Galavantes

On 11/9/2017 at 9:55 AM, Ookla the Cow said:

Our awesome new WoB database.

https://wob.coppermind.net

Launched yesterday.

Hey thanks!

I don't know if this is considered underhanded or not, I often set my kindle location to the UK (I am in the US) to get books early. I got The Core almost a week a head of time. Reading Oathbringer now.

What is "the new arcanum"?

it's possible, and it would explain how prof was harmed by his own powers used by someone else even if that wasn't his real weakness. but it should only count if they are used by someone else, otherwise obliteration would have incinerated himself. So that only leaves gifters as potential victims of that. so we have no way to verify that hypothesis

Or powers replicated by a motivator.

That was probably it. I'm willing to give you the credit.

It wasn't stated or even alluded to that I could tell. But my theory is that Obliteration's weakness is being alone. Not in the sense that he can't be in a room by himself. But truly alone.

I think he faces his weakness constantly by sticking to his conviction that he must kill everyone in order to save them from their self-inflicted suffering. 5 years ago was when he decided that killing everyone was the only way. This, of course, would leave him totally alone in the world, requiring him to face his weakness in order to go through with it.

Actually I think someone did nail it. I recall someone specifically saying

But I can't recall who.

So just to ring in on this from my own interpretation/opinion, and curious your thoughts on it. When Calamity kept saying over and over that they were to observe and learn, then return. That they were not allowed to interfere, it sounded a lot like asimov's robotic laws. That they break down for Calamity's people kind of like this:

 

Do Not Interfere

Observe

Learn

Return

 

When he was first born into our world, he was so overwhelmed by sensory information he freaked out, and it was implied he took actions. He stated

 

"You are worthless, as a whole. You will destroy yourselves, and I will bear witness. I will not shirk my duty as others have. We are to watch, as is our calling. But I must not interfere, not again. The acts of youth can be forgiven. Though I was never truly a child, I was new. And your world is a shock. A dreadful shock." He nodded, as if convincing himself.

 

So he got born in to our world, had the worst experience of his existence, and then lashed out, doing something. What that is? No clue, but it was interference. Now you have someone "new", with the rational of a new born, with unlimited powers who felt it was hurt by the people of the world. Think of the Hulk in the movie "Incredible Hulk". Anytime he attacked the soldiers is when he was shot at. He literally only responded to any "pain" inflicted on him, and any collateral damage was due to his tantrum. He is being hurt, does not know why, does not know his own strength, and just wants the pain to stop so lashes out. This brings us to the next step:

 

So his prime directive was not to interfere, but the moment he got here, he did exactly that. Well who's fault is that? Can't be his. He was just doing what he was told. It was the humans who made him do it. They hurt him. They are bad people. They should be punished. But he can't interfere. He isn't allowed. He is however supposed to observe. Well he is going to observe humans destroy themselves like the bad people they are. Then his earlier interference will be justified. They made him interfere. He is a good extradimentional entity. He does what he is meant to. It has nothing to do with his feelings being hurt, and wanting to see the humans punished for what they did to him. He didn't make a mistake, its their fault. So he will learn to confirm they are bad to the core by destroying themselves, and he will get to leave to go home with the knowledge of a job well done. Then he will get to return.

 

But wait. He is still here, and has been here for a long time. Why aren't humans wiped out already? They are bad, they can't move beyond that. If they move beyond it, then it means He will have to move beyond his pain and be sorry for breaking the rules. That even though justified, he still made a mistake. No, no, that can't be it. It will happen, they will all wipe themselves out. Then David shows him. Shows him with absolute clarity and fact, that the darkness in humans. The darkness he is so convinced was the reason he was hurt upon entrance into our worlds, wasn't there to begin with. It was just an accident on all sides. That the destructive nature that he thinks is prevalent in everyone, is him. That he is as subject to pain as humans. And just like humans, he has the equal chance to rise above it or be consumed by it. That he chose to be consumed. There were plenty of other versions that were able to rise above it and go home. But he wasn't able to. All his suffering since his birth was not at the hand of these evil humans, but from himself. He never grew up. So it was being faced by this, that he realized he so completely failed his directives. He interfered massively, and completely missed what he was supposed to learn for years. That he, who was so convinced he was right, to the point he defined all his actions from that sole premise, turns out was wrong. Having what you feel is your entire life view thrown out the window, is very very jarring. So all he could do is curl up underneath the sense of his whole world being turned upside down for the second time in his existence, and he left.Turns out his job was done long long ago, he got a big fat F, and he just didn't want to face it. 

 

Now I am not saying whether or not he was justified based on my interpretation. Just that this is what and why I feel he did what he did. I feel this was very much in homage to Mister Mxyzptlk. Hopefully I articulated my thoughts well, and I still say this is my own interpretation. Could very well be like skaa is saying, and his weakness got negated. This is just what I took out of it. 

 

edit: I realize i did pretty much just repeat what I already wrote, but I hope I fleshed it out further to explain why I felt he left, which was the original intention of this post while the last was to explain why I thought his species was not here to destroy. 

