Duxredux

In Stormlight 6 it will be revealed that this is just Hoid in drag disguised as a horse.

Eh, if that doesn't work then I'll take the King's Drop containing the Thrill and release it. Probably one of the worst items that could be brought to Threnody.

Here's another mostly unaltered answer. It's more dumb than the others: Body: Shade Skills: Shade Powerset: Shade Item: Yumi (whom I consume and become more powerful) If you can't beat them, join 'em. I'm surviving just fine, I'm not bothered by the Shades at all. Sure I'm starting out dead, but that's a minor detail, it's not like I'm getting more dead. Hopefully the reinforcement from an incredibly powerful Investiture source will give me more resilience to silver from those humans who just can't follow the rules.

We've got a few people who are already quite well suited to survive or thrive on Threnody probably nearly indefinitely, with little to no modification. Body: Ulaam Skill Set: Ulaam Power Set: TenSoon's double Blessings (only because I don't know what Ulaam's Blessing is) Item: Hoid's black suit that he still hasn't given back Ulaam's Cosmere aware enough that he probably understands the Simple Rules and how Shades work. A Kandra that may not need to sleep, can live to a thousand years, adapt their digestive tract to accommodate local vegetation, and doesn't particularly need typical heat or shelter with Ulaam's adaptations to reduce metabolism and could do quite well. Just walk quietly around and subsist off of local food material and avoid the Shades indefinitely. If necessary, work in town as a surgeon to get supplies like silver, but probably wouldn't need to. The suit was chosen so that if I ever really get bored, odds are Hoid will eventually come after me for the suit, particularly if I taunt him, so I should be able to leave whenever I want to with a bit of help from him or another worldhopper. If I actually knew what Ulaam's Blessing did, I might just keep it consistent, but as I don't, Potency and Presence are quite useful for someone expecting to generally just stay awake and keep moving to stay alive. TSM spoilers: Theoretical, untested alternate: Body: Yumi Skill Set: Yumi Power Set: Yumi Item: Connection Medallion Connect to Threnody and harness the power of Shades through rock stacking. ...yup, that's about it. Why merely survive when you can thrive?

Nice! I had a similar idea not quite 2 years ago on this thread: Feruchemical Power Grid, back before TLM was out and before we knew that Compounding with unsealed metalminds or Hemalurgy may not be straightforward. There's a few potential complications to what you're describing, and @alder24 touched on the supply issue. The other significant issue is how you actually create and distribute Feruchemical attributes with a municipal system like this and make it functional. So far I think we've only seen a Feruchemist store attributes in distinct single units of metal. What happens if you weld an additional chunk of metal to the original metalmind - does the Feruchemical charge spread to the additional metal or not? Is there a method of metering the power draw like one would for any utility bill? IRL electrical and gas lines have a form of built-in security in that unless you are a professional with professional equipment you have a very high chance of getting yourself killed if you try to tap into them illegally because the energy source itself is just that dangerous at the scale they transfer it. This is not the default for Feruchemy as you literally walk up and grab the wire to get the benefit, so some security would be necessary which gets expensive at a city, county, or country level of distribution. There's probably some way to get past these limitations, but I don't know if we have the information to do so yet. I will note that even if we don't see a wire distribution, there's still a question of the energy/mass compression we get in Metalminds. Is it cost effective from a supply chain transportation standpoint to pay people to eat and drink all day if it means you can ship a crate of Bendalloy cubes instead of food? The form factor doesn't matter for a chunk of metal, food shelf-life is a nonissue, and transportation conditions are far more lenient on metal than say grain. The same consideration applies to other applications - is sending a Brassmind cheaper than electricity or combustible fuel for heating or cooling? Some of this probably won't catch on because Elendel has electricity and it has to beat out the convenience we'll get in the modern day, but there's going to be a market for this somewhere on Scadrial. I think if Brandon wanted to he could make this work he could, but there are plenty of engineering challenges that Scadrial would need to solve. I wouldn't be surprised at all if something similar is utilized for space age starships when they can design and build the entire vessel and save on mass and volume by storing food, water, and oxygen in metalminds. If they figure out unkeyed/unsealed Compounding then we might see a municipal Feruchemical power grid, but if not they probably would still see use in closed system applications like Malwish air ships or space ships.

Well, you've got some support over from this thread @Stormtide_Leviathan. I could see this being something Brandon might do. There's a bit of discussion on the older thread as well.

