Plastic Misting

How about we look at it from a dramatic perspective rather than from a lore perspective?

The Champion could be some Herald we barely know anything about, but that wouldn't be very interesting.
It would be much more dramatic if it's a character we know very well. Imagine we get a whole book of wind up with flash backs and moral struggle where the reader expects the character to make the honorable/right choice in the end. But instead he makes the selfish/hateful choice. Odin swoops in and we get a Champion.

(a bit like the ending of Death Parade episode 9)

No other way to explain how it stayed in the exact same spot for over 10 years.

Was that mentioned in the book?

I also got the impression of it being stationary but I'm not sure why.

Hey!

When it was revealed that the Calamity star is really the International Space Station I felt a bit cheated. I always got the impression from the books that it appeared like any regular star. The ISS wouldn't appear like a star, even to casual observation without a telescope: It orbits earth around 16 times a day. That a lot faster than a star (from our point of view).

However there was never a mention of that in the book. Or was there? Was there ever a mention of Calamity having odd properties? Other than the red colour, obviously.

I don't have digital copies of the books handy otherwise I'd figure it out myself with the power of ctrl+f

I think his chapter early in the book could've been a bit shorter without us missing out on anything.
And him getting over Ranette felt a bit out of place to me. There was no real build-up and it just kinda happened. And it didn't effect the main plot either.

The thought that crossed my mind when rethinking about how Rashek died is that he was actually stabbed with a spear when Vin finished him off. That could result in a hemalurgic spike.

Has anyone else though of that before? In retrospect that theory seems so obvious, you could easily come up with that after having read the second book.

 
Then maybe the sovereign could be the Lord Ruler, having his soul somehow transplanted into a new body by the use of that spike.

Secret history spoilers:

Remember how crazy Preservation's future prediction skills were during the first three books? He was predicting the future more than a thousand years ahead. Presumably Sazed has them now. So anything that happens is probably according to Sazed's plan, or at least he accounted for it.

Honor never said that.  Besides, the "current leaders" are the Trell-agents.  They couldn't care less about any specific human pawn, so long as the plan itself continues on schedule (and if they aren't immortal, I'll eat my hat).  And there is a greater goal - secure dominance over the whole of Scadrial.  Again, they don't care about the puny humans.  If they need to wipe everything and start from scratch, so be it.  It'll take time, and is appallingly wasteful, but better to flip the table than lose on it. 

I didn't mean it as a quote... It seems pretty obvious that honours thing is to act morally correct, e.g. the ends don't justify the means.

We don't really know how exactly the Trell agents are connected to the Set. But even if they are at the top of a strict hierarchy they still have to convince the humans to do their bidding with some explanation. And as I explained earlier: It probably isn't just a promise of power.

Suit accepts the Trell-agent's authority without question, and is gratified that they listened to him about moving up the timetable.  That is, until they told him what exactly that entailed.  That plus the fact that the Set's hirelings are afraid of them (see also their conduct while divulging the information about the agents' presence) suggests that the Trell-agents are fully in charge.  Also, Taravangian runs a murder-clinic to get intel from one of the Unmade (who by the way are his ostensible enemies) regarding his plan to take over the world - if he's good, he is extremely misguided.   

Well, you are right. I was just speculating what seems likely to me from a story-telling perspective. I don't think we know enough about the Set one way or another.

Taravangian... Is kind of like the trolley problem. I think that is going to be a big part of Stormlight Archive. Honor obviously has his solution of "you can't kill to save" but the characters will be tempted to go for other solutions. Taravangian tries to kill to save.

I think the Set might be similar. I don't think the Set is simply power-hungry. If that were the case their long-term plots wouldn't make sense because they don't help them achieve anything during the life-time of the current leaders. There has to be a greater goal. I also don't think Sanderson would write such a simple style of villain.

Just saying, I can't see a way for Suit to hang around in any of the other two Realms, and more than that: If you are going to send somebody to another Realm to keep working for you, blowing them apart and saying you're going to wipe out life on their planet is probably a horrible way to start that pitch.

Hmmm, it's kinda tough to judge considering we don't know any of the goals of any of the cosmere-aware organisations. Suit seems like the person that would go along with destroying a planet for the right reasons.

I don't think it was just an expression, because he says "you'll be allowed" before "to serve us in another realm".

It could be a herring but that seems rather unlikely to me.

Hmmm, I wonder how much time would have to pass on Scadrial for there to be 1980s tech.

After BoM technology probably the equivalent of mid-to-late 19th century. This would mean there's only about one century.

And that is why the Set are the villains, because their actions have suggested that they have discussed precisely this.

I think the Set is part of Harmonies plan to prepare for humanity what's to come. They are responsible for many technological advances. And in the epilogue the Trell-agent explains that they are afraid of civilisation advancing too far. I would be surprised if members of the Set didn't turn out to be good guys at the end, at least to Taravangian levels of goodness.

It probably takes more than one generation of breeding to get results.

