LewsTherinTelescope

There's a WoB on it. Interestingly, they seem to know this is what it means in-world too: God I forgot she can do that... that is so confusing.

Good point! I kind of forgot for a moment that Scadrians also exist and might do things, lmao.

They do, but there's Intent limits on things, and Kell in particularly was fantastically bad as a Vessel for multiple reasons (he didn't match the Intent, the power already wanted to be with Vin and didn't like other people, and he was a Shadow with no Physical tie), so if it were something like making a bunch of koloss, is that something he's able to stop? Not like he can smite them or destroy the spikes.

I'm curious as well. My gut feeling is that there's not really a hard cutoff, going off this WoB: And off the fact that the Stormfather and Dalinar seem to kinda still count as Honor for a lot of things even though they don't have access to nearly as much power as Tanavast did. But that's just my guess. They do. Hoid mentions that "Aona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered", Harmony that "the deaths of both Devotion and Dominion trouble me greatly, as I had not realized this immense power we held was something that could be broken in such a way", and Khriss that "at some point in the distant past, both Devotion and Dominion were destroyed. Their Investiture—their power—was Splintered". It's sort of weird, for the reason you say – what we know of the Dor seems to point towards it being more one mass, but Brandon and characters in-world consistently refer to D&D as Splintered. The Dor is pretty weird. Wouldn't that work regardless of whether there was a Vessel or not? Leras towards the end couldn't really interfere much, and neither could Kell.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly. My theory was that Hemalurgy is why Nightblood is the way it is, and specifically is the way it destroys the spirit. My assumption was that Nightblood draining is the way they attempted to recreate Shardblade-like objects with their knowledge and magic, and so that if Hemalurgy were involved, it was probably by design. But if they didn't intend it to do that, and just intended it to cut or something, then that's not necessary, and you could be right that it was an external force.

I don't know if that's quite the same thing, from the way Brandon talks about it it seems like it's more due to Ruin guiding the person than a manufacturing thing. (Though I have wondered whether maybe it is the same thing, and Ruin breaking off the sliver of the sword with the Intent of spiking is what did it, or something.) It actually seems to be a bit weirder. Some WoBs talk about it as if the power is still of Pres, but nonetheless spikes do repel the mists and Ruin has an easier time fueling powers granted via Hemalurgy, so there seems to be some Ruin involved still. Which doesn't contradict what you suggest, I think it's pretty plausible, just elaborating on it. I certainly think that could be! Makes more sense to me if Shashara did know, though, since somehow she expected it to be Shardblade-like.

Something worth noting is that Ashyn is ten-based but its magic comes from Cultivation, so that's not a number exclusive to Honor.

I'm actually not sure if I agree with this distinction, necessarily. The squires thing is definitely part of it, but why can't they be two facets of the same thing? The resonance may not be the squires specifically, but rather like... this idea of attracting something and bonding into one with it, Gravitation and Adhesion combined into a single thing, with the squire boost being a more abstract and passive representation and the Reverse Lashing a more concrete and active one.

