Ashbringer

If trellium isn't that, I wonder if it could be made as a weapon against Shardblades regardless, splitting tanavastium and korellium(?) from the Shardblade alloy.

I think a prior WoB was that a Mistborn could burn harmonium to some effect, but that would require it somehow being in their body without it reacting to the water inside their body and exploding. But a Gold Compounder could survive it. Unsure if anyone could burn it - it seems anyone could burn lerasium or "refined" atium, but God Metals don't seem to follow a solid enough pattern in general.

My brain

Everyone is quoting me it's weird

Xino! is the thing we do this game just to not grammar or spel with focus

Cassandra Adama, The Metallurgic Emporium NullBlade didn't take the little opportunity to talk about himself. He'd never really been open about his past, save for the one blunder Cassie'd made. Not that Cassie had ever talked much about hers. And that was fine, she thought. They were here for the present. If she could have given up the Soulcaster and made everything fine, back to normal, back to being just a smith and Lurcher, would she? Before she'd been adamant she wouldn't. She didn't know what she'd say now. But it didn't exist. If it did, it was too late to try and find it. "So, I suppose it's time I stop distracting you and leave you to finish your work," NullBlade finally said. And he was right. Rust, he was right. "Yeah," she said simply. "Shouldn't let the storm go to waste." Cassandra Adama took one last sip of tea. Then she started moving, slowly, and grabbed her kettle, holding it soft in fingers that for all she knew could crush it. "... Goodnight, NullBlade," she said, taking one last look at her shop before turning for the door, unable to speak the final phrase she'd been thinking, I'll see you in the morning. For all the willpower, the belief she needed that this would work... that was beyond her. So she just nodded and walked upstairs. The actual continuation of the project was simple. The main amethysts had been let sit in the Alleystorm for several hours, and shone bright with Stormlight. She didn't need to do much now - just connecting some of them to her body, giving her centers for motion, for sight, and the large perfect gem for her own soul. It would be easier to implant the full string of gemstone beads once her experiment was complete. Still, it was strange to use her Soulcaster this way, liquifying a small part of the metal that had once been her flesh, dropping a small gemstone within, and re-solidifying the material. She couldn't do that before. She couldn't make heat with her Soulcaster, although she'd often wondered if she could make molten metal if she combined Foil and Flame. But she'd done mercury and gallium enough to shift between them quickly. On a whim, she Soulcast her own dress, a strand of thread at a time, making a similar yet contrasting metal to that of her own body. It... just fit. Was she stalling? She couldn't tell. But that was enough gemstones. So there was nothing left to do. So Cassandra Adama laid down, folded her arms over herself, resting her Soulcaster over her weak heart. She took the last breath she'd probably ever take. And Changed.

Oh. Right. New profile. It is nice, just not what I remember

Interesting Kas and Shining pointed the same thing out in two different ways. Probably not e/e. Definitely. Okay QF has been a while so let’s go quick and go Turtle.

I mean, slippery answers can be locked down by specific wording. "List the player names of all of your current Elim teammates" for one - don't know how you can wiggle out of that one without going a bit too wild with your interpretations. I like the idea of asking questions, but I don't know if being able to talk about alignment in any way would work very well. Or just yes/no, or the Master/Elims in general being able to lie.

... actually, how can the questions work? Because could you ask "list the entire Elim Team exactly" and either find a villager or get the entire Elim team?

The one thing that stands out to me is The Doctor can just ask "what is your alignment" to find Non-Master Elims, and they'd know if they hit The Master because their ability would shut down. Unless I'm reading the rules wrong.

