therunner

And Navani tries and succeeds in organizing people, yet that is not enough? Importantly, she helped design the plan Dalinar used to try and get Highprinces on his side. Some artifabrians who do not want to share their knowledge, but that was not my main point. My point is that Navani's strength is not bringing disparate groups together, it is in making groups work effectively/efficiently. She is the one who spearheaded development of grandbows, worked on the design of painrial, was the one to develop the elevated platforms that she eventually further refined into the Fourth Bridge (also under her leadership). A lot of these principles were known even 8 years ago, but it was her teams under her supervision that created fabrials with real life applications and effectively turned artifabrians into engineers. If Dalinar is CEO, Navani is COO. So Rlain, who did nothing that would help Sibling is more worthy because he once tries to get two different groups to work together? Even though he never once showed any interest in leadership, any organizational skills or anything that would be needed for Bondsmith? She re-discovered it, its not like she was handed a book and just followed instructions. It might have been easier, because she did not have to postulate existence of anti-light, she had an example. However, she most certainly discovered a way to produce it, and she did it effectively alone. We also have no idea what it took for Gavilar to discover it, or who might have helped him. EDIT: Even looking at the details about Bondsmiths here (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/424-the-ten-orders-of-knights-radiant/#e13781) suggests that just 'bringing people together' is not all that Bondsmits are expected to do. For example Setting up a government requires a lot more that giving people a common goal, it requires good managerial and organizational skills, both of which Navani demonstrates quite well, in contrast Dalinar struggles with this a bit.

I think Navani has a very different way of unifying than Dalinar does, and since he was our first example of Bondsmith that affects how people perceive Bondsmiths should act. Dalinar in effect binds people through arguments, he binds disparate groups together by giving them same goal. (EDIT: Also, Dalinar mostly failed in uniting before he bonded Stormfather at the end of WoR, he only convinced 4 out of 10 highprinces to join him on expedition to center of Shattered plains. All his accomplishments in uniting came after he became Bondsmith.) Navani, however, does not act that way. Instead what she does is smooth interactions of disparate groups so that they can work together effectively, or at all. She manages the the resources so others can focus on their strengths, she puts together disparate teams of scholars that would normally not talk together etc. She even manages to effectively work with the enemy forces (for good and ill). And she does figures out how to merge Stormlight and Voidlight, something others thought impossible. In effect, she acts very much like emulsifier she talks about when discovering Warlight. She does not tie things together like Dalinar does, she merges them through smoothing out the differences. If Daliner is the one who puts the organization together, Navani is the one that makes sure it works smoothly and effectively. Seeing how different the individual Bondsmith spren are, I think it isn't reasonable to expect all Bondsmith to fulfill their Ideal of unity in the same way. And while I agree that others seem to show similar qualities, she was the one in the right place at the right time and most importantly, without her Sibling would not recover his ability to create Towerlight. People usually mention Rlain as a candidate, but he demonstrates unifying quality only once, when he convinces Singers and humans to help carry Radiants to safety, and to that he 'channels Teft' so it is not something that comes naturally to him. I think Rlain actuallly fit corrupted Truthwatchers almost perfectly. Like Renarin he is someone caught between two world, Renarin between expectations and desires, Rlain between human and singers, and neither feels they properly fit with either anymore. I think she should get at least some credit for the anti-light. The only knowledge she worked off is that she saw odd sphere, and that the light in the odd-sphere exploded when in touch with Stormlight. That is not really all that much to go on. And yes, she built on pre-existing knowledge of how light reacts to sounds, but presumably so did whoever discovered it for Gavilar, working off pre-existing knowledge and figuring out something new is how science works. In history we have examples of things being discovered nearly independently, in math you have Leibniz-Newton controversy, asking who discovered calculus first and who should get credit. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_controversy) Many times some things were rediscovered nearly independently later, and we usually credit the person that managed to spread the knowledge and see the use, which in this case would be Navani as Gavilar's organization did not seem inclined to share their discoveries and we do not know if they realized what anti-stormlight would do.

