Stormtide_Leviathan

That does make sense with it's traditional associations in the real world

Not necessarily. Maybe the ecology that lives down there needs to learn some limited method of controlling the spores in order to be able to survive down there. What theories is she referring to here?

Yeah I agree. Getting a 17th godmetal in harmonium already complicates things, if we started seeing godmetals for avatars it gets exponentially more complicated fast. That definitely felt like something put in there to say "no that's not what's happening here". I think the corruption only comes because it's a *godmetal* charged with hemalurgy (specifically, the godmetal of a shard that has nothing to do with hemalurgy). It's solid investiture of one shard charged with the investiture of another. If you were just charging, say, a goldspike I don't think that would creare corrupted investiture, that would just be Ruin investiture. I also don't get the sense that taking Allomancy inherently counts as corruption, though admittedly I can't articulate why.

Clearly, there is a plan for Marsh down the road. I don't think Sanderson would make him immortal and keep him around for no good reason. So what's going to be his story going forward? Marsh is currently probably one of the most (if not the most) heavily ruin-invested individuals in the cosmere, save Harmony himself, and as lost metal tells us that's not likely to change. Hemalurgy was different in the era of the final empire, and you just can't have as many spikes now as Marsh does. Sazed, meanwhile, has a problem. He has more ruin in his system than he does preservation, and it's making things difficult for him. Perhaps one way to solve this issue is to shunt that extra ruin into an avatar, a minishard. And who better to make an avatar of Ruin than the person already most heavily aligned with him? Ruin is the end of all things. The fall of the great civilization, the mountain ground into dust, the star that goes out. Preservation gave a part of himself up to create life. So what then, is the avatar of that opposite part of Ruin? Death.

I think Brandon's said that Elantris is the earliest in the timeline

I wouldn't be surprised if he's able to suppress his nature as an elantrian when he needs to for a disguise, and could still be frozen in time, so I don't think we can really use that as evidence of much

Not necessarily. When adolnasium shattered, all investiture was assigned to one of the shards. Now the aethers dispute that claim, and say they're their own separate thing. But it's possible their investiture was assigned to autonomy

So after rhythm of war, I saw theories floating around that godmetals were kind of like a supercharged versions of the normal metals. Atium, for example, was compared to Super-Electrum (this was before the atium retcon which throws a bit of a wrench into the info we know for comparison) and raysium with its investure-conductive properties might have been super-nicrosil or super-duralumin. After a certain fact in sp1 caught my attention with Lost Metal fresh in my mind, I want to revisit these theories. In sp1, tress uses an iron tool and a steel tool to manipulate aethergrowths- iron to attract it and steel to repel it. This of course is very similar to what we know of their effects in fabrials, as well as of course their allomantic effect. (And I'm just now realizing that iron feruchemy affects gravity, you're storing and tapping the physical pull of the world on you, though I think it does so through tapping/storing *mass* not gravitational force). This use of steel to repel investiture reminded me of something else- Trellium aka bavadinium. This particular comparison holds up nicely for the purposes of this theory, and I'm interested in the differences between how steel and trellium repel investiture. So of the known godmetals, do you think they're comparable to the allomantic metals?

So the midnight aether mimics things, taking on their shape. This immediately brought to mind Re-Shephir, aka the Midnight Mother, who does exactly this. There's no way that's a coincidence, I think we can all agree. But the question is, is this just magic working by similar principals? Or was Re-Shephir made directly from something aetheric? Cause one of the prevailing theories is that the Unmade were unmade from being *something*.

Yeah this makes a lot of sense! White sand does change from white to black and activates with water so it makes sense that people would assume it's a spore. I agree that it's probably not directly an aether but rather something that works by a similar mechanism

Ohhh that could make sense, yeah. If it took an aluminum spike to bring him to life, that would also stop him from using his powers.

