Duxredux

Some of Shallan's sketches provide supernatural insight, though likely only when she adds in details she isn't paying attention to. Not sure how far that foreshadowing goes or if it mostly shows current events of people she has some sort of Connection to. Oh, cool, the Coppermind already pulled the details I was looking for. Another thought is the specific shapes that emotion spren take in the PR, particularly the mutable ones. They are harvesting emotions and perhaps thoughts or memories from the person they are drawn to. That might be giving clues to the innermost thoughts of viewpoints we don't have yet, so a type of foreshadowing though not one that necessary draws on future sight per se (though maybe it does). Angerspren for humans appear as pools of blood, whereas for the Listeners they appeared as bolts of lightning (future stormforms?). At any rate, each spren form was deliberately chosen for every single instance they show up, particularly the ones that have multiple appearances. Brandon even has been tracking which regions different spren are rarer or more common, like logicspren being rare among the Alethi but common in Azir, probably foreshadowing Shadesmar geography. Both of these have been around from the very beginning and may not be quite so obvious on first read through. Brandon says people haven't realized that his hidden clues are foreshadowing yet, though that doesn't discount alder24's list. I definitely missed some of those my first few readings.

Material composition can matter for Awakening strength, so optimizing for that can help with a lot of Awakening feats. For example (90% not serious), take Awakened cheese golems to combat Shardbearers, assuming a dairy product counts as living adjacent as much as cotton does. Shardbearer stabs or slashes at the golem, the golem "flexes" to immobilize the Shardblade before using a hammer to bash the Shardbearer in all its cheesy glory. You'd need a cheese with a really good rind. As for near-living incredibly strong material, start looking at the same military applications as spider silk. You might even be able to get away with Rosharan Greatshell carapace. Soulcast items that were previously alive will work too. One question I have is how high the 1 Breath 1 Lifeless Command scales. I'm guessing that 1 Breath won't let you make a Lifeless Chasmfiend, and though even then it would likely be lacking the necessary spren to allow it to support it's own weight. So you need to make Awakened power armor for your Chasmfiend. What other creatures are worth Awakening and bending to your will? Nightmaws? Would Aviar retain their parasite and still grant a blessing? Yeah, Awakeners have a lot of flexibility and power at the disposal - so long as they have the Breaths.

I'll chime in that who is a better father can be a very emotionally charged topic, and perhaps one that can be highly subjective. I semi-apologize in advance for the snark, but proving that one of two men, neither of whom have children, is objectively the better potential father is one reason that people use this social construct known as "dating" to determine the answer for their specific circumstance. And surprise, surprise, different people generally choose different men.

I'm voting Ishar. Look at his track record. He's the only non-Shard we know that literally made a planet uninhabitable. He founded the Knights Radiant and convinced a lot of very important people, including Honor, that the Oathpact was a good idea (getting immortality and the Bondsmith Honorblade in the bargain I might add) after they knew he nuked a planet. His idea trapped Odium for thousands of years. Now he's unhinged and an unchained Bondsmith. And he still just convinced Dalinar, whose bond to the Stormfather he just tried to steal, to meet up with him in Shinovar. His knack for getting people who already know how his plans turn out to go along with his next scheme is perhaps as scary as his Bondsmith powers. The dude wants to become Adonalsium. Possibly even more than Odium, they shouldn't let Ishar out of the Rosharan system, especially if he had his Honorblade and was still insane. Maybe not even if he was sane. His ambition, knowledge, chutzpah, charisma, and power are all formidable.

Considering the ethics of using Hemalurgy when Medallion-tech is viable, I'm guessing Hemalurgy for power granting might end up only used for creating Medallions for Invested abilities foreign to Scadrial. There may be an attribute stealable by one or more of the Godmetals that makes Hemalurgy very attractive again, but we'll have to wait for those to be revealed. My guess is that in the long run Hemalurgy will become a very dangerous weapon against Invested beings as the proper Intent can be triggered anywhere and Aluminum production becomes more well known across the Cosmere. In fact, I suspect Aluminum is the general answer to power creep. With the right knowledge, an Aluminum spike gun or Aluminum spear is one of the better Hazekiller weapons.

@alder24, all fair points. Hopefully for Ann's sake it isn't that bad, but I was looking specifically at low level ozone concentration levels, who know how high they actually are when generated by a spore. Rain on the Zephyr sea... What would that even look like? Even if the rain falls in known lines, the explosions of air should blast the falling water droplets and Zephyr spores everywhere and create amazing winds and really funky pressure differentials. That sounds terrifying, and ships would probably want to stay well, well clear. I'm surprised that Crimson is the one with unpredictable weather, not Zephyr as I think about it, but then who knows how those rain lines even work.

