LewsTherinTelescope

I mean you're shoving a bunch of Investiture into your spiritweb, take that hypothetically far enough and yeah that's gonna result in Ascension, but Ascension is not just Connection (being able to do it naturally requires Connection, but lerasium and Allomancy don't seem to have the same Intent alignment requirement, so I don't know whether it still applies or not).

Wouldn't the fact that Kelsier is barely Connected to Pres despite being a powerful Mistborn seem to make this not very likely? According to Leras, lerasium Invests a person. There's an old WoB that talks about it giving a lowercase-c connection, but we don't know if it gives a capital-C Connection or not.

Yeah. I imagine Brandon's intention was to play off those stereotypes and subvert them by making them good people doing it for a good reason, but definitely something to be very careful around. I've wondered recently whether there's a proto-Intent thing going on. Maybe they can make projections, but the Chaotic intention behind why they are doing it causes Order's power to refuse to work for them and so they didn't figure it out, similarly to how when Kelsier tried to attack Ruin the power just... didn't listen. Oh huh, that would've been cool. Hmm, I could see that. Same, I appreciated the contrast and was surprised how strongly Brandon seems to feel it's broken.

Characters sometimes lump them together, but generally a distinction is drawn between the Voidspren that are fully of Odium and the Enlightened spren. So not the same thing, no. Hm, not sure. Depends on whether normal Radiants can use Lifelight or Towerlight, I feel like.

I don't mean hesitancy over the risk of being deadeyed, just like, not wanting to get involved/none of them wanting to go fight, or the bond being less understood at first and so the spren being less interested in it, or spren not necessarily finding the humans worthy of a major commitment.

I imagine it's theoretically possible to destroy it with anti-Voidlight, but in practical terms you're never getting even remotely distantly close to that much. It seems to require the "Song of Prayer" thing to get Light, so taking a gem out in there probably won't immediately explode you like taking an anti-Stormlight gem into the highstorm probably would, but I'd guess there's probably still enough ambient Odious Investiture laying around that in the long run the sphere will be destroyed. Hmmm. I think hypothetically, removing enough Investiture from whatever's running it (assuming that it's a spren or spren-like clump of nonsapient Investiture rather than Odium itself) would weaken it, but would still take far more than would ever be practical to make a noticeable dent. Same with the highstorm, damaging the Stormfather and removing a chunk would probably weaken the storm in my opinion, but uh, good luck doing that lol.

WoB is that it's accurate, apparently (though perhaps that's a small enough detail it could count as an "accurate" vision but be modified a bit for thematic reasons like you suggest, idk): I am curious if those estimates might hold for normal Desolations, the False Desolation seems to have been a desperate "all hands on deck" event but I'd think most would be that too... but then, in the past the spren might've been more hesitant to lend their aid, so perhaps during most times it was a smaller number. Hard to say.

He might even also know that they're spren already. Shashara and him based Nightblood off of Shardblades, and they came to Roshar through Shadesmar, so they would've encountered both deadeyes and the living spren and may have asked what was up with them and found out the connection. I definitely think this is very likely. I can't really think of any other reason the Fused would hear the screams, and Vasher is certainly pretty dang Invested.

