Returned

As others have said, they probably weren't maintaining their population. They usually committed relatively few troops to engagements on the Shattered Plains, were much more capable of retreat (no need for maneuvering bridges), seemed to have a serviceably-sized standing military, and had an ample civilian population which was not needed for industry (they didn't build much or make weapons, and had enough excess labor to be able to heavily invest in researching new forms). Because the Alethi couldn't locate or reach their population center the Listeners' only suffered attrition among their soldiers, which could be quickly replaced with the excess labor force of civilians taking Warform. The Alethi strategy at the end of WoR was explicitly to destroy enough of the Listener population to shatter their ability to continue fighting the war, and they were more or less successful. If not for the coming of the Everstorm, this probably would have been effective.

I would choose Misting + Feruchemist without hesitation, though I maintain that members of the forum tend to really underestimate how much storing attributes usually sucks, and how much time you'd have to spend doing it to get a useful amount into a metalmind. There are a lot of good options for compounding, but I think that being able to compound zinc is one of the most versatile. Lots of attributes allow for cool tricks but are still pretty narrow in what tools they offer to accomplish tasks or solve problems. But mental speed, especially in the sense that it grants flashes of inspired insight (instead of requiring the same effort but just sped up, as with Steelrunning), would allow you to figure out ways to address any issue effectively based on the full suite of resources available to you. Plus you could figure it out really, really quickly and on demand. The "on demand" part is what causes it to edge out gold for me, because to really get the benefits you'd have to be constantly compounding it, and that's dangerous in undefined ways. And with my superior planning abilities, I think I'd be in serious physical danger beyond my abilities to handle pretty rarely.

Alternatively, Wax has a ton of practice with both shooting and his Allomancy. It's plausible that he could judge when a Push on a bullet would be helpful or when it would ruin the shot, and what timing is practical (like just before hitting the target or an obstacle in the way). But I do think that Frustration's answer is likely to be a factor as well, even the dominant factor. Wax is an amazingly skilled Coinshot.

There's no wrong answer, so that answer is definitely sufficient! The issue is one that is a substantial theme of the series, which really starts being emphasized in WoR. I'm looking forward to the story wrestling with it further in future books too, and maybe you'll be similarly interested. I found a lot of the sequences that deal with the topic to be uncomfortable, given the internal and external conflicts involved, but I can't imagine the series without them. The Oaths are at the heart of Radiance, even if no one involved quite understands what that means or how to deal with it. I'm really glad you've stuck with it! I hope you continue to find the series rewarding. I did, and I like seeing other people enjoy it.

I'm curious to hear about how this squares with your earlier comment regarding people in power arbitrarily crushing those beneath them. If you're open to discussing a bit more (and you don't have to, obviously), would you expand on why the link between morals and the incredible powers of Surgebinding is unsatisfying to you?