I'm not sure. How were the Surges, including Connection (Adhesion), bound to the Knights Radiant? How were the knights as they are laid out in symmetry with the 10 different surges formed without specific and intentional design? I guess it's possible, but I doubt that the spren just naturally and symmetrically granted power over the surges to those they bonded to with the Nahel bond. I was looking at this one before posting my idea actually. I wouldn't take this one as face value, since this is a pre-mission record of one of Urithiru's Knights, right? I would totally believe that anyone other than a Bondsmith or Herald sent to imprison BAM might not understand the full implications of what was happening or get the full briefing before going on the mission. I think there's something specific Connecting BAM and the Nahel Bond, or maybe the Nahel Spren based on these epigraphs from RoW, from Kelek: We know that the Fused, at least Raboniel, consider Adhesion to be a false Surge offered by Honor. Presumably this implies that they generally don't have access to Connection, yet how was BAM Connected in any measure to the Parsh? As for the Sibling, perhaps the Nahel spren as it works with the Knights Radiant is a bond of Honor. Perhaps that was what was specifically lost when she says that she lost the ability to hear her father's tone - maybe she would have become a Deadeyes had she not had Cultivation's tone to draw on. Perhaps Navani's method of restoring the Sibling's ability to hear Honor's tone would help Deadeyes in some way. Storytelling-wise, there's plenty of Chekhov's Guns laying around here for this. As for the Stormfather, perhaps as the remaining holder of Honor's power and the remnants of Tanavast's soul, he was a source of that power and Tone and was not appreciably affected. Assuming that this mechanism of a too-powerful Nahel bond is accurate for theory-crafting purposes, I would guess the Parsh transition to Dullform didn't happen in a single world shaking event at the binding of BAM. Instead it may have happened the very next time they tried to change forms - and their ability to Connect was ripped away (along with their ability to hear rhythms) and left with the spren that had facilitated their form of power. Perhaps it happened with the very next Highstorm as some tried to change forms. Not sure if that's the Voidspren anymore, but presumably the forms of power are more militant forms. If they tried changing to say, mateform during a Highstorm to allow their species to persist, the too powerful or unregulated Nahel Bond, specifically given by the form of power, broke the Parsh. To know if this is accurate, I'd have to check if any of the Listeners tried to change from a form of power back to one of the normal forms, but I don't think the mind-altering nature of Stormform allowed any of them to do that before the Everstorm came. In essence, perhaps the Parsh had the same restriction that the Knights Radiant had at the Recreance, where once bonded to a spren only by a very careful process could they safely annul the bond and withdraw without becoming a deadeye. If there was an abrupt or forcible separation of the bonded, while both were alive, then the bond broke one side's ability to Connect. At any rate, @alder24, thanks, you filled in some of the stuff that I didn't get around to posting (like dullform), and stuff that I didn't remember. Sometimes writing these long posts on a phone is really obnoxious, and finding references is a pain. I acknowledge there's a lot of stuff that would have to be filled in, and I don't have anywhere close to the references that some of the other theories like "Chanarach was the one who broke", but the core idea is that whatever portion of the spiritweb that Connections, well, connect to, particularly the Nahel Bond, is specifically what is missing from the Deadeyes and the dullform parsh. There seems to specifically be issues when that Nahel bond is broken when both parties are alive. Whether BAM is Connected to the bond itself or did some crazy Elantris level or Rosharan scale Connection, that specifically seems to be what was missing from both. Maybe this isn't enough new material compared to all of the other theories, but the mental leap was that the Recreance and Parshendi dullforms all seemed to be an issue with that bond specifically, and that dead Shardblades were left with an incomplete and forced Connection to the PR. It's tenuous, but I hope it at least got people thinking in new directions, even if it ultimately isn't correct.

This line of thought came from another thread, but it seems like it warrants its own discussion. I was looking into what possible levels of ozone could be generated from Zephyr for use as an oxidation agent for spore bullet impact charges, but I'm finding that even the amount in smellable ozone might be creating a host of problems. Ann says that Zephyr spores give off a smell like lightning, which is one of the things she finds nifty. The characteristic smell of lightning often is the result of ozone forming. The issue with this is that ozone is hazardous. Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia article: Assuming I'm reading this correctly, if you can smell it, it's probably damaging your lungs (sorry Ann). Because of the nature of the spore seas, rain falling on the Zephyr sea is by definition, sea level and breathable air. Longterm exposure, even at very low levels of ozone causes all sorts of problems (ouch, sorry Ann). An article by PubMed Central found here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427716/ also notes "A characteristic property of ozone odor is the fact that it is easily addictive" (ouch, ouch, sorry Ann, but this explains a lot). I'm not sure on the decomposition rate of ozone at ground level compared to the generation rate of the gasses of the Zephyr sea, but all this together seems to be a substantial concern for residents of the Zephyr sea, particularly for anyone who frequently works directly with Zephyr. It might not be gassing them, but this doesn't seem insignificant. I'm guessing Brandon will try to avoid playing the card he did for Scadrial, "they are just genetically resistant to metal poisoning". Sorry for everyone that likes Ann, based on this amateur prognosis. I'm pretty sure the plan for Zephyr is to serve as an emergency air supply for the space age. If the air it generates had hazardous gasses in it, that could cause problems, but not insurmountable ones. I'd guess a filtration unit should be able to filter the larger trioxygen molecules from the breathable air until it decomposes into dioxygen, so that wouldn't cause issues directly. Thoughts? Anything I've missed? I'm not an expert on the matter by any means. Presumably the spore cycle that Xisis is studying at the bottom of the Crimson Sea somehow has to account for air generation above sea level... right? If this "smell of lightning" isn't ozone, then what is causing it?

