Honorless

28 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Spending far far too much time overthinking everything and coming up with so many wrong theories some of them eventually stick

Oh and congrats and thank you for getting that Fainlife question in and not getting RAFO'd! Omg, I wonder if the Evil on Threnody being Fainlife theory might be correct! So much hype!

Okay, so the theory got confirmed:

at 39:21, thank you for asking this to Brandon, @Kingsdaughter613! Honestly Punny, and a lot of the rest of you, how do you guys even notice these things?!  This is amazing!

If Preservation / Harmony can just copy other Shard's Investiture, I'll eat my hat... I think. Actually, I'm not so sure anymore since I typed that. Hmm... 

Shadowblazes from Rithmatist were originally Spiritual Realm creatures

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Ironeyes

So, uh, we know that the charcoal creatures are afraid of coins.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Ironeyes

So are the white chalk creatures, which I think are called Shadowblazes…

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Ironeyes

Are they also afraid of coins?

Brandon Sanderson

Are they also afraid of coins? To a much lesser extent. Um, I can give you guys some backstory on this. What’s going on here is that the place these things come from, um, linear structure and things like this are frightening to them, like they come from a non-linear location. Time does not move linearly where they come from. When they come into this world, structure and linear time progression, is bizarre to them. And there are some who have embraced it, and been like, “This is cool and different!” and there are others that are still terrified of it, as a representation of what is so alien from the world they came from. So that’s why we’ve got this whole clocks, and even structure, as a metaphor for, um, something that is terrifying to them.

Uh, Rithmatist started in the Cosmere. The magic shares a lot of its roots, then, in Cosmere magic worldbuilding. I split if off because I wrote the whole first book with it being in the Cosmere. I split it off, saying “No, I don’t want Earth to be in the Cosmere.” Even an alternate version of Earth. It just raises too many questions about the nature of Earth being involved in this. I want the Cosmere to be its own dwarf galaxy of which not even a dimension of Earth is involved. And when I made that decision, I broke Rithmatist off. That’s the only one I had written that didn’t belong, but it still has, so, it means that the magic is going to feel very familiar to you, uh, it’s going to feel like the magic of a, um, of the Cosmere. And Cosmere magic is based around, usually, human beings making a symbiotic bond with an entity made out of the magic. This is, kind of, one of the origins of Cosmere magic, and Rithmatist has, therefore, its roots in that. I’ve done some things since I’ve split it off in the outlines to distinguish it, but it’s going to have the same roots. So you’ll notice some things like that, that are similar.

Questioner

Uh, before you split The Rithmatist from the Cosmere, did the Shadowblazes come from the Cognitive realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Yeah, the Shadowblazes were in the Cognitive realm, they’re--you know, well, they’re more Spiritual realm. They were Spiritual realm, sorry. They were Spiritual realm entities that got pulled in, uh, to the Physical realm. And the Spiritual realm has no time, um, it exists independent of time and location, all times and all places are one, and so, uh, when something that’s from the Spiritual realm got pulled into the Physical realm, it was like, “This is so weird!” Um, and there are very few things in the Cosmere that exist only on the Spiritual realm, which was a really fun thing I could do with this book, was show that. Cause most things exist on all three realms. Um, so, yeah. So, yeah, I mean if you’ve got, if you’re a Cosmere, uh, theologian--not theologian, magic, uh, what do you call it? Uh, they call that, uh, I have a word for it in-world. But anyway, if you’re a realmatic theorist, you can kind of pick out how the Spiritual realm beings were related, originally, to the realmatic theory.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017)

and of course, Shards are primarily in the Spiritual Realm.

Beyond that, Brandon hasn't confirmed any other entities that are primarily in the Spiritual

Hmm... possible. Allomancy already draws power from somewhere else though, no idea how you'd put Aviar Investiture to filter via the metals. Even less of an idea of how you'd do that with Surgebinding, where presumably your bonded spren acts as the filter... or the bond with you might supercharge your Aviar. We might get that latter answer from Lift from enough.

I think with the Dawnshard comment that Brandon made, he just said Heightening-like effect, collecting Investiture of various other types or a mix would not give the same effects.

