Returned

I don't think that the right way to interpret Hoid's comment is that he arranged for Kelsier to do anything. Hoid needed something, and Kelsier did it-- those aren't necessarily related. I also don't think that we have enough information to answer this question definitively, so it's all speculation. My top guesses are threefold, in ascending order of how likely I think they are: Kelsier set events in motion to save Scadrial from utter destruction on the slimmest chances via the most dangerous avenues Kelsier set events in motion that caused a very dangerous Shard, which had largely overridden its bearer, to be relinquished and taken up by someone more stable Kelsier made the Well accessible by setting in motion the events that freed Ruin, which (arguably) allowed Hoid to get a bead of Lerasium for himself Removing the Lord Ruler doesn't seem like it was all that relevant to Hoid or his plans, save perhaps accessing the chamber where the Well was located. Further, it is strongly implied that the Lord Ruler's fall was orchestrated by Ruin, and that was in turn part of a future-sight-related play by Preservation to ultimately escape his and Ruin's agreement and preserve Scadrial. It's not impossible that Hoid had a hand in that, but I don't see much reason to believe it beyond it being possible for someone like him to attempt if he wanted to. I do believe that Hoid prefers people to survive rather than die, though he isn't an absolutist about it if necessary. On balance he may not have cared much about Scadrial, but he does meddle in Cosmere affairs pretty regularly and is generally an encouraging presence for the Cosmere's heroes (and an obstacle for its villains). That's item 1 on my list. Item 2 involves some Cosmere spoilers: Item 3 also includes Cosmere spoilers: I'm sure other possibilities exist and other posters will have thought of them. And we know so little about Hoid's schemes that we might all be wrong no matter what! I'm on record as thinking that Hoid has substantial access to Fortune, so the specifics might not be anything we have insight into from text so far.

The value of a Breath is going to be highly contingent on an awful lot of factors, as @Duxredux described above. These include how many there are floating around (retained within Awakeners), how many can be collected (call that the birth rate on Nalthis, more or less), the wealth available to the would-be purchaser, the intended application (are you stockpiling Breath to stop aging, and don't intend to Awaken things?), and the skill of the purchaser (Vasher can do a lot more with Breaths than most Awakeners, and more efficiently to boot). Some of those relationships aren't so clear, either. Is Breath more valuable to Vasher because he can do more with it, or is it less valuable because he already has a lot and can use a Breath very efficiently? I think that there are two big factors in terms of the relative value of a Breath for Awakening a Lifeless vs. some other purpose: Not all Lifeless are created equal. This is addressed pretty well above, so no need to rehash the details, but a generic human Lifeless is going to be well below a prime Lifeless soldier as the Returned maintained. Depending on your needs this may not matter, or it may be critically important. Research into Awakening is ongoing, and there isn't a clear ceiling on how good it can get. Vasher is an ancient Awakener and specifically a research scholar of the art, and even within Warbreaker we see him refining Commands to eke out better performance (which seems like a flip side to better Breath efficiency as well). So if one is a scholar working to actively improve their Awakening, or has access to developing knowledge in the field, then an irrecoverable Breath has a really high opportunity cost. Whether it's used to create a Lifeless or is simply lost, an Awakening performed next year could probably require fewer Breaths, do more things, and do them better than an Awakening performed today. For an immortal, like a Returned or person who has reached a sufficient Heightening, the opportunity costs of losing a Breath permanently are high-- inestimably so. I think that item 2 is the big one. Vasher and Vivenna lead dangerous lives, and so I'm persuaded by Vasher's comment that it's better to lose all of your Breaths and survive danger than to cling to them and die. But those situations aren't obviously ones in which having a Lifeless with you is better than having some other construct. Cosmere powers generally seem to be best when the user is flexible and creative, and permanently investing your Breaths into creatures which require some degree of ongoing maintenance seems inflexible and narrowly focused. Compared to Awakening a straw poppet or cloak, at least. An Awakener who has the resources to create and maintain high-quality Lifeless minions probably has the resources to deal with a squad of enemy soldiers in other ways as well, so even at one Breath per minion the Awakener can almost certainly do better. If I had either option and was forced to choose one or the other, I would choose the phantom every time.

Interesting question! My instinct is to say no, that Forgery can't separate nor re-assemble something as you describe. The main reasons are that a stamp needs to be on a thing to change it and damaging a stamp's imprint interferes with the Forgery. So if you stamped a table top to separate it from the table's legs it seems as though it wouldn't be effective because, once the legs did fall off (if they did at all), then the stamp wouldn't be able to continue influencing them because they are not, themselves, stamped. I don't recall any examples of a stamp's effects being permanent in the sense that they persist after the stamp is removed. So I think that such a Forgery simply wouldn't work. For the same reason I think that the glued wood pieces example would not work either. You could, however, stamp things such that they were easier to break (Forging the joinery to be weak or poorly done, maybe, or the glue to be inferior or badly applied). The puzzle example faces the same issue. Stamping one piece isn't going to influence the other pieces, certainly not if they aren't assembled into one complete puzzle. I think that Shai's description of the table seeing itself as one thing is mostly about a single stamp being able to influence all the different components of a discrete object, as we would consider it, rather than needing to stamp every individual component to achieve the changes. And it also has Realmatic implications which may or may not be mechanically relevant to Forging itself. All that said, we don't really know a whole lot about Forgery. I wouldn't rule out possibilities like you describe completely, since many things in the Cosmere become possible with extensive knowledge and enough spiritual energy.

