Oudeis

First: Why? Helaran's identity was barely hinted at in the first book; several people guessed it before the second book came out, and kudos to them. Why do we have to assume that if something were going to be important several books down the line, we'd know more than we do? And we do know quite a bit. Eshonai is hugely important; she was one of the five people who decided to assassinate Gavilar. And the closest we get to knowing much about her is that one chapter is titled with her name, and a very brief scene in that same chapter. The Highprince was almost certainly Vamah (if you'll read this post on the thread I mentioned before, it collects all the pertinent data I could find in the two relevant chapters from Way of Kings). And the leader was named Hallaw. Well, anyway, maybe you're right. Maybe the breadcrumbs we have gotten are just there to make the world seem more developed. I'm certainly not positive that we know why Helaran was there. I'm just saying, I'm not convinced that "kill Amaram" was the goal.

If that's so, why don't people block with slanty Forbiddance lines? Any Vigor Line shot at them would mostly bounce away, dealing a fraction the damage. I realize this would prevent you from sending your own vigor lines, so you'd have to rely on chalklings. But here's the thing. One of the people in any duel will be better at drawing Chalklings. And it only takes one person making slanty Forbiddance lines to turn it into a chalkling match. So why doesn't every match devolve into slanted lines, and a chalkling battle? If the person who isn't as good at Chalklings tries to make it about Vigor Lines... well, they'll just sit there whaling way at Forbiddance lines forever, taking fifteen shots or more to take down a line that took the other guy half a second to draw, while the other guy sends wave after wave of chalklings.

Pegasi is weird. Originally in Greek the horse was Pegasos, in Latin it was changed to Pegasus, but in ancient Rome no one called the whole race "pegasus." So... if you take the latin version of a word bastardized from greek to english with its meaning changed and apply latin declensions... sure, then it would be pegasi. At this point, no actual linguistic sense is being made, so the best you can go for is what people just call it (and I cringe to imagine language being determined by popular consent). In short, like so many English words, just say whatever you want and hope people understand.

I, for one, appreciate the completeness of the answer, in case others out there wondered. There are times it's possible to over-explain an answer, of course, but a few extra lines to provide foundational math were warranted in this case, in one man's opinion.

This is an enormous leap to make from the fact that it's a culture that thought color was holy. I'm not sure I agree that it's a viable theory, and I think it's way premature to say you're 'quite sure'. Perhaps I'm taking the phase "generation" too seriously. If Sprenblades were based on Honorblades, and Nightblood was based on Honorblades, I'd personally categorize that as the same 'generation', as they're functionally cousins. But, who knows what Mr. Sanderson had in mind when he phrased it the way he did.

You guys are conflating things. It doesn't matter if you have a working alternate theory, you can still know the "obvious" explanation has problems. I didn't know for sure how she'd escaped, how she'd survived. It didn't matter. A dead body mysteriously vanishes moments after death? Okay, something up. Maybe she Soulcast a fake body and left it for the them to stab. Maybe it's an illusion. Maybe a dozen other things. None of that matters. You guys are proposing the fallacy of false dichotomy; you may have assumed the obvious answer because you couldn't propose an alternative, but some of us were able to say, "I may not know what has actually happened here, but I know it wasn't this." I didn't need any "additional" information to come to this conclusion. And I've never claimed I knew what actually did happen. I just smelled something fishy. Even if you didn't know there even were Orders of Surgebinders, even if you hadn't see Kaladin heal enough to survive a Highstorm, even if I had just picked up Words of Radiance and had never heard of Brandon Sanderson before... a person supposedly "dies" and then moments later the body has mysteriously vanished. I didn't need to know anything else to suspect that somehow, someway, something was going on here.