Could work, but like with Lerasium Mistborn, it would eventually dilute back

Holding Stormlight gives you a buzz so expending it can make you feel a bit tired. It shouldn't affect combat performance too much. Healing is healing and Stormlight healing is much less costly than Feruchemical healing, Compounding is better but you still have to store a bit.

Blood itself isn't necessary to create a Hemalurgic charge, I don't think iirc, it "just so happened" that Hemalurgic bind points almost always coincided with major arteries and veins (not that that's a problem for the recipient, Hemalurgy literally reshapes their organs out of the way and does not cause infections, I wish that it didn't do those things, then that could've been another factor to take into consideration for Hemalurgists and it would have been very Ruin-y), and blood could help against Hemalurgic decay.

It is apparently possible to spike a spren

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Questioner

Supposing that a skilled Hemalurgist got hold of some a Shardblade or some Shardplate, how would he best use it assuming that the best way isn't to put it on and kill people with it.

Brandon Sanderson

That's probably the best way, to put it on and kill people with it. I'm not sure why a Hemalurgist would want one more than anyone else would because the metal is already Invested which means its not useful to him.

Questioner

So there is no way that he could use a Hemalurgic spike to take some power from the Spren that's crafting it.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, that's what you're saying. You want to grab something off the Spren? That's gonna be way harder than grabbing one that's not already made into something. So I don't see why he would want the Blade, just go grab it from them. Even then its going to be worse then, probably in most cases, a person. Maybe its possible that spiking yourself with a Spren would be valid, but you don't want to take it out of the Shardblade. That's gonna be harder, but you would probably have to go to the Cognitive either way to make it work, so yeah.

Shadows of Self Portland signing (Oct. 10, 2015)

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Questioner

Can you Hemalurgically spike a highspren?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, asterisk.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

Could be that Brandon had something like Ishar's experiments in mind to make this work though.

Also I'm pretty sure that your Spiritually perfect self is already a part of your Spiritweb. And an Electrum shadow won't be enough, it only shows a few seconds into the future, a minute if you stretch it. You'll need an Atium shadow. Then you have to contend with the problem of whether they'll even have Bindpoints, if you could access said bindpoints from the Physical given that your shadow is not a Physical thing, is that your own Spiritweb.

The Investiture conductivity does seem like Raysium's natural properties used with Cosmere knowledge though apparently they do share some Hemalurgic principles

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kalamitous_emoashions

Have we seen any evidence of Hemalurgy on Roshar? And, as sort of an addendum, given the end of Oathbringer, was what happened to Jezrien Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

There are certain cosmere philosophers that would count it. I would divide it as two separate things that are using similar fundamentals... I wouldn't call it myself, but there are people who would disagree with me in-world. Have we seen evidence? I would say no evidence that is easily-- easy to pick out.

kalamitous_emoashions

But it's there?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are people with Hemalurgy who have been to Roshar. I'm pretty sure they've been on-screen.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

I'm pretty sure that just means similar fundamentals, how it happened shared similar underlying mechanisms but the process itself didn't actually use Ruin's Invested Art.

I suppose it's possible for Godmetals to have inherent properties and interactions with their native Investiture besides their use in the Invested Arts. Harmonium does explode, after all and is used for mechanical Allomancy.

Regardless of whether conducting Investiture is it's innate property or it's property as a Hemalurgic spike, it could be useful in Hemalurgy for transferring Hemalurgic charge, creating supercharged spikes, stealing the same attribute from multiple victims into the same spike (wait, can normal spikes do that? I think you can pierce once, though maybe that wasn't a hard limit, just Hemalurgic decay) stuff like that

Besides, they can Soulcast food and metals and even medicine, so they're getting supplies directly. They may not be literally making money but they sure are making the things that money would buy.

Vivenna was at the Fourth Heightening after getting the old Idrian spy's Breaths, so a 1000 Breaths. Edit: did not find any exact number in the book, but she does seem to have perfect pitch and colour hue recognition and life sense. All of these abilities do exist before reaching the Heightening, of course, they would just be less perfect. But it's safe to say she's definitely not above the Fourth Heightening.

