Oudeis

Yes, while I was out tonight I remembered the cadmium thing, and realized I should have added it. It's my understanding that the whole "removed from the wheel" thing was just, who would make mistings. i.e. it was not originally built into the system that people could be Seers, so he took out Pulsers and replaced them. The effect cadmium could have was still a viable power, but there was never going to be a cadmium misting. I realize we're a bit far out on a speculative branch now, and believe me, this is not the most fragile house of cards in my whole theory. Not gonna lie, I will be at least a little surprised if my model turns out to be even mostly correct. That said, I haven't seen another model which adequately handles the problems I've addressed.

Ah, I misunderstood, I thought you were talking about the general tone. No, you're right. In that instance, Moogle stated something as flat-out true when it's speculation, at best. Blaze: That's not... an actual train of logic, that's just a series of points in support. 1 and 2 have some connection, but as I've pointed out, point 2 is a fallacy of argument from silence. A few other points also connect in pairs, but there's not a syllogism from "this is a hard, established fact" along a chain of conclusions, or even very compelling arguments, to an ultimate statement of fact. You just have a theory, and a few reasons why the theory might be true. And you're absolutely right, on that score. Your theory is one that holds merit and, frankly, one I happen to believe. But by no academic standard could it be considered as anything more conclusive as "supported". If all you said was that something "hints at the fact" that would be one thing, but here you're flatly stating that you find the assumption reasonable. That's the point where you increase your own burden of proof. It's a reasonable theory; it's not a reasonable assumption.

Cool... Just to clarify, you do understand that this is a choice you personally are making, yes? You're not disagreeing that I'm correct that you have failed to meet the burden of proof required to say that it should be logically assumed that Jezrien's Blade was one huge and glorious and has changed. You're simply saying that you, personally, in your own head!canon, have decided this is the case. Yes? Keep in mind, I'm not arguing the other side. I'm not saying, the Blade has clearly never changed. I'm just saying, from what we've been given so far, there's absolutely no way to know for sure. What you want to believe is one thing, but you can't decide that in a more objective sense, your head!canon trumps actual logical conclusions. @hoser: As someone who has bugged Moogle more than once on this issue before, even I have to say that his OP handles the entire thread pretty well. It was a thorough and full disclaimer, and cites valid reasons why it's tiresome to try to remember to write "I think" on every specific post. While I can see your point that someone hopping into the middle and seeing only the one post wouldn't have read the disclaimer... well, if someone's going to start reading posts out of context, there's a limit to what the rest of us can do to try and help them debate more rationally.

You raise an interesting point. Your contention seems to be that the phrase "surgebinder" means, specifically, someone with a Nahel bond to a spren on their way to being a Knight Radiant. I've wondered about this. Does the connection between an Ardent and a Soulcaster count as a Nahel bond? Is there a spren involved? Is there a type of spren that turns into Surge fabrials? Would a Lifespren, for example, turn into a Regrowth fabrial? Is that where Regrowth fabrials came from? Is one a Surgebinder by having the ability to bind a Surge? Is one a Worldhopper if one "catches the bus", as it were, to another world, even if one lacks personal Worldhopping magic? If an Elsecaller were to take her squires to Scadrial, are they all Worldhoppers, or just the one with the agency to Worldhop? The Heralds seem to be shuttled against their will between Roshar and Braize. Are they Worldhoppers? Are they the Worldhopped? For comparison, I'm going to point out Taln, as we're discussing in another thread. In his Interlude, he's described as being barely legible, with only a few words making actual sense, and his accent is thick and sounds Norther Alethi. Then when Shallan talks to him, she understands every word, and he has no trace of an accent. Then, at the end of the book, Amaram is in his presence. He doesn't flat-out state whether or not he can understand Taln, we only have confirmation that he makes out two words, and he says nothing on the accent. By your reasoning, which is it? Since he doesn't say "he has an accent" should we assume he has an accent, or since he doesn't say "he doesn't have an accent" should we assume he has an accent? If you want to believe it yourself, that's fine. But you cannot reasonably contend that something must be one way because it's not expressly described as another way, without the burden of proof that it would have been totally weird for him to describe it another way. Kalak has seen this Blade hundreds, maybe thousands of times, it doesn't currently have his attention, it's non-anomalous, and other, much much bigger and more important things are going on in his life just at the moment. There is absolutely no reason to find it suspicious that he doesn't say, "Jezrien summoned his own Blade, which looked very very different from the others." It's just Jezrien's blade. Every so often, someone interact with Shallan without thinking to themselves, "My, her hair is red," and that's, if anything, far more unique among the Warcamps than one Blade out of eight.

