Returned

I have zero insight into the particulars of LDS theology, so please forgive any basic errors I might make in that area. But continuity of identity, "self", and personhood are pretty common ideas in fiction and philosophy and I've done some amount of (layperson and therefore not especially impressive) thinking on the topic. I've always found, when there is a theological base for the questions, the concept of personhood and "self" is presumed by the asker to be arbitrary, complete, and defined by God's creation of a being. These leave the concept of "self" entirely separate from issues like continuity of thought or consciousness, personal growth, etc. The usual phrasing I see is that a person is, in a fundamental sense, their soul (typically undefined in the conversation), and that changes in circumstance, attitude, experiences, personal philosophy/outlook have no impact at all on their fundamental identity. They tend to treat the soul as inimitable, immutable, and indivisible, and accept varying degrees of possible differences in behavior based on circumstance. This would address the PM and MM versions of a person: there is no conflict of identity because there is only one person. If you saw a movie and liked it, quoting it to friends for a while, etc., but then forgot every detail about it over a period of years, then saw it again and remembered both the movie and your previous relationship with it (as well as your experiences while you did not recall the movie), it might be hard to argue that you were 2-3 different people just because of the differences in your recollection. You simply remember the first time you saw the movie and your activity around it afterwards, you remember the time when you didn't recall the movie, and you also remember the time when you re-remembered it. No conflict, no identity destruction or merging. The Cosmere setting is arbitrary in how it defines some element of a person as existing continuously (a "soul", perhaps) but also specifically refuses to explain that dimension and so I don't think we can come to a conclusion about what a Cosmere soul really is or what it means. What we do see is a (seemingly) persistent, singular element of a "person" that exists from their birth at the latest and lasting forever. Evi died all the way, but still exists in some sense as herself in the spiritual realm to which "she" presumably went after death. No identity issues there. Vasher's (literal!) predecessor died, possibly all the way, but his "soul" was pulled back/allowed to come back into a constructed body. No identity issues here, either: there was only ever one Vasher, always defined by the presence of his "soul". Kelsier died but not all the way, and his "soul" remains as a cognitive shadow with no transition period nor intermediate states. Again, no confusion, as there was only the one and he never went anywhere we didn't see. The Heralds and Fused don't die in any meaningful sense and persist indefinitely, sometimes with bodies and sometimes without. No conflict, as they never stop continuously existing. I, personally, think that the Cosmere is pretty clear about what a "person" is. People exist in all three realms at all times while living (or "living") regardless of other factors. When a person dies they stop existing physically and mentally, so they stop existing in the physical and cognitive realms, but they still exist spiritually and so still exist in the spiritual realm. This is implied by Evi's forgiveness of Dalinar at the end of Oathbringer (assuming that that event actually happened, which I'm not sure was confirmed). It's less like traveling from one place to another, or changing from one state to another, and more like climbing out of a lake. Your feet were in the mud, most of your body in the water, and your head and shoulders in the air. Once you climb out of the lake you're no longer in the mud or water but still in the air. So because the persistent presence of a "soul", or something to that effect, has been represented as constant and meaningful I suspect that the Cosmere is similar to questions of identity that begin from a theological base: the soul (whatever that is, exactly) is what counts for something being "you", and the rest is mostly just décor. Even a person highly Invested enough to leave a cognitive shadow behind can be evaluated this way: the person existed as themselves, then upon death the "soul" continues to exist in the spiritual realm alone, and the remaining concentration of Investiture kept the shape, memories, mindset, etc. of the person but lacks that foundational element and so it must be a different entity, even if the shadow experiences perfect continuity of identity and consciousness. Whether or not that new entity has any properties besides being person-shaped magic, especially with regard to the afterlife, hasn't been addressed even obliquely yet (unless I'm forgetting something, which I might be!). _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A question that might open another avenue of thought: do you consider Hoid's representation in the spiritual realm visions during Wind and Truth to be a real person? It was purely a construct of Investiture, in a "place" where only spiritual energy really exists, but it was also a perfect representation of Hoid as he was during those ancient events. This includes his memories, but also included enough of his nature and reasoning to comprehend the situation and his own iteration as being a vision only-- a truly perfect representation of Hoid while the "real" Hoid was definitely elsewhere doing different things, and apparently unaware of his SR-doppelganger. Was this a soulless, theologically irrelevant automaton, albeit a very complex one? Was Hoid's "soul" "in" both representations of himself at once, making both real?