There were 300 Stonewards and Windrunners with both Plate and Blade at Feverstone Keep alone, so there definitely seem to have been a lot more than 200 total, if just part of two orders was that much. Not exactly. Also, Ashyn is ten-based, yet WoB is that Cultivation is the relevant Shard there, not Honor (also worth noting, Surges and Radiants are of both Honor and Cultivation, not just Honor – though Heralds are just of Honor and yet are still ten and much of Vorin symbolism is based around this number as well, so it's presumably not just Cultivation's influence giving rise to that number either). Similarly, Hemalurgy, Feruchemy, and Allomancy all center around sixteen metals, despite Hemalurgy being of Ruin, Allomancy of Preservation, and Feruchemy being a mix. So I don't think it works for these numbers to all There's also this remark from Khriss that seems to indicate most places are centered around four or sixteen, not their own numbers: Personally, I think the most likely explanation is just Brandon's good ol' fallback excuse for everyone: perception, and the sprenlike nature of Shards. Humans like assigning importance to lots of things, including numbers: just look at how often trios occur in myths, or seven being "lucky" and thirteen being "unlucky", or how multiples of five feel "round" to us due to the way our number system is set up. And in the Cosmere, perception is a fundamental part of the way Investiture works, and the way spren and similar entities manifest. In my opinion, a lot of the symbolism in places can be attributed to latent effects from that (for example, Nalthians picking out a bunch of things with fives and deciding five is important, and this perception of several nations or even the entire planet of people influences the Shard that is deeply integrated into said planet and people and gives her a bit of a subconscious bias towards the number five as a nice round number that she jumps to when she doesn't think about it – hence what Brandon says about there being "inclinations" but it not being that "specific"). I think the Rosharan system actually provides a very clear example of that, due to the abundance and importance of spren. Brandon has indicated before that the Surges granted by the spren are based around what people perceive as fundamental (which makes sense, considering that from what both he and in-world people say it seems like the spren are pieces of the Surges, similar to how as the spren of the storm the Stormfather is the highstorm), though he has indicated that there were "seeds" set up (perhaps just Ado doing things like putting ten gas giants in the sky and littering tens in other places, with futuresight to guide it? or perhaps the Shards telling them "yep this is definitely how it is"? I have my own theories but I'm trying to keep this part a bit more factually-based with things we know seem to exist). So Rosharans and Ashynites both believe in a system of ten Surges and Essences, spren personify these, Honor and Cultivation uplift them (we know the sapient spren seem to have only come into existence after the Shards arrive, and if I remember correctly there's a more specific implication that they were indeed more intentional creations), and now they can be finangled into granting Physical beings control over the things they personify by merging their spirits. Meanwhile, similarly to on Nalthis, the Shards have integrated themselves extremely deeply into things on Roshar, and so this pretty much universal belief messes with them subtly, and so when they do things without specifically picking a number, they often gravitate towards multiples of ten, because it just feels "right" subconsciously (just as people IRL will often do the same, because of our base-ten system). Meanwhile, the Fused reject Adhesion, and believe there are only nine true Surges. They're also basically the only inhabitants of Braize, the place Odium is Invested in. So rather than ten, Odium instinctively reaches for nines when he acts, because he finds that number feels right and natural to use instead. Also worth noting that on Scadrial, a lot of the sixteens are intentionally set up: when setting up the mist Snapping, Leras considered several options, and eventually settled on sixteen because he knew people would recognize it due to the metals. Not something inherent to the Shard's actions, just an intentional hint seeded into mythology to let them pick out that it was an abnormal occurrence. Similarly, a lot of what Yomen cites is stuff Rashek set up, and perhaps stuff Rashek made up considering how long it's been since the events. (That got way longer than expected... oops :p)

I don't think there's any direct magic connection between them, but I think it's possible that at some point H&C managed to get Odium to agree to a "fair fight" clause in some sort of way, trying to keep approximately even numbers between the sides, with Odium not bringing back "sleeping" Fused until there's a certain number of Radiants with similar powers or something (it's rather interesting to me that the shanay-im and mavset-im seem to be among the more common Fused while there's only one awakened nex-im, just as there's a lot of Windrunners+Skybreakers and Lightweavers but only one [known to them] Elsecaller or Willshaper). Which would give each side more of a fighting chance (which Honor and probably Cultivation would like) but would result in far more brutal wars compared to if one side won quickly (which Odium would like, especially with his "training ground" idea). So the Fused might be being forced to hold back in numbers or power until Radiants reach higher levels. At least, that's how I'm rationalizing it, because yeah going off RoW the Radiants should have crushed the Fused when there were hundreds or thousands with full Blade and Plate

More just that imo they're just a bunch of normal (but Identityless) metalminds attached to each other that you can tap at once, or something like that. Same way they have steel metalminds and such attached to the power-granting portion.

Unsealed metalminds are real weird. You don't actually have to consciously tap or even know about the nicrosil portion for it to take effect, touching it just automatically grants the power. (The Bands of Mourning don't actually behave at all similarly to other medallions in... pretty much any regard, they seem a lot more just like normal metalminds anyone can use. My theory is that rather than being a 32-power medallion like people in-world think, they're just a one-power medallion that allows you to use Feruchamical nicrosil, and then a bunch of normal nicrosilminds.)

