Duxredux

Apologies if anyone has already posted this. I have an idea for what Radiants get for their 5th Ideal. 3rd Ideal they get their Shardblade, 4th they get Shardplate, 5th? They get a fabrial. Specifically, this is where all Soulcasters come from along with the Regrowth Fabrial that Nale uses to resurrect Szeth. The 5th Ideal Radiants gain the ability to lend not just their Spren as a sword, not just their armor, but their very powers to someone else, and this is why non-Radiant Soulcasters become Savants in a long-term fatal manner. Navani still doesn't know how Soulcasters work, other than they're spren? Answer, it's the exact same mechanism that drove her crazy about Shardblades and Shardplate. WoBs: Thoughts?

I have a few speculative ideas for Nale's Radiant hunt. I don't really have anyway of confirming them though short of asking in a WoB. The Heralds have a special Connection with the Radiants. Ishar comments that they all see a bit more clearly when a Radiant swears an oath and touches the Spiritual Realm. Perhaps Nale can feel and subsequently triangulate when a Radiant swears an Ideal and starts forming a Nahel bond starting from the First Ideal? Maybe his status as a 5th Oath Skybreaker increases that connection as well. Another option is that his Highspren was giving him intel in a similar fashion to Syl seeming to instinctively know where Kaladin was/would be and later which members of Bridge Four were close to progressing in their Oaths. There's a precedence for spren knowing where a bond could be sworn and presumably Nale's spren trusts him if it allowed his final oath to become The Law and it isn't just about tracking movements in Shadesmar. The part I really don't get is why Nale didn't come hunting Kaladin, Shallan, and Jasnah. Unless... each case somehow had another proto-Radiant nearby that was confirmed to be killed and so they got missed, SA 5 preview spoilers: Still hard to explain why the main series Radiants' subsequent Oaths or Truths spoken didn't alert Nale.

Hum. I'll largely be coming up with ideas to reconcile the concepts here. Idea one is that the Eleventh Metal, Malaltium wasn't created via alloying pure Atium with gold, it was created by dissolving the silver out of the naturally occurring Atium - electrum alloy. Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver, and by removing the silver you're left with an alloy of gold and Atium with unknown percentages, maybe they needed to add in more gold or something. From the Encyclopedia Britannica on silver processing: Silver (Ag), like gold, crystallizes in the face-centred cubic system. It melts when heated to 962 °C (1,764 °F). With a density of 10.49 grams per cubic centimetre, it is the lightest of the precious metals. It is also the least noble of the precious metals, reacting readily with many common reagents such as nitric acid and sulfuric acid. Metallic silver can be dissolved from gold alloys of less than 30 percent gold by boiling with 30-percent-strength nitric acid in a process referred to as parting. Boiling with concentrated sulfuric acid to separate silver and gold is called affination. Both these processes are used on a commercial scale for separating silver and gold. Keep in mind that Kelsier basically robbed and killed the guy that made the discovery in the first place and that the whole process was carefully monitored through Ruin. Kelsier may never have known how to make the stuff. I'll drop the history of Malatium from the Coppermind article here: While learning Allomancy from Gemmel, Kelsier infiltrates Keep Shezler and, after defeating the Mistborn Antillius Shezler, comes across Shezler's notes theorizing about a possible eleventh Allomantic metal.[8] Even after becoming Harmony, Sazed could not find any prior legends about an eleventh metal and concluded that the legends were likely fabricated by Ruin to help drive Kelsier's plan to kill the Lord Ruler.[9] Between Shezler's apparent mental instability,[8] which might have allowed Ruin to speak to him, and Ruin's ability to manipulate text, it is entirely plausible that Ruin could have been behind the creation of Shezler's notes. Furthermore, Gemmel, the person who directed Kelsier to Keep Shezler and drew his attention to Shezler's notes in the first place, showed signs of being manipulated by Ruin,[8] suggesting that Ruin was indeed intentionally leading Kelsier to the notes. Ruin later claimed that he was in fact responsible for manipulating Kelsier into "discovering" the metal.[10] I'll also note that scientific research on Atium would be hideously expensive and likely would be carefully monitored by the Inquisitors and consequently Ruin. I'm not sure if we've seen pure Atium anywhere except in the aftermath of Wax's laboratory experiment with Harmonium and Trellium, we've never seen Atium naturally occurring. It's possible that other Shards have intentionally hidden away their Godmetals or alloyed them to better control the effect on the planet. On Roshar at least, Honor intentionally put limitations on some of the Surges because they were too potentially destructive if left unbounded. Stonewards don't have access to microkinesis for example and so can't casually split axi (equivalent of splitting the atom). Unchained Bondsmithing is really dangerous as Ishar has already demonstrated. Limiting the power they give mortals (or immortals) is something that Shards do not infrequently. Idea two is that TLR was already playing with fire by using Ruin's Investiture in Hemalurgy and he intentionally built fail safes, backdoors, weaknesses, and legislation for the event that Ruin escaped or otherwise was able to influence the Hemalurgic creations. Imagine the havoc that would have been caused if Ruin had entities that he could control without the backdoors made by TLR. If there's a lasting change where the Investiture of the God Metal gets incorporated into the Spiritweb of the one burning it, then I can think of plenty of reasons to not Connect yourself that strongly to Ruin. With burning Raysium it might functionally be equivalent to creating a Fused in the first place. Sazed was able to directly heal and Invest Spook making him a Mistborn and I didn't see any Lerasium getting swallowed while he was unconscious, so this is something a Shard can do directly. By directly Investing a being a Shard avoids the risks of someone or something coming along and stealing or hiding away super powerful Godmetals (cough, cough, Hoid, Trustwarren, cough, cough). Ruin died because someone hid away his Atium. Besides, if Rayse can produce things like Yelig-nar with Amaram notably swallowing a gemstone and gaining access to all the Surges of the Fused, what makes you think Rayse wasn't using his Investiture wisely and empowering his minions anyway? There's also a relatively recent WoB where when burning or Investing a Godmetal, it can't be sentient. Shardblades are out for example, so I'm not sure if we've even seen a viably burnable sample of Tanavastium either. Any of these ideas help?

