a Faceless Immortal

I'm fairly sure that the 4 Dawnshards are as follow:

Change, Into, Instant & Noodles.

This is how Adonalsium was shattered.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

Kaladin needs F-Copper so that he can store happy memories for when it rains.

And since you did specify twin born, give hime A-Brass too so he can help people who are scared and sad. Therapy Kaladin is Best Kaladin.

I was absolutely devastated in that moment. I think I had subconsciously expecting Sig to renew his oaths for the climax of the book (which I guess is what Brandon wanted...), but, I have to admit, this does make more sense character-arc wise.

Still, I hate that it had to happened.

RIP Aux.

My guesses involve the following:

• Dalinar dies, either during the contest or before. Before he dies, he has a deep conversation with Kaladin, or something of that manner, that sets Kaladin on the path to say the 5th oath, maybe pick up Honour (maybe even Odium as well? I feel less set on him taking Odium) and becoming the shard of Duty, or Protection
  • I feel better about Dalinar dying than Kaladin. This could just be because I haven't read the books recently and I remember less of Dalinar and his arc, but I feel like a meaningful death would suit him more than Kaladin, since Kaladin has spent so much time dealing with survivor's guilt and Dalinar was more about reconciling himself with his past
  • I also just really don't want anything bad to happen to Kaladin, and if he becomes a Shard he can be semi-immortal for a time
     
• Ba-Ado-Mishram and Shallan have a meet-up of some kind, and this is an integral part of ending the Desolation
  • Shallan feels responsible for causing the Desolation (because she killed her mother) (who is definitely Chanarach)
  • I figure Ba-Ado-Mishram can probably overpower Taravang-ium, who is new and inexperienced, taking control of the Singers
  • Shallan probably convinces her to do this somehow. Both are fairly identity/connection focussed characters, so she probably empathises with her somehow
     
• I would like to see the Heralds come back somehow (I know they are around but like, being lucid and not insane would be cool). Specifically, I'd like to see Ishar as the Coalition's Champion.
  • This specific scenario is unlikely, I'll admit. 
  • However, I do believe Ishar will prove to be very important. Maybe a 5th ideal being sworn near him gives him a few minutes of clarity to expose some important truths? Maybe the Windrunners get a stream of squires to swear the first oath, one after the other, and the resulting oath-train lets him reforge the Oathpact? idk

Might be back later to update this.

I think the problem here is that aluminium burns instantaneously, whereas a Shardblade strike happens over a prolonged period of time. 

This suggests to me that the only viable way an Aluminium Gnat could meaningfully affect a strike would be if they could dismiss the blade or otherwise break the spren's form in a way that cannot be immediately resumed; without being able to do something like this they either A. do nothing to the blade, and have their soul sliced, or B. manage to prevent the blade slicing their soul and instead get slammed with a 7 (Rosharan) foot long hunk of sharp metal. Neither of these outcomes are particularly good for the Gnat...

I have no proof that this is actually the case, but I think this aligns with what other people here have said.

2 hours ago, Heilven said:

Gives it as "strength of squires". Is this clarified somewhere? Because to me that sounds like he means that the squires are more able to use their abilities.(I read the wob posted y frustration earlier, I see why it's generally referred to as an increase to number of squires.

He could be referring to an 'increased strength of squires' as in 'a force of fifty strong,' where the strength is in the number of members. I think this could be a reasonable, if somewhat obscure reading, especially since we are talking about 'Kaladin's Squires' as a unit.

Alternatively it could be that Windrunner squires simply advance faster; that would make the people around him begin to display abilities faster, and progress through their abilities quicker, hence the average Windrunner squire would be stronger than the average Skybreaker squire for example (They do have squires, right?).

Cadmium ambulances would definitely be a lifesaver. Could also be used transport medical isotopes or organs for transplant across greater distances.

Bendalloy would be great for high-priority construction (if you can afford it).

Yeah, I feel like the physical pushing/pulling metals combined with a weight-changing projectile (as far as I know they break conservation of momentum, so accelerate the projectile when it's light, and then drastically increase in weight before hitting the target for huge damage. Might be expensive, idk) could make a pretty solid 'railgun.'

Time bubbles are pretty useful for speeding up any chemical process, or making a cool museum if you are super rich.

