Argent

Oh, well. It was worth a shot.

Beldre was what I figured too.

Maybe they are just going early. You know, way early.

I understood them to be a Soother & Rioter combo.

And you are right that it could be a part of the act. But that's not the impression I am getting. Hence, theorytime!

He did pop up in Alloy - look for a wedding and the newlyweds talking to a guy who looks like a beggar. As for the scope of Era 2 as far as the Cosmere is concerned... I don't know. If we are correct about a new Shard coming over, things could get big.

Others have had pretty much the same idea. From what I've seen in the last couple of days on the forums, it's either that or people believing it's Bavadin's Shard, Autonomy, that's doing this stuff. I personally support Bavadin because his Shard's Intent matches more closely Bleeder's obsession with freedom.

On the contrary, I doubt more than a handful of people outside this forum know about this

I don't know if there was ever a real Lessie. But that's possible.

I find this theory poorly grounded in evidence and highly unlikely.

Multiple WoBs. I am low on time (and high on caffeine), but it went pretty much like this: Is the author of the (The Way of Kings) letter Hoid? Yes. Is the recipient of the (The Way of Kings) letter a dragon? Yes. Who is the oldest character we know? Frost. ??? Frost is the recipient of the Letter Also, I am indeed confusing Frost and Khriss. Nazh works for Khriss. Frost is just a dragon Hoid knows.

It's not Wayne's skill that made me suspicious, it's what happens inside his head. In a small way he stops being Wayne and becomes whoever he is impersonating. There is a time in The Alloy of Law when he is pretending to be an old lady, and - while in his viewpoint - we get to read about some kids nearby remind him - her - of her own grandchildren. That's not something people do when they pull a con.

Uh. We don't know much about her (was she a girl? I can't remember...), but she is Nazh's... employer? master? and the one Hoid exchanges letters with in some of WoK/WoR epigraphs.

Hmm. I am kind of @ParadoxSpren on this, but for different reasons. If I were to guess, I'd say that when a person is taken by the Shaod, the Dor changes a lot more of their Spiritweb than, say, when a person Snaps and becomes an Allomancer. After all, Elantrians change more than Allomancers (or Radiants for that matter). There are... passive effects to becoming an Elantrian. To use an example from (magical) biology, let's see humans have 100,000 genes each. Snapping adds, for the sake of argument, 2 more, each one encoding for a Spiritweb trait responsible for whether the person can perform Allomancy. Being changed by the Shaod would, in this example, add... I don't know, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand? More than two in any way. Those genes would then encode for things metallic skin, glow, prolonged lifespan, the ability to draw Aons, any other perks Elantrians get. Surgebinders would probably be in the same boat as Allomancers - a gene per Surge, maybe one for inhaling Stormlight, but that's it. I guess it all comes down to how the upgrade to your Spiritweb works. It looks like for Surgebinders, Awakeners, and practitioners of the Metallic Arts it's a one time change, a switch. One day you are a regular human, then something happens, and then you can do magic. For Elantrians it's a continuous thing. Yes, there is a one-time change (the Shaod), but they need continuous access to the Dor through Elantris. If this supply disappears or changes strength, they change with it - as seen during the Reod. Makes me wonder how adding giant modifiers to Elantris' Aon Rao would affect the Elantrians... So yeah, this makes sense to me.

And I don't know about Lessie orchestrating her own murder. All throughout Shadows she cares for Wax. Causing him pain is just not something I could see her do, especially during the early stages of her transformation into Bleeder. What I will concede to, however, it the bit about Harmony taking control. I misremembered the textual evidence that he didn't. I maintain everything else as I proposed it, though - that thing he pushed for was the plan that would end up with Wax grieving and Lessie dead.

I don't think the comment about the letter qualifies as big enough of a deal to cause Paalm to snap. Marsh not working for Harmony... With the number of spikes in Marsh's body, I find it hard to believe. I think Harmony's disagreement(s) with Marsh are just that. As to why he allowed Marash to give Spook's notebook to Marasi... respect would be my guess. Or trust. Trusting that Marsh knows what he is doing.