I'm sorry, this post came out much longer than I'd hoped, but I wanted to provide the best expression I could of my reasoning so I've had trouble slimming it down. This is an interesting point that matters to the issue, I think. Savantism via Allomancy and godmetals, as we're discussing here, is going to be a specific thing compared with other forms of savantism. There isn't any other (known) similar mode of interaction with godmetals, so that's a good distinction to have made. I don't know that becoming a savant through burning godmetals would be fundamentally different than burning other metals, given that we're operating only in the Allomantic frame. Lerasium is a metal that anyone can burn Allomantically, and thereby become an Allomancer, but it isn't clear that all other godmetals could be used that way (or that it would have a similar effect), so I don't think that "godmetal savant" is any more of a thing than "tin and pewter savant". You could do both, but they're separate. Additionally, I want to clarify that savantism is an effect of distorting the spiritweb, with any changes to the body or mind being incidental to that. I'm pretty sure that that is the established mechanism, though I may be mistaken; if so, I would appreciate any references to help me get it right. I don't think we disagree about this, but the mechanism is important to the topic. This is how savantism develops in Allomancers, so there's no dispute there. Your established Connection to Preservation lets you access Investiture via burning a metal, and the resulting flow of Investiture that infuses you can distort your spiritweb if you get enough of it for a long enough period. What that distortion does is what defines savantism in one metal or another, or even a non-metallic power. Lots of tin dramatically enhances how much your senses improve when burning tin in the future, etc. The question about becoming an Allomantic savant with a godmetal is, then, what enhancement comes from the accompanying spiritweb distortion? This is the part where a specific conclusion still feels arbitrary and heavily assumption-based to me. We have only the barest understanding of what godmetals really do at all, including lerasium burned Allomantically. I'm not convinced that the effect of becoming a savant with lerasium means that your Allomancy will super-effectively Connect you to the Shard associated with any given godmetal, were you to burn that metal. Burning a metal at all is still drawing on Preservation's power, and that power is translated via the metal into an effect. What seems to be the effect posited in this thread is that lerasium's Allomantic property is the ability to super-Connect to a Shard (generically), and a lerasium savant would have that effect turbocharged. So, for a savant, one more scrap of lerasium burned would lead to taking up Preservation, one droplet of atium burned would lead to taking up Ruin, one flake of raysium would lead to taking up Odium, and so on for the rest of the Shards. This seems unfounded to me-- it doesn't seem to track with how Allomancy works, nor how lerasium has been seen to operate, nor taking up or losing a Shard, and more. That said, we don't have any other examples of Allomantic godmetal burning besides lerasium, and godmetals are likely to be odd anyhow, so who knows? But the only support I've seen for the idea is that one WoB, and I think that it has to be misinterpreted to provide it (given the lack of corroboration from anything else, so far). This seems a bit off to me. I don't think that Shards create godmetals, specifically, so much as godmetals are the physical manifestation of Shards-- this is how Sazed explains it. The form can change, but there isn't more or less of it-- only more or less physical manifestation in a given spot. We see this in the lerasium beads, the liquid metal at the Well of Ascension, and the mists themselves. It does "stick" in some instances: on Scadrial some of Preservation's power is in people (which permanently weakened Leras), and when you burn lerasium you get more of that power, which stays within the person who burned it and their descendants. So I don't think that a lerasium bead would re-form in the way you're describing, certainly not if you burned it as we've seen characters do on-screen. You'd have to find more. It's necessary to note that we don't know very much about this: the Well refills, the mists come and go, and atium reformed over time, but lerasium didn't seem to work that way. So I could be way off on this. Anyways, the position that is persuasive to me, based on the WoB upthread, is that to become a lerasium savant would require so much lerasium as to be equivalent to just taking up the Shard anyhow. I don't think that that requires concentrating the Shard's power in a particular form or sequestering it within a person, though one could do that. For example, Vin physically draws in all of the mists (which are also a physical form of Preservation's Investiture) to Ascend. But Sazed didn't have to, and even while Preservation was held its power still manifested physically as mist.

I'm not sure that tracks with what we know of savantism, but I might not be understanding exactly what you mean. Would you be willing to describe some of the savants we know of with this interpretation? Like, an Allomantic savant, Soulcaster savant, etc.? That might help me feel more confident I'm getting the full picture.

Every time for me. The endings for each part of each book are really well placed, though sometimes they overshadow interludes for me a little bit.

I think it's important to point out that these are just my musings, and they're far from proven! The fun of posting on the forums (for me) is to have lots of ideas floating back and forth with other fans who have other perspectives on the same texts. My guess is that they wouldn't, for the reasons above, but if one of the Unmade does end up producing a Bondsmith it'll just be that much more exciting of a twist for me. I'm also very interested in the idea of a Bondsmith working with Voidlight, however they came by their Bondsmith powers. I hadn't really thought about it before this thread. There are some differences in how Surges work for Odium's forces (the Heavenly Ones' lesser agility in the skies compared to Windrunners comes to mind), especially since it seems not to run out on its own. A corrupted, deceived, or traitorous Bondsmith might be able to do some really interesting things with power that never runs dry and arbitrary limitations. Do you have any thoughts on how a Bondsmith using Voidlight might differ from what we've seen of Dalinar so far?

