Gilphon

You're splitting hairs here, I think. Magic in general is a natural outgrowth of the functions of the Cosmere. There are, I think, two useful definitions for what can be considered magic in this context: Would Khirss consider it weird enough to be worth researching? Is it only possible through the use of Investiture? I think the Singers forms unambiguously meet the second definition, and while we don't for sure about the first, it would surprise me if Khriss had no interest in all. Whether or not something is a magic system is a harder question. But really I wouldn't call the Old Magic a magic system either. That'd be a bit like calling the Thrill a magic system. It's just a weird thing that a very powerful spren can do to people. And that a Shard can imitate when she's so inclined.

The distinction here is that Nohadon is complaining about Surgebinders, not Radiants. Our understanding is that people were bonding spren for quite some time before the Radiant orders were established. And then eventually Ishar got fed up with that and made the Orders be a thing- which presumably happened after Nohadon's day. Like in the first post-Nohadon desolation, perhaps. What we don't know is if Ishar used some crazy Bondsmith stuff to actually change the way the magic works, or if he just wanted them to be better organized. The wording of the First Oath implies the former to me, as does seeing just how crazy Ishar's powers are, but it's also possible that the First Oath wasn't worded as strictly before Nohadon. Like we already know that what's important is the idea behind the Oath, not the words themselves, so maybe all Nohadon did was articulate the First Oath particularly well.

To wildly speculate on this: The magic system Khirss brings up right before this line are Surgebinding and Voidbinding. She then speculates that it may be the Old Magic, but dismisses it. And then she launches into a big analysis of Fabrials. So she's not talking about any of those things. But- what paradigm is she referring to, that surgebinding and voidbinding fit into but fabrials and the Old Magic do not. Well, we often think of Surgebinding as being a combination of Honor and Cultivation. And we don't know a lot about Voidbinding, but it's 10-centric, which suggest there's Honor in there, and it comes from the Unmade and has Void in the name, which suggest there's Odium in there. So, perhaps it's an Honor/Odium combination magic system. If that's the case, the third magic system that completes that paradigm would one made using a combination of Cultivation and Odium. So perhaps the 'even more esoteric abilities' are the Forms of Power? Or perhaps they're something that was purely theoretical until Venli happened- which would be a better fit for the WoB; it's not quite a magic system, because Venli is the only one who could do stuff with it, but in theory if Radiant Regals became more common it could blossom into a new magic system. Hmm. The purelake fish had occurred to me, but I mostly dismissed them as 'well, they probably just have a spren-bond. That's not that strange at this point.' Forgetting that we don't know what they even get out of the bond. So they is something there that we still don't know. I'll not totally convinced that that's something we've been promised an answer to, though. We wouldn't even know for certain that the fish were magic if it wasn't for WoBs. For the sake of completeness, I tried to avoid to making too many distinctions between 'things where we have a pretty good guess' and 'things where we just have no idea'. Shallan's memory definitely seems supernatural, so that's a good guess for the Lightweaver resonance. But we don't actually know that that's what's going there.