Well, to a point. An argument can be made that any meddling in events such that they turn out differently than someone else is trying to achieve is impinging on that someone else's free will. The incredible knowledge and foresight granted by Preservation and Ruin only turbocharges that, practically and abstractly. But more concretely, Harmony wasn't keen on letting Autonomy do whatever she wanted, nor Bleeder. So I'd say Harmony cares for free will a lot, but isn't an absolutist. Depends on what you're up to. For the most part, probably. Unless he needed something from you that would overwhelm his desire to honor your wishes, in which case your preference will probably matter a lot less. From direct contact with Harmony? Maybe. Someone would likely only choose to remain spiked in exchange for the power it grants (situations like Penrod's aside), and that power comes from a manifestation of Ruin. I imagine there are lots of tricks one might be able to use, like sitting in a perfectly sealed aluminum box, to some effect. But I also suspect that the tension between harnessing Ruin's essence (for lack of a better word) within yourself, while also blocking off Ruin's ability to talk to you via your harnessing of its essence, is probably not going to favor the mortal. As for avoiding madness... that's a fuzzy goal to start with, and one I think it would be hard to reliably avoid while making use of Cosmere magics.

A fair clarification, though I'm not sure how that would interact with Awakening either

It's easy to overinterpret how much "much of the system" actually indicates, as well as "dictated by the planet itself". How far do those go? What do they even mean, exactly? The form of magic? What the magic can do? How the magic operates? We also don't know very much about how a given magic system could vary if fueled by different Shards. The systems we know the most about are poor examples for the reasons @alder24 pointed out. The only real mixing of magic systems we've seen or gotten WoBs about have been between the three Metallic Arts, and Forgery/Aon. And, perhaps, the imitation of Rosharan Shardblades. If Honor were on Nalthis, would Awakening be about making oaths to the thing you want to Awaken, or might an Awakener accumulate power by making and keeping multiple oaths, or might an Awakened object have a fundamental oath it needs to fulfill? Would the magic even be something we would recognize as being like Awakening, or would it look like Rosharan magic but have a Nalthian implementation (whatever thath would mean)? We're really grasping in the dark, for now. I imagine we'll see much, much more in the future, especially with late-era Feruchemists moving around the Cosmere.

Edited in: My post is already really long (I am trying to cut them down, I promise), so I thought it might be good to add a more concise summary of what I'm trying to get at: all that we know about Sazed's divine actions with gross effects are what he did and didn't do, at least at a very broad scale. We don't know that, for the latter, he didn't do things because he couldn't (whatever the mechanism for "couldn't"). Assuming that the reason he didn't was because he generically couldn't strikes me as a very strong assumption with very weak support, especially when "magic with more or less infinite power" is the explanation for so much that we know he did do. I don't think that it works very well to chop up discrete elements of his (non)interventions and then throw around "didn'ts" and "couldn'ts" for each, then roll them back up into a generalized theory of didn't/couldn't. Especially at this point in the publication schedule, as a lot of what's going on with Sazed and Shards in general is explicitly undefined and mysterious. As ever! That's the fun of the discussion forum. I'll only say (since we're already a bit off topic to the thread) that people tend to favor theories they like by strengthening assumptions because they support the theories they like. My position, outside of my pet theories, is that something changed between his ascension and Sazed's current state, or that we are simply incorrect in our assumptions about conditions during/immediately after the ascension. I don't want to shut down discussion of any theories, but I think that people are generally overinterpreting their assumptions while also not examining them very closely. We don't know precisely how or why Sazed is so inactive in the most recent Mistborn era, how much of a departure that is from earlier periods of his divinity, etc. Theorizing is great, and fun, but generates possible answers, not answers (at this stage in the Cosmere books' publication). For example, it seems likely that the final statements in the quote above is true, but I'm not sure that the scale and conclusion are necessarily correct. Even though I broadly expect them to be. All possible, of course. But I'd argue that the reason this was such an issue for Rashek is that his divinity had a severe time limit. Sazed's power didn't disperse, and it's unclear how much his capacity to act so dramatically changed between the first five minutes after ascending vs. the next five. We simply don't know. "He could have missed the long term consequences" is true, but that does not equate to it being true that he did miss them. Plausible, but as above, overinterpreted as an explanation rather than a possibility. I was referring to the scale and intensity of changes Rashek made, not what he did to that group-- he did change the DNA of Northerners. Sazed made similar changes where he thought them good, such as re-working the Koloss. He was doing all of that stuff anyways. Either we presume that he could do so with knowledge of the likely results, or we don't. Sazed nailed all of those details with respect to the Elendel Basin, producing something unusual and stable but nevertheless exactly what he envisioned. It's hard to square that with the fact that the Southerners got a catastrophe and nothing good. I'll believe that there was a reason the results were what they were, but not that we know what that reason is (for now!), nor that the reason is automatically a lack of power, knowledge, or precisely placed limitations on what uncertainty in future events is acceptable. The specific items I listed were just examples of possibilities, every bit as achievable as all of the other things Sazed did successfully when we throw in Shardic powers and knowledge. Constructing a just-so story about how he achieved the absolute maximum that he could, and then throwing in varying arbitrary details to explain why that maximum level was what it was, is the death of discussion and theorycrafting, not the beginning of it. I mean, if that's the theory you like and find convincing then great, I don't want to dissuade you. But I still don't see a reason that the position of "Sazed could radically remake one continent but couldn't move another" should be persuasive to anyone.

