SwordNimiForPresident

Given how Mistborn Era one ended, I would be very surprised to see someone else merge Shards. I suspect that Cultivation will be killed and Shattered, and Odium will make war against Scadrial. Given that Harmony is effectively impotent but also, for all intents and purposes indestructible, the battles would all likely be fought by proxies. I think Odium and Cultivation would form Genocide. Selective pruning based on hate seems pretty straight forward. Adding Honor to the mix would probably Make it into something similar to Crusade/Jihad but more to the tune of the war in Dune where tens of billions were killed in the name of the Kwizatz Haderach. Adding Autonomy to Harmony would probably tilt it towards Autonomy because Ruin and Preservation are already balancing each other out. They are effectively nullifying each other which means most of the intent would probably be Autonomy. Hegemony and Empire are basically the antithesis of Autonomy. They would be more appropriately applied to Dominion.

I don't have the books with me to check, but doesn't the Stormfather play a role in the transformation? I feel like I remember him asking Eshonai if she was sure she wanted it. That could just be me conflating that with something else though.

It's a little off topic, but she would likely be much better served by a bendalloy medallion.

I only count three Shards associated with emotion, but assuming they come in pairs I can posit a fourth. -Odium (hate) and Devotion (love) -Valor (courage) and presumably some form of Fear, Terror, Horror or Cowardice. None of the others we have seen so far are emotions. I always assumed that they came in complementary pairs so I grouped them like this: -Ruin and Preservation (obviously) -Cultivation and Whimsy Those four are all some variation of change. Ruin being absolute change and Preservation being null change. Cultivation is ordered change and Whimsy is disordered change (basically chaos). -Dominion and Autonomy -Mercy and Justice, Vengeance or maybe Cruelty (again, assuming they come in pairs). These four are related to authority. Dominion is absolute authority while autonomy is independence/freedom. Mercy and Justice both require authority in order to be enacted or enforced. -Invention and Endowment -Honor and Ambition These four are about goals and motives. Invention is having the pieces and working towards the whole. Endowment is about having the whole and giving away the pieces. Ambition is about pushing boundaries in the pursuit of something while Honor is about staying within the boundaries. It is interesting that the German word for ambition is ehrgeiz, which literally translates to honor greed. This is all just my take on it obviosly, and I had to make up two Shards in order for it to make any sense. Time will tell if it holds any water. I do think it's interesting that it breaks down into four groups of four and that there are four Dawnshards. Given that one of my groups is related to change, and Change is one of the Dawnshards, I can't help but wonder if maybe the other other Dawnshards will be related to my other three categories (Emotion, Authority and Motive). Again, time will tell. edit: Just one last thought I wanted to add. The Dawnshards and supposed to be primordial commands that Adonalsium used to create the Cosmere if I understand correctly. If I were going to give the Universe four commands to arrive at intelligent life, it would probably be something to the tune of "Change, Feel, Think, Organize", which in my opinion matches up pretty well with my four groups (change, emotion, motive and authority respectively).

Double nicrosil Bondsmith. Might as well just be a Shard at that point.

Bondsmith and anything else obviously. If Bondsmith is out, Elsecaller/Edgedancer. Realmatic transfer, Transformation and the Ability to heal others. Abrasion is just icing on the cake. I'm curious if you could achieve the two orders dream by using one of the Honor blades while also being a KR? I was really hoping we would see Dalinar use Jezrien's blade at some point but that seems unlikely now. edit: fixed a type

Kelsier and Jasnah. I like the idea of them developing a non sexual romantic relationship based around their mutual ambition and natural competitiveness. Them constantly plotting against each other would be interesting and it would also be funny when Hoid comes around and trolls Kelsier.

This could also be Autonomy referencing the original agreement between the Shards not to interfere with each other. edit: Also, Autonomy having DID is a cool idea and seems entirely possible at this point. It will be interesting to find out if you are correct.

F-Gold doesn't heal old scars either. We see a certain someones scarred hands in BoM and he is probably Fullborn at this point. I assume that since Stormlight and F-Gold seem to heal in the same way, you could store the healing from Stormlight (or likely any other source of healing) in a goldmind.

