LewsTherinTelescope

The change from "the" to "its" isn't alone the weird part. The revision also changed "did not—could not—give him this metal" to "did not—could not—give him the other metals". The original line says the mists can't give him atium (WoB supporting that read), but Brandon later deliberately removed that confirmation, which raises the question of whether maybe he changed his mind and they can fuel it like any other Allomancy after all. This is a plausible argument to me, but I'm confused how that relates to what you were saying above about the old cadmium-swap WoBs? That was the part I was disagreeing with—if they were just electrum Mistings, the swap is no longer necessary (which explains some... confusing... statements on the topic). I could go either way on the core question of whether pure Dor could fuel the effect or not.

In context, I think he's saying atium is the only metal he has left, and atium's power can't give him the other metals. Which... is patently obvious, so I can only assume there was some restriction on how they could edit the line without breaking layout because I can't fathom why Elend would need to point that out.

So there's an odd thing here. In the original version of Hero of Ages, Elend calls out that the mists can't give him atium: But this actually got changed (long before the leatherbounds): We still don't see either of them using atium, but the fact Brandon felt the need to go back and get rid of the confirmation they couldn't is curious. Investiture itself is still part of a Shard and has Intent and all that. We don't know what the full limits this might or might not impose are, though.

Oooooh that's a really good question. I kind of suspect the answer is no for purely meta reasons, because as access to pure Investiture grows suddenly every Misting forces Brandon to reckon with all sixteen God Metals and every Mistborn forces him to reckon with two hundred and fifty-six abilities (and that's not even counting the potential for hybrid God Metals). I could see something like this, though: When Vin and Elend burned the mists, they don't seem to have gained stores of the unknown metals. Perhaps your soul/body need to "know" a power to be able to use Investiture to fuel it? Burning a metal too much tears cracks in your soul, but maybe you still need to burn it a little to open up a channel for it to flow through at all? According to Peter, yep! According to Peter the "atium Mistings" were really electrum Mistings (see above), so for the sixteen thing to work those old WoBs must be supplanted, no? He clarifies in the first paragraph of the response that "you've just got to make an alloy", which implies atium-electrum works as it always has.

I've moved this to the Cosmere forum since you also talk about non-Stormlight magics.

We know from the Stormfather that the Dawnshards were used in the destruction of Ashyn, and Taln got his "weapon" from Kalak, an Ashynite Surgebinder. (This doesn't necessarily mean Kalak was the Dawnshard previously, we've seen they can be stored in objects.) More broadly we also know that the Dawnshards were once well-known on Roshar, with the ancient histories being rife with mentions and the Poem of Ista referencing someone with one. How the Dawnshards got to Ashyn and Roshar in the first place is of course an open question, but it seemingly did happen. Taln shows disdain for Surgebinding, so I don't think his weapon was directly related. (That said, while I do think the theory is decently likely I don't think it's certain. This post was less trying to argue that it was definitely true and more looking at the implications for the story in the hypothetical scenario where it is.) He still agreed to join up to spare anyone else the pain, he still chose to go back every time, he still sacrificed himself defending those who needed it whenever he Returned, he was still scarred by four and a half thousand years of uninterrupted torture. Whatever edge he may have doesn't change who he fundamentally is as a person or the awful things he chose to bear, just turns him from a myth into a man.