And I love the idea of the Coppermind internet; who needs to have copper cables transmit information via signals when you could just touch the copper itself, and suddenly have access to the sum knowledge of Scadrial beamed in to your brain?! It would be interesting to see the mechanics of what happens if multiple people attempt to access information; presumably only one being could possess each item at a time, so it would probably be more akin to a library than our understanding of the internet, and data security would be a nightmare . However, one plus over our internet is that you would know what you access as a memory rather than having to rely on pesky reading comprehension skills. Seems pretty dang cool. To quote The Matrix, "I know Kung-Fu!"

Man, space age Cosmere is going to be exciting.

I quite enjoyed it. Not quite as good as Tress; definitely had all the twists and was a bit strangely paced in that regard, but the premise was cool, the plot satisfying, and the hate-able characters EXTRA hate-able (storming Ryan and storming Jen. No wonder John had self-esteem issues.)

Also, anyone else here read Anathem by Neal Stephenson? Does the dimensional travel seem familiar to you, or is it just me ...

I mean, that is definitely a possibility!

I am inclined to believe otherwise however, for two main reasons:

1. Odium to me feels like he's going to be a major Cosmere villain, and so having him merge into the shard of War being held by Dalinar would make Dalinar said major Cosmere villain, which I really do not want to see
2. Dalinar's character arc seems to me to be mostly about his reconciliation with the atrocities of war, and uniting people rather than creating fractures, ie wars.

Both these points may be invalid because they are just my opinion, but I thought I'd throw them into the ring to see what others think of them

1. Avoid. (alder24)
2. Don't show up to a fight with him. (alder24)
3. Be on a different planet. (alder24)
4. Achieve agelessness and outlive him. (alder24)
5. Be the Chosen One, draw from the Mists while pulling his metalminds out of his body. (alder24)
6. Be in Cognitive Realm while he's in Physical Realm (be aware, he can open perpendicularity on his own) (alder24)
   6.1. Be a Soulcaster and Soulcast his metalminds into smoke. 
7. Ascend and use Shard's power to smite him.
8. Be a Windrunner with lots of Stormlight and drop a huge asteroid on the planet he resides on. (alder24)
9. Nuke him, preferably with Tsar Bomb hidden in a truck. (alder24)
   9.1. Use big Anti-investiture bomb on him.
10. Be an Elscaller, boosted by a Bondsmith and use the Surge of Transportation to teleport him in the middle of the vacuum of space, far away from any star system. (alder24)
11. Be a Bondsmith with medallion granting F-steel, with a lot of stored speed, use that speed to touch him first and take away his Connections and powers. (alder24)
12. Have access to F-steel again, with a lot of speed, and aluminum spike, spike him with aluminum spike in the correct binding point, which would remove all his powers (alder24)
13. Stab him with Nightblood, if possible from Cognitive Realm. (alder24)
14. Have access to some invested art and be a Dawnshard. (alder24)
15. Drop a primar cube where he stands, charged with powerful Allomantic aluminum, and shoot him in the head. Or use a powerful enough suppressor fabrial. (alder24)
16. That's hard. He's god. God cannot be killed. God cannot be overthrown. Your rebellion—you think he hasn't seen its like before? (alder24)
    16.1. While he's monologuing, tap lots of speed, put a shotgun with aluminum pellets to his head, shoot and pray to gods it works, before he kills you in return.
17. Surprise drop a nuclear warhead on them.  (Trusk'our)
18. Have an Elsecaller Shardblade them in the back through the Cognitive Realm. Hopefully that actually works, as we haven't yet seen it canonically. (Trusk'our)
19. Use a hyper-charged Allomantic grenade that utilizes Allomantic chromium to drain the Fullborn's metal storages. Then have a squad of two-hundred machinegun-wielding soldiers pelt him with bullets. (Trusk'our)
20. Have an extremely talented sniper headshot the Fullborn with a fragmenting aluminum bullet. OR have the sniper use Hemalurgic aluminum to strip them of all their Invested powers. (Trusk'our)
21. If the Fullborn is considered "evil" unsheathe Nightblood and drop it in front of him. Make sure to use a lot of Feruchemical steel to escape before they destroy you afterwards  (Trusk'our)
22. Befriend a Sleepless and have their Larkin-Hoardling hybrids drain the Fullborn of Investiture. Sleepless can then kill the Fullborn through conventional means. (Trusk'our)
23. Create a Bands of Mourning style Unsealed Metalmind and fight the Fullborn of equal terms. OR use Hemalurgy to accomplish this effect (though that would leave you vulnerable to being controlled by the Fullborn). (Trusk'our)
24. Capture an army of Shades and unleash them on the Fullborn. If they are unfamiliar with the nature of Shades, they may not know how to effectively kill them and will be overwhelmed by them. (Trusk'our)
25. Soulcast the Fullborn into a non flesh material so they can't heal from being turned to stone or non metal material, we haven't seen what soulcasting metalminds does or if it's even possible, but I assume that it's new Identity would prevent any shenanigans. (Lesser spren)
26. Be Elantrain, use prep-time to prepare either suppressive effect, or Speed effect. Then, create Aon Dor symbol to leech from Distance, and kill them at leisure (therunner)
27. Be Elantrian, use prep-time to replicate effects of Fullborn powers, and fight them (you have advantage since you are Elantrin on top of Fullborn powers). (therunner)
28. Drop fullborn in lake of molten aluminum. (Xaladin)
29. Throw a powerful Cadmium grenade at them to slow them down whilst you find a sufficiently large rock to drop on them, popping the bubble and hopefully crushing them beyond their ability to heal before they can escape (Me)
30. Simply exist on Post-Catacendre Scadrial. They are all dead already. (Also Me)
31. Hit them with a taser. After that you can just stab them to death with an aluminum weapon. (Frustration)
32. Get 7 5th ideal wind runners to pin them down, and stab them repeatedly with aluminum knives. they'll run out of healing eventually (PinkPlasma)
33. Plop them in the forests in threnody. cut his finger, and elsecall the crap out of there (PinkPlasma)
34. Compound speed, stuff them in an aluminum box filled with water and weld all of the seams on the box shut, then drop it in center of the oceans on roshar during a highstorm. run away. (PinkPlasma)
35. Become a fused/herald. fight them until they eventually die, no matter how many times they kill you. (PinkPlasma)
36. Get kaladin to fight them (PinkPlasma)
    36.1. He is the storm. The storm cannot be killed. (TheSurvivorofDeath)
37. Have Hoid insult them (Xiahida)
38. Become Andolism and hope and pray to yourself you can kill him (Xiahida)
39. Soulcast the air around him into aluminum. (Xiahida)
40. Use a Raysium dagger to leech away his power. (The Stick)
41. Assemble ALL of Lopens cousins because that should be enough people to kill any god, honestly speeking. (Nasax)
    