My assumption, after bands of mourning, was that the lord ruler had nothing to do with the creation of the bands and instead it was all kelsier or at least, kelsier with some help from spook or something. He didn't have access to feruchemic powers, but we knew little enough about what his deal was now that I was willing to brush that aside until we knew more. But after The Lost Metal, this just doesn't make much sense. So what happened then? There are two questions here- one, who made them and two, why did they keep them in the temple instead of somewhere practical? - Kelsier made them. This just doesn't seem likely anymore. Kelsier doesn't even have access to allomancy anymore, let alone feruchemy. I don't see how he could have made the bands, unless he had to give up his powers to make them or made them and then later lost his powers (say, through an aluminum spike). But why? Why would he make them, why would he not use them himself to get his powers back if he knew where they were, and even if he can't use them why are they kept in a temple and not as a tool for the ghostbloods? It just doesn't make sense. - Marsh made them. Maybe. Marsh does have access to both allomancy and feruchemy, and I could see harmony instructing him to make them as a failsafe and then to put them in the temple to hide them until they're desperately needed. But even marsh, with all his spikes, doesn't have all the powers. He only has 21 spikes, which is not enough to give access to the full breadth of allomancy and feruchemy. There's only one person to ever have access to all the powers of both without the bands - The Lord Ruler made them. He was always the obvious choice. The biggest strikes against him were that 1) he did everything in his power to avoid letting anyone else and 2) that we saw him pass into the beyond in secret history so we know he's not secretly still sticking around, so someone else would have had to find and distribute them. I don't think 1) is actually an issue though. Because while yes, he wanted to make sure no one else became a fullborn, he also wanted to make sure he stayed one. The lord ruler knew about aluminum and knew about hemalurgy to know that an aluminum spike could be a serious threat to him; I think it would make sense for him to want a backup in case that happened. Someone else still would have had to distribute them though; likely kelsier or marsh. (The memory coin certainly implies kelsier, though as I mentioned earlier it makes more sense for marsh to be the one to hide them at harmony's request) What are your thoughts on this? Who made the bands? How? Why did they make them, only to abandon them?

Trellium (Or Bavadinium) is described as a silvery metal with a red cast, and dark red spots similar to rust. When heated, it gives off a full array of light with the red portion being expanded. Red though, has a very specific meaning. It is not known to be strictly associated with any one shard, but rather is the color of investiture from one shard that has been "corrupted" by the investiture of another shard. So why, then, is trellium associated with red? Well cause all the trellium we see is not just trellium, but hemalurgically charged trellium. This means that it is solid Autonomy-aligned investiture filled with ruin investiture. That sounds like textbook corruption to me. So that leads to a few questions. - What color would trellium normally burn for, when not hemalurgically charged? - If you were to use any nonscadrian godmetal as a spike and charge it with Ruin, would it develop similar red spots from the hemalurgic charge, and give off red light on the spectrometer when heated? If you were to use an Atium spike, it presumably wouldn't develop red spots since it wouldn't make sense to corrupt Ruin investiture with more Ruin investiture, and I'd guess the same is true for Harmonium if you could find a way to use it as a spike without it exploding. But what about Lerasium- specifically, is it different before and after ruin and preservation became harmony? - Does feruchemically charging godmetals produce a similar corrupting effect? If so, how does this apply to the scadrian metals? Does it corrupt both lerasium and atium (I don't see any reason harmonium should be corrupted), since you're putting a bit of ruin into lerasium and a bit of preservation into atium? Or does it corrupt neither, since it's aligned with the proper intent even if it's also aligned with another intent? And similarly to hemalurgically charged lerasium, is this different before and after the creation of Harmony? My guess is that feruchemy doesn't corrupt either, if it corrupts godmetals at all, since I don't remember the lord ruler's bracers being described as reddish.

The metallic arts are traced in *spiritual* genetics, not normal genetics like we have

I don't think you use tin to store pain- I think you use it to store your ability to feel pain. So even if you completely turn off your pain, get stabbed with a knife, then someone else taps the painmind, I don't think they'd feel the pain of a stabbing. They'd just have increased sensitivity to pain

There was a very imminent threat of an apocalypse on scadrial and no other apparent outs. I think, even if there was only one use left on the bands, Kelsier would be willing to use them to avert the apocalypse even if it means losing access to the bands.