First, I'm gonna tell you not to let yourself be body-shamed. If there's a character you want to be, be him, and don't worry about not fitting the body type. From my own awful, awkward cosplay experiences playing characters I don't have the type for, I can tell you, people will always be more supportive than you think they will. At my last con, I went to two different panels expressly about encouraging people to feel good about their own cosplay, and several other panels that touched on it obliquely. That said, I don't want to assume that this is what's happening here. If you simply from a personal standpoint have made your own decision to cosplay as a portly character, I support your decision as much as I would any other you'd make. Just realized this is in the Stormlight Archive thread, not cosmere theories, so I'm throwing this paragraph behind a spoiler tag. For all other series. My advice is to do a Bridge 4 uniform, maybe with a bow, and go as Rock or "generic bridge 4 guy", or to say "Rust it!" and be a Mistborn. But hopefully I've given you some options.

Thank you. The only reason I even question it, I asked Mr. Sanderson a question at a signing once in person and he referred to, "The man who calls himself Taln." I mostly think he was just trolling us, but the seed of doubt has been planted. For reference, I found the quote. Chapter 60. "And the Dawncities?" Navani asked skeptically. "The fabrials?" Dalinar shook his head. "I've seen neither."

May I take this opportunity to compliment you, Moogle, on your excellent disclaimer in the OP? At the end of that vision, he expressly says that it was weird because he didn't see any fabrials, anywhere. So, even seeing a ReGrowth fabrial, he doesn't recognize that it's even a fabrial. To him, it's apparently just something Knights Radiant can do. Until the Oathgates (and we're not even positive there) the only "fabrial" we've seen imitate a Surge have been Soulcasters. We, the readers, assume (and I think we have WoB) that "Ancient Fabrials" like the Soulcasters are all models of the Ten Surges, but the modern people of Roshar don't seem to grasp that, and have no examples other than Soulcasters. One small part of your theory seems to be that Taravangian could have chosen any of dozens of possible explanations, and chose Honorblades because it had a kernel of truth. I disagree. The only possible other examples you've given have been the Regrowth fabrial, which I think most of us here think is extremely unlikely, or that Szeth was simply mistaken in what he saw. Since "what he saw" was, I cut your arm with my Shardblade, your sleeve is shorn off and the skin is grey, now suddenly you're glowing and magically your arm works again, I do not believe "trick of the light" was going to explain anything. I personally can think of no other explanation Taravangian could have given. Can you provide any? As for "it's not the kind of lie you just think of," one section of the Diagram talks about creating another Truthless. Clearly, 'people armed with Honorblades' is a thing Taravangian has spent some time working on. I think it's not so unusual that this concept is something that would come to him when he needed a lie. Well, this is Mr. Sanderson, self-proclaimed prude. There are some tropes he has no interest in subverting. The passage isn't ambiguous at all; he specifically looks at the seven Blades, and calls them "masterly works of art". Nothing about the sentence or statement makes it seem as though he's generalizing about all Honorblades; he expressly means these.

My personal theory is that Rashek used mechanical allomancy and cadmium to trap them in a time bubble underground so that only 16 years seem to have passed for them; this would keep them largely safe and prevent them from advancing in the thousand years Rashek knew it would be before he could check in on them again. This would also explain from whence they got the inspiration for mechanical allomancy, which a thousand years of the Final Empire and three hundred years since have not revealed. I swear I posted this theory once elsewhere but I can't find it for the life of me.