Following Book Five, some have theorized that the weapon Taln used against Cultivation in an attempt which left his soul warped is a Dawnshard, and that its aftereffects are why he held firm (example). One common response I have seen is that this would weaken the symbolism of him never breaking. I would like to present a different angle: it does, and this is good. A huge part of every character's arc has been accepting that everybody breaks sometimes. If Taln is Just That Good™, it cuts a hole in this theme. Let's take Kaladin as an example: Over the past two books he's had to come to terms with the fact he can't save everyone and he needs to heal instead of destroying himself trying. But what if he knew that before him stood living proof that if he did push himself harder, sacrifice even more of his well-being, wear himself down further, he truly could save everyone? Would he have ever grown? Or look at how the fandom treats the other Heralds for giving up after enduring two and a half thousand years of war and torture. Do they get respect or at least sympathy for what they went through? No, they're reviled because no matter how much weight they bore, Taln "proves" that they just weren't good enough, didn't care enough to keep going. (I'm hoping Book Five's emphasis on their experiences will shift this, though I haven't seen much discussion of them since it came out to be sure yet, but at least beforehand people were vicious about their "weakness".) Taln holding out in part because of magic rather than purely force of will does weaken the symbolism, but perhaps that's because it's a symbol which should be weakened. And it doesn't change the fact he signed up for the Oathpact to spare others the pain, or change how much he cares about helping people while on Roshar, or reduce the suffering he went through. It just makes him more human. [Way of Kings Prime characterization]

I suspect this could be what we're seeing in the visions, or at least the more "alive" Tien and Nohadon ones. (I go back and forth on how exactly I think of all that as working.)

Does duralumin affect your spiritweb, or does it affect the metals?

The Stormfather implies it when speaking with Eshonai post-death (RoW 117): This is of course the exact question that Brandon poses about Shadows, so this seems to confirm that despite Eshonai retaining continuity of consciousness the entire time she did indeed become one immediately upon death. This question assumes the Beyond exists, which we don't know. But also worth noting that Kelsier feels the stretching again after Ruin's attack (SH 6-8): By then he is unambiguously a Shadow, so if the Beyond does exist then this is an open question anyway. The hypothesis that pre-Well Kelsier was a non-Shadow who passed on actually makes it more complex because then we have to contend with both versions going Beyond separately. (This obviously doesn't disprove the theory, but imo it does interfere with the simplicity argument regarding when one becomes a Shadow.) Again, this is assuming a specific interpretation. If there is no split, there is no problem.

So far as I know we have no idea.

I'm unsure if it would work (we've so far only seen the process used to flip a Light to its anti so we don't know if it can change its Shard entirely, and Breath does seem to have some more structure to it), but I suspect that's what he was trying and he stumbled across anti-Light in the process. Again mostly speculation, though.

Mostly a shot in the dark, but I think it's related to this WoB: I suspect he was looking for a way to convert Stormlight to Breath, and believed maybe if he isolated the Light + exposed it to its inverse tone the songs would cancel out to produce a hypothesized "pure" Investiture. Instead... boom. (Well, it wouldn't explode right away, but all he'd need to do is assume it was a failure and try to store it in a long-term storage container that already had Light in it, and then boom.)

Isn't that an Iriali? The only thing we know about the Selay racially is that they have distinctive "skin ripples".

It does feel reminiscent of something the Stormfather says in Oathbringer (chapter 16): I'm not opposed to there being more if there's compelling evidence, but I don't feel that line on its own necessitates it.

But again, Ishar was a Bondsmith on Ashyn. From Syl's RoW interlude: And we know he and most of the other Heralds were followers of "Passion" at the time, with Ishar himself being the first Odium convinced:

Historically I think the reigning assumption has been that the Dawnshards were used to Command all Investiture during the Shattering, and so the Shards arise from attempts to fulfill those Commands, rather than the Dawnshards being aspects of Adonalsium's persona in the same way the Shards are? At least that's been my assumption, perhaps I'm misunderstanding how the community at large has envisioned this working. (That said I do totally think they're related to the aspects from Wind and Truth, that number doesn't seem like a coincidence. And now that we know the aspects exist, that does seem like a plausible new justification for there to be quadrants connected to the Dawnshards. I just don't think that when Tanavast references "Adonalsium's four aspects" he means the separate Dawnshard objects, I think he has to be referring to part of Adonalsium itself.) I don't remember if I observed them myself first or if someone else on Discord did and I developed my own stance off it, all that kind of blends into a soup after enough discussion, but I don't think it's discussed in the text anywhere. The Essences in general haven't really been touched on much compared to the Surges, I think the most we get is the Ars Arcanum mentioning the Double Eye's pupils represent "the creation of plants and creatures". (Though if you watch closely you can still see connections, like Willshapers having the Essence of Foil and Reachers being made out of bronze, or Shallan's admission about Testament having a running metaphor of bleeding.) Oh interesting, I hadn't considered that. That'd be a neat connection. Tanavast mentions that they were left with instructions "to protect, to shroud, to nurture" and that the Wind was chosen "to protect", so presumably the other two instructions each belong to one of the spren. The most obvious answer would be nurture = Stone and shroud = Night, but Cultivation preferring the Night's song complicates matters. So for now I'm going to be going with nurture = Night and shroud = Stone, even if it's kind of odd (guess you could say laits shroud those within them?). (Note: when I call a Shard or spren associated with a Dawnshard in the rest of this post, interpret that as shorthand for "associated with the aspect of Adonalsium which issued that Command", as described by my theories above.) Change = "to nurture" seems uncontroversial. Exist = "to protect" similarly seems like an obvious connection, but I'm actually going to propose Exist aligns with "to shroud". You see, there's a big question here: "protect" and "nurture" make sense as guardians, but why was one instructed to shroud? And that makes me remember two other things: Yolen being hidden, and Autonomy (which I believe to be associated with Exist) blocking Taldain. Did part of Adonalsium intend to keep the worlds hidden so they can't influence one another, so they can exist independently? Now of course we need a counterpart to "to protect". Notably, the Wind resonates with Honor because of its instruction, so that seems like a good place to start. It's a fairly common theory that Honor, Devotion, and Dominion are associated with something along the lines of "Unite" or "Bind" (not necessarily those words) given lines in Stormlight and Elantris. We also see with the Windrunners and Bondsmiths that in the cosmere the concepts of protection and unity share a lot of DNA, and the Wind urging Kaladin to understand Nale is reminiscent of Dalinar's arc about understanding Tanavast and Honor. So perhaps the Wind's instruction is related to that intention? This leaves us with only the fourth unanswered. Personally I think the last Dawnshard is about creativity, being related to Invention, Virtuosity, Reason, and Whimsy. This could fit neatly with either Day* or Sea*: we use a lightbulb going off as a metaphor for a reason, and the continent of Roshar itself would likely have arisen from the ocean. Also, both Dustbringers—Spark—and Lightweavers—Blood—are associated with creation. (Though this brings us to one of the annoying parts of the Double Eye system, which is that Illumination isn't associated with either light-based Essence... And don't get me started on Truthwatchers/Pulp and Edgedancers/Lucentia...)

I've moved this to the Wind and Truth + Cosmere board since you're talking about a lot more than just Mistborn.

My answer to this is different depending on if we're talking out-of-world or in-world. On a narrative level, Evi forgiving Dalinar or the whole Tien -> horse -> rock sequence with Kaladin definitely seem to me to be written with the understanding these are real people, with the alternative explanations exclusively being presented outside the text and including such proposals as "Hoid and his shenanigans". But in-world, it seems almost... redundant to me? The scenes in Stormlight all include a Bondsmith in the process of becoming a god. Investiture is already the mechanism for consciousness. The Spiritual Realm is already the realm of essential Identity and eternal memory. The Cognitive Realm is already the realm of experience and subjectivity. What does a "Beyond soul" actually do? And what are its answers to the Ship of Theseus, Cognitive Shadows, etc independent of the existing Realmatic answers? There's also Wayne passing on: This doesn't sound to me like an intact personality moving on to a specific place, it sounds to me like individuality fading as they spread out across the entire universe. Emotionally, I also prefer Dalinar forgiving himself as an arc to Dalinar recieving external absolution. My preferences for the Tien scene are more complicated than it being entirely in Kaladin's head or it being entirely just real Tien, but if we remove the Beyond as a factor then the Spiritual Realm is perfectly capable of handling that complexity on its own. (I'll talk about Vin and Elend in a second.) The one case off the top of my head where I prefer it being 100% just the person is Teft, but given the timeline that's easily justifiable by him just not having passed on yet, and Moash also references seeing Teft's spirit before he lost his sight. On the other hand, Ruin and the ability to let go are just as important to Mistborn as Preservation and survival are. Characters understandably view death as tragic (and IRL I agree), but to me it feels more thematically fitting if people end while their mark on the world remains. Otherwise Ruin is just delayed Preservation and there's no point to the cost of and growth from accepting it.

A Sea* spren fits with the Essences. If you look at them carefully, you'll notice they come in pairs: Zephyr and Vapor Spark and Lucentia Blood and Tallow Foil and Talus Sinew and Pulp These could very well come from gas (Wind), light (Night, or reaction against Night since she wasn't very liked), liquid (Sea*), solid (Stone), and above them all life (Adonalsium). Side note: Outside the last group, these can be broken down into an "opaque" and a "transparent" version. Echoes of Pull and Push? To play devil's advocate against myself, though: if you favor Day* you could argue they're light and Night is liquid (hence Cryptics and inkspren being dark, and perhaps related to midnight aether's blood connection). There's also what the singer who worships the Origin of Songs tells Dalinar (W&T chapter 43): (Though to devil's advocate the devil's advocate, we only hear about "light of day" once we stop hearing about Night.) So for now I'm undecided on which of the two it is, but I do think it's one of them. I don't think the Wind does mention the Night, does she? The Sibling and Syl do, but from what I can find she only references the Stones. Her other sibling(s) just aren't ever really relevant. The weird thing about that line is she says "Perhaps these were the tones of the gods", but she should recognize at least Cultivation's and Odium's. The fact she's unsure suggests to me these are a separate set, and we do know the Wind and the Night have songs that appealed to Tanavast and Koravellium. Also perhaps relevant (W&T chapter 100): Each of the spren was left with a specific instruction, one might even say a command... so why only three, when the big Commands we know number at four? It's also established that the Old Magic are Adonalsium, or at least part of him/them: Chapter 100: Chapter 122: But again, why three when Adonalsium had four aspects? However, if it was four as this post proposes, suddenly everything falls into place perfectly. The Dawnshards are Commands, though. If I tell someone "get me a cup of water", that instruction isn't an "aspect" of me. And I feel like Tanavast surely would know the nature of the Dawnshards? That said, a command may not be an aspect of the issuer, but it still reflects one. My theory is the aspects represent the portion of Adonalsium's intention that gave each Dawnshard Command, which connection was then somehow exploited during the Shattering to separate these aspects from each other and then break them further. The Old Magic spren then would be avatars embodying each of these purposes and left with charges reminiscent of those original commands. This of course raises the question of what happened to the fourth. I have a few different ideas, but here's one of them (involves Dragonsteel Prime spoilers):

This bit from Hoid might be relevant (W&T chapter 33):

I could see there being a bit of this, but isn't important in Kholinar that Veil doesn't have the experience she pretends she does?

My understanding is he pulled them in physically, if you go back to the interlude it mentions him summoning his power to do something that brings him "peace" before the wave hits. That aside, I think Odium/Unmade being behind the Hierocracy is pretty plausible, you make some good connections here. I'm not convinced the spirits of the dead would pose a danger to Shards, though—Ambition and Odium annihilated entire planets in their clash, and Odium still had a lot of juice left in his tank afterward. But forging the Vorin nations into a base for his physical armies would still provide value. Just look at how the western half of Roshar viewed them before they had Surgebinding.

We don't talk about moderation decisions besides with those involved.

Oooh I love that blurb! If I ever print a copy up I'll probably use it myself too. Though it feels kind of weird for D'Naa to not get her own part, but I'm not entirely sure what I'd put in it either.