That's been my impression too. My doubts have mostly come from the most recent Mistborn novels, in which we see that the tension seems to be greater and different than what the earlier books implied. The original theme had an element of "together, they can do anything, like create a planet and people and balance is less important than choosing to cooperate". More recently the limitations on Sazed seem much more constraining. Either something has changed or our original impressions are off in some way. This I find less convincing. The changes Rashek and Sazed made involved knowledge they definitely didn't have before ascending, and were also pretty far-reaching (as was the knowledge). They'd need to have at least some capacity to predict the changes their meddling would cause to even consider undertaking them. Plus we know that Preservation is fairly good at peering into the future, which would be helpful when making decisions, and Shards provide a complete knowledge of their own historical use (so Sazed would have known what Rashek did with the Southerners to survive the heat). We've seen Shards be ignorant of things they might have known, or at least deduced, and knowledge of the unintended consequences of Rashek's meddling were apparent to Sazed. Ignorance seems clearly possible here too, but moving the Southern continent to somewhere warmer, or plopping it on top of a geothermal hot spot wouldn't have caused the same type of physical butterfly effects that changing their genomes would. And it's not like Sazed didn't fiddle with the world-- the question is why he stopped here, and I'm not satisfied that we have enough information to approach it with any confidence yet. Rashek's interference wasn't bad because it was rapid, it was bad because it was sloppy. And, to a lesser extent, because he became more prone to preserving things on Scadrial, including his changes, due to the Shard's influence. But more broadly I think that Sazed's stated situation is probably true: the balance of Ruin and Preservation in him makes it hard to do much, and being compelled to maintain a parity between them leads to many actions being a zero-sum situation. At least, I see no reason not to believe that explicitly stated item. Sending a person is much easier, since it doesn't demand so much of that balancing property, and humans explicitly can choose to preserve or ruin even in unequal measure. But we still know that Sazed is up to something unclear, and perhaps not as balanced on the Ruin side of things. That's where I've been thinking that he's effectively stuffing ruin into the future to get a bit more edge for preserving now, and (maybe) hoping for people to be able to resolve that balance in a way that he cannot.

I think that there are far too many books yet to come for the ultimate villain to be anyone we already know who seems clearly situated to be the big villain. Of the characters who are important on the Cosmere stage that we know, I think that Kelsier and Autonomy are the top contenders. It wouldn't surprise me for Kelsier to take up Autonomy, for that matter. They seem like a good fit for each other. Hoid is also a contender: he already operates on the right scale, has few friends but lots of enemies, and we don't know much of anything about what he's doing or why. But he's sure becoming powerful along the way, snapping up every magic system he can. But if there is an overarching villain, it will have to be someone that can involve (if not necessarily unite) all of the groups, characters, and worlds we've seen so far plus all the ones we haven't seen yet. I'm not sure any of the characters we know are well situated for that, outside of just being menacing or aggressive, which isn't a lot to hang the conclusion of dozens of novels on. My prediction is that we'll have a rotating cast of aspiring villains who are increasingly consequential to the Cosmere, but the ultimate issue will end up being a people vs. nature (even human nature) sort of struggle. Something along the lines of arrogating the power of divinity into the hands of mortals who are lacking in the traits needed to wield it without wreaking havoc. The power of Adonalsium is too great for mortal ken, and the only ways that mortals can have or use it involve being broken in some way, which in turn leads them to cause problems (intentionally or otherwise), and those problems are amplified by the power their brokenness allows them.