*Shrug* If your position is that Odium can simply be ignorant of Nightblood when convenient for the plot (Rayse certainly knew that Nightblood existed, and knew that he was on Roshar, after Oathbringer), then that ignorance becomes a fair explanation in all cases, including this one. The ability to hatch a scheme at all isn't what I was referring to but rather that Hoid is one of the best and most capable schemers in the Cosmere over a period of millennia-- Szeth doesn't even come close to comparing. After re-reading that section of the book, the definitive answer seems to be that the thing identifying Hoid as dangerous is the Odium Shard itself, not Taravangian, and the Odium Shard got through its experience with Nightblood just fine. Great, in fact, since Rayse wasn't a good fit for Odium any longer at that point while Taravangian was aligned very well with it. Here's the relevant section for anyone that doesn't have a copy of the book handy: Hoid refers specifically to "the power that Odium holds", which is pretty unclear. Presumably Hoid is referring to the Shard, Odium, but that's not obvious-- he could also be referring to the being Odium, as Rayse styled himself and Hoid may have believed Taravangian would continue, but in that case he would definitely be referring to the Shard. It's that "power that Odium holds" that will identify Hoid as the only thing that can harm "him" (not clear what the antecedent of the pronoun is here, but Taravangian makes the most sense to me). The "power that Odium holds" is also described as about to vaporize Hoid due to the fact that it "bears a grudge", which strongly suggests that Hoid is describing an emotional motivation and not a logical one. It's also telling that Hoid says "It's going to vaporize me" and not "he is going to vaporize me", implying that this is the power itself lashing out and not the vessel directing it to do so. The contrast between the power bearing a grudge and stating that the vessel had changed highlights that this is not Taravangian's idea. So that's probably the answer, based on the text itself: the Shard doesn't care about Nightblood because Nightblood isn't in any way a threat to it, but it does care about Hoid (probably for reasons we haven't seen in any of the books yet, given their long and un-narrated history). How accurate the Shard's assessment is, I can't say.

It's a tantalizing bit of reasoning to think over. If we want to take Hoid at his word, maybe it's Nightblood's relative lack of agency and control over himself? Like, Taravangian remembers using Nightblood on Rayse and resolves to never, ever be anywhere near Nightblood again, thereby controlling the risk, whereas Hoid can (and has, and probably still does) scheme against opponents?

If ever there was a planet thematically suited to Autonomy... A rogue planet would probably fit into the Cosmere pretty well since physical location is much less relevant to getting around and interacting with other people. And we know that a Shard can move a planet around, if it feels like doing that. Perhaps a certain, hidden Shard is working with exactly that! As for magic and perpendicularities, I think that depends on which Shard (if any) has Invested itself there. A Shard almost guarantees a perpendicularity, and it seems like magic systems are what Shards want them to be (with at least some conceptual connection to their central concepts). So I don't think that the magic system would have to depend on the planet at all, in the same sense that Metallic Arts have nothing in particular to do with Scadrial's planetary features, though it would of course be used in ways that complement or respond to the planet. I, personally, would want the magic system of such a planet to be really different from what we've seen elsewhere and so things like manipulating heat or producing food would fall flat for me. Stormlight Archive, with it's closeness to the cognitive realm and Soulcasting, has burned through a lot of the ground any "magic makes the technology go"-type approach could cover. And Mistborn's "it's too cold for us without magic" has covered a lot of environmental responses. I like the idea of something interacting with the planet's solitude, or maybe closeness to the galactic core, but I'm having trouble thinking of more details. Especially since hundreds of generations of inhabitants might not see any change in the planet's isolation relative to anything else. How about: Isolatry. Investiture accumulates, naturally but slowly, in the habitable areas around the core of the planet, which includes both aquatic areas and air-filled pockets. Individual people can attune to that Investiture, and concentrate it within themselves over time. But that process is disrupted by others being nearby, with the result that any gathering of more than a few people in a square block or so are just barely able to use any magic at all. This results in a major social organization with cities of "ordinary" people who can't do or interact with magic at all, while others prefer isolated, hermit-like lives in which they develop their powers. In times of great need the settlements can reach out to the hermits for aid and hope to get a favorable response, but any degree of interaction frustrates the magic-accumulation process and so contacting the hermits both interrupts their own plans and methods while also frittering away the powers they can command. Conversely, the hermits can't do a whole lot to control or even influence the communal folk for the same reason. I can imagine some fun and interesting social structures that might develop to deal with these conditions, to allow contact and communication at varying levels while preserving as much capacity for magic as possible in specific people. What the magic can actually do and how it works... well, I guess that doesn't have to be as tightly thematic as the system itself. Maybe I'll think of something interesting-- it could happen!

They might be able to work something like that out. That's more or less what Dalinar learned to do near the end of Oathbringer, though I recall that among knowledgeable beings there was something surprising and unusual about his ability top open a perpendicularity and so it may not be available to Navani. Even if they could it wouldn't necessarily be Stormlight they got (it seems like that was Honor's form of Investiture-as-power, and he's gone/subsumed into a being who may not want the Radiants to have any). But pure Investiture would probably be an easier form to work with for their needs than other form borne of a hostile being (Spitelight?).

These look great! I especially like the spear and Nightblood.