I'll note that strangulation is often misunderstood. In most cases where something is around the neck and is choking someone, they don't pass out because they can't breathe, at least not directly. For proper chokeholds like the rear naked choke (RNC) they pass out because the jugular veins that cycle blood to the brain get blocked off. It's why someone can hold their breath for a couple minutes but pass out within 10 or so seconds of getting put in a chokehold. I mean yes, you can choke someone by crushing their windpipe, but constricting blood vessels takes less force and usually happens much earlier. A Cadmium Compounder can manually oxygenated their blood but in this scenario they won't be able to exhale the carbon dioxide accumulating in their brain because that blood is trapped. Now maybe they can have a Cadmiummind store waste CO2 to flush the blood, but that's complicated, theoretical, and requires them to assign half of their potential Feruchemical storage just to respiratory waste. I'm guessing the carbon dioxide has to go somewhere. Now with Awakened ropes used to simply compress a target, it takes time to wind a long material around something as elongated as a person. It's not instantaneous and dependent on the width of the Awakened material, the diameter of the target, and how the material needs to move to add additional layers. One loop of rope is pretty easy to get around someone, but something like a cocoon is going to take time. The solution is probably to use wider material like a carpet to maximize width and so minimize turns around a person, but walking around with something that bulky is a bit of a tell. Thin rope will need several passes before it can bind an appreciable area, and notably Vasher used scarves and wrapped Kaladin's hands himself, he didn't just toss a scarf at him and have it start winding itself around him. And of course if you can intercept the Awakened objects like Kaladin did with the sheets leaping off the clothes line, then you can avoid a lot of problems. Fullborn might be able to just flex off an Awakened constrictive binding by compounding Feruchemical Pewter and maybe Gold if they need it. Set themselves on fire with Brass if they have to, since most Awakened objects are organic and organic means carbon and hydrocarbons and therefore flammable. Now if I was a Radiant Sharbearer going up against an Awakener, then I might check if I can do something like have my plate spren make a sharp edge along one side of my armor. The dorky imagery is like the cutting edge for a plastic wrap dispenser. Basically something to passively cut anything that tries to constrict me. Takes no effort on my part once it's setup. Rosite Aetherbound might be able to grow a cutting edge beneath the binding. Sand Master probably uses ribbons at a distance to intercept and cut the Awakened objects. Let the Sandmaster even touch sand and it can use one ribbon to gather more sand and externally cut off the binding. Anyone other than Kenton probably sandblasts their body in the process but would survive if quick enough. Alternately use a ribbon to fetch a sword and cut myself free thay way. Now if I'm the Awakener and this is how people are planning against me... I might use a single longer rope already tied to an anchor to grab the target by the ankle and crack them like a whip to injure and disorient, then send ropes along that rope to bind the target at the end. Thin ropes can throw boulders at fortified positions, so they should do just fine to yeet people at brick walls as well. Alternately see how far material science has progressed and see if fiber core steel cable works, sewing blades into the rope, or see how well Awakened objects can operate machine guns and artillery. An alternative route is to use something similar to braided fishing line which is thin enough and strong enough to cut into the skin of the angler if they aren't careful. A Bloodmaker or Radiant could do it, but it's psychologically hard to break something that is embedded in your skin and digs in deeper the more you struggle. Even a Sandmaster or Aetherbound might have problems with that. Something as thin as a fishing line would also be very hard to spot and intercept. How would I counter that Awakening style? Etc. Etc.

