Returned

"Like Shards" is a difficult condition to evaluate. Taravangian sort of could see the future, though Odium (while impressed) was dismissive of Taravangian's ability compared to his own. Renarin can see the future in a manner that seems similar to a Shard's, though with severe limitations that a Shard would not face. And even among Shards there is a lot of variation in how well they can se the future. Cultivation and Preservation seem pretty good at it, and Ruin was canonically bad at it. But we don't have a good standard of comparison to say if, for example, Ruin was better or worse than Renarin or Taravangian. I would argue that, as a general guideline, no non-Shard can do things quite like a Shard can do them, even if the task and method are similar to what a Shard would do to complete it. For all intents and purposes, I believe that Slivers cannot see the future as Shards can either fundamentally or via external (i.e., magical) augmentation.

I agree, I think that Moash is a very interesting contrast to other characters. His arc gives a really valuable perspective on Kaladin's and Dalinar's, though now that he's Vyre that may fizzle out (though may also give rise to another dimension for him, which could be interesting). I think along the same lines as @Treamayne, that Moash has been a good character narratively, but primarily through becoming a terrible person. He's always been the anti-Radiant. And honestly, I think that a lot of people's feelings about Moash are heavily influenced by his betrayal of Kaladin. Kaladin is a pretty clear hero, a "good guy" and also someone who struggles to be a good person, a fan favorite, and the one who pulled Moash back from the abyss and death while also trusting him deeply. When you love and respect Kaladin, the person who betrayed him so deeply and completely is generates some strong, negative feelings.

"Hate" is always a tough word to apply to a fictional character, in my view. They are very rarely rounded enough to be more than a handful of events, plus whatever a given reader wants to project onto them. I don't hate Moash. But I do despise him. I'm not saying that his life wasn't filled with tragedy, difficulty, and sorrow (it was). A tough but enjoyable life for him was ruined by caprice at the hand of a careless tyrant. But his reactions to those things were wicked in my view. His motivations for the plot in Words of Radiance were entirely self-centered, and even if he pretended (even to himself) that he cared about Alethkar being a better place or something like that I think that he would have pursued his vengeance under any circumstances and at any cost to anyone and everyone else. And, consequently, the whole point of everything he did would only have been to satisfy himself. Not a hero. Not a good guy. Not even a decent or passable guy. Just someone who doesn't care what price you pay, or the world pays, as long as he gets the thing he wants, and that thing is really just his personal satisfaction anyhow. And that's not even the worst part (I'm spoiler tagging this because others in the thread have done so, but I think it's OK to spoil on one of the series-specific subforums, isn't it?): My feelings on Moash are that he continuously chose to do bad things for bad reasons, couldn't handle that he'd done it, and then committed himself to an indefinite future of doing more of those same types of things in exchange for magically not feeling bad about any of it any more (or feeling anything, but that's tangential). People who have suffered tragedy can also be bad people, just like anyone else, and being able to sympathize with the fact that he was a victim of severe injustice doesn't justify or excuse his future choices. He could have become a better person, and still might, and that might change how I feel about him. But so far he's actively refused to do that, at all, and instead has constantly made choices in the opposite direction. He's a bad guy, and he chooses to be a bad guy, and I don't like him. I don't see anything redeeming in him, nor do I think that his grandparents' fates excuse anything he has done or become.

Out of all the Cosmere characters I'm hard pressed to think of one who deserves our sympathies more than Kaladin. No matter what ends up happening to him, how valuable or good it is for him or Roshar or the Cosmere as a whole, even if it's "worth it", Kaladin has had a very rough time of things, all while wanting and trying to be good.

It depends on how you view things, and you'll have to let us know what you think when you get there (you'll know it when you do, I think!). I hated it more than Sadeas' betrayal. Out of curiosity, now that you've got a good bit of SA under your belt, how do you feel about the interludes and the pacing of the books' main events? I tend to like the interludes a lot, but am also usually chomping at the bit to get back to the main plotlines.

