd be referring to it as "that place."

I've speculated elsewhere (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52690-unknown-shards-and-opposition-in-the-cosmere/?p=395163), based on Frost's description of Odium as "God's own divine hatred," that Odium is an embodiment of the biblical 2nd Commandment: I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no other gods before me." Taken to an extreme, separated from the other attributes of Adonalsium (a.k.a. 15 other divine attributes that describe the other 15 Intents), it drives him to destroy the other Shards so that he remains as the most powerful being in the Cosmere; the only god left. Some of the hatred against the other Shards may spill over to their followers or the worlds they inhabit.

A couple other people have said Chromium, and I agree with that... as a start. But he uses their Allomancy to catch other Allomancers, then steal their power with Hemalurgy. He's stalking powerful Mistings all over the world, waiting for the opportunity to strike and steal their power. And with each kill, he becomes more powerful, more unstoppable, and more unstable. Also, played by Zachary Quinto.

Well, someone from Nalthis saw a Shardblade, so there has been some worldhopping from that planet. In fact, the economic system we saw in T'Telir could very well encourage merchants to worldhop to get cool things. (My merchandise is literally worlds beyond my competitors!) Sixth of the Dusk shows us that there are old and young Shardworlds; First of the Sun is obviously one of the youngest. Sel appears to be one of the older worlds, based on the Ire; they had regular people as guards with them, so I'm sure that the existence of other worlds is becoming common knowledge. IIRC, White Sand is set 1000 years before Elantris (please factcheck me, somebody), so Taldain could be another old world. Roshar and Scadrial may have been stunted in their growth by the Shardic wars happening on them. (Heck, maybe Scadrial isn't even that old of a world; unless there had been someone prior to Rashek who used the Well of Ascension, Scadrial is only ~2300 years old during WoK, and the prelude in that book happened 4500 years prior. [in Year 0, Preservation betrayed Ruin. In year 1024, Rashek began his rule. In year 2048, Vin used the Well. In year 2049, Sazed Ascended. In Year 2390, Alloy takes place, which is roughly concurrent with the Stormlight Archive.]) That could explain why, even though Stormlight Archive is in the second half of the Cosmere sequence, worldhopping is not common knowledge on either Roshar or Scadrial at that point. And let's also not forget, there are dozens of other Shardworlds, even if most of them are minor. Some of them might have a lot of ambient Shardpools (like the one in Sixth of the Dusk), so worldhopping might be common knowledge, even if there's not a lot of Shardic influence.

I don't think it's that he can't leave, but that he hasn't. He is not a worldhopper, which means he has not left his homeworld; since the only place we know dragons come from is Yolen, that means he must still be on Yolen. I was wondering about the original question, myself. It's possible between Secret History and Stormlight Archive, Khriss managed to find Yolen, and thus got connected with Frost and the Seventeenth Shard. (Or maybe she was already Seventeenth Shard, and Frost wasn't involved up til that point.)

Observer, I think you're getting some minor Shardworlds confused. Ashyn is a minor Shardworld, a separate planet (not moon) in the Roshar system, where the planned novella The Silence Divine will be written. First of the Sun, where Sixth of the Dusk takes place, hasn't been confirmed to be in any known system. We know that First of the Sun doesn't have a Shard on it, so it couldn't technically be Allomancy - that's an interaction of Preservation with the planet of Scadrial. But, yeah, now that you mention it, the powers do seem similar, although the Initiation is quite different - no Snapping involved. I wonder what it would look like for an Aviar to give a steel-like ability...

Found it: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/22712-phoenix-signing-121/page-2#entry219598

First of all, welcome to the forum! It's an interesting question you raise, whether or not there has ever been a Shard on Threnody. Yeah, we know there's not one there currently, but maybe there used to be one. I'm not sure anyone has raised that thought, before. As for the Survival Shard, it's something that the forum has taken and run with too far (kind of like the "force" that opposed Adonalsium and the Lord Ruler's descendants, both things that Brandon gave cryptic answers about and later said people read too much into them). The Shard wants to hide and survive, but that is not its Intent. See here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52009-bands-of-mourning-release-party/page-2#entry392615

Threnody is not in the same system as Sel! Scroll to the end of the topic - Peter clarified that there was a misunderstanding at the signing, somehow.

