therunner

Neither dahns nor nahns seem to necessarily play a role in military, or to be more precise, military ranks overrules socials rank in military context. See Kaladin and Tien's (both of second or third nahn) positions in Amaram's army, or Kaladin's position as captain of Dalinar's personal guard (as there were some lighteyes of lower ranks there). So this does not seem to be special to bridge crews but general way Alethi military functions. We have no evidence that they could have been sold outside of bridge crew context. In fairness we also don't really have evidence that they could not have been (outside of them not all being legally slaves). Fair enough. To me calling them 'slaves' without any qualifier is precisely de-contextualization, as you are applying a word which in their context carries different meaning (i.e. 'bridge crew member' =/= 'slave' to a Rosharan, as they understand the word slave differently, and despite there being some overlap there are also differences). I think calling them bridge crews (or Sadeas' bridge crew) should be sufficient, because we all know exactly what they went through and how were they treated, so there is a little possibility of misunderstanding. As we seem to be approaching this from different viewpoints, we will most likely never agree on this so agreeing to disagree is I think the best way forward. Agreed, I never even expected this to become a discussion in the first place as I never intended for it to be a part of my argument, merely a sidenote.

@Honorless Because to characters themselves it would not be slavery, nor would they call it that I think. They perception of the situation is different, and the word slavery carries a different meaning for them. Calling their situation 'slave-like' or saying 'they were treated like slaves', would be okay to me as it defines the relationship by similarity to what we understand as slavery but does not add factually wrong statement. I apologize if it seems pedantic, but to me it feels wrong to call them literally slaves when in their context they were not, as that would imply things like depressed wages for the same job, tenth dahn, being able to buy and sell them even outside of context of bridge crews etc.

I do think that we should view those actions through at least two lenses, our contemporary one and the one characters themselves would have (or as close as possible). That is because our contemporary lens is biased as well, albeit differently then theirs is. For example the slavery debate, our modern perspective on what constitutes slavery is very different from that of people in history, or from that on people on Roshar. We might call what happened to Bridge crews slavery, but to them it was not, as to them slavery is a social institution that carries greater implications than what happened to them. (I am not trying to restart that discussion again, only use it to illustrate my point). As someone who does not think morality is something inherent to humans (outside of some basic preference for behaviors helping an in-group) I don't think our moral standards are necessarily superior to those of other cultures, present or past (or fictional). Some behaviors are obviously acceptable by culture despite being harmful to in-group (i.e. human sacrifice, various more risky rites etc.), but some which are individually harmful can be beneficial to group as a whole (i.e. conscription and war). You can think of society/civilization as a super-organism comprising all the people (and potentially also animals) in it, and just as an organism can take actions that benefit them as a whole at a cost of some parts (i.e. hurt a limb to save themselves) so can society take actions that hurt some members to save the entire society (and more people). Ideally if such actions can be avoided, they should be, but sometimes they cannot. Above I was only outlining my views on this in general, obviously the entire war on Shattered Plains is unnecessary posturing, hence any actions taken up until the start of Last Desolation cannot be justified through this lens. Now, personally I do find conscription to be immoral, but not to the same extent as slavery. To me conscription is generally speaking still several steps better (of course that also depends on precise details of the conscription process and terms). And morality of conscription also depends on context. Conscript for war of conquest? Not good. Conscript for defensive war? Much more justifiable.

I have not moved goalposts, only pointed out what are potential consequence of the definition you provided (by my reading). I was mostly trying to argue from position in-world characters could have taken, i.e. the alethi one, and not include our own modern positions on the topic. I was not trying to get you to use language I am comfortable with, only to use the term as the in-world characters would have used it (per my understanding of the Alethi society and the position of the characters). I agree that we should stop arguing this point as it leads nowhere.

By this definition most armies in history with the sole exception of voluntary armies were slave armies, as they consisted mostly of conscripted peasants and such. I am not sure if such a broad definition is useful outside of modern day context (which Roshar most certainly is not).

Yes, but that has no bearing on them being slaves or not. I don't see a point on arguing about labor time or breeding. Their lot being difficult also does not make them slaves. WW1 soldiers in trenches were in comparably horrifying situation I would say, and they were also not slaves.

