Gilphon

Huuuh. Brandon just referred to Restares as a Cosmere-aware player. That's surprising to me- I've always thought of the SoH as ignorant of a lot of wider cosmere stuff.

So, I was going to let this drop, but apparently I need to quantify that last point a little more. What's sticking out to me here, and why I said that, it that it's specifically the Allomantic properties of the metals that are being used here. Covering a gemstone with aluminium doesn't mess with the Spren's identity, it blocks the effect. Brass doesn't control the temperature of the gemstone, it makes the spren less inclined to express itself. We're certainly not destroying the spren or stealing its emotional fortitude. All three examples we've seen are perfect matches for Allomancy but totally unlike the other metallic arts. If it was just the inherent properties of the metals and not Allomancy, you would expect it to be something that shared in all three, not specific a single one. But, in fact, what I'm saying is that what was just revealed is that the Allomantic properties are the fundamental, cosmere-wide properties of the metal; that Allomancy is something far broader than we realized. Which raises the question of exactly what Feruchemy and Hemalurgy are.

Previously, I would not have called that Allomancy, I would have just said 'yeah, that's aluminium being weird'. But this epigraph has made me revise that opinion- it now seems that aluminium's ability to mimic its Allomantic properties in other contexts is not as unique as we had believed. It now seems entirely possible- even likely!- to me that those things are indeed Allomancy. Certainly these things have more in common with Allomancy than Allomancy does with Feruchemy or Hemalurgy.

Other things: Ialai mentioned that 'even the shadows had turned against her'. That... sounds a lot like she was becoming an Elsecaller. Or maybe a Lightweaver. It sounds like she was a proto-Radiant, in any case. The Ghostbloods have become powerful enough that one Highprince was forced to make a deal with them, a second ran off terrified, and a third just sat there resigned to her fate. That's scary. And a few chapters ago, Shallan was thinking that Ialai was the most powerful person in the warcamps. It should be clear to us now that that wasn't true. The idea of the Ghostbloods now being the uncontested top dogs in the warcamps should worry us.

So not all anger is an Angerspren, but all Angerspren are anger. So of course people can be angry with an angerspren showing up. But maintaining that there is a sharp enough distinction between a cognitive representation of an idea and an idea is splitting hairs. It's certainly silly to invent an entirely new magic system where the only difference between it and Allomancy is that the new one only affects the former and Allomancy only affects the latter. And recall that how Allomancy works (with an Allomancer) is that burning the metal Connects you to preservation, who sends you investiture, and then the molecular structure of the metal as a key, telling the investiture how to behave. So the purpose of burning the metal is that it Connects you to a source of investiture. So theoretically, if we had an Allomancer who was also a Radiant, we might expect them to be able to use Allomancy by just pushing Stormlight into a metal, and not burning it. That, I believe, is what we're seeing here- a Fabrial uses Stormlight as the investiture source it needs to create allomancy.

So I really don't think Shallan could've failed to notice herself holding or preparing a needle. And Radiant being the one to kill her, after she was the one arguing against it the entire time? That's just crazy. If she had wanted Ialai dead, why not just back up Veil and outvote Shallan? And surely all three would've wanted to ferret out the secrets Ialai was getting at. Of course spren are emotions. They are pieces of thought that got attached to enough investiture to become self-sustaining. The thoughts involved are somewhat broader than Allomancers typically think of the emotions they manipulate as being, but it's all essentially same thing realistically speaking. Like, imagine a Rioter on Roshar. If they riot somebody's anger or fear, that's gonna make Angerspren or Fearspren more likely to show up; make them express themselves more clearly. And the opposite is clearly true for a Soother. So we can say that with Allomancy, you can use Zinc to attract spren and Brass to repel spren. And so, to get what Navani's talking about here, all this Rioter would have to do is target the spren directly instead of working through a middleman. It's not a new metallic art, it's just allomancy. Being used in an entirely new way.

So, I mean, Navani said that Zinc and Brass were the 'principle' metals. So the other metals are going to do things that aren't as broadly useful in the context of Fabrials. Which makes sense; none of the others directly affect cognition, so they're not gonna directly affect a spren either. Copper and Bronze are probably gonna be the easiest other ones to use, since they're both still Mental metals.

The thing is that it's not just a similar effect, it's exactly the same effect. Like a spren is a piece of living emotion, and zinc and brass are being used to strengthen and weaken it. It's not just a parallel acting on the same principles, it's the same principles leading to the same outcome in two different places.