Does it work that way, by intensity rather than polarity? The Ars Arcanum (as best I recall) suggests that having more Connection improves positive feelings and trust, increasing both people's awareness of you and trust in you. That implies that negative sentiment, like hatred, would be counteracted by tapping Connection and enhanced by storing it. But that seems like a limitation of the skill of Connectors we've seen so far, without any direct examples of Feruchemists using it, and I doubt it's so flat and straightforward. Can we extrapolate from other power sets, maybe Shai as the Beggar or Dalinar/Ishar?

It is an interesting question! I doubt the answers will be too satisfying, especially given the explanation we already have. It's a fundamentally magical place and, most importantly, is specifically distinct from the physical realm in its basic composition and philosophical orientation. We should maybe be mildly surprised when there are similarities to the physical realm, not assume that it's basically the same as a totally different plane of existence. Expecting fundamentally physical interactions and relationships seems like the wrong basis. I would think that there's something like an observer effect involved. Like, when Dalinar and co. went to the spiritual realm they experienced (variably) things like position and time even though we have been told that neither of those concepts exist there. Maybe a thinking being's presence there is enough to sustain themselves by manifesting not just air but your air when you draw breath, temperature and pressure appropriate to you but not physically imposed outside of yourself. I wish Shallan or Jasnah had narrated their perceptions more clearly, as I'm sure their training and inquisitiveness would have led them to think about questions like these. We don't hear Shallan note that the air pressure is different at different elevations, for example, but that doesn't mean that they aren't, just that she wasn't described as noticing them.

I didn't like him much, either, though the biggest issue for me is that we don't see enough of him or his life experiences for him to be a proper character. A lot of what he says sounds to me like someone who might have wound up as a Radiant but didn't because he couldn't overcome his failures/traumas/whatever else. Him just alluding to those things doesn't give us anything to really think about, though. We'll probably never know because his story is done and his end too pathetic and inconsequential to warrant much more detail from flashbacks. Maybe we'll learn more about him and his life from the flashbacks of others in the next five books. I do think that his motivations and mindset aren't necessarily as awful as you describe, although I certainly disagree with him and don't approve of his methods or perspectives. He really was a capable general, by all reports, and did well at what he was assigned (he didn't choose to oversee those border squabbles, he was ordered by his Brightlord to do it). He's diligent even when he's insincere. The petty jealousy I don't recall, though it's believable. He was definitely not a great guy. But (again, for me) he was too poorly developed and thinly portrayed to really hate him. I will agree that he sucks.

I like that angle as you describe it and am definitely looking forward to more of her perspective in the future. I'm still hoping for a bit more text instead of subtext, but I feel very confident we'll get it and that it will color my impression of her on re-reads afterwards. As her own thing she probably has more going on than I've properly received, but so far I've been more invested in the overall stories and less in Lift herself since she's so similar to where she started. Do you have any specific changes or developments for her that you're looking forward to? Are you dreading her losing some of her... not quite innocence, but... youth? (I'm almost officially old now, so I've lost some touch with a character like Lift).

This idea has me thinking: trading for Light from Shadesmar will have a variety of practical problems (willing traders, who will have their own problems getting Stormlight, for example). So until the conversion problem is solved the only reliable options would be like those that @Trusk'our has outlined for when you must have Stormlight and nothing else will do. But these methods are inconvenient at best and probably not terribly high-yielding. With that in mind, how much Stormlight would you have to be able to get from one of these methods to be worth the trouble? Conversely, with Stormlight in such short supply what tasks would be critical enough to justify using some? Assume that any of the methods suggested in this thread will work, and attach any yield of Stormlight that you think is reasonable for them. I have to think that a planner like Navani will accumulate as much Stormlight as she can and store it away while she works on the problem. But I'm having trouble thinking of a problem severe enough to use such a precious resource, outside of an immediate, existential crisis.

I can't speak for @bmcclure7, but I'm mostly referring to the sapient spren in Shadesmar. Compared with humans they are a totally different type of being with a radically different environment, lifestyle, and mode of existence. But most of them are just folk, like anyone else on Roshar, and some even less strange than some humans (what little we saw of the Tukari seemed less like the Alethi ambassadors than did the Honorspren at Lasting Integrity). There's nothing wrong with them having a lot in common with humans (and similar physical realm beings). I just expected less overlap based on earlier depictions of the spren and their home, and hoped for some interesting differences in how they think and behave. Instead, they're not much more different from humans than the Alethi are from the Herdazians or the Azish. Again, that's OK (maybe it's even the point), but I had hoped for more novelty, originality, and worldbuilding around the spren than what has happened so far. The bonded spren are more of a mixed bag, and I'll agree with your suggestion that their advancing bonds influence their minds (possibly in specific ways which would make them more human-like than might otherwise be the case). Syl is very human-like while Pattern seems to have some fundamental differences of thought and perception from Shallan which come up from time to time. Ivory seems very human-like, as long as the human in question is Jasnah. Dreaming-though-awake seems like they might have some interesting, non-human perspectives and habits, though we don't see much of them. The Stormfather's "I'm just a guy, like you" reveal is a case of its own, but most spren don't have that same narrative role.