I read it as threatening them with actually making him a slave, i.e. tenth dahn, worse wages and everything. (EDIT: However, it has been a while since I read it fully, so I am not fully sure (and I am not sure if that is even addressed in book).) Just because a lot of crew members were low on the social ladder, does not make them slaves. Assigning risky duty to deserters and criminals is not outlandish (even though it is immoral). And if I remember correctly they had to survive certain number of bridge runs to leave bridge crews, not necessarily to be free, i.e. If they were a member of military beforehand, they would get assigned to a different post (or maybe could ask to formally leave military), if they were slaves they would still be slaves, just not in bridge crew. That is a good comparison, and close to something I was trying to go for. The company analogy was meant to highligtht that I can be technically 'bought' despite not being a slave. Dalinar bought bridge crews (people, material, everything) but from this it does not follow every crew member is a slave (i.e. they could not be bought outside of this context). I agree that the position crew members were in effectively erased a lot of differences, but that was a function of the situation not their social standing (or status as slave). While in bridge crews it matters little if you are a slave or a free man, everyone needs to deal with the same 'bad' situation (non-slaves would get paid more though), however the moment such situation would end (i.e. end of war) the differences would again become very important. To summarize my point, their bad situation had little to do with some of them being slaves, and much more to do with nature of bridge crews under Sadeas. I have trouble understanding these, what did you mean by it?

I mark my edits (outside of spelling ones) so you can see exactly what was added. I mostly try to argue from in-world perspective, what would work there, so that is my base approach. I feel like if you say that author could have written different scenarios, we are no longer talking about the same situations and characters, so I don't think you can argue Bridge Four abandoned Moash when in-world they don't really have a chance to do anything to find him, they did not choose to leave him they simply had no option to do so. For example you say they all fly, except they don't. Up until near end of Oathbringer, only Kaladin is Radiant and others have their powers only when nearby (although nearby is still something like 30 miles) so this limits how big an area they can search and they don't have improved eyesight so would need to fly relatively low making it even more difficult. (and squires most likely have poor efficiency with Stormlight limiting them further) Moash was in enemy territory so randomly running into him makes little sense to me, especially when they are trying to be inconspicuous. To see the fight with Lady Leswhi they would first need to find him, and at that point they are weeks away from warcamps and seem to simply be traveling trades (having stolen carts like that). Ultimately if the situations were wildly different than what is in the books, then yes I would be curious about such a meeting. But I don't think you can use lack of meeting between Bridge Four and Moash as evidence of them abandoning him. A question, why would Skar be a good character to reach out to Moash? The only thing I see they have in common is being good fighters, but little else, so he does not seem like an obvious choice. Not being privileged is not the same as being poor. Compared to someone like a farmer in Hearthstone, he was privileged, compared to someone of even seventh dahn he was not. Generally he should be a second nahn (as children inherit the highest nahn, with some exceptions) and his grandparents were second nahn. He was also powerless to stop what happened because he was not even there when it happened. Maybe he could have done something (appeal on their behalf), maybe not but we cannot know. No, they are not slaves. Lopen has a slave mark, Rock, Teft and others don't. Moash literally says he was threatened with being made slaves if he tried running away again, which makes no sense if he was already a slave. Again, I am not saying none of them were slaves, or that their situation was not horrible, but it is simply not true that all bridge crews are all slaves. Sadeas does treat them as if they were slaves, which does complicate matters, but Dalinar trading his Shardblade can also be understood as a compensation for lost men. Sadeas transfers men from his command to Dalinar's, and receives Shardblade as a compensation for lost strength. EDIT: To clarify further, if someone buys the company I work for, the new ownership can promote me and influence my standing. That does not mean I am a property of the company (even if for whatever reason I could not break my contract with them). EDIT 2: It was not supposed to contribute my argument, merely correct factually wrong statement. Calling all bridge crew members a 'former group of slaves' is factually not true. They did go through deeply traumatizing events from which they had little way of escaping, but no one exercised such control over their day-to-day lives they would if they were slaves. They were members of military assigned utterly horrible dehumanizing duty, yes.

