HSuperLee

There is no way that Harmony couldn't penetrate a coppercloud. If Vin could do it with a single spike, then Harmony can do it. Now, against mistborn, I'd suspect that it would render them more resistant to their Hemalurgic flaw. However, most allomancers aren't strong enough to take control of a Kandra without one of the enhancement metals anyway, so we've never seen it be tried, nor are we likely to. Combine that with the fact that its difficult for Kandra to gain access to Allomancy, and it becomes even more unlikely that we ever will.

I have thought about this a lot, and I've generally fallen towards the idea that they're some kind of warlock, as pact of the blade can be used to emulate shardblades. Potentially done best through pact of the celestial to get access to healing abilities, and then you can take the invocation misty visions and mask of many faces to get illumination. Though I've also tried to do a windrunner build based on genie pact, which grants a slow flight speed. Though that was slightly disappointing when I realized that warlocks don't get reverse gravity, which is perfect for windrunners. Ultimately though, I still do believe warlock is the best class for replicating radiant abilities. Edit: It occurs to me that I was talking about the Knights Radiant in general rather than specific Stormlight characters, but I never actually specified that, so I'm doing it now.

@Olmund I suspect that trying to compare a Kandra brain to a human brain isn't exactly possible. Whatever the natural state of their "brain" is, is such that can exist despite the weight of their bodies pressing down on it without bones to protect it. Frankly I was shocked when MeLaan stated Kandra have an organ dedicated to thinking in the first place. Until then I assumed that each of their cells, whether biologically or magically, was capable of acting as a neuron in and of itself, and that their entire bodies basically would function a brain with lots of redundancies. Apparently I was wrong. Knowing there is a specific organ Kandra use to think, I suspect that cutting it in half would drop it below the minimum mass needed to maintain the kandra's consciousness. Maybe some of them keep it large enough that bisecting it wouldn't be an issue, but I suspect that's not the case. Even if it were though, I worry about the realmatic effects of trying to divide a Kandra's consciousness. We know that souls exist in the Cosmere, but not where they come from. So its possible that only one half of the Kandra would get the soul, and the other would either revert to some pseudo-mistwraith state, or would die. Or maybe the original soul would stick with one half, and the other would develop a copy of it, or even a brand new "blank" soul. Its difficult to say. But I doubt the results would be in any way clean or simple.

Well, we've got two Epic women in the story as main characters right now. Frankly though, Megan definitely is not going the Wonder Woman direction, so maybe that will be Paige's role. I mean I'd love to see her actually get more character development, and she seems to be developing powers on top of her martial arts experience, so perhaps she'll fill the role of Wonder Woman. Especially if her experience with Deathrise leads to her being the most willing of the three towards killing and violence, much like WW herself within DC's Trinity.

Alright, everyone, say it with me: Fullborn are the Kryptonians of the Cosmere. Alright, now that that is out of the way, yes, feruchemy is overpowered, but only in the sense that it has no upper limit that we've seen. That said, I'm part of the rare few that genuinely believes that there is an upper limit to feruchemy and that its not much beyond what we saw the Bands of Mourning do, specifically when Marasai started leaking mist. One of the biggest limits seems to be that we've seen a feruchemist start pulling out fraction of a second enhancements, which leads me to believe it might not be possible. It seems that there may be a delay between when a feruchemist starts tapping and when they reach full tap, most notably seen in pewterminds where they don't instantly muscle up, but apparently it takes a second, which means a feruchemist probably can't do something like compress years worth of weight into a seconds worth of mountain cracking strength, which then puts another upper limit on their max power due to their compression being limited. None of this is to say that feruchemists aren't overpowered, just that they do possess actual and rather tangible limits. That said, they're still much less limited than most other magics of the Cosmere, especially with them not being dependent on any expendable external resource, which most other Cosmere magics are.

I do have to wonder if this is offset by the concentration of Investiture in their environment. They might actually have denser bones than we would expect from light-worlders. I suspect we'll actually see attention given to this as Rosharans become more involved with the greater Cosmere. If nothing else, we know that the surge of gravitation overrules the actual gravity a subject should be experiencing and replaces it with a new one, so Rosharans might be able to, either through fabrials or just through Windrunners and Skybreakers, actually bring Rosharan gravity with them when they travel. If nothing else, Shardplate itself might be able to strengthen them in a way that would negate the effects of higher gravity. Though honestly, surgebinders wouldn't really need to be that concerned about the higher gravity in general with their healing abilities, and its more the average Rosharan that might have issues. Sixth of Dusk 2 Spoilers:

I guess the word I'd chose for it is "wonder."