Here ya go: www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#20 EDIT: Well, I have the link, but not the direct quote, 'cause I can't figure it out either.

Doesn't make sense to me. Assuming Hoid and Frost are writing each other Letters, and Frost is on Yolen*, then it means Hoid was writing a letter to someone on Braize asking for help with Odium, who is trapped on Braize. Actually, when I put it like that, it does kind of make sense. Let me try that again: If Frost is on the world Odium is trapped on, I wouldn't expect that Odium would let him run around free, sending letters to Hoid and running the 17th Shard. Frost and Rayse know each other, so I don't think Rayse would ignore him the way Ruin ignores Kelsier in Secret History. Now, what about other worlds that could possibly be Yolen renamed? I think it's a great idea that Yolen is hidden because it was renamed - Khriss has found it, she just doesn't know it! I had been considering this possibility already, and here's what I had come up with: Roshar and Scadrial don't have room for dragons. I think we have confirmation that there are no other major landmasses on Roshar, and Scadrial is getting well-enough explored that I don't think there's room for dragons or a third race there. Minor Shardworlds are lame. I don't think it would be a minor Shardworld like Ashyn, First of the Sun, or Threnody, although I can't definitively rule them out. Maybe it's because I suspect Odium first Shattered another Shard on Yolen, causing the remaining Shards to disperse, or maybe it's just because it would be a total letdown. Taldain is tidally locked, so I think that disqualifies it unless something catastrophic happened to Yolen to make it like that. Sel was a place that Odium visited. I don't like speculating on what wasn't said, but it didn't mention a return to Sel, so I don't think Sel can be Yolen. Nalthis is a big world, which we don't know a lot about yet. Still a possibility. Vax is a neverending source of frustration to the community, and just typing the name gets me so upset since we don't know anything about the planet at all. It's definitely on the top of my list. But eventually, I decided that I didn't think Yolen was renamed to another planet. Brandon has cited Asimov's Robot/Galactic Empire/Foundation megaseries as an inspiration for the Cosmere, and one of the Foundation books is about the search for the lost homeworld of humanity: Earth. I think Brandon will give us a hunt-for-Yolen in the last Mistborn trilogy that will be reminiscent of Foundation and Earth, which would preclude it just being another planet that's been renamed. (Then again, Second Foundation was all about hiding the second Foundation in plain sight at the old Galactice capital planet, so renaming Yolen as another planet is also thematically relevant.) *Frost is not a worldhopper, which Brandon defined as anyone who has been to another world. He is also a dragon, which is one of the three races native to Yolen. Frost is from Yolen, and he hasn't left.

Good thought, but I disagree because of conservation of energy. In the epilogue, the people of Southern Scadrial were freezing to death, and they had run out of things to burn to keep warm. They needed a supernatural source of heat to keep from freezing to death, so my thoughts turned to Brass Compounding. (There has been some discussion about the SoScads possibly living underground and storing geothermal energy in the medallions, which is in line with what you're saying. But I wasn't a fan of that theory, either, since it doesn't explain why they were freezing to death on the surface in the first place.) Then again, just because the Sovereign compounded heat to save the SoScads in the first place doesn't mean that it's the same mechanism currently used to fill the medallions. Their society could have recovered enough that they only need the medallions when they go outside, and it's just their way of storing heat for later (because their coat technology has been drastically crippled over the course of a thousand years on a too-hot planet). However, if the medallions are also granting F.Nicrosil (as Wax speculates and Allik confirms), that part of the medallion also needs to be refilled, which cannot be done by standing in a fire. If you want 100 people to use weight medallions for a week (to operate an airship, perhaps), you need one person to store constantly for almost two years; not terribly practical. Unless you have compounding, of course. So, yeah, I disagree with your theory not because I don't think Brass Feruchemy can store enough heat that quickly, but because I don't think the heat was there in the first place. Wayne discussed it when he was wounded (I think it was in SoS, but I'm not sure); if he spent time storing health while sick or injured, he would get worse, and then when he tapped it he would just get back to where he started. It's not possible to get ahead using Feruchemy, and the inhabitants of Southern Scadrial needed a way to get ahead of the cold. EDIT: Also, that would either be the best job or the worst job. All you need to do is sit around in the fire all day. But you couldn't bring anything to do or read, because it would be burned up. Maybe a high-temperature chessboard?