Oudeis

Interesting... I officially believe this theory. If y'all recall, I think it happened in Szeth's first interlude (I'll look it up if anyone doubts me) he mentioned that the terms of his punishment are to obey whoever holds the stone, with two exceptions: He cannot take his own life, and he cannot give up the Blade. This is something that was written into his very oath itself. The Blade isn't some incidental thing he has apart from his oath, it itself is tied to his punishment. I would not be surprised at all if I were to learn that his Blade, which I think is Jezrien's Honorblade, not only grants him the powers of the Order associated with Jezrien, but also binds him to Jezrien's primary trait of honor. I don't think this contradicts the quote above about how he CAN choose to break his oath. The honor binding, in my opinion, is not absolute. It gives him a powerful urge to obey the oath, but it isn't utter domination of his will. As a reflection, Kaladin, despite being honorable enough to attract Syl, still does sometimes lie, or act in anger, or sometimes do things for selfish reasons.You do not need to be perfect to be honorable, just as the Blade Szeth carries compells him to honor, but doesn't ensure it.

You forgot to dramatically put on sunglasses as you said that.

The weapon used in the book was a Gauss Rifle, and omg now I wanna see someone fire a Gauze Rifle. Anyone else thinking of the Medic from TF2? I like the idea of snipe-healz.

So I had this dream. Some old dude had some manner of magic, but also splitting headaches. Seemed totally random for most of the dream. Then, in a big reveal at one point towards the end, I learned that some people are Radiant-like, but instead of having side-by-side Surges, they have opposing Surges that are always directly opposed. But, the dichotomy always gives the Surgebinder splitting headaches with no cure. I think the old man ended up having Light and Dark as his Surges, but just before I woke up I learned that Dark wasn't a Surge... at least, not a Surge on the normal table. If it existed anywhere, it was probably a power of Voidbinding. So then, for some reason which made little sense to me, we decided to find all of the Conflicted Radiants. We somehow got word that one of them was this very young, six-year-old boy. We thought he had the Surge of Math, so we handed him a math test but he just drew all over it. We were about to give up but one of my companions studied what he was drawing, and realized that there were patterns, and the patterns always pointed towards a specific number, and that number was the answer to whichever question he'd drawn all over. A lot of times it was a graphic representation that showed the work more simply and concretely than equations, like drawing vectors instead of describing them. So we knew he was a Conflicted Radiant and.... then we were sad cuz he was gonna have headaches his whole life and there was nothing we could do about it. And then my mom walked past and said, "Oh yeah, your sister's friend has these two opposing Surges." Then she described them both but I only remember one of them, he could make himself popular so people did what he wanted. "What, you didn't know that?" And I was all, "...Mom?" Then I went to use the restroom but their house was like two city blocks long and it took me forever. Kay that's my dream.

I keep seeing people mention that we know Jasnah is a different order than Shallan. May I ask someone to link me to this evidence? I didn't see anything in the book to suggest it.

A baby. I think a baby could kill Steelheart.

After four and a half millenia, I could see a "sword of justice" becoming a "sword of retribution". Depending on context, the two are not entirely dissimilar.

Eh.... I realize every Investiture system is different, but they all have a certian basis. Almost every other system functions on the rather scientific basis of "this does what it does, regardless of how you feel it should happen." Obviously, this could be the big change, and maybe AonDor really is unique from all other systems in this way. I just get the impression that Mr. Sanderson's attitude is not going to lend itself to a system of magic changing just because the practitioners think it should. It would be like saying that on Earth, gold isn't magnetically reactive only because people think it's special in some way, and that once we changed to paper currency and gold became just another metal, magnets should start affecting it. I've seen almost every other form of magic in other fantasy books work the way you're suggesting, and the impression I get from Mr. Sanderson is that he's trying to break out of those crutches that other writers use, where they write themselves into a corner and so have magic just change to adapt to new circumstances.