They may be able to ignore or repair muscle fatigue as we know it by constantly rebuilding their muscle fibers, but they are going to run into an issue once their body starts running out of nutrients to turn into forms of energy. So they probably don't get tired, but they can completely use up their energy supply and basically starve themselves. Granted, there's then the blessing of potency which would extend how well they can use that energy. I can't remember exactly, but I believe when TenSoon replicates a horse Sazed specifically notes he's able to run much faster and longer than an actual horse would be able to. Small tangent, but as this conversation continues, it is occurring to me how much kandra really do limit themselves by being attached to nearly human forms. I know that's something TenSoon himself pointed out, but I don't actually think we've seen any kandra but him take on a non-human form. Which is a shame, because they could do so many interesting things if they got more creative with their true bodies.

Man, what Kandra can and can't do is beyond weird to me. We know, if nothing else, that they are able to create cartilage for noses and ears, so they should be able to build cartilage skeletons for themselves. While admittedly, this isn't as ideal as having actual bones, it is better than nothing. But Sanderson himself has admitted to being conflicted on what exactly Kandra can do, and how deep their shapeshifting goes. Personally, I absolutely hate the idea that they can copy to the genetic level, since that means they can fully (and I mean fully) replicate human functions, including bone growth. While admittedly that would take a long time, them being immortal means that over enough time, they should be able to completely build their own skeletons. And then things just get more and more complicated if they can actually alter their DNA and their potential just shoots off the chart in terms of what they are capable of. Can they transform some of their cells into bacteria and then infect other creatures? Could they replicate blood types perfectly to donate blood to humans with 0 compatibility issues? Frankly, until Sanderson decided how deep their shapeshifting goes exactly, its really difficult to pin down their maximum potential.

I believe the assumption that Honor and Cultivation map to one order is somewhat flawed. Yes, Windrunner's spren call themselves honorspren, but as Frustration said, meaning the idea is at least disputed. Frankly, I'd be more willing to make the case that Windrunners, Skybreakers, and Bondsmiths all come very very close to the Shard of Honor, and in fact represent different facets or perspectives of the complete Shard. I'd be even more inclined, though many would disagree with me, to say that it is impossible to say that any of the orders are "closest" to Honor or Cultivation, with them all being equally diffused with the two. The nature of the oaths are themselves mixtures of the two, with Honor being responsible for the oathy nature of them, and Cultivation being responsible for the fact that the oaths are designed to develop over time. In the case of Windrunners (arguably the least Cultivationy of the orders) we see this in the oaths going from "I will protect..." to "I will protect even those I hate..." and on and on. I think it might be most realmatically accurate if we didn't think of the orders as each different magic systems corresponding more and less to Honor or Cultivation, but instead if we viewed them as different aspects of the single magic system of Surgebinding. Much like how we see Feruchemy as one system made of a complete mix of Preservation and Ruin. We don't argue, "but is feruchemical gold closer to Preservation and feruchemical aluminum closer to Ruin?" and I kind of think we should treat Surgebinding the same way. But that's my opinion.

Its an extended version of the Willshaper glyph. Each order of the radiance has a longer and shorter glyph, with the shorter being more useful as an emblem, and the longer representing a shardblade. So what you're seeing could be thought of as the Willshaper shardblade, though obviously each actual shardblade is going to be unique.

Odium + Devotion = Frenzy (in the idea of overwhelming passion and emotion that overpowers every other sensation and experience) Frenzy + Dominion = Chaos Chaos + Ambition = Pandemonium Not quite Ruin, but something close. The desire to cause the entire world to be just as mad as you are. Basically, you'd have the Joker, but as a Shard.