I think you misunderstood me on the storage point: I meant that storing the attribute is problematic, not that the metalminds are not large enough. Weight is probably the easiest attribute to store (Wax does it at all times because he has weight all the time, and it has no negative repercussions) but Speed requires you to Move to store (and probably the more you move the more you can store) To be slowed down while you are trying to move when storing. Per the numbers in the post you have quoted, non-compounder simply cannot store enough speed to move at sonic speeds for more then milliseconds, even in extreme cases of storing effectively for half their waking hours for a year. I have analyzed pewter storing as well, burn gives you 2x the speed and flare 3x the speed, so I have no idea where the 10x speed you are writing came from. This is what I wrote on pewter (100% speed is 9 m/s, as feruchemy starts to give diminishing returns after a certain point which seems to be capped at 100% of the natural attribute or less) I have taken into accountant 1) Flaring 2) Sprinting 8 hours every day 3) Flaring pewter and then tapping steel, and it still does not provide sufficient benefit. Even if the Thug/runner sprinted 16 hours every day, stored that and did it for 50 years, they would not be able to move at Mach 1 for more than 1 second, the exponential diminishing returns are simply too strong. There is that issue with people tapping steel burning metals faster, but I do not think it makes them any stronger, it just wastes their reserves faster (Brandon in the source WoB likens it to bendalloy bubble, and those do not make you any stronger due to faster burn), so I do not think it is relevant for this analyses as I have said in the original post Your analyses of the loses ignores the WoB I shared in my post, which says that you get loses you get when tapping faster are much greater than 9/10, and are progressively greater. There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/153-hal-con-2012/#e2803) saying that loss of withdrawal of large amount of attribute does not depend on the rate of storage, so compounder could not get around it, they would need to make large enough stores to effectively neutralize faster tapping loses if they wanted to tap fast. I agree that compounder could break sound barrier, we do see Marasi (who used BoM) do it after all. I avoided talking about them in the analyses because we have very few hard numbers on compounding, all we know is It multiplies the investiture/stores by ~10. You need to burn the metalmind with the storage. Now, since burning a few small vials of metal can take tens of minutes, to burn entire metalmind will probably take hours, but it depends on the size of the metalmind. We do not know if the metalmind being invested makes it burn slower (there being 'more' to burn). Now, to break the sound barrier for 100 second per my more optimistic analyses, you would need to compound about 6-7 times (assuming you start with those 1500 hours of 100% speed stores), which would probably take at least a week? But as we have no hard numbers it is hard to say, but it is realistic for compounder to achieve. Now we have seen Marasi move at conservatively Mach ~7 for 0.5 second at most and she was already worried about depleting the stores too fast. Since BoM were most likely built by Fullborn/semi-Fullborn their stores were compounded, but by how much we again have no clue. To get Mach 8 would require to tap at ~250x speed of normal 100% tapping, per the Scenario 1 (T, time of storage when tapping n-fold is T = T_0/n *5/6 * (3/5)^(n-1) , with T_0 being the starting store) so if you started with 10^50 hours of stored speed (i.e. you compounded the same store about 50 times, taking a lot longer than a week) even then you would be left with 10^(-6) hours of tapped Mach 7 speed, i.e. ~4 miliseconds. So Mach 1 definitely doable for compounder, Mach 7 also doable but it would require some ridiculous stores going by information we have available. While I think aluminum might heal the spike wound (but it would require a lot of compounding first, as the damage is even greater that the one caused by shardblades) this might not make it economical as aluminum is not that common on Scadrial yet. They would be able to create unkeyed metalminds, but not medallions as those require Excisors to create and we have no clue what those are (and some speculate they have to do with Hemalurgy). So they could not make even simple medallions, much less BoM. Yeah, I think it would be one of these two cases, leaning probably closer to the second one, i.e. non-Rosharans would lash harder, but it would take comparatively morel light.

I like that approach, though it is not in spirit of the thread If I recall correctly 1 Lashing gives the same acceleration as the Rosharan gravitational acceleration on the surface of the Roshar, so ~7m/s^2. If it works more on 'redirect the gravity that already works/multiply it' than it should simply take different planets fields, but than it would not work in space, and there are some WoBs saying Windrunners could fly to different planets. On the other hand if we had non-Rosharan Radiant, what would it do? Would it still be tied to Roshar because spren are from Roshar (so far)?

Indeed, I would say that any time he allows himself to act as something more than a 'big angry serious storm' he is wonderful, like with Lopen, or Eshonai. I have the same problem sometime Usually my brain catches up if I reread the thread, but sometimes...well, I ain't no Lightweaver Kind of, maybe slightly more 'if someone has done it, it is easier for other to do' but the gist is what you said I think. I am a bit confused on that front myself. There seem to be corrupted spren (Glys) which are of Sja-anat, and then Voidspren. But some Voidspren seem to be red and some golden, which led me to my though that some 'voidspren' are regular spren that were directly coopted by Odium. Well, assuming Cohesion can manipulate weak forces, and Gravitation,well, gravity, then to get 1 energy from nuclear reaction you need 1 stormlight for Super-Cohesion, and to get the same effect using gravitational lashings you would need ~10^20 units of Stormlight, but that is probably covered under looooooot (Sidenote: Can I say 'a loot of loot' to signify a great amount of loot, larger than a lot would imply?) That is probably more normal use of Cohesion and bondsmith powers, I was thinking more along the lines of unchained Bondsmith. Huh this raises interesting questions: Can you lash ground? I would assume maybe yes if you could conceptualize a piece of it as separate from the rest. But then in principle you are weakening the gravity of the planet, even if only very little. What acceleration would Lashing impart when the Radiant is floating in space? Would it default to the dominant gravitational source? Or is it determined by a place they have strongest Connection to?

Good point on Venli being a total edge case herself, that makes taking her as an example problematic Trolling Stormfather is just what the war effort needs (I've been interpreting the "hard limit" as the Intent that drives the spren being broad but ultimately still having limits on what it can cover. Could be right, could be wrong, just how I've taken it.) My point's just that if the Shards are preventing people from forming bonds, the people directly working for Odium and betraying the war effort seem like people the Stormfather might want to deny. This WoB is a good argument for it being mostly at the spren discretion, with their Intent limiting it somewhat. And the argument that denying bonds to people hindering war effort is also excellent one...I think I have to abandon my position and acknowledge that the accepting of Oaths by H/C does seem to be a formality for Radiants. Potentially, although if Voidbinding is of spren, then maybe it is the spren that needs to be in some emotional state and not the human counterpart. Ah, I see. So essentially form Knights Radiants as a alternative to wild surgebinders, and have Knights/Ishar hunt wild surgebinders who do not join orders. And over time wild surgebinders die out, because Knights are a stable organization? It might be that in some spiritual sense, the first surgebinders had to 'make' the path the others now follows? So now the pathways for the Nahel bond are 'known' to magic and it works more easily? I think it is not that odd. Positive and negative charges could repel one another (if there was additional minus sign in Coulomb's law) , but not necessarily annihilate one another. I.e. 'Preservaton' (quantum of Preservation investiture) has the opposite charge to 'Ruinon' (quantum of Ruin investiture) so they repel one another but they are not antiparticles of one another, even though 'Anti-Preservaton' has the same charge as 'Ruinon'. I am not sure if Regal powers are good example. A lot of Voidspren are red, suggesting they are of corrupted/co-opted investiture, so if their original investiture was of Honor, Odium might piggyback on that for the Regal powers. Altough some Voidspren are apparently gold, so that complicates this line of reasoning, however I think that Venli's voidspren was/is red. I think 'Nukes for all!' might have been Odium's intent when wanting to recruit surgebinders for his army Gravity and adhesion might have hard time nuking things (gravity is really weak), but Transportation could allow for some creative application: you could Transport someone's electrons away, and their atoms would fly apart quite fast (and incredibly destructively). Since Abrasion most likely works (in physical sense, in world who knows) through in effect manipulating electromagnetic interaction of particles and their environment, it might also be used to negate EM forces holding atoms together, for similar effect. Though I seriously doubt they could do it, it is fun to imagine. Well, if Cohesion/stoneshaping works by first making Connection to stone, and the using stormlight to do things with stone (it honestly sounds very similar to Soulcasting, but instead of transforming it is shaping), then Bondsmith might strenghten that Connection (or Connect Stoneshaper to larger area) and then open perpendicularity to provide in effect unlimited stormlight...that might do the Shattered planes trick, at least on smaller scale.