Dunno if there's a broader discussion on this somewhere... I'm searching but if someone can provide me the link I'll read that discussion. Oddly, searching Vigor, Forbiddance, and Warding returns a lot of results on this forum... That doesn't always happen. In the first scene, Joel is describing a melee to his friend where a woman bounces a single Line of Vigor off several Lines of Forbiddance. So... which is it? We are expressly told that a Line of Vigor hits a line of Forbiddance, damages the Forbidding Line, and stops. Yet we are also expressly told that it hits a Line of Forbiddance, reflects, and keeps going. Is it both? If so, Vigor is almost worthless. If I put up a Line of Forbiddance perpendicular to you, every shot you send at me would simply reflect straight back at you. Is it one or the other? If so, I just make a slanty line, and every shot you make bounces harmlessly to the side and never gets to me. So... which is it, and either way, why aren't they worthless for anything but taking down Chalklings?

Tricky word. Originally, pegasus was a name, not a breed; one specific flying horse was named Pegasus. So it didn't have a plural. It was pretty much in English that the word 'pegasus' came to mean 'flying horse' so prolly go with the English convention for pluralizing? So I supposes pegasuses. You say it depends on the intelligence... Fitch's knight knew enough to draw its chalk-sword and attack the dragons. Nalizar's spiders... attacked somehow. The default assumption seems to be that a chalkling knows how to use its basic tools to attack, be that a weapon or claws or teeth. Why do you think it would be so much harder for a chalking to know how to use a bow than a sword? Good point on plasma rifles... though, I suspect that if it worked, a "plasma bullet" would only deal as much damage as an arrow; the chalkling's "power" is expressly stated as based on things like detail and the Rithmatist's control. I would be surprised if that could be increased with different weapons, but what do I know? Maybe it's possible. Could you draw a wizard and have it shoot out fireballs? As someone mentions, can a Rithmatist chalkling make more chalklings? It's possible you could draw a person with a piece of chalk and a grey sweater, but unless they get Incepted they might not be a Rithmatist. Can chalk reproduce? Would a Rithmatist Chalkling have to use up its own substance to "draw" the new chalkling? How much ammo can you draw for a plasma rifle? How many arrows in a quiver? Could a Hulk Chalkling perform a Thunderclap and send out a chalk shockwave? Kay, I'm changing my chalklings. Heroes. I would draw marvel comic heroes as my chalklings. Depending on how range works. Hulk and Thor defensively, wolverine offensively... wouldn't Nightcrawler's teleportation power be awesome if that worked? lol, the Invisible Woman.

Okay. That's actually somewhat interesting. You think the new information we'll get is that they weren't just looking for people from powerful allomantic lines; they were looking for women with something even more specific in common, so their pool wasn't "over a hundred at this wedding alone". I'm not saying I think that's what happened, but it's a viable alternative to the commonly accepted scenario. As for "they picked only two at the wedding," there's a faulty assumption in your conclusion that this means only Steris and Marasi were viable targets. As I've mentioned, names weren't a viable option; they can't very well ask every woman what her name is, assume they all tell the truth, and then take the women who say they're Steris. They needed pictures, and they can't very well carry a hundred pictures and go through the whole list for every woman. Simple solution. The decision was made from a larger pool of women, but it was made in advance of the wedding. As Kaymyth and I have commiserated, it's wildly untenable that invitations to a wedding would go out THE DAY BEFORE but the truth is, people did RSVP and it would not have been difficult to place a bribe or a spy and get access to the list in advance; it would hardly be considered a security risk. At that point, easy enough to go through the list, pick the dozen or more women on your list of targets, select four or five of them, and have copies made of just those few portraits. The Vanishers have a manageable amount of targets, can quickly locate at least a few of those women at the wedding, everything goes smoothly.

Shallan sees Jasnah stabbed and very, very dead, then sends her Lightwoven double up top to try and distract the mutineers. While they're away, she runs into Jasnah's room to find the spheres and use their power. On that way, she expects to stumble across Jasnah's body, which had been left in the doorway... but it's just plain gone. She wonders if they took the body or was it just rocked by the motions of the boat somewhere she can't see in the dark, but it was a huge red-flag for me. The others were smaller clues, but from this one, I was more-or-less positive she wasn't dead.

