Returned

It depends on what you're doing while you fill the metalmind, I think. The rules would seem to be the same as for regular Feruchemy. If you're separately, completely draining your Identity while you fill it then the metalmind would be unkeyed and anyone with a relevant Feruchemical ability should be able to use it, otherwise it would still be keyed to you. We see this with Wayne tapping the goldmind bracelet in Bands of Mourning. But unless the metalmind you're filling includes nicrosil (which you're also filling with Investiture) it wouldn't be unsealed-- there's no other way that we know of for someone without access to Feruchemy to suddenly get it absent a different intervention (like Hemalurgy). We see this with Marasi using the Bands in Bands of Mourning. So if you, a non-Feruchemist, have a Southern Scardrian wristband of nicrosil you could use any lump of iron to store your weight, and that iron would be keyed to your Identity. If you had a wristband of nicrosil you could (presumably) use a piece of aluminum to drain your Identity while storing your weight in a lump of iron, and then that iron would be unkeyed (but only someone who could use iron Feruchemically and knew what the lump of iron was would be able to make use of it). An unsealed metalmind needs to have a component that is nicrosil and stocked with Investiture, so an unsealed metalmind is always going to be nicrosil alone or nicrosil and something else. As far as we know, that is... duralumin is also involved in some way, but we don't have any more details on that right now. We'll get a lot more information in Lost Metal, or very shortly thereafter, but for now the specifics of unsealed metalminds and Feruchemical nicrosil are both unclear.

I'm not sure the same rules apply to Splinters as to Shards. Ulim, at least, seems a bit slick with what he promises to Venli, and Adolin's trial by the Honorspren doesn't seem quite like what was promised. Sja-anat is a much bigger Splinter than most spren, and she's playing all sides and is interested in actively betraying Odium (though she may have never made any promises to him-- we don't have much reason to think that she did). My impression is that the bonds formed by Roshar's spren and humans are especially binding because they're imitating what Honor did with the Honorblades. Sprens' bonds with Singers (typically) aren't based on oaths but instead seem like a sort of resonance or natural fit between a spren's nature and the Singer's mindset (maybe through a Cultivation-like avenue, and maybe not). I suspect that a bond with an Unmade wouldn't necessarily require a formal agreement of any kind, that they wouldn't necessarily honor the spirit of the deal even if they did make one, and that they wouldn't do anything to place them under others' power more than they had to. But if one did make a formal oath to bond, I think that they would be bound by that oath like any other spren. Just not through their nature as Splinters.

Definitely true, though also an issue for Feruchemists (if not to quite the same degree). If I had either power, I'd spend a good deal of time studying metallurgy

I think that what we describe as "luck" works differently in the Cosmere, particularly for main characters. The way we usually use the word in the real world is basically a backwards-looking evaluation of what outcomes might have happened, and when those outcomes are mostly good (especially when unlikely or occurring without explicit effort) we say the person is "lucky". And often project that forward into future actions. In the Cosmere we have constant interference from Shards and their agents, plus Fortune, which seem to prune the branches of possible futures in ways that push characters towards particular situations and outcomes. Kalading may not be "lucky" in that he wound up in terrible situations, but those situations are also (probably) largely necessary to make him who he is and position him where he is. If we look at it in the real-world sense I'd agree he's not all that lucky, but if we take it as a given that powerful forces were going to put him in rough situations no matter what then his continued success in those situations seems pretty lucky to me. But yeah, I can see why Kaladin bristles at the description and has thought of himself as cursed rather than fortunate.

We've got a few statements from Brandon on it. The summary is that Harmony changed the nature of the Koloss, so they became a true-breeding group (they could reproduce sexually, instead of through hemalurgy alone) and create infant "koloss blooded" individuals. These individuals have some Koloss traits like strength and toughness but would not be "full koloss" unless they accepted hemalurgic spikes, which would transform them to be more similar to what we see in Vin's time.