If two misting parents had a good chance at getting a misting child that would be common knowledge and people would choose their partners accordingly.

Also, if we're already on the topic of cruel logistics:  You only need a few male allomancer rapists for a lot allomancer women. Actually you probably want very few males so you can get maximum allomantic inbreeding going. Something like in the image on the right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Domestic_animals. You'd probably also need a different strategy depending whether you want mistings or a mistborn. And there is probably a decent amount of knowledge on animal breeding around, considering there were farm animals during the final empire.

Man, I never realized just how dark this could get.

Now that I think about it there's a good chance Spook had himself spiked at the end of his life.

He probably didn't ask other old allomancers to spike themselves because he wanted to keep Hemalurgy a secret. But there's really no good reason for him not to do it.

David probably wouldn't think of Babylon Restored as New York city.

My idea for Newton was to use a laser to blind her and so effectively rendering her useless. We can't really be sure whether that would work given her powers.

For Obliteration I also like the Mother switch. All other methods I can think off rely on the same principle, such as poisoning him.

As for finding Regalia, I have no idea. As a reckoner I would assume that her base is somewhere under water. And she could probably also just bring in supplies through an underwater route, making that avenue also impossible for use.

Let's be honest here, that whole grape catapult plan is nice, but it is waaaaaay too obvious, especially given we had already established Regalia as being very smart.

Can anybody here come up with a better plan?

Also, can we brainstorm about ways to kill Obliteration, Newton, and Regalia?

I wonder if having a strong fear of something is a prerequisite to becoming an Epic.

Otherwise there would already be some Epics around that don't get corrupted, so it kinda has to be.

But then again that would mean that David isn't going to develop Epic powers in the next book, and that seems rather unlikely to me from a story telling perspective.

If the stalemate lasted for an extended period of time Prof would get bored and no longer fear Steelheart. Then he could win easily.

IIRC Eshonai notices at one point that Venly and the scholars seem oddly comfortable with the new stormform and he wonders if they already used it at some point.

It would makes for her to keep Stormform a secret until the other Parshendi were so desperate they would take the risk.

Yes but the Radiant's fist ideal is "journey before destination" and Mr T is doing the exact opposite "destination before journey". He wants to get to some place and he is willing to employ any possible means to get there. There is no way this coincide even with the Radian's ideals. What he wants to accomplish is irrelevant, it is the mean he is using to get there that are significant. So far, he has murdered thousands of people, spread a war, destroy a kingdom, assassinate leaders and launch a plague. He is not redeeming in anyway as he does not feel bad for any of the things he has done. On the other hand, he keeps at it.

 

I do not believe any spren from any order would be fine with all that.

I didn't mean to imply anything with my observation.

The Nightwatcher is involved, which means normal rules don't really work anyway. And it has been heavily implied that Taravangians affliction and character will be an important plot points later in the books. And we know that not all spren are as discerning as honorspren with whom they bond with (don't remember the exact quote though). And we also know he's more compassionate on his dumber days.

I don't see it as likely, but there is plenty of room for odd things to happen here.

One of the Parshendi songs reminded me of Taravngian recently:

Scholarform shown for patience and thought. / Beware its ambitions innate. / Though study and diligence bring the reward, / Loss of innocence may be one’s fate.

So I theorize that he has some sort of bond with a scholarspren with help from the Nightwatcher.

Eh...

I dunno. Yeah, the people of Arandell weren't expecting a a Winter, but the whole thing last a week, at the outside most. And they aren't unfamiliar with cold conditions. The ice diggers at the beginning clearly have a steady job, the atmosphere is cold enough that there's an official capacity for someone to act as Ice Master, and the sales hut adapted quickly.

I'm sure there were some deaths, but I don't think the effects lasted long enough for Elsa to work up a seizable body count.

I suppose it depends on a lot of unknown variables.

If it were to ruin most of the crops in the kingdom it could lead to a massive famine, potentially killing thousands. But it could also do close to no harm in a good scenario.

To be fair, Elsa probably also killed a lot of people by causing that winter.

Perhaps they knew that if they would keep the bond they'd trigger another desolation.

That's the only reason I can think of that really works. All of the other reasons mentioned here would lead some radiants to give up their bond, but all of them? At the same time? The radiants would probably still like their power after the desolation is over, they can still keep doing good with them.

It could potentially be a further plot point that Tarah conceived a child with Kaladin right before he kill the shardbearer.

Not likely, but I do think she has to become plot-relevant again in some way, and I don't really see how.

What are the theories on Lamiril's blackmail anyway?

Let's assume Gaz' crime was murder and Lamiril has evidence.

It's not like Lamiril could just come out say: "Hey, that murder that happened a year ago, that was Gaz. I knew it all along and was blackmailing him the entire time."

However from the threat that Gaz would join the bridgemen we can also assume that after the blackmail was revealed it would be handled within the law. It would be more or less public. It's clearly not a threat of assassination or the like.

I can't think of anythign that Gaz could've done that fits both of those criterias.