Piggybacking off of @alder24's quotes, Steelsight is useful because of the context of the world the Hemalurgist is interacting with. Even for someone like Kelsier who can no longer fly on Steel, he can still at a glance identify the viable anchors and weapons available to an enemy Coinshot. Here's an old thread discussing Wax's precision and how it relates to Steelsight. In summary, Wax is an incredible marksman likely because of the sensory feedback for his shots, Steelsight basically gives modified laser sights, and decades of practice. There's other things like increasing his weight and correcting his shots with Steelpushes that are less relevant to this conversation. Notably Wax acknowledges that the Coinshot they fight at the end of AoL has very good aim, so it's probably not just Wax. Steelsight in the context of firefights means everyone else effectively is using tracer rounds, with Wax able to pair and identify who was shooting invisible Aluminum when fighting a small army in BoM. If you take the time to learn your Allomantic metals, being able to identify metals on sight could be really useful. Since you're a living metal detector, you'll may be able to tell if the person you're facing has Feruchemical bracers or metal vials hidden on their person (like how Wax identified Marasi as a Misting), what type of metal it is, and logically what powerset you can expect to be facing. Dead zones indicate Aluminum and the general size and shape probably will tell you if they have a shielded metal flask, an aluminum firearm, or an lined hat. You may also be able to spot Hemalurgists from their spike material or placement (depending on how those look to an Inquisitor's eyes). Sure you have to have done your research and be paying really close attention, but that's a lot of information. I'll also note that having someone who can on sight verify good Allomantic metals with the right percentages can be useful even just by inspecting metals for other Mistings. It makes sense, but it does make me wonder why Inquisitors weren't better at spotting Feruchemists and Allomancers. Maybe they just relied on their enhanced Seeking since it could punch through Copperclouds which was an advantage most didn't even know was possible, and it could let them pick out unaware Allomancers like Vin who was burning trace metals. In the modern world, you may be able to identify the interior conduit and wiring for a building which may be relevant in later eras to trace things like surveillance cameras. The x-ray vision that specifically highlights metals is useful because power and information are generally transmitted on metal wires, and it seemed like that was the case for Southern Scadrian technology as well. Mapping what and where something is drawing power and sending information is pretty useful, particularly for one of the greatest thieves of the Cosmere, though electricians, engineers, and hackers can get some mileage too. Greater Cosmere spoilers: Now there are pros and cons between getting an eye spike vs A-Steel/A-Iron the main advantage being that it's a passive ability. It doesn't run out through normal use or while burning Duralumin, it can't be Leeched away, and it doesn't need a Coppercloud to be hidden from Seekers (which got Wax in trouble in BoM when snooping at the New Seran party). The cons are of course you can't Push or Pull.

Most of the time you won't be able to use this method, but the Mists of Scadrial respond to an Allomancer burning their metals. They will subtly begin to swirl around the Allomancer giving an indistinct visual cue pretty much only noticeable if they are motionless, as a Pewterarm running through the Mist will disturb them anyway. This would be hard to show via a storyboarding medium as it's generally only recognizable through the increase of motion of the Mists which would be very hard to show via stills. Hemalurgists repel the Mists. I think it's worth to think about the POV you are portraying because what each person can sense can vary dramatically. The world through Kelsier's eyes is far different from the world through Breeze or Spook as a Savant. The terror of a Hazekiller confronted by a Mistborn is not a perspective we often see, but seeing someone move around seemingly by levitation or punching through armor is it's own brand of dramatic. Tineyes see through the Mists, and Coinshots see metal lines, and keeping that in mind based on what perspective you show will be quite relevant.

Well... let's do a bit of loose math with some internet calculators to get a rough idea of how much force we're talking here. In TLM Wax was able to launch himself while carrying Wayne on his back in a single impulse to a boat traveling from Bilming to Elendel. The distance between Bilming and Elendel is about 100 miles based on the in book map. To aim low, let's assume to boat was only 30 miles away from Bilming and as they were at an elevated position on a tower probably near the coast, I'll say they were about 500 feet in the air. Reeeaaally loose numbers. For context, the fastest bullet according to Wikipedia has a muzzle velocity of 1422 m/s. Using this calculator, assuming a 45 degree angle launch, starting 500 feet above the target, taking into account gravity, and to hit a target 30 miles away, Wax and Wayne would need to be moving about 1550 mph. Let's assume that Wax shed all of his weight prior to launch and is only carrying himself, Wayne, and their weapons, so... let's say Wax launched 250 pounds of mass. That's what, 27,000,000 joules of kinetic energy? Toss that into this calculator for bullet kinetic energy, assume a 140 grain round, and if you apply 27,000,000 joules of force you'll need... a velocity of 254,000 feet per second, or 173,000 mph which... makes me question my math. That's almost 7 times faster than what you would need for escape velocity. That's probably fast enough that if you fired it horizontally it still wouldn't land on the planet, and that's just Wax with a Duralumin spike. If we add in air resistance, Wax retaining some weight, or assuming the ship is farther out then that force just gets higher. I'll need ballistics people to tell me if I got that right or not, as well as how much force would actually be transferred to the target or if it would just leave a nice neat bullet hole going straight through with relatively little energy transferred to the rest of the target's body. So... I'll say that a Fullborn could fire a bullet faster than they would ever have a practical need to do so. If I was a sniper Fullborn with a single surge, I might take Gravitation actually. I couldn't fire them out of a conventional gun, but Lashing the bullet towards my target before Pushing on them would let me ignore drop from Gravity entirely and that takes a significant variable out of the aiming equation.