There are also multiple ways to Splinter a Shard, and we know that what happened to Dominion and Devotion was different than what happened to Honor.

Almost explicitly yes, from the text itself. There is a sequence in Oathbringer in which the Midnight Mother "tugs at" Shallan's bond with Pattern and tries to insert herself in its place. I suspect nothing good comes of such a bond, though-- it certainly seems to go poorly for Yelig-Nar's hosts. My guess is that the nature of bonding would be different for the Unmade, since they won't be following in the wake of Honor's fetish for oaths and are much more powerful than ordinary spren (as opposed to the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and Sibling). The Unmade also seem to be pretty functional in the physical realm and mentally intact even without a bond. Sja-anat isn't bonded to anyone but seems to have all of her mental faculties, while the Stormfather's introspection and mental abilities seem to be expanding as his bond with Dalinar deepens (much like we've seen with Syl and Pattern). Given these, I'm not sure that being bonded would be desirable or useful for an Unmade, regardless of whether or not it's good for their hosts (Yelig-Nar excepted, as he seems to need a host to manifest usefully in the physical realm).

I'm not convinced of the tri-Shardic amalgamation idea. Shards generally don't want to merge with one another (at least the ones we've seen so far), and change in the process if they do, so I think that combinations aren't going to be quite so lackadaisical or balanced as this. Especially Autonomy-- they're not likely to combine well with others, even if forced into it. Also, the Shards themselves are already effectively infinite, so it's not obvious to me that we'll see conflicts being decided by one Vessel holding more than one versus a single Shard (ask Dominion and Devotion!). The Shards' agents seem (to me) like more important figures in prosecuting conflicts. I wouldn't say that Wax is more significant than Vin, for example, just because he's backed by two Shards rather than one. But they both operate where the Shards themselves can't or prefer not to. I do like this line of thinking, though. I think that something we'll see more of is demi-Shardic beings, like the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and Sibling, which are fonts of magical power but have their own purposes and constraints while not being bound by quite the same rules as the Shards themselves. But we don't know very much about these entities or how they might be formed, so I can't guess how many we might see, what they might do, or how they might generally behave.

Probably Mistborn for me, though I'd be happy with either. If not for the Feruchemical effects of zinc, steel, and copper, I'd be much more decisively on the Mistborn side. Feruchemy is indeed awesome, but there are some serious drawbacks (chiefly spending long periods of time miserably limited in exchange for relatively short bursts of variable benefits) and some of the mechanics at the margins aren't clear (like how much you can "dribble" an attribute into a metalmind to build up a useful reserve without being severely disadvantaged along the way). These make me think that it would be hard to get a lot of benefit from Feruchemy frequently for anything beyond marginal use, which is not the effect I'm after. In a lot of cases you'd end up spending more time with sub-normal capabilities than superpowered, and using your powers burns a lot of time invested (not to mention misery while doing so, for some attributes). Mistborn, on the other hand, get cool powers that work on demand. Allomantic steel, iron, pewter, tin, brass, and zinc will help you through an awful lot of situations, and the only preparation you need is to put some metal in your pockets.

That was my first thought as well, but I went back and checked and it's very slightly protruding from his skin: I'd also thought that maybe the spike Penrod was stabbed with was fully embedded, but it's not explicitly stated. The way the surgeons describe it and their attempts to remove it suggest to me that it protruded from his skin as well.

Since the function of the 5th Heightening is that it stops your aging, and your soul knows how old it is, I would wager that the person would revert to their true age before the aging stopped. But we don't really know how any of the Metallic Arts interact with Heightenings, so I don't think we can say for sure. An interesting, converse example is what would happen if someone with enough Breaths to reach the 5th Heightening (and is a Feruchemist) tried to store youth in an atiummind. Would they age and then stay at the age the reached through Feruchemy when they stopped storing youth? Could they be a limitless source of youth for storage? Would their stored youth be some kind of "super" youth? Would it work at all? Who knows? I think that this would be a fun question for Brandon.

