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My guess: Their allomantic strength would remain the same. So they'd still be able to burn the same metals with the same power. On the other hand, their skill would atrophy just as skill in doing any particular task goes away if you don't do it for 5 years. Their pushes would be less precise. Maybe a bronze-burner would have to think a bit more to recognize pulses. Their reflexes wouldn't be as fast, they might not react to things in time. that sort of thing.

Yeah, as best as I can tell "the stormmoash" crowd are having pretty much the reaction Brandon wanted us to have. That scene is just picture-perfect for it. Elokhar, down and beaten. About to say the oath to start on the path to redemption. Starting to glow. Holding his son. You can just imagine the dramatic music. ...and then Moash literally kicks the child , stabs Elokhar (gives him a double-tap for extra brutality, the scene lingers on it for a bit), then gives Kaladin a final F-U salute and runs off. The only way he could be any more hate-worthy is if he stabbed a cute puppy on the way out. It's not really about the actual actions. Szeth and Taravangian assassinated a bunch of leaders and those leaders were just as innocent and had families too, Dalinar had a whole history as Blackthorn and probably murdered far more kings and queens and children, etc etc. So did many Alethi warlords, probably. But that's not the point; stuff referenced off-screen can never have the emotional impact this scene does. It's just a super well-written, emotional scene. Exactly as it's supposed to be. And Moash is the villain of it. So in conclusion, StormMoash.

Could be somebody trying to access the Beyond, too. That seems like the sort of thing Hoid would try, or some academics from Silverlight like Khriss.

This seems to be the most likely option implied by the superficial reading of the book... doesn't mean it's right though. I like those options too. Especially the mention of the Derethi priest - there's openings there for planetary-scale intrigue if Brandon wants to elaborate on it... I think this is exactly what Hoid did, though. He stole it from under the noses of both the Rose Empire and Shai. If he hadn't explicitly told Shai that he'd stolen it in the deleted scene, nobody would even know he did. In my opinion he is. He's got the capability to be ruthless and to betray people for his own benefit - just not physically hurt them himself. He wanted the Scepter. He got the scepter, betraying both his employer (Rose Empire) and his accomplice (Shai) to get it. Seems in-character to me. Agreed. He definitely helped Shai get the opportunity here. I don't know whether what he did is help the near-assassination happen (thus giving Shai the opportunity) or to help Ashravan survive the attempt instead of being killed (thus, also giving Shai the opportunity). I would have usually guessed the latter - that Hoid interferes to prevent Ashravan from succumbing to his injuries, long enough for his flesh to be sealed but his mind to be gone, giving the Arbiters the opportunity to go to Shai for help. Doesn't seem weird to me. Hoid meddles all the time for his own ends. Usually when we see that reason it's either trying to oppose Rayse or (more often) trying to get a new form of power. Here, it's the latter - he wants to get the moon scepter to help figure out Selish magic which he doesn't have yet. Not that I can think of - but definitely want to hear theories!

Since the magics being geographically locked is related to how the Dor is stuffed into the Cognitive realm (which has a spatial component) instead of the Spiritual realm, I would guess that pre-splintering selish magic was not geographically locked. That means it must have been extremely different than what it is now.

It could be that a new elantrian only appears when a previous one dies. As if there's some bit of investiture that leaves on death and finds a new host. It's possible that while Devotion and Dominion were alive they manually chose Elantrians, but once they were killed the number remained static at whatever it was when the splintering was done. (By analogy to other magic systems... in Stormlight Archive, you could easily achieve a limit on a radiant order by only having a limited number of Spren of that type exist. Like Bondsmiths. In Warbreaker, returned are those with Divine Breaths; if there were a fixed number of Divine Breaths, that would limit number of Returned. Maybe the mechanism is something like one of those.) The limit makes Post-Reod Elantris even more horrifying - if Arelon had only treated the Elantrians well and kept them comfortable, instead of leaving them to brutally murder each other in a walled hellhole, they would have lost far fewer to the Shaod, because fewer would have died!

