SpinningSky

Hello, This idea started as a silly almost "fanfiction" over on Reddit (some of this is verbatum from there), but truth is the more I think about, the more I like how it closes Kal's arc, I think it's pretty cool and something Brandon might pull. I decided to hop over here hoping to see how this could canonically work with you, fine scholars of the shard! I am quite happy with some of the ideas I have, it's possible but wouldn't go as far as to say it's likely, I'll appreciate any feedback to either deny or confirm it. the premise the only 5th ideal we know is that of the Skybreakers. According to it, the radiant becomes the law, this of course requires almost a sacrifice of one's humanity to become a pure embodiment of the ideal (which is no problem for a mad Herald of course). If we assume this to be the case for Windrunners as well, I think it would be a very bad ending to Kal's arc to have him give his humanity away to an extent, I think it would be horrible to end Kal's story with any act of self-sacrifice really. my outline During the book (WaT), there starts to be a general understanding of the sacrifice any 5th ideal would require. Kal feels he is ready to speak it, buy Syl kind of avoids the topic, she's even more defensive than usual about ideals. In the meanwhile in Urithiru, Dabbid is starting to come out of his shell and gets some help at Kal's psych ward. He also gets a new friend: Notum the Honorspren. While he's not willing to bond a radiant, Notum decided, to try and come to the phisical realm in his congitive form (yes, it's a big leap) , he and Dabbid get paired up because the spren needs his help with some physical things, the two "bond" in a friendly way, Notum appreciates the "straightforwardness" of Dabbid, they make a funny pairing. [Skip to the book final climax] They are all together, and to beat whatever they're facing, they need Kal to speak the 5th ideal, but we see Syl is still conflicted, she knows he's ready, but she also understands that if he does speak it, he'll never get a chance to live a normal life. In the middle of this crisis, Notum finally has a change of heart and opens himself up to bonding Dabbid. Dabbid knows the oaths, no one like him has spent time listening to the radiants, and while he never spoke them, in his simple way he truly, profoundly believes them. He stands up, and speaks the 1st oath. Looks at his friends, and speaks the 2nd. He starts walking towards their enemies, as he speaks the 3rd and Notum appears as a spear in hand. He starts running\flying towards the enemies, windspren follow him, he speaks the 4th and his plate forms. Dabbid looks back at Kal, smiles and mouths "Bridge Four". He speaks the 5th, and saves the day in glorious radiance. Dabbid gives Kal the greatest gift he could, the chance to live a normal life, returning the favor of saving him many years back. "Kal had finally saved someone, and that someone had in turn, saved him" Why I like this so much arc wise I think we have two major arcs to close with Kal: -we need to get Kal to feel like he finally saved someone -we need Kal to accept others can sacrifice themselves for him, and be content with where he is without striving for more btw I'm not impling his depression gets "solved", I mean this as "learning to live with it" I think this idea closes both arcs in a pretty little knot, having the first person he saved "sacrifice" himself for him, though this "sacrifice", for Dabbid, is actually an act of self-healing, so in the same scene not only someone saves Kal, but Kal sees how, over the course of 5 books, he saved someone else, giving worth to all of his struggles, as he enabled Dabbid to become the strongest radiant on Roshar. so, canon, few things that come to mind Dabbid: I think this works in terms of Dabbid, matter of fact if you believe this theory, it really feels like he was written with this in mind all along. We have no doubt he believes and knows the oaths, but there's a good reason he hasn't been speaking them Fifth ideal: I don't think I have a strong argument in favor of my premise, given the 4th ideal was about accepting limitations, it would be a bit weird for the very last one to go in the opposite direction. For the skybreakers it's always about giving yourself up to "something" so it's more linear. Notum (or some honorspren): we have no real reason to believe there's a way for a honorspren to befriend a radiant while knowingly avoiding a bond, but for the ideals speedrun there has to be an established strong relationship between radiant and spren I feel, so I came up with whatever might make it work, but again there's no reason to believe it to be likely. So what do you think? cheers

Good thinking! I was pondering this cause it really makes sense for them to be hollow and somehow kept in the air through investiture (so kinda like blimps) Another thought crossed my mind though, what if instead they're repelling each other? could it be that the different aethers repell each other like same charged particles? It would explain how the moons hold each other in place staying still, and how the seas stay separated

For a theory I made I had to put together all of the Lift info I could find, if you wanna read my "notes" the link is in the signature

It would make an excellent movie, both for visuals and because, being a shorter story, you'd need to cut far less out to make it fit! Actualy, this could very easily make an incredible animated movie more than probably any other Cosmere story (I'm for for real-life adaptation for everything else)

True I see your point! My head canon for this is that we use the word "burning" because that's what Scadrians call "ingesting a metal and doing a thing that consumes its matter", but while the allomantic burning is a way to access Preservation's investiture, for god metals you can just use the very concentrated phyisical investiture that way, similiar to how you immerse yourself in liquid investiture to use that. We could say that Preservation got insipired by how godmetals worked to make allomancy

As @trav just posted, it's a matter of how Brandon has decided to define God metals, not what I think they should or shouldn't do Though I believe that whether exactly all of them can be burned by anyone is still up to debate, he wanted them in general to be usable by many and unrelated to allomancy

I really like this idea, but I'm afraid it starts to fall into the mistake of giving him too much credit, at the end of the day he didn't have perfect future sight and that's important in the books. But I really like at least the idea of him figuring out he needed to put dumb Taravangian in the right conditions, and that in the future there would be more chances of him being dumb I don't think that's right though, smart taravangian is very passionate about what he does, just not empathic\compassionate. Odium is deeply self centered, doesn't care what happens to other shards if he gets more power