So I just decided to try to get this all down in digital ink, instead taking up space in my head. Note, however, that what I'm talking about here are what I will loosely call 'unfulfilled promises'; questions that we've been implicitly promised we'll find out the answer to one day. We don't, for example, know which spren grants Nimbleform, but I don't really feel like we need to find that out. Surgebinding What happens when a Radiant swears the Fifth Ideal? Did Ishar change the way the magic works, or did he just command them to organize into orders? How did the Fused get sorted into the various Brands? Do the Brands have guiding philosophies like the Radiant Orders do? We're still missing a whole bunch of resonances. I think the Windrunners are still the only one we know for certain? I don't think we've seen anything from the Surge of Tension. There's a WoB out there describing the basic concept, but that's all. Maybe some of the things Dalinar's done were Tension, but that's so hard to separate from general Bondsmith weirdness. The Division Fused. How exactly is a more internal form of Division going to work? What was Lezian doing? Like, the surge of Transportation, fine, sure, but what exactly was the deal with his husks, from a realmatic perspective? Bondsmiths sure are weird! Their powers don't really seem to fit into the whole 'ten surges' paradigm; more like general Connection magic. And then there's that line about how they existed and were named before humans came to Roshar. I don't think this is just referring to Ishar. It feels like the Bondsmiths are something older than the other Orders that could shoehorned into that framework. Fabrials How are Reversers made, and why do they use amethysts instead of rubies? There are still 7 of the main Allomantic metals where we don't know what they do. Well, technically 8, because of steel, but come on, that's obviously Repulsers. What's up with the different varieties of Soulcaster? Why are some limited to a single essence, whereas others can switch between a few? Why are Surge Fabrials other than Soulcasters so rare? I don't think we've seen any aside from Nale's regrowth Fabrial. Void Stuff We still know basically nothing about Dai-Gonarthis and Chemoarish. Our understanding of Ba-Ado-Mishram is pretty shaky. And I'm not convinced we fully understand Moelach There are few weird things going on in Kholinar Palace that seem linked to the Unmade, but don't quite match the effects we know about. There was a time dilation effect, and the Queens Guard was acting very weird. The Thunderclasts. What are they, exactly? Singer souls, like the Fused, or something else? Voidbinding. Is still a big question mark. I feel confident that Renarin is a Voidbinder, but there's got to be more to Voidbinding than just 'bonding an Enlightened spren'. Everything seems to suggest that Renarin is the first of his kind, but Voidbinding must've previously existed in some form or Khriss wouldn't have known to write about it in the Ars Arcanum. Forms of Power. There are seven whose names we've heard, but only two we've seen in action. And I'm willing to bet that there are some others we haven't of. Almost as big a question mark as Voidbinding, these guys. I feel like we're in a similar position with them as we were with Fabrial pre-RoW; we don't even know how much we don't know. Aaand that's everything I can think of. Feel free to add to this list if you can think of a question I've forgotten. Or subtract from if you think you have any answer to one of my questions.

Okay, searching the Coppermind, most of the Rosharan references to gold are talking about the colour- this person's armour was painted gold, that person was wearing gold robes, etc. Which I don't think is relevant for our purposes. Two things that might be a reference to the metal, though- Dalinar says that Tanavast's cloths seem to be made out of gold. And (Dawnshard spoilers): So there's nothing I'd call 100% conclusive that I can find, but I think it's a reasonably safe bet that they least know what gold is.

I hadn't thought of the idea of the Nicrosil being imported- but considering we know that Ulim was working with a Feruchemist, that would make a lot of sense. I don't off-hand recall any references to gold or silver beyond the 'silver-nickel alloy' we're discussing- and since they're not using gold as money, it's going to be spoke of less than other places. I'd be surprised if they didn't have gold at all, though- surely that would be discovered before alloys like brass or steel and hard-to-find elements like Aluminium.

If you're making that argument, to me that would mean that there are now 15 tones; that it is no longer possible to separate Harmony's tone into Ruin and Preservation.

Harmony's tone is probably just a combination of Ruin and Perservation's tones. So I guess it depends on what extent you think Ruin and Preservation are still separable.

To me, learning about fabrials have made the Feruchemical effects a lot more mysterious. The fabrials we've seen mostly are the allomantic effects, or things very similar to them. I do feel like there should be a way of making a fabrial that does something more akin to the Feruchemical properties, but I have no idea how you'd do that. Aside from just cheating via using unsealed metalminds to make a fabrial; I think there should be a better way than that.