Here's the theory. BAM specifically Connected herself to the power of the Nahel Bond on Roshar, and I think a lot of problems are caused by an asymmetrical breaking of the Bond. Perhaps the bond is now slightly too strong and unregulated. Elantris spoiler: Here's some things we know or highly suspect: When a Radiant dies, their spren does not become a Deadeyes, that only happens if the Radiant forsakes their Oaths. When this happens, the spren gets a more permanent tie to the PR, either they manifest as a Shardblade or they are dismissed while bonded to a Shardbearer. The deeper the bond, presumably the more damaged the Deadeye. BAM gained new abilities that allowed her to grant forms of power to the ancient Singers, possibly as a copy of Ishar's Knights Radiant. Singer forms by their very nature are spren bonds, Nahel bonds. Presumably when BAM was imprisoned, the Singers became Parshmen, unable to form bonds with spren to gain forms and they lost their minds in the process. Voidspren, particularly Ulim seem to have far, far more mental stability in the PR than they ought to, considering Ulim was able to leave Venli's gemheart with no negative consequences to his mind. There is an imbalance here. Not a new idea, but I agree with the idea that at the imprisonment of BAM, the Singers with forms of power, basically all of them except the Listeners, lost a portion of their Cognitive selves to the Voidspren that inhabited their hearts. This provided an anchor to the Voidspren in the PR, allowing them to retain their minds even when in the PR. This widespread rending of the fabric of Roshar's nature may have kicked off the decisions that lead to the Recreance, though 17 Sharders who track the history would need to check that. At the Recreance, by a similar mechanism the spren became Deadeyes, a portion of their mind trapped in the other realm. Just as a Deadeye can forcibly be Connected to a Shardbearer by application of Stormlight, perhaps the Everstorm on the first pass forcibly Connected the Parshmen to the CR and restored their ability to form bonds with Voidlight. This allowed the Fused to be more directly reborn in their bodies with the Everstorm. The restoration of their minds may have been a side effect, though Odium is likely better served by thinking, passionate Singers. Why did the Parshmen still have their lost minds after generations? Perhaps the mostly severed bond that kept the Voidspren sapient was passed down generation to generation. Nahel bonds can be passed. I also wonder if a Deadeye Enlightened by Sja-anat would have their mind restored with the Everstorm. Thoughts? I wrote this late at night, and needed to get it out of my head.

My take on this kind of the debate from the OP is that I mentally separate whether or not redemption is possible, and what should be done if anyone were to run into Moash as he is now in the story. I do think redemption is available to nearly anyone that truly tries to change. If it were written well, and Moash genuinely tried to become a better person, I would be happy for it, perhaps no less than Dalinar's choice of Third Oath. Same answer for Dalinar, Moash, Szeth, or Amaram. That said, if anyone from the Coalition side were to run into Moash right now, if they had good odds at besting him, they should take him down as fast as possible. For someone with an Honorblade that basically means either killing them or crippling them with a Shardblade. Moash has set traps, done sneak attacks, murdered the comatose, and killed former friends. He uses living beings as leverage to manipulate people who care about them. Basically in any situation he is in, he puts everyone in his immediate vicinity in mortal peril. His past actions and his abilities severely limit any situation that he can be trusted in. Unless he were to make an appearance showing clear, indisputable, uncontrivable remorse, he should be taken down before he gets the opportunity to hurt anyone else. Any potential he has for redemption should not supersede the necessity for protecting others from someone as deadly as he has proven to be. Not much of a spoiler, but references Alloy of Law:

I'd advise against using iron in the bullet. I'm not sure on the gun barrel side as I'm looking down range. It seems possible if not probable that any nearby growing Aethers, Verdant, Crimson, or Roseite would intercept bullets or actively reinforce impact sites. I'm assuming that iron and steel affect the growth of the Aether, but do not feel a Newtonian push or pull, similar to a plant growing towards the sun. At least, that's what it looked like to me. Even if the attraction effect drew the growth from other spore projectiles, I doubt this would be any improvement on just hitting with the spore in the first place. Since this is likely going to be used in conjunction with other spore-based weapons, it seems wisest to stick with shooting spores, silver, aluminum, or ammo material that has no interaction with spores, unless it's specifically for a situation down range. Using iron just to get a faster shot seems like it could cause all sorts of unwanted side effects. Now steel rounds for a smooth bore weapon might do interesting things for defensive spores. I'll let others debate on if it will fire well or not. As for Zephyr and Sunlight used in the propellant, I suspect that Zephyr specifically creates oxygen atoms in both O2 and ozone. Ann comments on the smell of lightning when there's a puff of Zephyr, which sounds like ozone to me. I haven't run into a class that gives me the formulae for figuring out optimal ballistic performance so someone else would have to tell me if that would change the propellant side, but with instant ignition and a potent oxidizer, that sounds like a dangerous impact charge.

