Duxredux

I was more ambiguous than I meant to be. The person who wants to tap the Identity of the Knight Radiant would be the one storing their Identity before replacing it by tapping the Knight's Identity, not the Knight storing Identity-less Identity which as you said doesn't make sense.

If it is possible, it would probably involve storing all of your own Identity first, which VenDell thought may let you tap another person's metalmind. That said, I don't think we've seen someone tapping and storing the same attribute simultaneously which could be trivial or highly complicated. If storing and tapping is simple, it would let a feruchemist withdraw from an unsealed metalmind or an unkeyed metalmind and rekeying it to themselves. And yup, it's Connection you want for spren bonds.

This makes sense logically, but I'm trying to think of supporting evidence in either direction that this is how security phrases fundamentally work. Do you have WoBs for some of these details? I didn't see many WoBs that deal with security phrases, and Awakening is a relatively new and nuanced Art, and one that has not progressed particularly fast because most Awakeners keep newly invented Command phrases to themselves. Not that I can think of specifics to support this what-if which is why I posted it as such rather than as a hypothesis. It does make me wonder if extremely limited security phrases are possible for Type 3 entities (and we know that there are core phrases and delegated limited use phrases). Basically letting someone else activate the preprogrammed Command in the object, like Vasher's rope that responds to tapped sequences. Most people probably wouldn't trust others with something that valuable and any solo Awakener wouldn't bother because the Breaths are Identity-keyed to them, but there's a big gap between impossible and rarely done. Actually... there's that Awakened lock in TLM which seems too mundane to blow the Breaths for a Type 4 Awakening so it's probably a Type 3. The question then is whether that spoken password constitutes a security phrase, and if they've simply progressed security phrases to filter out passcodes given under duress. That makes sense to me as a logical extension of existing mechanics though it could just be a really cleverly worded Command. Though maaaybe that lock just has a Lifeless beetle that crawls around and moves the mechanism, but there's gotta be something that physically prevents someone from just cutting through the door, stamping a new door, or picking the lock with Rosite.

Same way it does for a Lifeless. You say the security phrase, give the Returned an order and then its compelled to obey. Perhaps not too different than the backdoor Frava suggested that Shai build into Ashravan's soul. Obedience to a security phrase does not equate difficulty in breaking the Command. We don't know the full story of Vasher's falling out with his wife, and it's possible Shashara changed the security phrase without Vasher's knowledge. I could even see discovering that the security phrase had changed kicking off Shashara's death. As it is a lost security phrase is theoretical for Nightblood but not Azure's sword, so perhaps not a moot question, even in terms of ability in Command Breaking.

Had to related what-ifs that may be possible and I'm not sure yet on the scope of the ramifications. What if Returned had a security phrase known to Endowment and anyone that she decided to divulge that information to? What if Nightblood or Azure's sword had security phrases? What would or would not be possible? Did Shashara have more control over Nightblood as the Awakener, or did Nightblood operate about as we've always seen? Thoughts? If these are possible there could be some pretty terrifying reveals.

It's possible that this method of combining Investiture with tones may only work with investiture in a gaseous state. I'm not sure how you would even go about using Navani's methodology with solid Investiture either for Anti-tones or combined tones. That may be the limiting factor you're looking for. As a side note, one thought I had is that the glow of red Investiture could be the soul of the corrupted object trying to resist or revert back to it's natural state, even if that resistance is futile or unintentional. This could be a person, an object, a spren, or even a world. I'm trying to think of cases when the red of corruption shows up, but I can only think of that red as it affects something else, so far never raw Investiture turning red. It may also explain some things that probably ought to be considered corruption but do not have red coloration: Also, this thread has expanded to other worlds and may best fit in the general cosmere board.

