Oudeis

I was taught that the expression was "ipsum est". My latin teacher was a FILTHY LIAR.

That's basically what I meant. Preservation's ultimate goal was, "Someone frees Ruin, I die, that person takes my power, sacrifices her life to kill Ati, and a second person takes all the power at once." That being the case, knowing only Preservation's ultimate goal, it would seem odd that he tried to stop Vin from freeing Ruin, yet since we know he was post-poning his plan until it had a better shot, it makes sense. Same with Honor, Odium, the Heralds, and anyone else you care to name in Roshar. Any specific action they take might end up seemingly contrary to the core of their ultimate plan, because sometimes a few steps back gives you better positioning. Something to keep in mind, to explain why with what we know the actions of a few of these agents might make less than perfect sense at the moment.

Possible, though I suspect the Invested nature of the highstorms has something to do with it, not simply an overabundance of spren. It's nice how you tie in what we know, that some spren have some Cultivation in them, and the fact of Wyndle's leavings. You've led me to an alternate theory that I sort of can't believe took me this long... Maybe those two things are what the Storms bring, the two things from the two Shards. From Honor we get stormlight, and from Cultivation we get crem, which has been stated (I believe) to be good food for plants, and apparently also for Parshendi. If so, and if crystals are Roshar's universal focus... then perhaps crystals plus crem is how one accesses Cultivation's Investiture? Crem solidifies around objects. Tien used to find special rocks that looked like just rocks but seem to have had something special. What if Tien were Cultivation's form of surgebinder, somehow drawn to gems that were covered in crem, and able to lift his brother's melancholy with them?

Is "mating form" required for mating? If so, how are there still parshmen? If they don't take on mating form, how do we get new parshmen?

Which is the feruchemical metal that stores social connection? Could it be used to "store" heavily for the grips, so they can change sets quickly in the background and draw less attention? Apart from the obvious (f-gold) which metal(s) would be useful for lion-taming and other animal-tricks?

Don't forget, Jezrien said, "They will have the Knights Radiant. That will be enough." So way back whenever, when Jezrien was saying "maybe we'll stop the desolations," he did so on the assumption that the Radiants would keep up what they were doing. Also, this might help with the confusion: It's possible people seem to be working against their own best interests because their interests aren't as clear-cut as you might think. On Scadrial, Preservation's ultimate plan required that Ruin first be freed, then killed. Despite this, the Mist Spirit acted to prevent Vin from freeing Ruin, because there weren't just two options, there were three. One outcome was Ruin wins and one is Preservation wins, but the third was stasis. Leras decided not to gamble on Vin being able to kill Ruin, so he tried to convince her to give the well another thousand years. His immediate actions worked counter to his ultimate plan; if you'd judged him based just on his actions at the Well, you might be very confused as to his final goal. Just so, perhaps desolations are bad, but they are also the only field where either side might win. So both teams are trying to prevent desolations until they think they can win, and then when one side thinks they can win, they try to bring about the desolation. And realize that the Heralds might be insane, which throws another monkey wrench into the works.

I really hope that was a typo. =D Lirin, the only educated man in Hearthstone, tells Kaladin that it's a rare occurence. Szeth's own thoughts on the matter suggest that his Blade is unique in turning his eyes blue in the first place, not the fact that the color doesn't stay. And Taln's eyes are brown, while he is clearly wielding his Blade.

I realize it says "not required," and I understand that they are publicly available. A lot of people prefer not to read spoiler chapters, and relish the anticipation waiting for the full book. You are under no obligation to post spoiler tags or warnings, especially here in the Cosmere forum. I've just found that it's a simple enough effort to make. I'm sorry if I came across as trying to issue some kind of command.

My friend's gut tells him that Lutha was Rashek's father. Personally, I suspect that it was Rashek's love, who was a feruchemist, and therefore had to be turned into a mistwraith.

Except that the Old Magic doesn't seem to be a system of Investiture, it seems to just be a Shard directly affecting the world, like when Vin or Rashek took the power at the Well.

Hey, Omniscient? That stuff is spoilers for WoR readings. Would you kindly either throw it behind a Spoiler tag or save those comments for the WoR forum? I realize that, being omniscient, you know all this stuff already, but there are people out there staying willfully ignorant.

Computers are arguably the most important thing on earth. On our well-educated world, where computers are everywhere (not just wielded by a tiny fraction of the population) with more information available than at any point in our history, what percentage of the population do you think understands anything beyond the absolute basics of computer programming? Shardblades rarely wound; they are used to kill. The long-term effects of a wound wouldn't be something people have to deal with commonly, or something the average person would see in his lifetime. And the 'average person' on Roshar is functionally a peasant. Or infantryman (and while of course I have the utmost respect for the infantryman of any country's military in today's world, on Roshar it seems reasonable to assume that they were not terrible well-educated). Roshar example: People think that Shardblades will turn a darkeyes into a lighteyes, which does not seem to be the case. If everyone knew how Shardblades work so well, why would so many people be so mistaken as to their use/abilities? Shardblades are modern tools, yes, but they're also things of myth and legend, and Jasnah's entire part of the book deals with how the world has their myths and legends entirely wrong. EDIT: Grammar.