One question I have is if we know the full response that is taken against someone who is viewed as a direct threat to the Spore Eater. To my knowledge, we only ever see Crow herself fire a shot, and the Aether may be less hostile towards her than anything else. If it directly attacks a person threatening the Spore Eater, like a Verdant Aether spearing out and taking root in an aggressor and fueling itself with their blood, that could be very dangerous. Dangerous enough that even silver axes may be too slow for something that catches bullets. It doesn't necessarily need to block silver, it just needs to kill you faster than you can hit it. Ranged attacks may be much more effective than close combat, particularly if you are out of range from the Aethers. I assume the defense response of the Verdant Aether protecting Crow draws on her water just as readily as other spores, considering she takes a long drink after firing at herself. Nothing special, just fire at Crow from all sides from a distance until she dehydrates and can't move. If you specifically aim for her gun arm or legs, the growth of the vines may disrupt her aim or hamper her own ability to defend herself.

At the very least, printing out Aon templates to trace would vastly improve most Elantrians' abilities to draw the more complicated Aons. They already have theory books, but here you can more readily mass produce them or make Aons with previously calculated measurements. And here's the "Aon Shao so everybody looks like Galladon" template or "everyone looks like a Scadrian as extrapolated from your face". My initial thought was wondering at what point the necessary intent would trigger for the Aon to go active. For example, if Raoden were to draw the chasm line on any of the Aons in the theory books he found, would they have gone active, or would he need to have the Intent to channel the Dor for the entire character and thus need to retrace the whole thing? I'm guessing the latter, even if Raoden himself had written the book. The Aon glows from the very first stroke, and fails if even the first stroke is incorrect. This might mean that the correct Intent must be utilized during the entire coding process, and that each Aon must be typed as active to make it run in the end. It looked like from the WoB, even object-oriented programming is possible, but an Elantrian would have to write the code themselves, not just run it through the compiler. Let's start by assuming that this is possible, what would need to be ironed out to make it usable? If keeping an active Aon in standby in a program is possible, there would probably be syntax foundational to basic Aon programming, like starting every single program with stipulations that the following Aons do not run unless an execute command is given. Depending on how removed the Elantrian can be from creating a functional Aon - and might need to be typed with the correct Intent for the program to run - then even the characters as displayed on a monitor might be considered valid Aons. Hence the need for safe syntax. What I don't know is how transferrable or savable this is - can the Aons be saved to a file which is closed or do they constantly require an actual visible presence on the screen? What portions of the Aons could be reused or called again, and which portions would either vanish or need to be retyped to renew the correct Intent to make them active again? With callable Aons, I'm guessing most of this will have workarounds to make most things repeatable and could make certain sections of code very routine. That said, as far as I know know, AonDor wasn't designed from the ground up to have nice and tidy syntax or to be nice and user-friendly for the Elantrian programmer. There could be really obnoxious hoops to jump through to get it to work, but if it's possible at all the complexity will just determine if we're talking similar to Python or Java in terms of difficulty and user friendliness or if we're talking C++ or Haskell. As for a simulation, I'd guess that even Earth computers could run simulations on what an Aon would theoretically do if we had sufficient information to define what each did and how they interact. If we can do it with non-Invested tech, they should be able to.

I'll pitch in that Zane was able to counter a Duralumin-enhanced Push from Vin using Atium. The timing and strength of his counter Push was so accurate that he barely moved. Whatever processing abilities Atium bestows, it allowed responding to even that kind of cue (which is what, Vin jerking slightly as she pushes against her anchors on one side and whatever Zane was Pushing against?) It doesn't anticipate someone else about to burn Atium, so presumably as long as there are any visual cues whatsoever, it can help the burner react. As for Vin's reaction to Zane's Atium, I'd argue that Vin is world class in no way less than Kaladin. By herself she took on a squad that consisted of two fully trained Mistborn, Mistings, and killed one of the Mistborn with less than a year of training at age 16. She walked away with a cut to her arm and her cheek. That kind of pure skill is theoretically trainable, but expecting any significant percentage of 51 people to do the same is pretty unrealistic, especially when there isn't any athletic prerequisite to become a squire. Even then, Zane had a 50/50 chance to respond to her attack and guessed wrong (and pulling off the react-to-the-reaction multiple times consecutively seems incredibly difficult). 50/50 odds if you happen to have insanely good reflexes are better than no odds, but that's still terrible. If we're allowing this high of a level of Cosmere knowledge to the combatants of their own system and their opponents, then the Seers can start doing Fortune guided strikes to Hemalurgically spike out chunks of the Windrunner's Spiritwebs. I'm betting that even if the spike is the wrong metal to hold and retain the charge, any Allomantically viable metal could punch out an ability or a Connection from a Spiritweb (unless we think that each metal can only interact with a specific aspect of the Spiritweb, which seems unlikely to me). Spike out the Squire's Connection to their Radiant through their heart, and they're dead with no Progression to save them.