Mmm... Nightblood is sentient and has his own Identity which would contaminate the Identity match. I assume we don't count it as a Metalmind if you can't ever withdraw the attribute when it stops being keyed to you. I'd guess that anything sentient, Shardblade, Nightblood, Vivenna's sword won't work as retrievable Investiture storage, Breath, Feruchemical, or other. Not unless you can brute force siphon Investiture anyway. Absolutely no way can you use Nightblood as a Metalmind when drawn, he'll just consume the kinetic Investiture as it's transferred. Well... maybe if the Feruchemist was the Radiant then Identity contamination wouldn't be a problem as Radiants can Surgebind through their Shardplate which I assume is a related principle. At that point saturation and Investiture resisting Investiture become the next possible hurdles to jump.

Feruchemy by nature changes the Awakener. Any improvements to an Awakened object then most likely comes as a result of any alterations to the Awakener. I came up with three categories. Methods involving alternation of the Awakening process itself: This would be anything that changes the visualization, identity, or casting time of Awakening. Zinc, Copper, and Duralumin might help for the visualization aspect. Blanking Identity via Aluminum would probably make unkeyed Awakened objects which could be both useful and risky in the right application. Steel allows for accelerated "casting" time. If necessary, a gasper Ferring might be able to talk at a constant stream without pausing to breath when bulk Awakening objects. Rather limited application here but could add an edge to specific scenarios. I wonder if someone sufficiently skilled could use Duralumin to let you tap into the sensory suite that Awakened objects use for objective detection. Methods that alter the Awakener and improve effectiveness of the Awakened object: Using Awakened clothing that maintains typical Awakened strength when shedding weight would give you far greater mobility than normal while being effectively as strong. Self-adjusting Awakened clothing for Brute ferrings could be useful as well. Methods that affect Lifeless: Lifeless have a tiered system of security phrases some of which expire after specific usage. Copper allows you to greatly expand this system and remember all phrases of all your Lifeless and possible greatly reduce the chances of someone hijacking your Lifeless. There's some decent application here. Depends on what you're planning on doing as an Awakener.

Thinking out loud, it may not be a pure tone of Roshar. Allomantic pulse patterns dictate what Allomantic metal is being burned to the senses of a Seeker, and despite all Allomantic abilities being powered by Preservation they do not have the same pattern. For the same reason, I'd assume that despite all the Radiant abilities except a couple weird outliers being powered by Stormlight, each ability would have a different tone/rhythm if listened to by a Seeker. On the other hand, a skilled Seeker can even identify what emotions are being manipulated by a Soother, so not sure how that really works. I could see Soulcasting either making tones on a similar spectrum as the Metallic Arts, or possibly to the same degree of variation that a Soother emits when targeting different emotions. So... my answer is the tone to hum is probably whatever a Seeker would hear or whatever Shallan heard, which may or may not be a pure tone. alder24 has good stuff though.