Cassandra Adama, the Metallurgic Emporium "I guess you learn something new every day," Cassie said, cracking a smile. It faded quickly. "But... I think I get what you mean." It was a different concept. Losing control of your own motion and emotion versus living in pain. But a similar result. Anything that would give them a chance to live without it. For some, even if the chance was astronomically low. For others... well, Cassie had a chance. "Thank you." She said nothing for a while. It was... nice, sort of. Two friends sharing tea. Before Cassie would think it presumptuous to say she and NullBlade were friends, but... something about baring one's soul to someone, even if her soul matched her skin, made it seem right. It had been a while since she had a friend. And now she might lose it all. Was it weird that she was more worried about him, about Poller, about the other few people she'd met and had company? She'd made the decision of not wallowing away into a statue, but was that just selfish? No, she had to hope this would work. It had to work. She had everything she needed. She just needed to believe in her own willpower. "I'm... sorry it turned out this way. I know we never really focused on your own savantism and... I know you've lost people before. But thank you for staying anyway." @mathiau

Cassandra Adama, the Metallurgic Emporium Cassie knew the look in NullBlade's eyes. It had been the one in her own eyes just a few days ago. "May I know what this way is?" he said, taking the tea but seeming to take little interest. "More importantly, is there any way I can help you with it?" Cassie took a small sip. The tea was still bitter, but she knew how to make it well. Hopefully it was just her mouth and not the drink itself. "I think the skin was the last thing to really turn. The inside had been more metal for a while. But I've also been working on the project, which led to more Soulcasting. Not a lot more, but... enough to do this." Cassie gestured vaguely at her own face. Well, here we go. "What do you know about Cognitive Shadows?" Cassandra asked. "I don't know much. Just that a lot of Investiture can make the soul of a person continue beyond the death of their body. Like making a spren of a person. And if a body can be brought back to life, or isn't really dead, then something that can connect the spirit back to it. And some of my contacts found a plan to make that connection." The words were flowing easier now. "Because as much as this is killing me, it's not really me dying, is it? A heart of iron, yet a heart that still beats. Metal skin that still moves. Metal eyes that still see. It's still a body, just one that's becoming less and less... habitable. Less of a home to my soul. And the idea is to use a gemstone to make the home better. So I can live in a body as metal as can be, but one I'm connected to stronger, one that can move and speak and live." It sounded so much nicer, put that way. No talk of finishing the path her Soulcaster had set her upon before she could progress. No talk of implanting a gemstone the size of her fist into her head or chest with some macabre blend of scalpels and smith's tools. No talk of the mere handful of people who had successfully done what she was attempting, no talk of the thousands who had tried and were never seen again. No talk of the scale of energy that would be needed to work such a transformation. Although it seemed as though the last problem was solving itself. Perhaps the penultimate one could too. "It's... not likely to work. A lot of people try to make Cognitive Shadows. Not a lot of people succeed. You need a big energy source and willpower," she said, lowering her teacup. "But the Alleystorm is here tonight. That's all the power a mortal could dream of. And... the other thing. The changes, you've seen them. Something is changing within the soul of this world, making them unstable, adding something new or peeling something away, I can't tell. But it makes them unstable. Harder to Soulcast things into something entirely different, but easier to make a small shift. They're... something is changing reality. Changing what a soul is. Maybe I can follow along." Cassie looked at NullBlade. "I remember now, NullBlade. The Hospital, something we could see, the dark things that took my worry and my memory. There was a break in the wall, a break that made the world not what it was. Something important is falling apart." She took a deep breath. That had been a lot. "I don't know what I can do. I don't know what you can do. But... if I try this, it has to be tonight. It has to be." If she could still make tears, she would have them now, but that ship had sailed a long time ago. "I... am I doing the right thing?" @mathiau

Depends if it breaks his Oaths. Which it probably would, but we don't know enough about Fused-becoming to say.

... you know, Dalinar as a Bondsmith is a pretty good master of Connection...

He did say "it's what you think it is" or something along those lines. And the theories were either Voidlight or an Unmade, but leaning Voidlight. Don't think many people predicted anti-Voidlight. That there could be merit to Trell being related to a Shard, but not a Shard itself by our definition. Or just that WoBs can change.

WoBs have been misleading or overwritten before. See Szeth's Black Sphere being anti-Voidlight and not Voidlight.

I think it is possible Odium breaks out in SA 5. Mainly that I feel Dalinar being forced to serve Odium could have much more drastic consequences. Don't know if Odium could order Dalinar to release him within the bounds of their agreement, but Odium probably could force Dalinar to make the Stormfather a deadeye. Which would be bad. But still, that's more SA5 things, and likely wouldn't be spoiled in TLM.