There were six train robberies, then the robbery at the theater, then the wedding, then the final train robbery. The first few train robberies, the cars weren't even robbed. It wasn't until the fifth train robbery that they took the first hostage. At the sixth, they took two. At the theater, they took one. Then at the wedding, the took Steris and Marasi. One plus two plus one plus two is six. (bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.) You... raise a moderately good point in that the number of women on a given train would be less than the women at a wedding. However, recall that they are nobility. They buy expensive tickets in advance for private cars (like Edwarn), most likely at a reasonably set schedule (like Edwarn) and so can be relatively easily tracked (like Edwarn). While you have a point that a broader range might actually be helpful, you're not addressing another big point I brought up. The unthinkable cost, and the time. And the fact that no one could hide the face that over two hundred clerks are suddenly spending six months interviewing literally everyone who's ever met a noblewoman and asking about her paternity. The Set could never have afforded something that insane, and they would never have kept it under the radar. "Tracking women and trains" might be an investment of resources, but compared to spending ... unknowably large amounts of money performing in-depth research on literally every woman suspected to have any Noble blood in all of Elendel, it's pocket change. Also, recall that it's not lists of names (which is good, because they can hardly stop every woman on the train, ask her name, and trust that she'll be honest). It's a bunch of pictures. I do not accept that the Vanishers are carrying around hundreds of drawings of women's faces, and checking literally every woman against all of them, one by one. Such a robbery would take hours. I... don't follow you at all on the "one in ten, one in hundreds" point you're trying to make. Do you think you could rephrase? I'm not sure what you're getting at here. As for why... I don't know. I don't even have a theory. But I don't need an alternate to propose that the current theory doesn't hold water. I think that the most Mr. Sanderson expects us to be able to deduce by now is that there's something fishy going on, we just don't know what. When Shadows of Self comes out, I plan to read it looking for additional clues. I just re-read Alloy of Law, and I simply don't see the clues we need. I think that, like hemalurgy in The Final Empire, we have enough to think, "okay something's weird with Inquisitors," but not enough to say, "Hey this is prolly how hemalurgy works!"

You don't think it was hinted that she was alive? Her body mysteriously disappeared, Stormlight heals, and she has the Transportation Surge.

But that's the exact opposite of what the person was saying. You sound like you're trying to contradict me but you're just reinforcing my point.

Thank goodness the Aon Aon doesn't have Elantris as a major feature. Because then you'd need to draw the Aon Rao inside every base Aon... but that Aon Rao would have a base Aon, and thus that one would also need a base, and things get recursive instantly.

Well, the MAG has a tendency to come up with stuff if the text doesn't provide. I'd be a little surprised if the stuff they come up with turns out to be canon. The downside of not-burning cadmium if you're a cadmium savant (or maybe bendalloy, I forget which) is a lost point of influence. Apparently that's meant to represent that after burning cadmium long enough to savant, everyone you've ever known or loved is dead.