Yup, you were thinking of the exact scene I was thinking of, but you stopped a couple of paragraphs early. It's still not fully conclusive, but this blood is liquid enough to shake off. Didn't think this detail would be particularly relevant, but Vivenna notices that Vasher has a rather hairy torso, and I'm pretty confident that dried blood with plenty of hair to adhere to won't just shake off from someone running. There's some degree of Intent involved with choosing what color source to use when Awakening, since it seems like Vasher can choose to use a handkerchief instead of risking draining the color from his cloak (particularly when it's not Awakened already), so blood as a color source might not be something that most are aware is even possible. Vasher certainly seems to think about what he uses as a source. The main situation that I can think of where you would even need an emergency color source is if an Awakener was captured and held against their will, Vasher demonstrating one of those when he had all of his colored items confiscated and was tortured. The other we've seen is in the prison setup they had for Vahr, for forcing an Awakener to give up their Breaths. Now if I was Vasher and hung up like that, first I'd try to get the gag out by altering my shape a bit (I'm guessing growing closer to full Returned size would stretch the gag enough that I could get it out when shrinking back down to normal size, but hurt me more than it would the manacles). Next, I'd pull bits of my beard or shoulder-length hair out with my teeth, and do my best to tie a little hair man in my mouth (not easy by any means, but doable with hours or centuries of practice). Then, I'd rub my arms against the manacles until they were raw and bleeding or bite the inside of my mouth to get some accessible blood as color. Finally Command the hair man to pick the manacle locks or fetch the key. And that's a hypothetical method to break out of an Awakener's prison specifically designed to deprive you of voice, color, and objects to Awaken. If they want you alive to get your Breath, they'd have to put in a lot more precautions in place to prevent you from using your own blood as a color source.

Interesting. To what extent am I bound by the First Contract, particularly the no homicide clause? If I can't kill anyone and do not have to form contracts on location (since they can't pay me in Atium), then I assume I am functioning as a spy/information gatherer. Very similar to hoid without wit's build but for different stated reasons. I want Blessing of Presence for memory storage, Duralumin compounding with 2 spikes so that I can quickly form Connections to new places and quickly learn and retain new cultures and languages (assuming he trusts me enough to divulge those whoppers of secrets which by no means a given). I'm going to have to use these abilities to get very good at approximating the appearance of native peoples as I explore as I don't anticipate finding random corpses or having a master to kill people for me. If homicide is on the table, then I'm taking Potency, compounded Steel and a stack of Atium spikes to collect as many powers as I can to bring back home for further study.

Well... Bloodmaker lets you store a bright color source. We have a case of Vasher Awakening using blood flowing from a chest wound and it drips colorless. In an emergency you can cut yourself, use blood for Awakening then heal up. Expensive use case for Health though, particularly compared to a bottle of dye. It would work in an emergency, like say if you had been shoved out a window and were falling to your death, but then any sufficiently experienced Awakener could do that. Yeah... you don't need a metal bracer for this, even if there was an ability that let you do this. If there was a metal that let you store personal color, then I'm more interested in looking at selective Feruchemical camouflage or invisibility depending on the mechanism, not Awakening.