From what Khriss says in AU and Brandon says in WoBs, it sounds like a Radiant spren is a Radiant spren because it embodies the Surges it grants (and several also seem tied to the Essence of the order). So in the case of the Bondsmith spren, they are presumably Bondsmith spren because they are direct personifications of the Surges of Adhesion and Tension, and perhaps the Essence of Sinew (a metaphorical way of saying "the things that hold the world together" or something like that?), not necessarily just because of Investiture or a Shardic association. (Worth noting also that the intelligent spren had to be created by the Shards, even if Surgebinding wasn't an expected outcome, so that may also play a role.)

Have you seen philosophy debates? Listening to those can probably kill someone.

Technically we don't know for a fact that Adolin didn't get replaced by an amnesiac worldhopper at some point... and Kenton clearly made it around going off that one street in Luthadel...

Death has never been difficult for Kaladin, nor has sacrificing way too much of himself. The difficult thing has been fighting against those urges. Dying and especially sacrificing himself wouldn't be a capstone to his arc, it would be a complete reversal of it and contradiction of its themes.

Well, he's toyed around with the idea of revising the prose, so maybe not.... screams into void

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it as well. Apparently, while some of the worldbuilding and prologue stuff is from the prose, not all of it is, so there'll be some new scenes and information as well, which I'm quite curious to see And having the full product there to tweak with will hopefully have let Isaac give everything just a bit more polish.

I mean yeah, she can probably sustain it. I assume Szeth could keep something going for a bit if he freaking tried why do none of the Skybreakers ever touch it but using it responsibly and most effectively is probably a lot more difficult. After all, it's a pretty dangerous power, you don't want to burn everyone around you. Yeah that sounds about right. Shame. I bet Jasnah would be extremely annoyed if Ivory didn't let her use it for several Ideals and seven years, and Venli got it in like one xD

Ah nice, I couldn't remember if she used her Blade or if it was only after the Windrunner Honorblade was stolen. To be fair, all she did was burn a table. I assume that Nale's training would probably be about bigger, and more dangerous, uses. Yeah, could definitely be. I don't remember if we see the spren when it's in use by someone or not, I'll have to keep an eye out. Definitely would also make sense. Could be both, too, lol.

I don't remember if she does, maybe? But if so, that means we can't actually say whether Dustbringers get Division earlier or not, because Third is when Skybreakers unlock it as well. Hmm, interesting idea. But don't Oathgates have a similar effect? Could just be Light. I wonder if the reason is because she needs an anchor of sorts in the Cognitive to pull on, and he can refuse to do that? Might also explain why it's harder to get back out, because now you and your spren are both fully in the Cognitive and you've got nothing to latch onto in the Physical.

I'm talking about the "If you make the assumption that all Surges are equal." bit. We don't know what Ideal she is. Fair enough. I should instead phrase that "we have a lot more evidence of use", but that's not as certain as I had put it, that's a very good point. Interesting, forgot about that. Wonder why he can deny that when we haven't really tended to see spren be able to consciously deny powers before (closest being when Syl's bond was breaking).

Yeah, I like the idea it's Ferrous, though unfortunately odds are it's probably just something random Isaac threw in (I can dream, though!). Doesn't prove anything about the sapience, though, considering he's indicated that he's keeping most/all the powers from AoN anyway.

I'm using the example they did earlier in the thread. Though, if we take the primary Surge of Edgedancers to be Abrasion, then we end up with: Bondsmiths: Tension Windrunners: Adhesion Skybreakers: Gravitation Dustbringers: Division Which doesn't make sense, considering how associated Bondsmiths are with Adhesion, and means that this idea doesn't work, as Adhesion would be primary for Windrunners, not secondary. Outside Adhesion being a weird one, we've seen no reason to think any Surges are inherently lesser or greater. I mean, in that case Jasnah took something like seven years to ever use Transportation a single time, which I'd disagree with. Wouldn't say it's any less a "true" use than a partial Lashing. Yeah, I linked that WoB earlier in the thread. Mostly a meta thing, not a true rule. The argument I was responding to was someone saying that we "know" that that's not correct and several orders have mechanically-enforced "primary Surges", which I disagree with.