Duxredux

That is a good question. Why does Kelsier feel the need to keep so many secrets, even from his closest friends? In the context of Mistborn 1, Here's a few options: He trusts people but at arms length. In Secret History it talks about his relationship with Marsh, how both of them always knew that if the other screwed up they would both get hunted down and executed. This may also be an echo of TLR implying that Mare had betrayed Kelsier. He obscured only the parts of the plan that would have even hinted that he intended to get himself martyred. He wasn't just putting on a show for the crew, he was putting on a show for the entire Skaa population, and the crew's response to his death, particularly Vin running over and weeping over his body added a degree of authenticity to the performance that would have been very difficult to obtain had any of them known that he intended to die. The question is, was his inflexibility in maintaining his position as crew leader simply because he knew he was the only one that had all the pieces to the plan and he needed the crew members to not improvise and disrupt the hidden agenda? It may also be simple pragmaticism for Skaa thieving crews to keep very tight control on information should any member ever be caught by the Steel Ministry. Look at how quickly everything fell apart when they believed that Marsh was caught and broken. The life lesson about information risk learned growing up with Marsh applies tenfold when running an entire crew that can get executed if a single job goes too far awry. I'll also note that Kelsier has pretty much been outside of the law from day 1 without it ever really being his fault. A half-noble Skaa, he was illegal from birth, joined the underground where is chances of execution were lower, and became a deity (okay that last one is his fault, but he wasn't expecting to live with the new role, at least the first time). He's magically anchored to Scadrial so it's not like he can hop over to Roshar and live as a random ardent. He works from the shadows with the Ghostbloods, but what alternative does he have if he wants to still be involved with important dealings of Scadrial? It's not like he can walk down the street to the local pub, hood down, sleeves rolled up, spike through his eye, and order a beer. Look at what kind of deference happens when MeLaan, MeLaan, reveals that she's a Faceless Immortal, now imagine if Kelsier showed up at the Governor's mansion. If Kelsier really wanted more control over Scadrial, I think has plenty of potential to gain more and has chosen not to, considering he is a major religious figure in both the North and the South. Mythology is different from theocracy. He has a big enough following that he could probably set himself up as an immortal ruler and he has chosen not to do so. On the subject of lies, Why would Kelsier not want the memory of him helping the Southerners to get out?

It depends on what Taravangian got from the residual memories in the Shard. Remember that Rayse was the one running the show back when the discovery was being made, Taravangian spent most of this time frame far away from Urithiru or in jail if I remember right. Unless I missed something, they can't convert Stormlight into Voidlight or vice versa. They've figured out how to invert a tone and create Anti-Investiture, but that's entirely separate from converting one Shard's Investiture into another Shard's investiture. I'm pretty sure they tested that and the tones of other Lights and inverted tones did nothing to the test Light.

I disagree, this could be verification for both long-term and short-term planning. This is Taravangian we're talking about and he loves gathering information enough to bleed people out to record Death Rattles and stabbing Lezian isn't much more than that. He makes his plans not just based on his own agenda and capabilities but also by predicting what his opponents will do. It might be as simple as confirming that anti-Investiture really works and that both sides have the means to produce it to better inform his predictions as to what Dalinar and the Coalition will be planning. Up to this point most of Taravangian's plans have been multi-pronged with a lot of detail on political and positional strength, he's not really the "doomsday weapon" kind of strategist, so it will probably be a factor in his plans, but I have done a very poor job of predicting Taravangian up to this point.. It also might be as simple as resource management as Stormlight is extremely easy to acquire but diminishes relatively quickly but Odium seems to have been selective on where he Invests Voidlight. There's a resource disparity where Voidlight persists much longer than Stormlight, which means that every time the Coalition captures Voidlight spheres they can accumulate more and more anti-Voidlight to permanently kill Fused. If Odium's forces can keep Voidlight out of the hands of the Coalition, they will have a significant advantage as even if the Coalition has the knowledge to create anti-Light, they still need the resources to do so. Actually, because the very Light that enables each side's abilities also it what allows them to be permanently killed makes planning warfare very different in general. It's the equivalent of using guns that can only permanently kill your own side but can put your enemy temporarily out of action. It adds an unusual degree of risk. The shelf-life of Light and anti-Light becomes even more important in Shadesmar. Adolin and Shallan's trip to Lasting Integrity showed how travel time becomes much more important. There may be places in Shadesmar that would be very difficult to invade with anti-Stormlight. Yeah... Anti-Light and resource management potentially changes a lot of how war can be conducted between the Fused and Radiants. Same with power utilization in general with Fused powers much more efficient in many cases not requiring carried spheres while Radiants get Plate and Blade depending on their Oath separate from their Surges. It also means that whenever either side is carrying Anti-Light, then by nature they are carrying half of a bomb while the opponents have access to plenty of regular Light to set it off. It's... going to get complicated.