Here's some ideas that might give other groups a chance against an Elantrian, though I'm not sure how much of a better chance. Having the ability to negate and resist AonDor like select members of Dakhor certainly would help. At least I assume Elantris 2, Dakhor, will still have these monks in a threatening capacity. Being able to hack Aons also helps (though we've only seen Hoid do this). Aluminum in general might help, though presumably aluminum or silver would not have cured Hoid or Charlie's curses otherwise Hoid or Ulaam would have utilized it. Well, probably at least for Charlie at the end. I assume that Aons are relatively easy to understand by someone using Connection (at least, if Kelsier can learn to read Aons on the fly as a CS, anyone better prepared probably will be able to). By the very nature of using language-based magic, a sufficiently educated or Connected person will be able to read what the magic is meant to do, just like how a Soulstamp will always describe the change that it is making. Hoid was able to look at Charlie and know the stipulations of his curse, so we know that seeing the "code" of an active Aon is possible, though who knows who else would have that ability. This should make reacting to visible Aons relatively easy compared to abilities without such a visible tell. The other question is if Raoden is exceptional or typical in his drawing speed, and precision. If most Elantrians can draw 2 perfect circles in the air with each hand (Aon Daa) while being attacked by Dakhor monks without Aons to augment themselves, then yeah, Elantrians would be really hard to beat. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if Raoden was pure talent. He had what, less than 3 months of practice? As far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't much information) Elantrians drawing new Aons have to remain stationary relative to the frame of reference when they started drawing the Aon. If you can actually get the jump on an Elantrian then their extended casting time will limit them to simpler Aons and may let you come out ahead when compared to a Radiant summoning a Shardblade. Late game with fabrials, anti-Investiture, Southern Scadrian tech, Aluminum, and AonDor, makes attacking anyone who had sufficient time to booby trap their turf ridiculous dangerous. Just barging in without scoping out the place is a bad idea unless you know for a fact you can just tank everything. I suspect espionage and abilities that allow for covert operations and disarming these kinds of defenses may be highly valued.

I doubt it. He basically considers himself a spren, and he came to Roshar in part so he could stop feeding on souls. Cognitive beings, similar to himself with some measure of intelligence does not seem at all better than eating Breaths.

It might have something to do with the Alethi view on the Tranquiline Halls, Callings, and dahns and nahns. The Alethi have serious issues when they require upper caste men to perform lower caste labor and have divisions on who can use a sword or a spear. There may be a cultural taboo that extends to asking a soldier living their Calling (not a slave) to run a bridge and not being able to carry a weapon into battle. Dying while carrying a bridge compared to spear or sword may have been raised concerns for their prospects in the Tranquiline Halls. A bit of a stretch, but not an unfounded one, I think. Tactics only work to the point that your followers will obey orders.

One hypothesis I've seen is that when Dalinar acts in conjunction with the Stormfather they are in a similar weight/power class as a full Shard. In SH, Ruin notes that for a Shard to have any real power they must have ties to all three Realms - something that Dalinar provides to the Stormfather who holds the bulk of the power. When Dalinar and the Stormfather act, they must do so in accordance with Dalinar's Oath to Unite instead of divide and might rightly be called "Unity". Dalinar doesn't Ascend in the sense that he vaporizes as he isn't channeling the bulk of the power, but the Bondsmith bonded to the remnants of Tanavast's soul was enough to make Rayse run out of town.

If you start looking at how Shadesmar geography works, there may also be something to how power may pool into the depressions of geographic landmarks. Both Elantris and Mai-Pon forging require drawing a version of their country.

I'm not sure where the line is, but we also just have to accept that Feruchemy is a fictional magic and at some point it will extend into a branch of science that either Brandon hasn't studied or that the answer will boil down to "Brandon wanted to tell a cool story." Dig too deeply and it will break down. I don't know if we've hit that line yet, because Brandon dives really deeply into stuff I sometimes have a hard time following, but there's a limit to Brandon's genius in creating an entire universe with magical laws. I don't intend to stifle the discussion, really cool insights can still be gained, but we haven't ever seen F-Atium during storage, only tapped by compounders. It might be wise to mentally draw a line at which point we try to ask Brandon or Peter in a Q&A and find out what it is semi-officially, or get RAFO'd while trying. Like... page 3 or 4 and still no one feeling closer to a solid answer.