There is absolutely a reason the enforcer would lie in this instance. It's the oldest trick in the book, and literally the only weapon he's got left. Have you ever seen a movie called Ladyhawke? Matthew Broderick's character is a thief and a con-man. He's in the woods when he hears someone stalking him, and he immediately asks aloud, "Pierre, do you have your crossbow? Francois, run back to camp for help, we can hold this guy." He's alone, of course. Bluffing that your side is stronger than it is is a) an excellent way to scare off enemies who could otherwise kill you and b ) what David is doing at that exact moment with his tale of Limelight. And why wouldn't Steelheart use that lie? He's already lying to everyone and saying that Conflux works with him freely. The main point of this might be nothing more complicated than driving home the idea that Conflux is personally in charge of Enforcement. And it wouldn't be too hard to fake. Newcago is stable. There's little crime and if an Epic does show up, Enforcement is supposed to back off and let other Epics handle it. How often do they die? How often do they die when there isn't some way to verify? Roy doesn't even claim that Conflux is using his powers to know that they're "offline". He could just mean exactly that. Mobiles are cheap, and considered secure. They would be in constant, direct link with HQ. And mobiles can easily register vitals. If HQ saw team leader's vitals spike with adrenaline, then flatline, yeah, he's gonna know. And since Roy does think Conflux is personally in charge of Enforcement, which is a lie we know Steelheart has told him, he simply says what he assumes to be true: "Conflux will know the minute we go offline." I think the opposite is true. I think that gifting has fewer questions. If he's charging them directly, why isn't he Epic-mad? If he's charging them directly, why can he pull the power back as he does when Prof orders? I think what he "gifts" isn't a power in the sense of the other one example we've seen, I think it's a store of energy. In a human, he gifts it in a way that it resides safely in that person for them to use at will. In something like a power cell, it's simply a store of enormous energy that can be drawn off. I think that even if he can Gift literally endless energy, he wouldn't, for the exact reason we saw in the book. If the Reckoners did steal a power cell, which they proved isn't impossible, they wouldn't want people getting their hands on limitless energy. Maybe there were a small cache of more-heavily-guarded cells that WERE literally endless. Maybe one or two trusted (hostages?) human lieutenants WERE given the full, limitless energy (though that might have driven them insane). EDIT: because STUPID EMOTICON.

I think the issue might possibly be literary. From more-or-less the start this whole Knighthawk thing struck me as something Sanderson would do, something that will be important eventually but we're only getting teased. I think it's a combination of two things. 1. They need to use phones. Maybe however good Tia is with technology, she literally CANNOT whip something up that can walkie-talkie past miles of steel. So, it becomes a necessity. A calculated risk. There's no other way to do it, so you give it a go. Plus, this isn't their first mission. Maybe five years ago they jumped at every little snag in their plan and worried they might be the mobiles, but presumably sometime during all that time they've gotten complacent. I'm sure they were all as paranoid as all get-out way back when the mobiles first came out, but they did what testing they could, and took the risk. Years later, they've had more than enough time to be betrayed, and they haven't. It might not be logical, it might not be something that can be proved with scientific accuracy, and it might be a tautology, but the proof that the mobile network is secure is that for years the mobile network has always been secure. 2. The Foundry strikes me as something that will come up in a later book. Sanderson wants to tease us, but he doesn't want to give it away, and that's exactly what he's done. Everyone in-story knows the reason you can trust the mobiles, they just aren't telling us. He's gotten us to notice it, which is good, and now we're all dying to know what the Foundry is, which is exactly what he wants. ((Let me be clear, I don't think that last point is a bad thing, in case I came across that way. Mr. Sanderson's capacity to tantalize us is one of my favorite things about his writing style. I'm already anticipating the day, years from now, when I finish Calamity, and re-read Steelheart with the perspective of everything I now know. The first time I read the first Mistborn book I saw a number of things that didn't make a lot of sense, and I just assumed it was yet another lazy fantasy writer. By the time I'd finished Hero of Ages, he'd revealed that, if not every, then almost every inconsistency was a case of the in-story characters being mistaken about something. It blew my mind.))

Ehhh.... you do have a point. However, we can't know that the Enforcer told David the truth, or that the Enforcer was TOLD the truth, and even if so, he would have felt the loss of, what, thousands of power cells? Can he feel the difference between losing 2,000 power cells and losing 1,996 power cells?

Although... even the Lord Ruler at a ripe old age of a thousand didn't die until he got stabbed. So presumably, if he found a comfy couch to lie on and didn't sneeze or have someone gently bump into him or something else fatal like that, he could sit there REALLY OLD but not dying for a bit to use his nicrosilminds.

Depends on what info Firefight was sending back. They blew up the place in order to disguise their theft. The only way he could've known would've been if Firefight told him, and if he acted on the intel it would have given the Reckoners the idea that they had a mole. It's possible he decided to risk it until the Conflux trap, and after that he obviously couldn't tell Conflux to de-power the cells.

Argent. I realize that's possible, but very little of what you say has been confirmed in the books (How, for example, is there a book written in nothing but Aons, and why would Raoden be trained in reading purely Aonic texts if it wasn't a full language?) I can't really explain or justify, it just feels 'off' to me, a forced explanation. While I think Mr. Sanderson is an amazing writer, everyone makes the occasional mistake, and I feel that Occam's razor suggests that's the most plausible answer.