I second @alder24's post. My comments are regarding storytelling and stray towards a "how the sausage is made" type of explanation and is based on how I've heard Brandon talk about the books and his writing process, and unlike alder24, this one feels like an essay is coming on, so if you keep reading to the end, you have been warned. There will be a tl;dr at the bottom. The Wax and Wayne books are a slightly different genre to the Stormlight Archive, despite both falling under fantasy. Wax's books are meant to be similar in feel to the pulp fiction genre, those stories being the ones that were bite-sized thrillers originally serially published in magazines back when Brandon was growing up, reading the genre, and trying to break in as a writer. Brandon pays homage to the original format in the book's newspaper clippings with the stories of Nicky Sauvage and Allomancer Jak. Brandon intentionally keeps the Wax books shorter because he need faster pacing for the genre, adding elements of thriller books that you sit down, ones that you read in one sitting as the tension pulls you to the end. This is why the books' word counts are only around 90,000 - 100,000. They are designed to have that kind of tension, and once the major conflict starts with the wedding party and Steris's kidnapping, the rest of the events in Alloy of Law span a few days at most. Most of the books fit this format, once the inciting event happens, the whole thing gets wrapped up in a matter of days. The Bands of Mourning is the exception with the additional travel time, and the tension overall dropping a bit as the characters themselves get a breather. There's real tension for the characters as Wax and Wayne are outnumbered or otherwise outgunned in nearly every fight they are in, of course as Wax takes heavy injuries, from getting blown up all the way to dying. Because the characters feel tension the reader feels tension. We're supposed to be worried that Wax is going to be shot or blown up - again - because the format of the story including length supports that in addition to Brandon not telling us up front how many books are left in the series. Incidentally, I generally enjoy the Wax and Wayne books and reread them far more than the Stormlight Archive in part because I often am in the mood for that kind of humorous romp than I am in a deep lore dive. In contrast is the 400,000+ word count per book epic fantasy known as the Stormlight Archive, and we're just 40% through the story and we know it. Brandon wants his own, really his own, Wheel of Time that he wrote entirely himself before he bestows the RAFO on the next to take the reigns of behemoth epic fantasy as he was given the RAFO by Robert Jordan's wife and editor. We already know the characters that are planned to have viewpoints for the rest of the series. Sure he's had a posthumous viewpoint, but we're not worried that all those character are going to die before they get their book. In essence, because of the length of the story as a whole and the enormous length of each book, if Brandon were to keep the tension as high as he does for the Wax books, he would have readers burning out all over the place. He's also depicting a longterm war which means lots and lots of battles. It's not so much as each individual battle so much as it the long-term effects of war on a person, as Dalinar explains when he relieves Kaladin of active duty, and all of the reasons that alder24 said. In essence, by necessity of the booklength, this story must have clear signposted indicators of when we should be feeling high tension, which is usually at the Sanderlanche at the end - Kaladin returning to save Dalinar, fighting Szeth, fighting Amaram, and when he ultimately jumps off the tower in a suicide attempt (at the end when he can get away with killing a character and have the readers adjust to their absence between books, like Elhokar, Sadeas, and Amaram, whose deaths feel bigger than say, Ialai Sadeas). The rest of Kaladin's fights need to not have as much immediate tension because readers need to not burn out as fast as an actual wartime combatant, even though there still needs to be accurate depictions of the scrambling, regrouping, and general complications in any battle. Stormlight-based healing both before and after the fight reduce that tension - but raises the longterm tension of Kaladin building a dependency on Stormlight as he unconsciously uses it to try to self-medicate his depression and anxiety over his friends. Again, as alder24 noted. And to finish with a lengthy conclusion, perhaps it's good to sit back and watch for the overarching conflicts rather than the small altercations in SA, because it's meant to be a long-form story. Honestly, I'm glad for all of the signposting that Brandon does in the Stormlight Archive, including when I need to be on edge, like listing which viewpoints we will get in each of the five parts to each book, or telling me ahead of time who the viewpoint characters will be so I can mentally set my expectations. I've tried to read the Wheel of Time on 4 separate attempts and I've bounced off every single time around books 7-9. This is in part because I'm trying to read them back to back so I can try to retain the plot lines in my head, in part because I'm not in the middle of the phenomenon that was the Wheel of Time when you had the rampant theory crafting and discussions - what we basically have on the 17th Shard. A lot of my friends have read Sanderson, so each new book gives us something to talk about and go over our favorite scenes, but I don't have that with Wheel of Time - either they have not read it or have read the whole thing and already know the answers to everything. Wheel of Time's pacing and story structure as it sits in its complete form just didn't work for me, and there isn't anything wrong with the books, but there is a necessary buy-in and commitment to this type of story that is a bigger ask than something like Alloy of Law. I guess this is also my suggestion to everyone who has loved every book of the Stormlight Archive and has been trying for years to get their friends to read it - give them a chance to absorb each book in its entirety before handing them the next one, unless of course they just immediately ask for the next installment. Try to give them a bit of the same discussion and theory crafting experience that you had when waiting 3 years between books, it will help them retain the important elements and can get a chance to discuss anything confusing (and if they are genuinely confused or missing something important and shouldn't have, be wise when you RAFO them). Yes, you want to show them Dalinar at the end of Oathbringer or Maya at the trial, and yes you want them to be up to speed so you can discuss everything with them, but 1.5 million words to read before you discuss it with them is a big ask (and discuss it beyond - oooh, wait until ___). Journey before destination, don't rush them to your favorite parts, let them enjoy the ride. I highly support and praise all the 17th Sharders who support and discuss with people who post their reactions in the various threads as they share their first reading experience. I'll get off my soap box now. tl;dr from a storytelling design perspective, Mistborn Era 2 books need different tension in their fights compared to SA based on the length of each book and the promised length of the series.