Hrm. I thought we didn't have an answer yet on what specifically a "soul" was. I'm currently under the impression that it's just a way of saying "spiritual aspect", as in, Stick has a cognitive aspect and a spiritual aspect, so Stick has a "soul". So the robot would have a soul simply by virtue of being an object. Do we have a WoB somewhere that in the cosmere, "soul" is defined as... actually, how do you define a soul in this context, exactly? And he says a Shardblade would interact with it as with a spren... how do Shardblades interact with spren? Have we seen someone stick a Shardblade into a flamespren? Per Kaladin's mom, rocks have spren, and we know Shardblades cut through rocks just fine. Is that just his way of saying, a Shardblade would cut through the robot, and both halves would have a spren, the way you cut through a rock, and both halves would have spren?

Yes: This is the thing to which I refer. It's been said they were at... I think the phrase was "other end of the planet," although now I wanna look up the original quote. If it meant the pole, did it mean the geographic or magnetic pole? Luthadel was the "north pole" and that was magnetic, so presumably that's what was meant here. Basically I wanna know a lot more about the Southern Scadrians.

As is mentioned in another book, most people think of accents as something the other guy has. So, does Shallan mean, he has the accent she's grown used to in the Warcamps, the accent of Kholinar? Or does he have her accent, from Jah Keved?

He doesn't mention the accent, but he also doesn't mention a complete lack of accent. (EDIT: To clarify, I'm saying that sometimes we've been told the accent was thick, but other times it's been conspicuous in absence. So what could we assume from a lack of mention?) And even in his Interlude, Dalinar was able to understand several specific words. The fact that Amaram hears "the Desolation" isn't proof. If anything, I'd suspect that one specific word is one likely to have survived millenia intact. Later that same chapter, it's described as a "strange, unchanging mantra." I feel it isn't clear one way or the other if Amaram can actually understand "the man who calls himself Taln" or not.

From his own Interlude, he's speaking but all the people around him are unable to figure out what he says. But then Shallan can understand him. So we have the end of Way of Kings, where he speaks to a bunch of city guards who all seem to understand him. Then we have his Interlude, where several people do not understand him. One is Dalinar, who becomes a Radiant not long thereafter, and one is Elhokar, who has seen Cryptics. One is Bordin, one of Dalinar's men from Kholinar. They can't understand him, making out only a few words, saying he has a thick accent. Then in Shallan's part, where suddenly he is understood perfectly by a Surgebinder. So... what are all the differences? I'm not really hypothesizing this, but I'm just throwing it out there. When he's first understood, he's got a Blade which may or may not be Taln's Honorblade, and he can be understood. Then later he can't be understood and he definitely does not have that same Blade. Then still later, he is understood by someone who can Surgebind. So. In every circumstance where someone, whether or not they have Stormlight, has the ability to Surgebind (possibly, if that Blade was an Honorblade), people can understand each other. When they can't (which is somewhat debatable for Dalinar at that point) they can't. So... the ability to Surgebind inherently grants you the "babel fish" power? Amaram walks into the room while Shallan is there. Can he understand Taln? The passage leaves it unclear. It's from Shallan's perspective, and she recognizes it. All we get from Amaram's perspective is that Taln isn't saying anything specific or clear about the 'cache of Blades'. Does he understand the words at all? Would it be weird for him to not say, "but these words are just gibberish"? I'm not sure.

Well, if a bead of lerasium gives your spiritweb a connection to Preservation that makes you a mistborn, and Vin's earring causes the mists to repel from her body, it seems logical that allomancy is somehow innately of Preservation and hemalurgy is innately of Ruin. But that's just my interpretation. That somehow, the "net" used to trap the spiritweb, and whatever mechanism joins that scrap into your own, are forged of Ruinous power. On a tangent, a weird thought occurred to me just last night. We know that the magnetic "north pole" and the geographic one are far, far distant. So when he talks of people surviving at the South Pole, which does he mean? The bottom of the axis around which the world spins, or a circle directly opposite the Final Empire? The reason the Empire was so livable was that the ash had a magnetic component which caused it to concentrate around that geographic area. If the Southern Scadrians lived at the geographic South Pole, they somehow survived without the ash.