So. Returning to this topic after two months of spoiler-dodging absence. That 'Silver-Nickel alloy' has to nicrosil. Most likely, Raboniel doesn't know the difference between silver and chromium. Or perhaps was lying about it being silver, but I think ignorance is more likely on that particular point. It'd be an odd lie to tell. I'm also inclined to believe that she wasn't being truthful about Raysium's purpose. Both because I doubt they'd equip rank-and-file Fused with Godmetal spears, and because I feel like 'conducts Investiture' is so broadly useful that Brandon wouldn't want to force them to rely on a Godmetal for that when it comes time for them to start making Fabrial computers and such. That part does make sense as a lie for Raboniel to tell; she definitely didn't want Navani trying to reproduce that dagger, so she wanted to believe it relied on the unobtainable Raysium more than it actually did. But Nicrosil as a metal that naturally conducts investiture? Well that's just a perfect match for how it acts in all three Metallic Arts. It work also explain why they haven't employed those daggers in any previous Desolations; they had to wait for Nicrosil to be discovered before Odium could start thinking about how to apply that knowledge. This does, of course, raise the question of what Raysium actually does. I do think that both Raysium and Nicrosil is required to make the dagger work. I would speculate that the Raysium is the bit that makes it work on cognitive entities like Spren, Heralds and Fused.

Weirdly, it seemed like the Sibling started having problems before BAM was sealed. Like I'm sure that didn't help, and neither did Honor's death, but it started earlier than those events. Maybe it had something to do with BAM learning how to provide Forms of Power?

Oh, it clearly didn't occur to Hoid that Odium would be able to mess with his Breaths. Either he didn't know Odium could do that, or he thought it would count as harming him. What's really troubling to me is at the end, he doesn't say that he's lost perfect pitch. He's says that something's interfering with his perfect pitch. That makes it sound like Odium did more than just remove a few minutes worth of memories. But equally, surely he can't have done anything too dramatic, given that he couldn't do anything he considered harmful.

I'm definitely in the camp that says that Taravangian reneged on the deal by attacking Rayse, and so Odium is no longer bound by it. Like, remember what's important is the Intent of the deal, not the exact words. I'm pretty sure the Intent of 'I'm going to stab you with a cursed sword' runs pretty contrary to the Intent of 'The Diagram will serve you.' It's not like Taravangian was hedging his bets by not including himself in his mental definition of 'The Diagram' when he made the deal or anything. This was why Taravangian had to so careful to not let Rayse sense any disloyalty until the crucial moment. Why he couldn't just tell Dalinar that Rayse was afraid of Nightblood. He had ensure Rayse still thought he was loyal, so he'd still protect Kharbranth. However. If Taravangian had somehow managed to kill Rayse without turning against him, I would say that the deal would be in place; I don't think he could just break that. And he might magically compelled to serve himself now, which would probably be bad. Of course, I doubt Taravangian is inclined to do much damage to Kharbranth, so it'll probably be fine. I just don't think he's being magically compelled to protect Kharbranth.

I would be surprised if he couldn't hear them though Bronze- and really I'd argue that being the only Mistborn on Roshar (or anywhere, quite possibly) is the definition of 'some Hoid thing'. Could he do it without Bronze? Well, it's not completely impossible, but I don't tend to think that he'd be any better at it than any other humans. So I think he's most likely burning Bronze in the scene you quoted. Hmm. I wonder how the perfect pitch you get from Breaths interacts with Bronze and the Rhythms.

A thing is that I've never really trusted Cultivation's intentions. I trust that she wants to improve Roshar in the long term. And I trusted that she saw Rayse as an enemy. Those two things were enough that she could be considered an ally to our heroes in the broad sense, but now that Rayse is no longer relevant, well, I really don't know if fulfilling her plans is in our protagonists' best interests anymore. What she sees as good for Roshar as a whole could very well be a bad thing for individual good people. That's very much the mindset her manipulations instilled in the man she hoped would become Odium; and it seems entirely plausible to me that her goal was to make Odium into someone who would be willing to cooperate with her.

To me, the notable thing isn't the Connection hack- they've been multiple signs that such a thing is possible. I'm more curious about how what appears to be a Skybreaker managed to make his Plate function as a spacesuit; I had thought that that would be something only Windrunners could do, since they can use Adhesion to handle any pressure-related problems that crop up.

I agree with the theory about Formless being a child, by the way.