Feel free to not reply to me further, but please don't assume I am arguing in bad faith. You have started multiple of your replies in this way (not to me necessarily), and just because someone disagrees with you, or has a different read of situation than you does not mean they argue in bad faith or are a bad person. It would not be just hard, but completely unrealistic. You are suggesting they just 'find' a single person in relatively mountainous area, with a lot of ways to hide, who is also trying to not be found. How exactly could they have reached out to him, without it seeming like a stretch? At best they can try to explore the area on their freetime, but they are currently in the middle of war, so they most likely don't really have a lot of it. At this point also on Kaladin has a spren, so aerial search would require Kaladin to go with them which limits the area they can search. (I noticed that latter on in the reply you say that you agree that it is hard the way it is written to justify it, and you would wish it were written differently. I was replying piece by piece, and want to leave this section.) Moash would be imprisoned, that is a fact yes. That does not change the fact he could have tried to return. Actions have consequences, and it is up to people how they deal with them. Don't get me wrong, I get it why he did not go back, but to expect Bridge Four to somehow reach out to him is odd, considering they have no clue where he went, no way to contact him and little in opportunities to search for him. Kaladin not protecting Elhokar would have gone against everything Kaladin is trying to stand for. I can equally say, that Moash...could have just...not tried to kill Elhokar, and it makes just as little sense. A soldier in war cannot just leave his post, that is punishable crime, does that mean that a soldier is a slave? Bridge crews were members of the army, and so could not just get up and leave. Moash in fact mentions trying to run away multiple times and being punished for it, and that he was told that if he tried it again he would be enslaved. If being a bridge crew member was equivalent to being a slave, threatening them with it would have little effect. If in the middle of WoK the war in Shattered Plains suddenly ended, the members of the bridge crews who are not slaves would be assigned to a different post or could leave military (I have no clue how exactly is the military organized in Alethkar, but I would expect there to be a formal way to do so). Slaves would either be also reassigned, or they could simply sell them, depending on what would be more profitable. But they could not sell bridge members who are not slaves. No one owns Teft, Moash, Sigzil or Rock and many others, hence they are not slaves. I am not trying to say that the conditions in the bridge crews were not utterly appalling, but they were not slaves. Horrible conditions don't equal slavery, even if the situations are similar. And while you said you wanted more diversity in how they behave (which I agree would have been nice), you called them all slaves, which I disagree with. I thought the window of Teft was a nice reminder, but I understand wanting more. But I disagree that they gave up on Moash, Moash through his actions made it clear he does not want to be with them, and they are not obliged to try and pull him back against his will. And I don't think if he had a talk with someone else it would really change anything. Moash seems to me like quite a bull-headed person, and if Kaladin (the one person he was closest to in Bridge Four) did not manage to sway him, I don't think others could. It could be a nice way to expose more of him, before his Odium days. I think that is actually what was happening with the stew. They talked, they shared, they tried to offer support. We did not see a lot of it on-screen, but I always thought that it exactly what was happening. And we did have a bridge member who tried to commit suicide, it was Kaladin. I think that due to his depression, Kaladin is actually one of the crew members who was most impacted by his time in bridge crews (from those we have seen at least). But a lot of Bridge Four members were also going through traumatic time, and if you are dealing with something it is not that easy to reach out to others. And even if you reach out, the person has to respond, if they don't or actively avoid you there is little you can do. Also we don't know that no one tried to reach out to Moash, you just assume it. The only reason we know about Graves is because Moash chose to associate with him, and we do know that others are still in contact with Moash and trust him (Lopen told him about Kaladin loosing surgebinding) as late as hours before assassination attempt. From what we see of Moash he did not even seem to be doing badly, he was fine only he wanted to kill the king in revenge and was convinced it was right. That is not something support of your friends is going to help you with. Also Kaladin tried to talk to Moash about it before hand (at least from what I remember), he was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of killing the king, wanted nothing to do with it and tried to dissuade Moash, but Moash kept pressuring him until Kaladin relented (after being imprisoned after Adolin debacle). I can just as easily say that Moash exploited his depressed and traumatized friend for his gain (to be clear I don't actually think that). I also think that WoR sets up what would become of Kaladin had he joined Moash quite well, he would become the kind of person that kills people based on his own feelings and his judgement. You know, like Taravangian or Amaram or Moash. EDIT: Also I don't think poorly of Moash due to his poor background (which he did not have, his grandparents were silversmiths, making him solidly middle class), but due to his goals (only revenge in my reading, no matter what he tells himself). And the only reason I think better of Taravangian is his goal, he wants to save people. Of course to him the sentence is, he will save people on his terms, which is what makes him a villain.

