Oudeis

Do you recall where he says this?

1. That's pretty much what I had in mind. Technically, my head!canon is this: (I have been resisting typing it up, because I don't want someone pointing out that my specific scenario is unlikely and saying that therefore my entire theory is unlikely; this is only one possible way things could go down, and any of a nearly infinite alternatives could all fill the same requirement). Odium appoints a Champion. This Champion is somehow tricked/forced into drawing Nightblood. By some mechanism, the Champion cannot (or doesn't realize the danger in time) simply discard/sheath Nightblood. Nightblood consumes all of his spiritweb, connected as it is to Odium's, and thereby also draws in Odium's. Rayse is left without the power of a Shard and materializes physically (there has been some oddly-phrased WoB suggesting he would not long survive the process of de-Sharding). Nightblood Ascends. I realize there are questions we have about the whole scenario; as I've said a time or two now, we honestly don't know anything about Investiture, or the Spiritual Realm, or what happens to Investiture after Nightblood "eats" it. An alternate theory of mine is that someone somehow takes Nightblood physically into the Spiritual Realm and stabs it into the "nexus" of Odium there. Maybe a Herald takes Nightblood, travels to Damnation, and uses it there, where Odium is Invested. If either of these specifically are disproven, or even if they're just found unlikely, I contend that this does not invalidate the entire theory. They're just a few specific examples of a thing which might happen a dozen different ways. EDIT: Might not have addressed your actual point. I might have misunderstood. Were you asking if I thought Nightblood would become his own, new Shard, with a new Intent adjusted by his Command? No. I do not think that. I think he'll be just like Vin, that he will Ascend to become the mind controlling the power of Odium, and that he will be influenced by the Intent as she was. 2. Eh, I'm not sure I agree. I'm going to try to find the line in Warbreaker where Vasher tells him... it's in reference to a sunset, or to being stuck in a closet. Vasher tells him something like, you can't like things, you're a sword. And Nightblood says, yes I can. I decided I can. I want to find the actual quote... I remember getting the impression that Nightblood is playing at having a human range of emotions in an attempt at accomplishing his Command, which he knows he's unequipped to do.

Okay. I'll take that as a, "no, none of those things have been confirmed."

lol, glad to see I made it into a sig.

...? No. He drew it not well. The chasm line is the dab that's sorta between the lower-right corner of the box that is Elantris, and the circle that is Kae. The lowest point of what he drew is supposed to be the circle of Kae, connected by the straight road to the bottom of Elantris.

Wait, what are we talking about? What inconsistency?

This is what he drew "Aon Rao with the Chasm Line" as.

Yes. If you were a giant standing in the mountains to the east of Elantris, with the ocean to your right, looking down at Elantris, Kae would be on the bottom. The eastern and western walls (top and bottom, to your perspective) would be flat, and the north and south walls (right and left, to your perspective) would be concave. Also, there likely isn't a need to ask the same question in three threads. Prolly someone checking any of them will check all and someone will answer your question.

I asked Mr. Sanderson at a book signing to draw me Aon Rao with the chasm line, and from that I have deduced something: Elantris is not oriented north. It is oriented west. So the "bottom" circle is actually the eastern one, not the southern one.

The first time it's described, Vin says, "She killed my sister. Messily." and for a while I thought that meant "Messily" was her sister's name; somehow I didn't actually realize it was a word, not just a collection of sounds. A fridge revelation, there.

Having read the W's-o-B you mention, I feel you are paraphrasing them and making leaps of assumption not inherent in the statements, but we're derailing the thread here.

I'll try to find the relevant WoB, but I do not think your model is accurate. I believe the "fourth use" you mention of lerasium is just lerasium being used allomantically. I believe we have WoB that lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn. What it actually does is, allow a person to re-write their own spiritweb. The default use of it writes in a connection to Preservation (i.e., makes you a mistborn). There is WoB saying that if Vin took a bead of lerasium and simply burned it, she'd make herself a more powerful mistborn by default. You must know what you're doing with lerasium to take conscious control of the process and rewrite your own spiritweb in a different way. I will try to find the WoB in the morning when I'm not heading off to bed.

