Gilphon

I mean, I'm pretty sure that we have seen people Bonding Cognitive Shadows; surely that's what the Fused are. Like that's a bond that inevitably ends poorly for the non-Cognitive Shadow participant, but it's still a bond. So, I guess, the first hurdle to overcome in trying to make this work the way you want to is whatever reason the Fused have to body-snatch instead of sharing their bodies with the original owners- because the way that was explained, it did sound like it was more of 'unfortunately, there's only room for one soul per body' and less 'the Fused are just kind of awful like that'; I didn't get the impression the Fused were capable of leaving the original person intact.

I feel like noting that although it's possible for Fabrials to replicate the Surges, that seems to be extremely difficult to pull off- Hence Soulcasters being very rare and valuable, and the Regrowth Fabrial Nale has being seemingly unique- and the more basic Fabrials seem to do stuff that would be complicated to replicate via surgebinding. Like Navani's painrail doesn't map cleanly onto any of the Radiant powersets, but making it was probably as simple as trapping a Painspren in the right kind of gem. And producing heat could be doable with Abrasion or Division, but it's not really the intuitive way of using either Surge. So I don't think that 'an outgrowth of the surges' is the right way of thinking about them. Indeed, I suspect that 'replicate' is exactly the right word for what things like Soulcasters are doing- they give you access to an ability that's almost identical to the Surge of Transformation for most purposes, but they're not actually Surgebinding. They have a similar relationship to the Surges as Azure's Blade does to a Shardblade; they're both attempt at reverse-engineering Surgebinding using a different magic system. Which is to say that I'm in the camp that says that Cultivation's magic is the 'putting spren in gemstones' thing that we see in Fabrials, Listener Forms, Greatshells and possibly other places. Based on what we've seen from Fabrials, to seems what effect you get out of it depends on both the type of Spren and the type of Gemstone, which would mean there are hundreds if not thousands of possible effects. And since having the right mindset is so important for Listener Forms, we can infer that there's an Intent component in there too, the scope of what could be done expands even further. So it's a system that has limitless potential, but getting it to do exactly what you want it to takes a lot of knowledge, experimentation and skill. Which feels right for Cultivation's magic system to me. Oh, on the note of Vyre's Knife: My personal theory is that it's a combination of Cultivation's unnamed system and Hemalurgy; I think it's a Raysium (or whatever we want to call Odium's godmetal) spike with a gemstone attached to the end. Possibly because a Gem by itself couldn't trap Jezrien against his will, but a spike alone couldn't hold his entire soul?

Considering this on a meta level... I feel like Era 4 having interactions between planets gives us more than enough new magics to explore for three books; having a whole new set of Allomantic Metals on top of that feels like overkill. So if Silver is going to be a thing in the Metallic Arts, it would have to be introduced in Era 3. So I feel like we can conclude that it wasn't part of Brandon's original plan, since before Era 2 existed, Era 3 would've been about exploring Cadmium and Chromium. Which means that when he wrote that Annotation, he didn't plan for Silver to be able to do anything. But I note that he's a bit more evasive on the topic in the more recent WoBs.

I mean, I don't think the way that Spikes are in-organic is gonna be the problem- imagine if you had a tattoo made with some kind of metallic ink, and then the arm it was tattoo'd on got chopped off. You'd expect anything that got restore the arm to also restore the tattoo, right? The fact that the spikes are Invested strikes me as something that would make it harder, but necessarily impossible- you'd probably need to a huge store of healing to make it work. But then, there's the trickiest part; making sure the Investiture re-grows in exactly the right way. That's almost certainly not gonna be automatic- healing alone surely isn't gonna let you recover from having something spiked out of you, right? To me, it feels like in order to get this part right, you'd need to understand the Spiritual Realm in a way that most people simply can't, and then internalize that understanding to the degree where the correct structure of the spiritweb is part of your self-image. Which sounds like it would be really hard to do. So I suppose I'm landing on 'this is theoretically possible, but difficult enough that it's effectively impossible.' I feel like the most likely result would be that you'd re-grow a spike that counts as Invested but doesn't give you any powers.