Well... I guess Hoid has been to the Horneater Peaks. I'm assuming your name is a shortening of a longer name... TotES spoilers

I think you are overstating the ability of Plate, and we're talking a handcannon, not Vindication. To use video game terminology, Plate doesn't eliminate knock-back; hit a Shardbearer hard enough and they will get thrown around. Kaladin's flying kick during Adolin's duel not only cracked the backplate, but also the connecting sections with the added bonus of knocking the Shardbearer to the ground. I don't remember the Big Gun specs, but the handcannon from BoM used rounds as big around as a man's wrist and that gun had enough kick to cripple a man's hand if they fired it without properly being braced. Add in whatever armor piercing properties that Ranette would come up with. I'd guess that a Shardbearer could run through bullets as easily as they do arrows, but I wouldn't dismiss small cannon fire. The WoB uses Vindication as an example, and I'm guessing something like a Pewterarm round with Wax Pushing the bullet to get the one shot break. I think these rounds should do plenty of damage and at least stagger any Shardbearer that gets hit with a round. This isn't to say it's a fair fight, it definitely isn't, but I don't think it would be a trivial matter for a Radiant to fight this loadout. Word of advice for anyone considering fighting an 11 on 1 fight, get some allies that can carry guns.

Spoilers for the end, don't read it unless you've finished the book. Seriously, it won't make sense and it spoils a lot. I haven't seen anything to directly indicate this, but the spoiler section is a theory for the Lord Ruler's reasons for building the storage caches. Had another couple thoughts after sleeping on it.

First, I will note that anything that Ruin said while trying to get Vin or Kelsier to capitulate should be taken with a grain of salt. Similarly anything that Odium said of Honor or Cultivation when trying to recruit to his side should also be taken with a grain of salt. Lastly, and perhaps an obvious statement, most Shards do have a Vessel calling the shots. Those Vessels can choose, can make plans, and can manipulate. To an extent, calling a Shard good or evil is like saying that the position of judge, manager, president, or gardener is intrinsically good or evil. They aren't - but some positions do have more options available to them that let them nuke planets compared to others. This brings me to my second point in addressing the OP, are we talking about Preservation, the power in general, or Preservation as held by each Vessel? Because as readers I think most would say that Leras, Kelsier, and Vin as they held the power, as we judge the decisions they made, were heroes. I agree with @king of nowhere on how PR often works (public relations, not Physical Realm this time). That said, with the context of Leras, though he was not referenced by name, was praised by Sazed in the HoA epigraphs, and he had in-depth knowledge of the events leading up to the Catacendre, likely beyond what the First Generation of Kandra told him. It is of Leras that Sazed uses these words: "In Preservation's gambit, I see nobility, cleverness, and desperation." Words to describe the holder of power, not the power itself. By nature of their powerset certain Shards will lean more towards what people will consider "evil" than others. Take Ruin, where they cannot hear the hearts of men, they can only implant their own influence. They interact the world by whispering into the minds of the insane or the spiked - not the perfectly sane and well-adjusted. Psychologically being in that position could seriously distort someone over millenia. That is a stark contrast to Preservation who hears the hearts of men but cannot speak to them until they have died. Their touch on a person literally makes them more sane and their soul more whole. One of these Shards really will have an easier time acting to benefit humanity. As far as I know, such specific limitations have not been revealed for most of the other Shards, but they are almost certainly there. I agree that nearly any Intent taken to an extreme and to the exclusion of other Intents will have major side effects or downsides. However, details about what information each Shard has access to and the ways they can interact with the world and with people, there will be some Shards that will be able to act with more alignment to what most people would consider beneficial than others. As has been pointed out, Nalthis seems to be doing pretty well, and that's likely due to a fundamental constraint of Endowment - in that it is giving power to another. I don't know for sure, but Endowment may not be able to take power for themselves and must give power to others rather than acting freely. Shards that do not have an Intent that impells them to action may give their Vessels an easier time in reigning in effects harmful to humanity. Lastly, I think we sometimes forget that Shards can choose to give up their power, become a Sliver, and let someone else do the job. They don't have to hold onto the power until their personality gets subsumed by the Shardic Intent (which I think is at least partially due to the psychological impact of being unable to interact with the world contrary to the Shard's Intent). We've only seen one person on screen hand over a Shard without dying in the process, but it's a valid option. Waiting around until compelled to ruin stuff wasn't the only option available to Ati. I will acknowledge that stepping away from Ruin and handing off that particular powerset to another person seems incredibly risky and a good way to get yourself killed, so there are reasons beyond just being power hungry or selfish for Ati to hold to the power for as long as he did. I'll also acknowledge that we as recipients of WoBs may know some details regarding the underpinnings of the Cosmere that even the Shards Ascended from the Shattering may not know.