Yeah, my supposition depends on if Brandon only pointed to the Voidbinding page when asked about visions, and did not actually say that Renarin Voidbinds.

I think there are additional differences, but more in practical terms stemming from the underlying mechanisms Sel's magic is the most flexible, as you state its capabilities seems effectively unlimited especially the Elantrian system, only restricted by amount of energy. However it is strongly tied to the planet, and while there might be ways around it (the Ire fortress in SH and its conduit) it presents a great limitation. This will probably make them focus almost exclusively on magi-tech and magical constructs, because they are so easy to make for them, but their sphere of influence will be greatly limited. Roshar's magic is the second most flexible, with fabrials seeming to be very flexible (if a concept has spren, there can be fabrial of that spren) it is not as strong or as flexible as Dor/Elantris. However getting it off-world is most likely easier, as everyone is interested in getting Stormlight off-planet, suggesting it is easier to achieve than with Dor. I would assume they will focus mostly on their fabrials, but since they work off in effect physical principles, they will also develop technologies along those lines that will be non-magical. Scadrial's magic seems so far the least flexible of the lot. Even local fabrials so far only replicate/retarget normal Metallic arts to objects, and are not doing anything completely unrelated to abilities from Metallic arts. This will force them to develop mostly conventional technologies, augmented and supported by local fabrials. This is supported by the fact that Scadrians seem to be the ones with spaceship in Era 4, unlike the others (although we know little) who have comparatively easy access to cognitive realm to facilitate interplanetary travel. Interesting hypothesis, if true and Trell is Autonomy, they might have become interested in Scadrial due to actions of Ghostbloods who seem to be the only Scadrian group actively messing with others, in effect making Set a reaction to Ghostbloods. It seems to be that Dawnshards themselves are not that extremely invested, Rysn exhibits some signs of Fifth Heightening, suggesting that Dawnshard is not much more invested than single Divine Breath. Assuming it works off similar principles of course. I see Dawnshards as a sort of incredibly specialized and yet flexible tool, the tool on its own is not that powerful, but driven by someone wielding great power it can do great things. I do not think they have necessary math just yet. Stormwardens suggest some knowledge of probability and statistics, Fused might have some better knowledge of mathematics of waves (what with Rhythms and all), so maybe if they put their heads together they might cobble something together. They do have the advantage that quantum effects seem to be present in some spren, making experiments necessary for discovery of quantum effects much more feasible. I think they might have quite robust phenomenology of quantum effects in a few years if they focus on it, with some rudimentary math to accompany it, but Hilbert spaces are at least 1-2 centuries in the future for them.

I would upvote thrice if I could, for Dune reference, Princess Bride reference, and for the idea as a whole The Dune analogy I think does mostly hold-up, if Odium is Paul, then Renarin is Guildsman. While Renarin/Glys' futuresight is more limited than Odiums, it does create pockets which are hard/impossible for Odium to see, creating space for action without interference. This was exploited to kill Odium.

@KandraAllomancer I like the theory. Interestingly in that WoB you shared (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/370/#e11882) he does not say that it was Renarin who saw the future, only that when someone else is seeing future it creates ripples. In other WoBs on Renarin he also avoids saying that Renarin voidbinds (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/332/#e9541) (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/109/#e1426). Brandon also pointed to the voidbinding chart when someone asked about the visions (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/176/#e8461), which means the visions are of Voidbinding, not necessarily that Renarin is Voidbinder. He also says that about Renarin in WoR that he was not in much control of the visions (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/109/#e1425)