Vasher is a Returned and as such has a Divine Breath, which would make him of the Fifth Heightening, which is 2000 Breaths. He also had Peacegiver's Treasure, which is 50,000 Breaths, Tenth Heightening. The actual amount of Breaths he carried around varies throughout the novel. Iirc he started at the Third Heightening, 600 Breaths and mostly went down from there.

3 hours ago, Hoid17th said:

Thanks for the link Honorless! I did consider if it was from Taldain, but I was just wondering how he changed the black sand back to white. On Taldain, the sand must be in the light of that sun for 4 hours for the sand to become white again, after being drained. It could be that the sun on Nalthis is somehow different and the sand reacts differently to this light than it's home light, similar to Superman on Earth. Or, as AonDoor said, it could be that Hoid is somehow transferring Investure.

Stormlight spoilers, books 3 & 4 (latter under another spoiler box inside the spoiler box) and some mild White Sand spoilers as well

We don't really know the nature of unique Rhythms, and Raboniel was certainly still affected by Voidlight. I don't know if it's possible to make Investiture that is not only not attuned to / opposite of any of the Shards of Adonalsium or any combination or neutral/all, but an entirely new one. Most likely you'll still be Connected to some Shards but it might be possible via playing around with the various combinations to get something weird enough to work. I think it might work best to find pre-Shattering Investiture for this, Hemalurgically steal some old Invested Art from someone Yolish or something, or perhaps the Dawnshards.

(And of course, we don't have exact confirmation of the relationship between a Shard's Pure Tone / Rhythm and Shardic Intent.)

I think you might still need to do something else to get rid of your Connection to your Shardworld? I think that's different from the native Shard(s)' Pure Tones, just getting new Investiture wouldn't remove your Connections.

All that said, I've liked the idea of an artificial Shard since a very long time, so I certainly hope we get to see something along these lines!

The scene in question:

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“Then we begin in the distant haze,” the Storyteller said, bringing up another hand, letting powdery black sand drop from it, mixing with the sand that fell from the first hand. As Siri watched, the black sand turned white, and she cocked her head, smiling at the display.

Yeah, that does seem to be white sand from Taldain

As for this bit: ""I learned it many, many years ago from a man who did not know who he was, Your Majesty. It was a distant place where two lands meet and gods have died. But that is unimportant." We do have a short story the Traveler set on Yolen, a few snippets from the Liar of Partinel and a few chapters from Dragonsteel. You can find out a fair bit if you look around. Stuff's compiled here: 

20 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

[snippitty-snippitty-snip-snip]

So, Nightblood was cutting apparent force, that's a bit strange to swallow. "Gravity not being composed of anything" may not necessarily be true, who knows, maybe in the future scientists will detect its force carrier but never mind that. Oh hey maybe there's "Virtual Investiture", so to speak.

Oh, never mind, missed the quantum part. Hmm, well done, Nightblood, I guess. That sword just gets weirder and weirder.

On 12/3/2021 at 9:12 PM, Hoid17th said:

Don't know if this is important or not, or if it has been mentioned before, but the first letter that Siri teaches the God King is 'shash', which is also the brand Kaladin got on his forehead in The Way of Kings.  Just a little tidbit!

On 12/4/2021 at 7:42 AM, Thaidakar the Cool Ookla said:

eternal sadness at that not being important

You two might enjoy this tidbit if you haven't already seen this:

Stormlight and Elantris spoilers

Already solving the shortcomings of Hemalurgy, I see. Yeah, I think it should work from what we've seen so far. You might need Endowment's tone to do stuff with it though.

That does seem to be the case. He's not pulling all of Stormfather to construct the Shardblade or Shardblade-equivalent but it could operate the Oathgate. We don't know any more about this, just that previous Bondsmiths did not get access to a Shardblade, and probably also not a Shardplate.

17 minutes ago, Eryr said:

So, In...    Oathbringer, I think? Hoid says,  "...The cosmere can be cruel..."   Is this a slip-up, or does he actually know what 'cosmere' means, and is aware of the implications? Not just cosmere aware, but aware of the word. Who coined it, why they coined it, and what it means. 

Yes, Hoid is pretty in-the-know (the only character who knows more about the Cosmere is Khriss) and one of the oldest characters in the setting (Frost the Dragon is older). He's a Worldhopper and was there when Adonalsium was Splintered and the first Vessels took up the Shards, he was even offered one, but he refused. In fact, he predated even them.