    Ooh I get lucky number 42 lol
     
42. Convince Stick to fight them for you. Stick may not want to be Fire, but maybe Fight-er?

Now don't y'all dare start from one again!

Surely we can all stop starting from 1. each time we post, so we can have a running total and see if we can actually make it to 104? If I have time later I'll edit this post to have a list of all the unique ideas so we can actually start making progress lol

30. Throw a powerful Cadmium grenade at them to slow them down whilst you find a sufficiently large rock to drop on them, popping the bubble and hopefully crushing them beyond their ability to heal before they can escape

31. Simply exist on Post-Catacendre Scadrial. They are all dead already.

16 hours ago, therunner said:

I think Shardplate is the best space-suit so far in Cosmere.
While yes, Feruchemist could store attributes to survive, they would have to tap gold non-stop at quite large rates (healing radiation, lack of pressure), and the rest of attributes they would have to spend years storing to prepare for single trip. I mean, just storing enough breath would take quite a while, not to mention wakefulness (since you can tap/store only when awake so Feruchemist would have to remain conscious for entire trip).

With Shardplate you just summon it, close it, and now you need Stormlight mainly to heal lack of Oxygen, being protected from everything else.

You are correct, however, I believe the Feruchemist's biggest disadvantage is that they don't exist anymore. Still, I believe that once a way to deal with the pressure difference is found, the about of gold used would be minor.

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

I don't think temperature is an issue, as it's the property of the matter, and in the vacuum of space there are no particles (like whole 5 atoms per 1 cm3), so there is no temperature transmission to your body. However you get heated up by the Sun's radiation, but that's not much greater than what's on Earth's surface. Your body however will have troubles with cooling down, as it can only do it by radiation, which is a slow process, and can't do it via heat convection or conduction, so you might get overheated because of that.