tl;dr, I suggest we look at expanding the discussion to the task of "Winning Shards" and not just beating the Shardbearer Now this is beyond the scope of the original post, but I feel like it's worth mentioning how the powers we see at the very beginning of the Stormlight Archive are significantly different from nearly every other accessible magic system based on the following distinction: if you kill a Shardbearer or wielder of an Honorblade you gain full access to their powers relatively quickly and you can freely trade that power around. This is different from all of the genetic systems (Allomancy, Feruchemy, Sand Mastery), cultural adoption systems (Elantrian, Dakhor), symbiosis (Radiants and Aetherbound generally need consent), and Identity based technically transferrable goods (Soul Stamps, Breath). Hemalurgy can be used to steal powers and spikes can be harvested from fallen Hemalurgists but they require compromising your own soul and aren't easily exchangeable. Medallions are the closest to easily and freely transferrable power, and being metal they are hardier than most, but are nowhere close to as hardy as Shards and frankly aren't as busted (yet). On a battlefield, I would expect a fallen Shardbearer to be the most highly contested ground on the whole field. Because of this Shardbearers are generally deployed with this in mind - if the Shardbearer falls on a battlefield then their honor guard needs to do their absolute best to recover the Shards otherwise they will have to face those same Shards in the next battle. It's why backup Shardbearers are trained or sometimes made the primary user of the Shards for the nobility. Dalinar thinks about this pretty much every time he outruns his honor guard, and this is why I think Helaran wasn't the best Shardbearer because of how far he extended himself beyond the aid of his own army and lost the Shards. Beating a Shardbearer isn't really the goal, it's winning their Shards, because the bearer is replaceable while the Plate and Blade persist. So... it's not in the scope of the original post, and I'm continuing with one of my earlier thoughts about how Shardbearers are rarely deployed alone (there's the old adage that Shardbearers can't hold ground), but I feel like a significant condition that almost everyone will want to add to beating a Shardbearer is recovering the Shards after the fact, for the obvious reason that you have them and your enemies don't. In some cases this conditional will be naturally fulfilled, like a Pewterarm managing to get a killing hit through a crack or visor can probably deal with an honor guard, particularly if equipped with a newly acquired Shardblade, but it won't be a bygone conclusion in every case. Once a Shardbearer dies, the armor will fall off of them (at least it did in the scene with Helaran), so it's not in a tidy contiguous unit to drag back home, and you'll need to recover the majority of the Plate components as whoever has the most can feed Stormlight into it to recover the rest. It takes considerable time to don Plate, and it has to be assembled from the feet up to allow the Bearer to support the tremendous weight - so putting on the Plate and wearing it home requires you to basically have conquered that area or have sufficient support to protect you while you get geared up. Thus, if you send Lifeless insects to attack the Shardbearer, you'll want Awakened ropes on standby to drag the Shards once they go down. Simply deploying aerial bombardment on a Shardbearer won't remove their Shards in a war, you'll want to retrieve them as well or have to face them again the next bout. This is why I think super risky last ditch efforts like a double Iron compounder jumping on a Shardbearer isn't as useful as it sounds if they have no way to carry it back home. They can probably grab the Shardblade, but their powerset isn't the best at recovering the Plate. Best option I have is jumping on and crushing the majority of the armor and bringing home the sole remaining piece. This does introduce uncertainty into the debate, since it's undefined what they are recovering Shards from, but it does make me expect that expensive ranged attacks are less likely to be deployed against Shardbearer if there's no option for recovery.

Sorry to echo @Returned again, but it feels like we still need more detail on the motives. Does he believe the tenants of the religion he is a pastor for or is he simply using the kindly pastor gig as a cover for his true motives? Is he trying to convert the NPC's to his way of thinking or is he mocking the party for their "short sightedness" or "naivety at failing to understand how the world really works" from his perspective, or is that he genuinely believes that he is trying to do good (from his perspective) and that he's allying himself to a lesser evil to fight a greater one (poverty, corrupted governments, sin, etc.)? The way that you do this is important setup for how the party views the church, the business connections, how the community views the church or the party ("they just killed Pastor Johnson! What's wrong with these people?" vs "Did you see how much heat Pastor Johnson was packing? That's not normal, something's not right with this church."). If you need a specific outcome for the rest of your planned story and just need a villain monologue we can probably spin something up. For kicks, I threw your prompt into ChatGPT then swapped out pastor for businessman because it really heavily weights that for the prompt. Tried putting it back in and... well you see. You can probably mash those up together. Suit's main appearances are: AoL epilogue SoS chapters 8, 17 BoM chapters 16, 25 to basically the end.