I, personally, would work backwards. What sorts of things do you want people using the magic system to be able to do, and what basic things might people interacting with your magic system mechanisms do to accomplish them? Once you have some of that nailed down, what unusual combinations and results would those rules allow, and do you want those things in your magic system? When you've got the results you want in mind it makes sense to build around those rather than try to independently create rules that happen to produce them. As for breaking away from the Platonic elements, that's harder to give advice about. It's easy to say "don't use them", but harder to say what might replace them. What do you want the magic to represent? The Platonic system tends to represent control over the elements themselves (such as what an Airbender can do), but also often represent phases of matter (solid, liquid, and gas) plus energy. Focusing more on the latter might help move away from the "blast of fire, geyser of water" approach. But you can also think of the magic as an agent of change, in which case thinking about interactions between things might help. For example, in The Stormlight Archive a lot of the Surges define how things relate to each other: gravitation, abrasion, and so on. If you look at what interactions between things you want your magic to be able to affect you may be able to determine groupings which are coherent within the magic but don't relate to Platonic elements at all.

I think we also need to consider Autonomy's example: Autonomy for me, but not for the rest of you. Autonomy is known to be interfering all over the Cosmere but is viciously resistant to others' actions on Taldain. We might see a similar twisting in Mercy, even if it's hard to imagine exactly what that would look like in this specific case.

That all sounds pretty reasonable to me. A lot depends on how much the identity of a specific spren matters to the bond. It seems like something that hasn't happened often, if ever, before. The big discrepancy I see with my opinion on Shallan is Kaladin breaking his oaths in Words of Radiance. He totally lost the ability to Surgebind, or use Stormlight at all, but we able to swear the Third Oath immediately. He didn't have to re-commit to the first two, though he is still bound by them. It would be sensible for Shallan to be able to do something similar. It still seems odd to me with Lightweavers, given the nature of their oaths, and I definitely don't think that she's hit the fifth-- I don't think that the degree of self-deception she's still engaging in fits with that. But it is Shallan, so I suppose anything is possible.

I don't think that Shallan's progress has been as @Nasax outlines. Her narration is unreliable, and we really don't know how a Radiant breaking oaths and then returning to them with a different spren works, so those are important issues to bear in mind. But when we see Shallan in the books in the present day we know that she's developing her bond with Pattern. Her development mirrors what we see with other Radiants, particularly Kaladin, in ways that would be complicated to explain solely with subconscious manipulation on her part. I'm referring specifically to her lack of ability with Stormlight and Surgebinding-- she can't wield as much Light, nor as well, in Words of Radiance as she can later, which seems to be a property of a lesser bond compared to a stronger one. She's much worse at Lightweaving and Soulcasting than she is later, though that could more easily be her mind holding her back to avoid confronting the truth. Other details in a similar vein include her not having access to Plate (that we know of). Finally, Lightweaver oaths are about self awareness, and it strikes me as odd to think that a person could reach the peak of that while also constantly lying to themselves to the extent that they don't know they've gained that awareness at all. It seems much more likely to me that a new bond with a new spren requires a budding Radiant to start from square one rather than picking up where they left off with their previous spren and oaths. I don't think that her broken oaths with Testament are relevant to her current progress as a Radiant.

Aluminum is (seemingly) unique, and certainly very important in the Cosmere. I'm not arguing against that at all. But powerful isn't automatically the same as a godmetal, and we really barely even know what godmetals are in the first place. It still could be Adonalsium's godmetal, of course, if such a thing really existed. It could also be something more like a twist, like aluminum being what was left behind when Adonalsium was shattered but not what its godmetal actually was. It could be some product or remnant of Yolen, which had access to magics and knowledge preceding and outside of what the "modern" Cosmere features. Or countless other things. We haven't seen any evidence that godmetals can be produced from mundane components by any industrial processes (godmetallurgy?), let alone a relatively simple one, so the ease of producing aluminum at scale strikes me as an argument against. As we learn more about godmetals that may change. Additionally, it would be out of character for Sanderson's writing to tease something for so long while also telegraphing it so directly and constantly that you can't imagine any other reveal. Those are the major reasons I don't find the case for aluminum-as-Adonalsium-ium very compelling right now. As for reasons to believe it might be, "I find it really impressive" is a pretty weak, perhaps specious, piece of evidence.

