Gilphon

Brandon weighted in on this issue on reddit: He stops short of actually confirming whether or not it's aluminium, but says that it's absolutely possibly for it to simply not have occurred to them that they're looking at aluminium. Which, y'know, knocks out the only argument I've seen against it being aluminium. But, perhaps more importantly, he says that issue will be clarified later in the book.

You're responding to the wrong point here. Like yeah, there might not have noticed any metals conducting the mist, but that's not the claim I was responding to. We're talking about a metal that 'can withstand the blows of a Shardblade, resists being Soulcast, and interferes with a great number of Radiant powers'. Surely a metal that does all that would have some kind of noticeable effect if you tried to use Allomancy on it, right? Because, y'know, we're almost 100% certain that aluminium does those things, and one would expect a metal that, as far as we can tell, interacts with the Rosharan magics identically to aluminium, would also have pretty similar interactions with the metallics arts. At very least, one would certainly expect it to be similar enough that it would've been noteworthy, considering how prized aluminium weapons are on Scadrial. Unless what you're arguing is that aluminium doesn't block Shardblades or interfere with Radiant powers. Which is, uh... well, the burden on proof lies quite firmly on your shoulders at that point, and you'd definitely need an argument a lot stronger than 'Navani hadn't figured out what it was when she was giving the lecture'. Since, y'know, that's easily explainable by the fact that aluminium is a rare curiosity that doesn't live at the forefront of everyone's minds on Roshar, and so it could take a little while for somebody to remember that they'd heard of a Soulcasting-resistant metal in a different context.

Copper's the wrong colour. We know from Kaladin's POV the the conductor metal is a silvery colour.

The thing is that we can conclusively eliminate everything you just mentioned except aluminium for the first one, because the epigraph was just talking about what the metals does by itself. If any of the other metals had aluminium-esque properties, they definitely would've noticed that on Scadrial. Unless a godmetal is involved, as you mentioned. It's also worth noting that Bendalloy is the wrong colour to be the one used in the Fused's spears, as is Odium's godmetal. Not that I think any of us are seriously considering Cadmium or Bendalloy in this context.

I don't think you'd need to alloy the aluminium, just coat your weapon in it. Like a pure aluminum weapon isn't going to block a Shardblade because it's not strong enough to withstand the physical force of the blow. But putting an aluminium coat over a steel weapon should work just fine. Like using the same alloy as Miles' guns is theoretically possible, but more complicated than you'd need, and the Fused seem to have a worse understanding of Fabrials than the humans do, so I don't think they'd getting into special alloys that are still new and exciting innovations over on Scadrial. Like Scadrial has got to have more advanced metalworking techniques than the Fused do.

To let us piece it together ourselves so we can feel smart, and to emphasize the fact that their knowledge of Fabrial stuff is still very much incomplete. Just like when he didn't confirm that Steel is used in repulsers, even though that's obviously what it would be. And, to get slightly more speculative, having something that's a mystery in the lecture being understood in the present day shows us how quickly they're advancing; a lecture from just a few months ago is already outdated. And I would further argue that the description is too perfect a match for aluminium for any other explanation to make much sense- If any of the other 15 'normals' metals had similar Investiture-resisting properties, we definitely would've heard about at some point in the Mistborn books, so it can't be any of them. And the detail of it being an extremely light fits right in as well. I suppose it's vaguely possible that it could've been Odium's god metal, but that would be a bizarre bit of misdirection on Brandon's part, given that we could easily tell the difference between the two from colour. But anyway. I believe that this epigraph tells us that the spears are not Aluminium or any of the metals Navani has previously mentioned. Gold, Copper, Bendalloy, Electrum and Odium's Godmetal are the wrong colour, so we can eliminate those as well. Which leaves Chromium, Nicrosil, Duralumin and Cadmium as possibilities. Cadmium I think is obviously the least likely of those. I do not think that there's a smoking gun we can use to narrow it down conclusively from the three we have left, but I believe that the effect described fits Duralumin the best, and that moving into talking about Duralumin right after talking about Aluminium makes sense from a flow perspective.