I've been toying with the idea that Silver might have an affect that they simply weren't able to recognize at the time; something that would've been indistinguishable from no effect at all during Era 1. Like, just to toss out some examples, something that requires strong electrical currents or direct sunlight, or foreign sources of investiture. It would've seemed to do nothing from their perspective, so they would've written it off as useless, but perhaps it'll end up being significant in Era 3 or 4.

My instinct is that Ettmetal would be the universal Metalmind, if you somehow managed to find a way around the whole 'water makes it explode' issue with that, and that Lerasium should do something more specific. And my personal guess of what it would store is 'Intent', because that's a spiritual/cognition property that gets thrown around a lot that none of the other metals cover. Maybe it would let you do stuff like remotely activate other magical abilities you might have. ...Which actually sounds a lot like the Allomancy grenade, now that I say that. Maybe I have this backwards, and Lerasium is universal while Ettmetal stores Intent?

Well, it's technically not defined by "need two hands"; it's technically defined by what Arts and Majesty says is masculine or feminine. Which is equestrianism is gender neutral despite needing two hands. I imagine there are similar loopholes going the other way; things can only need one hand that Arts and Majesty doesn't talk about. But really that's a detail point; and realistically people probably learn to just ignore the Vorinism wherever it gets too impractical.

Have you thought about how to fit Lightweavers into this paradigm? Like I understand that the whole Truths rather than Oaths things means they're gonna be a bit different, but the idea of them just randomly being an exception to this framework is unsatisfying to me. Like surely there should still be some kind of pattern to what kinds of truths they say at which point in their progression, right?

Odium describes the Sadeas army as 'soldiers he's been preparing for a very long time', so I feel we can reasonably assume that he has, at the very least, been whispering into Torol's mind for quite a while. Which implies a certain amount of awareness of his general situation and the people in his social circle. And Amaram has absolutely interacted with Hoid; on-screen even. Amaram has attended parties where Hoid has been acting as the King's Wit. We see one such party in WoR, and the two of them appear to have spoken in the past. And, like, generally, if Hoid intended to hide his presence on the planet entirely, becoming one of the most distinctive and recognizable figures in Elhokar's court in a really dumb thing to do. At that point he just no longer has any control over who knows what and who might tell who. Indeed, it strikes me as Hoid intentionally calling attention to his presence. Possibly the idea is to call Rayse's attention to one spot as a distraction, but then zip over to the other side of continent before Odium has a chance to confirm or act on that intel. Keep him guessing and unable to focus on his plans and whatnot, y'know?

I feel like Odium probably knows he's on the planet; the guy's left his fingerprints all over the place. It'd be way too easy for him to pick up on the description of the King's Wit from Amaram or Sadeas or somebody, or hear about a trio of unsubtle worldhoppers searching the purelake for a certain wanderer. We can, however, infer from the way that Kholinar isn't currently a smouldering crater than Odium can't track him in real time or pinpoint his exact location. Though, now that I think about it, he's been in Kholinar for a little while now. Long enough for the Everstorm to have passed by a few times. I wonder how he's hiding from it. Maybe he goes and hides in that Aluminium-lined room he set up for the Wall Guard?

Of course the distinction exists. Just like how general relativity doesn't mean that you can't distinguish between matter and energy, it's still possible to distinguish between investiture and not investiture. Once again, I promise you that I'm not misunderstanding anything about how the Cosmere works. And nor it I misunderstand the definition you gave for the 'end X'. I just that said that that definition is, while technically accurate for Allomancy, very counter-intuitive and not a particularly useful way of looking at it; although you're not spending your internal Investiture or anything fundamental like that, you're still spending a limited resource, and getting less power out of it than that resource should be worth. Surely you can, at the very least, appreciate how it's an odd decision for Brandon to make our textbook example of an 'End-positive' magic system to be one that works like that. Unless, of course, you assume there's some mechanism that replaces the metals, in which case that all works just fine. It's not like there's any Realmatic reason why the metals have to be lost permanently; the bones of Dahkor Monks are conceptually similar conduits, and it's not like those poof away every time they use their powers. I mean, yes, that's exactly what I meant. 'The result is that there's no net change either positive or negative' is precisely why I feel it would make so much more sense as 'pure Preservation' magic system. Preventing all kinds of change is exactly what Preservation is all about. See Ruin talking about how Preservation would've just trapped everyone in stasis forever if Ruin hadn't been there to balance him out.

