Duxredux

I found this: My question is if she got access to an Honorblade, could she utilize Stormlight to fuel her Surges in addition to metabolizing food into Lifelight? From there, could she figure out how to internally mix and/or separate the power into Towerlight with the right intention? Maybe she just eats a prism to separate it? I'm imagining something on the back 5 where something goes wrong with the Sibling and Lift just jams herself into the workings and makes it work anyway. At any rate, having a Radiant on standby at Urithiru that can be directly fueled by the Sibling and Bondsmith could be really useful. Sure Dalinar can open a perpendicularity and eventually Navani will be able to as well I assume, but making it so Lift is doing funky stuff that only Bondsmiths do would be... fitting and hilarious. I still don't know how she was sneaking into Dalinar's visions. Thoughts?

Here's the relevant phrase from the Coppermind: Ishar flickers his Honorblade at the end of RoW. I think it's clear that the summoning time can be instantaneous, but is based on the perception of the wielder, as Szeth takes 10 heartbeats to summon Jezrien's Blade. Unless we think that there's an inherent difference to Ishar wielding his own Blade? At any rate, I think this could be updated to include what we see Ishar do.

This is clever and what you've described seems sound. I'll add one more element to consider and that's security. Honorblades have security in three ways, being able to key it and its ability granting to the user, being able to summon and dismiss the blade at will, and being able to kill people threatening you. Right now we only have the third, but you want at least the first. You really don't want people to knock the Honorblade that you've worked really hard to create out of your hands and then fly off with it or nuke you with their ill-gotten powers. If we can't figure this out, owning one of these becomes extremely dangerous. Nightblood's security is that he requires a huge amount of Investiture to use, will kill a user that considers themself evil, and is too dangerous for most sane people to want to own or use. Probably not what we want to copy. There is a very small informational lock in that if you don't know if something is a Southern Scadrian medallion and how those work, you won't intuitively know it can be used like one. That's not a great security system though. Not sure what the solutions are. The physical link problem, if you could dismiss it at will and summon it to your hand that could solve that issue mostly. It depends on if you suddenly lose your Stormlight reserve when you lose contact with the Honorblade. Edit: I'm reading the WoBs and Honorblades are ridiculously dangerous to have. Their default state is not dismissed and anyone that holds one can access the powers if they know it grants it. Who designed the security on these things!? Okay, sure, they're prototypes compared to Shardblades but still... you probably want better security than the original Honorblades.

Captain Goradel - a traitor, ostracized by his own, a pawn of the gods, tried to kill a member of Kelsier's crew, ultimately was a hero that helped save the world. TenSoon - a traitor, ostracized by his own, a pawn of the gods, tried to kill a member of Kelsier's crew, ultimately was a hero that helped save the world. Marsh - a traitor, ostracized by his own, a pawn of the gods, tried to kill a member of Kelsier's crew, ultimately was a hero that helped save the world.

There's two conversations here, that may or may not be related. The first is what Ideal Dalinar is on. The second is if Unity as a Shard makes sense. I agree that Dalinar is likely on the 3rd Ideal, for the other reasons mentioned, that he doesn't have Plate and because the only known 4th Ideal Radiants that Raboniel was worried about was Jasnah and Kaladin. Shardhood may or may not be related to what level Dalinar has sworn to. For the second, what would be considered a Shard? Could Dalinar and the Stormfather jointly be considered a proto-Shard when they are operating together using their power? Dalinar clearly has not vaporized and so we can assume that he has not Ascended, but he's a person with ties to all three Realms that has joint access with the Stormfather who holds a large portion of Honor's power. I'd guess Dalinar hasn't Ascended for the reason that he doesn't normally hold the bulk of the power and he hasn't been overloaded enough to vaporize. That's a question that I'm not sure the answer to, can multiple Vessels control a single Shard? If it is possible, I'd guess it would be really tricky for the Vessels to be united enough to not cause conflicting agendas within the Shard, which I assume would be bad. Dalinar at the end of Oathbringer was worrying enough that Rayse ran, and that should be an indication that the level of power that Dalinar has is on level with a Shard I think. So... maybe when they are working together as Bondsmith, they are in a limited fashion functionally a Shard? If they are, then they are definitely restricted to following Dalinar's Oaths of unity, and might rightly be called Unity. My guess for "We killed you!" is that Dalinar and the Stormfather, possibly as Dalinar touches the Spiritual Realm while swearing his Ideal, looked like Honor's Shard to Odium (maybe even a zombie/Frankenstein Shard, I dunno, this is a weird roundabout hacked way to become a Shard if that is indeed what they are together). I don't think that the Shard Unity came together momentarily before splintering again, rather they may functionally be a Shard when united and working together, but that doesn't happen that often so they aren't utilizing that power very effectively compared to a typical Shard. The power and Vessel are separate beings, which is weird and very unstable. It's actually kind of worrying, because Dalinar can make decisions such as accepting Oaths with limited access to the mind and senses of the Stormfather. Imagine having a Shard's power but without a Shard's senses or knowledge to know the actual effects of what you were doing. Further thought and spoilers for Mistborn Secret History What does everyone think?