I love them all, but Way of Kings (in my opinion) does the most and best worldbuilding of a new and interesting setting and introduces the most interesting, novel ideas. I was really excited by the implications of a fighter that could manipulate gravity, of the behavior of Shardblades and Plate, of the medieval-esque combat on terrain like the Shattered Plains, of Alethi social organization, of a world battered by semi-regular one-directional hurricanes, of spren appearing when something draws them, of currency which is a source of domestic light and also has central value because it fuels the Soulcasters on which modern society largely depends. All cool ideas, well thought out, and consequences thoughtfully considered and well presented. It has many interesting characters and develops them well, giving nice perspectives on all the things above and more while also going through narrative arcs I found interesting. The Heralds, and the truth their existence and rare POV segments suggest, set my imagination afire while I burrowed through the way modern Roshar thinks about and believes in them. It's always easier to dazzle at the start with a cool setup than it is to make all of the setup pay off while answering all questions in a satisfying way, and establishing such an original setting all but requires that a lot of the "best" example stuff gets used up earliest. All that novelty can't be fresh a second time, and the longer a story goes the more likely you'll run into issues like inconsistencies, ultra-precise detail for the sake of ultra-precision alone, a loss of wonder through familiarity, character developments that I don't enjoy as much (even when they're totally reasonable), and storylines that might be weaker than others. Things that intrigue me provide a lot of grist for my imagination, which is where the experience of reading a book really exists for me. And so even though later books have more answers, bigger set pieces, and so many other things to recommend them, it's very hard for those to overwhelm the sense of possibility and excitement a well-done early book provides.

Whoa, that's going to draw some heat! My unpopular opinion is that Elend's character arc is so flat and his successes so undeserved (in a broad, narrative sense) that it drags down everything and everyone else. Vin's devotion to him always felt (to me) like an awkward fit for her character and bled away her agency. The latter in particular I found disappointing because it was so hard-won for her in The Final Empire. The story probably would have been better overall if she'd gone with Zane and/or Elend was removed from the picture in Well of Ascension. Also, I despise Spook's street slang. It's a cute enough callback in era 2 that it's the High Imperial language due to Spook's elevation, but I always hated reading it and invariably skip it on every re-read. I've always felt it's underdeveloped and kind of lazily done, and didn't achieve any worldbuilding which it was presumably intended to do (unusual for Sanderson writing I've seen). A swing and a miss, at a pitch that was clearly 20 feet away from the batter in the first place.

Free mechanical energy is a big advantage I can see to Gravitation. Lash something big and heavy to make it easy to move high up, loading it with potential energy, fasten it to that height, and then let it drop when you need to harvest some power. This is basically the same idea as the heavy weights in the shaft in Rhythm of War, but easier and cheaper to set up when Stormlight is available so that you can use it when the Stormlight is more scarce. But you could also rig up something like a perpetual motion machine, where equal weights are connected to two pulleys. Lash at least one weight so that it's effectively weightless (or at least less heavy) and the device can produce more mechanical power than it takes to run. Obviously the difference is that you have to use Stromlight to make this work (so there's really outside energy in the system, so it's not quite cheating thermodynamics), but it's a pretty straightforward way to convert Stormlight into mechanical energy. You could use Abrasion to make perfectly efficient magnetic flywheels, again a great way to store energy for later use. You could use Transformation to create perfectly machined parts, making precision engineering a trivial problem (a very simple example would be an unpickable pin-and-tumbler lock, which might be a popular product). Similarly, Soulcasting could easily produce perfectly reliable basic inputs for industry, like complex chemicals, which could then be used by anyone and would eliminate the need for industrial chemical refinement. Stormlight being relatively hard to use by non-Surgebinders, plus its inconsistent availability, seems to be one of the biggest hurdles to it impacting the world and so converting it into more reliable energy or mundane items that are otherwise complicated to produce seems like a good way to scale it up and make it available to anyone without even the need for an intricate fabrial. I do expect that advances in fabrial technology will ultimately eclipse the awesomeness of Surgebinding in most everyday circumstances, but the flexibility of a Surgebinder in using their powers on demand will always give them a niche.