I'm putting in the quotes to clarify my original comment, since I wasn't clear enough. Chapter 16. Chapter 19. But in the book's glossary, Ien is listed as meaning "wisdom" as in Seon Ien or Adien. I suppose the case could be made they never expressly say "Ien transliterates as healing," they just call it the Aon of healing, so I can see the case being made that, for whatever reason, the concept of "wisdom" heals via the AonDor, but that sounds... just off to me. Sloppy.

So, in the glossary Ien is listed as meaning "Wisdom", but twice in the book it's listed as meaning "Healing". Is this a typo? Am I just missing something?

For that matter, we know she carries grenades, reincarnates, and has many times been surrounded by the entire team. I guess maybe the idea was "stick around and try to learn about the other cells" but I really don't see why she didn't just blow up the leader when she had the chance (unless she KNEW he had the forcefield/regeneration to survive a blast)

http://xkcd.com/762/ Analogies are like sandwiches, in that I'm making one now.

I just sorta thought that "holding Stormlight" was more like Allomantic pewter. It makes you stronger, and increases your body's natural abilities, including its ability to heal, but it can't make your body heal something it simply could never heal on its own; Feruchemical gold, by contrast, is a fundamentally different type of investiture. If your arm gets cut off while you're burning Pewter, it might seal off the bleeding more rapidly, but it would never grow the arm back. Feruchemical gold, however, would. The two powers, at a glance, seem to have some overlap, but they do a similar thing in slightly different ways. Just my two cents.

While plausible, it still 'felt' in the book like they were REALLY the people. Llarimar seemed to feel that Lightsong still acted somewhat like his brother, he still cared about the same things as his brother. I realize this COULD all just neuro-chemical, but that doesn't feel like the case. Also, there's the fact that at the end, Lightsong remembers crossing the veil and being asked if he wants to Return. Even if the "real" man was really just donating his body for a Divine Breath, why then would that Breath remember that moment?

I might be accused of trying to bump this topic, or double-posting, so my apologies if I should have just editted my previous post, but this is a different idea. If this is actually against the rules, my apologies, and I'll know for next time. When Baron Edan is first introduced in Chapter 11, it's mentioned that his lands border the Chasm, and that the earth is no longer fertile there. Is that a thing that happens in normal earthquakes in our world? Or is that a subtle extra clue to the Chasm?

Morality is technically a more organic issue than that; while that's how your brain works, it's not considered universal. You apparently would approach murder from a de-sensitized standpoint, thinking of the baby as "not really a person". Someone else might have 'justification' as their moral workaround, in which case it's easier to ascribe some sort of blame to the victim, which is frequently easier to justify on someone with control over their actions. For a fascinating look at moral relativity, ask a room full of defense lawyers what type of criminal they draw the line at defending. They all understand that it isn't a matter of "these are clearly, objectively worse than these," they're rather morally subjective.

Re: The point a few people have brought up about "Why didn't Ruin just mess with Sazed's copperminds?" First, he wouldn't necessarily know that doing so would help. Sazed himself didn't understand the reference until the last moment. Second, that part of the prophecy, if Ruin understood it better than the rest of us, only came to pass if Ruin died. I'm pretty sure his "let's ruin the prophecy" plans all centered around avoiding the part where he died. All eggs, one basket, that sort of thing. =D

Epics have only been around 11 to 12 years, so since we haven't seen an Epic that young, we've never met anyone who was born Epic. It's possible there are some. I don't know that we've got enough information to know when someone might turn Epic. I can't find my copy of the book at the moment, but in the prologue I'm fairly sure David says something about "people started turning into Epics." The phrasing isn't crystal clear, but suggests to me that "people turning Epic" is something that still happens, not like every Epic turned at once. If so, back when the first five chapters got teased, I told my best friend that that's what would scare me the most about that world. The idea that I could get struck with Epic-ness, and suddenly be evil. I'd walk around everywhere paranoid that it was gonna happen to me that day.

No, I'm sorry. I clearly over-reacted and I was behaving like a child. I'm sorry for my outburst, and I'll try to eliminate them going forward. You are right, I misunderstood what you were talking about when you said it wasn't proof. Oddly, now that I do know, I still disagree with you, but even more oddly, someone else already showed me a quote proving that I'd read the source material wrong. So, you're right, I do not have proof of the fact in question, but I think for a different reason than the one you said. Unless I'm still misunderstanding. I'm going to bed now. EDIT: Even if you were right, that would make it one plus one plus two plus one, not one plus two plus one plus one.