Not confirmed, sure. But what you've been doing is taking 'it's not aluminium' as underlying assumption, which given the obviousness we both just agreed is present, seems like a shaker idea. If you can find me some strong piece of evidence that it's not aluminium, I'd be willing to reconsider my stance, but I am, in fact, comfortable using that as a working assumption in the absence of such evidence. And I would say that the conclusive thing is that they're two different metals- and hence we can probably be confident that the spears are not aluminium, despite the fact that that's probably the conclusion most us jumped to when we first saw them. Two unrelated metals is a stronger conclusion than I think we can conclusively state- she didn't specifically call out any of the other metals as alloys of each other, after all. Going into the chemical composition of metals that she doesn't have a name for is a bit beyond the scope of the lecture.

I invite you to share your reasoning, then. What is this clear indication that the mysterious investiture-blocking metal that the Fused have large quantities of is not aluminium? Because from where I'm standing, it pretty obviously is. At the absolute minimum, last week's epigraph was certainly written with the intention of making us think she was talking about aluminium. Because the only thing I see is the 'Navani could ID aluminium' argument, and if that's all you have, well, I would suggest that you're the one reasoning from a false premise there. The Fourth Bridge, which uses Aluminium, was built after this lecture, using techniques learned from the Azish. The lecture which included a plea to the other nations to share techniques that she wasn't aware of. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that Navani knows more in the present than she did when giving this lecture.

This is what probably makes the most sense, but I'm hoping that's not it; that there really is a practical reason for the Tower to be like that. Just because of amazing the pay-off for all these weird details would be if this was all how it was supposed to be. @Schneeente That's a really good idea. And exactly the kind of explanation I want for the weird Urithiru things.

Hoid is an archetype where pan is just makes more sense than not. Like you've been travelling the Cosmere for ten thousands years and met all kinds of people from all kinds of difference cultures who all have different ideas about gender, it starts making sense to care less and less about it. And yeah, confirmation that he is intentionally writing Shallan as bi now. Like he's always written Shallan as bi, but it felt like he was doing it accidentally in WoK and WoR. But anyway. This makes it less likely that Jasnah and Hoid are a thing, but doesn't actually prove it's not a thing.

Yeah, well. Obviously she hasn't done this at the point in time when the lecture was given. Because if she had, she would've said 'aluminium' last week instead of 'some mysterious metal that blocks investiture'. Also claiming she works with it almost daily is a strong claim, given that we've heard her mention it all of once, and that was in context of 'new techniques we've recently learned from Azish artefabrians'.

I don't think Navani would be able to ID duralumin- remember, last week she couldn't ID aluminium, which should be easier for her. (Although I would guess she's ID'd the aluminium at some point between when the lecture was given and when the Fourth Bridge was made). And in a meta sense, it works for her to bring up duralumin directly after talking about aluminium. And really conducting Investiture sounds like a pretty exact match for how duralumin works in Allomancy.

So. Since the metal Navani was talking about last week was clearly aluminium, we can now say the Fused's spears are not aluminium. We do, however, know that it's silvery, which can narrow it down nicely. I had been thinking that they were Chromium, because the overall function of the spears is so similar to a Leecher, but hearing Navani say that really what the metal does is conduct Investiture makes me thinks that Duralumin is a better fit- the draining part is handled by the gem; the metal's just a conductor. Because really that's what that does in Allomancy, it pulls in more Investiture that you'd otherwise get for the reaction. And it would also nicely parallel how Aluminium can be used as an insulator. So between the two of them, you get a lot of potential for circuitry. Man, now that I say it like that, using it just to make those spears is really wasting its potential. Just goes to show how far ahead the humans are at understand Fabrials, I suppose.

The thing to remember is that the slave economy has probably already had a major crash- they just lost the Parshmen, after all. It probably needs major restructuring now anyway, so it makes sense for Jasnah to see an opportunity to here.