Radiation is a long term problem. You won't die from radiation while crossing space between planets. You might develop cancer from this, or radiation poisoning, or nothing if it was fast enough. I think the most radiation intense regions of space between Earth and Mars are van Allen belts, caused by the Earth's magnetosphere. From Wiki: 

You are correct that no conduction or convection occurs within a vacuum, but I believe blackbody radiation accounts for something like 60% of the human body's heat loss, and without a layer of air or other material surrounding the body to be heated up by said radiation, all that heat is simply being dispersed into space, rather than forming the 'blanket' of warm air that usually accompanies the human body and maintains the optimal 28-ish degrees celsius (82 Fahrenheit for you Americans) surface temperature.

Additionally, sunlight heats things up substantially without an atmosphere worth of gasses to absorb it. The outer layer of Earth's atmosphere is something like 120 degrees celsius (248 Fahrenheit) when in direct sunlight, which is significantly more than a human body would enjoy.

Hence, any part of the body in direct sunlight would warm up noticeably quick, and any in shadow cool down. All of this to say that temperature is definitely a factor when working in space. I mean, why would NASA insulate their spacesuits if it wasn't?

DISCLAIMER: Numbers used are from memory, I'll edit in some references later when I'm not using a phone.

11 hours ago, alder24 said:

They can't become a Chasmfiend

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NeedsAdjustment

Would a kandra be able to imitate a chasmfiend, given enough time?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not about time, it's about mass. A little one, sure. A full grown one? They'd crush themselves. They'd need to be able to make use of symbiotic spren bonds from Roshar, which isn't just a matter of digesting a body.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 5, 2016)

 

Valid point, it's been a while since I last read SA and I had forgotten about the symbiotic spren (and also the fact that Roshar also just has weaker gravity if I recall). 

I imagine a Kandra who comes prepared could take ALL the hillbil-- angry people with shotguns.

Simply put, a Kandra with metal bones who has taken the shape of, say, a Rhino, or even a Chasmfiend (if they ever come across one) would be fairly indestructible by conventional weaponry; the thick skin of the body is able to regenerate rapidly, the essential organs can be tucked within a specialised metal shell, the bones will be substantially more durable, not to mention the fact that they can augment their natural weapons with metal, or even their own shotguns themselves! Metal Rhino with built-in machine guns, anyone?

Simply put, a Kandra could basically be a living, self-repairing tanks if they wanted.

The problems a radiant may suffer in space are, I believe, the following:

• Lack of Oxygen
• Lack of Pressure
• Extreme fluctuations in Temperature
• No protection from Radiation

And I believe a combination of Shardplate, Stormlight, and Adhesion* can effectively nullify these issues, in fact I believe that Shardplate alone is probably the second most functional space-suit we will see in the Cosmere, beaten only by a Feruchemist, who in all probability could simply store enough resources to survive (although pressure may present a problem for them, but I am sure there is simply something I am not remembering) entirely by themselves.

As to the speed of space travel, I believe that has been sufficiently discussed above. I would, however, like to add that a fabrial capable of applying reverse lashings would prove as a useful method of transport for those who aren't gifted with the surge of Gravitation. Although this probably wouldn't be as effective as a Windrunner or a Skybreaker using the surge themselves (see other surge fabrials, like the soulcaster), it would at least be something.

Man, all of this sure gets me excited for the space age of the Cosmere!

*The usefulness of Adhesion depends on whether you can impose pressure on space, despite there not being any particles to provide that pressure. If it turns out that adhesion allows you to pressurise empty space, then it will be extremely useful.

I imagine a Kandra who intentionally builds their body for combat would be pretty scary for anyone to face.

The bones don't necessarily have to be one material the whole way through, do they? So feasibly, the bones could be made of steel which has been electroplated with aluminium for both physical strength and investiture resistance, without having to spend anywhere near as much on aluminium. This would make them pretty defensible against a Shardblade, although I imagine a ShardHammer would be the most effective weapon against any Kandra, because once the bone breaks it becomes a huge problem for them to deal with.

8 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

TLM spoilers: 

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Kandra with F bendalloy medallion and aetherbound... grow your own body and your own bones at will.  So dope. If you toss on A bendalloy via an extra spike it would only make it more epic. 