People seem to tend to have a style. Which makes a degree of sense; you want it to be as artistic as possible, so learning how to draw one thing really well must help to at least some degree. Also there seems to be preference. In the back of my mind, I sorta wonder if how powerful you think the thing actually is affects its power; if I make a wolf and I suffer the misaprehension that wolves are violent and savage and rabid, and someone else makes a wolf and knows they are typically timid and cautious, would mine naturally behave more aggressively? Anyway. What Chalklings would you have? What sort of creature, being, whatever do you want to have protect you and defeat your enemies? A type, maybe, where some are better at offense, some defense, some mobility? Also, who is gonna be the first to say pokemon? I think my grouping might be greek monsters... or possibly obscure creatures from various mythologies. A halcyon to fly around and attack a weak spot on the rear, a set-beast for aggression, maybe an oni for defense. I wonder if the rock-paper-scissor mentality works at all... in that first duel, Finch fought off dragons with a knight. Does making a defensive chalkling with some mythical reasoning behind it to defeat the beast make it better against that specific chalkling? Can chalklings be ranged? If I make an archer, with a quiver of arrows, could he draw those arrows and fire them at other chalklings, or even at Lines of Warding? Finally, I would like to see Melody at some point make an enormous chalking. I see it shaping up like an ouroborous; she draws a line of Warding, then around the outside starts at the tail and works forward, quickly filling in powerful scales for defense, many many legs along the length to give it speed, maybe spikes at the sides, powerful claws and crushing jaws for offense, built so big it circles entirely around her Warding Line... then, finally complete, it races to her opponent, crushing tiny chalklings like godzilla, destroying the enemy's defenses... I think that'd look cool. Granted she'd need a way to stay entirely protected for the many minutes it would take her to do all that, something like a large team in the melee, six teammates around her to play defensively and keep enemy Vigor lines and chalklings at bay while she completes her masterwork...

HA! Love the analogy to Futurama. If only I'd invented the fing-longer.... And yes, I always assumed that there might eventually be the ability to deliberately choose which goldshadow(s) you experience, that by default you go to a particular choice, one that's important in your subconscious or on your mind recently. Miles claims to burn the metal often; does he choose to see those two selves? Does he subconsciously think they're the only option, making a self-fulfilling prophecy? For what it's worth, Mr. Sanderson has said that if he burned gold, he'd see himself if he never became a writer. Ah yes, we've all been there. Responding to both Moogle and Kaymyth: Ooo, I had not thought of Gold Savants. Could you even function? I've read both passages where gold is burned, and neither one of them talks about the world around them. Can they even see it? Remember, you don't just see the other person; you ARE them. Obviously you don't have two bodies. If you kept burning gold, would both of you walk around the room? What if they try to split up? As I said before, neither of them seem to be the "real" you; it's like you split into polar opposites. Like, at a point in your life, when you made a choice, what if you went to one extreme or the other? Vin is obviously closer to the urchin than the noble; so then did her "urchin" persona take the place of her body, and the noble showed up in another spot? Can you even walk around and move? Can you interact? Can you see other people? When your 'selves' disagree over what to do, is the one you're "closer" to the decider? Or if you burned gold for hours, would your physical body just lie there comatose while your mind was off playing in the spiritual realm? Would gold savants need to be put in a bed and fed and cared for? These are questions to which we need answers.

Upvote because I just finished determining the "mental enhancement" quote wasn't in Theoryland and was about to search the annotations... Question: In the second hyperlink, did you mean to say electrum+duralumin? Or do you think electrum mixed with atium would do it? Gold is kind of unique in that it's the one metal with any kind of an immediately deleterious effect. Iron can pull a knife to your chest, and tin can make you too susceptible to loud sounds/bright lights, but the only metal that always seems to hurt you simply to use is gold. Even Miles, who comments that he burns gold every so often, reels from it when he uses it on-screen. I don't think we have a guarantee that gold and duralumin won't hurt you, a lot. In my head!canon, it lets you see a bunch of different goldshadows at once; which would mean you'd be thinking with many, many brains at once. Hrm. Rather than gain their knowledge... I wonder if it works a little differently? We don't see a lot of how the goldshadows work. They never seem surprised. Lawman!Miles looked at outlaw!Miles and noticed his slouch, but didn't seem surprised to see him. He knew the outlaw's past and everything he implied and he hated it. How much do they know about what's going on for the "real" person? Do they understand they're only here for a moment, that they're just a shadow? I actually wonder if we understand what's happening there at all. People seem to assume that when you burn gold, there's one "yourself" and the other is the Goldshadow... Vin was the urchin who saw the fine lady, Miles was the outlaw who saw the lawman. Yet, in both cases, the "self" wasn't really them. Vin wasn't anymore that scared little rat, not by then. She might never have actually been that furtive and bestial. We see less about outlaw!miles but I got the impression that it's another exageration, that it's not exactly Miles as he really is. Do "you" disappear when you burn gold, and the only things left are two goldshadows? Is there a central mind left anymore to say, "Okay but guys, here's the situation I'm in, who's got a solution?"? Anyway, I'm just rambling now. If I were mistborn, I'm pretty sure I'd be afraid to burn gold with duralumin. It might kill you.