How should they have contacted him? He left warcamps with Graves after the attempted assassination, and it is not like they can call him or have means to find him (especially if they would be trying to not be found). The onus was on him to come to them, he knew where they are and he could try and come back. They would probably be harsh on him, because he nearly killed Kaladin (the one person that save all of them) and only good timing of his 3rd Oath saved his life. Also bridge crews are not only slaves, some are but not all. Teft was not slave, nor was Moash. Skar was enslaved for stealing equipment of Highprince's bodyguards, Sigzil was pressed into bridge crews for nearly killing someone. Rock was sent to bridge crews for putting chull dung into Sadeas' food, but was not enslaved. All Bridge Four knew after WoR was that Moash lied to them for months when planning assassination, nearly killed Kaladin and then ran. That is betrayal, so calling him traitor makes sense. And remember that Moash was not particularly friendly person, he rebuffed Kal's attempts at first, and was not really trying to make friends with others in the group only with Kaladin. And things like support meeting and mental health care explicitly don't exist on Roshar (at least in Vorin kingdoms), so they could not have been involved in Bridge 4's start.I mean first part of Kaladin's arc in RoW is about improving and setting standard for mental health care (at least for some types of patients).

Yeah, I think that will be one motivator. The other is the potential civil war in the Basin, I am re-reading BoM now and every couple of chapters someone mentions how unhappy other cities are with current arrangement (Elendel having the most power, double taxing, etc.), and one informant directly warns Wax that Set are 'small fries' compared to the risk of civil war. If the cities go to war, that will spur their development somewhat. And it is not like they don't have smart people working on research (see the young lady in SoS who is currently working on theory for radio), it is just that their culture and society does not value research and science too much. What Sibling's shield do you mean?

True, and after single cut you just need to heal the soul, not regenerate entire body I confused myself there. So viable as a surprise tactics, but complicated by earrings/piercings and the fact that we don't know how much health is required to fix soul.

True if they are tapping constantly that would complicate things. It would also depend on how much healing would be used up to heal the soul cut. Could those have enough healing stored to regenerate entire body from nothing? And do it fast enough that the attacker does not simply tear them off?

True but that could also mean that it is thicker than we assume, and it has relatively 'low' density. Without more precise measurement it is difficult to estimate it. I can also see it going either way, but considering only Ryshadium can carry Shardplated warriors, and those are full 20-30 cm taller than other horses, have spren bond and stone hooves (suggesting some modification/interbreeding with local fauna) and regular horses can carry up to 200 kg without significant stress (and up to 300 kg if you don't mind putting strain on the animal), I think estimating shardplate to weight at minimum 300 kg is reasonable. Potentially yes, but that would depend on how precisely shardplate acts. If it acts like usual metal it would be certainly useful, but Scadrial is still at least 50 years from being able to apply that knowledge (and that is assuming they know the principle of operation). I mean cars and electric lights were invented in the last 20 years (not there before Wax left, starting to become 'common' after he returns) and based on Sazed comments they are not progressing particularly fast (he expected them to have radio a century ago).

Thank you for confirming this On Amaram I think i have to slightly disagree with you, while I do agree that he did care more about appearance and validation than about genuinly helping, I also think that he was a true believer in Sons of Honor cause and that is why his end on side of Odium feels wrong to me to some extent. Personally I would think it would serve his and Kaladin's arcs better if he ended up as someone opposing Odium, but also being against coalition led by Dalinar. I can still see him trying to bind Yelig-Nar in this scenario, but it would be his hubris and need to be the one to seen to save people that would lead him to this moment.

Interesting, this then suggests that you can easily kill Gold Twin with one good stroke of Shardblade (unless they have some large metalmind attached to their head).

-Words of Radiance, chapter 14 This implies that Plate is lighter than it looks, meaning it should be even thicker/bulkier, though we of course don't know if this means significantly lighter than its bulk suggests or fractionally lighter than steel but will throw you off, a bit like finding a deceptively heavy pebble or light rock. Interesting, however also note that whenever Shardplate becomes damaged, the user notes it starts to feel heavier, implying that the effect which makes it feel light is dependent on plate working properly, possibly the same as the enhanced strength. In WoK, chapter 58, pg. 915 (in my edition at least), Dalinar describes Shardplate as weighing over 100 stoneweights, and stone generally denotes weight of 6kg (although it could range from 3 to 15, depending on location). Lower gravity of Roshar would not have much impact on this, as both plate and stone would be relatively 'lighter' by the same factor, so their ratio would remain unchanged. Even assuming the lower bound of mass and density of steel would give Shardplate thickness over 1 cm, so still like WW1 tank. Good point, it is in chapter 57 of WoR shortly after its start. Kaladin rams his spear into a crack in Relin's vambrace and the tip is a bit bloody. showing that some cracks can go all the way through. However, at this point Relis also has cracked chestplate (even from two hits), yet Kaladin notes that only the vambrace and the eye-slit are weak spots, suggesting that the crack in vambrace was unusually large, or that it was close to shattering completely. Either way however, it does show that cracks can lead all the way through. In light of this I think that if you could create deep enough cracks with a first shot, and place the second into the crack you could shoot someone in plate without shattering a section. However, I don't think this would be a shot that can be done with any consistency, considering the speed of Shardbearers, the size of cracks and the average accuracy of firearms.