Incidentally, I wrote out the top post to try to be relatively unbiased and to show evidence for the various options. I'm not entirely certain on him being an attention seeking diva, or at least whether or not that is one of his core characteristics. Everything that Kelsier did to setup the Church of the Survivor including the recruitment drives, showboating overcoming his discomfort of entering the resistance caverns, even his encouragement of the crew I put under suspicion as being part of the plan to provide the Skaa sufficient hope and motivation to rise up and overthrow the Final Empire. Sure, he setup a religion in his name, but he didn't actually expect there to be an afterlife once TLR killed him, so unless he was going for post-humous glory, seems kind of odd for someone as pragmatic as Kelsier usually is. The crew was suspicious and confronted Kelsier about his growing fame, which I believe is when he directs them to the executions reminding them of why they were fighting. This isn't to say that he isn't good at drawing attention to himself, but I wonder if he's merely weaponized it like Lightsong emphasizes his laziness and apparent uselessness. This doesn't address the religion setup in the South though and a temple built to the Sovereign (though that one might be elaborate misdirection to hide the Bands of Mourning). Kind of depends on if he likes the glory despite sticking to the shadows or if he's found it's just flat out easier to get people to do what he wants when they think he's a deity, something that he would probably be annoyed to find he shares with Hoid. Depending on how the Firemothers work, whether or not Hemalurgy is involved or if the Southerners even knew about Hemalurgy, I could see that either needing some fake divine mandate or creating rumors of divine power. Ooor Kelsier could just be lapping it up, but I'm leaving this one as open-ended in my head canon. Based on this, my take is that it is not easy or natural for Kelsier to do good or be good and he deliberately surrounds himself with good people to keep himself in check and inform his goals. After Mare's death, his goal was to bring back Mare's flowers. He listens and tries to change when Vin shouts at him about nobility, Dox scolds him for putting Vin in danger, or Preservation rebukes him. This is part of the context that I view Marsh talking about being the third leg to a tripod balancing Sazed and Kelsier, where if Kelsier doesn't have someone around that he trusts to shout at him and slap him upside the head, he will get into trouble. It's a similar concept to Dalinar talking to Navani (WoK chapter 64: A Man of Extremes) about how he is a weak man, and how weakness if bound correctly can imitate strength. It's becoming a problem though that some of the people Kelsier could trust to be a better moral compass like Marasi or Sazed either turn him down or are growing less reliable. At any rate, I'm probably in the minority, but I'm not sure if self-aggrandizement is core to who Kelsier is (at least after coming out of the Pits of Hathsin), and that for someone with at least some psychopathic tendencies he tries to do good and surround himself with people who are better than he is, which is perhaps the best you could hope for some with his brand of behavior disorders. Eh, the discussion was my primary goal, the poll was mostly to fuel the conversation. There's a tradeoff between too few over-generalized options and choice-overload and 4 options plus "other" seemed to fit the general view of Kelsier as I've seen him portrayed in the various threads. It's actually multiple choice so people can choose multiple options or whichever fits closest. Besides, it's already generating discussion right? If people are genuine interested in the discussion, they'll read your point of view.

Yeah... Odium probably was trying to turn Kaladin, and not just so that he would commit suicide. Agreed, something was going on there. The thing that I'm trying to figure out is that Kaladin's glowing yellowish-red eyes seemed to be reminding Venli of something. It probably wasn't the Thrill, and it wasn't the glowing eyes of a Fused (I don't think), but I'm not sure what it could be. Yellowish-red has to be very intentional wording as opposed to say... orange. I'll note that he probably used a Reverse Lashing on the floor, not a Full Lashing, and those are supernaturally darker than all other Windrunner Lashings as they draw even light towards them. Reverse Lashings are rarely used, so this could be simple unfamiliarity on Venli's part. It doesn't discount this as a different Investiture, but it doesn't rule out Stormlight either.