To answer if Cosmere healing can heal cancer, the answer is probably with the same Cognitive limitations. Looks like cancer is not part of the Spiritual Ideal and the right healing can naturally filter out cancerous cells so long as the Cognitive aspect is in alignment. Most of the trouble with cancer is how hard it is to differentiate and target the cancerous cells while differentiating between the types of cancers, particularly if cancer bypasses the immune system, so this looks like it should be pretty easy to heal. Now... it's possible that for most humans in the Cosmere won't ever deal with cancer, depending on the mechanism that allows humans to have less diseases anyway. If the bit of innate Investiture in all souls means regular healing is aligning towards the Spiritual Ideal (which is a bit of a stretch), then something on the scale of the beginning of cancer probably isn't much of an issue. Cancer is difficult to treat once starts rapidly growing and developing, particularly if it's started spreading (the term you're looking for is metastasized) but if the body naturally catches that handful of cells that had damaged genetic code and didn't terminate properly, that's much less healing then say a massive viral load from someone sneezing in your face with the common cold. I'd actually guess that if the body could as consistently identify cancerous cells as it can the common cold, then the cold would cause more of an strain to the immune system (barring cancer of the immune system like leukemia). Cosmere humans are weird because they have something like a spiritual limiter to their life span - an actual allotted time of life (on average) or a predetermined decline of physical health directly linked to their age as viewed by their Spiritual Ideal as seen with Rashek. So while heart disease and cancer are big killers in our world, they may not be an significant issue in the Cosmere, or as likely to kill the elderly as any disease that can target a weakened immune system. Now that's for normal unaltered humans. If we look at Drabs (apologies, yes this is the Mistborn board, but this isn't much of a spoiler that there are members of the Cosmere that have lost that innate Investiture) or those who have been non-lethally Hemalugically spiked, then yes, they may be more susceptible to cancer and for the next bit I'll just assume that cancer is a problem to at least some people in the Cosmere. Hemalurgy can do some pretty wild things, so I'm not going to discount the possibility of healing someone via Hemalurgy, but for spiking it out we're talking literal excision from their soul. For cancer that has metastasized, you'll never target the individual cells well enough, that's the whole reason why we can't remove them via surgery IRL, and I can't imagine a scenario that would let you so carefully target a single class of specifically cancerous cells (though hemalurgy can target physical strength for what it's worth). This would be like trying to spike out the spiritual web representing the liver, but somehow avoiding all non-cancerous cells. By definition, the cancer is growing from mutated cells that you really want to keep functioning, so you can't just remove all related cells. If it did work, it would probably be as traumatic to the body as IRL cancer treatment if not more so. That chunk of soul you punched out ain't coming back, and if did, they gained access to healing that would have cured the cancer in the first place. Injuries in the Spiritual Realm are so much harder to heal than injuries in the Physical Realm, so it seems like you're going to have a pretty extreme use case scenario to justify breaking out the spikes and mallet. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, I'd guess that you're more likely to cause cancer by excising pieces of the soul and creating gaps in the Spiritual Ideal. I'm having a hard time imagining a case when you would want a big ol' tumor enhanced with a Hemalurgic spike over just getting the spike in a tried and tested location that we know isn't going to have complications. If you can think of a symbiotic instance which is better than just getting the benefit yourself, let me know. Long story short, break out the Gold medallion, not the spikes.

Sigh. Looks what each of what we think is obvious isn't actually obvious. This isn't the right place to discuss it, but it feels like it's rather common for this kind of linguistic disconnect between you, me, @therunner, and/or @Treamayne (and Frustration, but he's on hiatus for a couple years) though not necessarily in equal measures, as we've filled thread after thread with super specific examples, debates, and if I remember right, at least one argument that came down to a translation error between the English and Polish versions of a book. I'm getting tired of it, and it doesn't look like any of us are going away in the near future. Any of you also feel like making a PM and figuring why our communication styles clash so often so the rest of 17th Shard doesn't have to watch us argue for their entertainment? Well, unless any of you enjoy competitive debate, because I don't. If no one wants to hash this out, then I hope no one is offended if I periodically just bow out of these debates. Yeah, overall I think that we agree on Sleepless, I don't think we see eye-to-eye on what insects are optimized for, and I'm stumped at how you reload a wasp or spider via surgery, but we can agree that Awakened insects that try to bite eyes are at minimum a substantial distraction to add to an Awakener's arsenal.

