Koloss17

Honestly, I really liked it! It hit a really nice niche for me as a Doctor Who fan, with the horror being exploring a terrifying hypothetical (in this case the question of “what if everyone forgot you existed?”). It was a wonderful ride, and I felt that it was an excellent addition to the Dark One series. Honestly, I feel like it could stand alone, unconnected from Dark One. Personally, I enjoyed the short length of the story, compared to other audiobooks Brandon Sanderson has done in the past. I felt it could convey a thrilling story in a pleasantly short amount of time, and there wasn’t a single part that I felt I wanted to go faster. The voice acting was fantastic, and I loved the unorthodox approach to storytelling that is criminally underutilized. That said, there’s quite a bit that I feel goes against what is said in the original Dark One, and I’m not sure if that is a rewriting of the canon or if it is an intentional in-world choice. Overall, I really liked it and am excited to see Sanderson and Wells collabs in the future!

A new entry has arisen! here’s On Two Feet.

That is an interesting thought! One key thing to consider, however, is that there is a price to be paid for the bond. What price would that be? Now here’s a thought, which is actually quite similar to yours. What if the vessel-shard bond is a spiritual bond? It is a contract, much like that of nahel bonds, yet it runs much deeper. It exacts the price of limiting actions of the bearer and eventually effecting their spiritual identity to be that of their own. It seems to be a fairly decent candidate.

Perses, head down, opened his senses once more. To his horror, the house creatures were right there. Perses froze, anticipating their next move. They approached, from all sides. From them, one emerged. It’s body morphing, it’s heartbeat changing. As it morphed, it’s heartbeat ended up beating to the same rhythm as Malsam’s. Was it copying her? He silently cursed, as he wished, not for the first time, that he could actually see what was going on. He cursed again as Malsam opened her mouth to speak. "I mean you no harm, Watcher. Not so long as you mean me none. What is the reason you are here?" From what Perses had felt during his probing, they were not negotiators. Perses didn’t dare speak further, but he did pay close attention as the creatures in the shadows advanced, approaching behind the others. As Perses opened his mouth to warn them, Willow bolted, Vivi in toe. Ruin. Perses flared his senses. Bronzesense, lifesense, hearing, touch. He was using unsustainable amounts of each, and because of his in depth probing earlier, they might not last. Luckily, fights often ended quick. Making his peace with Death, and praying to both Harmony and the Survivor, Perses raised his gun towards the Malsam copy and fired, right at the center of the creature.

So are we considering general fortune a shard has? Because I feel that can lead to quite the edge in any sort of large scale attack. Odium, for example, while powerful, is not particularly adept at thinking ahead (well, pre-TOdium I suppose). Cultivation, Endowment, and maybe Autonomy, on the other hand, are quite high on fortune, and are up to their metaphorical knees in schemes.

Hmmmm. Maybe. But it is worth noting that luhel bond seems to be more exchange-oriented. You have to give up something to get it. For a Nahel bond, it seems both parties benefit without all that much effort. Spren get intelligence in the physical, radiant gets powers. I would say an example of a Luhel bond that we have seen would definitely be Nighblood. Where midnight spores eat your water, Nughblood eats your investiture/soul.

Honestly I would be so bummed if Brandon introduced this super cool world, and then kind of did nothing with it. There’s so much potential here, and I want to see all the possibilities! I certainly think Tress’ story is over, but I just want another story set here, perhaps even just a slightly lower stakes one.

I’d honestly go with some creative miming, or perhaps morse. Are you looking for other potential options?

I worry that it might be extremely powerful, with near immortality, extreme probing skills, shape shifting of a sort, and sleeplessness. How have those strengths been balanced in the past?

….has anyone made a Sleepless character? There’s a whole host (pun hyper intended) of possibilities with playing as one, and I am very close to trying to do something with that.

Yeah, that seems to be quite a common theory. I think it has some merits, but I feel like the black of the uninvested sand would be quite similar to that of blackened Aethers on death, so I am not sure how the unsureness would come about in regards to color. Oh wow I completely forgot that! That makes things so much more likely! Thank you, I totally didn’t catch that (or I might have, but it was on my first read-through).