@Tamriel Wolfsbaine So... I will note a few things about the stuff you're talking about Nightblood and Awakening in general. The creation of Nightblood was weird, really weird. Things happened very oddly to have the result we got. Whatever Azure did to get her blade, that's probably a safer way to do it, and I'm guessing there are reasons for why they do it with metal swords and not just random femurs. Here's my notes: The shape and the way you perceive an object, how it perceives itself, those all have an impact on the result of Awakening. if Shashara and Vasher had used a shield instead of a sword, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. A femur probably still thinks of itself as something used for walking, not bashing stuff over the head. Similarly, a wooden bokken is considered a training weapon specifically meant for practice without killing someone. If you are familiar with how those things are supposed to be used, I could see it unconsciously affecting your Command. I don't know if it would make it fail, but it would probably affect it. Nightblood's aluminum sheath contains him and somehow he doesn't need to follow his Command in the same way as when he's drawn. I don't know if that's simply because that's a property of Aluminum, or if the way we think of a sword is that it is dangerous when it is unsheathed and that the killing is done when it is back in its sheath. I'm not sure if this would work if you were to try to do this with a weapon that didn't have a sheath. Imagine if you couldn't actually turn off Nightblood trying to absorb all the Investiture from you or anything around him. So, embedding Nighblood-style weapons in your arms? That seems like a really, really good way to get yourself killed. Using a weapon that doesn't have a designated and generally accepted "this end -> safe", does the whole thing start trying to sever souls without a safe way to hold the thing? Kaladin uses the entire spear when fighting This is really, really dangerous stuff, and you can't turn it off once you Awaken it, I don't think. We don't know if Azure's blade draws on Investiture on use. Nightblood certainly does. Again, probably a bad idea to imbed things that will suck you soul in your arms. Steel was relevant as the material, but we're not sure how. Endowment was involved in Nightblood's creation, more than the normal amount. Not to a huge extent, but more than normal, and we don't know what that means. Now it may be possible to create hacked Shardblades easily without the 9th Heightening, but if it ever becomes common knowledge then Nalthis is probably going to get devastated. Again. There would be huge consequences in the Cosmere, especially if they are easy to create and move between worlds, which they seem to be, unlike Shardblades. If this were to happen in-world you probably would hope that they would: never speak of it again like the Mythbusters did. The presence of Azure's blade on Roshar can have really scary ramifications.

Thanks! Has anyone considered going through and tagging those Warbreaker annotations in the WoB Coppermind? I routinely miss things like this as I usually don't have time to read every entry. Most of the time these days I end up listening to the audiobooks, and have to scramble to get other things down on paper.

I read this WoB and got thinking: Why does Nightblood not remember killing Shashara? I have three guesses: Nightblood was possibly drawn at the time, and he doesn't seem to remember well when he is drawn. He may have just blanked it. Nightblood ate Shashara's soul and she has never left him (a lot creepier than most cases of this trope) Nightblood's Command, given in Shashara's own native tongue, is repeated/reinforced whenever he is drawn. He hears her voice often, Commanding him to Destroy Evil. She's still talking with him, at least in a limited way. Thoughts? All of the above?