Hmm. It's an interesting idea, especially considering that Magical healing works with how one sees oneself Miles describes Allomantic gold not as him seeing alternative versions of himself, but him being both versions at the same time The latter ought to change how he sees himself, consciously or sub-.

Sooo... that happened at the end of Shadows of Self. But it also made me think about the prologue of Mistborn #4, now with the added knowledge that Lessie was Harmony's agent since the beginning. Let's look at the few key points of their relationship we know about. I. First Meeting As far as we can tell, the first time Wax and Lessie met was in the Weeping Bull, an... establishment of some sort where Lessie was posing as a "dancing girl." The owner (I assume) of the place was somebody called Rusko. There was apparently a pink garter and pretty legs involved. Wax guesses that Lessie was chasing a bounty there, to which Lessie replies with "yeah, kind of." My take on this is that she was there for Wax - he was her "kind of" bounty. Maybe that was her first attempt to get him interested in her (not very successfully apparently, at least not in the long run), or maybe she was just keeping an eye on him and having some fun on the way. It is possible - I am even going to say that it's likely - that she kept an eye on him after that meeting, and maybe even before (and he just couldn't remember). Possibly under different faces too. I don't think it's important. II. Granite Joe's Bar When they meet in Granite Joe's bar - which is where the Shadows of Self prologue takes place - Lessie is sneaking into the room he was led to by the barkeep after he asked about Granite Joe's whereabouts. Which, in retrospect, is awfully suspicious! The barkeep led Wax to this room so he can sit there until Joe's hirelings can get in position and gun him down. And at the same time this woman climbs through the window of this same room? Rereading the passage, Lessie was obviously saving his skin there. She is startled when she sees him there, but I think that's a fake reaction. Reading farther down, I am not sure I buy Wax's "they must've known I was going to show up today" thing in reference to how Joe got a sharpshooter in position so quickly. Oh, I am sure he believes it, but I am fairly confident Lessie had a hand in orchestrating the ambush so she can put herself in a situation where she can protect Wax, sass him up, work him, appear to save his life, and generally make him fall for her. I think at this point she is still purely an agent of Harmony, not yet in love with her "kind of bounty." It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that Lessie swears by the God Beyond, something many here believe to be a thing of people who are more aware of the Cosmere. She also uses "holy hell," which doesn't strike me as a Scadrial curse. The one bit that confuses me a little is Lessie's employment under Granite Joe. The way the speak with each other suggests that she was definitely on his payroll - before she decides to finally hit it off with Wax. Maybe she anticipated him going after Joe so she got herself hired by Granite, maybe with the specific promise to deliver Wax to him? That's a big con she is playing at this point... III. Feltrel Finally, we have the confrontation with Bloody Tan. First, there is a short line about the letter Wax gets from Elendel - about how "Lessie thought it implied more than it did." I believe at this point she is aware of Harmony's plan to send Wax back, a plan that includes her dying very soon; and event that would be so traumatic for Wax, he would want to abandon the Roughs and go back to the city. So of course she would think it implies more than what it says. There is a line that bothers me slightly: "Wax didn’t recognize the slender man, who hung with hand to his head in a salute." It could be a bit of subtle foreshadowing, but of what, I don't know. It's an odd detail to include where he included it. I've outlined the events that take place during the actual confrontation in a different thread, for brevity. The short summary is that I believe Paalm was under Harmony's control when this scene was unfolding, and it was this forceful takeover that sent her on the path of becoming Bleeder. --- --- --- And that's it. Not so much a theory as a retelling of the events we already knew, but with some additional knowledge shedding light on what could be considered background, foreshadowing, or just Easter eggs.