 

That is indeed a pretty awesome idea!

I guess it depends; are koloss-blooded stronger than your average person because of residual investiture or is it simply a genetic thing?

This WoB makes me think it's the latter:

Quote

Questioner 1

Alloy of Law. We've got koloss-born guys. What's their origin?

Brandon Sanderson

So... Currently in Mistborn-- And I delve into this a lot more in the later books, but, you know, it's not a big spoiler so I can tell you. Um... Koloss have become... They can breed, but when some-- when a child is born to them it is born as a koloss-blood. It is not born the full thing, right? Grows up normally, and at maturity, at their right of passing, they can choose to ma-- take the step, gain-- get the spikes, and turn into actual, true koloss. Or if they don't, they have to leave the tribe and go... You know.

Questioner 1

But they're more, like, human size? Like, human looking?

Brandon Sanderson

They're human size, human-- I mean, they've got some residual effects. They're a little bit tougher. But yeah. General, they can be human. And so what you're seeing in Tarson is some-- one of those who actually came and-- He's the son of a full koloss-blood and a human Allomancer, which makes an Allomancer koloss-blood.

Questioner 1

Okay. So that's what I thought. A little human interbreeding. *unintelligible* weird.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, um, and a human could, if they wanted to, go convince the koloss to accept them, join the tribe, and get spiked. So yeah...

Questioner 2

It makes their skin saggy, and they start growing...?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. It makes their skin saggy, and start growing, and start ripping, and all that sort of stuff.

I was under the impression that there was some Lerasium - is that not how Wayne gained his powers?

An interesting read, however...

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

Strongly disagree. It's far better parallel to the French Revolution, which was very much a spontaneous popular revolt, which directly overthrown and killed the unpopular king, caused chaos across the country, mass executions, multiple government changes, reducing status of nobles and priests, rising the status of peasants and the middle class,  multiple coalition wars, which ultimately ended with Napoleon (Elend!) becoming Emperor of France, bringing monarchy back to France, who forced his political order across whole Europe using his supreme military force. Please, the American Revolution didn't even kill any king!

I am going to have to agree with Alder on this one; to me it seems the French Revolution is a much better parallel, or even inspiration, especially when the text is littered with names like 'Demoux' which seem of French origin to me.

Yeah, I do agree that Odium seems to be in the prime position to become the main antagonist in the Cosmere. Hoid certainly believes so, Frost seems to agree (Judging by the letter he sent), and he definitely has done some majorly villainous things -- and he probably still has his fingers on many of the events in the cosmere (looking at you, Trell!) 

whoops sorry I totally forgot

I'm not sure how spoilers work for unpublished sequels so I'm gonna spoiler it just in case;

Honestly this, while cool at first, just really confused me.

Man this got off topic very fast  

While I definitely have a disliking for Moash, I actually really enjoyed his interactions with the Parshendi and singers and so I think it would be a satisfying plot line if he, while being completely shunned by the rest of humanity for his pretty atrocious acts, finds sympathy in the community of the singers who, like himself, have been manipulated and mistreated by Odium, eventually coming to a leadership position among them and encouraging them towards unification. The only problem I see with this is he's pretty much being pushed in the direction of being incredibly selfish (I mean, he doesn't even feel remorse for killing Teft) and so it would be a very miraculous change in direction to go from where he is to being someone who strives for unity. I think this could possibly be achieved by making Odium get on his bad side somehow (he stops taking his pain etc) and because 'enemy of my enemy' joins with the humans to defeat Odium, I'm just not sure how quickly this turnaround could happen without making it feel contrived.

Regarding the casteism (which totally deserves it's own topic), I think this is one of the cases in which Brandon, because of the massive amounts of world building he has done, has a much bigger picture of the effects it's currently having on society in his head than is translating into the stories. Because these books are stories rather than political metaphors a lot of the philosophic quandaries about race (eye color in this case), culture and gender have basically been sidestepped in favor of  a more fluid and succinct plot line. I would, however, love a short story/novella about what's going on, either with Lirin and Hesina during their stay at the tower and how their lifestyles contrast with Laral's and the other lighteyes or maybe the members of Bridge Four struggling with being part-time lighteyes?