If we were talking about earth, you'd have a point. No one is hiding knowledge of shardblade injuries, and if the culture of Roshar were the culture of Earth we could look it up on stormipedia or wait for buzzspren to tell us about The One Trick With Shardblades a Dad Figured Out (That Soulcasters Hate). In our world information has to be supressed to be little-known. In this world no one knows because that just isn't the culture. There are a few hundred Shardblades in the known world. That is a tiny amount. They get treated seriously, not pulled out for party tricks. They are the express purview of men, and natural philosophy is restricted to women. The Shin have one Blade we know of that they keep sending out of the country; Szeth would know less about the non-immediate effects of Blades than just about anyone else. I'm sure there are tons of documented cases that literally tens of people have bothered to read in the last century or so. Normal people in this world believe a dark-eyes picking up a Shardblade will turn into a light-eyes. There is no evidence from this book to support the idea that the population of Roshar is, en masse, well-educated. People can be smart and they frequently know a lot about the things that directly affect them. Maybe the average Shardbearer knows (though it's a stretch to say that many would care about something that esoteric) and a few generals, a handful of doctors, and a few scholars who happen to care about such a specific topic.

I thought about Ruin changing the words in the logbook to make the spirit black. Why? That would make the previous spirit seem different from the current one. If Ruin were trying to get Vin and Elend to not trust Preservation, why not make him out to be evil and also to look more like the current Mist Spirit? Why deliberately change the wording to make the past spirit distinct, rather than similar? Sidenote... do we know which ear vin wears her earring in? When she touched the white Mist Spirit, she got a burning pain in her left ear. I'd like to know if it was due to her healurgic spike reacting poorly to Preservation.

What does anyone think stormform looks like or is for the purpose of? Does it allow them to survive a highstorm? They seemed to be trying to summon creationspren at the hall of art. If Shallan summoned some creationspren for them, could they use it? Also I agree with the people saying that Parshendi turn into Voidbringers when someone corrupts their Spren, the way that Spren got corrupted in the Dalinar preview. My theory from the first book is, I think, supported by Eshonai's interlude. At least one point of the assassination was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Eshonai expressly says that they did what they did in an attempt to thwart the Parshendi Gods. I think that for whatever reason, the Parshendi needed the Alethi army at the Plains, possibly for the purpose of killing Greatshells. Eshonai does say that they had to stop the Parshendi Gods, there's talk from Gavilar's history that the Parshendi think the chasmfiends are Gods, and killing greatshells seems to be just about all that gets done on the Plains. I think the reason he was to make a comotion, wear white, be seen, was to enrage the Alethi beyond reason. To make sure cooler heads would not prevail, to add as much insult to injury as possible and draw out the Alethi armies. Just one man's opinion. I sometimes feel that Endowment gets interpreted rather broadly. Literally any deliberate giving from one person to another is Endowment. When you Riot someone, you're "endowing" them with sorrow. Forgery "endows" an object with an alternate past. Szeth "endows" his victims with Stormlight when he reverses their gravity. You could even say a Coinshot is endowing his target with money. He just endows really really fast. I'm not saying it doesn't fit. I'm saying, what doesn't fit the definition of Endowment? One final thought I just had. The Parshmen are said to be Parshendi without songs, without form... without Spren. They are thoughtless, they are mindless, they have no memory or communication, just the most basic of child-like thought. Like a child... or like a spren. Like Syl, without Kaladin. And yet when bonded to a spren, they gain the ability to think, and talk, and reason. Could it be they are more like Kandra than we realize? Someone told me once that there's WoB that the bit of ruin and preservation in Scadrians is what made them sentient, that mistwraiths turn into the sentient kandra when they get given a small amount of Ruin via the hemallurgic spikes. I understand the common colloquialism is that if a cat were given spikes, that cat would gain self-awareness and reason. What if a Parshman has no Scrap of a Shard in them? What if they're the equivalent of a mistwraith, and the bond with a Spren gives them that tiny Scrap of Honor or Cultivation to turn them sentient? The implications to such a system being so similar to the mistwraith/kandra would be mind-boggling to me. Also Scrap is now totally my word, up there with Shard, Splinter, and Sliver.