Let's look at this from another angle at the work that is being done by the Investiture. Say we find a 6-year old Feruchemist and we get them to start storing youthfulness. Would they start growing to full adult as they age? I don't think so. Investiture is leaving their body as the Platonic ideal of youth. It would seem very strange to me if they were to gain knowledge they don't have or physical mass as a byproduct of Investiture leaving their body. That mass would need to come from somewhere. Similarly when TLR lost his bracers and no longer had Investiture sustaining him and his biceps, a thousand years of hair didn't shoot out of his scalp or nails out of his fingers (which is a thing that happens in one of Brandon's non-Cosmere books when someone uses age to heal). That said we know that through compounding an adult can revert to a child. So clearly Atium when tapped can alter a person's physical mass. I think it's plausible that F-Atium could restore a missing arm but with some constraints. I'd guess that if they had stored say 5 years of life, lost an arm, maybe they could tap those years and regrow it - but not get the full 5 years back as youth. Some of the Investiture would be utilized to create the mass for the limb. You might also have to be compounding or have youth stored from when you had the limb, in not sure. Burn x years of life to regrow an arm would be far less appealing than F-Gold. I don't think it would work like a save state - store a year and roll back any major injury with and end up back at the "correct" age. I can believe that unusual things could happen when tapping Youth, but I wouldn't think anything directly beneficial would come from storing, like muscle mass at the start of an exercise regimen, or knowledge before a test. Loss of Investiture just shouldn't create mass or energy, even if it's just the Investiture in memories that have not been lived. Feruchemical storage can have benefits as we've seen, but not in this way.

Oh, I know it works while sleeping, I just put having health siphoned off when sleeping in a different risk category than weight. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure how a Sentry Ferring chooses when they wake up from active storage.

I'm similar to cometaryorbit and therunner. Nothing has seemed to fit, though admittedly I haven't looked too hard. I've debated doing a sketch of a duck wearing a monocle in GIMP, but never seemed to find the time. Then I decided to try stable diffusion. Apparently the internet is adamant that ducks do not wear monocles. I had as hard a time finding a duck with a monocle as when I once tried Captain Picard with hair (something about his iconic baldness just overrode every other aspect of the prompt). These were the best I found. That said, when people change their names it can cause issues. Reading some of the threads from the Ookla phase is seriously confusing because the quotations retain the name at the time of any quotations. Trying to guess who was Ookla _____ based on the major contributors was a pain, especially on mobile. Found a glowing green rock if you want it @cometaryorbit, though you could probably just run your own prompt through stable diffusion until one tickled your fancy. Couldn't find anything for Kelsier though.

Might as well summon @Koloss17 to talk to you about the benefits of F-Tin. Storing your sense of pain is a much more pleasant approach than tapping determination to grit through horrible suffering. If you can't heal through alternative means then any sort of anesthetic will help. In later eras pain meds will help if they still haven't figured out how to compound with Medallions. For a bit I was trying to figure out if storing health in a Medallion would let you sleep while storing wakefulness in a Bronzemind, but that sounds like all kinds of risky.

78% Windrunner, 76% Bondsmith. I consistently get these two very close together, though when I was in charge of some 11 year olds I got Skybreaker, which probably says something. I'm definitely not a Lightweaver or a Dustbringer. I could see either Windrunner or Bondsmith, though in terms of Bondsmith Ideals I fear I would be as chull-footed as Dalinar. Being a Windrunner is generally who I am, being a Bondsmith is what I try to be. In the explanatory article it notes that some who followed Bondsmiths would swear the Oaths knowing they would likely never bond a spren considering the limited number of Bondsmith spren. Knowing myself and the high probability that the Bondsmith slots would be taken, I would probably end up as a Windrunner who tried to become a Bondsmith squire. I'll wait. If no one is a higher match than 76% Bondsmith I'll put that, otherwise I'll put Windrunner. And no, not just because Bondsmiths are bustedly powerful. 2025 edit: Interesting. A year later. Normally I wouldn't edit a post this far back, but it seems fitting