I don't think we have a clear answer on this yet. I presume that Awakened objects' ability to navigate the world is related to the cognitive realm, which is why the visualization and precision of the Command are so important to the Awakening working properly (or at all). I wouldn't expect the straw poppet to know what keys are, and Sanderson has said that's one of the most difficult Commands we've seen, but it still accomplished its task even though Vasher probably didn't know exactly what the right keys looked like (and so couldn't visualize them). I'm not convinced that Awakened objects can generally achieve Heightenings, but I can't rule it out. Interesting thought, and I wonder what implications it would have with certain appropriately Awakened items if true.

I think that a possible, major difference is that Endowment's agents (the Returned) kind of choose their own objectives based on what they glimpse of the future. Endowment decides if someone gets to return from death with a bunch of cool powers, and (presumably) chooses people that have objectives which align with her own. The powers are a standard kit, have no strings attached to Endowment once granted, and the agents make their best efforts at fulfilling whatever it is they found so important to attempt. Conversely, Cultivation also chooses her own agents but directs their development in specific ways that she thinks will serve her goals (and not necessarily the goals her agents might have). Cultivation seems totally fine imposing objectives on people situated to accomplish what she wants and her gifts are never free.

True enough, but it strikes me that Roshar already has FTL: the Oathgates. Transportation is effectively instantaneous across Roshar, and the Oathgates are already known to be spren. I think that the major issues are that: Spren are bound to Roshar, and so setting up another spren off-world is a challenge that they haven't solved yet. The fix for this may or may not involve a fabrial, so we'll see. Oathgate travel may not really be instantaneous but rather very, very fast, such that it seems to take no time at all over the distances covered by Roshar's Oathgates. If the latter is the case then Roshar is at square zero on FTL. If Oathgate travel is instantaneous and Oathgates can be set up in other parts of the Cosmere than Roshar then the Stormlight trade is really going to take off. Imagine if the Ghostbloods make a serious play to control all off-world Oathgate travel in order to monopolize the easy Investiture trade...

From what little description we've had it seems that the 16 intended to shatter Adonalsium and ascend to divinity, though the reasons differed among the individual members. If I remember correctly Hoid wasn't so into the idea, but everything about the event is pretty murky and will likely remain so for some time. As for aluminum potentially being of Adonalsium, Sanderson has RAFO-ed several questions along those lines. That might be to preserve mystery around why aluminum is such an oddity in the Cosmere and have nothing to do with Adonalsium at all, but the metal's strangeness would still be there if we were directly told that aluminum isn't Adonalsium's godmetal. I personally don't think that it is, but it seems overly strong (given what we know currently) to say that it definitively isn't.

It's less definitive than I'd remembered, though at least the reference actually exists. That doesn't always happen for me! Wyndle is making his best guess, not declaring something that is definitely true, but the bit about body fat only makes sense if metabolism of fat is relevant to Lift's strange ability: In Allomancy, aluminum specifically destroys Allomantically relevant metals. The specific Allomantic effect is stablished by WoB: But more generally, you are correct to note that aluminum is strange. Aluminum is a very odd thing in the Cosmere and it has properties that transcend any individual magic system for reasons that are still unknown. Unlike other Allomantic metals, which have cool effects only because the Metallic Arts made them more than mundane, aluminum has always been strange in the Cosmere: Allomantic metals are not themselves Investiture, nor are they Invested. They are a catalyst which allows the Allomancer to access Investiture, which comes from the spiritual realm in a specific way and producing a specific effect defined by the metal burned. So a misting with metal in their stomach doesn't have any Investiture a larkin is likely to be able to access unless they're burning it. I say "likely to be able to access" because Allomancy, like any Cosmere magical ability, requires "extra" Investiture in a person in the first place. But that isn't "Invested" in the sense of what a larkin eats. See these two quotes, an annotation from The Hero of Ages and a WoB for relevant details on Allomancy: As far as I know this is unclear, but it seems like a reasonable guess. You'll burn away the Allomantic metals as long as you have a sufficient amount of chromium to burn, just like effects of any other Allomantic metal. What we saw with Wax and the grenade happened instantly, at least according to his ability to notice it. But we've seen precious little leeching in action so it's not explicitly known. Also unclear, but I doubt it. The quote provided by Kolten, that Vin's other metals disappeared, suggests that aluminum doesn't work on itself and it's not obvious that separate beads of metal are considered distinct in Allomancy; if it worked that way, even discounting aluminum's resistance to Investiture, it would be hard to explain aluminum not eliminating itself when burned. Duralumin doesn't seem to work that way (not that it would, given its effect, but it's probably the best comparison we have for now): That said, the Inquisitors certainly could have killed Vin by choking her with aluminum or force-feeding her enough that it would destroy her intestinal tract. If, that is, they could get enough aluminum, which they almost certainly couldn't at the time that scene took place. And, as above, there were far easier ways to kill her had that been what they wanted to do. Burning aluminum to do more than get rid of other Allomantic metals is hard to do, never mind becoming a savant with it. But if someone were to do that they could start to do some pretty cool things:

Reading my post again I think I could have been clearer. I think that the points you raise are interesting and suggestive, especially together. I think that the theory has merit, and given that there aren't all that many Dawnshards out there we should pay attention to the potential connections you've drawn. I'm not sold on the bits with the gem (Dalinar could just as easily have a Dawnshard that isn't the one Hoid once carried), but the other bits are pretty intriguing. I also really like the point that @teknopathetic raised about Dalinar's experience with The Way of Kings on the night of Gavilar's funeral.

If I remember correctly, Lift does regularly metabolize fat into Light (Wendel mentions it). She doesn't have to (else she would starve to death pretty easily), but when she's trying to use Investiture her metabolism obliges. I, personally, doubt that a larkin could remove food from her body pre-metabolism but the rules for Lift are odd and not totally clear right now. A larkin consumes Investiture. In at least some forms, certainly yes, but not in every possible case: The current listing on Coppermind states that Allomantic chromium causes the target Allomancer to lose their metal reserves, so his burning steel should be irrelevant. Coppermind also states that non-Invested metals are affected before Invested ones, so possibly the grenade just didn't have enough charge to interfere with the ironmind after dealing with the steel. It's not 100% clear from the scene's description. We don't have any indication that Lift's body will consume itself to the point of death just to provide Investiture. If she were prevented from metabolizing her food into Light, it's not clear if it would be metabolized normally or would disappear to no purpose. As above, a larkin consumes Investiture. Any potential calories in Lift's body are also potential Investiture, but are not themselves Investiture, so a larkin shouldn't be able to do anything with them. Also as above, Lift doesn't have to metabolize food into Light-- her body clearly still has the calories to function and grow. We've also seen her run out of Investiture multiple times without dying, so it seems unlikely that a larkin could force death via that mechanism. She did have to actively burn it, and she was forced to. She recognized that refusing to burn the aluminum wasn't really going to improve her situation, and if the Inquisitors had wanted to kill her they could easily have done so while she was unconscious and wouldn't have needed to bother with doing it via forcing her to use Allomancy. There are many differences, and many similarities. The most efficient, salient WoB response is the one I quoted above: there are some types of Investiture that a larkin won't be able to consume. We don't yet have a full accounting of how they differ. Given enough time and chromium, probably. Yes: Unknown, but probably not. Otherwise she would have likely starved to death by now. She could starve via the conventional route though, I would assume.