So on the very last page, Hoid is singing some very meta song about artists and art. But the very last line is about "The more you must guess at the truth that is there, creator, creation, parted by the breadth of a hair". That's sounds like it's begging for a second half of a reference there, where somewhere in the book someone is separated from something important by hair in a panel. An I could have sworn that on this board I remember discussion about something like that. But now I can't find it. Anyone got anything? A previous discussion, or an idea of what art page completes the reference? Or am I just making things up?

Probably marketed that way because it's a catchier phrase. And it's a good hook! I'm not sure why, but to me "what if the dark lord won" is catchier than "what if the chosen one turned evil". I think it's because of the standard tropes it plays against. In fantasy there's often a Chosen One, and the Hero has to overcome all sorts of trials, beating the odds against them many times, in order to triumph. It's a natural twist of that to ask - well, what if the hero doesn't beat the odds? The odds are stacked against them, it makes sense they'd fail! So this is a book exploring that. What if the hero turns evil just doesn't tie into the standard tropes the same way, and so isn't as catchy. And in the end, the actual plot isn't really either of those, precisely. The book explores it over time. At first it looks like an obvious dark-lord-won setting - volcanoes spitting ash everywhere, brutal slavery, an immortal dictator-god-ruler-mage. Then there's an obvious twist - actually, TLR was supposed to be the hero, but turned evil! And then there's a less obvious twist - TLR wasn't the hero, the hero did fail after all. TLR was the guy that stabbed the hero in the back. And the eventual twist that actually Alendin wasn't actually the Hero of Ages either, the Hero of Ages is Sazed. Though you can't trust anything written in prophecy because it's all been actively manipulated by an active trapped evil god, and really the whole thing is a long Gambit Pileup between two gods, and Rashek honestly probably did the best he could given the fact that he was just a random packman thrust in to a position of absolute power with an ACTUAL god of decay whispering in his ear for centuries.

I do that sometimes too! Depends on the book.

Ooh, that is interesting! I did not know about it! The Traveller is Hoid. Is he back on Yolen, which is all white? The soot clearly means he's just back from Era-1 Scadrial, as does the comment about Ati and Leras dying. Could the guy he's talking to be Frost? "You sly old lizard!" So Hoid has likely two motivations - "to restore what he has lost" (something probably impossible) and a vendetta (against Rayse?). Restoring what he's lost involves some place... which isn't named. He also thinks what Ati nearly did (nearly destroyed a planet?) gives weight to his vendetta (because if Odium has his way, things will be way worse?)

Well, yeah, that's not an original idea for his motivation, I probably got it from these forums somewhere. I don't think I have any more insight into what Hoid's after than anybody else here. It was just a shift in my thinking - realizing that him acquiring all these different pieces of magic is for some more fundamental reason than just power and abilities.

So I realized that my assumptions about Hoid's goals were obviously wrong! And maybe other people's are too, I don't know what everyone believes. For the longest time, I assumed that the reason Hoid was collecting different magic systems was to become more powerful. Obviously I thought he needed that power for some mysterious goals; I wondered about what those goals were (stopping Odium? Something we don't know of yet?) but I always implicitly assumed that the reason he wanted more magic systems was because having more abilities is, obviously, more powerful than having less abilities. But then I realized something. Hoid tried to acquire the magic system of Elantris! Elantrian magic is, by construction, geographically limited. You can barely use Aons outside of the country, much less elsewhere in the Cosmere. It would be farily useless for Hoid to be able to make Aons! And yet, he still tried to become an Elantrian. So that means he had alternate reasons. He's got some reason to try to make a connection to the Investiture of every single shard. And now I'm more convinced than ever that its a Realmatic reason, he's got some plan in mind that requires him to pull investiture from many different Shards, not for reasons of power but for something else. Reforming Adonalsium? Stealing all the Shards at once? Don't know. But it's something very special.