Sigh. Examples please? Maybe they have different insects in your part of the world, but I can't think of insects that naturally eat the eyes of living animals or preferentially bite the jugular. I'm no entomologist, but when you say hunt their prey, don't know of any insect that actively tries to kill and bring down medium or large mammals, they usually go with more parasitic approaches by living off of small bites of blood, laying internal eggs, etc. because if they keep it alive that's another meal tomorrow. Sure, flying stinging insects like wasps or bees have been known to take down larger mammals, but that's usually from the poison of hundreds and hundreds of insects, not by severing arteries or veins (also do insect venoms even work if they're Lifeless? I'm assuming they would decay and stop producing). Also... why is it too late once they get to the visor? How fast are you expecting insects small enough to crawl through a visor to chew to something fatal? Can't the Shardbearer, I don't know, take off their helmet and glove, step back and have a subordinate pick or brush off these bugs or do it themselves? I can't help but feel like if there were insects this well suited for quickly killing humans through biting alone I'd have heard about them by now. Now capitalizing on the distraction of sending and biting insects flying into their visor, increasing your odds of cracking a section of Plate by using Awakened ropes to lob boulders or getting a killing shot, now that I can get behind. I wouldn't leave the task just to the bugs. Also, sure it would look dorky put over the helmet of a Shardbearer, but surely you've heard of mosquito netting? I'm still saying Sleepless will do it better and more cheaply than blowing dozens or hundreds of Breaths, and stealth may not be an issue. Need I remind you of Hoid's pen? Someone who is paranoid, has plenty of layers of enhanced senses, and was specifically watching for the Sleepless still got duped, and then you really can have a hordeling specifically designed to fit through a visor slot and slice someone's jugular. They also can send a swarm of hundreds or thousands of jumping, crawling, flying insects that will be much easier to replace than dozens of Breaths. Don't forget that Skybreaker who got killed by a Sleepless, apparently outpacing their ability to heal or fly away. Oh, English, you imprecise language. Sometimes I really wish that less of the world had adopted such a poorly designed language even though it really is convenient for me as an American. I apologize if I had more ambiguity than I intended, but what part of "incendiary attack", "dumping oil and igniting it", or "flamethrower" implied that I wasn't planning on burning these bugs? Also, do you mind helping me understand why lethal temperatures to an insect won't cause them to be nonfunctioning whether or not they are powered by carbohydrates or a Breath? I assume the proteins in their body and striated muscles denaturing due to heat will make them stop moving, possibly damaging the body enough that the Breath fails or they slow down until they pop. It's kind of why it's lethal in the first place. Their small scale means that they can't dissipate or use mammalian strategies like sweating, circulating blood, etc. to redistribute heat to survivable temperatures, so yes, a human can stand closer to a fire for much longer than a bug can. In fact, unless you have done a lot of Commanding, Lifeless insects won't even try to avoid it or survive it.

Moash is a particularly touchy subject and this thread got to 4 pages of debate on if Moash could get a redemption arc or if he even should. This is a link to my response. Moash means a lot to different people, so if none of this fits the core of what you were thinking about, feel free to let me know. I have a few possible interpretations and to save on post space, I'll put them in spoilers after the questions. What should I do if I think a friend is a bad influence on me and going off the deep end? What should I do if a friend or trusted individual (family, coworker, etc.) betrays me? I'm guessing you don't mean: How do I talk my old friend who has committed multiple homicides and keeps trying to talk me into committing suicide into going back to how they used to be? If it's at this level, call law enforcement, maybe get a restraining order or SWAT involved. I'm not the best person to talk to for anything at this level. Phew. Doozy of a first question. I reformatted this and added thoughts to hopefully improve clarity and sectioning off ideas.

Nah, there's ways to deal with them. What you're describing basically is done naturally and more effectively by the Sleepless, and they were certainly scared of something coming to get the Dawnshard that they couldn't handle. Now granted, some of that fear may have been due to the Dawnshard's effect of protecting itself, but still. You're describing some complicated maneuvers for something that literally has the brains of a beetle. Now Vasher's squirrel showed surprising intelligence, but I'm not sure how far down the intellectual scale that goes. It could work. There isn't much of a precedence for what you describe IRL because some more recent defenses developed for entomological warfare (yes, there's a term for insect based attacks) are simply things like the insect repellent DEET to deter a mosquito or hornet swarm from even attacking the target. Drone swarms that need communication and processing likely can be taken out with EMPs or simple EM emitters, neither of which would deter undead bugs. So I had to look elsewhere and science fiction nanodrones I think are closer to the concept and can be defended against via incendiary attacks. You need mass to dissipate heat effectively and the very nature of a swarm made of small constituents means that individuals will get to lethal temperatures quite quickly compared to someone wearing Plate. Some insects can survive wildfires, but they do so by flying away, going underground, or burrowing into wet, rotten wood that insulates them. An unprepared Shardbearer won't handle it well and will likely die, but if they have support staff, then oil can be dumped and ignited even in the most primitive Cosmere culture we've seen so far (barring something like the Simple Rules of Threnody complicating things). If further tech like a weaponized heating fabrial, F-Brass, Division, a flame thrower, etc. is available then while you likely can't ever fully kill a Sleepless as that requires killing every last hordeling, you can pretty well repel their attacks. If anyone wants to explore defenses against the Awakened insect gambit or the more effective Sleepless, then we can spin up a thread titled "How to Stop a Sleepless Invasion" which may be relevant in later books.

Uh... hate to tell you this, but he basically signed that agreement the moment he took up the Dawnshard. Unless Roshar invents immortality, he will outlast all of his friends in Bridge Four. That's what it means to be an immortal among mortals and versions of this concept have been reiterated over and over in literature. Whether he stays or goes, so this It's a continuation of his choice to retain his Torment rather than trying to siphon it completely away. In many ways, at this point retaining his Torment(s) and hardships is his choice and he's turned a corner in his choice to regain his frayed honor and conscience. What's different here is that he has permanently left Canticle better than when he found it, and that he himself has become a better person. Basically, not every good friend you meet you keep for life. I was a counselor for a youth camp and it was basically my job to create an environment where temporary friendships could form and people could come out of their shells and learn more about themselves and others and grow. A weekly cycle of getting a new batch of teens, learning all of their names, doing my best to learn about them and care about them before letting them going out to normality and trying to gear myself for the next week. Life is not a youth camp, but those days can still be special and everyone involved can grow from the experience. Just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's not worthwhile or happy.