It's a reasonable enough conclusion, in that none of the three details contradicts it, but pretty far from definitive. We just have too little information to make reliable inferences on so many things, related to the Dawnshards or not... We don't know that the First Gem Hoid once carried is the same thing as the gemstone Frost references; Roshar is a particularly difficult place to assume one gemstone is the gemstone. We can say that Dalinar's experience while hearing The Way of Kings read to him on the night of Gavilar's funeral is mystical and significant (I think so), and a Dawnshard would be both of those, but Dawnshards are obviously not the only mystical and significant things in the Cosmere. We can say that Dawnshards aren't Shards of Adonalsium, and therefore aren't "of gods", but we also know that Dawnshards are deity-scale in power and scope (even shattering Adonalsium, potentially) and therefore might be "of gods". It's just an assertion either way. Dalinar had a warm feeling, like what Rysn experienced, but didn't have all of the same experiences that Rysn did (like enhanced colors). Does that mean that he doesn't hold a Dawnshard, or that he does but his is different, or that we just don't know enough about how Dawnshards work? For me, it's too many assumptions built on other assumptions in order to reach a pre-held conclusion. Dalinar may well hold a Dawnshard, and the points you've identified may indeed be evidence of it. But to say that the three alone definitely indicate that is a bridge too far for me right now. It's like saying that because Torol Sadeas was killed with a Shardbearer's maneuver means that Adolin killed him. Both are true, but only knowing the former really isn't enough to support the latter on its own.

Thank you so much! I've been terrible at using DALL-E so far, and I really want to be able to make good images for my tabletop games. I've already made some cool ones after learning from your inputs.

That looks great! What text did you feed into the generator to make it?

This is probably something that will end up being tangential (at best), but we've also heard interesting things about using alloys of godmetals to be able to create other original things at the magic system level (such as metals usable in the Metallic Arts, and their effects). That really reminds me of the WoBs that describe the Shards of Adonalsium not being fixed-- you could have created sixteen totally different ones, or any other number. And the significance of metals to all of the Shards definitely supports a relationship like the one you suggest.

Lol, I hope you're OK with the "guess I'll find out more later" feeling if you want to keep reading SA! For what it's worth, I've thought the payoffs we've seen so far were mostly worth it.

That difference between Surges and Feruchemy is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. Feruchemy fixes the "rough edges" around using powers, like a Feruchemist's body being able to avoid crushing itself from increased weight when tapping iron. It seems like this would also be the case for dealing with friction against air when tapping a steelmind. I wish we had more examples. We've only seen Sazed, who moved short distances, and Bleeder, who might not follow the normal human rules. So as long as someone has access to F-steel, maybe the side effects of high speed are manageable? We might find out in Lost Metal, but my gut feeling is we'll have to wait for era 3 If that doesn't work, then maybe F-steel covering large distances is just tricky with any Surges that let you fiddle with pressure or friction. Ultra-high speeds could be great in an emergency but I'd worry about burning through Stormlight just to handle it in any other situation.

I agree that it seems like it would be difficult for a Lightweaver to do this, especially in a casual way. Over a longer period of time, and with the appropriate knowledge and skill, maybe a transformation could occur. It seems like it must be true that the self-image can change (or maybe that the healing can't simply do what you describe), else Lightweavers wouldn't appear to age (among other odd effects). We have one other type of being in the Cosmere which can change its appearance in a manner perhaps like you describe, though the mechanism isn't understood. The Cosmere has generally shown, so far, that if something can be accomplished one way it can probably be accomplished in other ways too.

The way it's described in the books is that pushing and pulling is relative to your center of mass (often represented by the blue lines extending from metal objects to the Allomancer's chest). Observed effects match this pretty well. Most of the time when you see a cool move, like pulling a coin into your hand, the Allomancer is just pulling the object towards themselves and then moving their body to suit. Sort of like kicking something up from the ground and then grabbing it out of the air-- it's not quite that you kicked it into your own hand, but kicked it into a position from which you could catch it. Other situations seem to involve motion, like pulling something towards yourself while your body is moving through space, creating more of an arcing motion than a straight line. It does get more complex, though it seems to take some serious Allomantic skill to do it. We see Kelsier pushing and pulling just on specific parts of metal rods to cause them to spin around or move more in "nudges" than solid pushes and pulls. We also see Wax pushing on a single bullet, then recognizing that the bullet is made of multiple pieces, and then realizing that he can push on just a specific piece. Kelsier's tricks especially suggest that there are a lot of things that a skilled Allomancer can do with careful pushes, pulls, and leverage.