So the way Fabrials use metals is apparently just Allomancy! Which in turns implies that Allomancers could strengthen or weaken spren, which is kind of fascinating. But what I want to focus on is that this is Allomancy without an Allomancer. You can apparently getting a Rioting effect just by rubbing investiture and zinc together. Which, in retrospect, we've seen from aluminium plenty of times; maybe aluminium isn't as special as we thought. But the idea that allomancy is just that easy if you have a source of investiture... that's huge. A lot could be done with that. The Scadrian medallions are just scratching the surface of widely-available Allomancy, apparently. But- if the Allomantic properties are just what the metal naturally does when exposed to investiture, where do the Feruchemical and Hemalurgic properties come from? Feruchemy in particular is a mystery in this context, since we've always known exactly what you need to do to coax out the Hemalurgic properties of a metal. And also- this could be the key to getting reverse compounding to work, couldn't it? Use a piece of zinc that's been 'activated' like this as a metalmind in order to tap Riotting. Just... Wow. What an epigraph. I'm certain Navani has no idea just how many world-shaking implications are that pretty simple sentence she just said.

It occurs to me that the Fused probably aren't used to death being as consequence-free as it is for them at the moment. Like normally they'd get sent back to Braize until the next Desolation every time they die, which might be centuries away. This time it just means they have to take a week off to recover. But in previous desolations, a single Fused would've been less expendable than a single Radiant, since a Radiant Spren could go forge a new bond within the same desolation. With that in mind, it's worth questioning whether or not this is how the Heavenly Ones acted in previous desolations, or if it's a response to the newly lowered stakes (from their perspective). I'm inclined to think that they've always acted like this, because it's hard for me to imagine beings that have lived for thousands of years completely changing their favoured tactics that quickly. Despite the fact that fighting fair would've put them at a disadvantage in the long run.

So, I mean, I don't want to go as far as to imply that the Heavenly Ones didn't torture the Heralds. But there are hundreds of fused and only ten heralds; it's physical impossible for more than a fraction of them to be doing that at any given time. And for the past four thousands years, with only Taln? I mean, it's hard to imagine more than dozen Fused actually being involved at once. I don't think, therefore, that it's unreasonable to assume that that task was eventually left up to the very sadistic and stubborn among the Fused. And certainly there seem to be plenty of Fused that are worse than the Heavenly Ones. So I feel like there's room for argument about them having with fairly minimal involvement with the whole Herald torturing thing? Like, they were probably at least complicit, so I'm not letting them off scot free. But you shouldn't necessarily take that as a statement on their true character either.

I thought Wax's resonance was confirmed to be his aim, not the steel bubble. Like the steel bubble is an impressive feat, but it's also theoretically doable for any coinshot. I believe some attempts at getting Brandon to tell us what Miles' resonance is have gotten him to tell us that a Twinborn would need to use both abilities near-constantly in order really notice anything, and that Miles leaned too heavily on the Feruchemy side to get anywhere. In general, the Ars Arcanum tells us that Twinborn resonances are gonna be subtle enough that there's no proof they're actually supernatural, while Radiant resonances are 'dramatic'.

I mean, pain would be pretty useless if you weren't able to recognize that it wasn't normal; the entire point of pain is to signal that something isn't right. So it can be assumed that anything that feels pain is capable of figuring that much out. Really unless they're utterly soulless automatons, they're gonna have some level of self-awareness. And if they don't have that, then they're just fancy inanimate objects and could be healing like Dalinar healed the temple.

Ooh, I have a WoB on this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/222-words-of-radiance-houston-signing/#e5636 Which should be understood to mean that they are honorless, but that they are not associated with the Shard Honor in any real way; he didn't create them or anything.

So, with the focus on Dalinar getting excommunicated from the Church last book, I have to imagine that we'll get a Church-based antagonist this book. Hopefully, Restares, because I believe the theory about him being an Ardent and he needs to be tied into the plot somehow. I do not, however, imagine this plot thread continuing in a meaningful way after this book. It seems like Vorinism is on the verge of breaking against the rocks of reality, so they can only be taken seriously as antagonists for so long.