Taln was the indisputed best fighter among the Heralds and we have a decent grasp on what most of their Surges allowed for. Granted that was before Ishar was an unchained Bondsmith unrestricted by Honor, but that still has to count for something. Considering the Fused, Thunderclasts, Regals, etc. that Taln took down in all their varieties, Stonewards (not stoneware, autocorrect) probably have answers for even the more isoteric abilities on Odium's side. We probably won't see the cooler applications of their powers until Taln's book though. I don't buy just yet that Taln had significant trouble against Shanay-im, though he could have. Cohesion and tension... which doesn't work on living objects or Invested materials but works on materials other than stone. As far as I know, the Honorblades do not have mutable shapes like Radiant Blades, but I suspect Stonewards can do similar stunts with whatever material is on hand. See a flier, grab a bow from the ground and a bunch of arrows and start firing away. Manipulate the tension of the "string" and limbs of the bow to be able to fire even the giant spike that was Taln's Honorblade. For a peek at what a Stoneward might be able to do, look at what Prof from the Reckoners pulls off with Tensors, but perhaps greater application. Melt oncoming weapons on impact so they splash away. It won't be pleasant, but change any projectile that hits you into the consistency of paint rounds. Punch straight through non-Invested armor as if it's wet clay. If Stonewards can indeed affect their own body then skin like stone is just one enhancement they have. It's not Talenel Stoneskin, it's Stonesinew. Maybe he could use Stormlight to modify the tension of his very muscles, ligaments, and tendons to perform supernatural feats of strength and speed, as in maybe he could keep moving around via Stormlight and Tension even if his nervous system was paralyzed. As for that stone armor, it wouldn't surprise me if Shardplate was based off of Taln. That said, there's a big gap between what any Stoneward can do and what Taln was pulling off, so who knows what the average Stoneward can do.

Looking back we've known for a while that there's something odd about the Shardpool on Elantris, since it presumably doesn't just dump someone who uses it into the Dor plasma in the CR. Nor is it in of itself plasma and it doesn't restore power to an Elantrian who enters it. What exactly is filling that Shardpool?

Mass war is not the only method of invasion. In Secret History, Kelsier's introduction to the bigger Cosmere politics was Khriss and Nazh (semi-helpful scholars) and the Ire, foreigners he didn't even know about who were prepared to forcibly Connect themselves to Preservation, taking a Shard that Kelsier didn't even know existed. Kelsier foiled Scadrial's first invasion plot (that we know of) and no one but the Shards knew it was in the process. Other than Shards, the Ire were one of the first groups that I know of to make an intersystem invasion and not just a scholarly pass. As for Era 4 speculation, who other than Brandon and Dragonsteel even knows what state all of the Shards will be in, which if any have been taken up by new Vessels, which Vessels have been subsumed by the Shard's Intent, or if any of the Shards become perambulatory and go off to develop new or co-opted Invested Arts. As @alder24 said, there are whole branches of magic that we know currently exists and haven't been explored, let alone the possibility of new Invested Arts that could become pivotal. Who knows where each Dawnshard will be that far into the future and what each Invested Art could do with each Dawnshard? The list of "unknowns" full of pure speculation have such huge potential for upsets in the war that what we do know sans-speculation seems paltry. Brandon has enough tools and enough pieces he can move around that he can have the war go pretty much any direction he wants. He had that just by introducing the Dawnshards, four massive Chekhov's guns that were used in the Shattering. More speculation, but based on the Dusk's reading of the situation in SotD, perhaps one or more Shards have made an agreement that that a planet must be of a minimum tech level or Cosmere awareness before it can be brought forcibly into the larger conflict - or that the major ruling bodies must agree to an alliance. Who wins? I dunno.