Moash girlies represent!!!

Huh interesting. That still doesn't rule out the possibility that that self-awareness was damaged by the heralds giving up the oathpact or something, but it doesn't really point toward it either

Investiture, when you have enough in one place, tends to gain sentience. The honorblades are splinters of Honor he made himself, and clearly quite invested. Each generation of blade since them- sprenblades and nightblood- has been sentient. Spren figured out the radiant bond when trying to replicate honorblades- but why did they try to replicate them? What made spren look at an inanimate sword and go "i could do that", unless the swords were, in fact, something similar to them. To me, it would just make sense if the honorblades, too, were sentient. So why haven't we seen this sentience? Well, for the same reason people didn't know pre-radiant-return shardblades were sentient: cause they're dead. They died, probably, when the heralds gave up the oathpact. This would leave one honorblade still alive, Taln's honorblade, one that we haven't seen yet and clearly has *something* going on behind the scenes. (Primarily, who swapped it out for a normal shardblade after taln returned? Where is it now?) We haven't seen shardblades in the cognitive realm, and it's like our radiants have had a lot of opportunity to either. They lost the honorblade before they figured out how to go to shadesmar. It's not like the radiants would have to be dumb and not think to check what honorblades look like after they knew spren were different in the cognitive. (Technically there was a couple-month period where Jasnah could have checked, but I think it's a lot more believable for one person in a couple months to not think of this than a whole city in a year). There's also a cheeky WoB about honorblade's 10 heartbeat limitation My assumption for a while was that the reason for this was about perception. They thought it would take 10 heartbeats, so it did. But in the Vyre interlude, we see him going "Adolin was able to summon his blade in less than 10 heartbeats. There must be a way I can too" and actively trying, to no avail. And the shin have more experience with honorblades than they do shardblades- and i doubt the 10 heartbeat thing is that common of knowledge among people without shardblades, so why would they think this limitation exists? So maybe they actually *do* have a 10 heartbeat limitation, because they're deadeyes.

He's bad. Unifying alethkar is not a point in his favor, he's a conqueror who wants the world to bend to him. He thinks he should be the most important person in the world and has the social power to make other people act like it. And he's a horrible husband too, as the icing on the cake. Frankly I was on board from the moment I read "Szeth son-son Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king". I'm always down for regicide and not a single thing I learned about Gavilar since has made me reconsider that opinion (especially not his own POV chapter).

possible, but i think if anything it's a lerasium-*iron* alloy, which could be having a similar effect with the blue lines but would give wax access to an additional metal (and compounding, though weight seems like potentially one of the less useful things to compound, but I'm sure you could find a circumstance where it's extremely useful). Here's the relevant passage. As for what could be in the special vials. If he gained access to other powers somehow through the explosion, could be any number of metals. But even just as a steel misting, he could burn normal steel, unsealed steelminds, and steel-godmetal alloys (atium, trellium, and potentially harmonium being the more useful ones, though we have no idea what any of them may do), as well as being able to burn any pure godmetal.

Stormlight spoilers Oh I like this theory! I think this makes a lot of sense, Trell fueling feruchemy somehow.

As I understand it, Avatars are basically like the inverse of whatever harmony is. Harmony is multiple shards combined into one Intent (with arguable effectiveness), and avatars are when one shard splits into multiple intents. So if Ruin, Preservation, and Harmony can all have distinct godmetals, I think it stands to reason that different avatars of the same shard may as well.

Oooh what about some kind of BreathBank? At the very least, being able to store your breath in an object and then have someone else (someone specific?) retrieve it so that if you die, you can pass your breath onto something

Spiking feruchemists for non-feruchemical traits just seems like a waste even if there are more feruchemists than one might think, I doubt kandra blessings are made from anything but normal humans