We definitely don't know all the limitations of the medallions due to not knowing how they're made. The fact Southern Scadrial has people around whose job is to fill heat medallions suggests they can't just compound brass, which seems like an easy solution. It might be that making compounding medallions requires a compounder in the first place. We know there's some weird interference in the medallions operation that prevents you from using more than one at a time, and that each one can only have two powers, so for all we know, compounding medallions just don't exist. That aside, there's also a substantial difference between being able to freely move stormlight around and moving the metallic arts around. For one, the quantity and renewability of stormlight is kind of insane. Only compounding would be able to compete with it (and that would be with many compounders working together) and as I just said, we've not seen compounding medallions to even be sure they exists outside of the Bands of Mourning. Further, stormlight is in a far more useful form than invested metalminds. It seems even in-world people are still trying to figure out investiture conversion. The existence of fabrials and gemstones able to hold stormlight makes it almost constructed for trade and industry in a way that medallions, while still useful, just can't compete with. Let's even say that there is a medallion trade the ghostbloods are benefiting from, that doesn't mean they would automatically ignore the potentials of stormlight.

There's definitely something going on, though we know not what.

I don't see why they couldn't bring medallions with them. A medallion is really just a metalmind, and metalminds fill with investiture specifically Connected to a person, not a planet. If anything, medallions would be easier to take off-world, because they've already been stripped of Identity, meaning they shouldn't have any Connection to Scadrial to begin with.

Not a biologist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But to my understanding there are two reasons why it would be difficult if not impossible to do that. First: As best I know, your immune system does actually see tattoo ink as an invader and would like to get rid of it, except that the ink molecules are actually too big for the cells that make up your immune system to break them down and process them out of your body. Laser removing a tattoo is, to my knowledge, using a laser to break down those molecules so they can naturally be removed. The thing about blood cells is that they are small enough that an immune system should be able to process them, meaning ink made out of blood would fade fairly quickly. Assuming it took, that is, which leads us into... Second: A person's body is very likely to have an allergic reaction to someone else's blood being put into your skin, and that would be very bad.

We do not know this. It would actually be a really good question for Sanderson. But based on the whole statements that Syl makes in WoR about how the winds knew Kaladin before she did, and how the winds guided her to him, and all that weird spiritual Connection stuff, it seems extremely likely that they are in fact the same windspren.

Frustratingly, Frustration is correct. (yes, I only made this post for the wordplay)

In addition to some of the examples of intent that previous comments have mentioned, we also can begin to see more of it in soothing and rioting, since they can target specific people and emotions, rather than simply being AoE's that increase or decrease emotion. Debatably, this also extends to seeking, as Vin needed to put effort into discerning one metal from another at first, and when flaring, she had to specifically look for the emotions Breeze was targeting (which even years after having read it, I'm still kind of blown away that she could do that.) While it could be argued that was merely a case of power and precision, the fact she intentionally needed to change her thinking makes it more similar to the whole thing with Wax seeing the bullet as multiple parts, which is definitely a case of intent. Though yes, raw power comes into it. Personally though, I think that the best example of Intent in the metallic arts is when we've seen allomancers burning the mists and experiencing "phantom metals." Both Vin and Elend are basically out of all their metals when they burn the mists, yet their still able to select which effect they want from the mists, which are essentially acting as a wild card for any metal they could burn. They get to choose which metal(s) the mist acts as, which is pretty clearly (and later confirmed by WoB) to be a use of Intent in the magic system.

And that pantheon is the many pantheons comprised wholly of Autonomy.

While I understand the sentiment, there are other threads discussing that, I am concerned about getting this thread super off topic with that discussion, considering that people have been discussing the nature of godhood at least as far back as written history, and likely have been doing so since the idea of gods first appeared in the human mind. And I don't say that to be disingenuous, I legitimately just mean that we could have a whole thread just dedicated to what it means to be omnipotent, or omniscient, or perfect, let alone trying to discuss all three of them alongside any other attestations we make make of divinity (I actually remember there was a thread discussing some of this stuff this past spring, and whether or not the Shards really count as gods.) Push come to shove, we can all agree that the vessels are not perfect, and that compared to a monotheistic deity they fall woefully short, but that doesn't mean we can't answer the question as to which is best among the Shards. Even if we were to agree they've all failed to be good gods, we still can ask which has been the least bad, if nothing else. And that is the question of this thread. Edit. I'm realizing that it was Frustration that was objecting with the whole Shards not being gods thing. I apologize if my comments don't work being directed at you, mathiau. My apologies.