I have a theory that the Fused Orders might also be bound by a series of oaths and they need to access their powers- there was a line somewhere in OB about them learning to access Surges at some point after the Oathpact was established; it's not a thing they could always do. I don't think they're exactly the same ones- the Heavenly Ones appear to be the Windrunner equivalents, but I don't think they're focused on protection- but something that gives each Order a shared 'personality' in much the same way the Radiants do. For the Heavenly Ones in particular, I think it would be about respecting fair competition. So they always accept one on one duels, and will generally agree follow any rules that their enemy suggests (as long as the enemy in question doesn't cheat), and don't like going after people who can't fight back. But in any case, I highly doubt this is new development; they're ancient beings who are almost certainly very stuck in their ways, and the discord between the Honorspren and humans is brand new from their perspective. So I doubt it's anything to do with that.

A big part of the reason I find it weird is that we already had two different ways of modifying the effect; the type of gem matters, and the Singer forms show us that the mindset of the person doing the trapping matters as well. So here we're suddenly introducing a third way of doing it, one that doesn't appear to be utilized in any of the naturally occurring forms of this phenomenon. And this is the very first mention we've had of different metals having different magical properties on Roshar (aside from aluminium, of course). It also makes Fabrials jaw-droppingly open-ended. There are likely to be dozens- maybe even hundreds- of things that can be with each individual type of spren: ten types of gem, probably a roughly similar number of useful metals, and likely two or three valid mindset = 200 or 300 hundred possible effects before you even consider the type of spren, which is likely to be the factor the introduces the most variance. And then you have to consider the implications of using multiple gemstones in a single device to combine effects and stuff like that. The potential here is staggering. So. I hope that illustrated why I was somewhat taken aback by the idea of the type of metal mattering. This doesn't follow. Solid investiture may be metal, but not all metal is solid investiture. In fact most isn't. The metals they're using are no more likely to be invested than any other material they might have chosen. Unless they decided it was a good idea to use Shardblades as Fabrial components or something crazy like that.

I was mildly disappointed to see Sigzil using a Shardblade, because that means he's a full Windrunner rather than just a squire and I was hoping he'd end up being a Truthwatcher.

I think the answer is the first one. Like we saw if Shadesmar in OB that the Honorspren were still largely sceptical of humans, and seemed disquieted by the idea that Radiants were the thing again. Which can be contrasted with the Cultivationspren who seemed overjoyed by the prospect. Which fits with the way that Edgedancers seem to be currently be the largest Order once you subtract the Windrunner squires.

I mean, I'm sure at least one of them is the same, since we've seen Aluminium used to make Fabrials do weird things. It would, indeed, surprise me quite a bit if there wasn't a significant degree of overlap between the two lists, because the a bunch of the Allomantic Metals are the ones they'd be most likely to experiment with. Like iron, steel, tin and copper. It's weird, though. Metals shouldn't be an inherent part of how Fabrials work; Chasmfiends are hardly surrounding their gemhearts with metal wiring. It feels almost like they've added some Hemalurgy into the mix, but if so, it's an application of Hemalurgy that does not resemble anything we've seen before.

I would assume that it does not, that it would just stop them from coming back when killed. I feel like if Odium could just smite somebody with a thought, that would be a big deal and would be worth calling out directly. Even if it was limited to Voidspren-esque beings like the Fused. I don't think the Everstorm changes the picture much tough; he seems to have pretty direct control over the Everstorm. Indeed the Everstorm seems to be the only thing on Roshar he has direct control over; everything else he does is accomplished by working through his various minions.

I don't think Odium micromanages them to that degree. This isn't a Ruin situation where he's mind controlled them all or anything. As we saw at the end of OB when some of them had a problem with following Dalinar, they're kept in line by the knowledge that Odium could yank away their immortality any time he wants. So they have free will as long as they don't annoy Odium enough to make him decide they're not worth keeping around, and presumably are allowed just do their own things most of time.

I mean, The Fused seem to be using the normal surges, not Voidish surges. Like we've seen Kaladin thinking about how their powers mimics what Radiants can do; they're not a whole new set of powers he doesn't understand. And creating a ball of light is pretty obviously an Illumination power- just because Future Sight is also probably Voidish Illumination doesn't mean it can only used to do one thing.

Bring evidence of her treachery to Dalinar. Like he asked her to do, and presumably signed off on this mission thinking that that was what she was going to do. Indeed, I imagine he's going to be somewhat annoyed at Shallan for going off-script like this.

Also, with Navani being able to get a better view of the Spiritual Realm than Rushu and the repeated emphasis on her desire to reactivate the Tower, it really feels like we're heading in a 'Navani as the Sibling Bondsmith' direction.