Gilphon

Y'know, I never actually connected 'Shallan knows that Kaladin killed her brother' to 'Shallan starts telling more mean-spirited jokes at Kaladin's expense and stops being emotional honest with him' before now. Like, I was fully aware that both things happened, but I never actually connected cause to effect in my mind before. Although it's pretty obvious that that's what's going on once you lay it out like that.

It's not so unlikely- like surely the Southerners must have medallions and/or spikes that contain F-Aluminium, right? Like that's gotta be part of the puzzle for how they make the medallions. And meanwhile the Set has been experimenting with stuff like that; they were able to make an unsealed Goldmind, so they must have somebody with the requisite set of abilities.

I mean, it's kind of besides the point once you get to that, isn't it? You need Trellium to successfully hide rogue Kandra from Harmony, and you can't get Trellium without direct interference.

I would definitely assume that a Fullborn is too highly invested for Soulcasting a spike inside their body to be possible. Like a garden-variety Fused is too invested to be soulcast directly. But I concur that an Aluminium spike is the best weapon for the job. That and Nightblood are the only surefire ways to kill a regenerator, and Nightblood is big and attention-grabbing and therefore wouldn't work on somebody who can compound physical and mental speed. But even then, compounding both kind of speed, senses and fortune making the prospect of catching him by surprise a logistical nightmare. Though I feel like noting that a Fullborn probably wouldn't survive taking a nuke to the face, because the concussive force would rip the goldminds off his body. So it's not like there's nothing that can take a Fullborn down. The issue, at least to me, is making sure they don't or can't dodge the lethal attacks.

I feel like that's either not going to change the situation or make things go worse for you. Possibly it would just make it harder for you to make anything at all happen. But hmm. If you created a hemalurgic spike by stabbing somebody who was currently storing their identity, and then tried to burn or tap that spike. That would get around the problem Brandon's referring to in the last WoB, wouldn't it? I feel like that would make something weird happen.

Draining a Allomancer is probably gonna be a lot easier than draining a metalmind, though- all you have to worry about with an Allomancer is a few tiny flakes of non-invested metal. Versus a whole invested bracelet.

I'm pretty sure Ruin would notice at the point when Perservation's basically dead and he's just destroying everything. Certainly he'd be an idiot not be at least conscious of the possibility of other Shards stepping in, and surely a big chunk of investiture that doesn't belong to him or Preservation is gonna stick out like a sore thumb. I almost feel pretty confident that while Ruin was sealed and Preservation was desperately trying to think of a plan to stop him for good, that kind of interference would be the kind of thing he'd check for. It's certainly not like holding back Ruin took his entire mental capacity; he was still making a point to personally speak with everyone who died on Scadrial. Though really it's hard for me to buy that a Shard could possibly miss the presence of another Shard under even the worst circumstances. Like maybe a newly ascended Harmony wouldn't initially realize that that big chunk of power that doesn't belong to him isn't supposed to be there, but that's still not being unaware of it's presence. Certainly Trell's presence is very obvious to Harmony by Era 2, what with it manifesting in the cognitive realm as red tendrils attacking everything.

Right, but modern Trellism is pretty different from Trellagism- and nor is it like Trell is just some guy; Trell is a shard. Ruin and Preservation would've noticed if another Shard was actively doing stuff back when they were around. Trell would've had to arrive right after Ruin died, and then just sit around avoiding Harmony's attention for 300 hundred years. It seems a lot more likely to me that Trell is arrived relatively recently and revived the pre-ascension religion. Or, really what I think happened is that the ancient Trellagists were descendants from worldhoppers from Taldain, and the guy you're referring to exists and is named that to show us where the name comes from, and entity is calling itself Trell on Scadrial is not the same individual in any meaningful way.

Brandon's RAFO'd the specific question of whether or not you can use Chromium to wipe out stores: My intuition, though, says that that is theoretically possible but would take a lot of time and Chromium- and that a better way of achieving the same result would be grab somebody whose actively tapped the metalmind you want to wipe.

Well, I mean, you haven't exactly come to the right place if you want unbiased opinions. You're come to a place full of people who are biased in favour of Oathbringer who will try to convince you to keep reading. But in my personal biased opinion, Oathbringer is the best book Brandon's ever written. I can at the very least assure you that you will view both Dalinar and Shallan very differently by the end of the book. Also, going off the one thing I definitely know you'd like, I can tell you there's a chapter from Rock's point of view later on. So maybe at least push through until then?

I'm very skeptical about trying to associate the Unmade with the Orders. Like Brandon's phrasing is very hesitant in that WoB; implying at least to my eyes that any associations that exist are loose and unclear.

It's really hard for me to imagine that those Faceless Immortals could be Kandra. It would take a lot for there to be a whole bunch or rogue Kandra out there that Harmony's not aware of. And surely he'd let people know if he knew about them. I mean... I guess if you found a bunch of Kandra who had never been put back together after the Catacendre, and filled them Trellium spikes? It's hard for me to imagine that Trell's been active for that long, though.