So last night I listened to the most recent Shardcast, where they were discuss their reactions to Lux. One of the things that Argent mentioned he'd like to see is Jax and David eventually meeting up in Lux sequels. He specifically compared David to being superman in the same breath, and then I realized: Jax is batman. He's a extremely well trained martial artist, and a self-educated inventor and technological genius, who also doesn't use guns (granted for a different reason than Batman traditionally has.) He also is in many ways more willing to be violent and harmful than David is, such as when he dropped Perrick down Lux's ladder, which reminiscent of Batman's more aggressive style of fighting. He also is driven by revenge, while David is specifically inspired by his father's dreams (and now that David's got a copy of his father that he can speak and who helps teach him about his powers, he's even got his own Jor-El.) With this is mind, I'm now thinking the dynamic between the two characters, once they meet, might become something reminiscent of their comic counterparts. Not in the competition that the internet seems to have become fascinated with, but in the very strong sense of mutual respect as they admire each other's abilities. Frankly, I find that rather exciting, and I think a Superman/Batman dynamic between the two would be extremely fun to see.

Something we definitely don't know but that is both relevant and interesting for this conversation is how much the original vessels thought of taking up the Shards as a form of apotheosis. I mean, they were comparing themselves to Adonalsium, so its possible that they wouldn't have exactly thought about taking up Shards as being the same as becoming gods, especially if they didn't realize quite the scale of transformation their minds and spirits were going to undergo. That said, we've seen enough of them refer to themselves as gods that clearly they now associate themselves with the term. But the point I'm trying to get at is this: in some religions (I'd make the case that this is true of the Abrahamic faiths for example) the idea of godhood can be associated with responsibility. That is to say, God is supposed to be the being that cares for people and helps them in addition to holding together the universe and standing against evil. I don't know if most of the original vessels had that perspective, or if they just saw taking up the Shards as taking up power rather than responsibility. However, I would say that Sazed, both as a religious scholar, and someone who wasn't aware of any power greater than the Shards, very much approached taking them up as becoming a being of infinite power and infinite responsibility, and as such I think he's fought a lot against the Intents of his own Shards not for the sake of self preservation (pun not intended) but rather so that he's able to better care for the people of Scadrial. I think he truly sees being a god as a duty rather than a privilege, and as such, I'm inclined to believe he is the best god that we've seen. Except perhaps Lightsong. Lightsong was am excellent god. He just lacked the power to back it up.

For the spiritual quadrant, I know a name that's been proposed in other theories is LIVE. Could that potentially work? I understand its similar to the BE of the physical quadrant, but I also gravitate towards it being one of the Dawnshards due to the nature of investiture to spontaneously develop sentience and push things more towards life.

We've generally seen a pretty much universal compatibility when it comes to investivores such as larkins, Returned, and Nightblood. Personally I find that very interesting, but don't quite know what to make of it. Just as humans and other animals have different stomach proteins that allow us to digest different foods from each other (the most obvious example being human's inability to digest grass) you'd think digesting different investitures would require different specializations. Anyway, that's a whole tangent in and of itself for why can Vasher survive off of just stormlight. Back on topic, I like this idea, but partially just because I honestly want to see more of Valor. As for how supported it is, I really can't help but imagine that its main different is either going to be in command or intent. As we the readers are given a better and better understanding of realmatics, I imagine that intricacies of the magics are going become more important, and as such, I think Vivenna's blade is probably intentionally similar to Nightblood to show how significant both elements were in Nightblood's very unique creation. Nightblood has shown us that awakening+ is absurdly powerful (in this case the plus referring to that WoB that says Endowment was involved in its creation) and I think Vivenna's sword will ultimately show us how powerful awakening on its own can be, and frankly I look forward to it. Awakening has always felt like the sleeping giant of magics to me, where we can be kind of quick to dismiss its raw power due to the breath costs associated with grand effects, and I feel like we sometimes forget just how much potential it has, and we see Nightblood as terrifying anomaly. Frankly I'm expecting there will come a day when some awakening that truly surpasses Nightblood. I don't know quite what that will look like, but when Nathis reaches a technological point that there population begins spiking (not a hemalurgy reference) then there's going to be a lot more breaths in circulation. That got off topic again, but I'm okay with that for the moment. WoB referenced above in regards to Nightblood's creation: