LewsTherinTelescope

I strongly disagree with the assertion that Ishar put the Ideals into place. First off, he had to threaten Surgebinders into agreeing to whatever he did, which wouldn't make sense with a unilateral permanent change to the magic. Additionally, orders like the Lightweavers and Elsecallers do not have Ideals that really restrict them much, so if the Ideals were put in place to do that, I have to question most choices made. Lastly, a bond with a spren of Honor and Cultivation requiring growing into oaths feels like a pretty natural outgrowth of the Intents. Two things: one, ettmetal is a single element, so you're not separating it out into any two metals via "normal" means (unclear if nuclear fission or anything works with godmetals, so maybe you can do that I guess, but that's not really the same thing as it being made of two other metals). Two, while Brandon on one occasion said there would be two kinds of mists, we've seen no indication of this, and this line in your second WoB: to me indicates it's likely just one mist of Harmony now. But it's worth asking Brandon for clarification on at some point, I feel.

We don't know what Voidbinding uses, but Surgebinding seems to be able to be fueled by any of the Lights, depending on how you acquired the magic.

My bad, I tried to link the WoB directly but the link got broken somehow, I guess. Here you go.

Yeah, he changed his mind, based on the WoB I linked.

Oh yeah, forgot that. Though that wasn't hundreds of years ago, just "a few generations".

When did he do that?

Note: while Nale says that Szeth's brain hadn't died yet, this feels frankly preposterous, because he says this line even in the original ending where Kaladin straight-up kills Szeth with a Shardblade, burning out his eyes. He also says Szeth's soul was cut through and he was "dead for certain", even in the new version where he dies from crashing down in the storm. So... the things he says in that specific section are questionable, both in the old version and new, lol. We've been told via WoB that Szeth and Gawx were both physically dead. Ordinarily, I'd say Nale's line in the book takes precedence, but due to the issues I outlined, I feel in this situation, the book... doesn't make a whole lot of sense... and so am going with the WoB instead. I'd probably recommend C-steel and A-chromium, in this case. Can tap speed, "fly" with Steelpushes, and Leech. Not quite as scary as a Fullborn, and you're going to lose some, but very effective nonetheless. Hemalurgy chart says "a steel linchpin is recommended to avoid the potential deadly side effects of the bestowal of four or more spikes". I think assuming active support of the Shards makes this far too unpredictable. We're not having Odium make more Fused, let's not have Harmony make more Metalborn. Yes, it's theoretically possible to separate ettmetal into lerasium and atium, and to use the Scadrian godmetals to make Feruchemists, but as of yet neither us nor the people in-world seem likely to have any clue how to do either of those things.

I'm very curious if perhaps Yelig-nar can use a gemheart to fully take over, similar to how a Fused can use a gemheart bond to do that but the soldiers at Thaylen City were (iirc) affected more similarly to Regals, somewhat themselves but massively twisted.

Do you have a source?

Nah, four or more is the threshold for a human, two or more is just for kandra.

Hm, I'd missed he had three, I only remembered two. Seems pretty conclusive, then.

Do we know this for sure?

I mean, it's manageable, but it's still a wrinkle that needs to be worked out and can add in a moment of weakness.

I mean, which metal it is is rather important, considering A-aluminum will wipe the Metalborn's reserves, if they have to use that one for that effect.

Nitpick: The pre-Radiant ones seem to be very very bad, considering Nohadon lost 90% of his population, and this was when Surgebinders were starting to be a thing. It's possible that the middle ones, where they had the Radiants but the Desolations were still coming further apart, could be less bad. Something to keep in mind is the Unmade. The Midnight Essences in the Starfalls vision were capable of digging into and cracking Shardplate, and we know that Midnight Essence can even be "extracted" and used by someone besides Re-Shephir herself (as happened in that vision, actually). Ashertmarn was probably used during the starts of Desolations to collapse important centers, like happened in Kholinar. Nergaoul could exploit tensions between kingdoms and have the humans decimate themselves. Yelig-nar can grant someone all ten Surges, which in the right hands could be very deadly, especially if he attacks a place that is mostly undefended (it's mentioned in the Nohadon vision that almost every scribe he had was slaughtered during Yelig-nar's break-in, which would be a pretty massive setback in terms of keeping knowledge around). And some of the Unmade are still mysteries. Ultimately, though, I do agree that the Radiants at Fourth Ideal and above should not have much of a hard time when they go all-out, especially the flying orders, and I'm curious how they were effectively countered.

Note that we actually see a perspective on what happened in the prologue: There's one shot heard that nobody can agree on where it came from, and then more follow. Seems to me that Wax's theory is pretty likely.

Oops, ignore those messages, was screwing around with finding what HTML the forums allow... and turns out adding a button to the text and clicking it will submit the post.... and I may have accidentally clicked it a couple times before I realize and spammed the message by mistake. Oopsies

If abilities are part of Identity, why does spiking the ability out not change his Identity?

I'm mostly going off the Ideals and the Radiant order blurbs than the Divine Attributes since there's more specifics there. These lines feel very similar to me: I also disagree with the assertion that justice and mercy are incompatible. In my opinion, knowing when to be merciful is a core part of being truly just and fair, as opposed to merely punishing. But this is of course heavily open to personal interpretation of these concepts. Yeah, I can see that, especially when it comes to the Radiants.

Ah, okay. I must just have missed the Ideals being sworn, my bad. I see, interesting. Hm, I've often seen those as some of the most compatible orders, honestly. An activist seeking justice for the oppressed feels like something both would like, for example. I'm curious to see what path Quicksilver takes with them! Him getting into the philosophies of the metals in the newest post was interesting.

At some point, Taldain's opening back up, it sounds like. (It's unclear what point in the timeline he's talking about.)

Ah, I see. Yeah, I think that will be interesting. Having to balance all the Ideals certainly sounds difficult, though not impossible, and I'm curious to see how he'll handle this! I'm a bit curious, though: how strictly do the Ideals bind him? So far I had thought that he'd mostly kind of been skipping the requirements with the Identity from the old Radiant. Is this not the case? How does this work for spren like Cryptics or highspren, where the Ideals are extremely personalized and living up to a theme will not alone account for it, but rather a pretty specific Ideal is necessary? What are the zinc and brass shadows being discussed here?

What I meant was more the part on storing his own emotions, like frustration or pain. I was intending it as an addendum to the previous suggestion. Like, if you do take the option of making him be affected by other people's emotions and such, it would probably be a good idea to change how storing his emotions away works, so that he can't just store away these emotions that are affecting him without other downsides (in the example I proposed, becoming overall less emotional would be the drawback, but there's probably other downsides you could come up with as well). Otherwise, it doesn't end up being as much of a weakness. Yeah, that's why I suggested things like being affected by the emotional states of those around him, as it fits the more temporary mirroring aspect of the unconscious uses of the powers, I feel.

The story's a nice read, and there's some fun ideas here that I can't wait to see developed further! A potential suggestion: at the moment, Quicksilver feels kind of overpowered (which might very well be something you're going for for fun, in which case you can ignore this message). I've got a few thoughts on ways to maybe help with this, but I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about writing, these are just some ideas bouncing around in my head about it. While it's mentioned it took him years of practice, and we're told it takes him a long time to do some of these things, it doesn't really feel that way because we don't see it too often. Perhaps at some point you could show him back in the past before he'd mastered this skill, and show him struggling with it, to show the reader better that it is something he's had to work hard to learn? I think it could also be useful to maybe in times of great stress, show him slipping a bit when he tries it, to emphasize it takes a lot of focus to effectively do it. It might also give the reader more appreciation for his level of skill, to see how he started and how far he's managed to come. I think what Mia suggested about making him sometimes a bit too open to the influence of the Identities of others would work as an interesting counterbalance as well. For example, maybe strong emotions of others nearby will lead to spikes in his own emotions, and he has to be careful to control this. Perhaps he starts to slip into roles a bit too heavily (which could lead to interesting interactions with him and Shallan). That kind of thing. In a similar vein, I think removing the ability to store specific emotions, and instead changing it to generally storing strength of emotion, could be somewhat interesting, as it forces him to both tap and store it much more carefully, but this might ripple to some more core changes to the ability that wouldn't fit well with the story. (Sorry that the positive bit I wrote was so short, while the more criticism-y bit was much longer. It's not intended to reflect negatively on the story, I just usually have a hard time picking out specifics when it comes to the good sides of things; even if my overall opinion is more positive than negative, the pros tend to be a lot vaguer and harder to put to words in my mind.)

Seems like it is difficult, but doable if you have a firm enough will. Additionally, Kaza explains that while it's easier to Soulcast a whole object, it's possible to Soulcast a portion as well if you're skilled enough.