Exactly!

You have two metals melded together. Nicrosil and whatever else. Nicrosil grants the ability to tap or store a certain investiture, basically becoming a ferring for a time. The other metalmind is just used to tap and store whatever ferring ability you just gained. To be able to do any of this, it seems clear that you need both metalminds to be unkeyed, i.e. someone stored all of their identity in an aluminummind before storing nicrosil. Nicrosil hadn’t really been explained past “it stores investiture”. I think that based on what we see in the books, it seems clear that the investiture in question is the person’s innate investiture, which is their ability to burn/store/tap a metal. Basically nicrosil stores a person’s metalborn-ness. With that out of the way, the main question is reusability. It seems that with F-aluminum, F-nicrosil, and F-whatever else, you can create an unsealed metalmind. However, it doesn’t seem to be repeatable, as once you have fully stored say, your F-iron, you wouldn’t be able to make another unsealed ironmind. That’s where I think excisors come in. They both allow the user to have F-aluminum, F-nicrosil, and anything else they would need, as well as making the process repeatable. Personally, my headcannon is that that is some sort of Hemalurgy rig that spikes the user with F-nicrosil, F-aluminum, F-whatever else, and A-Nicrosil. That would allow the compounding of innate investiture, allowing you to make repeatable unsealed metalminds. But that’s just my theory. To your specific bit of confusion, the nicrosilmind is unkeyed, which means that there is no check in place to see if the person that is tapping the metalmind is actually the original owner, so you can tap the ability to use a metal without consequence.

Oh god I was just complaining about the length and trying to decipher what each letter meant. I just now saw that it’s totes. Be right back, just jumping into a chasmfeind’s gullet real quick.

That is actually a really good point! Hope lives!!!! This is also a fair point. Also that acronym is killing me inside. It 100% makes sense, but storms.

Perses stopped burning everything. What in Harmony’s name was that. “I don’t think the house liked me probing it.” Perses said in a surprisingly calm voice. “And it might have sent some goons to deal with us.” Perses, blind as he was, still wanted to look. He didn’t need to actually face the direction of anything; generally having his ears pointed in the direction is best. Fighting the urge, he positioned his head to the ground, and felt for his gun. It wasn’t anything special; a simple handgun. But he was good with it. He had no clue if it would actually do anything and these things, but he hoped it would. turning on his senses again, he scanned his surroundings, awaiting the attack.

Ohhhh yeaaah. I completely forgot about that little tidbit in TLM. Kinda shoots down the theory. Thanks for bringing that up!

So I have just finished the book, and need to share my thoughts. @The Bookwyrm made a wonderful post on it already, (100% check out his thoughts), but felt that I wouldn’t want to put my thoughts there, as they’ve only read part of the book. so this is my warning: DO NOT PROCEED PAST THIS POINT IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ALL OF SP1. It’s worth the read, and my theory will be involving all parts of the book. There will also be slight spoilers for TLM, so be wary of that too. So now that everyone here has hopefully read everything, I shall begin my rambling, starting with what @The Bookwyrm has said. He pointed out that there are striking similarities between sand on white sand and aethers, the largest being the use of water as a price for control of the sand. But the similarities don’t stop there. Further down the line, we see Tress experimenting with verdant sprouts, and realizing that there is a similar connection to that of the midnight spores, but less advanced. This is something also felt with sand mastery, where they feel almost alive, but don’t quite have a mind of their own. Additionally, when they are used up, and the investiture killed, they blacken. A more interesting comparison is how Taldain’s sun acts oddly like the moons on Lumar. While grains of sand do not fall from the sky, they are invigorated by sunlight, turned from black to white again. This is not exactly something seen in the spores, as for all we know, once they are blackened, they stay dead. However, we do see that the moons exude some sort of investiture, as Fort recharges his awakened tablet by exposing it to the sun. Now, I know the sun isn’t the same as the moons, but clearly something in the sky is invested, and allows the tech to keep going. It’s also worth noting that the moons seem to be stationary, just like Taldain’s sun. So there’s a lot of similarities. Are they exactly the same? No. Lumar’s moons drop spores from the sky, something that Taldain’s sun doesn’t do. Aethers also respond much more explosively than white sand does, and once they blacken, they cannot unblacken. Not to mention that sand mastery is genetic. So I don’t think they are exactly the same, but there’s something suspicious going on. Here’s my thought: I don’t think sand mastery is of Autonomy. I personally don’t buy it. It is way too simple a magic system and extremely niche within the world. It is also insanely similar to Aethers, which has never really happened to magic systems made by different shards. I think sand mastery is related to Aethers, and originated there in some capacity, but are not the same as Aethers. Something is weird about them, and I just can’t believe that they started in Taldain. Unless, of course, Aethers are of Autonomy. Now, that’s an interesting theory, and it does have its merits. The autonomous nature of Aethers, both as we know them on Lumar and as we know them from TLM, seem to align very much with the nature and Intent of Autonomy. The only hitch is that Taldain, Autonomy’s presumed base of operations, is on the opposite side of the galaxy from Lumar. But given the shenanigans Autonomy got up to in TLM, distance doesn’t seem to be that important. Am I confident that the Aethers are of Autonomy? Nope! But it’s either that or white sand isn’t of Autonomy in my books. Anyway, this is less of a theory spouting and more of a rambling post. If you have suggestions or additions to make, be my guest. I think this is a very intriguing line of thinking, and I want to get to the bottom of this.