What does anyone think gold would do under the influence of duralumin or nicrosil?

Yeah... for my own annotations, I usually don't bother with the M, and I shorten Alloy and Base to A and B. So, Gold is Q3/1B. I guess I could formalize a way to shorten it more: Quadrant-(Metal)(Purity) so it would just be 3-1B. Good catch!

Do we know Amaram was the target? I discuss what we know in this thread. Maybe he was just trying to win that battle for the other side. Maybe that spit of land is more important than we realize. Who was the other army, anyway? Maybe he had some entirely alternate purpose. Who knows?

Four. As I mentioned in my most recent post, they have kidnapped four women. Steris was five, Marasi was six. Out of... there must be hundreds of women known ironclad to be of the Lord Mistborn's line. There must've been a dozen, easily, at the wedding. If you're trying for a grand total of maybe a dozen targets, and you're presented with hundreds of potential options, where is the benefit in researching thousands of women to increase your chances? At the absolute least, research is premature. If they successfully kidnap a hundred women and start to run out of really, really obvious choices, then I could see them researching to find more. But there's absolutely no need; when you need a dozen, there is no return on a dime of investment to increase your pool from 100 to 106. For the second part, as I've mentioned in this thread, Wax found the official record, and it lists her as Lady Colms. Like Kaymyth says, the only way to learn is from gossip, or interviewing midwives, or something. And I've admitted, it's fully plausible that the sister of Wax's fiance, the woman he loves, the protagonist of the story, JUST HAPPENS to have her parentage by known by a secretly evil nobleman who JUST HAPPENS to also be part of the Set. But that would be crazy coincidence, and also boring. I hold out hope for a better answer than "just cuz." I do appreciate that you are attempting to tackle the "why bother" point. For the first time in a while, it feels like this debate is doing something other than circling in place. While I respectfully submit that you have not convinced me, it is still nice that the point has at least been addressed somewhat.

Do we know killing amaram was the point of the attack?

When you put out a fire, do the flamespren die, or just fade away?

To be clear, I think Kal made his turning point WAY before this scene. Hours earlier, in the training yard, when he realizes that Elhokar is Dalinar's Tien. That's when he decides, I cannot keep both promises, and I've chosen the right one to uphold. As soon as he starts walking towards the palace to try to save the king's life, that's when I think Syl begins to revive. In my head, Syl has stopped being a spren of generic "honor" and is the spren of Kaladin's "honor"; she died when he had no honor, when he forswore his oath to protect. Kaladin had no honor, and therefore Syl was dead. Deciding to intervene, knowing he has no more powers and he faces at least two Shardbearers, realizing he might well be throwing his life away for nothing... that is when he once more has honor. That's the moment Syl awakes. And, for the record, while I agree with you that the screaming match was going on for minutes, if not hours, before Kal starts to hear it, I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with Syl going from dead to yelling instantly. You should see my sister if you wake her up. (j/k) I sorta see this bit as evidence of their strengthening bond... when Kal goes into a situation knowing there's at least a chance he'll die to do the right thing, Syl begins to revive. When he's facing Moash and Graves, decides to protect the king even knowing he will die, and that then the king will, too, anyway, his honor is proven enough that the bond deepens, and through his connection he starts being able to hear Syl's words. I, personally, am totally confident that Syl was dead for a time in Words of Radiance. Now, I grant you, "dead and trapped as a physical Blade" might be a very different thing from "normal old dead." When you put out a fire, do the flamespren die, or just fade away?