I really like that idea and description; they feel true to me given what we know about the Cosmere and Investiture. I guess I'll have to amend my pet theory to "I still think the blade was initially composed of atium to at least some degree"

I still think there is at least some atium in the blade...

I think that there is a flaw with the premise. It's far from clear that you could store "seeing the future" generically, though maybe you could. I'm not sure I'd agree that what atium grants is a sense so much as it is a conduit to the Spiritual Realm where "time" isn't exactly a thing. It's true that you "perceive" that information in some form, but that isn't necessarily the same thing as having a distinct sense that can detect it. Like, maybe you could retain the ability to perceive and process such information, but without that conduit there isn't anything for you to perceive or process. And there's the arbitrary retcon cheat that the atium in Mistborn 1-3 is really just an alloy of atium, so it may behave differently from how the pure godmetal would. 1. We see in Secret History that Kelsier, whose Mistborn nature is a result of stronger Connection to Preservation than most, was aligned with Ruin anyways, so the issue seems more complicated than just burning a lot of an alloy of the godmetal. And if tin wouldn't grant you more future-sight than the atium you burned to fill it in the first place it seems like it would be a non-factor (if the process would work as you suggest). 2. The compounding seems irrelevant to me. Compounding lets you store more of an attribute than you put in, forced into a particular form by the metals used in the process. Burning enough true atium Allomantically would probably allow you to Ascend to Ruin if you were properly aligned with it and the Shard were not already held. We've already got a WoB indicating that doing the same with Lerasium is effectively Ascending to Preservation. But that's burning all the atium there is and could be, not storing some other effect that an atium alloy grants. And that's even if you could store the future-sight, which is at best unclear. In any case an effect granted by burning atium isn't the same thing as the atium itself, and the nature of godmetals as the physical manifestation of Shards seems like an important factor for such an effect. 3. There isn't much evidence of the extent of what the Lord Ruler knew about the Metallic Arts, in no small part because the details of compounding have been deliberately reserved by Sanderson to be revealed in future books. I think it's safe to say that the Lord Ruler probably knew more or less everything about them, as Sazed seems to know everything after his own Ascension. And in any case his efforts around atium were to sequester the vast majority of it in a hidden place for a very good reason, so he probably wouldn't want to make use of the knowledge even if it does exist and he did have it.

I also think that this was it. His actual capabilities don't matter very much when he can compound-- with enough zinc he can intuit information in a flash without any real forethought. In a pinch, he'd be able to duplicate the results of the smartest people ever toiling for their entire lives over figuring out some issue or other. And even if he didn't bother and his plans failed, he was a deific, unstoppable killing machine. He almost certainly had the option of accessing unlimited Fortune, if he cared to, with the knowledge of physical science we know he gained during his brief ascension. At his leisure he could be both lucky and good. To the extent that he had an ongoing goal it was resisting Ruin, and he did so brilliantly: his preparations were vital in opposing him and preserving people through the final cataclysms. He deceived a god, one who had millenia of experience and far greater access to all of the powers that Rashek did, sufficiently to lead to that god's downfall even though Ruin was able to arrange his demise. His rule started by letting him express his rage unfettered at the same time his ability to impose his desires on the world expanded radically. By the end it seems like he was very apathetic, not caring much about anything at all (outside of resisting Ruin) and so not really bothering to do much. He didn't care about the quality or nature of his empire, save that he be in charge of it and be able to use it to oppose Ruin. He didn't care if the skaa rebelled, because the nobles and his armies could generally crush them (they always had before!). He didn't care if the nobles thinned themselves out with internecine conflict. He didn't care if life was easy or hard, pleasant or brutal, or anything else. I don't think he was a good ruler, by any definition of "good" I would use, but his empire was how he wanted it to be and accomplished the things he wanted it to accomplish.