Willshapers do seem to be edge case, but the Venli examples make me lean towards some voice being involved. For Teft, I think we can go by Kal and the fact that every other Windrunners seemingly had to have their words accepted, so I would assume it is the same. That was my reading at first as well (and still mostly is), however the question is, who/what decides if they are living up to ideal? I see three options Shard, either H or C take a quick peak at Radiant-to-be and decide if they are living up to the Ideal. Spren, the individual spren can accept oaths at their discretion. Mechanics of Nahel bond itself, the magic knows if the Oath is truly lived up to/fully meant or not. Personally, I think currently it is some mix of options 1./3. and before Knights Radiants were formed it was option 2. with maybe a bit of option 3. (i.e. magic decides, but the spren can influence if it counts or not). I mean yeah, Gaz definitely acts bad, but to me his POV showed that he does that because of being paranoid and fearful. Frankly I pitied him somewhat afterwards, and I think he himself did not want to be like that, but could not bring himself to act against it. Shallan seems to have given him some measure of hope that he can be better. But yeah, he is not exactly exemplar Radiant. Malata is more complicated than just working for Odium. She is part of Diagram remember, so I think she may honestly believe that Taravangian's actions are necessary, and hurting humans is a bonus for her spren. Good point on the metal composition. Despite how the spren may act, they are all probably something like 60/40 at most, some leaning more towards C and some towards H. If Glys has enough Odium's investiture I would expect the bond to now have some mechanics related to emotions, if we have bond for Honor and Oaths for Cultivation. Although Glys is red, so he might not have that much Odium's investiture to begin with, being mostly just corrupted/co-opted. I am also fan of the theory that spren Voidbind, not people (https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/97133-spren-can-voidbind-not-people/ ). Fair, this is also reasonable position given what we know. I do not understand the first point. Surgebinders would predate Knights Radiant by at least one interval of Desolations, so I do not see how Radiants being intended to be keepers of knowledge could help surgebinders make surgebinders motivated to help humankind. After the Knights were formed it works, but surgebinders are older than Knights. The second point is interesting, and I would love to see how it first came about. I personally always saw the bonding as something instinctual, Syl bonds Kaladin and neither of them truly realize what has happened until he swears the 2nd Ideal. And while Syl did bond in the past, she lost her memories, both due to trauma and due to crossing into Physical. I see now, I think this should work. I think only one Tone would be necesarry, since we know that Preservation is naturally repelled from Ruin (OG mists and Hemalurgy), so one Tone should both attract like investiture and repel the other one. The Vessel-specificness I mentioned because it seems that Preservation-aligned metal of Sazed is no longer Lerasium but something else (same for Ruin/Atium), so to change the new metal to original one might require something that was specific to given Vessel. Good point on Bondsmith's powers closeness to Honor. This might suggest that the second order to have loosened restrictions would be Windrunners, they do have Honor's truest surge (if Odium is not lying about it). Interesting note on Cohesion, I always thought that it unrestricted Division might go nuclear. Looking at Ars Arcanum, Lightweaving also has 'various waveforms' listed, so Lightwoven gravitational waves might be a thing? Or if pilot-wave theory of Quantum mechanics is correct within Cosmere, they might do almost anything, funnily enough. But I think that is a bit of a stretch True, though Brandon did say that Bondsmiths will have some special interactions with all orders, but so far it does not seem to be straight up power boost, more of a broadening and building up on the original power. Sixth of the Dusk does seem to point at the conflict being more proxy and about getting influence with others, sort of like Cold War. Will be interesting for sure.

Good point. Thinking about it, are the only orders we did not hear have their Oaths be actively accepted be Lightweavers and Skybreakers? I would think Bondsmiths would be special case either way. Also haven't we also seen Venli have her words rejected and being told she does not mean them enough? If I remember correctly that would imply that Cultivation/Honor have some say in what is good enough, so it might not be simple formality. Nohadon in vision complains that not all spren are as discerning as Honorspren, suggesting some spren bonded not so savory people. If the Shards had a say in it back then, such bonds could have been limited as Venli is (if I remember correctly). Hmm, good question. It might break the bond forcibly, if the surgebinder was not worthy according to new mechanics, which might be traumatic for both the spren and the surgebinder? Yeah, that is true That is why I meant this as alternative, where Ishar would not be so...forceful. That is a complication, true. But would the nature of the spren affect the bonding process? All the radiant spren seem to have mostly the same process, dispite having differing levels of H/C investitures. Plus enlightened spren also seem to work within this framework despite having Odium investiture in them as well. Interesting theory on surge fabrials, it does sound likely. Actually this presence of gradient suggests to me that the Oaths were placed on top of original smoother progression. Going by RoW, Kaladin was functionally as Connected to his spren as almost any 4th Oath Radiant, but he could not access the powers of the 4th Oath fully until swearing the Oath, suggesting the lack of Oath limited his power sort of like closed dam. I am not sure if that was the original intent of the surgebinders at least. Of spren I could see it, but since humanity seems to have often lost a lot of knowledge (both scientific and historical) I think most surgebinders would be motivated by more mundane goals than protection of mankind. True, but I am thinking that the plate was artificially added to help with fighting, it being heavily invested was a goal, and so they chose the mechanism that would facilitate that. After all, any proper Knight needs Plate. Interesting idea on the Connection, and the parallel with more bonds within close groups makes sense to me. Fair enough, hopefully the fifth books reveals a bit on this I would say Tones would not help, unless the Tones can vary based on Vessel. If the Tones are of Shard, than Ruin should still have the same tone even with different vessel. And I would think that Tones would stay the same, otherwise Navani will quickly discover something has changed about Odium. It is interesting Stormfather mentions only restrictions on Bondsmiths. Either he does not know about others, or only Bondsmiths were restricted (I doubt this), or restrictions on Bondsmiths were first to fail/easiest to overcome. That seems likely to me as well, I wonder if Bondsmith with loosened restrictions could help with this, as we have seen Dalinar 'empower' Shallans Illusions. Somehow the idea of powerful Surgebinding producing loud sounds is terrifying to me. Unrestricted Honorblade seems like a possibility as well, and I like the image you are presenting. Cutting completely loose with powers can be awe-inspiring.