The King's Drop in the Thaylen Gemstone Reserve has been glowing brightly in a dark vault for 200 years. Uh... how? The explanation that it's a perfect gemstone and can hold Investiture indefinitely is all well and good, but energy in the form of light as bright as daylight is being emitted constantly from that gem. It hasn't diminished in that time presumably, and I doubt they lied about it. So where does that light actually come from, if it's not the Investiture emitting radiation in the form of light? Where does the actual light of Stormlight come from?

Agreed. Short answer is that everyone and everything would die. Probably the Cosmere explodes into unrecognizable chaos. Beyond that, looking into the details, I think this depends on how thoroughly Connection works on a Cosmere level, affecting stuff that in our world uses normal physics for. For example, take the Surge of Cohesion, also called the Surge of Strong Axial Interconnection, that allows Willshapers and Stonewards to manipulates things on a molecular level. What happens if matter just... doesn't stick together? What happens if gravity just doesn't work consistently or in the direction it's supposed to? Does a physical object actually need to be tied to it's Spiritual Identity or Cognitive Identity to remain itself? (I don't know the answer to that one) I usually take the Identity Theorem for granted, but I don't know if that's a given here. So yes, you should totally be terrified of Ishar and any unchained Bondsmith.

After reading the comments and thinking back, I'd guess that Adonalsium is similar to the Shards, because they were created by dividing Adonalsium. That implies that Adonalsium was originally a being of Investiture with the various attributes we see in the various Shards but combined into an entity. Adonalsium presumably created Yolen, and the inhabitants shattered Adonalsium, Ascending to become Shards. I do think that it's very likely that there was a mind directing Adonalsium, and that mind presumably died at the Shattering (unless... they became a super Sliver or Cognitive Shadow and are still around...? That's a whole other thread that probably has already happened). Otherwise, I'd expect the Shards to be able to gain sentience and overall autonomy without a vessel, unless they somehow need to be at the scale of Adonalsium to do so. Seems unlikely though as even relatively little Honorspren bonded to humans seem to be more self-aware than say, Scadrial's pre-Catecandre mists. In-world speculation from the Hero of Ages epigraphs: If Adonalsium was just a chunk of metal and there wasn't a distinct and possibly separate conscious directing it, I find it weird that so many people can Ascend so readily to become Shards. People can absorb that much power with at times minimal preparation, and that seems unusual unless the power being directed by a consciousness was something that was somehow built into the system of Investiture all the way up to Adonalsium. Some Vessels get attuned, some cheat, some seem to just be Connected to the Shard(s) and so Ascend. They can do it though, which I find telling.

I doubt that Shallan is a Kandra. If she is, Brandon has deliberately given us misdirection on this one in one of his Q&A sessions, and I don't think he ever intentionally lies. Says confusing things, forgets something he said earlier, or things that he forgot he changed his mind on, those happen all the time. That's pretty good evidence that she's not a Kandra I think. Also, welcome to 17th Shard! I see that this is your first post. Brandon has said that there is a Kandra that we've seen on screen on Roshar, and we've been theorizing about who it is for a while now. This is one of the more clever guesses I've seen, and that would have really rocked us. Shallan's deep dark lie is that she isn't even Shallan and can't remember it? That's one I hadn't considered, even with her instability and holes in her memory.

Duh, I should have checked Coppermind. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Order_of_Bondsmiths#The_Third_Ideal The main focus of this Ideal is becoming a better person over time.[12] There may be other interpretation of this Ideal that have yet to be explored. If this isn't the Third Ideal, then we need to bring it up with the Moderators and make it a point of discussion. Huh. Got the exact wording. @AFdooda If you can't tell, there is a lot of debate that happens here at 17th Shard.

@ReinyxGrey, I'm late to the party (ironically) and I had asked the question of increased 2nd Heightening relevance back in January actually, but I hadn't made the connection to the characters or how it could play into the bigger story line. If you want some supplemental discussion stuff, we had people debating what it would look like just from a Cosmere mechanics and viability standpoint. I for one think it's a really cool idea, and I'm seriously underestimating Endowment if she foresaw to this eventuality.

@Treamayne, your explanation about Dawnshards not necessarily being weapons makes sense, but I sure didn't get that from your initial post. Thanks for clarifying. Wait, have I been reading Oathbringer wrong this whole time? I thought Dalinar's 3rd ideal was something along the lines of "I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man" and that was what the Stormfather accepted as an appropriate Oath with some confusion by saying "these words are accepted". If "I am Unity" was his oath, I've been getting this wrong for years. Ah... I wish I had my books...