I've seen various opinions regarding Kelsier over the years on 17th Shard and I wanted to poll the public opinion on what kind of person Kelsier really is. I was hoping for this to be an open discussion on how people perceive Kelsier, and as such I'd like to lay down some guidelines to hopefully keep this thread polite, thought-provoking, and a safe place to share your views and experiences. First, it's okay to respectfully disagree, but please do not imply that another person's experience was wrong. Your experience with the books is your own and does not invalidate another's. Second, if someone posts explicitly incorrect factual data, then yes, please correct it, but this is the most extreme disagreement I want. Even for someone quoting a character's view on Kelsier, that is subjective within the context of the story. Again, I want to know what people think, not try to arrive at any sort of conclusive answer. I'll put out some background in the order of the poll, though it's probably unnecessary . Brandon himself says that had his life gone differently he could be a very evil dude and is an actual psychopath. His formation of the Ghostbloods and involvement in the Cosmere doesn't paint the most friendly of pictures. During the days of the Final Empire his hatred of the nobility was considerable and he has an innate ruthlessness. He forced the very first Skaa plantation we see to flee or join the rebellion. Is Kelsier a good man? I remember his lesson to Vin on friendship and what friendship really means, choosing to go toe-to-toe with a Steel Inquisitor to save Spook. Most of what we see Kelsier doing in Mistborn 1 is directly related to the plan, but there is a scene later in the book where Vin goes with him and visits the Skaa to give them supplies and encouragement. This is framed as a break from his plotting and recruiting, this is what he does to decompress and at least partially relax the mask of the Survivor of Hathsin. I remember his encouragement, his willingness to change and try to see the good in others and protect the Skaa. His time as a Cognitive Shadow during Secret History shows him repeating Leras's counsel to himself, to do better, that the hearts of men are not his toys, and we see him weeping as Spook runs into the flames. Kelsier is also extremely charismatic and draws a lot of attention and notoriety, deliberately so. He was famous before he became the Survivor of Hathsin and sowed the seeds for his own religion hiring OreSeur to enact a false resurrection. He drew power away from Yeden the leader of the Skaa rebellion, created a fake belief of mystic power when he had Demoux fight Bilg in the army, enhancing Demoux strikes with Allomancy. Even when he goes to free Spook, he thinks to himself about how he's always wondered if he could best an Inquisitor. We've since learned that he has established a name for himself among the Southern Scadrians as the Sovereign, with a temple built in his name in the north, complete with dead/sacrificed(?) Southerners and elaborate traps and locked door. At the end of Secret History, Vin asks Kelsier how much was about them, and how much was about himself and proving that he hadn't been beaten, a question that Kelsier didn't know the answer to. Presumably he was the one that commissioned or created the Bands of Mourning, the most powerful artifact since the Well of Ascension. He also is looking to obtain Stormlight from Roshar and has a chapter of the Ghostbloods working in the shadows there (though there are hints of a schism between chapters). Kelsier also has the distinction of being the only person we know to have Ascended to become a Shard and willingly given up the power, though Vin is very close. In his first life he had to be restrained from stopping the first round of executions, he sprinted for 16 straight hours and would have fought an entire army to try to save the army of the rebellion at the end of that sprint if Vin hadn't stopped him. Not once, but twice he has deliberately placed himself against a god expecting to die - the fact that neither The Lord Ruler or Ruin managed to permanently kill him doesn't discount the expectation of death. At least, I'm going to say that letting go the power of Preservation when Ruin is trying to kill you is tantamount to accepting death. We also have that medallion that Hoid gave Wax showing Kelsier helping the freezing Southern Scadrians. So. What do people think? We've gotten very few glimpses from his point of view since Secret History, and it's been 300 years since he was alive. Who do you think Kelsier is at his core?

I'll chime in here and note that magic and fiction is somewhat subjective as by definition, most would say there isn't a real world counterpart (though I've known people who would swear by what others would consider superstitions). There may not be an objective answer, particularly if there is any sort of issue with language and cultural disconnect. Don't forget we're an international community. It feels like poor form to criticize another author on a fandom forum, but I'm mostly quoting from what Brandon and Dan have said on Intentionally Blank as an example. I'll try to find the episode as they said it better and were better researched than me. A while back J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series commented that she didn't read fantasy and didn't really consider that she had been writing fantasy. Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series wrote a rather pointed essay in response noting that by disparaging the genre it was doing considerable harm to authors within the fantasy genre. There have since been follow up articles where Rowling seems to clarify that she hadn't intended to write a fantasy book, she only realized that it had become one later on. Take it as you will, feel free to research the debate yourself. My point is that the debate as to what is and is not fantasy or magical can inadvertently marginalize, though no here has the same social weight as Rowling, Pratchett, or Sanderson. Again, talking to the debaters of semantics, your opinion is your own, and how it felt to read the books is your own experience. If you want anything close to a statistically significant answer as to how people in general perceive magical objects as they relate to the Cosmere, you won't get it through debate, you'll get it through polling and statistics. While I side with alder24 here and I think there are plenty of magical objects in the Cosmere starting from the very beginning with Elantris the city, Aon Tia plates, Metalminds, and Soul Stamps, we could be the vocal minority thinking we're the majority.