It's an interesting idea, and I think that maybe it could work (though there are some strong assumptions in the plan that I'm not 100% sure I'd sign on to). I can think of a couple of issues that might interfere, or at least might be worth answering: Scale. Against effectively infinite power, would storing some of it an ounce at a time make a difference? Intent. Sazed muses that Ruin's nature might influence how atium (the era 1 variant, at least) operates even when used Allomantically. If we somehow changed the stored weight to be meaningfully Ruinous weight, could we still rely on it to be inert enough to weaken Ruin? Secrecy. Ruin can't see through metal, so storing metal underground in metal-rich caves while also running a distraction scheme suggesting the atium was elsewhere was effective. Hiding a Hemalurgic being to whom you deliver food and metal seems easier to detect. There is at least some reason to think that Ruin would still be able to influence the Koloss, too, especially with extra spikes for iron compounding. Scope. Is this even how it works? The amount of power used by Allomancers seems utterly irrelevant to the amount a Shard has. What did make a difference to Preservation and Ruin was the amount of themselves they permanently installed in Scadrial. Preservation's permanent investment was mostly in humans, with just a handful of lerasium beads and the mists/metal at the Well otherwise manifesting physically. Ruin's manifestation was the atium geodes in the Pits. It seems like Ruin's primary issue was not knowing where the atium was-- finding it was his big priority, and once it was all burned his schemes were ruined (appropriate!). The direct, physical manifestation of Ruin in atium might be different than some expression of the Shard's power stored in a container, and even if it didn't do we think that the Ruin-as-stored-weight is different from Ruin-as-atium in terms of weakening Ruin himself? I'm not certain.

I agree. The old air of mystery counted for a lot, too, and was always likely to be changed as we saw more spren-related things (that's Sanderson's way of writing), but spren as a category of being do seem to be different from how they were presented before. They're a lot like Star Trek aliens now: basically human in every meaningful way (never mind the outfits and a splash of makeup), sometimes temporarily organized around some theme which occasionally makes their behavior marginally different from human (but only when it's convenient for the plot). Now that there is regular communication with Shadesmar and spren communities maybe we'll get some more story and depth that brings some of that alien-ness back

We're on the cusp of Cosmere-dwellers discovering significant inter-Investiture form conversions, so I'm skeptical that future plot developments will go too deeply into mechanics of getting just one type through a slow, laborious process. The state of play on Roshar seems like it will seriously limit Radiants' abilities to operate outside of Urithiru, while the value of Investiture not linked to a specific Shard's intentions and Investment in a place is clearer than ever. I predict that Stormlight will be scarce enough to deflate the magic power inflation Roshar experienced in RoW and WaT, and that most of what we see of it will be Towerlight that has been processed and converted or will be something like the jar of Dor from Secret Histories. I think that @Jult has the right of it. The smartest scholars in the Cosmere are mostly stuck inside of a place that has ample Investiture of almost the right type, a very strong (perhaps existential) interest in converting it to exactly the right type, some experience in performing those conversions, and a fair bit of time without more urgent priorities (maybe arguable, but I think this is true enough). Investigating how to siphon off scraps of Stormlight through convoluted methods might still be attempted but it seems (to me) unlikely to produce useful quantities and clearly less promising than researching a conversion scheme. If the Rosharans need a lot of power in a hurry I'd wager they're more likely to trade with the bankers in Shadesmar for some of the stores they have, and Shallan is conveniently located to help.

The Eternal Sky books by Elizabeth Bear have an interesting setting with a lot of depth and thought put into it, though the magic might be a bit soft for what you're after. The Great Way books by Harry Connolly were also interesting and on par with some of what you've listed in a lot of ways, though again the magic system might be too soft if you're comparing it to the Cosmere.