Feruchemy for sure. It is easily the most versatile system so far with things like nicrosil and duralumin. Being a full Feruchemist opens the door to every other magic system in the Cosmere. It's also the only system that lets you alter your perception of time, which is probably the most overpowered ability you can get.

I assume you meant this for me? I couldn't really say. No part of any religion has ever seemed believable to me. There's really nothing that could convince me that one is true, except perhaps a deity of some kind inserting absolute knowledge of its truth into my mind. The Universe seems, to me at least, to be completely explicable. We simply haven't fully explained it yet. Any sort of "magic" or "spirituality" that people experience can pretty easily be blamed on our overactive brains. After all, there are people with mental conditions that cause them to effectively live in a different reality. (I put those words in quotes because I'm using them to generalize larger ideas, not to be derisive)

I don't believe there is a god or conscious force guiding the Universe. Most creation stories seem aimed at answering the question "where did the Universe come from?". I find it odd that the answer most religions arrive at is that god made it since this raises the obvious question "where did god come from?". If god can just exist, I see no reason that the Universe can't just exist. Adding deities just seems like extra steps to me. I also take issue with the vast discrepancy between the creation myths of various religions and the actual observable Universe. We know, with a reasonable measure of certainty, what happened in the beginning of our Universe down to incredibly small units of time and it in no way relates to any creation myth. I'll also add that I take religious holy texts (bible, torah, ect.) literally and in that regard I find most religions abhorrent for their treatment of people that are "other". In the case of western religion, I take issue especially with their treatment of the afterlife. I have been created without the capacity for belief through no fault of my own. I literally lack the capacity to believe. I could meet god face to face, and would assume I was suffering from mental illness, severe head trauma or a reaction to a psychoactive chemical. Presuming one of the various western religions was correct, I am to be tortured for eternity in a pit of fire because of something I have no control over. That is evil. It's like making an ant farm so you can burn the ants. This got a bit ranty and off topic from your question, sorry. I'm gonna leave it in anyway since it is relevant to the topic at large.

I believe the Universe can likely be explained through science and math, we simply lack the tools to measure it. I also believe the Universe is deterministic and that causality cannot be broken.

@teknopathetic This theory seems completely plausible. My only quibble would be Shallan actually killing Chana. As we have seen, Heralds fight with Spiderman levels of reaction time. Ishar literally parried a Shardblade with his finger tip and he isn't even considered "good" when compared to some of the others. There's certainly room for surprise or hesitation or what ever, but after watching Ishar take on a whole squad of Windrunners it seems a bit credulous that a child could kill a Herald. I used to wonder what Ishar meant when he said he would destroy the Radiants if they didn't agree to be bound by oaths. I assumed that it was some Bondsmith thing. Now I think he literally just meant he would kill them all with his bare hands..

That's interesting. The bit about a Herald dying slipped right past me. Honestly there were enough surprises in there that I should probably read it a few more times. Book 5 is gonna be juicy. It would also be quite funny if Brandon went out of his way to troll you personally.

Hey sorry if it got mentioned somewhere in the thread already, but I stopped reading about halfway though when it became a debate over semantics. When did we find out that Chana was dead? I don't recall seeing that anywhere in text. Was it a WoB?

I would guess that they used it in the construction of their fortess, as well as in the making of the Connection orb that Kelsier used to take Preservation. I don't have the text on me at the moment but I think they were also using something on themselves at camp that was implied to sustain them in some way. Presumably that was also produced via the Dor beam. Fully agree. Selish magic seems to be the biggest pain the ass for potential world hoppers. This is what leads me to believe that Sel's various systems can work off world, just not in the same way or not as well as they do on Sel. We simply haven't seen it yet. I'll just add that of all the magic systems out there, Aon Dor seems to be the only one that cannot be acquired at will. This makes it far more valuable in my opinion. Having it would give you a leg up in potentially acquiring other abilities, where having other abilities would not help you get Aon Dor. I also think that this makes it safe for Aon Dor to be extremely overpowered compared to other magic systems, as the maximum number of people using it is very limited.