@alder24, I didn't know about those WoBs. Thanks! I see three interpretations from this disparity. Not sure how much further discussion can be had though, but I thought I would lay them out. 1. Brandon messed up with Vasher's statement. This is by far the least likely considering how intentionally Szeth was referenced. 2. Both of the WoBs declaring that Szeth was not a Cognitive Shadow came in 2015-2016, whereas RoW and the WoB on the revival of the deceased came in 2020. It's possible that for some reason Brandon changed his mind on Cosmere resuscitation and forgot he made the other statements. 3. For some reason it is important that Vasher has misdiagnosed Szeth's condition despite clearly keeping a close eye on both Nightblood and and his current wielder. This seems odd and slightly out of character for Vasher, considering he knows that Szeth died and was revived, a detail that would probably not be common knowledge. All within the realm of possiblility though. Am I missing something? Anything stick out to anyone or is this just a unimportant detail?

Question, are we assuming that there is still an arbitrator that determines the validity of Oaths? Like how Venli literally couldn't progress in her Oaths until healing her mother? Though Syl did say that the Stormfather could not forbid her in WoR, so who knows how exactly those rules work. If there are still only a handful of these "authenticators of Oaths" and still only 3 Bondsmiths, there may be limits to the diversity of Radiant groups that some people are theorizing among the various nations. Are Oathgates still around, creating a melting pot that selects for Radiants? I'll also note that spren culture will develop and dictate how these different Ideals are best embodied in people. You will get the outlier spren who has quite different views from the rest, but the decision to bond a Radiant often is not done in isolation among the spren varieties. How the spren and the concepts they embody will evolve in a modern age is a huge discussion by itself. What we see in SA is a product of all these factors. What is borderline behavior yet acceptible for a Radiant to do in the current Rosharan Era could get slapped down so hard in a modern Era and vice versa. Maybe even what is commonplace could get upended. Dalinar argued pretty heavily against the emancipation of Alethkar's slaves (at least during wartime) and the Stormfather didn't step in. For a Bondsmith to do the same thing in today's society would probably be almost impossible because of how divisive such a stance would be. I'm hoping we see far more utilization similar to what Dalinar was envisioning while digging a latrine in full Shardbearer kit. Power over the Surges, shape-shifting nigh-indestructable metal that optionally can cut the Realms, and modular telepathically controlled highly resilient metal are what the higher Ideal Radiants will likely always have. Armor and sword is just one application of that, but there is sooooo much more that could be done than what historically was done by the orders of knights literally founded during a seemingly eternal war. Peacetime Roshar without Odium breathing down everyone's necks could be fascinating.

I was listening to RoW, in particular Kaladin's spar with Zahel. When Zahel was talking about Type 2 Invested entities, when a departing soul is drenched in power and stapled back onto a body. I'm paraphrasing from the audio, but Zahel says "It's what happened to me. Happen to your friend in the tower too. The one with the sword." That's gotta be referring to Szeth right? There's also this WoB, particularly the bolded section: So... did Nale just cut the timing really, really close, or did he deliberately wait until Szeth was dead before sloppily stapling his/a soul back to his body? If so, why? What about Gawx? With Szeth in particular, I started wondering if he would end up being in some measure Kaladin's guinea pig for the project Dalinar gave him - namely healing the Heralds' minds. As a slight tangent, I wonder if Moelach was deployed by Rayse specifically to accelerate the mental degradation of the Heralds. It seems unlikely that the Death Rattles were meant to benefit humanity, particularly the Diagram. Maybe it was meant to give insight for the Fused and attack the Heralds? Perhaps Moelach will have to be bound before the Heralds regain any of their sanity. Any ideas as to why it might be important that Szeth is potentially a Cognitive Shadow? Thoughts?

Oh cool, we got a WoB on this exact question. Thanks bubblebooy whoever you are. Looks like it's a combination of the responses. In some ways it will reduce the benefits of drawing Nightblood but also mitigate some of the negative effects.

I'll add in that even if you did figure out how to get it to consume Investiture, you might only get a couple of leechings before it healed itself and stopped being a Lifeless. Which is cool in itself, but complicates things. Add that to the list, might be able to make low-grade Returned (or whatever Brandon was implying) once Medallions become more accessible or Scadrial gets more Breaths.