I wasn't referring to identifying metalborn in the first place, I was referring to a given employer identifying and attracting metalborn suitable to specific employment and then locking them into it. I'm also not suggesting that there isn't an answer to that question, only that identifying a six year old pewterarm -> long-term employment of that child as a bodyguard has some missing steps which are important to their actually staying in the job. I can imagine inducements that would do the trick, though I question if they would be attractive enough to reliably work while also being affordable enough to scoop up a sufficient portion of the metalborn population. Me too! This is the kind of worldbuilding detail that really makes Sanderson shine compared to a lot of other authors, when he does it. I was disappointed to that we didn't get more detail in era 2. Hopefully era 3 includes a lot more, and I feel like it should (with expanded medallion production). I don't see why they couldn't have refrigeration now that they have electricity (though Wayne's funding of Sophi Tarcsel seems to have caused an irregular jump in technology, which makes it hard to judge). Even still, the issue isn't whether or not fresh food is better than frozen, it's whether or not it is enough better to justify the cost of a pulser (cadmium + their time) with an economy that can (and will) support that additional cost. Fresh strawberries are much better than frozen ones, but I wouldn't pay $60 for a pint of them when frozen ones are $3, to use an example with made-up numbers. There's always an upper end of the market for luxury items but the size of that market in Northern Scadrial is unclear-- how much money is available to chase luxury goods like ultra-fresh food, and is it enough to sustain many pulsers? Maybe, but it's not obvious to me that it definitely would be. This sounds crazily expensive if it's the best opportunity for a slider, especially to get a two-minute edge. Again, I'm not saying that no one would want the service or that no one would want to pay for it, but rather that the economy is only going to be able to support so many sliders doing it. Lots of people would love to have a personal concierge doctor on-call for them, at all times but very few can afford that, so relatively few doctors can make their living that way at some arbitrary level of income. As for the coinshot couriers empirically being paid more than the police I'm not following your logic (I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I'm missing the argument). Regarding the desirability of metalborn staff, again I agree that they are better. The questions are: are they sufficiently better to justify a enough of a wage premium that pushes them into the middle class for what are ultimately low-skill (though hard to replace) service jobs (which is an interesting question in itself: how much of a middle class is there in the Basin, and how "middle" is it? I haven't gotten a good read on that, but it doesn't seem robust), and is there enough wealth accrued to employ enough metalborn such that seeing a poor metalborn should be surprising or noteworthy? Defining "poor" more precisely would be helpful but I'm not sure it's necessary to discuss the broad idea. The economics and wealth-and-power hoarding of the 19th-century-U.S.-style capitalism that dominates the Elendel Basin sucks up a lot of opportunities for personal advancement and class mobility that would allow anyone to rise, including metalborn (even if they'd have an easier time of it than others). The wealthy and powerful don't really want others to gain in wealth or power, which was a major plot point in SoS. I'd expect any metalborn to have a lot more social cachet than we see, though-- why wouldn't you want Metallic Arts in your family line, especially if you're wealthy and connected enough to marry strategically in the first place? That should be enough that none have to labor as miners, or do whatever a Bloodmaker might leverage their power to make into a career. I'd like to see more of this, too. The world is smaller when nothing of note happens unless the protagonists are there, and the Basin seems like it would be different than it is shown to be if metalborn were more than an afterthought (or even rose to the level of afterthought). Era 2 suffered a lot from narrow focus in a way that era 1 didn't, and while it made for interesting Batman/Indiana Jones-style stories I don't value those as much as a richer setting. If only!

(I'm trying a new format for replying to items in a quote box, please let me know if you don't like it). Some questions: I'm not saying that there are never situations in which a metalborn could command a premium income, but rather that those situations aren't necessarily common enough, lucrative enough, and give the metalborn enough of an advantage that we should be surprised to see a metalborn that is not wealthy or that prefers a different job. We definitely shouldn't be surprised to see metalborn who earn a lot and are wealthy! But neither should we be surprised to see metalborn who do poorly, even with a "valuable" power. 1. How would one snap up guards and guarantee their long-term employment? Even if a metalborn would make a better-than-mundane guard, is that your most attractive option? The comparison to only factory work or farming seems unreasonable. And, crucially, how much more could you earn as a guard than something else? Even if you're paid a premium over regular guards the work might still pay poorly. Is there enough wealth among those who want bodyguards to pay all metalborn prospects well? Probably not, though there will definitely be a high-powered elite who do. And while I agree that metalborn are generally going to be better guards than regular people it's a mistake to assume that you're hiring Kelsier, Vin, Wax, or Wayne instead of one of the countless metalborn they mowed down in exactly that job. 2. Is this profitable, though? Bendalloy and cadmium are expensive, so even a pulser/slider who sells their services at cost will also be expensive (and broke!). A pulser or slider who demands moderate compensation will be more expensive still. For the pulser, how many goods are there for which freshness is so valuable that it's worth the extra expense, even in cases where it's objectively better to use one than to refrigerate? How much commerce is there around those goods, and how many pulsers can be employed in their shipping? For a slider, how would your examples work? Would someone hire a slider to tail them all the time in case such a situation arose? Could someone get enough value out of an extra two minutes' worth of thinking time to pay for the bendalloy and also pay the slider enough that the job would be worth their time? Again, there will almost certainly be some cases where these things hold true but I'm skeptical that there would be enough that any given metalborn, or even very many of them at all, would be reliably able to make an impressive amount of money. 3. Was the courier in SoS wealthy? Or was she just expensive to employ for the business that hired her? A coinshot courier is undoubtedly better than an otherwise identical mundane courier, but how much better, and how much extra money is that worth? Some messages are definitely important enough that delivering it in ten minutes rather than an hour matters. How many such messages do you imagine Elendel has per day, and how many coinshots can make a living delivering them? If there are more coinshots than courier jobs where they can command a premium, we'd expect the pay to be pressured downwards which further makes couriering less attractive compared to other jobs. I'm not sure it would have made a difference-- the Vanishers overwhelmed everyone but Wax's crew anyways. The Tekiels invested heavily in something they thought would work and were simply mistaken about the nature of the threat. I don't see much reason to think that handful of pewterarms and tineyes would have been any more insurmountable for the Vanishers' scheming, or even made a difference in the heist. But the reason I quoted this item is because it made me chuckle a little bit. You don't have to answer, of course, but I'll venture a guess that you are relatively young. Young enough to not remember 2008-2010 in much detail?