I started mine to watch Halo but stayed because of Strange New Worlds. Super disappointed with Halo though. I've been skipping all of Kwan Ha's scenes since the third episode, which means that I skipped the entire episode last week.. such a shame. On a happier note, I also watched Lower Decks which I enjoyed very much. It's honestly my third favorite Trek show now. I was always a huge fan of the Original, but never got super into TNG or DS9 (though I didn't have a problem with them either, just not my favorite). As for the more recent shows, I wasn't a huge fan of the season long, Universe ending threats. I'm totally fine with a Universe threatening plot line, I just want it to be wrapped up by the end of the episode or maybe the next one on a rare occasion. Dragging it out all season and ending every episode on a cliff hanger makes me lose interest. Strange New Worlds brings back the episodic "story of the week" model of older Treks, and it does it with a great cast. Kirk has always been my favorite Captain, but after watching two episodes of Discovery and the one episode of SNW that's aired so far, I feel pretty confident that Pike is my guy. There are a few episodes of Discovery that give some decent context for SNW if you haven't watched that show yet. The most important would be S2E12 "Through the Valley of Shadows" as it is central to Pike's internal conflict through episode one. I also liked S2E8 "If Memory Serves". It revisits "The Cage" story line from the original pilot and takes us back to Talos IV. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I'm watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It is everything I've been waiting for an more. I've watched the first episode four times already. If you were a fan of the original series, this iteration captures everything that made it great and packages it in a beautifully done, perfectly stylized setting.

I imagine they don't use Aon Dor because they are in the Cognitive realm. Given the machanics of Aon Dor, I don't see how it could function anywhere but the Physical. They do seem to be drawing the Dor to their fortress on the edge of the Scadrian CR, which makes me think that setting up a satellite Aon Rao on other worlds is probably possible. It also seems possible that accessing the Dor from other places (at least on Sel) might simply be a matter of finding the right base Aon for the geographic region. We've barely scratched the surface of Aon Dor on page, so I'll have to wait for more books to find out.

Aon Dor is the strongest magic system in the Cosmere so far. A programmable magic system is limited only by imagination. The only thing that might be able to knock it off it's throne is Microkinesis, which has not been explored in the canon as of yet.

Kelsier is a cat. He's the type that can go out and enjoy killing something and then go back to its family and snuggle. Kaladin is an ostrich, because he like to bury his head in the sand.

I imagined an Egyptian sarcophagus but yea, that's the idea.

I think I've said this in a previous "Kelsier's body" thread but I'll throw it out there again. Kelsier is a Cognitive shadow, so he is Immortal in the sense that he will never fade away from the CR even without his body. Kelsier's bones still exist in the physical realm. Kelsier can talk to Spook, and knows the location of several Inquisitor spikes. Wax showed us that unkeyed gold metalminds can be tapped by someone that is dead but still in the CR as long as the metalmind is touching their corpse. Kelsier could get Spook to spike himself with F-Gold, F-Aluminum and F-Nicrosil, then make an unkeyed goldmind, then hold that goldmind against Kelsier's bones. Kelsier could then tap that goldmind and regrow his body. Kelsier would retain his scars in his regrown body because they are a part of his Identity, much like Kaladin's brand was part of his. I'm not sure why Kel would need a Hemalurgic spike in this scenario, or how he would go about making one that is key to him given his lack of a body to spike in the first place. The only use I could see for a spike on Kel is to grant him some type of Feruchemy (probably nicrosil) so that he can make medallions. As a Cognitive shadow, Kelsier would likely be immortal in the same sense that the Heralds or Hoid are. He would likely no longer age but would probably still be vulnerable to the destruction of his body, though he could likely easily resurrect again as long as his body isn't completely vaporized. He could probably also stash a piece of himself somewhere touching a fully loaded goldmind keyed to himself so that if he were to de destroyed he could resurrect there instead (like a checkpoint in a video game).

Do blade-dead limbs decay? Or are they simply paralyzed? If they decay it could present some serious health problems for keeping it attached. Otherwise I imagine a human limb would be very easy to awaken.