@adouloumis I'm not sure if what each Shard is good at necessarily needs to be tied to specific attributes beyond their Intents. I'd guess that if you take each Intent and tried to extrapolate what it would look like in a person to the level of a Shard, you will get ideas on what they can and cannot do. In order to cultivate something, that in some measure is deliberately shaping something to a desired result as it grows. That implies forward thinking, different from intense hatred that plans the deaths of Shards. Honor to an extent is retrospective, aligning oneself to a previous commitment, in the case of the oaths we see (not sure in all of the ways Honor is viewed in Cosmere terms, that's a different debate). We see visions and history far more than extrapolations for what those oaths will mean for the future. We have so many Cosmere terms to throw around, but it wouldn't surprise me if each Shard's powerset is more dependent on what actually happens if you take that Intent to the extreme. It could be based on other things like you suggest, and maybe there is an undiluted Fortune attribute, or outside of Feruchemy or if Shards have a "Fortune" or "Connection" stat, but as of now I'd be basing it off of what the Shard can actually do based on its Intent, rather than being a subset of other powers. Basically what I'm saying is that different intentions can look to the future with entirely different goals. To me at least, it can make sense that Preservation, something intending to maintain something in a specific state in spite of change, could be more focused on getting a specific future than Ruin, unless that future is the reducing of worlds to basic matter. I'd be very hesitant to base Shards off of the Feruchemical table, it only has to account for 2 Shards, not 16. It doesn't have to be right on a grand Cosmere level to be accurate for someone learning Feruchemical theory.

Well... Adonalsium is presumably a Yolish term, and the -ium ending that goes with a lot of metals is likely an aspect of the English language. To really check this, I'd need translations to see if the naming convention of Atium, Lerasium, Raysium etc. hold true in other languages, and even then it might not reveal anything because Brandon is an English speaker and the localization team just kept his made up word as is. Mistborn Secret History spoilers: My guess is if you asked this, you'd get a RAFO or "some people might think this". The question I have is how you are differentiating this hunk of metal from Shards who also can manifest themselves as hunks of metal. Is the implication that there wasn't a human or other sentient being operating as the Vessel?

@Treamayne, I think Dawnshards can be viewed as a weapon, at least from a Rosharan perspective. Honor raved that humanity destroyed Ashyn with the Dawnshards (you can fact check me on this one. This is Oathbringer ch. 113, my copy is in storage at the moment) and in the visions Honor worried that they wouldn't be able to defeat Odium without them, so they can be viewed as tools to oppose Odium. Weaponry may not have been their primary purpose, but they likely can be used as such if you know what you're doing. @AFdooda, I think I've seen that theory that Dawnshards were used in the Shattering, but I'm not sure where. Cool idea regardless! Maybe I saw it on the Shardcast episode on Dawnshards? I don't know if I want to trawl through 2 hours of audio just to fact check if it's a preexisting theory though. On that note, if you are caught up or don't mind spoilers, that Shardcast is a good place to hear what has been discussed on Dawnshards. I'll throw this in here, Dalinar is the one who claimed the name Unity, so it may not be of particular Cosmere relevance, though this was directly after swearing his third Bondsmith Oath and just before opening the Perpendicularity, so he did have an much stronger Connection to the Spiritual Realm right at that moment and may have been speaking truths he himself was unaware of. I'd guess that if Unity was Shard name level relevant, it's because Dalinar's oaths tying him to the Stormfather and the diminished remnants of Honor's power are to unite instead of divide. Because of that, I would say that Dalinar most likely cannot act in opposition to that Intent, regardless of if Unity could be a normal expression of the Shardic power and Intent of Honor. If Dalinar were to Ascend to a full Shard using the oaths binding him to the Stormfather as a foundation to do so (no this not a hypothesis for the 5th Bondsmith oath, this is just hypothetical), then I would guess that he would have to continue operating under those oaths and could very well end up called Unity at that point. I don't know if this would change the Intent of the Shard or if he would be crippled, unable to access or utilize all of his Power compared with another Shard that didn't have to use such a roundabout method to Ascend. A bunch of hypotheticals that would get RAFO'd so fast (Read and Find Out, a card that Brandon gives to people who ask him a question that he doesn't want to answer yet).