I was writing a different post, trying to analyze the events of the Era 2 prologues with the new knowledge available in Shadows of Self, when an interesting idea struck me - what if Bloody Tan was in on Harmony's plan to get Wax out of the Roughs and back into Elendel? Here me out, let's look at the events in The Alloy of Law prologue, but using our Shadows of Self lenses. When Wax first encounters Bloody Tan in the dead city of Feltrel, Tan says the following: Knowing what we know about each one of these legendary figures, I tried to work out how Tan could've seen them all. Death is easiest - that's Marsh. So, for some reason, Marsh must have revealed himself to Tan. He is a pretty secretive guy, I find it terribly unlikely that Tan could've just ran into him on the street. But Marsh works for Harmony, so it's very likely that Harmony wanted Tan to see Marsh. Or, alternatively, Harmony wanted something done, it had something to do with Tan, and Marsh could do it. So here's what I am thinking. At some point before this prologue, Harmony decided that the way send Wax back to Elendel was to instill a desire in him to get away from the Roughs (Lessie's death), and make sure there is nothing holding him back there (Lessie). So Lessie had to die. How do we kill her? We get Wax to do it, because of divine sadism or something. Harmony knows there is this trick that Wax and Lessie do when one of them is held at a gunpoint where they coordinate a shot at the captor - which works great, unless the captor is both Metalborn and has one of the few powers that would allow him to cheat. For some reason (possibly because of timing, but also possibly because he was unstable), Harmony chose Bloody Tan to be his instrument. He sent Marsh to him, recruiting him (either by negotiation or by force, doesn't matter), and then spiking him with whatever power would let Tan react to Wax's shot. So now Tan has seen Death (Marsh) and potentially God (Harmony), since spikes allow for visual manifestation. Not sure how the Survivor fits in all this, but I'll settle for a 90% complete theory. So now that I've overanalyzed two lines of text, let's move on. Bloody Tan then proceeds to tell Wax that: Yep, he sure does. "Someone else moves us" runs with the same idea. There is only more interesting piece, I think, that it involves the origin story, so to speak, of Bleeder. Either MeLaan or TenSoon informs Wax that what finally caused Paalm to snap and adopt the identity of Bleeder was a situation where Harmony asked too much of her, and when she refused him, he took the reins. Lessie's death is a prime candidate for this. Lessie - Paalm - loved Wax and didn't want him to live with the pain she knew her death, at this hands on top of that, would bring him; she probably asked Harmony to find another way. Harmony, for one reason or another, decided that his way was either better or it was the only way, so he forced her to go with it. I imagine she removed one of her spikes not too long after Wax left Feltrel. When and how she got the trellium spike(s) is a topic of another place and time, however. All in all, I find that this theory provides are more complete picture of the events in The Alloy of Law prologue. It makes a lot of sense to me.

For the record, it's investiture. We are not into dudes who invest.

I am pretty sure it refers to TenSoon's murder and replacement of OreSeur.

I hypothesized somewhere that: Trell is Autonomy / Bavadin Shards can go play in other Shards' sandboxes, so to speak - inject their Investiture in another Shard's magic system for a limited effect without actually Investing themselves in the world (which would give them much greater power, but at a cost) Trell's Investiture, his effect on the Metallic Arts manifests itself as an additional God Metal (whereas if he had become Invested in Scadrial, he would spawn at least one new magic system, a new Art) - trellium. Trellium would have to have to follow the rules of all three Metallic Arts, but it would also have to be in line with Trell's Investiture. This means an Allomantic effect, a Feruchemical effect, and a Hemalurgic* effect. ... I just argued myself into a corner. What I was going to say before I initiated protocol Eat Your Own Foot, was that it would make sense for Trell's - Autonomy's - metal to be somewhat in line with his Intent. So it could be the case that trellium is kind of a self-sufficient, an autonomous, metal - a substitute for any one of the regular metals. An Allomancer would be able to burn it for any one of the regular effects, a Feruchemist would be able to store anything (except for age and whatever lerasium grants), and a... Hemalurgist... would be able to steal any power. Except lerasium and atium don't seem to work like this. Lerasium's Allomantic power is not directly in line with his Intent, and neither is atium's... well, either power. So I don't know if I can argue that trellium - bavadium? - should. Trivia: I typed "Hemalyrgic" and Google Chrome suggested to correct it to "Hemalurgic." Good for you, Google, you are learning!

A valid point.

Okay, that's close enough that I can't argue. I am convinced, it's her earring.

It has to be Breeze. Since Wax is a descendant of the Counselor, and since both share the family name of Ladrian, it can't be anyone else. As to why they don't call him Breeze, they don't call any of the original crew members by their real (or preferred) names. Wax was thinking about this when he was in the kandra Homeland, I think, something about the original names being near holy.