That's a nice find, somehow I've not come across that one. I'll be digging through the archive later! Unless I'm missing something concrete about the geography of Scadrial (scadrogoraphy?), I'm still not sold that that effect is necessarily enough to make such a huge difference (compared with the extreme, but survivable heat they experienced, free movement of air, convection in the oceans, and so on), or would apply so meaningfully to the Southern continent. But please don't think I'm demanding that you throw out further evidence-- it's clearly possible, with magic everything, to get the final result you're describing whether that's the specific mechanism or not. I like the theory, in any case. Come to think of it, I'm not sure we ever got much idea of how long the survivors huddled in the caverns. Surely they'd have some way to estimate it if it were longer than a day, as they'd have lots of regular tasks to accomplish regarding food distribution and waste disposal. That seems like information that would have been recorded in the Founders' books. Rashek certainly did a lot very quickly, a few minutes (I think? It's been too long since I've done a re-read of the original trilogy), including moving continents and flattening and raising mountains. No one needed sheltering during any of that, or at least an empire's worth of people survived anyways. I am curious if there was a Shardic tension that Sazed had to deal with during the Catacendre. I've never been able to develop it quite well enough to justify a thread about it, and I'm sure it's not so novel anyhow. But preserving the Northern section of the world and its people seems to have gone alongside more or less ruining the Southern section and its people. The Southern experience seems unnecessary, or at least seems so so far. And Shards do have an unusual relationship with time...

Almost agreed; the book only said he was keeping the caverns safe. It did not say that he only kept the caverns safe. From what's been written since we know that Sazed was doing more than just what was explicitly stated in the passage you cite (see re-making the Koloss, fiddling with DNA, etc.). At that time he's got unfettered divine power. It seems inconsistent with what we know so far of Shards to suggest that he could only protect people if they were in big stone bunkers. But certainly the plot explicitly focuses on efforts to get as many people as possible into the bunkers during the final cataclysm. It seems safe to suggest that the people undertaking those efforts couldn't know that Sazed was about to ascend, so the caverns were the best option they knew of to survive. So I find your second clause more persuasive: there were few-to-no people left outside the caverns by that time. It could work either way with the ash, I suppose. It seems difficult to contrive a constantly shifting mass of ash in the sky that would not disperse over the entire planet (I think it was Grímsvötn in 2011 that definitely did not keep its erupting ash only over Iceland), but Shard-magic, etc., so I wouldn't bet much on it. I'm very curious about how the Southerners survived Rashek's world of ash-- didn't the seas around their continent boil due to heat in their region? That seems severe enough to need a non-mundane fix, whatever it was that he gave them, but maybe not. The scale of changes Sazed made seem like they would have had consequences similarly severe and proximate for the Southerners as for the Northerners- tsunamis, the Ice Death, and who knows what else? A Shard can fix those with magic too, but then we're right back to Sazed being able to protect people anywhere they might happen to have been when the Catacendre started. The lack of information on Southern Scadrians makes it impossible to draw specific conclusions, so your guess seems as reasonable as any given that we know they did live, somehow. My main point in mentioning them was that we have no reason to think they were huddling in bunkers but would still have been at risk of consequences of Sazed's actions, not unlike the Northerners, and still survived. But that's all pretty in-the-weeds and tangential. Given his temperament and values, I think it's safe to say that if Sazed could protect people from dying during the Catacendre, he would and did. His unopposed divine power seems sufficient to do that regardless of other factors, so I would lean towards thinking that he could do it. I agree that, given the lack of any mention at all of Northerners besides the Founders (and any Scadrians besides Northerners and Southerners), it's most likely that there were either no people living during the Catacendre outside of the caverns and Southern continent, or so few as to be irrelevant to the population became re-established. I don't see any reason to think that people outside the caverns both existed and were or sacrificed by Sazed/beyond his ability to save.

Almost immediately after: Bah, and here I thought I'd found a tidy, natural example. I've even read that WoB before! Then I guess my only surviving (and not from being in a bunker!) idea is that without Ruin's active opposition it might have been easily within Sazed's power to save, or at least not kill, those not able to make it into a bunker. Though we only hear of the bunkered Founders as people surviving the event on the one continent, that's hardly conclusive. It does make the Southerners' situation more mysterious, as if they weren't mysterious enough already. I've been increasingly getting some Sixth of Dusk vibes from their history and current state on Scadrial.

Hard to say for certain, but the only element I can think of that suggests an answer suggests no. I acknowledge that the element is weak with respect to the specific question asked, but here it is: at least some Koloss survived the Catacendre, were only present in Northern Scadrial (as far as we know), and certainly they weren't hiding in the storage caverns/bunkers along with the Northern Scadrian humans and Kandra. Since we know that at least some survived (and were changed by Harmony) to exist in era 2, it stands to reason that Sazed could protect them during the event because it appears that he did. I'm not counting the Southern Scadrians as evidence because we have no idea how they lived or how many died before the Catacendre, but it's notable that the Ice Death seems like it killed a lot of them (at least from the history we've gotten on it so far). Sazed probably had the power to preserve people whether they were in caverns or not (he wasn't actively blocked by Ruin, which is what frustrated Vin with the coastal city wiped out by a tidal wave), and also the interest in doing so. But I'll agree with previous posters that large-scale death was the fate of most people in Northern Scadrial, and it's not clear how many there were outside of the caverns to save or doom.