One quick thing, I see people comment about how when people die they can't move on. This is not the case, unless I'm reading the book very wrong. You only turn into a Shade if you are killed by a Shade. If you simply die, you pass as one normally one. This says to me that the Shades kill in such a manner that corrupts a part of your Innate Investiture, spreading the 'infection' as it were. I suspect that the Deepest Ones are natural Shades, patient 0 as it were. Something unique made them, but now like vampires their every kill adds to their numbers with lesser copies of themselves. Also worth pointing out, they knew of this continent and named it Hell long ago while they were still on Homeland, before the Evil happened. Since they predate it, while I can absolutely believe the two are related, it's not necessarily that the Shades are just a natural outcome of the Evil. Though who knows, perhaps in this arcana effect can predate cause.

Also, keep in mind they used to live on a continent I think called Home or Homeland, and knew of this other continent and called it Hell, before the Evil came and they had to flee. So is just this one continent the afterlife? And I still want to know ... anything, really, about the Deepest One Silence briefly mentions.

I'm gonna repeat Dunkum's question... I don't know that they actually do function differently. Two iron spikes placed in a mistwraith make it supernaturally strong, the way two iron spikes placed in a human would. Just because we see them used in pairs and given a special name doesn't mean they're actually fundamentally different. We do not have confirmation that it is total. However, we know that with allomantic imbues, which are noted to decay faster, they lose measurable power in seconds, and are significantly reduced after days. We don't have hard numbers but I for one would find it odd in the extreme if an imbue for physical might could sit outside of a body for a full year without seeming to lose any potency.

That I know of, we do not know that the Piercings were earrings. I said it earlier just for the very silly mental image, not because I know it was there. (I happen to believe they were in his ears but that's just head!canon.) In the book series, that I know of, we've seen three different spike placements that would work to grant allomantic bronze; Vin has her earring, Quellion had it in his arm, and Inquisitors got it between two ribs. Any of those three, or any of the potentially many, many other bindpoints (I believe Marsh says there are somewhere between 200 and 300 on the human body) could have been used. I wonder when Quellion got spiked, and I wonder if he could feel the Well... Though, the spike was his first allomantic bronze, yes? Do we know if he was independently a Seeker first? As for, was hemalurgy known back then? I would assume no, not explicitly. Obviously it was part of their ritual if there were Piercings of the Hero, but they probably didn't know what they were doing, any more than Alendi realized he was an allomancer, since he didn't know allomancy existed. Moogle: I think academically we're on the same page. From what we know, this WoB included, there's no more cause to believe the theory than to believe that one of the alloys of atium will cause wings to sprout from your back and let you fly. That said, we also don't know enough to say that it isn't true. I'm gonna sit here being skeptical, but I'm the last person to tell anyone not to believe something they want to. It's what gets us all excited to read these books, and that's only ever a good thing. There is exactly one flaw I can see in my model of Ruin powering Vin and Alendi: OreSuer's Blessing. Outside of bodies for over a year, it should have withered away to nothing, yet was still incredibly potent. Unless Ruin was directly powering that, we still have one extant example of hemalurgic spikes seeming to circumvent the Law of Hemalurgic Decay. I know the theory that decay is simply so slow that a year doesn't deplete them very long, and still reject it for the same reason that we know seconds matter, days matter, so a year has to matter.

Hrm... I can see Alendi not feeling comfortable mentioning in his logbook that per prophecy he had a tendency to slay people by stabbing them through the heart with his ear... (btw, my full geek-out is prolly best reserved for another thread, but I am still reeling from the answer you got on reddit about burn rates) So I thought I had mentioned this but I see I didn't... I don't actually think the power of the charge is an issue in this specific case. We know Ruin is good at directly powering allomancy when it's granted via hemalurgic spike. I figure that's what's happening here. Towards the end of the book Well of Ascension, Vin comments that she hears the thumping of the well even when she's not burning bronze. But that doesn't really make sense. It'd be like saying, my high-speed internet is so fast, I can check 17th Shard without even turning my computer on. And we've discussed the fact that after years of neglect, her earring's charge should have withered to uselessness. But Ruin powering it fills in all those holes. It doesn't matter how weak the charge is; as long as Ruin is providing high octane fuel, all that matters is that she's technically using bronze allomancy powered by hemalurgy. And even if she's not currently using bronze, maybe Ruin can just make it work, anyway, hotwiring it since it's his power. That would explain why she hears it with her bronze off. I personally think that you are extrapolating way, way too much from the quote you provided. His one cryptic comment is in absolutely no way justification to assume that you can stab allomancy out of any Scadrian; if that were the case, why did Ruin need to wait for a Mistborn to be born with a Seeker sibling? Wouldn't literally any noble, or even any skaa, work exactly as well? Someone asked a question and the answer was to say that the question looked like an attempt to hack one system with another. And he's explicitly said that he's years if not a decade away from giving us answers to those kind of cross cosmere questions. If anything, his answer was basically a RAFO. The question suggests that you don't need to spike a Seeker, the only way the answer "suggests" the same is by saying "I will not answer that" rather than giving a flat denial. It's the philosophy of the fifth amendment, which only works if you always use it. If he gave us flat denials for every time the answer actually was no, then the times he equivocates like this would stand out, and then it would actually mean something. He's going to give us this sort of answer a thousand time, and nine hundred of them are going to be things he could say no to, just to disguise the hundred that aren't.