No, that is not how that works. Lashing are not thrust, they are gravity. Gravity functions fundamentally differently, and so will not lead to the phenomena you experience under thrust. Overcoming previous momentum has absolutely nothing to do with experienced force, only with how long it takes to reverse direction of movement. You don't seem to understand this physics very well. Yes, and after you release it is in free-fall which is equivalent to being at rest, see principle of general relativity. That is what lashings do, they redirect gravity. Than please explain again, but no knives were used to directly penetrate plate armor. They were looking for gaps, and joints i.e. weaker section. How do you think the hole appears there? By magic? You need to push the material that is where the hole is supposed to be somewhere else, to do that you need to either deform the material (i.e. dent it) or remove it entirely (i.e. scratch it), you cannot wish it away. So you are saying that if they were wielding regular blade the result would be the same? No, I addressed piercing it. You need to displace larger amount of material than would be present in WW1 tank, how is 19th century rifle supposed to do that? They have lower kinetic energy (so lower penetration) and the bullets are not made from modern metals (so not great armor piercing properties). No matter how, the bullet weight ~14grams needs to somehow displace material weighting around ~100 grams and overcome the force holding the material together. Since the plate does not scratch, the force holding it together is quite large. Again how do you think piercing works? The material magically vanishes? No, it has to be moved elsewhere, i.e. it needs to dent or completely break. Thickness wise it is tank armor, weight wise it is also tank armor. It does have different failure mode (i.e. cracking and shattering) but you are trying to convince us that you can just shoot holes through without actually cracking it, then you need to start discussing the physics of the material. The material is thicker, heavier, and the fact it shatters suggest very high tensile strength, all things that would complicate piercing it. Yes there were, but tip on end of warhammer is quite different from dagger, which is what you said they were using. Wielding a warhammer and wielding a knife are very different things, and you can put much more momentum in swing of hammer than you can in stab of dagger. Yes, instead we have WoB that you need multiple bullets to shatter plate, and exactly zero suggesting that you can punch through without shattering it. Shardblades don't break, shardplate are made of nearly the same material and are shown to never bend, dent or scratch. Yet they can be shot through? And again, if they were vulnerable to piercing force, why are Fused not using piercing weapons? They fought Radiants for ~4000 years, and they have access to strength far above human (not to mention they have Thunderclasts).

When you mentioned indoctrination I was thinking primarily about his relationship with Odium, although there it seems to be a passive effect (on Odium's part from what I remember). Fused did not feel 'indoctriny' to me, but the praise of his Singer name could be likened to grooming. Good point on Graves, he did seem to intentionally frame it that way to get Moash on board and drops the act after their failure (which seems to disturb Moash, if I remember correctly). Well it seems like I have a good excuse to do a re-read of SA sometime this year, to keep an eye on this Looking forward to it.

Hello, I was thinking about metallic arts and Shardblades and was wondering, if you have metalmind attached to a limb that has been cut by a Shardblade, can you access that metalmind? I would guess no, since the soul is severed and the limb is then no longer 'part of you' spiritually speaking, but I wanted other opinions. Thank you.