They break the laws of physics as they exist in our universe, but not the laws of physics of the Cosmere, because magic/investiture is part of the physics there.

Yeah, I've been assuming for sure that Arik has some sort of magical ability. Reminded me of the fighting style one of the guys in Elantris... ClayShan or something?

Theory on Adonalsium makes sense! I like that a lot. The key insight for me being the WoB where he says that pure investiture, when there's enough of it, will spontaneously form a consciousness. That ties together the source of Adonalsium pretty nicely.

Yes! Great catch!

Atium is a big trump card here. With a good supply of atium to see the near future, mistborn obviously wins pretty easily against anyone - dodge anything, aim attacks directly at where the enemy will be in the future.

Well, I doubt anybody knows for sure. After all, the trilogy isn't written yet, so nobody knows how similar or different the plot will be. Some parts of various characters (and possibly the central conflict!) would have to be changed, because they've been pulled out and already used in other stories. On the other hand, some of the twists seem like they might be preserved, because they're pretty cool and haven't been used before. And - if they happen - these Aether novels are a pretty long time off. Lots of things might change between now and then. Or they might not.

Yeah, and Nalizar did spend some time fighting against the constable afterwards. So maybe the Forgotten influence was weaker for sometime, or even gone, it retreated deeper.

I like that theory! Makes a lot of sense to me. There's a lot of cities and formations that look like they were artificially created like that. Windblades in Kholinar. Urithiru. The shattered plains. Maybe Sesemalex Dar, based on its description on the wiki. Maybe that's what Dawnshards did. Also then it makes sense how the Dawnshards could be huge weapons of destruction, capable of destroying planetary ecosystems in the wrong hands (or when used overzealously), while still being powerful tools for creation if used well.

Yes, I think that makes sense. We already know that Shardblades are spren in sword form and are conscious. We know that Plate is somehow tied to advancing further in the ideals too. I think it would make sense if Plate were also somehow formed by a conscious spren like the blade. Not quite sure how that would work - is it one spren per radiant, split into plate and blade? or does a radiant get help from more spren to form the plate? or what? - but I think it makes sense that the plate has some level of consciousness.

I think Adolin is going to get more radiant powers, but that won't put him on par with the "main characters", because they'll all be advancing in their radiant oaths as well. I think we're going to see escalation. More and more squires, more radiants. Power up or be left behind. This also might tie in to how Ashyn was destroyed. Sure, when we have a half-dozen or maybe a few dozen radiants, the power doesn't seem so bad. What about when we have hundreds? Thousands? And they're fighting hundreds or thousands more? And searching for more and more ways to make stormlight more and more destructive. World War Radiant. It's gonna be bad. Real bad. And at that level of power, "radiant bond" might become table stakes. And Adolin might be the catalyst for how it gets so bad. If Adolin manages to "heal" Maya - and in a way that provides at least a path to heal more and more deadeyes - then suddenly there's a rush to heal deadeyes via bonds. And then some living spren decide that the recreance wasn't a mass murder, just a temporary hibernation, and that lets them form bonds more freely. If it goes this way, war by the end of book 5 is going to be completely unrecognizable.

He might be able to fight back physically as long as he's attempting to restrain his enemy, not actually harm them. For the fused, for example, as long as he's trying to send them back to Braize instead of hurting them, he might have various physical options.

Oh man. Seeing his plans for how many Cosmere books he wants to write and how long it would take him... People just can't keep up the same pace in their 60s and 70s. Aging is a real thing. Is he really going to be able to write at the same pace when he's 70 as when he's 45? I don't know how much confidence I can have that his plan will actually come to fruition. I hope it does, I'd love to read it all.

Yes, I noticed that as well, and other people did too. We're not quite sure what it means yet. I'm 101% sure it's intentional and a clue to something, but I don't know what. My best guess would be that Doomslug actually knows/remembers something about M-bot's pilot, and will eventually be able to communicate it.