I will try to defend my assertion on Ishar, even if I am not fully convinced myself. If I make any factual errors below, please correct me Oaths currently have to be approved/accepted by Honor/Cultivation, yet appearance of surgebinders who bonded spren in mimicking Heralds was a surprise to them. If the oaths existed and needed to be accepted, they would have known the moment first human bonded the first spren, and then Ishar could have presumably acted sooner. Of course it could have been poorly timed in the middle of pause between Desolations. Ishar threatened them, not persuaded them. That to me suggests inherent imbalance of power in the dialogue, for all we know it could have been 'Accept these new restrictions, or I am gonna kill you.' that would be a threat. I do not think Ishar would want to just massacre the surgebinders, after all they are an incredibly useful tool in Desolations, for the first time Heralds could have allies close to their level. If surgebinders appeared only after Fused gained surges, Heralds would be foolish to waste help. Alternatively, back then Ishar was most likely restricted by Honor, as his power came from Honorblade, so he might have had to act within Intent of Honor. So he could have helped make sure new bonds will follow Knights Radiants structure, and then convince the already existing ones to join. The spren original mimicked bond of Honor to Heralds, no Cultivation involved. While Cultivation was already present on the Roshar, the pact between Heralds and Honor was only between them as far as we know. Multi-shardic planets seem to have magic systems for individual shards and for combinations (although this might not be hard rule). Therefore, having Cultivating elements be present in the original bonds of surgebinders and spren seems odd to me. I feel that Oaths might have been placed ex-facto over the original system, effectively turning original mono-shardic system into di-shardic one, with the Oaths themselves being not artifically chosen but natural out-growth of the Intent of Cultivation. The growth in power with Oaths feels to clean? They start with limited access to given surges and no blade or plate, and have to slowly earn them, effectively mimicking progress through military ranks. Finally, the plate also to me feels oddly good for what Radiants are expected to do, i.e. fight against Fused. It resists external application of investiture, enhances wearers and aids their sense. Plus it is not actually formed from the spren the Radiant has bond to, but from others that are unrelated outside of 'species' (is that a good word for type of spren?) It is possible, even likely that a lot of the above is wrong, but I do think that Ishar had some hand in the structural aspects of Knights Radiant, and not just by telling people who already bonded the same type of spren to organize themselves. However, even if I am wrong on the above, the WoB still implies existence of more powerful/less restricted surgebinding and it is specifically stated that it is surgebinding without Oaths. It is possible that the only means to access it are Honorblades (those do not require Oaths) unless they had restriction 'build' in. Good point on ettmetal being only one element, I am bit surprised that slipped my attention. I was surprised by that WoB on two mists as well, but I felt it honest to mention it, as it might make creation of Lerasium/Atium more easier if they exist. As it would require only 'distilling' the new P-aligned/R-aligned metal and then transmuting those into Lerasium/Atium, or maybe directly distilling Lerasium/Atium. EDIT: That is possible, but those restriction could possibly removed as Honor in his dying moments seems to fear those feats of power being done again. For the sake of Roshar I also hope surges remain restricted. I do agree that Shattered Plains are weird, the pseudo-cymatic effect of cracks suggest use of Cohesion of the kind Venli used, but on much larger scale. Stoneshaping seems to have been done by Singers in the deep past, so maybe something like that? It honestly feels like if someone turned whatever was used in building Dawncities to destructive ends, and etymology then suggests it could have been a Dawnshard responsible. On Duralumin compounding to realm hop, I personally do not see it. Even Elsecallers create mini-perpendicularities to transition, and neither Dalinar nor Ishar seem capable of such feat. I think it might give them a glimpse of Cognitive. Addendum: I hope I do not come off as combative, I was writing this in a bit of a hurry, so I might sound terse.

I personally also wanted Rlain to bond The Sibling, but I think the fact that Radiants are so Kholin/Alethi dominated will become a plot point in the second half of stormlight archive, if not in the fifth book. After all at this point 2/3 Bondsmits are Kholin, effective heads of 3 orders are Kholin related (Elsecallers, Lightweavers, Windrunners...as Kal is known as the bodyguard of Kholins) and 2 others have prominent Kholin related memebers (Truthwatchers and the lone Skybreaker). If Adolin joins the Edgedancers the Kholin domination will be quite transparent, even if they did not intend it. And I think other nations will be unhappy with this balance of power, especially if the contest leads to tentative peace/cease-fire.

So in Oathbringer Dalinar has a vision of Nohadon as an older man, and Stormfather does not seem aware of this vision, suggesting it was not part of the Tanavast designed Bondsmith/Vessel download package. However it seems to me that we have seen a similar vision in RoW, specifically the one of Kaladin and Tien. In both of these visions Kal/Dalinar join Tien/Nohadon on some day of their lives (albeit Dalinar's vision then devolves a bit into a nightmare), and both Tien/Nohadon show awareness of the person they are talking too and things they are struggling with. Is it possible that Nohadon as surgebinder, or someone else used Connection powers to Connect Dalinar to Nohadon to help him? After all it is this vision that seems to set Dalinar on the course of swearing the 3rd Ideal, as it is here that Dalinar is reminded of "Hypocrite being man in process of changing" and is asked "What is the most important step a man can take?" and this question especially helped Dalinar in his darkest moment. So, I pretty much think that vision with Nohadon worked off the same principle as Kal/Tien vision did, i.e. someone/something forged Connection between Dalinar and Nohadon, to help Dalinar.