I think that there is a huge difference between having a potentially valuable ability and actually making something lucrative of it. Plenty of skilled and talented artists struggle to make a living. Being a pewterarm is great and could make you an effective bodyguard, but bodyguards aren't known for getting rich or living for a long time (especially not in adventure stories), so how awesome and lucrative an opportunity is that, really? We see coinshots working as couriers, another relatively low-paying job. Soothing parlors seem like a good opportunity but the only one we see has a kind of opium den vibe. Idashwy worked as a clerk, which steelrunning might help in some marginal way but also might not. Additionally, powers on their own may not be easy to apply without other skills. You're a steelrunner, and that's awesome. But is moving faster than others going to generate much money all by itself? See the coinshot couriers, again, to see that it may not. If you have other skills that can make use of your power, that's a different story: imagine a carpenter, like Clubs, who can make something great in a fraction of the time it would take another master carpenter. But this requires the carpentry skills first, and the Feruchemy gives an edge but is not itself all that helpful. I thought that this was one of the big setting details and commentary items in the era 2 books. Powers are amazing but the opportunity to make use of them in a self-enriching way is unrelated to having those powers, especially within the bounds of the law. Wealth was concentrated in those who were able to organize activity, and that organization did a lot to create the opportunities in which metalborn powers could be easily applied for money. But then the bulk of the money went to those organizers who paid their underlings as little as they could manage, similar to real-life industrialist robber-barons. Mechanization and technological development further dilutes the unique abilities of many metalborn, reducing their ability to command good pay and other deference, which is valuable to everyone else for exactly that reason.

I don't really agree that the Scadrians are as meek and welcoming as you suggest. There are pretty intense tensions between the groups in the Elendel Basin, and the Malwish have some pretty aggressive and self-interested tendencies, for example. Technology on Scadrial seems far more robust, accessible, manufacturable, and direct, including their magical technologies. The cognitive realm surrounding Scadrial has one of the most ruthless and effective agents and organizers in all of the Cosmere residing there while immortal. Along with a team he's hand-built over centuries which has some implications for keeping Rosharan supply lines stable. Rosharans looking to subjugate Scadrial are in for quite a lot of work. One thing that I'm curious about (which may have been discussed in Sunlit Man, which is still on my list to read) is how accessible spren are away from the Rosharan system. If it's difficult to replace a spren in a spren-driven fabrial while away from Roshar, for example, that's a pretty serious problem.

I am skeptical that we'll get another natural-born full Feruchemist, never mind a fullborn. The heritable Metallic Arts have been getting weaker and rarer. It might be possible to husband individuals to strengthen it again over time but it seems really difficult to do that all the way to a fullborn. With the advent of commoditized Metallic Arts, as demonstrated by the Malwish and the Set, it seems like it wouldn't be worth the effort any more. Buying or stealing stuff is so much easier! Plus, if you're interested in the natural-born route then all your work is for someone else to someday get all the powers and be more powerful than you yourself are. Picking up the right supplies gives you the all the power right now. I think that Kelsier is the most likely from your list, and also the most dangerous. He's interested in power, can always think of ways to use it, and probably has more knowledge about how to work with something like the Bands than anyone else (except for Sazed). I don't think that Marsh has the ambition to bother with it. Sazed already has way more power by holding the Shards, and if he gave them up someone else would take them and could then frustrate whatever his plans might be. Hoid already has so many powers and ways to pursue his interests that it's not clear to me that he'd gain all that much from being fullborn, regardless of how awesome fullborn powers are.

The most succinct answer to your (OP's) position is that Harmony is as smart as you imagine and so all of these potential approaches would not work for various reasons specific to each one. The plans that Harmony executed were the best ones possible given the constraints he faced, whether or not we are aware of the problems with particular alternative ideas. The answers to several of your initial ideas might make one a bit less confident that the situation had multiple solutions which were obvious, simple, reliable, and effective. Wayne's in-universe goal was specifically to prevent the bomb going off in a way which would destroy Elendel. Wayne's narrative arc all but required him to save others through self-sacrifice, especially with his powers. No one's primary goal was to keep Wayne alive, nor to risk Elendel's destruction more than they absolutely had to, nor was there time nor capability to bring in additional resources. The only ways Wayne easily survives involve being OK with the city being annihilated, which Wayne very much was not.