From chapter 65 to the end is one of my favorite sequences of the book (and of all of SA). I re-read it fairly often, even when I'm not going through the whole book again. I think that it evinces the major themes of SA as well as some of its most important characters in ways that just aren't matched elsewhere. There is still lots of great stuff to come, but I especially savor this bit, since I first read it ~8 years ago all the way through to today. Happy reading! I'm excited to hear about your overall impressions and feelings once you finish Way of Kings.

Eh, maybe. I personally think that you're right and that Bondsmiths are legitimately more powerful for a variety of reasons (many of the specifics of which are unknown to us for now), and Dalinar especially so. Ishar and Melishi have demonstrated incredible feats too, even without the exceptional circumstances Dalinar is in. And Dalinar can do things which blur the lines between Surges anyways (he can allow people to enter and exit Shadesmar through a perpendicularity, which is properly a Transportation effect). And the few resonant abilities we know of for sure seem pretty discrete and limited: eidetic memory for Lightweavers (or at least Shallan), and more and stronger squires for Windrunners (or at least Kaladin). Dalinar's powers don't seem to fit neatly into one description like that. But we've heard very, very little about what the Knight Radiant Orders were capable of, and even if we had we know for certain that things are different in Kaladin's time, so I'm not sure that's a great guide. We do know that practical effects of binding a Surge can vary (Dalinar is told by the Stormfather that Tension will "serve [him] differently" than it would a Stoneward, for example, and a Fused manipulating Gravitation can't change direction as quickly, nor move as fast, as a Windrunner), so there is a strong likelihood of that element there-- the same Surge doesn't necessarily work the same way for everyone, particularly between groups. Maybe Windrunners really don't have the same options with pure Adhesion even though it's the same Surge for them as for Bondsmiths. I'm not surprised to find Bondsmiths to be particularly powerful among Surgebinders and Knight Radiant Orders, I believe that a major part of that additional power comes from their capacity with spiritual Adhesion, and that spiritual Adhesion is itself very flexible and expansive in its applications (especially on Roshar). Similarly, any resonance (or similar) which involves that expansive and flexible spiritual Adhesion will be similarly flexible and expansive as a result. And finally it's very strongly implied that Dalinar has powers no other Bondsmith has commanded in the past, which seems unlikely to be "just" the resonance with Tension (otherwise previous Bondsmiths would have been able to do it too). But even the "normal" Bondsmith powers are vast and explicitly stated by the Stormfather to be greater than those of other Radiants: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ They were just examples of things which might conceivably be covered by spiritual Adhesion but not be obviously so to the characters or the reader, not strong suggestions of things that are definitely magical via Adhesion.