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

But the sword would cognitively act as one whole object, so shouldn't you be able to burn the whole thing? If time is the issue, then you could always use duralumin.

If it was a bullet, maybe but an entire sword? That's too big. Metal balls did provide more amount of potential power that could be burned than metal flakes so the amount does matter.

And as Szeth Pancakes mentions above, the Sword isn't completely inside you, that might be an issue too

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

Actually, I was thinking along the lines of painting it, or putting it in wax or bread dough, then buring the metal without it physically touching your actual body. But if you coated it in another, allomantically viable metal, then maybe you could use duralumin to burn both metals before the Harmonium could blow up on you.

Oh, I think that should work

On 12/16/2021 at 11:59 PM, Trusk'our said:

What I meant was, could you place a forgery on a metal spike and turn it into a hemalurgic spike, but fueled by the Dor, not Ruin.

Yeah, same thing, you want to Forge a Hemalurgic charge.

Brandon's kept relatively mum about Forging a Connection to a Shard and a location and how well that would work out to access a magic:

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Questioner

If you Stamp yourself, to have another, overwritten spiritweb, and you get Spiked-- *laughter* What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

We actually worked this out. *laughter*

Questioner

Well, you'd die, or very close to it, but would it revert when the Stamp reverts?

Brandon Sanderson

So what’s probably going to happen here is that you’re going to rip off the Investiture you’ve put on your soul, and your own soul will have less damage. Now, the spike is only gonna get the-- the spike, you're like "What will it do?" It will do what you've been overwritten with, but again remember, becoming an Allomancer takes so much energy, and things like-- But it is theoretically possible in the cosmere to rewrite yourself "You're an allomancer", someone spikes you to get this. The Investiture doesn't care that it was fake on you, you have managed to get that Investiture to work. Uhh, this is really tough. And really, like, you need Connection, and you need, like, the right kind of Investiture, but then it rips off and yes you have made a spike that makes you an Allomancer, even though the person was a Forger. So yes, okay? But this is the kind of stuff that is like the thought experiments for physicists in the cosmere as opposed to, y'know--

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

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Questioner

If you Soulstamp somebody to give them a Connection to Arelon, and they became an Elantrian, could they become and Elantrian, and if the Soulstamp is removed, would they remain?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, so you're asking a better one than people have asked. So you say "You get Soulstamped, you move to Arelon, your soul thinks that it is this, you do have spiritweb of Connection" I will go ahead and RAFO this with the caveat of why it might not work, is because, you might think you’re something, right? That doesn't necessarily mean-- Like, this is not completely invisible and things like this. And so, whether the power is going to follow those lines of Connection or not I will leave up to discussion, but it is a possibility worth theorizing upon.

Questioner

So a Soulstamp doesn't necessarily change the core of your spiritweb.

Brandon Sanderson

It does, but it's overwriting it. It's like Hemalurgy. What you are is still there underneath when it's ripped away, right?

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

(Note to the second one as there's a bit more to the Shaod and becoming Elantrian and he has since confirmed Connection shenanigans to make AonDor work off-world iirc)

It wouldn't be as difficult as accessing the Dor or Allomancy as anyone can become a Hemalurgist, you won't need a connection to Scadrial and not too significant of a connection to Ruin, just knowledge, Intent and spiking. Without the spiking, you'll need to Forge a bit of Connection. We know that creating Connections is possible at least: the Connection orb in Secret History. So it might be possible to Forge a Hemalurgic charge, yeah

9 hours ago, Ookla the Cometary said:

I thought "Iridescent Tones" meant color and sound, the whole perfect pitch/perfect color correspondence thing?

I don't know, it's possible it's a religious philosophical term that Lightsong applied to the voice that offered him the choice to Return

1 hour ago, Ookla the Frustrated said:

Not neccesarily more investiture, but more noticable, lightweaving is kind of like a natural coppercloud, albeit a very weak one.

Pattern notices that Shallan's lightweaving is more "quiet"

Not just noticeability, Shallan actually required less Stormlight to draw from the spheres than Kaladin, we actually see this and they talk about it and strategize accordingly