Initial train of thought Navani makes an interesting discovery in Rhythm of War: while Intention is needed to produce an anti-tone, the person playing it does NOT need Intent so long as the person creating the tool used to produce the sound had it when manufacturing it.[1] This Intent requirement brings to mind something else in the Cosmere – Hemalurgy. Hemalurgy requires Intent to create a spike, on the part of the stabber or someone else involved.[2] This got me wondering, can one create a metal with the Intention of it being used as a Hemalurgic spike, without the person using it knowing? And then I had another thought from there... Have we already seen this? Specifically, my mind went to the mystery of why Nightblood contains Ruin's Investiture.[3] An interesting thing with Hemalurgy is that it can be done by anyone with the right knowledge, no extra power required.[4] We also know that some of the Scholars had visited worlds that had gone through the Industrial Revolution and had a more developed sense of scientific theory.[7] Scadrial's tech level pre-TFE was apparently "early industrial era"[8], so it's possible that it was the place they saw, and perhaps they picked up knowledge of Hemalurgy, since it was known in Alendi's time.[9] (Note that I do not mean to say they visited pre-Ascension, just at a point where some things were still more widely-known in certain more Cosmere-aware circles than by Vin's time.) Now, we know that Nightblood was not originally a spike.[5] So I'm not suggesting that. But there's a key word there: originally. What if it's an object like what I speculate above, a piece of metal imbued with the Intent to rip off a piece of the soul of everything it attacks, but given a mind of its own and an incredible amount of Investiture to supercharge this effect and rip the whole damn thing out? (We know that larkin, Leechers, and Nightblood all work off roughly the same mechanics,[6] so whatever it's doing, sucking Investiture from the soul seems to be a key part.) That would explain how Ruin's power got in there, as well as explaining why it behaves very differently from anything else we've seen Awakened objects be able to do, and demonstrates a much more subtle yet terrifying way to mix various magics than something like Compounding. A small clarification Something I should note: Vasher has only been to the Physical Realms of Nalthis and Roshar, though he may have been to the Cognitives of others.[10] However, as the other WoB[7] says that some of the Scholars had been to worlds that had gone through the Industrial Revolution, and Roshar does not seem to have done so, and so I feel it's safe to say some of the other Scholars probably visited other planets, with Scadrial and Taldain in my opinion being the only real contenders for that one, and maybe Vasher just stayed in the Cognitive for that part of the field trip. And since Taldain is closed off[11]... Well, Scadrial certainly seems more likely to me. After all, as long as at least one learned about Hemalurgy, they could share it with the rest, and truthfully only Shashara really needs to have known exactly what was going on with Nightblood at the time. References

Doesn't say for certain, but "short of stature, black hair, prominent nose" doesn't sound like how Sazed would describe a dragon to a Scadrian. (Could be Sho Del, but given that Kell's first description of him is phrased nearly identically – "short, with black hair and a prominent nose" – it feels to me like Brandon wanted to make clear that the way he appears in SH is indeed what his corpse looked like.) From a quick search in my ebook, HoA 82: Kelsier also immediately recognizes Ati when he enters the Cognitive, so I think it's safe to say his appearance seems to have been his actual appearance too. Agreed. Tanavast seems most likely to me, just since we know Koravari's one, but that's just a guess on my part. (Aona and Skai I've got no clue about.)

An interesting note on this topic: The chapter arches have various faces representing eleven characters. Ten of them represent the Heralds. Can you guess who the eleventh is? Yeeeeeep, it's ya boi, Cephandrius Maxtori. We know that humans existed off Yolen pre-Shattering, and Khriss mentions that "[Scadrial] is one of only two places in the cosmere where humankind does not predate the arrival of Shards", so I dunno.

Last we heard, Dawnshards tentatively are younger than Adonalsium in the current outline, but Brandon is NOT canonizing this until the final version of Dragonsteel is out, to avoid locking himself in as his plans evolve.

I've moved this to the Secret Projects subforum, as we want to keep discussion of these there.

Personally, my thought on the "Ado's sake" thing has been less that "Ado" is a nickname and more that "Adonalsium" is perhaps a compound word or a title of some sort, and she's just using a shortened version of the title/phrase that still has its divine connotations in that context (probably "the Light" or something similar, since "adoda" = "light", as seen in Adolin's name).

Seems that the name changed, since he used roseite as an example of one that works the same way as it did in Aether of Night (Prime?), but obviously nothing named "roseite" existed in it. And despite the name, Amberite in AoN was rose-colored, so probably that one.

The text does specifically call them "oppressively low" fwiw, but that's... vague as hell lmao

He mentions that "one of the twelve is always visible, no matter where you travel", which I took to indicate that they're not just on the equator, but it's not really certain. But combined with the fact that only one moon is visible where Tress is, it feels to me like they'd have to be spread out, because I don't think someone closer to the poles would see any, in that case? But this is entirely gut feeling and I know exactly nada of the physics involved, so I could be wrong. I feel like it's extremely likely that future drafts of the book will give up on trying to make it at all a true orbit, going off all the issues raised here, tbh.

Phrasing reads to me as if they all do, personally. He references verdant spores with a "for example" later in the paragraph, which imo sounds like it applies to all of them rather than just the one. It's definitely interesting. Khriss describes the sand lichen reaction as follows: Which sounds a lot to me like how I'd expect the spores to be described, but it's also vague enough it can very plausibly be completely unrelated.

The thing with Scadrial is it doesn't have a moon (unless for some reason Trell adds one in TLM lmao), so Hoid would have to explain what one is to them, but doesn't. Imo that makes Nalthis most likely, since as you note Taldain (Dayside and Darkside) have very different plant and animal life, seemingly.