I'd also think that cavalry charges are pretty easy to disrupt, and therefore hard to execute effectively, via Awakening. Obviously this is just speculative, but things like short lengths of rope or caltrops that can autonomously roam the battlefield and specifically bind or damage horses' legs seem to me like they would make cavalry maneuvers much more difficult and risky. A slow-moving or careful horse might not be felled by those, but such a horse has also lost a lot of what would make it useful in battle. But we really know very little about Hallendren's economy, social structure, and military behavior overall. They might have a lot of cavalry like you describe! Information about that didn't intersect with the events of Warbreaker, so we don't know either way if they do or not, nor why or why not. I do think that it would make a ton of sense to have Lifeless beasts of burden, for example, even if we don't see much in that vein.

I think that this is the key insight. Before the Diagram there's no basis for Taravangian engaging in that kind of incredibly subtle, impactful sort of scheming (never mind successfully!). The ability to make those sorts of plays is derived entirely from the Diagram's incredible density of information and extrapolation, and so even if Taravangian had wanted to meddle like that it seems impossibly unlikely that he would have been able to do so. All that said, it's 100% possible that someone or something did set those events in motion (presumably via access to Fortune). But probably not Taravangian.

My read on it was more social and political. "[t]he spren" is not a description of individuals and their interactions. When Jasnah was in Shadesmar it was an event that was relevant for all spren and the world itself because she was stirring up (or at least representing) Radiant-like business-- not something spren could ignore or remain unaffected by. Other worldhoppers seem both rare and mostly interested in pursuing their own business, so not really something the spren have to "deal with".

I'm really not interested in re-typing the same thing any further-- if you don't think that the statement that Odium made that he will keep the deal in spirit has any relevance, then there's nothing more to discuss on that score. The terms of the contract then become functionally irrelevant, both because you can get crazy with loopholes (oh, I meant days as measured on this other planet where each one lasts 10,000 Rosharan years) and because ambiguous clauses become impossible to resolve in any way. The idea that Taravangian can't play word games just doesn't match the interpretation you're advancing. Why not? We may as well not talk about the contract at all with this interpretation, because there isn't any reason to think of it as a guide to what anyone has to do. If Taravangian can have any interpretation at all of the terms of the deal, then we're in the same place; indeed, the very idea of a variable interpretation of a contract like this butts against the "spirit of the deal" concept. How can there be a contract if both sides have totally different ideas about what it is? What if Taravangian has a "different interpretation" of one of Dalinar's obligations? Does Dalinar just immediately lose, or is he suddenly a contract-breaker? I'll say it again, as clearly as I can. If you think that loopholes or variable interpretations are viable, then there is no contract in any meaningful sense, so why bother talking about anything that was agreed to? I'll leave you with this as well: Hoid helped draft this contract and prepare Dalinar for the negotiation, and his influence was so obvious that Odium knew it immediately. It's not a complicated agreement. Suggesting that loopholes are a viable method of getting out of the obligations it imposes is as simple as "oh, I thought you meant [whatever], so I guess you're screwed" doesn't mesh with this very well. Hoid is no fool, though he plays one, and he seems to know as much about Shards as the Shards themselves do. It's not impossible that changing Vessels could frustrate everything, but every argument that loopholes might be effective would apply to Rayse just as well as Taravangian. If the contract exists (as discussed in the paragraph above) and was good enough to handle Rayse, it should be good enough to handle Taravangian. Maybe it isn't! I think that would be a brutal anticlimax, but that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. I don't see a reason that only negative obligations would be binding in the way we're discussing. Given this argument, if Rayse intended to follow the contract as a natural reading of it would suggest, then Odium should be bound to approach the contract in that manner. "I will do X in manner Y" doesn't give more wiggle room than "I will not do X". If the obligation is enforced by the Shard itself retaining it, and the Vessel is bound by the Shard's retention of that obligation, it shouldn't matter. I suspect that Taravangian fully understands the constraints he's under if the Shard's power is what's enforcing them, much like Sazed knew everything that his Shards' powers had done. If Taravangian is somehow unclear on this then he should be extra cautious about taking the risks of violating it and avoid getting too cute playing with the terms. You can fit a lot of action into ten days. How many pages did the battle outside of Thaylen City take up, and how much time did they cover? We also know that the Stormfather and Bondsmiths can fiddle with the rate of time passing, so we might get more than ten days' worth of activity out of ten calendar days. This also assumes that the contest is the climax of the whole book. It's not an unreasonable assumption, but I don't think it's necessarily so any more than Vin's first foray into Kredik Shaw had to be the climax of Final Empire. There is no guarantee that our favorite plot threads will be resolved in the next book (a possibility that I am more aware of than ever after Lost Metal). Like you, I don't think that the contest will unfold totally as expected and also wrap up the story as the agreement suggests. But there has been a lot of setup over it just to have a rug pull over something as small and fussy as a loophole, cancellation, or postponement.