Sorry for the double-post... I promised quotes, and no one has said anything since. In case anyone saw my post and is waiting for the quotes, I want it to pop up as "new post" for them. Here is the link to the (rather short) previous debate, with my quotes. A few thoughts... We also know Fedik was messing with Ruin's Shardpool. That may have provoked a reply from Ruin. If his mind were trapped, maybe it was an ill-advised action. Also, as to Ruin's knife. We know that the white mist can fuel Allomancy without the need for metal. Mayhaps the black mist can commit hemalurgic theft without the need for metal? Perhaps when "stabbed" with the mist, leaving the person alive is the natural state; perhaps it's the exact thing needed for non-fatal hemalurgic theft. And lastly... my concession speech. I asked if Fedik's stabbing were an example of hemalurgic theft and I got RAFO'd. According to my RAFO card, one reason people get RAFO'd is "it might mean the answer would make people focus on the wrong things". According to an annotation in Well of Ascension (I think chapter 40, definitely somewhere near there) people keep asking Brandon to write the prequel, to tell us more about Alendi's quest, and he's really sick of people asking that and hates prequels as a whole, and if he were to write a prequel it would be about Kelsier's training under Gemmel. So, those things together make it sound like, first of all, we're never gonna get told this, and second of all I was at least partially supporting my argument with the RAFO rather than "no" to my question, and it looks like the RAFO very likely meant something else. So... I'll be over here in my corner. With my poor, dead little theory. Crying myself to sleep...

That is not even slightly what I said, and if I did say it I'd slap myself silly. I did not mean to give you the impression that I thought physical changes caused morality changes; I simply meant that if the one can change, so can the other. Independently. =D Upvote. I think I really did end debate on that one... But it wasn't 4,500 years of stability and openness. Roshar wasn't a world where the dissemination of information is a big thing. There's an entire branch of historians trying to establish what really happened from the incredibly skewed accounts that they have access to. A lot of knowledge on Earth got lost or wiped out. I'm no historian, but it's my belief that two big things that could set human knowledge back are wars and massive natural disasters. It's a good thing Roshar isn't subject to constant warfare and weekly natural disasters... To give more concrete examples... no one, not even the most well-educated, knows what a dawnshard is, or where Urithiru is, or what Voidbringers were, or what's up with the Recreance, or what happened to the honorblades, and there's been more than enough time for that information to disseminate. Yes, I realize none of those things are quite as prevalent as Shardblades, but I also think Shardblades aren't quite common. Libraries are rare and the Palaneum is a wonder of the world. From one of Lirin's first talks with Kaladin, it sounds like after 4,500 years of medical practice, the average person considers washing a wound to be a waste of time, and this is a world where germs get their own visible-to-the-naked-eye spren. I do not think your argument that "knowledge of a comparably rare medical condition would be wide-spread" has a strong foundation, though several of your others hold merit.

Nope. Physics are universal and absolute. Granted they do some weird things under certain circumstances, but the idea that you can turn a blank wall into a mural because it wants to be one, or that causility is secondary to how "plausible" a vase turning into a chamber pot is, has no room in the laws of physics in our world. Similarly, morality can be subjective in our world, and objective in the cosmere, absolutely. It's a fictional universe. The laws of anything can be however the author envisions, including morality, absolutely. If you're choosing to squabble over the semantics of the word "absolute" then please provide me a word that means "entirely, universally and utterly consistent within the framework of its specific real or imagined universe" and I will use it instead of "absolute."

WARNING: Revival of the "Is hemalurgy evil?" question imminent. Please correct me if I'm wrong; considering the number of posts on so many threads throughout this forum where we've had this debate, it turns the idea of searching through all of them into a sysiphisian task, so I'm going to make an observation based on my impression. If I am mistaken, if I have missed someone's opinion for whatever reason, I beg your indulgence and ask that you correct me. It is not my intention to slight anyone. Here is my observation: A lot of people seem to split into two camps. The idea that there are definite moral absolutes, or the fact that there are not, that they are entirely mutable social constructs. Everyone I have seen support the idea that hemalurgy is not evil seems to belong to the "there's no such thing as evil" camp. Again, if I've missed someone who agrees that evil DOES exist independently of social norms and that hemalurgy simply doesn't fit the bill, let me know and I'll send you a PM to apologize and upvote your post. In the annotations for Mistborn 2: The Well of Ascension, Chapter 41, Mr. Sanderson discusses situational ethics. This is Brandon's universe. Technically it is his cosmere. You can debate whether or not there are absolute morals in our own "real" universe, but he gets to make the rules for his, and the rule is that there are. Let me save everyone some time. I happen to disagree. It is his book, and his universe. Let me re-iterate the fact I've stated before; you're allowed to believe whatever you wish. If you attempt to tell me, however, that you're right because your personal beliefs about a topic that's kept liberal arts students busy for literally thousands of years trumps a fantasy author's right to craft his own world, and if you're going to insult me for believing something different when your proof essentially boils down to how you feel about the world, please be prepared for me to be unimpressed. I'm not saying that your belief is wrong, and honestly I'm not even saying I think my own evidence is rock-solid. I am, as ever, open to conjecture based on evidence disproving my ideas. Please, however, have something better than "I just know that there's no such thing as absolute morality because I know it, and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong." Since I'm sure no one on this forum would ever make such a statement, I'm hopeful I've offended no one. EDIT: Upon re-read this came off as more confrontational than I'd intended. I softened it.