Have we gotten confirmation anywhere that a) he's a squire 2) he's specifically Kaladin's squire and lastly, that squires get access only to basic Stormlight?

My friend brought that WoB up... not it says "Feruchemical Atium Spike" which is grammatically inexact. It's possible that all it's saying is, "a spike which grants feruchemical atium" which we already knew he had. That I can tell, this isn't confirmation that atium has to be used to to steal allomantic or feruchemical atium.

I was talking about your assumption that there must be a way to take multiple traits from one person... Alternately, something worth mentioning. Musn't we have seen atium hemalurgy already? Marsh had spikes granting both allomantic and feruchemical atium. Don't you need an atium spike to transfer them? Admittedly, we don't know much about hemalurgy, so who even knows.

I was discussing this earlier today with Titan. We have four examples of a time the body of a person "went away" while they were Ascended. However, we also know that both Ruin and Preservation were able to physically manifest. Atium, lerasium, the mist spirit. For that matter, the Stormfather. It seems that, whether or not their own body is available, many Shards are capable of manifestation. No reason he couldn't make a bunch of metal show up in the form of a sword. It might not be his original "body" but, tbh, we don't know that it can't be. Even if other Shards couldn't manifest that way, we know different Shards have different capabilities.

There's an assumption inherent in this sentence I'm not fully comfortable with...