Just saying... Scadrial was horrifying waaaay before the Catacendre. The series starts with attempted legal rape, murder and a massacre before we even get out of the prologue. There's the slaughter of the Vin's old crew, Camon's execution by a Steel Inquisitor, and general skaa treatment including arbitrary executions. The very mechanism of Hemalurgy with the distortion of human souls to create Koloss or Inquisitor puppets for Ruin is deeply disturbing. Throw in the siege of Luthadel with the invading Koloss, and the Terris breeding program and Scadrial seemed horrible to me long before what was basically the end of the world. Yes, the death toll leading up to the Catacendre was terrible. Quality of life on average was dreadful. The fact that smiling and choosing to be happy was one of the greatest legacies of Kelsier is really disturbing when you think about how extraordinary people thought that was.

I've been thinking about this for a bit, and I wonder if we have different takes on how we perceive precognition and future sight. I'll try to give a couple of examples with a bit of what I'm learning with data analytics. Hmm... okay. The sheer complexity as I visualize it might be best illustrated with a 90 minute documentary on AlphaGo, one of the first artificial intelligence models attempting to solve the ancient game of Go. This is fascinating to me because it's a real world look at complexity and prediction. I'll give an explanation that doesn't require watching the documentary, though I personally found it a really cool watch. The game of Go has very simple rules. The board consists of a 19 x 19 grid with 361 locations that pieces can be placed on the board. Players alternate taking turns, choosing to either place a piece or pass. That's the sole extent of input - place a piece or pass. Once a piece has been placed the player cannot move or remove it, though the opposing player can capture pieces. However the complexity is immense (from Wikipedia): The number of legal board positions in Go has been calculated to be approximately 2.1×10^170,[15][a] which is far greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, estimated to be of the order of 10^80.[17] The sheer complexity of a 2-player game where input consists of taking turns placing a single piece is tremendous. Now imagine the probability space for all of Scadrial. Something fascinating was revealed in the documentary where AlphaGo played 5 matches against the top Go player in the world at the time, Lee Sedol. In simplistic terms, the Go player with the most pieces on the board wins. What was notable is that AlphaGo wasn't trained to win by the greatest margin, AlphaGo was trained to win. Attempts to secure large captures early on were ignored if it meant that there was a higher probability of winning the overall game even at a very slim margin. In other words, Intent matters in predictions IRL, not just the Cosmere. What you are aiming to achieve matters, even for AI. How does this relate to Ruin and Preservation? It matters because their minds are not infinite. I'm guessing their minds can't actually observe and comprehend the full probability space of an entire planet, and so they have to pick and choose what to focus on, because probability at thay scale is insanely complex. Intent matters. What is notable here is that Leras's plan never was to survive the conflict. If Ruin's plan was specifically to survive to leave Scadrial, that's a different probability space from something like kill Preservation and make good on their agreement that Ruin could destroy all that they create. Back to AlphaGo, spoiler, but a game was won against a world class Go player because AlphaGo aimed to win at any margin, ignoring current score or piece margins. Leras sacrificed practically everything, his mind, his life, nearly the entire planet, and relied on MAD (mutually assured destruction) with the goal of taking down Ruin and preparing the way for Harmony. He won by the slimmest margin possible with the Hero of Ages sustained by the powers of the Shards when otherwise he would have been immolated by the sun. Based on Intent, I don't think Ruin is stupid for assuming that MAD was off the table or that normal people wouldn't give up the powers of creation 3 times consecutively. I'll note that when viewing the infinite probabilities with the help of Leras, Kelsier's goal was to stop Ruin, not survive or stay as Preservation, and even then it relied on him letting Ruin almost destroy the world and relinquish the power of a Shard to Vin. If this doesn't match your view of future sight and probabilities, feel free to explain it. It's something I think about as I'm learning about with data analytics and machine learning where forecasting and classification probabilities are part of the data analysis, so different views are quite useful to me actually. I'll note that in the realm of AI and predictions, the number of factors and how deeply you look for predictions can increase the computational power necessary by multiple orders of magnitude depending on methodology.