Maybe? I just don't see Zahel doing this voluntarily day in and day out for training purposes. If he needed to for a battle or war he might be better equipped to handle that, but I just don't see grumpy Zahel putting up with consistent screaming in his head if he could avoid it. If Nightblood was screaming, things were serious enough to warrant drawing him and he probably agreed that some evil needed to be destroyed. In this case, the question is if he would need to be bonded to the Blade to hear the screams or if he would only hear them if he and the owner touched the Blade simultaneously. Alternately, would Kaladin hear the screaming of the spren only if the one bonded to the Blade was touching it also? I'd guess that he would hear the screaming regardless if he touched a dead Blade.

Actually, as I think about it, there is a precedent for piercing the ear as an A-Bronze bind point, and that's Vin. The question then is would you always have Seeking going if you were spiked into the side of the head? I've been unsure if Inquisitors need to be burning Iron or Steel to have their Steelsight active. Now I just need an Investiture sense based on smell...

Oh good. I read the title and was worried for a moment. If we're going deaths at the most spectacular moments, death by Nightblood is good. He probably wouldn't actually do this because for all of the fans that know his face there would be a jarring immersion break at climatic points, but here are some of those spectacular moments. Definite spoilers for a lot of the books' climaxes.

I'm not sure where it is, but I think I know which one you're talking about. This isn't so much a question of whether it's possible to have Steelsight without a spike (which I believe is possible for a normal Coinshot that simply practiced and changed how they perceived the world), rather it's a question of if the placement in the eye socket enhances Steelsight or otherwise makes it easier to adapt to using it. Marsh was able to see barely days after he was made an Inquisitor, or at least I assume he could see when fighting TLR. Normal sanity probably left the table if you're considering shoving a railroad spike up your nose, especially if a simple nose ring would be just as effective. A Bronze spike through the ear might work for Allomantic Bronze. I dunno.

Okay, I'll admit, this line of thinking came from the Hemalurgic Beaver thread from someone suggesting giving Steelsight to a snail. Does the spike placement in the eyes of Steel Inquisitors actually improve their Steelsight? I figure that normal Steelsight doesn't actually need vision to work, but it seems that even a single spike through one eye grants Inquisitor level Steelsight. That implies to me that it's not just the mind compensating with the lack of a single sense with heightened awareness in others, but that the spike itself can give that sight. So the train of thought is that perhaps sensory apparatus as a Hemalurgic bind point allows better cohesion/connection/processing/whatever when transferring unconventional senses to the Hemalurgist through existing sensory pathways. This led me to wondering if you could steal a Seeker's ability and then spike yourself in the nose and if it would be more effective than just normally granting them Seeking. Then the Inquisitors could "smell" out the Mistings they were hunting. This of course is RAFO territory, and probably a lot of things are possible if you are an expert Hemalurgist, but something in me would find it really funny if this was a known bind point, but they just never used it because it looked too dumb. Steel spikes driven through the eyes are inhuman and intimidating. A bronze spike through the nose? It just doesn't give the same effect. If this thread actually ends up being a serious discussion, then I'll change the topic to "Hemalurgic Senses"

The ettmetal primer cube buzzes when charged with Allomancy. Do we know what frequency it buzzes at or if it changes based on the metal being burned? It occured to me that it probably buzzes to the same pulse pattern that Seekers detect, or at least to pattern or frequency unique to each metal. If it does, then you have a mechanical method of detecting what allomancy the ettmetal is currently burning. Any engineers or programmers see a way to use something like this that has 16 buzzing states specifically tied to the metal being burned? Thoughts?

Redoing my post after some thought. We may need to look more closely at who is doing the Awakening. This WoB notes that because Breaths are the power of Endowment, which is intrinsically about giving away power, you can't use it on yourself (this actually explains to me why Awakeners usually are bad at healing themselves). This probably invalidates the injured person from simply restoring the dead limb themselves. I think another person could do it, but that leaves you vulnerable to the Awakener infusing you with Breaths. We know Breaths can be forced on someone.