Well... after I got tagged to convince someone to stay on the Shard, I thought I might as well make a formal offer for solicited advice. As opposed to my usual modus operandi of dispensing unsolicited advice. I'm not an expert at anything in particular but I am a jack-of-all trades and I think about things. As a disclaimer, if I think Google, ChatGPT, or another publicly available resource can give you as good or better advice than I can, I will be using those resources though perhaps with personal commentary. I'm not exactly one for a conventional AMA, as I have other obligations that trump 17th Shard (I think I've been pretty open that I'm married and have a toddler), but if you want to ask me more general questions to get my opinions on things, feel free to. I guess a main benefit of talking to me over non-Sharders is that I can draw from Brandon's works to demonstrate concepts.

I have a note to add, though it's external to the Cosmere. Spoilers for Schlock Mercenary, the comic written by Howard Taylor, Brandon's good friend back when they were making Writing Excuses together. As for this: Do you mind spoilers for the back 5 of Stormlight Archive? Brandon has told us some things.

The Shades of Threnody probably fit the bill, but their condition is thus far specific to natives and descendants. Threnodites killed by a Shade become a Shade themselves, and I'm not sure if we've seen a non-Threnodite killed by a Shade. Tough to say how exactly a Cognitive Shadow does damage to someone in the Physical Realm, but it's not via Physical Realm infection, that's for sure. Disease definition: A disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that has a known cause and a distinctive group of symptoms, signs, or anatomical changes. A particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people. TSM spoilers:

Well... regardless, all Shardbearers have something to block off their eye slit from projectile attacks. It's called a "forearm". It's a tradeoff in close combat situations. In Helaran's defense, he wasn't trained from childhood by the sword masters of Alethkar at the Shattered Plains. The more I look at these threads the more I view it as the community betting odds for a gladiator colosseum fight because fights just don't develop as is often described in the back and forth debate. Saying things like "a Shardbearer can just run away from a Seer" is implying a degree of knowledge that just doesn't happen organically in a fight. You don't look at an ordinary person, conclude that they have precognition and thus the person in power armor should run away. There's a learning curve to every new significantly different opponent and unless they've specifically trained for it and have insider information, they won't fight optimally. It's not uncommon for soldiers who have heard stories of Shardbearers their entire time in the army but never seen one to freeze and just stare at the gloriously beautiful warrior mowing down their comrades until they die. If a Shardbearer started strolling down the streets of Elendel you'd better believe people are going to stop and stare. Knowing the strengths and limitations of a Shardbearer is essential to fighting them. You don't expect someone wearing that much heavy armor to take longer to get tired than someone not wearing it. You don't expect someone in full armor to make huge jumps or climb cliffs. The fact that Plate looks like metal but cracks and shatters is not intuitive. A Shardblade's motion through living or non-living matter is not intuitive either, or that it is summonable and throwable. The Shardbearer pretty much has three options. Chase down their target, throw their Blade, or use their terrain to their advantage by throwing stuff. Wax would have interesting problems with something charging down the street throwing cars at him. Due to the simplicity of their options, it's a lot more straightforward from the Shardbearer side and the speed and momentum they can bring to the fight likely can overwhelm many opponents during the first few minutes of the learning curve, particularly as Shardbearers are taught to trust in their armor to protect them. That is, if the Shardbearer decides they need someone dead. So... I'd say that it depends on how much the opponent knows, their mobility to survive the first minutes of the learning curve, or if they can just overwhelm a Shardbearer regardless. Even a relatively normal and skilled soldier like Kaladin got a lot of mileage by knowing how Shardbearers worked, looking like a relatively unthreatening normal spearman, and capitalizing on distractions. Rosharans and significant visitors like Denth or Vasher may have that knowledge, but others won't.