Dalinar probably will have a similar attitude to the one he had at the Battle of Thaylen City. Despite facing Amaram Sadeas's army, he didn't fight with sword or spear but with ideology bringing a book onto the battleground. His Bondsmithing abilities and Ideals are far more potent than any Shardblade. That said, they also are planning on hitting up Shinovar, so finding an Honorblade isn't out of the question. Also, if it came down to it, either Jasnah or Kaladin would almost certainly rather lend Dalinar Plate and Blade than let him go in unarmed and unarmored or with dead spren.

They add in a gratuitous love interest for the Adolin - Shallan - Kaladin love triangle, probably one of Adolin's old girlfriends to make Shallan even more angsty. The justification will probably be so that they can get a really hot actress to play one of Adolin's old flames and they need to get more screen time for this actress for the salacious trailers. They make Syl obnoxiously high pitched. Not sure why they do this, but it happens. They go about 3 steps too far with the hint that Vin had a crush on Kelsier. Because... Hollywood.

Excessively pedantic paragraph warning. Asking why the Cosmere is different from other series settings can boil down to asking why Brandon is one of the top fantasy authors with book sales beating out other authors. It's hard to isolate or quantify. We can help you try to come up with different reasons, but if you want a shot at a statistically significant answer we would need a survey with a sample set taken that isn't just 17th Shard. From a statistics standpoint, you won't arrive at a conclusive answer by asking the question on 17th Shard because we are a self-selected subset of the population of readers and will introduce significant bias into the sample. Beyond that I can tell what I've heard, my guesses at the underpinnings along with my own opinions, but I'm a single data point. Moving on from statistics, I'll list of a variety of reasons that may have an impact on why people like the Cosmere as much as they do: The absolute biggest factor that I can think of is how the Cosmere is a hugely collaborative work engineered and piloted by Brandon that would be impossible for a single person to create. There's a degree of authenticity that Brandon can capture that someone without his resources or name-recognition would have a much harder time acquiring. Not every author can commission the artworks and maps that Brandon does. Most authors can't pay someone to painstakingly sift through enormous manuscripts to add in something like every instance of spren popping up in the Stormlight Archive. Not every author has B-Money forking out commissions for incredibly rigorous worldbuilding stress testing with expert opinions on everything from field surgery, psychology, warfare, linguistics, astronomy, physics, aerospace fighter craft, and probably more. For example, listening to Skar tell war stories on Intentionally Blank increases the credibility of Brandon's combat scenes. Brandon went and had Mark Rober discuss and demonstrate the Aether seas on YouTube for crying out loud. Again, the Cosmere is a hugely collaborative effort, it stopped being just a guy with a computer working graveyard as a hotel desk clerk long ago. Warning of confirmation bias, but how many magic systems does anyone know of where people have spent pages and pages trying to come up a with a quantum physics model of the magic system? We trust Brandon and his experts enough to think that this is even possible, where I wouldn't even bother with most series. Taken from the Elantris 10th Anniversary edition forward by Dan Wells, we love the Cosmere because Brandon uses grandly imaginative worlds as the stage for the lives of his characters who provide the emotional core to his books. We care about Stormlight because we care about Kaladin overcoming his depression while fighting for Bridge Four. We care about Mistborn because we care about Vin trying to find love and learning to trust in a dangerous empire. Dan's point is that without the characters providing the emotional core, the books wouldn't have been anywhere close to as successful. So... one answer is that it's not exactly the Cosmere, it's the people of the Cosmere. I read a lot less non-Sanderson fantasy in the last 10-15 years, but one thing that I've found fascinating is how thoroughly the magic system shapes and defines the world. It's not Earth or Middle-Earth with a new magic and name slapped on, it's Scadrial, Roshar, and Threnody. I loved Alloy of Law because I got to see what happens when you have the magic from a more Victorian era applied to a developing Western frontier with the promise that the magic would enable space age FTL. I know other people have done it, but watching the magic infuse the development of an entire culture is really cool. I assume this is possible for Brandon because he gets experts to collaborate so he can spend his time writing new books, not extensively researching and mapping it out over the course of 30 years like Tolkien. Another option is that the Cosmere has had Hoid from the beginning trying to hack the magic systems together. Not sure how many magic systems have had someone trying to collect and break them from the very first book. Brandon has always been promising at least implicitly from the very beginning that we will see these various magics come together. This foresight is something that not every author has, or has made known. Brandon is willing to keep secrets about the worlds and how the magic works for decades if it means he gets a really cool payoff, and that's significant. There's my answer. It's that the Cosmere has insane resources and name recognition that allows for collaboration that most authors can only dream of having and Brandon is an imaginative author that keeps his secrets.