Rather than continue to derail this thread, I'm posting my hypothesis here. Thesis statement: Mr. Sanderson created Nightblood for the express purpose of having him eventually take up the Shard of Odium. My thoughts on the matter: Per WoB, we know Nightblood was made for Roshar, and Warbreaker was made as a way to introduce him, as an origin story. This implies he's really, really important. I would daresay it's appropriate to assume he'll prove pivotal. Nightblood eats Investiture. He can eat Breath, Stormlight, and apparently the Mists of Scadrial. His hunger is not to be underestimated. Much is made of Nightblood, and his lack of capacity to make moral judgements. His mind was expanded from "I am a sword" to sentience with a thousand Breaths, and he was Commanded to decide what is and is not evil. The problem arose because, expanded mind or not, he simply didn't have the equipment to decide for himself what is evil. This entire concept, while interesting, doesn't actually impact the book very much. Nightblood would be a terrible and powerful weapon even without this issue, so it doesn't do much to impact what happened to Shasharra or what might happen with Yesteel. I believe this will prove pivotal. An issue with Odium, per the Letter, is its Intent. He mentions that Ati was once nice, but the Intent of Ruin perverted him into something horribly dangerous, and suggests that the Intent of Odium is, if anything, worse. It seems that simply letting someone else take up the Shard is a short-term solution, at best. Combining it with another Intent might work better, but that's already been done. Per the notion of Chekhov's gun, don't put in something you don't intend to use. So, to what use could Nightblood's inability to understand "evil" come in? I propose that one day, he will take up Odium. I think his endless hunger for Investiture will eventually lead him to somehow be connected to something vital to Odium (I have a few ideas how this might happen) and that he will consume it all, until he is Odium and Rayse isn't. And then, I think he will have exactly as much capacity to understand Hatred as he currently does Evil. I also have one last point to make, though I'm basing less on this. We know that some of the people involved in Nightblood's creation knew of Shardblades and were deliberately trying to mimic one. This is very unclear, but it's just about possible that even in-universe, it's actually someone's intention to craft a weapon capable of taking a Shard by force from its holder. It does harken to Preservation's long-game. Let me re-state that this point is even more speculative than the rest of my thoughts, and I'm including it out of a sense of completeness. If this is proven wrong, specifically, I still stil my hypothesis can be thought of as possible. EDIT: We now have much-more-recent WoB that Vasher worldhopped as a young man. While it's still possible this minor aspect of my hypothesis has some basis, it seems presumptive that it does not. As stated initially, this should not impact the larger hypothesis. (Having trouble getting to the actual source on the AMA, but this link references the relevant quote) Before I get into the arguments people have made against my theory, I'm going to clarify something that seems to keep getting confused. I'm not saying that Nightblood will want to destroy Odium because he will see Odium as Evil. I bring up Nightblood's Command not for the content of the Command itself, but to point out that Nightblood is inherently incapable of understanding abstract concepts of morality. The specific Command itself, or for that matter Odium's specific Intent, are irrelevant. Please do not reply saying something along the lines of, "Nightblood won't kill Odium because Odium isn't evil." Nightblood killed a wall once. I'm pretty sure the wall wasn't evil, either. On the other thread there have been a few disagreements with my hypothesis, which I fully admit is so speculative it might as well be head!canon (to be clear, I'm not convinced myself that this will happen. It's just something I wonder about). The main one seems to be an assumption that the expansion of consciousness one gets from being a Shard will be enough for Nightblood to understand hatred. I disagree. First, Nightblood's mind was already expanded. He started, presumably, with the cognitive aspect of "I am a sword" and a thousand Breaths and a Command expanded his consciousness to that of a reasonably intelligent adult. The Command was even specifically crafted, by two people who presumably do understand evil, towards evil-centric things. And, being a sword, he simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the concept. We have seen two people fully Ascend, and from their perspective seen the past of another man who at least partially Ascended, and we have a glimpse into what this expanded consciousness means. It is not omniscience. It's a knowledge of the history of the power, it's an ability to think about many things at once, to experience incalculable grief and guilt while having enough processing power left over to dissect subtle implications. It did not help Rashek know where to place a planet to make it habitable... even though he himself moved the planet from its proper orbit in the first place. It would not have been enough to let Sazed adjust the biology of mankind... even though he saw exactly how Rashek had changed them in the first place. Vin and Elend trick Ruin, and later Elend checkmates him, specifically because he's lost too much of his humanity and no longer understands love, or the strength Vin and Elend can find in their bond, even after death. Being a Shard, if anything, made it harder for Ati to comprehend human emotions. For all of these reasons, I question the assumption that a second expansion of Nightblood's consciousness will do what the first one couldn't. Of course, if anyone can provide a suggestion from text or WoB to the contrary, I will accept the flaw in my hypothesis. There was briefly a suggestion that Nightblood is incapable of taking up a Shard because he lacks hands, but I believe this is not a widely-held belief. It has been said it won't happen because Nightblood is too interesting, and making him a Shard will make him less interesting, to which I have two rebuttals. Many main charcters die or fade into the background; it's rare for someone to be SUCH a good character they can survive the spotlight forever. I do not agree that anything about Nightblood as a character means he cannot ever fade into the background. Also, I do not think Sazed became any less interesting of a character for having Ascended. Compare, for example, Ham, who impacts Alloy of Law far less, and is far less interesting in Era 2. I'm going to close with an additional thought: We, as a group, know practically nothing about Shards, or Adonalsium, or Divine Intents, or really anything related to the Spiritual Realm. Therefore, my certainty stems not so much from anything mechanical or realmatic, but more from an idea of narrative causality. The author has set up certain elements in the books, and I see them pointing to a certain conclusion. To be frank, I will be suspicious of anyone who claims that we know enough about Shards to say my hypothesis doesn't hold water; we know so little about Shards that right now, almost anything is possible. I would be much more likely to revise my certainty if someone points out a narrative reason why this is extremely unlikely. Or, of course, if further books or W's-o-B reveal things about Shards that are not now apparent.

And recall, literally everything about fabrials is apparently new technology. People assume that things like Soulcasters, Shardplate, and Shardblades are an ancient, highly advanced form of Fabrial, but we know they really aren't. Dalinar, in the past, doesn't see any fabrials being used; in fact, he doesn't even see any spren, which are needed to make the modern version of fabrials. So things like a simple heating fabrial... that's relatively new. That didn't exist at Ahrietam, or possibly even the Recreance. That's where their technology is. Spanreeds. Fabrial clocks. Navani, and by extension artefabrians, seem to believe the Ancients had wondrous fabrials that work basically like the fabrials they have now, just better, but from what we've actually seen this doesn't seem to be the case. The "ancient fabrials" all seem to do with the Knights Radiant; either Plate and Blade, which is a Radiant thing, or a very small number of Fabrials that all seem to be based on the Surges; Soulcasters, Oathgates, and the elevators at Urithiru (which have been speculated to operate on Gravitation).