Fair. But Adhesion isn't just sticking two objects together; it also deals with abstractions like binding through an oath. That's why it's referred to as "Honor's truest Surge". I'm not sure we really know much about what "raw" Connection can do through the Adhesion Surge, and Connection itself has always been one of the most fuzzily (and expansively) defined Cosmere properties as it's so abstract. Connection seems to be one of the subtlest of the Cosmere forces, along with Fortune and Identity. Anyways, using a Surge at all is manipulating it; a basic lashing is manipulating the Gravitation Surge, not a distinct Surge of "Manipulating Gravitation". It is possible, for example, that many applications using Adhesion alone have effects that are hard to observe, like an increased or decreased spiritual Connection between people. Contrast with an illusion produced through Illumination, or a lashing achieved via Gravitation. Those are things you will definitely see happen in a pretty concrete way. Nevertheless I would wager that Windrunners can access more abstract features of Adhesion (those we associate with Connection). The effect may not be explicit or dramatic by itself (compare with an Aluminum Gnat on Scadrial), may require practice to develop to any impressive degree (compare with Shallan being bad at Soulcasting for quite some time despite progress with Illumination), may be gated in some way (similar to how Skybreakers can't access Division until they've progressed far enough in their oaths), and any number of possible other differences. Stonewards don't have access to Adhesion, so we can discount them from this. I will (tentatively) argue that when Kaladin parts a Highstorm in Oathbringer he's using Connection (via some sort of spiritual Adhesion) to do it-- it is a very different effect from any of the lashings. Bridge Four is a remarkably tight-knit group made of isolated dregs. Kaladin is a great leader, but might he have unconsciously tapped some spiritual Adhesion to accomplish that amazing feat? It would not be unlike his amazing ability with the spear and connection to the wind, which we know is mediated to some degree by his bond with Syl. Might those be not just mundane, poetic connections, but Connections? Another difficulty in teasing out applications of Connection, alone, as an aspect of a Surge is that things are working differently during Dalinar's time than previously. It's remarked on several times that Dalinar does things with his Surgebinding which were inconceivable before, but we don't have any details about what is driving those differences or how they might impact other things. Dalinar can open a perpendicularity, which no previous Bondsmith was known to be able to do (whether or not they couldn't, or just didn't know how, who knows?). We see Ishar doing some really amazing, powerful things with the same Surges Dalinar can access, but Dalinar doesn't know how to do them (though it's also possible those abilities are specific to Ishar in some way, and/or could be additional resonant abilities). As with Kaladin and the storm, we don't know how these were achieved and they shocked observers, some of whom are very knowledgeable. So, in summary, Adhesion may well have properties the POV characters in the books don't know about and can't easily observe (making them less obvious than Dalinar's most dramatic feats), characters with access to Adhesion may lack the necessary knowledge and skill to make use of those aspects of the Surge anyways, and we know for a fact that the capabilities of modern Radiants are different from what used to be in ways which may or may not relate to the Surges themselves.

Maybe, but the convenience of Roshar is that Stormlight just rolls through the whole world periodically via Highstorms, brimming with raw, accessible Investiture. To use Allomantic metals I think you'd have to be an Allomancer, and that seems unlikely (though not impossible!). There would have to have been a bead of Lerasium apart from the others (or the timing of Yesteel finding it would have to predate Well of Ascension), or he'd have to turn to Hemalurgy or intricate Feruchemy via an appropriate, unkeyed combination metalmind. The issues are surmountable with enough knowledge and ingenuity, both of which I think Yesteel could have. Or he could just move between worlds as necessary-- he doesn't need to be on Scadrial constantly. Or he learned enough to allow him to interconvert Investiture in ways that would let him mimic Breaths to the degree he needed. Or he figured out a cheat, like with Khalad's Phantoms being stone-encased human bones, which would make Awakening something a person might describe as a "metal being" much easier and more affordable. Or all of the above. The whole Southern Scadrial reveal has made me much more receptive to the idea that Scadrial has a lot more secrets than we've discovered so far. And as Cosmere stories move forward I think that most Cosmere-aware people are going to gravitate towards Scadrial and Roshar, so it would make sense for an important figures to set up shop on one or the other.

My thinking has been that Honor's creation of the Honorblades was a manifestation of his oath with the Heralds. Physical objects which are nearly indestructible and grant Surges to their wielders no matter what-- a commitment which endures even after Honor's own death. We also know that the Shards are limited by their natures, so possibly Honor couldn't grant powers without something like a rigid, permanent oath. Odium, as a different Shard with different limitations, may be able to do things Honor could not, or at least in ways Honor could not. The swords are a commitment that Honor couldn't break under any circumstances, while Odium has at least some discretion over whether or not Fused can access his power. But we know so little about how Odium's connection to the Fused works it's hard to draw good, reliable contrasts.