Easy. Those Dragonsteel Christmas cards? Look at who is wearing the Santa hat. Biggest clue right there.

https://www.dragonsteelbooks.com/products/holiday-card-variety-pack Santa isn't unknown, he's famous. Besides, we already know the answer, it's obviously Nightblood when he's being carried by Szeth. Flies through the air on his steed (Szeth), immortal, knows who is naughty or nice, seen on multiple worlds (travels really fast), can eat an insurmountable amount of food, and always has gifts for everyone (so long as what you want is destroying evil) and can give out thousands of his "gifts" in a single night!

I have an alternate take on this. Visualizing outcomes and verbalizing steps and parameters for complicated processes often can help people IRL improve their outcomes. I've seen visualization used by athletes in a mind-over-matter manner and with goal boards. The act of verbalizing forces a person to take subconscious half-formed ideas and connections and define them with the structure of language. I've found that the very act of explaining a concept makes me understand it better or highlight what I have yet to learn. Visualization and verbalization can help anyone, take Kelsier's method of training Vin on their first night in the mists as an example. That said, humans in the Cosmere are not the same as IRL humans. They do not get sick as easily, the insane can get glimpses into the Cognitive or Spiritual Realms, they have Spiritwebs, and they have innate Investiture within their beings. So the idea is this: visualization and verbalization as we see in IRL has that extra bit that is Investiture in the Cosmere. The Commands and visualization that we see with Awakening follow the same principles as the IRL ideas I mentioned. In other words, I think visualization and verbalization can and will help every Invested Art more than it would for the mundane IRL reasons. I don't know to what extent, but I think it would. Would I call those capital C Commands? Maybe, maybe not, the line gets blurry here as they are not required as it is for Awakening (except for the higher Heightenings). I also don't know what would be impossible without a formal Command. That said, I don't see why it wouldn't have a Realmatic impact even if it was only a small one. I think the causality is reversed in the OP, Breeze didn't start instinctively use Commands because he incredible Soother, he became an incredible Soother because he always visualizing and verbalizing his goals.

Raboniel proved that it is possible to forcibly overwrite the Light suffusing the soul of spren, namely the Sibling. She was able to infuse the Sibling with Voidlight in likely that would have resulted in Unmaking the Sibling. After Navani becomes Bondsmith, she uses the tone of Anti-Voidlight to flush the Sibling's system while pumping in Towerlight, reversing the Unmaking process. So... why not use one or both of these techniques to change a Fused? A spren? An Unmade, like BAM? Leshwi talks about how her soul has been owned by Odium for too long, but is this completely irreversible? In essence, is it possible to perform an version of Unmaking but for Honor or Cultivation? Now they never figured this out before but then they didn't have Navani, her research on anti-tones, or Raboniel's demonstration on what could be done to a spren. Would a Fused converted to Honor function like a lite Herald? Another angle of exploration if this is possible. You have the old rhythms heard by the Listeners contrasted by Odium's tones. If reversing Unmaking is possible, what would Honor's version of the Thrill look like? The other Unmade? Thoughts? This could make for a lot of material for the back half.

I have a couple things on this. First, the concept of making enough anti-Investiture to even hurt a Shard, let alone create an entire anti-Shard is a ludicrous amount of Investiture. So huge with the Investiture often so thoroughly integrated into a system as to be practicably impossible. It's like trying to move all of the water on Earth to Mars - including everything in groundwater, atmosphere, oceans, and organic tissue. It's like trying to extract the element of carbon entirely from a planet. Now you probably only need to get over the 50% threshold and not have the two opposing halves annihilate one another, at which point the Investiture might naturally attune itself to the "anti-Shard". If this was at all possible, expect really weird stuff at this kind of boundary. Second, based on how I understood Navani's methodology, anti-Investiture is only relevant within the context that it is in a phase opposed to what we consider normal Investiture. The analog to noise cancelation that Navani uses to create anti-Voidlight uses the principle that sound has a wavelength and that that if you were to generate a sound with an inverted phase it would cancel out. See below: Source: https://www.soundguys.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/constructive-destructive-interference-sine-waves.jpg In other words, if you were to convert all of a type of Investiture into the anti-Investiture, it would act exactly the same as the original Investiture. The tone of Anti-Voidlight sounds identical Voidlight, it's just that the phase is inverted. At any rate, if you can separate this much Investiture from a Shard, then you basically have accomplished splitting a Shard similar to the Shattering, and you may have similar issues with pulling this much Investiture away from a Shard and not having it either become sentient or require a Vessel.