I rechecked Oathbringer and Stormfather does say that Honor raved about Dawnshards and refers to them as the weapons used to destroy Tranquiline Halls (Ashyn), so destruction of Ashyn did seem to require it and I was wrong on that account. However the WoB linked (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/450-waterstones-row-release-event/#e14434) does not specify that Dawnshard is necessary, and since Bondsmith have those heightened surges without Dawnshard there might be a way to highten the surges without it, potentially through Bondsmith doing some Connection smithing? While Rysn swore, oaths and Oaths are not the same thing. Rysn took up the dawnshard before swearing anything. If her orders Oaths did not contradict actions she would take with Dawnshard she and her spren would be fine. But I do agree that Dawnshard should probably not be included in this conflict as we have effectively zero understanding of it. EDIT: Apologize late edit, I was going through WoBs on surges and dawnshards and came upon something I think is interesting and possibly relevant for the discussion. It is specifically this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/444/#e14336) Note the bolded part. There seems to be sort of hierarchy to surgebinding roughly going fabrial -> Radiant -> Unbound surgebinder. We know that Radiants had to be formed by Ishar (and possibly Honor) artificially, as there were surgebinders before formation of Knights Radiant (for example Nohadon). There are other WoBs which seem to state that something is attainble to surgebinders but not to Radiants (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8690) and (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/444/#e14378). Together this seems to imply that the feats Radiants do are limited versions of full surgebinding abilities, although to what extent and in what manner is unknown.

Ashyn should not be out of speculation, as it was destroyed by surges (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/450/#e14434). The WoB directly states that dangerous manipulation of surges like that is possible. In addition, Knights Radiants have their powers restricted both by Oaths (which seems to have been forced on them by Ishar) and possibly by Honor as well, and both of these restriction can be lifted by Dalinar (as he is Bondsmith and 'representative' of sort for Honor), so Ashyn-level surgebinding is in principle achievable. In addition, Eila Stele directly states that people that came from different world were using 'dangerous powers of spren and Surges' that the Singers were forbidden from. As Honor was dying he also stated that Radiants would destroy Roshar as they did their homeworld. All of the above point to the fact that Ashynite were using Surges, even if the access method differed (Radiants use spren, Fused have them directly from Odium, current Ashynites (silence divine) have it through diseases, past Ashynites were using different conduit). Something on Roshar destroyed Shattered Plains, therefore it is example of destructive power Rosharans can wield. It was clearly not caused by natural causes what with the symmetry and all. We have also not actually seen the SoScad bomb destroy the temple, so its strength is purely speculative, its not like the Hunters going north knew exactly how large the temple is are what it is made of. It makes sense that they could probably guess what was needed as they knew what Sovereign did in their lands, but it is still not hard confirmation of destructive abilities of Scadrians. Actually we do not know that. Primer is described as a small metal cube and can easily fit in the palm, it also bounces when thrown so it cannot be too heavy ~100 grams maximum, maybe less. Per Allik (BoM, chapter 23) these contain 'a little bit' of ettmetal. Then he points to larger light on the side, which is presumably the fuel of the slider, Marasi describes it as burning stone. Even if the entire glowing stone was made of ettmetal (which is not necessary as the entire primer glows despite not being made entirely of ettmetal) it would not be much heavier than 1-2 kilogram. If a kilogram is enough for one ship carrying seven people for multiple hours (they sleep whilst flying) and not burn out, than a hundred kilograms would be more than enough for the Brunstell (crew less than hundred) for ~5 times the time at least, depending on how effective the weight storing mechanisms are. I think one ton of ettmetal for way Elendel Basin and back should be more than enough, based on the above reasoning. And Jordis does not seem particularly worried about running out of ettmetal even with the detour to Elendel, so either it does not burn that fast, or they brought considerable reserves. If we allow Shardic intervention Dalinar could be made Fused, and so could be reborn as Fused are. I personally do not like bringing the shards into it, so I will abandon that line of reasoning. They would not need to deploy bondsmith on battlefield, simply have him somewhere safe but reachable and he can recharge spheres as needed. Maybe stuff him in Cognitive and just bring him out for recharging spheres, Scadrians do not have easy access to Cognitive In contrast Scadrial would have to have supply lines that would bring ettmetal, and those could be disrupted more easily. Per WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/374/#e12145) separating out Ettmetal does not give you Lerasium and Atium but something else, there is a way to get Lerasium and Atium but it would be more involved. Along similar lines, from the mists we would most likely get these either ettmetal or more likely these two unknown metals, as there are two kinds of mists currently on Scadrial (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40/#e712). And as you said, neither we nor Scadrians know how to do this. If we let them do anything that is possible even though they do not possess such knowledge we can have lightweavers make lasers or gamma radiation, and have elsecallers create supercritical amounts of fissile material. These are both possible, but unknown to characters. Well we do not know if it was through direct Shardic intervention (and I find that unlikely), or through something else, like Wax holding and using the Bands, or Wax acting in concert with the Intent of Harmony and so could tap a little of that power. The other example in Vin was someone who was incredibly connected to Preservation, and Radiants need close connection to Honor (i.e. have a spren directly linked to their soul) to be able to get in gaseous investiture, suggesting that relatively close connection to relevant Shard is necessary for that. In principle this Connection could be achieved through various means, including direct shardic intervention, or duraluminum compounding.

I think creation of Dawnshard would be a bit beyond even Shards abilities, at best I think they might create sort of corrupted Dawnshard that would skewed by Shards intent? If Roshar is going to get quantum computers sooner than we do, I will be quite amused....and a bit sad.