I guess what I mean is, assuming we learn Trell's identity here - which we might not even learn - it could have happened in the context of OB and not RoW. So if the reveal is that Trell is Odium, then we wouldn't have known Rayse was replaced with Taravangian at that point. That feels weird, from a meta perspective.

Actually, one more meta-thing that we should probably add to the mix on Trell's identity: Originally in revisions, The Lost Metal was supposed to release before Stormlight 4.

Cassandra Adama, The Metallurgic Emporium NullBlade didn't seem to believe his eyes. He kept stepping closer, trying to get a better look. Trying to see what wasn't there. Cassie simply stepped a bit closer and handed him a cup of tea. She didn't want to hide this. Not right now. "... No, NullBlade," she finally said, setting down her kettle onto her desk. "I'm not alright. Things were always worse than they looked, now they just... look." Cassandra nodded at her desk chair, but didn't move to sit down. It wasn't exactly comfortable to stand for long periods of time, but at this point it wasn't any less comfortable than sitting down. Just not moving was best. "I... don't know where to start is. I've been looking for ways to get out of it. And I found... one way. But it's risky. Could leave me dead instead of living like this." She swirled the tea around slowly. "I was going to try it tonight." @mathiau Byron, The Einladung Hospital It was too much. Too much. Byron could hear the yelling, the confusion, the morphings, the panic from whatever was happening. Byron didn't know what it was, whether the dark things were causing it or trying to save people from turning physically different and mentally broken. But he just wanted it to stop. But Byron had noticed one thing. Whatever it was, it was so much bigger than this. Big enough that it happened at the same speed in and out of his distortion of time. Big enough that it happened quicker, if not easier, for those inside. So Byron did the one thing he knew how to do. He burned cadmium. A lot of it.

Honestly this is more an Era 1 issue for me than Era 2. Lerasium has the “extra” effect, but from my understanding what makes someone an Allomancer is an extra bit of Preservation in their Spiritweb, and a Lerasium Mistborn is from the bit of Preservation from the metal sticking to the person’s soul. But then what happens with atium? Where does that power go, and more importantly, why couldn’t Ati get it back? It can’t go back to Ruin directly, otherwise the Atium Misting plan would have doomed the world. It can’t go back to the Pits, as those are still destroyed in Era 2 - there could be atium crystals elsewhere, which we may find out in this book, but Ruin seemed much more panicked than a relatively minor setback than that. Does it stick to the Atium Mistings’ souls like lerasuim theoretically does? But they all - or at least most of them - died before Ati did, so where did the power go from there? I guess this is more a massive cosmere question, of “what happens to the Investiture of someone’s soul when they die?”. Which is… probably not going to be revealed any time soon.

I read that WoB as it being Scadrian's perceptions of what "atium" was as very slightly tainted, not the atium itself being very slightly tainted; although it would make sense if it was a mostly-atium alloy. Could be that burning pure atium does things that aren't immediately noticeable, like lerasium's "real" effect. But I do have questions as to where the power of atium goes when it's burned, and I don't think we have a canon answer on that. It repelled the Hemalurgic Spikes - those are still tied to Ruin's Investiture, even if the power within is of Preservation. Hemalurgy used to repel Preservation's mists too, which indicates those are different enough. Harmony recognizing a corrupted atium is an idea... but I'd assume Harmony still has the issues of seeing metal that the other shards have, and it depends how complete the corruption is.

Not pure atium, but if it's an avatar of Harmony being aided by one of the other theories (Odium/Autonomy) it could be corrupted atium. Although corrupted atium could also be one of those shards directly. Also malatium - Atium+Gold - looks significantly different than the "atium" - Atium+Electrum - that we know... it could be that the Era 1 atium was designed so no one would figure out it was an alloy, though.

I suppose it’s possible that the Shards know how to do it, but that would most likely mean Harmony is either specifically unaware or hiding it from Kelsier - and if Harmony doesn’t know, I don’t know why Taravangian would. Vasher is also technically a Cognitive Shadow and managed to worldhop. I was under the impression Odium had also been forced to Invest upon Roshar, which is why the Fused and voidspren exist. But that may be wrong too. A better question is why need to wait for Dalinar ro start sending Fused off-world if Odium was indeed able to.