This is the only way I can see a Bondsmith-comparable situation arising from the Unmade. Honor is about binding in the same way Cultivation is about growth/development, Preservation is about resisting change, Ruin is about destruction, and Odium is about conflict. More influence from Odium in a Nahel bond seems to me would broadly trend towards Odium's fundamental nature-- whether or not they can work with Adhesion in any capacity, that isn't going to be their main thing, and I wouldn't expect their powers to work along that channel (even if they can accomplish similar feats or results). I also think that their powers would be different from binding the Surges, as those seem to have been organized by Honor/Cultivation (and not exactly repeated on other Shardworlds), and it's hard to see greater Surge-based power being available than what Yelig-nar grants (access to all of the powers, or at least the nine that the Fused can make use of). The properties of the spren involved in the bond seem to be really significant, especially in terms of "greatness" (for lack of a more precise word). A lesser spren can bond with creatures, and grant power by doing so, but they don't grant Radiant-level abilities. See, for example, greatshells and Ryshadium. Greater spren can grant Radiant- or Fused-type abilities. But whether or not a Bondsmith spren is a level above even these isn't clear. There are unique, powerful spren which don't form bonds (that we know of), so we don't have a good test case. For that matter we don't even really know that the high status of the spren who have formed Bondsmiths has any effect on the types of powers they grant (would the Nightwatcher be more subject to Cultivation's nature than Honor's? We'll learn more when we see Navani explore her powers), or the degree of power (is Dalinar ultra-powerful because he's bound to an ultra-powerful spren, or is fiddling with Connection via Adhesion just amazing in itself?). Finally, we don't know very much about the nature of the Unmade. Are they effectively spren of Odium, as the spren involved in creating Regals are? Or were they something else, like spren derived from Honor and Cultivation, which were corrupted and may still retain some of their initial natures as far as granting powers? In any case they seem permeated with Odium's essence, which (as above) is associated with conflict like Honor is associated with bonds. Can that power grant a smooth bond, or would binding them involve constant conflict between spren and mortal? I personally think that the latter is the case, based on the description of binding Yelig-nar: try to control the one who comes after. In summary, I don't think that a bond such as the one suggested in this thread can produce a Bondsmith, or even a being with similar powers. Such a bond might produce a very powerful individual, possibly rivaling a Bondsmith, but they will be a thing apart and direct comparison is more likely to be a category error than anything else.

Agreed on Maya, and that we don't get more of other characters by having less of Adolin. The Maya piece is still in a "slow build, high tease" situation. I expect it to pay off, handsomely, much like some of the early Kaladin and Shallan sequences. But as Adolin isn't a main character (in the way that those two have been, with books dedicated to them), that's taking longer (more pages which aren't advancing this yet) to play out. Which is fine with me, but I can appreciate that they feel like filler to some people. I imagine it as feeling similar to if WoK ended without Kaladin swearing the second Oath or getting free of Sadeas: the buildup would still be there, and would be just as good and valuable, but the narrative would feel incomplete within that book. I increasingly have the impression that in Adolin we're getting a Kaladin- or Shallan-level plot from WoK or WoR (minus the flashbacks) but spread out over more volumes. I'm not sure I agree that the issue is getting more of other characters and less of Adolin vs. the opposite, but rather about narrative focus. Stormlight is huge, with tons of characters and events, and a constant risk with so much material is loss of focus and awkward pacing. When we have so much of Adolin, and it's nearly all setup and little payoff (so far) for so long, I feel that we're in danger of losing focus on the other characters and their immediately relevant stories. For people that want to see Szeth's story advance, RoW might have been very disappointing (though not due to anything about Adolin). But I can see how opening new story lines for Adolin might be frustrating, particularly for people that don't like him-- not only are they not getting Szeth (which they would never have gotten in RoW anyways), but they're also getting a lot more pages that aren't Szeth and dedicated instead to a character whom they also don't like. The books are getting longer with each release; if Sanderson isn't ready to advance already open stories (which is a legitimate choice, and I wouldn't challenge his vision!), that means that we're getting other stuff instead (and more of it) which isn't the same stuff that drew fans to the series in the first place. Again, I like Adolin and so don't mind this with him, but I can appreciate that some might be frustrated with what feels like a bridge novel to them in terms of what they care about: just another book to buy and read which is just passing time until the next one, which they might find more interesting. Prior to Oathbringer, no. Today, yes (sadly). Though I'll note that I don't think that Adolin's story is just fanservice. While we obviously can't get Szeth's story heading to Shinovar before the overarching plot is ready for it (with connections to events known and unknown to us), we could still get character development or even subplots about or involving him. He could be a player in events of RoW, even if not the central or decisive one. Instead he spends a non-trivial amount of in-world time doing next to nothing, an extra instead of a star or even supporting character. It's possible that the structure and plan for Stormlight is the best possible one, and that there just wasn't another way to do it other than how Sanderson did. But I'm not convinced that that necessarily is the case. Either way, after RoW and Lost Metal I'm less trusting and tolerant than I was before. I'm concerned that we're seeing longer and weaker books than might have been in service of books that don't yet exist, a tradeoff that might not need to happen. I don't lay that at the feet of any one character (and certainly not Adolin), but yes, I do think that we've reached a point where individual books are bloating a bit with fanservice (and other things) to fill out generally slower and more diffuse plot advancement.