No, to me Taravangian shows both through his thoughts and through his actions that he does actually care about people, he is 'just' terrifyingly utilitarian. Moash rarely even in his thoughts cares about others, he does have some better moments (trying to help Kal in his own way, helping those Singers) but those are exceptions for him not the rule. So yes, I am more likely to buy Taravangian reasoning because he consistently acts according to it, Moash does not. My general point on Taravangian vs Moash, is that for Taravangian the deaths are a side effect, not the goal, which is exactly as bad as it sounds. Goal is to save as many people as possible, and the deaths he causes are to him justifiable. Moash in contrast has death as his goal, he wants Elhokar dead and no one can convince him otherwise, even when they offer him other options. In this they are actually very alike, as Dalinar also offered Taravangian other option, but he turned him down. Taravangian is someone for whom ends justify the means 100%, destination over journey if you will. This is and should be horrifying, yet I think that to some extent ends over means is reasonable position, especially if you are faced with potential extinction of mankind. If your choices are horrible crimes to save anyone vs everyone dying, what is the more moral choice? Moash to me is someone who does not even have a journey, he just does what he wants at the moment. For example, ff he was killing to help people, why did he not plan to kill Sadeas? He was much more harmful to darkeyes than Elhokar ever was, yet Moash still chose to focus on Elhokar (and again there is the issue of him ignoring Roshone). Personally I would have loved to see a version of SA were it was Elhokar that survived but joined Odium like Amaram, and Amaram joined side of Honor. If it happened after WoR, Kaladin would be forced into difficult position (duty vs desire) and would also need to grapple with the fact that Moash was right about Elhokar. EDIT: @Honorless In what way does Moash plotline deal with indoctrination? I am unsure what you mean and would appreciate if you could elaborate

No it does not, that is not how physics of this works. First of all, inertia is not dependent on momentum in any way, usually inertia simply refers to objects resistance to changes in velocity (i.e. its rest mass), in contrast momentum is one of conserved quantities in physics describing direction of motion (and in a way 'amount' of motion, i.e how much force would be needed to slow it down to relative rest). The users of Surge of Gravitation choose in which direction they experience gravity (and its magnitude), i.e. they move in one direction with 1G for a time and pick up speed v, then they lash themselves in the opposite direction by 2G (which cancels the previous lashings) and now experience only 2G of lashings in the opposite direction, which starts lowering their speed. Even if for some reason they would feel the need to lash themselves into to opposite direction at once, because it is Surge of Gravitation, all it would mean is that they are being accelerated in the direction with larger lashing, again experiencing no larger acceleration (as the vector sum of those accelerations would simplify as n*g - m*g = (n-m)*g). It is like if you throw a rock upwards, it has some initial speed opposite to the direction of gravity so starts slowing down, but because of principle of general relativity it is in free-fall and so in its own frame of reference experience no force acting upon it, i.e. no g-forces in contract to fighter pilots. The wind resistance complicates it a bit, but in a nutshell it is the only actual force the Windrunners and Skybreakers should experience. And if the Radiant is not moving in the direction of the given encampment, i.e. they have exposed flanks, they are moving faster than most people could aim. They would be moving at hundreds of km per hour, constantly accelerating (making aiming even more difficult as you cannnot properly lead the aim) and are only human sized target, good luck finding anyone who can consistently hit such a target. Trench tactics are not very smart when the opposing force has people that can manipulate ground, even at a distance (with the change propagating from them). No one on Scadrial ever, not even Wax, used pushing/pulling to bend path of bullets to increase accuracy. Trying to do that is even more difficult than trying to dodge the bullets, no one has reflexes for that. Maybe bendalloy bubble could help with this, but since Wax never pushes out from it I expect there to exist some problem with acting on objects outside of it. Depending on how exactly are Medallions made it is entirely possible that you could not increase number of Coinshots/Lurchers, only gain ability to move the power around. Except that stabbing with knife was done to the gaps in plate, not to penetrate the plate directly. Sword thrust don't pierce the plate, hell even pikes or spear thrusts don't. The only parts of plate that were susceptible to piercing like that were the joints where the plate was weaker or not at all. The existence of plate is the very reason weapons like polearms were created, explicitly to penetrate the plate. Again, so far it does not seem possibly to get through a section of plate without breaking it outright. It does not dent, scratch or bend, and to penetrate it you would need it to be malleable to certain extent, which it is not. Higher momentum is useful if you want stopping power without penetration, but to penetrate you need higher kinetic energy not momentum (you need to do work on the material when you are displacing it) and as elaborated in previous comment, the rifles used in Era 2 simply are not up to snuff, they are much weaker than even ordinary assault rifles used today and those don't penetrate armor. So to summarize, you have late 19th century guns trying to penetrate in one shot armor that is at least 1cm thick (so around that of WW1 tanks) and is over twice as dense to boot (so it is actually over twice as hard to penetrate) [or over 2 cm thick, so twice the thickness of WW1 tanks, and the same density as steel], Scadrial forces have no chance of doing this even if penetrating plate without breaking section was possible. Yes, and my point was that Kal's contribution was negligible at best, and the primary factor in the helmet cracking was the Shardblades hitting it multiple times. If someone has shield, and you crack that shield with few hits, was it you who cracked the shield or the guy using it to defend himself? Because I am reasonably certain I could use shield even if I had no capacity to crack the shield myself. Shardplate is not thick glass, please stop with this misrepresentation of it. I addressed how unlikely it is to penetrate it in one shot above. To pierce the plate it by definition first needs to create a hole, to create a hole it needs to deform the material of plate, i.e. dent it. Plate does not dent, hence punching a hole trough is not possible. If to dent it you need larger pressures than I direct you to previous parts of this comment, since you are arguing for late 19th century rifles shooting through effectively tank armor, which is ridiculous. Also the straw and telephone pole example is a bit problematic, since both are made of wood, i.e they have generally the same properties. Godmetals and bullets don't. A BIT LATE EDIT: They are not worried about Kaladin, but about Jasnah and Dalinar (because they think he is fourth oath). Rabonial even explicitly dismisses Kaladin, considering him a mere soldier compared to Jasnah and Dalinar (which is a mistake on her part). They do mention they are worried about Surges, but they still plan the entire invasion of Urithiru around getting rid just two Radiants of 4th Oath. The invasion force involved hundreds of Singers in forms of Power and tens of Fused, yet they were worried about only two 4th Oath Radiants. If this does not highlight how powerful they are, I don't what would. Fair enough, we all have our interests. I would personally prefer to avoid more complicated physics, since I assume most people here don't have enough physics education/experience to be able to tell the difference between correct arguments, and people just using physics words without rhyme or reason. But simpler things like momenta, kinetic energy, density etc. are good I think. And thank you for looking more into the plate armor and joints. I stand corrected, there does seem to be a way to do joints reasonably well with smaller plates even without magic, and the illustration do suggest number of smaller plates around joints. Now I wonder if each of those drawn plates is an individual section or not.