Plus, in this story he specifically points out things that would be weird to his listener, like the spore sea. So agreed, the fact he's consistently and repeatedly referencing Earthlike (Yolen-esque?) plants and creatures without explaining a single one makes it seem like he does indeed expect them to know, versus his occasional slipups on Roshar where he only does it once or twice and usually explains what it is when he realizes.

Wait, what did I miss? When were aethers mentioned? :eyes:

Interesting idea. Don't think we know enough to say for certain either way, could be. I don't see why it wouldn't work on all Radiant spren, since they're all of both Shards (interesting related side note is that Navani was able to attract an Enlightened spren with a tuning fork, though we don't know which). May or may not work on non-Radiant spren, though, depending on their specific makeup.

Yeah that's fair. Valid. Personally, I see both of those as unfortunate circumstances but good and necessary within them, but I can understand why others would disagree. Fair enough. It's certainly not objective or anything, but to me most (definitely not all, as I mentioned there are one or two things like the Bilg stuff where it's a lot more murky) of his actions are things where I am (personally, according to the way I judge things) pretty fine considering them as (again, in my opinion) decently far on the "good" side rather than the "not really sure" side. Good point. So if there is a way it's probably not something immediately clear from holding the power, you're right. The spiritweb hangs around in the Spiritual Realm even after aspect separation, so if there is a true soul and afterlife (setting aside the question of if there is and assuming it because the line I was initially quoting was about that hypothetical) I don't think the spiritweb would be what goes there, because it's still here instead. Oh yeah, at least by default it screws you up real good. I wasn't contesting that part, just that imo the existence of the Beyond would probably not make it even worse. Fair. Wouldn't really describe them as "the defenseless", they're literally the military (or security forces, etc). Eh, what he did was dangerous, but I wouldn't say he's not on their side, just reckless and impulsive and that this can endanger people. Which of his actions in SH were him not trying to fight for those who needed it? (Setting aside the question of his methods, just talking about his goals, aka his "side".) Didn't he save them all from dying out? (Now, to be clear, I agree his recklessness and ruthlessness can endanger those he is trying to help, sometimes greatly, I'm solely contesting the point that any of these were the result of him joining on the side of anyone besides the people who needed aid.) In that case, I agree, yeah. Ah, I misunderstood you then. No argument here. Fwiw, I took Oltux's comment as contesting the argument that Kelsier's actions are fundamentally all selfish while others have more selfless ones (not saying you were making this argument, just that I've seen it before and the way I read Oltux's comment it seemed like that was how they took it), but obviously I can't speak for them on what their intentions actually were. Fair enough. On the general topic, not a response to any one point or person: Yes, Kelsier is reckless, and yes, he's often ruthless. But I feel like it's hard to argue that he doesn't care nonetheless. When the army exposes himself, he runs sixteen hours straight with pewter, even expecting that the other garrison would probably already be there and finishing them off, for the slight chance he could help. And when he arrives, and can see that yep, the Valtroux Garrison has them horribly outnumbered and they're about to wipe them out, he still tries to join the fight because he hates the idea of abandoning them, even when his chances are hopeless and he would ruin any salvageable parts of his plan by doing so. He also forces himself to watch the executions, and bluntly tells the crew that while what they are doing is the right thing, they need to acknowledge the consequences and do what they can. And in the end, he charges in to free them, trying to save any lives he can, and stays to fight the Inquisitor expecting to die and lose everything else, even before he knows the Lord Ruler will be there and he'll be able to make his mark. None of this is a man who does not actually care about the people he's fighting for, nor a man whose only goal is revenge or glory.

The way the WoB reads to me is that only one current Vessel is a dragon, meaning dead ones could also be, but it's not 100% clear I don't think. Doubt he's Sho Del, though, yeah. Name doesn't match the pattern their society apparently uses.

Unfortunately, the design's apparently just a design Isaac came up with that's not relevant to the broader Cosmere as far as Brandon knows. (Which, weirdly, is not the first time Isaac has added a random woman with partially red hair to the side of a Cosmere map, lmao.) But yeah the second half of the one you pointed out is super interesting. Still sad Brandon confirmed she's not a dragon. We don't actually know Tanavast's species, do we?