In the immortal word of Wayne, you can beat anybody, so long as you don't let them fight back properly. Fights are so much about environment, experience, circumstances, and more. On paper, a Thug should trash a Tineye, unless that Tineye is Spook as a full Savant. On paper a Crasher, a Bloodmaker Slider, and a Pulser should get trounced when facing a small army of bandits with a Pewterarm, Gold compounder, Coinshot, and Lurcher, unless it's Dawnshot with his posse. Now this isn't the case with every author, but I've listened to Writing Excuses and Brandon generally builds narrative goals within the structure of his fight scenes. It's almost never group A just wants to fight group B, it's Kaladin who has no desire to fight, he just wants to keep the other slaves of Bridge Four alive and the scene pacing focuses on him protecting them when they get injured or exposed. It's not Vin and Zane just beating up a bunch of soldiers for no reason, she's hunting Cett at the top of the keep to get him to stop bullying Elend and Luthadel. It's not Kelsier just duking it out with an Inquisitor, he needs to protect the Skaa, Elend, and give a showy enough fight that he can inspire the Skaa to rise up in rebellion (with a good dose of revenge as well). I've seen a few ways that these discussions go and generally the ones that I find the most interesting aren't focused solely on "who is the best", instead I find the ones where people try to come up with clever strategies that capitalize on one powerset's strengths to hit the oppositions' weaknesses and vice versa. Limitations foster creativity. For example, it can now genuinely be an important question to ask in Rosharan combat: how good are you at singing? Radiant Shardbearers are used to being able to tear through normal troops, but what happens if the entire appropriately named Singer army starts chanting the anti-tone of Stormlight in every conflict? I'm curious, what other formats of vs threads have people enjoyed most?

I mean you can discuss it if you want to, but you'll get some well used arguments from the older 17th Sharders. Alternately maybe some fresh blood will add in some new ideas and some of the old fogeys should just watch and chuckle. Feel free to peruse the 1000+ posts on slight variations on the topic on 6 separate threads in no particular order. Don't necro them, please. Or just skip them and have fun imagining the fight.

So... you're suggesting that TotES is a prequel to the Stormlight Archive? I was having trouble getting the chronology to match up assuming Riina was a contemporary of the current Era, let alone an ancient precursor, which I assume @Green Hoodie Mistborn also was working off of. The world-hopper tech is way too advanced, Ulaam exists and is on Lumar, and Sazed was around to release the Kandra. I'll try to give a few timeline markers. The fact that Sazed even exists and has any authority over Kandra at all puts this post-Catacendre. Alloy Era comes after SA 5. That puts it at most 300-ish years before the WoK assuming Sazed immediately released the Kandra on Ascension which we know he didn't. For kicks, let's assume that Hoid's comment about Saze was incidental and not relevant to Ulaams presence. The fact that Ulaam exists puts another upper limit of an additional 1000 years as Kandra didn't even exist before TLR invented them at his Ascension and assuming TLR yeeted super eccentric Ulaam out to wander the Cosmere to become an expert on Investiture with enough autonomy to go answer letters from Hoid. 1300 years tops with a lot of huge caveats. Dalinar's vision of Midnight Essence also had Radiants, so that puts it before the Recreance, more than 2000 years previously. Rosharan years are 1.10 times the Cosmere norm, so that estimate gets even longer. Add in that I assume Odium had to be on Roshar to make an Unmade on Roshar which puts the Rosharan marker at 4500 years in the past when Taln was abandoned in Braise to restrain Odium and the Fused alone. Kandra didn't even exist at the time of the Recreance let alone Dalinar's vision of Midnight Essence or the end of the Last Desolation, so there's no way that Ulaam rode the ship that freed the Midnight Essence that later got moved to Roshar and turned Unmade by Odium. Most clues point toward TotES happening after Mistborn Era 2, not thousands of years before it.