Well then what's the difference between mental fortitude and emotional fortitude? Also, minor point. Trapped in the Pit, TenSoon mentions that he has no idea how long he's been locked up without contact. But then later, in the cage, he makes a point of saying that with his Blessing of Presence, he has an exact numeration of the days. He talks frequently about how the Blessing cannot be turned off, even when he wants to, like how even being beaten it will prevent the sweet release of unconsciousness. ...which again I'm not sure how that's mental fortitude, rather than emotional or, frankly, physical, though I guess without a physical brain to concuss... It's very inconsistent. Is the Blessing of Stability like aluminum? Just completely and utterly worthless, because the very few things it can do, the Blessing of Presence does as well? I still don't buy the mechanism by which mental fortitude prevents insanity. Either you're talking emotional control, which should be the Blessing of Stability, or you're talking the ability to control your own thoughts, which can help mitigate the symptoms of insanity but not stop insanity itself. It's like saying that a Thug should have better eyesight. I mean, pewter enhances every part of your body; balance, strength, healing, pain resistance, reflexes. Your eyes are a part of your body. They should be enhanced, as well. But then what's the point of tin?

These are fascinating, especially the second one because that question (almost word-for-word) is in my personal list of questions to ask. May I ask for citations? If there's a source of WoB I haven't read, I'd like to see what else I've missed!

That we know of hemalurgy, admittedly the least well-known of the Arts, yes. That said, if there's someone who could do it, it would be Ruin.

Are Kandra mistwraiths mammalian?

Hrm, maybe. We do know that pre-Lerasium, it took the Deepness to Snap people even into Mistings. So if it happened, the earring was kept around for a thousand years, since the Deepness had only just returned around the time of Alendi.

By this point, Alendi has been forced to kill enemies and friends alike, send armies to conquer cities. So while Terris culture might not be down with generic human sacrifice, perhaps some specific prophecy spoke of the proper ritual for executing a rebel king, or something. I tend to think ritual because we know Ruin found that a convenient way to control people. If you think about it... really how did he manage all that? We know Ruin can only tell that someone has allomancy when they use it, and we know Alendi was Snapped by the Mists. So sometime after Snapping, Alendi had to someone ingest some bronze for some reason, and then burn it, all without allomancy even being a thing. Instinctively burning pewter when your body is in trouble, or tin when you're straining your ears, that I can buy, but bronze? Vin is one of the most powerful Mistborn of her era, and she barely feels her own Luck enough from the groundwater of a place with atypically high metal content to play around with it. What on earth could have happened to let Ruin know he'd found his Seeker to groom as the Hero? And for that matter, he had to do it at least twice, to get at least one properly charged earring. That's even assuming that two incredibly weak Seekers were even enough to hear the Well. The plural Piercings of the Hero might imply Ruin had to find at least three Seekers. This gets tossed around a lot... the actual quote makes it clear that it's never going to be as simple as "oops a splinter" nor is there any reason to assume anyone ever figured out how to steal non-fatally, and also goes on to say that even if they didn't die, they would still have suffered a grave wound to their very soul. Also, Ruin had successfully gotten people to conquer and slay to follow his prophecies. Even if he could, why would he only wound when he could kill?