Just gonna drop this here: Might be that Shallan's mind and soul is more fractured than just about any other Lightweaver. In fact, the extreme cracks in her soul might be what enable multiple Nahel bonds to exist in the first place.

One option. I haven't been keeping track of the colors, but it seems like the gold associated with Odium generally is in visions where Odium is intentionally making an appearance. What if the color is a facade designed to promote respect? Presumably Rayse is lying at some level when he chooses to appear as a venerable and elderly man or Singer depending on his audience, so why not the color as well? Mistborn spoiler: In essence, Voidlight is the true Investiture color, gold is the Passion propaganda color. The main issue with this is that this requires that WoB on how Odium's true color is gold without explaining Voidlight to be a bit misleading.

Isn't it only Hemalurgically charged spikes being placed that warps organ location? I don't think an uncharged spike will shift the organs around. This goes back to the debate over whether or not Aluminum can hold an Invested charge or not, but in this case notably on the Hemalurgic table Aluminum "Removes all powers". Not "steals", "removes". Unless you want to add in the the ethics of charging the spike in the first place for the forehead spike (assuming it's even possible with Aluminum), doing this with an uncharged Aluminum spike will probably just leave them dead. Side note, do you think the organ location warping is due to the Spiritweb having to shift to accommodate the additional piece of soul that is getting hotwired into the system? Back to the OP, as for governmental control of powers... it will likely depend on what kind of controls are placed on Medallion tech or if there is a black market of Hemalurgic spikes and Medallions. Harvesting someone's Brute Ferring abilities could be pointless if they can go down the street or hit up the black market and pick up a medallion that gives the same power. We don't know how the Bands of Mourning were made, but they were, so granting Allomantic abilities via Unsealed Metalmind tech is possible. Going beyond that don't forget that we already have seen a dictatorship government with a brutal police force that hunts down illegal power users and forcibly removes their abilities. That's the Steel Inquisitors in a nutshell, not just Rashek transforming all Feruchemists into Kandra. This also is direct opposition to Kelsier's agenda of democratizing powers, so either he would need to change his objectives to allow this government, or the government would need to be able to withstand the Survivor of Hathsin, because I can't see Kelsier letting this one slide, particularly if it was a visible government with easily assassinated figures. Not sure if this will change in future eras, but the current limits on Hemalurgically gained powers imposed by Harmony also will prevent another Lord Ruler from being created by this government. I'm also iffy about Harmony letting this slide either or if he would recruit another Dawnshot.

I agree with this - to an extent. I rarely visit the Vs threads and generally only to suggest strategies that I haven't seen mentioned yet, not to give a conclusive "this is better" statement. This kind of ranking is how a Tineye (Spook) goes toe to toe with Thugs and surprises them with how well he fights. There isn't an objective winner, merely subjective ones. That said, this kind of ranking or gradation of utility is done all the time in the realm of economics. To put this into context and to address the broader thread, hypothetically you are the owner of a Medallion store in downtown Elendel. How do you price your Medallions or try to market and sell your stock? Which items do you put in your store window? When you consider the cost of the metal itself, the shipping weight or volume, and what people are willing to spend, how do you make that call? While it's impossible to make an objective "best ability", there certainly can be a price tag on it. It's barely addressed in the books, and not at all in these rankings, but what about the intrinsic cost of purchasing, owning, wearing, and maintaining Metalminds? How heavy, expensive, and corrodible is the metal? Is the application worth wearing weight training bands for significant storage or tapping? Wax is way stronger than people give him credit for since he has been doing all of his stunts, brawling, climbing ladders, and precision shooting while wearing iron bracers on his upper arms. Same with Wayne who is literally doing hand-to-hand combat while wearing solid gold. Those are factors on utility separate from the ability granted.