Elantrians have a version of Lightweaving at the very least in the personal disguise department with Raoden using a heavily modified Aon Shao to become Kaloo the Dula. If Riina was the Lightweaver that spooked Re-Shephir then one of two things has to occur: She has to be able to use AonDor on Roshar. This isn't impossible, but figuring out how to use AonDor away from Sel requires advancements that I'm not sure if we fully understand how the mechanics work. Moonlight demonstrates this in TLM and and Riina can use AonDor when rockets, laptops, and tablets with video chat are around. As Era 2 of Mistborn comes after SA5 with the Catacendre about 300 years prior to where we are currently are in SA, it should be noted that Riina was hanging out on the perimeter of Scadrial's Cognitive realm with the rest of the Ire hoping to poach the Shard of Preservation. I think this may also line up with the 10 year time period when the Reod broke Elantris, but I'm iffy on that one. I don't remember anyone using AonDor directly in Secret History, but using it in the Cognitive Realm might have non-trivial complications. Now maybe, maybe the Ire were watching for Honor's death the same way they were watching for Preservation's demise, but clearly no Ire Ascended to Honor. Overall it seems like a pretty long shot to me. Alternately Riina would have to bond either a Mistspren or Cryptic to gain access to Lightweaving and have maintained the bond up to TotES if we're assuming that she's Lightweaving via Surgebinding in the scene with Lightweaving. Also possible, but again using a mechanism we don't understand yet and seems improbable since she would likely have needed to bond a spren pre-Rrecreance. Notably we also see no full humanoid-sized Rosharan spren hanging around Riina during Mistborn Secret History. Odds are, the false Charlie was just wearing an Aon Shao disguise using the original Charlie as a model and that she had nothing to do with Re-Shephir. It's the simplest answer that doesn't require any more hacking of systems than what we've already seen from Riina.

Last I heard from Brandon on Intentionally Blank is that Hollywood won't even listen to him on narrative decisions. Until that issue is cleared up my answer is everything could go wrong but probably won't because Brandon doesn't want it to be ruined as much or more than us. Brandon's been patient so far and will likely remain so until a genuinely good opportunity comes along that won't give Hollywood the opportunity to wreck the Cosmere outside of his own control.

I have two metrics that they can use to directly measure the Investiture in a Hemalurgic spike, since they obviously have access to normally charged, partially charged, and uncharged spikes. Option 1: comparison of Steelsight line thickness. Fainter line means more Investiture, keep spiking until it matches the one charged through conventional methods. Option 2: repulsive strength of Trellium against the Hemalurgic spikes. If I remember right, the normal spikes held by the cycle that Marasi killed were repulsed by the Trellium spike. Presumably this scales with the strength of Investiture in the spike or at least follows a curve that they can use to compare a normally charged Hemalurgic spike with the progressively charged spike. Either seems plausible, the Trellium method allowing for a more rigorous methodology.

Speculation as far as I know. They'd have to figure out how to get the Oathpact to even work to seal up the Fused now that the Everstorm is in place. Even Odium can't order them back to Braise. If the Oathpact can't serve the primary function of sealing away a serially reincarnated enemy force then it begs the question of why they would need new Heralds (assuming the old Heralds don't want to just pull a switcheroo and leave the new Heralds holding the very short end of the stick).

It may be slightly more complicated than this or require special work. In particular I'm thinking of when Wax dives off of a train to save Steris, he swallows a metal vial and it takes several moments before he can access it as an Allomantic reserve. Not sure if the the physical location is the issue or if it had anything to do with the duration that was in contact with Wax's spirit web for lack of a better term. If it's the first then something special has to happen, if it's the second than something simply held in the mouth should be fine. The concept of outside-in burning shows up in a few threads, one on trying to safely burn Harmonium, one on a Duralumin trick I came up with. Here's the WoB.

Not sure if I would phrase it that way, but they are probably the two most capable fighters/champion candidates in the coalition and most likely to intervene during the contest and potentially invalidate some sort of rule which he really doesn't want. Kaladin in particular has a history of interfering with duels and Szeth is less than stable. Now whether or not this is the primary goal, a secondary benefit, or a suspicious coincidence remains to be seen. That said, Dalinar intends to be his own champion and I believe he plans to travel to Shinovar himself to get trained in Bondsmithing with Ishar, so presumably one of them will fly him there and back in time for the contest at Urithiru. Back to the original post, let's think about it. We have a newly minted 4th Ideal Windrunner just barely sworn to accept that there are those he can't protect and a newly minted 4th Ideal Skybreaker on his crusade to cleanse Shinovar. Forget protecting Dalinar, I can't see them not clashing over the finer details in interpreting their 4th Ideals at the start. Sending Kaladin as the only one known fighter to successfully keep the Assassin in White in check specifically in a bodyguarding / protection role is probably going to keep some people in Shinovar at least initially alive (though I'm not sure if most of Kal's options work well with dealing with Nightblood. Hopefully Sig and the others who saw the clash against Ishar pass on how that match went). That said, Kaladin really does have a soft spot for the mentally ill, particularly the ones suffering from PTSD, and he has a strong understanding of what it feels like to be used and discarded by the powerful. He'll probably end up getting on just fine with Szeth if Szeth allows it. Got sniped while I was looking for an appropriate "defeat means friendship" meme.