I promise you I'm not misunderstanding how the Cosmere works. When I say 'the system', I mean the 'matter/energy system'. I'm making a distinction between Investiture and things that aren't investiture. And arguing that if the burning metals indeeds converts them into investiture in a way that's not easily reversible, then the overall result of Allomancy is that matter is lost from 'the system', in the same sense as I defined above. Which, y'know, there's absolutely no Realmatic reason why such a thing wouldn't be possible, but it means the whole 'end-x' is being defined in a way that's self-evidently counter intuitive. Especially to the people who would've been reading Sazed's book, what with them not having any real conception of the realmatics involved. Like surely whoever picked up the Words of Founding wouldn't gone 'what? Allomancy consumes metals constantly, how is that end-positive?' I certainly did when I first read that. Which is part of why I've always preferred the idea that the metals are somehow return to the planet; in that case the person reading it would instead nod and go 'makes sense. We're essentially getting power for free with Allomancy, after all.' And really, as long as I'm airing out my issues with things established the Hero of Ages Epigraphs, I've always thought it would make more sense if Feruchemy was the Preservation magic and Allomancy was the combination. Like they both do the thing where the user always has the same amount of power, but Feruchemy is all about building up stockpiles and Allomancy is about destroying one thing to accomplish something else. But I once again need to emphasize that this is a thematic issue, not a realmatic one.

Well, no, see, Preservation might not have designed the magic system, but Brandon sure did. And Brandon sure decided to make a entire cosmere concept of the purposes of describing how Allomancy is drawing more power into the system, and therefore it's a fitting power for Preservation. Which is why is it would be very odd if Allomancy was the only magic system that always removes matter from the system. And, like, here's an example. Let's say your a Coinshot, and burn 1 gram of steel to push a coin however much distance that steel gets you. So the 1 gram is converted to Investiture, then that Investiture is sent to Preservation, and then Preservation sends you the Investiture you need to perform the push. Since Allomancy is end positive, we can say that Preservation send you more than 1 gram's worth of Investiture. And then, by pushing on the coin, you convert that Investiture into energy. Okay, done. What's the net result from that interaction? We've lost 1 gram of mass, nothing is any more invested than it was a second ago, and we've added some energy to the system. We must've added more than 1 gram's worth of energy to the system then, because otherwise we didn't gain anything. Quickly running that through the relativity equation, we get that a single gram of steel lets you exert more force than 21.5 kilotons of TNT on a coin. Which is roughly the same amount of energy as a nuke. But, y'know, Coinshots clearly aren't nuking everything any time they do anything, so that can't possibly be how it works. So either Allomancy isn't actually end-positive, and you're in fact getting less than 1 gram worth of investiture per gram of metal, or the metal isn't actually being lost- it's still around in some way that's useable. Which would make sense if the metal was getting recycled back into the planet somehow.

The idea that they're permanently consuming the metals has never sat well with me, but not really of 'they're going to eventually run out reasons'. It's more because of the thematic implications of Allomancy- which is to say, Preservation's power- being fueled by destroying matter in a way that none of the other Cosmere magic systems do. Like, that's just not Preserving anything, y'know? I know theoretically the idea is that the power you get out of it more than makes up for the lost material, but it's always felt to me like Allomancy would have to be a lot stronger for that to be true. Because E = mc2 and all that implies. But if the metal is somehow cycled back into the planet, things make sense to me- Using Allomancy actively helps to replenish the world's supply, and the power you get from burning it is extra oomph added to the system. Which is a much better fit for how the thematics of Allomancy are actually presented.

I mean, really I think it's just that the second draft is the easiest one. Like all he's doing is fixing the things that he knows for a fact were broken in the first draft, not going over the entire thing with a fine-tooth comb.

I'm personally more curious about what Highspren look like in the CR. Like, in the physical like look like a crack in reality with eyes looking through. Do they just poke their head through, like Cryptics? So then what would their bodies look like? Or maybe those aren't their heads, and the 'eyes' are something else entirely. And, of course, I'm very interesting to get a better look at an Unmade in the CR. Like all we've seen on that front so far is Ashertmarn's gargantuan fingers. What does the rest of him look like? What do the others look like?