https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/ He says not to take it as cannon just yet, as he is polishing it up, but he is referencing this scene in some WoBs (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/87-white-sand-vol1-release-party/#e5758). That to me puts it on par with a lot of WoBs as we have seen him change his mind on those and outright contradict himself sometime. He clearly still considers the rough outline of events to hold, and the sailors had to escape somehow. What makes you think Suit is not lying? He has never been the most honest sort, and he has every reason to try and convince Wax that he has to give up the Bands. Ettmetal can cause large explosion, but more on a few building demolishing levels, not city demolishing levels. On Roshar we have Shattered planes (most likely) and Ashyn that was specifically destroyed by Surges. Scadrial does not seem to come that close. Ah that makes sense, but they can also transport the fabrial and just turn it on where they want? If it is not active it should not give of any pulses, so it should not seem dangerous. Shallan accidentally partially falls into Shadesmar, and so does Jasnah when she is young. They did not transition fully, but were still partly there. And Elsecallers (and anyone with Surge of Transportation) can specifically transition between realms. They can go to cognitive from wherever, and can go back to physical at will as well (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/398/#e13196) although that takes more training. So anyone with Transportation can go back and forth between realms as they please, if they have enough stormlight and know what they are doing. We know that eventually Rosharans leave the planet and still have surges, plus in principle Odium could make Dalinar Fused and pack up his bags and go, then you have 2 off-planet Bondsmiths, Dalinar and wielder of Honorblade, and Dalinar could reincarnate to boot. And if Scadrial attacked Roshar, those Bondsmith will be very relevant. On Roshar we have continent spanning (~3000 km wide at least) storm that supplies stormlight into anything that can hold it, that sounds like quite abundant source to me, you are only limited by the containers you can put outside, nothing else. This is far beyond anything seen on Scadrial. In addition we have never seen more than a few kilograms of Ettmetal, not tons, as far as I am aware. Mists are not usable much, the only confirmed cases being Vin and Wax. And they cannot be used to fuel fabrials on Scadrial, unlike Stormlight. EDIT: Changed some wording to bring the tone down, it was not my intention to be hostile. Thank you @Frustration for alerting me as to how I might come off.

And there is civilization at least 15x the size of SoScad that uses stormlight habitually and is now starting to use it industrially as well. Ettmetal is still less common than stormlight and much more difficult to replenish, there are not ettmetal storms every few days either. Outside of Roshar, we have Bondsmith who can open perpendicularity on-demand to replenish spheres as needed. Stormlight is easier to obtain and more abundant then ettmetal by any measure. You said 'deactivated' when in aluminum box in your previous comment and the fabrial would not be. And how would Scadrians get it in the aluminum box if they cannot approach it without losing their powers? Presumably Rosharans would not leave it unattended, or without traps. As far as I can see only Suit is talking about the bomb being able to destroy city and he is trying to bluff Wax at that point. The SoScadrians intended it to destroy the temple and not much more. If you could point me to were SoScadrians say the bomb could destroy the city I would appreciate it. Than encase the projectile in aluminum outside of small hole, this will limit passive loss of stormlight. It would take a lot of it sure, but not outside of bounds of what we have seen, I am sure it will not consume anywhere near the amount of stormlight it took to cross half the continent in half a day. Plus you can easily lash them under angle, and then let natural gravity do the rest. Not nearly as destructive, but much cheaper in stormlight. Fortune is not the same things as luck, it seems to be related to destiny and futuresight not necessarily 'luck' as we colloquially understand it. Based on other descriptions it seems that Brandon is using Fortune more in the way of it meaning destiny or fate. And based on Hoid, it is not that reliable anyway. Ah good point, I mistook spren feeding off highstorm while in cognitive for presence of stormlight in cognitive during highstorm. Still, Elsecallers can transition between the realms at will, and can bring the necessary spheres with them. On range we do not have any hard numbers, but I would say 20-40 meters is reasonable based on my memory of events of Oathbringer. It does not matter if the gun is full aluminum, its barrel still contains air and that can be soulcast, the bullets contain gunpowder which could be soulcast etc. Soulcasters need to project their consciousness into cognitive to soulcast in the physical realm, if anything it should be easier to do it directly from the cognitive realm. EDIT: and per @Frustration in below post (thank you, I could not remember where I saw it) Jasnah casts from cognitive in deleted scene, so semi-canon? Mechanically there is nothing to prevent it, it seems.

Maybe, but so far nothing suggests this. Leeching removes all investiture in others and so do leeching fabrials. While stormlight is at this point more difficult to transport it is also hundreds of times more common than ettmetal, which makes suppressor fabrials nearly disposable. And perfect gems are not needed, spheres can hold light perfectly well it just eventually drains but it still takes time, its not like spheres are empty 2 days after a highstorm. True, but if they have their leechers turned on, they are affected and cannot use metallic arts based on our current knowledge. So they could not effectively shield themselves from attacks, nor from bombardment. Rosharans would need to use them mainly as defensive tools, to prevent Scadrians from taking ground and to nullify their troops investiture. Once active Scadrians need to destroy the fabrial somehow, until such time they cannot take the area under effect. I do not think so, if it had attached gem with stormlight it should fork perfectly fine inside aluminum box. Its effect would be limited to inside the box but it would work. We have seen fabrials being worked inside aluminum lined room in Kholinar and it did not interfere with their function at all. How will you time it to detonate in proximity of Radiant? or are you counting on luck? Ettmetal bombs are not nuke level, they are still chemical bombs albeit very powerful. Set only speculated they could be used to destroy cities, they did not actually test it as far as I know. We have seen no artillery on Scadrial, but they should have it, it will still be magnitudes weaker than gravitation artillery, they could easily fire 1 ton stones at speeds around ~200 m/s (it would take only 15 lashings to do this). Rotary guns might be problem, but they seem to be somewhat rare, and unless you are feeding them aluminum bullets, they are ineffective thanks to reverse lashings. And guns can be soulcasted away, you could soulcast just air in the barrel into stone for example. EDIT: Apparently there were artillery cannons used in Era 1, so some artillery is present but how advanced is a question. Also stormlight is in cognitive, it appears during highstorm and spren use it as currency. Additionally you can bring it with you in gems. Soulcasting is not nearly as difficult as you imply, it depends on what you are trying to soulcast and into what. Anything that is one of ten essences (which includes oil, fire and stone) is easy to do, Shallan does it by accident in WoK, and Jasnah demonstrates the first two directly in battle in RoW, where she is not supported by Bondsmith. In battle of Theylen field, where she was admittedly incredibly invested she did feat like this repeatedly and even greater feats, and even in WoK back when she was only on 3rd oath most likely she could easily soulcast 3 people into the essences and some from distance. In RoW lightweavers accompanying Shallan have been practicing their Soulcasting while in cognitive, so it cannot be that difficult. Still does not change the fact that trajectory of incoming projectiles is effectively randomized, so it would be very risky protection, and it does not change the fact that large enough projectiles would ignore the boundary, unless the boundary was thick enough, at which point it is no longer quite so personal shield. Also aluminum would be unaffected by the bubble or it would pop it.