I'm a bit iffy on Elantrian. Aons are abstract enough that I would have a lot of trouble drawing them - particularly the curve on the base Aon. It would be cool but... I screw up enough when doing normal computer programming when I accidentally capitalize something I shouldn't have, forget to close a parentheses. that I shouldn't have or omit a semicolon. (Edit: see?? case in point.) Having to redo the entire program if I sneeze halfway through and twitch my hand would be incredibly abnoxious. Also, I can't just run my program in development, it will turn that rock into a potato, if I'm lucky and didn't screw something up. I can curse someone I meant to heal if I forget a line? Yeah... no. I'm not confident that I won't ever accidentally nuke something. I'm torn between Feruchemist and Awakener. As an Awakener, my piano and vocal skills would improve dramatically, I wouldn't ever get sick, and I could give half of my Breaths to my wife which would put us both at 4th Heightening. Perfect Lifesense to always know where the toddler is... furthermore, if we ever decide we've had it good and are ready to move on, we have an inheritance to give to our children and/or grandchildren. Awakening is the most easily giftable of the abilities, and so the most sharable. If I'm the only Invested being on the planet, that's kind of lonely. Feruchemist because there are totally days when I wish I could just sleep on command, have augmented focus etc.. I wear glasses and I already have found many times when being able to choose to effectively go blind can be really nice. Being able to dampen hearing, or smell as well wouldn't be bad either. See, for many of the attributes I would use it for the storage process just as much as I would to be able to tap the metal. For obvious reasons, gold would be the most obnoxious to store, but... I'm not that wealthy. I'm unlikely to have that much gold in my life to store more than a ring or two. Copper isn't as useful as it was in Sazed's time, since we have pictures, videos, and the internet, but being able to selectively forget things could be really tempting for the wrong reasons. Also, Sazed was a genius, because even if I had a textbook I could pull out, I don't think I would be able to pull off viable mechanical engineering techniques just from ancient theory created by a forgotten religion. As we have learned from the internet, access to knowledge doesn't necessarily equate to mastery of technique.

If we assume pre-existing knowledge, then my question is if Elend while loaded to the gills with Atium can take out Kaladin while a bunch of squires either gang up on him or get in the way. If he can, squires lose their powers and will become fodder for the Seers. If Elend as a Mistborn can't, no Seer or group of Seers will be able to take out Kaladin. Kaladin and Elend are the lynchpins, if either go down, their side loses. I'm really not sure. If Elend steps back and uses a Duralumin enhanced Atium burn at the start before replenishing, and can see far enough into the Spiritual Realm, that might be enough to tip it in his favor.

Biggest difference I see is that Miles keeps his Goldminds embedded in his constantly healing flesh. It's hard to get that gold away from him when he effectively has a constantly regenerating barrier around them. Notably, Miles was before Ranette had finished her rounds for Bloodmakers, which I assume uses the same principle as the one for Hemalurgists, separate them from what lets them heal. By contrast, spheres by nature are Investiture stores that have to be externally recharged, and thus have to be removable and replaceable. Okay, maybe eating spheres might be a viable way to get an emergency reserve (and yes, people, notably bridgeman and Sadeas's troops have thought of eating spheres), but I'm willing to bet most Radiants wouldn't do that on a regular basis. It's why the Radiants had to adapt where they hid their pouches because the Fused were specifically targeting them. A grenade placed on a backpack of spheres will give the Radiant major trouble. It's the major advantage of the Anti-Hemalurgy rounds to just straight Aluminum rounds in my opinion. In general, unless you can actually flat out kill a Radiant which is tough, taking out a Radiant means depleting them of Stormlight, and blowing up their gems should work just fine. It would make them more dangerous to Wax, but these exploding rounds probably could be coated in Aluminum to get most of the benefit of the metal. For that matter, Wax regularly can hit people in the eye with Vindication. How well would a Radiant do with Aluminum rounds going in their eye socket? Agreed, as I said it would be tough. That said, this is Wax we're talking about. To quote Wayne: "You can beat anybody, so long as you don't let them fight back properly". Shooting someone in the back while they were on the toilet is a totally viable strategy. Wax will bail if he doesn't think he can win. Also, glad people liked the thread!