They were oppressed, but absolutely nothing can compare to what one of their own members did to the Terris people. We know this because the World bringer of Classical Terris had any sense of dignity, respect, or autonomy at all. Ironic that Rashek himself transformed every living Keeper into mentally crippled blobs of Mistwraith, instituted the breeding program inflicting centuries of atrocities on the Terris, all the while adopting the fashion and architecture of hated Khlennium. To all appearances, Khlennium conquered all and absolutely subjugated the Terris, hence why Rashek could be mistaken for Alendi.

So I can't talk about the very first Feruchemists, but even in the days of Alendi and Rashek, Feruchemy was found exclusively among the Terris people and the Terris have always been an isolated people. As Feruchemy is genetic like Allomancy, add in isolationist groups and Keepers who literally can remember every genealogical tree, and odds are the Synod and Keepers are constantly on the lookout for more Feruchemists. New Feruchemists were probably scouted and tested by other Keepers. In Era 2, the Terris village was trying consolidate the bloodlines to increase the odds of a full Feruchemist born to their population, so they likely were also trying to track and find Feruchemist. Sometimes it's as simple as knowing that a parent was a Feruchemist like Wayne.

Setting aside precognition for a minute, something fundamentally different between Ruin and Preservation is how they can interact with humanity. Ruin exerts his influence, corrupting minds and souls, altering texts, and controlling Hemalurgists. The way Ruin interacts with the world is by propagating his own mind and goals, speaking into the minds of those with fractured souls.. Preservation reinforces souls, hears the hearts of humanity and acts as an intermediate guide for the dying moving to The Beyond. By the very nature of the limits on communication, Preservation must understand the hearts of humanity and trust in their decisions in order to have a significant impact on the future of Scadrial. This is pretty important with how the conflict between Ruin and Preservation played out. Nearly every major setback that Ruin suffered was directly related to the hearts of the people he assumed to be under his influence and control. Spook reversing his journey to becoming an Inquisitor, Marsh removing Vin's spike, allowing her to Ascend, the Kandra obeying the First Contract and committing to the Resolution, and Vin herself consistently resisting Ruin's influence despite her Hemalurgically charged earring. Preservation's plan would have failed had it not been for mere mortals repeatedly choosing to throw off a Shard's influence, again and again - and this was the core of Preservation's plan, set in motion from the moment he agreed to place more of his essence into humanity. It also seems noteworthy that the Hero of Ages was not one of the beings that had the greatest amount of Preservation's essence, a Mistborn, but one that had power from Ruin as well. It was not an Allomancer, but a Feruchemist holding joint power between Ruin and Preservation that was Preservation's final key player. Now, back to precognition, perhaps the elements of each Shard's precognition can be tied to their own senses and abilities within their domain of influence. From that standpoint being able to make predictions based on the hearts of every living person is formidable compared to mere influence over the spiked or insane. Another option is that in attempting to subvert or otherwise gain control of Preservation's strongest players Ruin blinded himself to their possible future choices to throw off his influence by his own work to subvert them and gain control over their actions. All these options are hypothetical, but they seem plausible and not mutually exclusive.

We could double down on engineering and go with Elsecaller or Lightweaver. There could be some complications, but being able to use Soulcasting to actively create the objects that you are Awakening is pretty significant. A few essences could really support Awakening as well: Blood and all non-oil liquids: ichor alcohol maybe? Dyes for Awakening? Wood, plants, moss: For general awakening application Metal/rock/stone: Apparently dead bodies Soulcast into stone can more readily be converted into something akin to Kalad's Phantoms. Well worth the Stormlight cost to significantly increase the effectiveness of your Lifeless. Alternately Soulcast equipment for your Lifeless or add blades to the ends of your Awakened ropes. And there's the fact that Soulcasting already is the backbone of Alethi warfare between building construction, food supply, waste management, etc. Add in being able to resurrect fallen soldiers as Lifeless, create Kalad's Phantoms, create equipment enhanced with Awakening (smart grappling hooks?), etc.. Add in that Soulcasters already have to have strong visualization and an in-depth understanding of what they are creating and they should readily adapt to the more complicated aspects of Awakening. Who knows, maybe being able to converse with the soul of an object would assist in giving or breaking Commands. There's pros and cons between Elsecallers and Lightweavers. Elsecallers are generally better at Soulcasting and attract the scholarly, which would play well into engineering. However the eidetic memory of a Lightweaver may be very useful for the visualization of Commands and Lightweaving could disguise their Phantoms dispersed throughout the regular army and occasionally you'll have an enemy soldier swing a sword at a solid metal fighter. That's pretty handy.