There's certainly some kind of weird time stuff going on in the palace- and we also never got an explanation for why the Royal Guard was acting so weird and emotionless. And I'm pretty sure we can safely say that both those things were caused by the Unmade. So the question becomes 'which one'? And I agree with you that Ashertmarn seems like the most likely candidate for the time dilation- messing with one's sense of time would be on-brand for him, and the effect doesn't seem to be targeted or directed, so it fits with a mindless Unmade. Which by elimination, would suggest Yelig-Nar is responsible for the Royal Guard- which would fit with the epigraph about him eating souls, and on thematically they could very well be the 'squires' to the main host's 'Radiant'. So that's what I believe is going on that front. But I also feel the need to bring up two alternative theories: The effects saw in Kholinar may be 'resonances' of a kind- they might be the result of the Unmade powers overlapping with each other- perhaps they can do things when working together that they can't do individually. But if that's the case, there'd be one more weird effect happening in Kholinar. If, for example, the effects we saw were the Ashertmarn/Yelig-nar and Yelig-nar/Sja-Anat resonances, there should also be an Ashertmarn/Sja-Anat resonance somewhere, right? Although, now that I say that, perhaps that's how Sja-Anat was able to corrupt the Oathgate spren, since she's not able to that normally. Perhaps there were more Unmade in Kholinar than we realized; it's possible that the time dilation and Royal Guard were caused by a fourth Unmade.

I don't believe there's any reason why that wouldn't be possible. The consequences of that happening would probably be extremely bad, though.

Probably. Hopefully she learns from Kaza's mistake and makes sure her cook isn't secretly a thousand cremlings in a trenchcoat. And then makes sure that the cook isn't planning on murderating her for any other reason.

Well, no, he promised to spare every human born within the city. Which I'm pretty sure doesn't include a hidden 'unless one of them gets really annoying to me' clause, but does include a 'I have to do my best to make sure my minions don't kill people from there either' clause, because of course that's what Taravangian would have Intended it to mean. But it's kind of moot at that point anyway; if Kaladin isn't protected by the deal, it might as well just be because he wasn't born in Kharbranth, rather than because Odium weaselled out of fulfilled the spirit of a deal that he said to hold to the spirit of.

I mean, that might protect Kaladin's parents, but I feel like making Kaladin himself born in Kharbranth would be a little too convenient, storytelling-wise; we can't very well have our main protagonist magically unable to be harmed by any of the main villains.

It's interesting to me that the Rysn Novella is apparently a higher priority to him than the Rock one. Like Aimia is real interesting and I'd love to learn more about, but I don't see it being as directly relevant to current storyline as Rock and the Horneater Peaks, and thus I would think that one would be the priority. Which suggests that maybe I'm wrong about Aimia not being directly relevant to RoW's storyline, which is exciting in it's own way.

Hmm. To throw some spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks, here are some facts: Elhokar's Shardblade has the glyphs on all ten orders on it, Which is a detail Brandon specifically called for in the art, suggesting there may something special about that particular blade There's no mention of what happened to the Blade after he died. We see Moash consciously decide not to claim it, and then it's just never brought up again. Sja-Anat was within walking distance of the throne room at the time. So, if we assume that this theory is correct, and she can revive Deadeyes, something important may have happened there.

Renarin's blade doesn't look or act any different, as far as we know. Certainly nobody seemed to notice anything odd about it back when he was pretending Glys wasn't corrupted. But- I like this idea, OP. I think it makes sense.

Some notes: The linguistic groupings imply to me that the Horneaters have been a thing for significantly longer than the Herdazians. Like, modern day Herdaz being mainland Resher in the Silver Kingdoms era suggests that the Reshi who didn't live on islands intermarried with Singers and became Herdazians- so they're probably a thing that happened after the Oathgates were built. But Horneater being in the same family as Shin implies that that happened very early on. Veden mixing with Horneater means that Shallan has some distant Singer ancestry. Which is makes me think of her multiple personalities in the context of Singer forms. Like they change forms when they need to change skill sets, and Shallan switches to whichever personality she imagines has the skills she needs at any given moment. Could they be her Singer blood expressing itself, or am I thinking too hard? I wonder what happened to the Rock novella. Like surely Brandon doesn't still intend to write and release it before Rhythm of War, right? So surely either he's folded that content into Rhythm of War, or things have been rewritten such that it no longer 'needs' to happen before RoW.