This has been my exact interpretation as well. I actually really like Skaa's theory that Calamity was forced out of our universe by his weakness, but Pathfinder's explanation was my own head canon when I read it. 

I can also think of reasons why it's perfectly consistent for Calamity NOT to have a weakness in the traditional sense of normal epics. I'd love to hear what WoB will be on this.

So . . . how did Obliteration of all people save anyone?

According to him, he actually thinks he's saving everyone. In his own crazy way. Apparently he had to face down his fears in order to do that.

Hoid isn't a bad guy in that he's not straight up evil. He doesn't enjoy people suffering and he HAS helped our protagonists from time to time. But he has also said that he would let Roshar burn if it furthered his goals. It's not a question of "good or bad". He is just highly dedicated to his end goal, what ever that turns out to actually be.

We also have no idea how much of its own power a shard invests into a planet. If we make the math simple and say that it is around 50%, then half of Harmony's power is currently tied up in Scadrial. Assuming the Shard attacking Scadrial is uninvested in any other planet (which is fair to assume since it was able to come to Scadrial) then it would be twice as strong as a single "invested" shard. Given that Harmony is generally assumed to be twice as powerful as your standard shard then that actually makes them even. 

This also assumes that strength is constant across all shards and that Harmony has 50% of his power available to him. Any of those number can be tweaked around to give Harmony either a slight advantage or disadvantage,

I'm on board with Kelsier getting himself a shiney new (possibly slightly used) body. The cognitive healing aspect perfectly explains the scars.

Regarding Sazed's naughty bits:

Sazed didn't regrow his parts because he didn't see himself with them. The same reason that a certain slave couldn't heal the brandings on his forehead.

Sazed COULD have healed himself however if he had been aware of Vasher's mental tricks.

I expect Harmony simply doesn't do it out of respect. 

Removed my previous post as it was potentially too spoilery. 

Some shards are better at future-sight than others. Harmony hasn't shown much skill in that regard as of yet, but he is rather young as gods go. Another shard described it as trying to look through layers of shattered glass. The further ahead you look the more fragmented it becomes.

There are some intricacies to the power that Harmony holds. Without giving away too much, he is not as free to act as you would traditionally expect from a god, and he is....influenced, in a way. I think that what he did here is indeed "messed up" in a literal sense, meaning that despite Harmony being overall a benign force, he can't be entirely trusted to accomplish things in the most gentle ways.

Was looking through some old WoBs today and stumbled across some that are relevant to this thread. The first discusses how two people storing attributes into the same metalmind would store them in separate parts of the metal. Which I think supports the idea that investiture doesn't spread out equally through the metal mind. 

The second is Brandon's 2012 answer on aluminum compounding. Stating that it doesn't do much.

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=977#78

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=977#65

Does anyone know what forum software the 17th SHard is built on? This is by far my favorite forum style.

Unfortunately not. I saw it mentioned in the most recent post here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/46816-a-new-power/ but the actual quote wasn't linked.

As stated in another thread. Recent WoB is that there is a minimum charge to a hemalurgic spike that it will not decay beyond. So it will always have some charge.

Yeah I don't see this as an error at all. Paalm took his metalminds, he mentions that he hasn't been able to find out what she did with them, and later we see him very un-healed. She could have gotten rid of them in a hundred different ways and we don't have the information to speculate on which of those ways are feasible and which aren't.

So we have a WoB on this topic:

So yeah... We'll find out eventually, I suppose.

Funny because Brandon immediately dispelled the debate over Asmodean's killer when he got RJ's notes. And now he's doing the exact same thing.

Harmony doesn't seem to have changed any of the systems much. We know he changed the way snapping works, but no confirmation of any other changes. That would be a great question for someone to ask Brandon.

Given that a seeker's abilities can detect hemalurgy (and potentially other-worldly forms of investiture), and that it does appear to be Vin's earring, I can see that being a very useful skill for Wax in the near future. 

I can honestly see this going both ways. On one hand every character seemed pretty convinced that she only had one spike. However, characters can and have been wrong. The "bavadium" spike would/could certainly explain her odd abilities. As well as the fact that she seemed quite sane, albeit obsessed with "freeing" the world from Harmony, which would make a lot of sense if 50% of her sapience was being derived from the Autonomy Shard. 

I'd have to hunt down the quote. But WoB is that all physical metals actually do have a mental aspect to them as well that allows you to use the new abilities. ie: Atium floods the mind with new information so the mind is also expanded to allow it to process that information.

I believe he said that the feruchemical charge "overwrites" the allomantic charge of a metal. That's why you can compound feruchemical effects and not allomantic ones (as far as we know). However were you to only fill half of the metal mind you would still retain half of it's allomantic charge. 

I'm unsure whether a spent metalmind would revert to an allomantic charge or just become "dead".

I did catch the reference. I just didn't see much in it as Brandon has been pretty open about the people on the southern continent.