I feel like the title that Death Rattle is referring to is just 'Knight Radiant'. But, directly on-topic: I mean, we've met both of Kaladin's parents, and they're both alive and not God, so I think we can rule out the ultra-literal interpretation. But broadly, I really don't know what Brandon could be referring to, and that kind of bothers me. I can't think of any interpretation of this that doesn't bother me.

The CR doesn't do the water-land inversion thing everywhere. That's a Roshar thing. Like Scadrial's CR still has land where there's supposed to be land. And we haven't directly seen what it's like anywhere else.

I'm very confident that we're not seeing the God Beyond taking a personal hand in events. Because the point of the God Beyond is that we'll never find out for certain whether or not they exist. So they definitely wouldn't be making moves so obvious that it's clear to the characters that something odd is going on.

Nightblood wasn't super helpful during that battle. He took down a Thunderclast and then almost killed two of the radiants. But really the most significant factor in that battle going the way it did was Dalinar giving everyone unlimited Stormlight. Jasnah and Shallan aren't gonna be taking down an army by themselves under normal circumstances.

I mean, considering what the CR is like on Sel, being transported to the CR there would kill most people. But yes, Raoden almost certainly misinterpreted the picture- and reasonably but incorrectly assumed when somebody disappears within the pool, they get dissolved. Riino being alive and well in Shadesmar pretty much confirms he made a mistake.

Mhm. He wanted to be a Lightweaver, and that meant finding a Cryptic who'd been trying to bond somebody who didn't survive, and would be willing to bond whoever else came along out of desperation. That's a pretty specific set of requirements.

I mean, Cultivation is the obvious answer here. She's definitely been manipulating events from the behind the scenes in order to disadvantage Odium. The only question is how extensive her meddling has been.

I personally believe that that's theoretically possible, yes, but I feel the need to caution that we still don't know much about how Nicrosil Feruchemy works. Like it's almost certainly a major piece of the puzzle behind how the Southerner's devices work, but we still don't know the details of the theory behind those, and don't really know if F-Nicrosil can be used for anything else.

I don't think you'd get that just by piling on lots of Investiture. A shardblade is something pretty specific- and, indeed, Nightblood doesn't really behave much of anything like a shardblade- they just call him one because that's what Rosharans are gonna call a magic sword by default. Now, there is a good chance that a Nicrosil Compounder would be able to do some absolutely bonkers things, but I wouldn't think that just using a sword as a Nicrosilmind would inherently do anything special, and nor would just passively having a bunch of power inside you. Like there's a plausible theory that Nicrosil compounding was how The Lord Ruler was able to do things like Soothing an entire city in his sleep, but he was still limited to powers built into the Metallic Arts; he wasn't cutting souls or anything. But if your Nicrosil compounder were able to get their hands on some Breath, then maybe they could compound that into a way to make lots of Awakened Swords. Or, potentially, go to Roshar to get a spren bond and getting a real Shardblade, but trying to compound a spren seems like it could go wrong in a lot of unpleasant ways. Although really compounding your way into effectively infinite Investiture by doing this kind of thing that strikes me as a good way to make the Shards decide it's best to just smite you before you become a threat.

I think it makes the most sense to assume that he can't create Fused while bound, because that would explain why he's stuck with his initial crop of them and not created any from Singers who died in any of the subsequent Desolations. Like, we know he could revoke their immortality if he wanted to, and some of them are visibly past their expiration dates, so it can't be a matter of keeping the total below a certain amount. Which, yeah, suggests that he was bound between the creation of the Fused and the formation of the Oathpact. I don't think it's fair to call Honor and Cultivation slow to react though- what we know about how these things work suggests that the only way Odium could've been bound would be if Honor had somehow convinced him to let himself be bound. I can't imagine that would've been an easy sell.

Quite possilby- It was suggested on Shardcast that Dalinar might be in the process of becoming an Avatar of Honor. If so, that voice would probably be the way he was feeling the Shard's Intent. Like, he doesn't seem to able to have a conversation with that voice or anything; it just passively tells him to 'Unite Them'. But that's still an incomplete explanation for Dalinar's weirdness- the weird Nohadon vision in OB strikes me as having Cultivation's fingerprints all over it, so she might be monkeying with his brain beyond just the amnesia. And then there's the vision of his childhood at the end of WoR, and the strange light he's felt a few times. I don't know, there's a lot weird about Dalinar, and I don't feel fully confident in my ability to properly untangle that knot.

I mean, theoretically it could, but I don't think we need this theory to explain that- The Stormspren were probably made by corrupting some other kind of spren, and Odium's probably perfectly capable of doing that without help from Autonomy. Even if he can't do it directly, surely he could send Sja-Anat to go do it for him.

I mean, the 'you' has got to refer to Unity, which I realize isn't much of an answer, but still. I personally subscribe to the theory that Unity is just Dalinar's interpretation of the Shard Tanavast interpreted as Honor, but I realize that that's not an idea that everyone agrees with.