One other thing I especially liked about this scene is that Kaladin honestly confessed that he didn't do it before because he was afraid and apologized for it. I thought it was really introspective and honest, and courageous for him to express his feelings about that failure so openly. He didn't just do the right thing in the end, he also grew by confronting a fault in himself and his behavior. I'm right there with you! But the older I've gotten the more I appreciate being invested enough to suffer that anticipation at all. Some fiction is nothing but climactic events, and sometimes they're even good, but it's the setups and development of characters and events that tend to stick with me.

Just constantly compounding gold is likely sufficient to overcome any physical damage that could be inflicted on a Fullborn. I'm not sure if we know an upper limit to what that can fix, but when Miles sets off dynamite in his own hand and is fine immediately afterwards we're at a point where physical damage simply isn't going to be enough to put a Fullborn down. Unless you can catch them unprepared and not compounding. But if that's a Fullborn's only meaningful vulnerability, and they know it, then that's unlikely to happen. If you can trap and confine a Fullborn and remove their access to metals you'll be able to cut off their access to more power, potentially forcing them to drain what they've stored until they're as mundane as anyone else (that's how Miles was executed). Anyone can be deceived or tricked, from the lowliest street urchin to Ruin itself. But a prison that could hold a Fullborn with lots of stored attributes seems hard to devise. A Fullborn, regardless of magical strength, is going to be able to compound attributes in ways that make pretty much any attack (or even direct opposition) ineffective as long as the Fullborn can conceive of it. And unlimited access to zinc and copper would tend to let the Fullborn outclass a non-magical person on those fronts, too. We still don't even know the extent of what compounding can do, or even some Feruchemy. If a Feruchemist constantly dumps Identity into aluminum, could they even be identified and located? Who knows? I doubt that there is going to be a generic way to stop a creature with such versatile power, and so much of it, without their adversary having access to magic too.

I'd definitely go full secrecy, including a secret identity if I had to use my powers openly. As for what I'd use the powers for... "evil" is probably the most succinct description. (Not really, but I'm sure some would find some of my applications... questionable). As far as tasers go, I'd think that pewter would do a lot for you in terms of resisting them. Really, all of the things that the real world could bring to bear on a Fullborn have Metallic Arts solutions (or at least workarounds), provided that you've thought ahead and prepared. Being surprised is pretty dangerous for anyone.