I have to think that Reason would be smart enough to not pin all of its plans on futuresight in a scenario where everyone else is using it all the time. If anything, I would think that Reason is the Shard to rely on futuresight the least both because of how tenuous it clearly is and also because its normal deductions should be superior due to its nature (as I understand it, at least; we don't know what inflections Reason has). Immediately post-Shattering is when the Vessels were at their most human (before the erosion of their personalities by their Shards) and were most able to have and pursue their own interests and goals, so if Reason took off immediately I don't feel confident suggesting why without more knowledge of the person Reason was beforehand. But maybe Reason was one of the "the Shattering needs to happen, I'll do my duty" participants, and doing that duty maybe involves existing and not interacting with the others? In any case, if inter-Shardic conflict was likely (and it seems nearly guaranteed from the start), and is so devastating to the Vessels (most of the ones that we know have engaged in conflicts with other Shards are dead), Reason running off to solitude might be the smartest possible move. Especially to stay clear of Whimsy and its caprices!

I bolded a couple of sections to avoid filling my reply with quote boxes, hopefully it's clear enough and still gets the major points covered. As an aside, did you find this formatting helpful? The bolded sections are addressed by number: 1. Yes, the stone analogy is simplistic, which was the point: it's an accessible, digestible example of future sight not being the only way to predict a future occurrence. That was its only function, and predictions being more complex to reliably make is irrelevant to that point. I'm 100% ready to accept that some scheme might have too many moving parts to be predicted without something to assist, and futuresight certainly can be that thing. But not necessarily the only thing that could help-- a powerful enough computer can track a more complex physical system than an unaided person but doesn't draw from the future to do it. And if the linchpin of your plan is futuresight, then all of my points above become central: it's very unreliable to use as the linchpin of your schemes. 2. I'm not sure I'm parsing this correctly (is there one too many negatives? Please let me know if I've misinterpreted), but Odium and Cultivation almost certainly did predict it. Unless there is an argument that Moelach has better access to futuresight than a Shard (or at least those two particular Shards), then presumably they already know everything Moelach has revealed and a great deal more besides. My suggestion in the previous post was less focused on that, though, than that someone could look at the resources, knowledge, and power on Odium's side vs. Honor's side (to be reductive in the groupings) and conclude that, yeah, Odium was probably going to win. And, therefore, that things he was pursuing and could achieve in victory would also come to pass. 3. Here we may be talking past each other. When I say "futuresight" I mean specific information on what will come to pass, like what era 1 atium grants. This is different from what Hoid does (and presumably what a spinner does) specifically because futuresight provides that information. It's the difference between "I know the outcomes of these events, and will fold those outcomes into my plans to gain an advantage" and "I'll somehow be closer to some of my goals in some way if I do X, so I'll do X and hope for the best". Importantly, the latter seems less prone to interference from others seeing the future (maybe because it's so much less specific?). There seem to be some clear differences in how individuals access and work with Fortune, and what I am suggesting is that if the Wind is accessing Fortune it is doing so differently than how we saw Rayse do it in his demonstration to Taravangian. 4. My suggestion is that they wouldn't know all of that, and that they didn't. The Wind's whole thing could just as easily have been "Odium will kill me, others might not, so I'll back anyone I can talk to that might oppose Odium", for example. And was it the Wind that instructed Kaladin to go to Shinovar with Szeth? Apologies again, I've only read WaT once and it was a while ago so my memories might be fuzzy on specifics and this item seems hard to look up quickly. Other possibilities that don't require much specificity about future knowledge also exist, like "if Kaladin stays here he'll probably die, and since he's the last person who could potentially help me survive I'd like to avoid that, so I'll try to get him to go anywhere else". If we want to conclude that the Wind did have enough access to Fortune, via any means and in any form, to develop such a complex plan based on that access, we're left with the problem that most of the beings we've seen use their own access in pursuit of their own goals have failed. Or at least failed according to what we currently know about their plans and the outcomes. That would suggest that the Wind not only has access but has the best access, enough to outdo every other Fortune-user including those actively opposed to what the Wind was trying to achieve. That is a much, much stronger statement. 5. If the Wind has access to Fortune at all (which, again, I agree is possible) and that access is similar to Hoid's or a spinner's (also possible), then I don't see that it would be useful for a Stormwarden's fortune telling, which is the subject of the thread. It's not clear to me that Hoid can use his ability to determine where other people need to be, but we've already seen variations on lots of other powers. Maybe the Wind's version is one such variation, but even then unless communication between Wind and Stormwarden is really, really good, how would they make use of it? Communication on that level would indicate to me that the Wind is a much more active player in Rosharan events than the book suggests. In any case, we know from Lirin's hobby that math is sufficient to predict a large majority of Highstorms. So I don't think that the Stormwardens were using magic to to make their predictions, and there's no evidence at all that they ever did or could. That doesn't mean that they couldn't be using magic in other ways to other purposes