No one else going to say it? No one? Best sword man is Nightblood. He beats an Honorblade and even recently got a number of votes as best roommate in the Cosmere. Tragically when Vasher had to choose between his wife and the best roommate, the roommate won. That's how best sword man Nightblood is. Apologies for the grammar and insensitivity of that last, I know where the door is. Like @alder24's WoB points out, Taln really is the best and has spent millenia both practicing and training the soldiers of the epoch kingdoms. Based on Dalinar's visions, while it's unlikely that the 10 Shardbearer stances taught to modern Shardbearers are directly preserved teachings from Taln, it wouldn't surprise me if they were ultimately derived from his trainings. Notably even Vasher seems just fine passing on the Stances.

I don't think that's for me to decide. It's the Spren's choice with how they choose to present themselves to the world. Syl would have something to say to this because she is amazing and articulate. If I had to choose one, I considered my background long and hard. The only armed combat training I've received was a smattering of 2-stick Kali, which doesn't translate well to a Shardblade anyway. The closest is to that is... a stick.

Here's my 2 cents. Looking over the Coppermind there isn't any concrete connection between The God Beyond and The Beyond and Brandon has RAFO'd questions like that. There is some debate as to whether or not The God Beyond is actually Adonalsium. Moving past this, what is the core objective for creating a hierarchical Pantheon of the Cosmere? The OP mentions divine authority, but unless I'm missing something big, it's implied that there was no bestowal of authority from Adonalsium to Shards, they were just the people conniving enough to kill the guy who had the job last, to paraphrase Nazh. From a power standpoint, sure it's fine to look at Invested beings and make a graded scale. Add in religious beliefs and Brandon has very, very deliberately made this undetermined because otherwise it undermines the characters. Brandon won't make a definitive answer as to if there really is a Beyond or not, that's just the term for "where people disappear to when they die and not even Shards know what that means". So what is being done in this thread could be discussed within the Cosmere with in-world hierarchy of authority, but there's a division between in-world and IRL because Brandon has intentionally made it indeterminate. Discussing Cosmere beliefs will just reveal your opinions on IRL religion and the religious and it may be best to reserve that for a thread designed for that discussion. I've heard and seen many different ways of considering what deity is and what that term means to someone, or what worship or belief entails. The method that one approaches or considers deity if they believe in one is not universal. I think there was a religious discussion in the general discussion board I read a while back that was really respectful and cool to read with representation from Jews, Christians, Atheists, the Egyptian pantheon and more if anyone reading this is interested. The general discussion board has quite a few AMA and religious discussion groups if people are interesting in finding people with similar beliefs or exploring how other people consider religion.

You're right of course. We know this, but does Kelsier? Does he know what being a Sliver entails? Beyond that, do we know the exact mechanism that allows a Sliver, Kel in this case, to persist? Is it innate to the soul of the former vessel or is it intrinsically tied to a Connection to the Shard of which they were a Vessel? If it was as simple as climbing into an Aluminum box with the Bands of Mourning to subsist off Feruchemical stores while his team carted him to Roshar through Shadesmar, that seems pretty easily testable. TSM spoilers

Cool ideas! Reading this after TLM, I have a different take on Thaidakar's interest in BAM: This seems very much in line with Thaidakar's goals of democratization of Invested abilities. The opportunity for Mraise to interrogate talk to someone who learned how to do that could be very useful for that objective. If Thaidakar can start roaming the Cosmere as well, sweet, but that that's another matter. For Thaidakar to talk to Kelek can also be useful because the exact nature of what sustains a Cognitive Shadow is very important. Unmade can get trapped in gemstones just fine, but trapping Jezrien severed his Connection to the Oathpact which made his soul decompose into a regular soul and pass into the beyond. I'm not sure if we know the exact nature of what allows Thaidakar to persist, and the details are likely why Kelek is also having issues getting off world. Kelek needs both to transfer his Connection off world but also have sufficient Investiture to sustain his immortality.