True on Raysium, however if we restrict Shards from interfering directly lack of Raysium (which might no longer be created anyway) would not be that big a problem. And in principle Odium godmetal should be obtainable somehow from pure Odium spren, if such exist, without direct intervention of Odium. While Scadrians have access to ettmetal, splitting into lerasium and atium is not trivial (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/374/#e12145) with WoB suggesting that physical means are not enough and Scadrial has limited means of manipulating spiritual and cognitive aspects. In addition Scadrians do not possess such knowledge, so Harmony would have to share that, and if Harmony is sharing knowledge then why not gamma lasers Lightweavers and nuclear Elsecallers? Splitting of ettmetal would allow only creation of Mistborn through lerasium. We have no idea how to create Feruchemists (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/4/#e4871) and neither does anyone else. On Fullborn, it seems to require some direct manipulation of spiritWeb (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14103) and the only one we have confirmed is Rashek who did it that way. So even if they could somehow learn to split ettmetal into lerasium and atium, it would only help them create mistborn, or mistborn+ferrings. @Bzhydack Good point on scadrial leechers, but the issue with those is that they will effect Scadrians troops as well, whereas Rosharans suppressors can be targeted at opponent only. Rosharan suppressors also seem to be able to work days at a time, it is just a matter of stormlight. Plus if Rosharan suppressors are already turned on, the Scadrian ettmetal grenades will most likely not activate nor will their leechers, so Rosharan troops would be protected from such effects if they fielded enough suppressors. Ettmetal grenades will definately be useful, but since the area of effect seems relatively small hitting flying targets might not be so easy. Plus you could equip Radiants with small suppressor fabrials to potentially stop ettmetal fabrials from functioning in their vicinity. By gravitation artillery I meant lashing large boulders to bombard opposing forces, that is level of destruction beyond anything Scadrial can field outside Fullborn, if not so well targeted. Elsecallers sitting in cognitive could also safely bombard Scadrian forces by either soulcasting air into stone, or more effectively doing what Jasnah did and soulcast air into oil and then soulcast a small spark. The issue with combined B and C bubbles is that object is either in a bubble entirely or out, so if the bubble was too thin and the object large it might never register the thin bubble at all. Plus bubbles do not reflect the objects away, just nearly randomly changes trajectory, which is bad news for people inside, because now the incoming ammunition is not predictable.

He is not doing so actively, he was not even that much aware of Southern Scadrians, Ettmetal is simply condensating somewhere similarly to atium. It is entirely passive effect. And Rosharan shards do not actively provide godmetals, that is simply the form spren take when they manifest because they are made of investiture of H+C. It is a function of the magic system on Roshar, just as storing/tapping internal attributes is a function of Scadrian magic system.

Of course Marasi was not compounding she did not have time to do so. However, she was tapping pre-prepared stores, and since the Bands had to be created by Fullborn, their stores were most likely created by compounding. I.e. she was passively using someone else's compounded stores for her feats. Compounding requires burning the metal with the f-attribute and then storing the resulting power, she would not have time to burn entire metalminds to do even a single compounding. If you start using Harmony to directly provide Lerasium or directly modify their spiritwebs, we might as well start asking Cultivation and Odium with help creating weapons similar to Honorblades and to help remove limitations on surgebinding placed by Honor (so it should be within Dalinar's means to remove). And if you start dragging shards actively into this, Dalinar could simply release Odium from Roshar under the condition that Odium kills Harmony, which he can do (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/87/#e5854) (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/431/#e14009). No Harmony -> no Lerasium/Atium/Ettmetal + potential plasma storm in cognitive -> losing Scadrial. Put a few reverse lashings in between Stormform formations, problem with guns solved. Then you say aluminum bullets, so we need to start giving armor to stormform. And the shooting formations could not be tapping steel too fast, otherwise the guns would jam so they would be vulnerable to gravitation artillery from Skybreakers/Windrunners. Main point being, if you drag shards into this by actively having them help Scadrial loses simply because Odium could kill Harmony in a fight, and Cultivation could create a bunch of Taravangians without downsides.

Ah, true I forgot about Wax. Nevertheless stormlight healing and f-gold seem to be the same, outside of healing death where stormlight might not be enough and F-Gold requires large stores. If seeker is in range of suppression fabrial, they cannot detect anything as their allomancy is off. And suppression fabrials cannot emit the anti-tone to given investiture, Urithiru was able to suppress Fused surges, and Fused were able to create suppression fabrials and both of these pre-date the discovery of anti-tones and anti-light. They need to be attuned somehow and that most likely requires knowledge of the pure tones of shard, but that does not mean it emits anti-tones. And I do not think A-copper could block suppression fabrials, A-coopper only ever blocks senses and some passive investiture effects, like attuning rhythms. Fabrial is active device, and A-cooper does not block active uses of investiture, at best it helps the smoker resist some effects (only confirmed is emotional allomancy, so cognitive effect not spiritual one).