Alright. Here goes nothing. “I’m going to probe the manor. Ideally, I would like everyone to be silent for five minutes.“ With that, Perses turned on everything. Initially, this has been extremely hard for him. Yet, it was what he had become good at in the past three years. He was about two months out of practice, as it was unnecessary in most of the Alleycity. It was much too loud anyway. Perses began his routine. He started his hearing loop, going from base power to full power over the course of about five seconds. The room continuously fluctuated from eerie silence to a thunderous roar. Slightly out of sync with that loop, Perses began the bronze loop. The room went from a roar of sound to a complex network of signals, with a bit of overlap between the two extremes. Finally, Perses activated lifesense. Sound, magic, life. Sound, magic, life. This loop reset every ten seconds or so, with a constant wave of inputs washing over Perses. From the chaos, Perses began selecting his focus. For now, he tuned out everything in his immediate vicinity. The pounding of heartbeats. The precise and intricate visages of the group. The network of magic emanating from multiple nearby people. For now, the only signals that mattered was from the manor itself. to an outsider, it would look ridiculous, with Perses locked into place, and having only slight head twitches towards anything interesting . To Perses, the world unraveled its secrets in front of him. @ZincAboutIt

@Ashbringer

The house moved. It spiraled, ever shifting, and almost in a conscious way. Rooms morphed, completely without sound. From tiny nooks to large, cavernous spaces, Perses felt the echoes of the others’ voices react according to the changes in size. It was all unfortunately distorted, as sound travels weirdly in time bubbles. Perses had interacted with pulsers and sliders a few times before, but never closely, and rarely while in the bubble. He was sure others could tell there was some distortion, but the extent of it was baffling. It wasn’t like a wall was put in front of the room he was hearing into, it was more like a maddening tapestry of holes and barricades all carefully woven into one, weird, jumble of sound. Yet still, there was information to be gathered. Perses had his senses about three times as high as he normally would, including his lifesense and bronzesense, which were dwindling more than he would like. It was a notch down from his initial entrance into the manor, before he knew who he had for company. But unlike in the waiting room, there was so much more going on in these walls. And through it all, Perses felt a presence. His lifesense was up quite high, but this felt like it could be detected by someone without a single breath. Beings, all connected, watching. These were what Cobalt and the lady of the manor warned the group about. They flew by in a blur, yet they lingered. They felt like they were all around him, yet he could rarely pinpoint an exact location. If only he knew more. If only he felt more. ”Byron, can you kill your cadmium for a second? It won’t be long.” @Ashbringer, @ZincAboutIt

My guy, I advise you to give this thread a reread. Frustration already corrected me, and I said that I clearly need to reread it.

Ah that’s a good point. I think you’re right.