One of the bigger hints that Kelsier wasn't anticipating a long and healthy life was after Vin saved Elend from Shan and called out the crew for being noblemen without titles. You have the scene where Vin is crying in the mists and talks about how everyone leaves her and asks when Kelsier is going to leave her. Kelsier can't give a straight answer and Vin grows suspicious. Aaand this is Vin we're talking about who followed Kelsier into Kredik Shaw and got attacked by a murder of Inquisitors. She ran with him to their beleaguered army and talked him out of risking himself to protect them. I really don't think Vin would have taken Kelsier's martyr gambit well at all and may have tried to actively oppose it. Kelsier handpicked the crew because they were good people, and good people don't leave their mates to fall in the cacky. I'll also note that Kelsier's self-sacrifice is echoed throughout the series by the entire crew. Most of the crew decided to send Elend and Vin away with Spook during the siege of Luthadel so that they would survive while the rest of them died (it failed because Spook knew and spilled the beans. Spook became the Survivor of the Flames. Vin and Elend chose to let themselves die to take down Ruin at the end. It might say something that while Kelsier hid his agenda, every single member of the main crew made a similar call to sacrifice themselves, though like Kelsier some of them lived to tell the tale. It's well established that Kelsier is good at reading people, even Shards, and among the entire crew I think there's an implicit acceptance to his martyr gambit (except maybe Marsh and he was mind controlled for half the trilogy). I'm not sure if Scadrial would have survived without Kelsier's example actually.

tl;dr Shardplate and Godmetals mess with a lot of rules, so my opinion is the jury is out until we see non-Godmetal heavily Invested objects dealing with heat loads. Read my research and meanderings below, but I don't think simply Investing a material necessarily equates to heat resistance. Also, Breaths are ridiculously expensive, so using them as a flame retardant additive is probably a last-ditch desperate decision. I haven't directly learned about this in school so I'm winging it, but there's a good bit of science surrounding what makes something fireproof. This includes things like the specific heat of the object, phase of matter, mass of the object, and environmental conditions with reactivity in mind. The specific heat is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a given material 1 degree Celsius. It generally has to do with molecular structure and the state of the matter. For example, from Wikipedia, "Liquid water has one of the highest specific heat capacities among common substances, about 4184 J⋅kg−1⋅K−1 at 20 °C; but that of ice, just below 0 °C, is only 2093 J⋅kg−1⋅K−1." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity The phase of matter determines if heat is conducted throughout the material via conduction or convection and affects specific heat. If you intend the material to maintain structural integrity, then melting point has a role in here. Something to note here is that Godmetals don't seem to follow normal phase changes. We had liquid, gaseous, and solid samples of Lerasium basically all in the same room at the Well of Ascension, so the phase change isn't related to heat most likely, though apparently the Mists evaporate in sunlight. That's still a bit odd. The mass of the object determines how much total heat can be absorbed before burning. For example, even things that you normally wouldn't think of as flammable like steel can be burned in laboratory conditions with small samples. This is in essence what Wax was testing with his spectroscope with the various Godmetals. He couldn't even really melt small samples of Harmonium or Bavadinium, but could burn shavings. In terms of reactivity, mostly I'm talking combustion. Chemical reactions require a minimum activation energy in order to react and combustion is probably the best known one. The chemical formula for combustion loosely is CH + O2 -> CO2 + H2O, or hydrocarbons (like gasoline, wood, etc.. Basically organic material) added with oxygen reacts to produce carbon dioxide and water. Because combustion is an exothermic reaction and releases heat, it feeds back into the chemical reaction and allows other samples to react (i.e. catch fire). Where this plays into the environment is whether or not the material reacts with oxygen in the air for something like combustion. We know of at least one case of a God(s)metal that is reactive, namely Harmonium. The activation energy for Harmonium reacting with water is at or below room temperature, though we wouldn't call this combustion in a typical sense. Shardplate gets weirder in the context of resistance to lightning. (WoB spoiler for length) The weird part is that generally objects, particularly metals that are highly conductive electrically tend to be good conductors. If Shardplate is a good electrical conductor then it's unusual that it seems to be thermally insulative. https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Conduction With that as the setup, here's my inexpert thoughts and options: Perhaps Investiture added to an object either alters the specific heat or the "mass" of the object. You can have insanely Investiture-dense objects that can still be carried around in one hand like Nightblood. In this scenario the way Shardplate protects the wearer is by the property that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to raise the temperature of the material and it takes a long time for the heat to be transferred from the outside surface through the material to the inside surface. However if this was the case, then as long as the material remains in the same state (solid), then it should take the same energy rate to raise the temperature of Shardplate from ambient-temperature to body temperature when touched. This doesn't seem to be the case, or at least I've never noticed Shardplate being referred to as supernaturally cold. For that matter, I don't think the Bands of Mourning or Nightblood have been noted to be abnormally cold either. Physical durability is a different property than maintaining that tiny band of temperature that is comfortable for humans. Shardplate might just be special in that it actively and magically works to protect the wearer. We already know this because the visor selectively reacts to a Stormform's lighting attacks. Intent and whatever else Shardplate has going for it probably is actively trying to regulate internal temperature. I'm not sure where it's redirecting heat in extreme cases, as it can't just vent heat into a superheated environment, the energy needs somewhere to go. Heatsinks use convection-based heat transfer via air or liquid across a thermally conductive material with a large surface area to cool a target region, but that works because the air or liquid is generally colder than the material to be cooled. Also see above where what we need for Shardplate is for it to be a thermal resistor. With the case of Awakening cloth, the added Investiture would have to be doing something to the chemical reaction of combustion. Unless it's changing the very hydrocarbon molecules so that they do not react with oxygen, raising the activation energy for the reaction, or Intent mumbo jumbo I can't think of, this feels different than material durability. You can have incredibly strong materials that are also quite flammable. Hrm... As evidenced by Firesoul Ferrings, with the right ability or Intent, heat can be converted into Investiture. Maybe... Shardplate or Blades convert heat to Investiture and then offloads that Investiture into the Spiritual Realm when it gets dismissed? I dunno. I'm grasping at straws at this point. Probably not what I should have been spending my time on while I'm sick, but hopefully someone pulls something from this. Shardplate breaks enough rules I'm putting it in it's own pile, and Nightblood or the Bands of Mourning don't seem like they have an insanely high specific heat capacity. Combustion of Awakened cloth is a separate matter, as it would imply adding Investiture changes chemical properties of hydrocarbons (which basically is what a lot of organic life is built out of, so... what 99% of Awakened objects are made out of). Any material engineers who know more about this than me? At any rate, if I had to say something, I'm going to say that using Awakening blankets to smother a fire is a risky use of Breath. If you're trying to brute force saturate a blanket with enough Investiture to make it resistant to fire then that blanket costs more than your neighborhood, let alone your house. Have your mattress punch through the wall, have the blankets hoist you to the ground, something, but don't just throw Investiture at it unless you don't think you won't survive otherwise. That said, this is dream @Tamriel Wolfsbaine who was making decisions, so I guess this can be excused.