Consider the case of Allomancy- Brandon's talked before about how the molecular structure of the metal acts as a Key that tells the investiture what to do. I would argue then, that for Allomancers, the Command is in the molecular structure, rather than any words. And, to narrow my focus to Copper specifically because that's the best example what I'm talking about, the only decision a Smoker makes is whether or not to burn their Copper at any particular moment- that's the only place that Intent has a chance to be relevant. They Intend to use their Allomancy, and then they get Investiture from Preservation, and then the structure of Copper gives the Investiture a Command. And I think that's generally how it works- on the mortal scale, Intent usually just means 'choosing to use your magic powers', whereas Commands are where you get into the specifics about what your powers do. Radiant Oaths might be an exception to that, but I don't think Awakening is- if you were practicing commands and vizualization, but had no actual intention to give your Breaths away, I don't think anything would happen. Awakening, I think, is just a magic system where you have an unusual amount of flexibility in the Commands. But when you get into the levels of power not normally accessible to mortal, you start needing more sophisticated Intents- 'I'm using my magic now' is only good enough if you only have one form of magic available- at the relatively low end, this means a Radiant distinguishing between their two surges and summoning a Blade, or a Mistborn choosing between their metals. But Shards and other high-end beings have a lot more freedom than that.

So Odium doesn't have any more raw power than the others Shards. The common theory is that he beat Devotion and Dominion by turning them against each other. Ambition he beat, with difficulty, in a dramatic 1-on-1 duel. And, then, well, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly Odium's interactions with Honor and Cultivation played out. But if he could've won a direct fight against them, he wouldn't have been forced into thousands of years of stalemate before he somehow found a way to kill Honor. Indeed, he's still trying to avoid letting Cultivation get the first strike on him- she's a threat to him even without Honor.

Somebody asked exactly this question on reddit, and got an answer: Which tells us that the difference is not the storage state.

Actually about the Stonewards. Or more, precisely, about the Truthwatchers. The idea was to send Radiants whose spren haven't broken with the rest of their kind- and hence Why Shallan and Godeke, because the Cryptics and Cultivationspren are board with the whole 'bring back the Radiants' idea, whereas the Inkspren and Honorspren largely aren't. But then why a Truthwatcher and a Stoneward? Are their spren also largely on board with the Radiants? If so, why do they only have three Truthwatchers? And given the way they haven't been mentioned at all before now, there don't seem to be a large number of Stonewards either.

Come to think it, there's a pretty simple answer for why they needed aluminium: If they ever fully de-coupled the Fourth Bridge from the lattice at Urithiru, gravity is going to do bad things to the ship. The best scenario is 'a whole lot of force starts pushing the lattice at the Shattered Plains into the ground, making it much harder to move and possibly damaging it'. But you can't keep it fully conjoined either, because then it's going to either grind itself into the mountainside or fly away from the tower.

I'd like to echo the above sentiments, together with the somewhat melancholy acknowledgement that I'm not planning on reading the book immediately, so next week I'm gonna have to start ignoring this subforum for fear of spoilers. Indeed, I'm probably going to have to ignore a good portion of this fandom. Which I can't help but have mixed feelings about. So, yes, virtual hugs for everyone, and I'll miss interacting with you all.

Oh, hey, vindication on the 'Fused are using Aluminium' argument from last week. That's nice to have. That Shadesmar mission though. 'Let's send two main protagonists and three characters the audience barely knows- two of which don't even have names- on this dangerous mission together! I'm sure that won't work out badly for the non-protagonists!' The structure of the book is becoming clear, though; Kaladin, Navani and Venli in Urithiru are the A-plot, Shallan and Adolin in Shadesmar are the B-plot, and Dalinar and Jasnah in Emul are the C-plot. And since it's the C-plot, we can probably assume the war in Emul will take most of the book, so won't we get to the Shinovar stuff until book 5.

Brandon made a comment on Reddit on wednesday that somewhat addresses this: I think what's going on here is that they figured out that the Fused were using Aluminium at some point between the start of the book and when the lecture was given.