You don't need Fortune to have an opinion about the future-- mundane attention and reasoning are sufficient for that, though obviously not necessarily accurate. If you hold a stone up at shoulder height and then let go, you probably have a strong sense of what will happen (the stone will fall), and you'd be correct, no magic needed. Honor's death and Odium's unceasing efforts were pretty good indicators of the shape of things to come, and the Wind's omnipresence (?) would allow it to collect a lot of information in more ordinary ways, like hearing death rattles. I've only read through WaT once so please forgive me if I'm forgetting more specific instances of the depth of Wind's knowledge (which I likely am). My point is only that futuresight isn't the only way that characters in the Cosmere know about things or hatch plans to influence the future, yet there is a frequent assumption here on the Shard that almost everyone of note has access to it and uses it, and that it is relevant (if not decisive) in basically all cases. This habit is what I read into your lattermost point: because one thing is conceptually sort of true, kind of, maybe there's some sort of connection that thing has to another thing which, if you squint, might fit in with some other thing which otherwise seems totally unrelated because it isn't impossible. I mean, maybe! But it's a thin argument. The point about cultivating Kaladin so early on is a pretty good one and well-taken. I will make one large distinction, however: access to Fortune doesn't necessarily grant knowledge of the future but instead puts individuals in positions where outcomes they favor are more likely (see WoBs on how Feruchemical Fortune works). We know almost nothing about the Wind and its properties, so one guess is as good as another, but it strikes me as a large assumption that the Wind is tapping futuresight. Fortune might not even be the mechanism at all-- it's every bit as possible that Kaladin is Connected to the Wind, which drew them together and not some scheme. But you have convinced me that there is some reason to speculate in the direction of the Wind having an ability like you describe. Could we tease out what might differentiate one possibility from another? Like, if the Wind had specific foreknowledge, what might we see it do that would be different from accessing Fortune like a spinner might? And how would both of those differ from a non-magical plan an informed being might concoct? No, it isn't. Acting on knowledge of the future changes the future and can cause problems with others' futuresight even if you're not directly opposing anyone, or are even aware of someone else. So "the future" isn't a fixed thing when other people are constantly changing it, which they are, which means that "knowing" it isn't a well defined state in the first place. And as soon as there is interference your futuresight becomes incredibly unreliable, at which point it's insane to have futuresight be the basis for your whole plan. Like, if you have a test coming up and could study for it or you could try to divine the right answers, it might seem like divining is the way to go. But if the divining isn't reliable then it's a worse idea to do that than to just study in a more conventional way. But at a broader, narrative level futuresight is either devastatingly effective or basically worthless and we, the readers, can't know which until the end. So when it suits the needs of the plot, a character using futuresight is completely unbeatable and can't fail. Unless the plot needs them to be defeated, and then the futuresight is inherently unreliable and gains no advantage at all. As a result, knowing a character has access to futuresight provides literally no information and is not different than any other approach a character might take to address a problem. Mistborn did a really good job of playing this out in an interesting way: Vin, Shan, Zane, and Yomen showed a lot of angles on the mechanism of seeing into the future and the specifics of the reliability/necessity/utility of futuresight were plot-relevant on the page. Later Cosmere works have been less impressive to me in that regard: Cultivation and Rayse futuresight-ed their way through incredibly convoluted plans which they could execute only because they had futuresight and seemed to rely on nothing else, but in the end they didn't future-see well enough so they failed in their ambitions anyways. Some advantage that was! And Taravangian got everything he wanted without any supernatural foreknowledge. Futuresight just fails until there is some hard-to-resolve situation that can't be made to fit any other way, and then it just works. Shards, at least, should know enough about futuresight's problems to not rely on it as much as they seem to, but keeping every other element of their schemes and reasoning a secret from the readers (which is very defensible, narratively) leaves us with an impression that futuresight is a lot better, more relied upon, and more powerful than events in-text reveal it to be. The diegesis just doesn't match the exigesis. That's a pretty interesting idea, especially if the Stormwardens doing the diviniation don't and can't know if they're receiving real information or not. Do you imagine this as something that will come up again in the future (the secret society continues, and continues to gain in the future whatever advantages they historically have), or just some extra richness in Roshar's past? I don't have a good sense of when the Stormwardens became a thing, but we may not have many PoV characters who would have existed in the appropriate timeframe. Maybe Navani would have personally observed some of it, or Renarin has some of the mysteries explained to him while the Stormwardens were trying to recruit him?