@alder24 Great finds on those quotes, thanks for bringing them in! I think that I understand your position. And assuming that I'm correct in that, I understand where you're coming from, and it's not impossible-- this is a valid possibility. But this is a zero-evidence claim, which boils down to assuming your conclusion is true and then using that presumed truth to interpret events so that they support the assumed conclusion. This was a very specific situation in which Taravangian had a very specific goal (to avoid revealing information about his Ascension to Hoid while still interacting with him), and fiddled with the Breaths in which the relevant memories were stored to accomplish it. I don't see any reason to believe that Rayse had any interest in doing something similar at any point in the books, ever, never mind having an opportunity to do so through this mechanism but declining or being prohibited from doing it. Maybe it's the case, but beyond your claim that it is there isn't any support for it (yet, and that I've seen). Reiterating that you believe it was as you describe because you believe it was as you describe isn't going to be convincing to me, though I would be interested in seeing other instances of Shards' behavior which might independently suggest that this interpretation 1. is indeed a factor which binds Shards, and 2. can be warped in this way. Please do bring it up again in discussion with me for any review of existing Cosmere material or any new material which is released in future years-- I really am interested in the idea, even though I don't think it has legs yet. Yup, I get it. It's fine as a metaphor to explain the ideas you're putting out (which I think it does well), but I don't think it extends beyond that at all. So I understand the comparison, but the one is not an example that supports the other. Only if we assume that loopholes are workable in this way. I'd say that the WoB posted by @alder24, above, discredits it completely in this case. If we don't trust Odium's word at all, then we've no reason to think that anything he's said is true. That's fine, but then everything is suspect (including the contract) in every possible way. The Stormfather stated that Odium lied in saying that Honor didn't care about people or their feelings, not that Honor was flexible in interpreting oaths. We also know that, towards the end of his existence, Honor changed and became more obsessed with oaths ("ranting" or "raving" about them, I forget the exact word). Maybe there was a shift from one view to the other? As for perception of the agreement, again, what you are saying 100% eliminates any value to statements about the "spirit" of the agreement. Unless we assume your position about Shards' inability to lie to themselves, which I've addressed above. We either have some basis for interpreting the contract, or we have none. Meaningless if we're simultaneously using his unreliability to discount other things he's said, unless we bring in evidence from outside to support specific items. We don't have a whole lot of external evidence, so his statements can either be viewed as reliable or unreliable and we can hedge our thoughts accordingly. It's not a buffet, where we must take some things he says as fact but then totally ignore others based on preference. I'm not suggesting that anyone should abandon their impressions or opinions on the matter, or on what they think will happen in future books. But one reader's feelings aren't really evidence, so they aren't likely to convince me of anything. My guess (and that's all it is!) is that Taravangian will manipulate events such that the outcome of the contest is meaningless to Dalinar's goals, reflecting Taravangian's different goals (compared to Rayse), mindset, mental capacities, and lesser degradation due to holding Odium. No loopholes, but a change in the game. We'll see! That's my impression as well. I just don't think that there is flexibility built into this-- being bound by the deal is being bound by the deal. Reinterpreting it, even passively, would be installing a different deal, one which Odium did not make. Maybe I've been too forceful on this, though. I guess that my essential position is that the contest issue isn't going to be resolved by the deal being technically upheld but still different than we think due to some fussy, technical maneuvering or similar cheat. Intentionally treating the deal differently than he knows Dalinar expected it would be when he agreed to it seems to me that it should bring down on Taravangian all of the possible consequences of Odium simply violating it. Other possibilities exist, but for now I've not found suggestions that any of them are more likely to be what happens to be persuasive. I also want to make explicitly clear that I really appreciate people engaging with me in the discussion. I like hearing the other ideas and thinking about how they might be woven into the broader Cosmere, even when I'm not persuaded. And the most likely possibility might be that we're all wrong anyways

It's the only thing that has ever worked to restrain Odium and the Desolations, and was also the best idea that people with far more knowledge, power, and experience in these matters than Dalinar has could come up with. I'm not sure that Dalinar thinks it's a great idea, but rather is the only idea he's come up with that he thought would even maybe work. I agree that a new Oathpact is probably not the way to go.