I actually thought someone had shown me the quote in this very thread; I know it was recent and this is the only place I can recall talking about Bloody Tan recently. I've searched and come up with nothing; if I dreamt the whole thing, yay! That means I can still believe he's a Seer. I'm gonna search a bit more and see if I can get back to you, though.

It's been confirmed that Tan was not an atium MIsting. Which isn't the same as saying he wasn't burning atium, but the workarounds I've been able to think of are complicated and unlikely.

First, I'm not certain that I agree that changing which Mistings "snap" isn't changing the fundamentals. That seems rather fundamental to me. Second, lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack. You've shown that Shards don't change their own magic system a lot, you haven't shown that they can't. That said, I happen to agree with you. I don't think I'm as convinced as you that it's a hard-and-fast rule, but I think you're right. I think magic systems are what they are, and the control any given Shard has over that system is rather limited. I just don't think either of us can technically prove it. With as little direct knowledge of Shards as we have, it is very hard to prove anything.

Good question, though I suspect the answer is scarcity. There simply aren't enough gemstones around to turn into spheres, and I'm sure Shallan's viewpoint once told us that diamond cannot soulcast the Stormlight stones. I have always wondered how they get covered in glass beads, though I suspect the answer is 'soulcasting'.

Wonderful, and since I can now see your evidence I fully agree. I never meant to question your honor, I just would much rather see the quotes myself.

Do we have any examples of Ruin changing someone's perception like that? He changes the information in metalminds, written words, and whispers into your mind. I don't think he's ever cast this kind of "illusion." And to what purpose? Which is a dumb question for me to ask, because you've asked me "to what purpose" and I'm about to explain to you how it's reasonable that we don't know. Oh, and Alendi DOES describe the spirit as smoke first. Then fog. Then mist. And don't forget, there is dark smoke at the Well which we know is Ruin. Just sayin'. Rashek is the giant, glaring threat in hindsight. At the time, Alendi himself thought he wasn't a threat, just an annoying racist packman. We know he was sent to kill Alendi if he couldn't lead him astray, but Kwaan knew to write things in metal to avoid "someone"'s attention. It's entirely plausible that, trapped as he was, Ruin did not know Kwaan's plan. As for why the metal wasn't mentioned afterwards, I have a simple answer. This is Alendi's logbook, not the CSI evidence log. He was writing for his own sake. It's mentioned time after time in the first book that a ton of crucial details are left out, a lot of questions are raised and never answered. These events happened a thousand years ago, recorded by a man in a book he didn't expect anyone to read, about his own philosophical conundra, in a dead language. If something normal happened, like the spirit grabbed an eating knife, or perhaps Fedik carried a dagger and the spirit grabbed that and used it, then dropped it, why would Alendi mention it? It's not germane to the emotional turmoil he's feeling which, as Vin says frequently, is most of what he talks about. I do, however, have my own theory. Alendi was questioning. He was wondering if he was right. He was doubting, possibly because of Rashek, his place as the Hero. Ruin couldn't allow him to pull a Kwaan and change his mind. We know that Fedik and Alendi were alone; only they were witness to the stabbing. If Fedik was the theft, that leaves one person around to be spiked... Very soon thereafter, Alendi writes with new resolve. In the passage Vin reads in the second book, the one that convinces her to decide she's not crazy, Alendi suddenly stops being wishy-washy and re-accepts his destiny as the Hero. A week out he'd been wavering; days later he's resolute. Exactly what Ruin wants. It also answers why he didn't mention where the knife went; Spook in the third book makes a point of noting that he'd somehow managed to forget an enormous piece of metal inside his own shoulder. Yes, it is unfortunate that it meant Alendi would have one more spike to remove before entering the Well and releasing Ruin, but as we saw with Vin it was instinctive. It was a gamble, but at that point so was waiting around to see if Alendi would give up his quest or figure out Ruin's plan. Ati wasn't left, at that point, with any 'safe' options. Kay, it's Thanksgiving and I have to get to the Turkey bowl. I've got more to say and quotes to post. I'll do so tomorrow.