Thank you, Seloun, for finding exactly the passage I was thinking of! Well, she did marry the king of Roshar's America. I guess that could be considered political... Seriously, the Kholins are just the Kennedys.

The whole system might be even more complicated than we realize. Because, of course, God Metals simply operate in a fundamentally different way than the normal metals; somewhat ironically, they work the way Scadrians think normal metals work. The metal itself is burned for power. It's ironic, therefore, how atium works in allomancy. You burn the power of Ruin, for net gain. One would expect, coming from Ruin, there would be a net-loss, like with hemalurgy. However, keep in mind that atium was never Ruin's plan; it was something Preservation forced upon him. So it might make sense that it operates slightly differently than it would if it had been something Ruin had deliberately granted. Lerasium, by contrast, was granted deliberately, so it's possible that's why it acts like a normal allomantic metal. With that in mind, perhaps they do both work in hemalurgy other than you'd expect from a hemalurgic thing. That in mind, here's my personal head!canon. Atium steals not only any trait, but preserves it perfectly with no decay. Lerasium is the one that comes pre-charged; you can just stab it into someone and grant them a power without first having to steal it. (To deal with the apparent power difference, I think Lerasium is restricted in what it can offer; only one of the Allomantic powers, perhaps, or maybe just only a base human trait, whereas atium can steal literally anything, and might be the only way to steal something like an arcana from another Shardworld.) Again, I cannot stress enough, these are just my personal musings. I have little to nothing to support them, and for all I know there's a WoB or something from the text I've missed proving me wrong.

People are still assuming that this second expansion of his mind will solve the problem that the first expansion of his mind could not. Nightblood is at least as smart as an adult human as far as we've seen, and he still cannot understand evil. Why are we assuming an "expansion" will allow him to understand hatred? Vin's expanded mind allowed her to ennumerate an army of koloss. It allowed her to perceive a whole world at once. It allowed her to mourn the death of thousands through her own folly, while enough of her mind was left over to ponder implications. It provided her with information, the history of the use of her power and its potential future applications. However we see from Sazed that while it can tell you how to move a planet, it doesn't tell you where to move the planet. It alone would not have allowed him to create the animals to repopulate the world. Map the continents. Fix the biology of humans. And Ruin. Vin outwits him with Elend, and Elend was able to checkmate Ruin, specifically because Ruin could not understand what drove them. He couldn't understand love. Love isn't even directly opposed by ruin, and Ati was once a mortal man (well he was.. some manner of... sentient being), presumably capable of love. Yet after millenia even his "expanded mind" was unable to comprehend the bond between Vin and Elend, and the strength they could find from it even in death. Is it possible the way a Shard expands a consciousness will change something fundamental about Nightblood and allow him to understand hatred in a way he doesn't understand evil? Yes. However everyone is saying it like it's some obvious, foregone conclusion, that "expanded consciousness" has to include understanding something entirely alien to your own nature. If someone has evidence to support this theory beyond the assumption that this is axiomatically true, I for one would be titillated to see it. If not, and people want to just believe that this is what it means, that's perfectly all right. That said, until someone can find some reason we should expect that a second expansion of Nightblood's mind will fix what the first one so fundamentally couldn't, I am going to continue to respectfully insist that my hypothesis does hold water.

Navani specifically comments at one point that she did not have the potential for a brilliant career, which was one reason she never pursued it. Better to be the benefactor allowed to meddle, everyone impressed that she knows more than most Nobles, no one expecting her to actually be as smart as the real artefabrians. I have quite the ego, and I have to say there have been times I've felt her same trepidation. There have been times I've stood on the precipice, knowing I could jump into the "big pond" and find out if I'm really a big fish... and being terrified of learning that while ordinary people consider me a genius, legitimate geniuses might just find me ordinary.

I link this whenever people start mentioning what their gender is.

You're right, I may have downplayed what Jasnah thinks of marriage. Still, even all that strikes me as not quite "it would never happen." However anxious the idea of marriage makes her, it's still the first idea she came up with to solve Shallan's problems.