You are misrepresenting Taravangian's intentions, he never betrayed human race he wanted to save human race the only way he thought possible. Based on vision of a Future (or however he created Diagram) he became convinced that side of Honor cannot win the Final Desolation, and he (future seeing Taravangian) devised a plan to save as many humans as possible. His plan was to get Odium to agree to spare his subjects in exchange for joining his side, and to then become king of everything (see him becoming king of Jah Kaved), so that every single person on Roshar is his subject. If his plan worked he would have saved hundreds of millions of people. The elephant in the room is that Odium visited him to make a deal on day when Taravangian was very stupid, so he only managed to get Odium to agree to spare Kharbranth, but saving only this city was never his goal, in fact this was a failure of his and he was not particularly happy about achieving only this. Tarvangian's entire motivation is based around helping as many people as he can, first by making Kharbranth center of learning and medicine, and then by asking Cultivation literally for 'capacity to save humankind'. Obviously he wants to do it on his terms and that makes him unsavory (and quite self-centered), but you cannot say he is selfish when his entire motivation is to help others.

The link is established even before any pushing/pulling is done, as the metalborn sees the lines connecting them to the metals. They can then push on those metals, presumably through the connection established by burning metal. In this reading burning Steel or Iron has two effects, 1) creates a connection between Allomancer and metal 2) Allows to generate force which acts on that metal, through the line connecting it to the allomancer. At least that is how I understood OP.

I am not that much of a gun person, but my sister is so I try to keep up a bit at least. Knowledge of physics also helps with basic assessment. On the topic of Shardplate, good point on it being potentially overlapping small plates that could be an option. For me the issue is that even if there are overlapping plates, around joints you need them to stretch either a single plate being flexible or multiplate plates somehow attached to each other with something like a spring. In both cases you end up with at least part of Shardplate material having 'stretchy' properties and at that point part of Shardplate being stretchy/flexible seems like a simpler option to me. I think like you said it is 'magic' like the seemless fusing of visor in helmet, or the Plate melding to user. In effect it reminds a bit of Leto II sand trout armor from Dune, incredibly hard and resistive, yet flexible when needed (like around joints or neck) while still being just as hard to damage. Huh, good point. The WoB does not specificy what kind of bullet only that there could be an argument for one with the right bullet. I think the other conditions (right shot, right time) weaken this slightly as I would expect anti-Investiture bullet being very destructive no matter how well you shoot it, but it sounds like a reasonable guess. At the very least proper anti-Investiture bullet should most likely be very damaging to Shardplate.