I'll have to re-read that section regarding a possible agreement with Hoid. But regardless, do we have any examples of a Shard directly striking someone down, even when it would be very convenient or practical for them to do so? I can think of only one, and it's kind of marginal. Food for thought, though it could also be primarily a narrative choice (not much story if a deity blasts the opposition out of existence in an instant). It's not impossible, but the "spirit of the contract" is less subjective than you're suggesting here (else it's meaningless, which is also possible). I don't find the "speak the truth" example to be very applicable, though I don't deny that there may exist another example which might be; I understand your argument even without an example. We'll see, eventually, what Taravangian does, but what you're describing is still firmly in the "the contract doesn't matter" territory. Endless loopholes and endless options to exploit them would undermine literally everything about the agreement. If the point of the agreement is that it be upheld as the parties intended to effect a specific outcome, and Odium set specific conditions guaranteeing that which are binding because of Odium itself, it's a massive assumption that the agreement just is fundamentally irrelevant now. Again, not impossible, but indistinguishable from there not being an agreement at all. I disagree about any similarity between Radiant oaths and Shardic nature being applicable in this way (the Oaths are specifically something Honor's power backs, not a thing about Shards generally). Metalborn, Returned/Awakeners, and Autonomy followers (Automotons?) seem to be able to lie all they want, including to themselves, with no consequences. For the contract specifically, if Intent matters in this way, surely it would be relevant at the creation of the agreement and not when a subsequent party to the agreement feels like not to following it. An interesting idea, and certainly possibly true. I'd be interested to see how it would play out with the degradation of a Vessel's mind over millennia. But it's also raw speculation without much backing (which is what we're stuck with in discussing these issues for now, I think, no matter what). I'm not sure what we've seen of Autonomy tracks with this, but there's not much clarity there either. The best evidence we have of anything on this topic is still probably what the Stormfather says about the consequences of Odium breaking his word: it would leave him vulnerable to attack. This is somewhat different from the idea that you've posited, though there isn't any reason both couldn't be true. As above, I don't think that reasoning backwards from Radiants' situations to Shards is sound. I don't think getting into the minutia of this is on-target for the thread, but it's a good example (I'll have to look up that section of Secret History again), though I'll note that Preservation acted in ways that did permanently prevent Ruin from destroying Scadrial. We've largely presumed that that plan was based on peering into the future, and our broad view of those events may be mistaken, but if Preservation did directly act as he did with an eye towards Ruin's permanent failure that would undermine the argument pretty severely. Regardless, if Preservation made use of a loophole that is the opposite of the "spirit of the deal", and so is still an interesting contrast to Odium's situation. When Odium said that all Honor cared about was oaths and not the intent behind them, he was drawing a contrast between Honor and himself to illustrate exactly what I've described here: fulfilling the letter of the oath sworn as different from the spirit of a promise made. If there is a distinction between only caring about the oath and exactly following the letter of an agreement I don't see it; if you feel there is one, perhaps you could explain? Finally, if we presume that Odium is simply not telling the truth here then we've no reason to rely on anything he's ever said about keeping agreements as true. Which is just another route to saying that the agreement is meaningless to events. Like I said upthread, specific positions boil down to some flavor of the agreement being binding here or not. Loopholes are necessarily the latter, as is the contract not applying to Taravangian. I'm open to either path (the contract mattering or not). This is obviously not an argument, but I would be extremely disappointed if the outcome of the contract is just "new guy, so no deal". Very dull and unimaginative, particularly for a writer of Sanderson's caliber. Although by the same token maybe he could make such an outcome interesting.

Meh. I don't find that line of reasoning persuasive. Taravangian is explicitly stated to be bound to the agreement that Rayse struck, and if it's not only possible but convenient and casual to change elements of that agreement in the way you're describing then such a constraint would be meaningless. And then why mention it, or care about it? If Rayse was bound by the spirit of the agreement, and Taravangian has inherited the agreement as it stood, then trying to wriggle through a technicality should have the same consequences for the latter as it would have had for the former. And if the contract just doesn't apply to Taravangian, and what was plainly stated in the book is just wrong, then all bets are off and the contract is meaningless to future events. As for Hoid's Breaths, is Odium's inability to harm Hoid due to a deal Rayse made with him? I never had that impression, as it seems Shards are (largely) prohibited from just directly harming people in general. But I'm inferring that from events in the Cosmere books and not an authoritative statement, so maybe my impression is mistaken. Hoid certainly has concerns about what would happen to him if Odium caught him on Roshar earlier in SA, and he would know, so we're definitely not working with complete information. I'm not ruling anything out, and obviously we'll see what happens. But the hyper-legal, hair-splitting approach to the deal has a major issue in that there isn't anyone to appeal to. If Rayse could not violate the spirit of the agreement, that would not be because you could call his manager to complain about it and see him punished. The issues seem more fundamental to the Cosmere and the nature of Shards. A Shard being bound by a promise doesn't mean anything if they can just change their minds or whip up a sophistry to do whatever they want. The Stormfather directly states that if Odium were to break a promise, he would be vulnerable to attack and permanent harm from other Shards (presumably Cultivation).That doesn't sound like a situation where you can make an argument and plead your case, it sounds like a mechanical outcome. We've no reason to think that Taravangian can just elide the whole ordeal. Though as I said above we don't know a whole lot of specifics about what the consequences of breaking the agreement would be for him, and that might be something he's willing to do-- for example, if he persuaded Cultivation not to attack him after breaking the promise, maybe there's no danger at all. But that would, again, mean that it doesn't matter what the contract states or implies. All that said, Odium is the only Shard we know of that seems to be held to account this way. Preservation straight up violated his deal with Ruin by choosing to do so, and Honor was described as only caring about the letter of an agreement. There is more to unravel here, for sure, but I think that the answers will not be found in discussion of this contract (nor, frankly, do I think we have access to enough information to make informed guesses about any of it).