Good points, but there's an assumption here that making Shallan the daughter of Chanarach was for Shallan's character arc. It might not be for Shallan, but for Chana in the back 5 books. I could see Brandon being able to work with Chana having to deal with an Unmade tormenting her family, going off the deep end and trying to kill Shallan, getting killed by an eleven-year old and subsequently sent to Braize before breaking and setting off the last Desolation. That could make for some pretty deep baggage for even a Herald I think, particularly if the other Heralds, particularly Ash and Taln, put together that this last Desolation was at least partially her fault. While Chana most likely won't have a book dedicated for her, we may still get viewpoints.

I like different scenes for different reasons on different days. After typing for a bit, I conclude that for me I appreciate the ones that have powerful character moments and the ones that made me recontextualize the way I thought about the magic system. @alder24, since you mentioned the Tower which I also found awesomely epic, I found one of your memes: I also remember the first time that I read Kelsier verses Bendal, and I thought it was really cool how many ways Brandon had come up with to show the Mistborn powerset when it had felt like he had revealed quite a lot that was possible. For similar reasons, I also liked Wax and Wayne at the wedding robbery as it was the first time seeing a Twinborn go to town with more modern equipment than knives and spears. Both showed much more depth of the magic systems than I had noticed, which is as impressive to me as pacing out a good action sequence. See, unlike watching a movie where Jackie-Chan beats up 6 guys with a bicycle, too much play-by-play combat in books isn't that interesting to me. The "puzzle-solving" aspect of some of Brandon's fights along with how they often line up with key character arc moments is what makes them awesome for me.