There's a number of ways to look at this thread, and I'll go way back to the original to address the writerly question from @Thaidakar the Ghostblood. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were hoping to get a better sense of what constitutes sexism and what makes a character sexist as a writer so as to better avoid making a character sexist (at least unintentionally), right? Best advice I can give is to give your writing to a variety of alpha readers who are not like you and see their response. Now if the core worry is coming off as a sexist author, that's actually a different can of worms, and I'll refer you to Writing Excuses. I think they refer to this as "Writing the Other" which is to say writing a character who isn't like you, be it gender, race, culture, etc. I think the first time they covered it back when Brandon was on the team was this episode. There's a common progression when writing characters unlike you that authors often follow. Let's see if I remember it right... First level is that you either don't have the Other in the story or objectify them within the context of the plot (there's a princess 'cuz the story is about the hero saving the princess). Second level is recognizing this and trying to put them in the story, but because you don't want to accidentally be derogatory you make them awesome, which Brandon calls the paragon. They're above reproach, but really the goal is to have representation in the book and the character doesn't actually do anything other than make an awesome cameo. The example Brandon gave was of soldier games where a bunch of white muscley guys are fighting other white muscley guys and then in a scripted scene they are losing and then the black muscley guy (who is awesome, everyone love him) breaks through the wall dual-wielding machine guns and mows down the enemy. They give each other high fives and black muscley guy drives off into the sunset never to be seen again. Third level is making them a significant character with plot relevance but they don't have significant flaws or are acting as a foil to the main character (likely one that you associate more with as an author because it's easier to write similar to your own viewpoint) and will call out the flaws of the main character to try to reduce the overall ___ist flaws in the story by calling them out as problematic. They are an active participant in the story, but are lacking depth because the author is afraid of writing flaws into the Other and getting it wrong. Fourth level is to give the Other a full and participating role in the story with their own flaws, character arc, community, and to basically stand as their own person separate from what you need them to do as an author. It takes a lot of work and feedback to get it right, and I have no further advice because I haven't written a cohesive original story of any quality whatsoever. Go through the others if you want more specifics, examples, and practice exercises. Back to the rest of the thread, it feels like there's a couple of goals that might be at cross purposes, and I'll list them off as ways to look at this thread in no particular order. Discussing if Wayne is sexist Discussing if Wayne does sexist things What constitutes sexist actions or behavior Worry that minimization of sexist discussion makes it more likely to be swept under the rug outside of the forum I'll note here that I don't think that within the context of the thread surrounding sexism that anyone is implying that anything Wayne does whatsoever should be modeled, mimicked, or given any approval whatsoever. This is my personal view, and I'm okay if it needs work or other people disagree, but I think that learning to understand the world and in particular how other people are different from you is simply a learning curve and some people choose to keep learning and some people stop. I'm not saying to stop looking for discrimination, micro-aggressions, or when people are being marginalized, but that at the core it's about people deciding to observe and learn more about people who are different from themselves, be it an individual, a gender, or a culture, and then treating them how they would like to be treated. Now this might be oversharing, so I'll put it in a spoiler box, but thinking about it I think I've gone through a similar progression as the four steps to writing the other as given above. So... my take is that if you feel like you need to get better at spotting the other and not make subconscious and or broadly incorrect assumptions about people, then it's a matter of putting in the work to learn and update your understanding. Calling someone out for being sexist tells that there is an issue, but general behavior modification "watch what you say" doesn't hit the root of why that "___ist" behavior exists in the first place. There has to be an internal desire to understand and perceive viewpoints outside of themselves, which is why reading literature written by people different from myself is more effective for me then looking up how not to be ___ist. Wayne is fascinating and I've debated writing one of my essays on him for a while, but I haven't felt sure I was doing it well. For Wayne, it feels like there's this weird dichotomy of believing that other people, particularly his "posse" are better people than he is, but then having to doubt those people when they see anything worth while in him at all. Like... "obviously you're better than me, you're not a bloody murderer, so how can you so consistently be wrong about not thinking I deserve to be shot?" I don't think he's a masochist, in that I don't think he actually derives pleasure from pain, but... more like a sense of justice has been served indirectly every time he gets blown up or shot and that he deserves it in some way. In terms of his really inappropriate behavior, it feels like he's reinforcing in the minds of his friends that he really isn't a good person, shouldn't be trusted with anything moral so that they can either punish him or make sure he doesn't get worse, this reinforcement required because he is so incredibly good at disguises. He's a master at appearing what he isn't... except the businessmen, beggar, guard, scientist, elder lady, etc. persona he adopts didn't shoot a little girl's daddy. For someone who has incredible control, can alter his mannerisms, vocal patterns, mental patterns, and could probably disappear and live a new life like a kandra if he wanted to, the bawdy drunk we think of as typical Wayne is in some ways equally a show, though he may not think of it as such. I think he makes prejudice, classist, sexist, etc. remarks intentionally to remind people that he isn't a good man right up until the end, and because it was coming from Wayne it should be discounted anyway. So... is Wayne sexist? I think he was anti-Wayne/murderers more than anything else and his other vices are reinforcements to how much he hates himself and wants so hard to be a better man and prove that it really isn't just an act.