It could be! Though there are a couple of significant hurdles. It would be hard for Yesteel to survive on Scadrial as he'd have no clear access to the Investiture that would let him preserve his divine Breath, and similarly he'd need a ton of Breaths to practice Awakening this way. We know that Nightblood was expensive to create. But Vivenna's sword in Oathbringer strongly implies that some of these issues have been mitigated. I'd just assumed that that entry in the broadsheet was a fanciful element of an adventure story, but maybe I was too dismissive.

Interesting ideas! The spren were, as I recall, dead (or seemed dead). Maybe that's something he was trying to fix through experimentation. I think we should also be open to the possibility that he's not behaving in any rational way due to his madness; whatever his plan, if he has one, might not make sense at all. I'd bet that there is more to it than that, though.

It's one of the fundamental, magic-relevant attributes in the Cosmere while also being a Surge of Roshar. For example, duralumin stores Connection for a Feruchemist without any need for a resonance. As a Surge of Roshar it can be manipulated by a Surgebinder, alone or as part of a resonant ability. Both Windrunners and Skybreakers can use the Surge of Gravitation for a basic lashing (Gravitation alone). Windrunners also have a resonance with Adhesion that allows them to perform a reverse lashing, which Skybreakers cannot do because they lack access to Adhesion. Connection is its own thing and can be used in its own ways, and also is part of resonances which allow for still other abilities. That's a good find on the WoB. I based my comment on these two epigraphs from Words of Radiance, but I think you're right to suggest that I overinterpreted them: Ishar was involved in the design of the Radiant Orders and the rules which governed them for sure (at least in ensuring that those rules existed). The only suggestion that access to Surges might have been similarly influenced by Ishar is the "rulings in the nature of each bond's placement" bit, but that could very easily apply to other things (like which spren are associated with which Order/Surges). I think there is some argument to be made about limiting Radiants to two surges, as we know that at least Yelig-nar possesses all ten. But this limitation, too, could be attributed to other things. Most notably the spren who first started bonding humans were imitating what they had seen with the Heralds and Honorblades, and we know the Honorblades granted two Surges apiece. I still suspect that there was some Bondsmith action in creating and formalizing the Orders and the Surges they provide, but that is speculative and even if true there isn't much reason to think that Ishar did (or even could) mix and match the Surges as he pleased. On a site-specific note, members of this board tend to frown on double-posting and prefer single, larger posts even when covering different topics or replies to multiple posts. I personally don't mind it, but you'll eventually run into complaints.

It's possible that a new Oathpact will happen, though I still doubt it. I especially doubt that Ishar would be the one pursuing it, since he has had a front-row seat to how the previous Oathpact didn't work. It's not even clear that a new one is possible, now that the Everstorm exists. Why go to so much trouble to reproduce a failed solution that had such devastating consequences for you and your friends? One of the few solid clues we have about what Ishar is up to involves For me any theory that doesn't account for this new, bizarre thing is suspect. Although I don't have any good ideas for what he'll accomplish with it (yet!).

I'm not sure the two economies compare in ways that would let us come up with an answer. No amount of spheres would let you buy an electronic computer on Roshar, while no number of dollars would allow someone in the U.S. to buy magical, immediate healing or soulcasting services. From the few directly comparable examples we get (like one diamond chip buying a loaf of bread) we might say that a diamond chip is worth ~$3-4, but that's not really enough to guess at an overall exchange rate.

Connection is a very powerful and flexible power to be able to manipulate in the Cosmere and underlies a good deal of how magical abilities work there. Even without resonances it would likely still seem powerful compared to other abilities-- "the concept of things being connected in fundamental ways" has implications for things like the three realms in ways which "fiddling with gravity" isn't going to be able to match. I also think that Bondsmiths' power is seen operating at a higher level other Surges, giving us more on-screen examples of how it works in especially dramatic ways than other Surges (so far). And it's also worth bearing in mind that the orders of Radiants, along with the powers they can access and how those powers manifest, were designed and organized by Ishar (who was himself a Bondsmith). It's possible that he planned for resonances and made sure that the most powerful would be accessible to the fewest people, while more common ones would be less potent.