That's my point, though. As described in the book, it can't be twisted. That's what "letter and spirit" means-- the only thing it means. A contract including both letter and spirit can either be kept or broken. The deal is to end the war (or at least Odium's participation in it) through the contest. A loophole would involve not doing the contest as outlined and/or not ending the conflict, and so would be breaking the contract because it seeks to violate the spirit of the deal on a technicality in the text. Such an outcome may well happen, but since it's functionally the same as breaking the agreement we might as well talk about what that would entail and how a specific method of breaking the contract might be relevant to events. So if we're talking about the contest not ending the war because both combatants die at the exact same instant, for example, then the letter and spirit of the contract are not upheld even though it's nobody's fault (and the contract doesn't specify what would happen in such an edge case). I just don't see how it would matter, in itself, if the contract were technically adhered to or not (even though I think it clearly would not be, because no twisting is permitted). That outcome would still be really important: nobody gets what they'd hoped for if they won, the war continues as it has been, there is no mechanism for dealing with Odium any more, and the terms of the deal can't even potentially help anyone any more. It would largely be as if the contract had never existed. So then whether or not the contract itself was upheld or violated seems irrelevant at that point. Like, if we were to game out that specific outcome, what difference would the contract being upheld, blamelessly broken, or voided make? I'm not intending to discourage anyone from theorycrafting about possible plot developments, but "I think [X] could happen" doesn't strike me as fundamentally different from "I think [X] could happen and uphold the contract somehow" or "I think [X] could happen but only by breaking the contract". I think that there are interesting discussions to be had around what consequences might follow from a specific conclusion to the contest, but only in the context of those consequences. Arguing about whether or not that conclusion satisfies an arbitrary interpretation of an arbitrary standard, in a vacuum, seems to be both upsetting to people and also blocks off those discussions. It seems obviously possible that the contract be unable to perform through any number of mechanisms (say, the champions are both delayed by traffic and can't make it to the arena on the appointed day no matter what they do, but the contract fixes the fight for a specific day, so what now?). But what of it? But that's just my perspective on the issue. If it is an appealing one to anybody in the thread, I'll ask this: what do you think would the impact on the plot would be if the contest failed to end the war as it was intended to, despite not being broken by either party?

I think that this entire discussion is has gotten off-center. Following the spirit of an agreement is also following the letter of it. What the "spirit of the agreement" phrase indicates is that there is no wiggling into a technicality (or loophole) which is technically within what the wording of the contract lays out but which is obviously contrary to what the agreement is intended to be. The very concept of a loophole which can be exploited to get out of what the contract has established is the exact opposite keeping the agreement in letter and spirit, and if a loophole is a viable option then the whole "spirit of the contract" element is totally irrelevant. To look for a loophole is to explicitly and specifically discard what we've been told about the deal. The alternatives people have posited (so far, and that I've seen) fall into a couple of categories. The final two are my own ideas that I don't recall having seen before (though I'd be happy to give credit if I've forgotten where I saw them): The spirit of the contract is functionally irrelevant, so we can lawyer away at the text of the agreement. This is a necessary assumption when looking for a loophole. The contract will be adhered to but one side (usually assumed to be Odium) will do so in a way that makes victory far more likely for them. The specifics vary based on the particular theories of what that way is, but this is equivalent to a strategy for winning the contest, not a way of weaseling out of the deal. It's not a loophole. The contract is not relevant to the new Odium's goals, so it's an irritation for him but not as consequential as it was for the old Odium. The ideas of winning or losing the contest have a totally different context and meaning for Odium now compared to when the deal was struck, so keeping it or breaking it are now different considerations and we don't know how to evaluate the implications. Finding a loophole is probably not an issue in this case (though we don't know enough to say this very confidently). The consequences of breaking the contract are not what we've assumed. Being "in someone's power" is not a clearly defined state, though there are obvious assumptions that we've been making so far about what that means here. Another issue, separately or relatedly, is that the presumption that Odium can't break his word has been over-interpreted. He can't break his word without risking consequences from other Shards-- it would leave him vulnerable in some poorly defined way. A strategy to deal with that risk, generally or in this specific case, would change what we've been assuming are inviolable rules. The spirit of the contract is to end the current war between Odium and the humans (and their friends) on Roshar via a fight to the death between champions selected by Dalinar and Odium, respectively. I think that what people are really looking for in discussions like this is a plot twist that might subvert our expectations. There may not be one. It's not exactly uncommon for an epic fantasy story to have a conclusion driven by a hero fighting against a villain in a climactic event. The way that such an event plays out will still have implications for future Cosmere works even if it occurs exactly as the contract suggests. A twist could be interesting but is not the only interesting outcome that is possible. People can, and should, theorize to their hearts' content about how the first SA arc will end. But when the possibilities we're entertaining are unlimited, like the range between the contract being perfectly followed and the contract being irrelevant, arguing specifics gets overly precise pretty quickly. For example, if you think that the conclusion will involve both champions quitting the contest, then what does it matter if the contract is kept in the process or not given that that's already how you think it will end? Why not talk about the consequences that might follow from the posited conclusion rather than debate minutia in an undefined space?

The memory in the coin at the end of Bands of Mourning was clearly Kelsier's, right? If so, that would be definitive proof that he can use a medallion.

It's as good a guess as any, but honestly I think this is just a retcon (though still official even so).