It took me a bit longer to get to it, since it also took me longer than most to get around to reading TLM but I finally read the thread, all 9 pages, of Wax vs Kal. I decided not to revive that particular topic, but I had an alternate and somewhat related thought to ideas in the thread. Assume Ranette were to get off world and then see the various Invested abilities throughout the Cosmere, starting with the Knights Radiant. We know she we would immediately go back to her workshop and make guns and ammo to kill them. Optionally she is making it for a specific person to use, Wax or maybe even Marsh. What do we think she would come up with? What can we come up with? The idea is to come up with stuff that would give a Scadrian, maybe an Allomancer or Feruchemist their best shot (pun intended) at taking on a Radiant, not saying that they will win. First, let's look at Plate. That handcannon designed for Wax to fire while tapping Iron is probably his best bet. Notably, Wax doesn't actually have to flat out break open Plate, he just has to hit enough times that it makes it no longer worth the Stormlight to keep repairing the Plate. If you have a weapon that can consistently damage Plate, it's effectively the same as landing a hit that the Radiant needs to heal, except the Plate makes the Radiant a much bigger target. There's at least one old thread on Shardbearers dealing with cannon fire, so there are responses, but it would take Next is dealing with Stormlight healing. The gun and bullets designed to use against Hemalurgists tapping Gold, the one specifically designed to blow limbs off is probably the best bet. That one has the advantage of causing catastrophic bodily harm, being costly to heal, and if you're lucky either damaging the gemstones of their Stormlight reserve or blasting it away from the body so they're either retrievable by the gunman or too far from the Radiant. Reverse Lashings are a bit tricky to deal with, though Ranette should grasp the concept pretty quickly as a Lurcher. She (meaning Brandon and his team of physicists) would probably come up with something better than just Aluminum rounds. Placement of the Reverse Lashing is also important - is it on a shield or did the Windrunner just paint the ground in front of them? Wax's best bets are probably Aluminum, offset his shot so that it will curve and hit anyway (tricky, but unlike a Lurcher a Reverse Lashing won't just decide to stop Pulling if it can see you aren't aiming at it), or try to maneuver so that the Reverse Lashing is behind the Radiant so it adds even more force to the round. All very tricky, but Wax has superhuman precision with guns, and if anyone could pull it off it would be him. For Lightweavers, it's messy, but Wax's grenade launcher should paint the room with shrapnel and let him sense irregularities from the visible (and, well, see what wasn't blown up). Not the gun to break out when chasing someone who tries to fade into a crowded street. Soulcasting, the best bet is probably to take them down before they know you're there. It's just too unpredictable to really plan for, since they can make so much stuff. Maybe Tineye rounds or grenades to thoroughly disrupt their concentration, but that still might not work for an experienced Soulcaster. I do wonder if causing major damage to whatever the Soulcaster is trying to Transform would disrupt the Soulcasting. Edgedancers would be difficult to hit and chase, but probably not much more than a Coinshot. I'm don't think any specialization beyond standard Anti-Radiant rounds would be necessary. Cohesion and Tension are ones we haven't seen much of and would probably give Ranette trouble. There's probably better options than just tossing grenades at them but I'm not sure what. Nothing yet for Elsecalling that I can think of. On home turf, Elsecalling may present different challenges on Scadrial than Roshar, especially since we don't know where the Perpendicularities are. For fliers using Gravitation, probably just be a good shot. Ranette made you the gun, so you better not blame her for the accuracy or she might shoot you. Division, standard Anti-Radiant rounds and kill them from a distance. Again, haven't seen enough Division to really know everything we're dealing with. Bondsmith with probably an army of Radiants protecting them? Gooood luck. ICBM or something. Squires? Really tough, but the best bet is to kill the Radiant first so the rest lose their powers. Alternately use massive area of effect attacks and try to damage any gemstones in the area or injure the group to drain their overall Stormlight as quickly as possible. Thoughts? Additions for other Invested arts?

Yeah... this is like trying to do surgery with a sentient wood chipper. Theoretically possible in a 1 in a million scenario, but even with all of the disadvantages (never thought I'd say this pre-Era 3) Hemalurgy is a much, much safer way to do minute targeted changes on the Spiritweb, particularly excisions. You'd have to figure out how to direct which part of your soul goes into Nightblood and still be in control over your body while your soul is being painfully devoured. There isn't a good way to practice this and you get one shot to do it juuuuust right and hopefully nothing you wanted to excise was close to anything important, like motor skills or brain function.