I mean, Hoid didn't actually say that Shallan was too young for him. Adolin said that Shallan was too young for him, and Hoid replied with 'Well, that's kind of a problem. There's only one woman in my age group in the area, and I've never gotten along with her.'

So I broadly agree with the of the Fused having Oaths of some kind, but I don't think they're directly reversed from the Radiants ones like this. Like the Heavenly Ones, who appears to broadly analogous to the Windrunners, aren't focused on destruction. I would say that the Heavenly Ones seem to focused on competition. They like to prove that they're better than their enemies by fighting fair as along as their enemies agree to do the same, and have a particular affection for 1-on-1 duels. I couldn't say much beyond that though; Lezian and Radoniel are only Fused from other Brands where I feel like I understand them as individuals, and we don't have enough information to say how representative they are of their Brands.

Brandon weighed in the whole 'dropping the Thrill in the Ocean' thing on reddit yesterday: My assumption is that what this means is that there's no easy way to find it in the Cognitive Realm.

I stand corrected. Missed that detail in the description. Still, Taln doesn't seem to have Shin eyes, so my overall point stands. Really, Ash looking like a mix of Shin and Makibaki strengthens my 'faster evolution' theory.

It's weird to me that we're apparently not going to get heavily into the Shinovar stuff until book 5; I always felt like an Oathgate, seven Honorblades, and an easily defendable country with lots of fertile land and no Singers would be a prize that the coalition would want to get their hands on ASAP. Six of those Honorblades are not as important now that Radiants are more common, but having another Bondsmith would be huge. And now we have Jasnah bringing it up as a priority. I guess with dealing with Emul and Tukar is gonna take up a significant chunk of this book? I don't know, it just seems weird to establish Shinovar as Jasnah's goal now if that's not going to really happen this book.

I mean, I don't know if I believe there's romance, but Jasnah certainly seems to uncharacteristically trusting of him. Like Navani mentions that she didn't drop the mask until after Shallan had left- Jasnah apparently trusts him more than Shallan. That's... well, that's evidence of there being more than just exchanging knowledge. Close friendship at the absolute minimum.

There are lots of different human peoples on Roshar. They've had ten thousand years to diversify their cultures. And the Shin in particular have been isolationist for quite some time, leading to their culture not being directly influenced by anyone else's, and there's relatively little intermarriage with outsiders, so they maintain a distinctive appearance. (In addition, I suspect that Cultivation's presence means evolution happens faster on Roshar, so the humans who left Shinovar have evolved to be slightly better suited for Roshar's environment. Which in particular means epicanthal folds to deal with wind, hence why the Shin are always mentioned as having large, round eyes. Although since there's no mention of Ash and Taln having Shin eyes this chapter, those were probably reasonable common among Ashynites to begin with)

On the contrary, it jives really well- Gavilar nabbed a Fused off of Briaze shortly before the Desolation started, so Leshwi didn't have a chance to notice that person was missing. But Raboniel realized it happened, and that's why she's so confident that this will be the final Desolation. Although Raboniel doesn't realize that they only human who knows how that was accomplished died without telling anyone about it.

I imagine that in theory it does, but there'd be nothing obvious to distinguish it from any other Bead in Shadesmar, so you'd have to search manually.

So. If Nergaoul has an obvious manifestation in the Cognitive, that's a pretty big flaw with the plan. But I feel like they would've thought of that, and used an Oathgate to check what it looked like. So I would suggest that either it's been pulled entirely into the physical and doesn't have a manifestation in the Cognitive, or they did go with the Aluminium cube plan and found that that blocked the manifestation.

I am of the opinion that this is a context where strength is irrelevant, because it's not just about keeping it safe in the current war, it's about keeping it safe from all future generations. No amount of strength could ever be enough. So the rationale decision is to go all in on secrecy; if there's only one person who knows where it is, that's one person too many.