I'm a bit late to it, but the stretch of WoR you're in now is my favorite across all of Stormlight. There's still plenty of awesomeness yet to come, but I still remember my own first readthrough of these chapters. Out of curiosity, do you think that Kaladin is in over his head as well as Shallan? She clearly is, but I'm interested in how you perceive Kaladin's storylines too in that regard.

Would it be possible for there to be a tiny hole in the aluminum body of the gun, oriented such that it would only be visible to someone holding it (like at the back of the gun, under and behind the hammer)? That would allow for the Vindication-style safety, but wouldn't be very dangerous in a fight with a Coinshot or Lurcher. The vast majority of angles would render the safety invisiible/unpushable/unpullable, except for someone holding the gun. Whether or not that's something that is actually true of the gun, any possible workaround suggests that other workarounds are also possible. A master gunsmith and skilled Lurcher like Ranette is going to be more capable of finding a solution to issues like this than any of us, and so even if the solution isn't presented in-text that doesn't preclude one from existing. But regardless, I think that the above observation that the safety is just not that great of a feature is a good one-- thrown in in the first place as an example of another creative use and extension of Allomancy, but one which never really mattered. It might appeal to a rough-and-tumble gunfighter like Wax, but would be a no-brainer to trade away in favor of something more useful (like an aluminum gun body).

I don't, largely based on Vin's struggles with Ruin at the end of HoA. The Shards were so perfectly matched that each one could block the other's efforts to touch the world directly, and when Vin attacked the result was mutual annihilation. I feel comfortable drawing a pretty straight line from that to Sazed's contortions to hold both Shards. But I've also been thinking on this question recently: how potent are Shards, generally, in their ability to influence the realms in which the other characters exist? Actions like those taken by Rashek, Vin, and Sazed really don't happen onscreen elsewhere in the Cosmere books. We know from some things Odium has said that Shards have the raw power and reach to do all kinds of things, but are bound by (as yet) unspecified rules and risks of consequences. Odium felt that he couldn't harm Hoid in RoW, as an example of the former. And Odium was described by the Stormfather as being unwilling to do some things he (presumably) could do because they would leave him vulnerable to attack. I think that there are good reasons why a Shard may prefer such restrained and indirect action, some that we probably know a bit about now and some which we don't. But it is curious that most Shards we've seen are only a little bit more active, at most, in intervening than Harmony. Certainly they aren't running around smiting individuals or cities. They all seem to be playing the game the way that we might expect Autonomy and Endowment to prefer.

I don't think that Connection is the attribute that would most let you do this, as storing it wouldn't make you less noticeable but might make people more suspicious or hostile towards you (we don't really know what Connection storage is like yet). If you wanted to be more of a Gray Man I think that Identity would be a more useful attribute to store here. You're still noticeable, but could people remember who you are? On the other hand, Identity in this sense may be more spiritual than social, so that may not have the desired effect either. Maybe a combination would work better? You blank your Identity and maintain some particular level of Connection, producing someone that no one can quite place as an individual but who definitely belongs where they are.

Interesting! I haven't come across too much anti-Adolin sentiment, though that probably has to do more with my timing of joining the forums and the people I happen to speak with in person about the books. At the beginning I liked Adolin because he gave a good angle on the story we weren't getting elsewhere, the "normal" Alethi view (Dalinar had his own stuff going on, Shallan is Veden and had her own stuff going on, and Kaladin and co. were enslaved). I also thought he was a nice foil for Kaladin-- talented, dedicated, and a decent person, but with all the advantages Alethi society can offer while Kaladin experienced all of the class-based injustices that society could mete out. I think that his stories have thinned out a bit since Oathbringer, mainly because we've already seen so much of what he's dedicated his life to (it would be hard to have a continued emphasis on dueling and battlefield domination indefinitely), and because events have diminished what made him unusual in war (Surgebinders flying and gliding everywhere, healing mortal wounds, and so on). His new plotlines have brought in additional details that round him out as a character more, but they're nevertheless not exactly about him as a character, nor his development. I think that we will get some stronger developments in those areas down the line but we're not there yet.