Best title ever, I really hope hiding that person's identity throughout future podcasts' titles becomes a tradition

The point goes a beyond Lerasium, it's about all Godmetals. Godmetals should all provide different effects and are detached from Allomancy as a system, that's why you need to clarify that God metals work with different mechanics, and pure Atium had to fit with those. I'm pretty sure they'll become more relevant in SA5 and definitly in era 3

So we should specify, not anyone can burn Atium to get its allomantic effect. Anyone can burn pure Atium to get it's god-metal effect, which we don't know what it is. Only mistborn and Seers can burn Nalatium (alloy of pure Atium called "Atium" on Scadrial) to get the Allomatic power. God metals can be burned by anybody, it doesn't have anything to do with allomancy or feurochemy or Scadrial, at least that's the way I understand it. It's just a way to access the Shard's investiture. I think using a metal as a metal mind is something different and you have to be a feurochemist to do so I doubt it's possible for others. Plus we don't know if you can actually store youth in pure Atium

So everyone saw it, looks fantastic I think it's hard to argue with that given how viral it got When I saw it in the context of the show though, I thought it didn't make any sense whatsoever. Her head is fully on the investigation, she doesn't particularly care for the guy or the dance, and she has no reason to be attracting attentions, she doesn't give any indication that she needs to "lash out" to unload tension or something like that. I was expecting something like "She neeeds to create a distraction, since she does't care what people think she does a weird dance". Put the way it was, seemed to be like a "insert tik tok dance here" moment. I liked the show overall, this was probably the bit the bothered me the most out of the whole thing, which is a shame cause her performance is fantastic. Was I the only one bothered by this?

I think most theories floating around will be about how the shards might be divided according to Dawnshards as you mentioned, we know very little of the Shattering and I think we'll be in the position to do some serious theorizing in about 10 years when we're closer to Dragonsteel If I was to give my two cents on your idea, I'm pretty sure we've been told that Rayse had held the shard for so long that he was almost fully lost in its intent, so I don't think that the personality of the original Vessels defined the shards, but the other way around: most Vessels, after holding the Shard with so long, were fully aligned with its intent. I don't think the vessel's spirit webs could be so powerful as to directly influece the Shattering, but again it's absolutly fair at this point to think as you do! PS: welcome to the forum

My line of reasoning is that to manipulate the chemistry of a pure God-metal you need insane amounts of energy and perfect knowledge of what you're doing (due to the amount of investiture\spiritual shenanigans), so pure atium to be alloyed requires a shard, much like you could technically do hemalourgy on your own but in practice you need a shard's guidance. In the moment the Atium is alloyed, it quits being a God-metal and can be manipulated more easily

Even shards not being able to fully see the future is a big theme in SA, so I'm fully with you in saying that we shouldn't think that Smart-avangian could plan everything and knew exactly what was going to happen, indeed it got less reliable over time. We shouldnt do that cause then we'd be accepting that Cultivation can just make humans that have what is basically more future sight that any shard, so again fully with you, we don't wanna break the Cosmere so soon If he hoped to get somehow to Odium or just king, unless he tells us, wil always up to interpretation I guess, but he couldn't have absolute control over it. My point is slightly different though, I'm saying that not the reliability, but the readibilty of the diagram was misleading on purpose. He didn't know for a fact he was gonna become Odium, but he knew that to get there he needed to hide it from himself, and to create a cult around the Diagram to do his bidding around Roshar.

I think that if you mean: "body" as a manifestation in the phisical realm "sentient weapon" as weapons which have a counterpart in the cognitive and spiritual realm (shardblades, nightblood) Then the weapon IS the body you speak of. If you mean attaching the cognitive counterpart of the weapon to a human, I think the concentration of investiture required to make shardblades\nightblood would not be well handled by the poor human, as shown by how humans tend to react when "spiked" by such weapons Or did you mean something else?

So I feel that in most conversations regarding Discord it's assumed that it will be sort of an intent "deviation" for Harmony, due to either: The % of Ruin overrunning the % of Preservation the balance between ruin and preservation falling into instability, thus Discord as opposite of Harmony But I haven't heard people taking about what I've been thinking about, which I find more elegant somehow Harmony + Autonomy = Discord My thought process being, it's not the "Ruin" nor the "Preservation" within Harmony that'll change the intent, instead, with a mechanic that we've seen, what if Sazed was to take up Autonomy's shard as well? You could argue that Autonomy truly clashes with Harmony, and if you try to hold both the intent of Harmony and the intent of Autonomy, that's where you get the Discord. It might not be a true "taking over the power" thing, but just the power influencing him, which fits with Autonomy MOs of leaving traces of herself around the Cosmere, as it kinda looked like it was happening throughout era 2. --- Having said that, here's my fan-fiction outline for this side of era 3, just for fun: book 1) we start Era 3 in the middle of all chaotic things are left unsolved by Lost Metal (more "in media res" start than usual Brandon), Sazed is forced already by the end of the book to somehow take up Autonomy's power or part of it. book 2) Sazed is a wild card becoming more and more Discord due to autonomy's influence, a whole lot of science discoveries and beginning of spaceships book 3) Spaceship is ready. With the help of Hoid and Kelsier (forced to work together) and some of our new protagonists, Sazed manages to put Autonomy's influence to his advantage, fully embraces it, and is thus able to truly act and: - releases all of Preservation power as Lerasium dust in in the atmosphere, making everyone a mistborn - now free to act with Ruins intent, he self-shatters (), thus destroying Scadrial (deeply tied to Ruin and Peservation) and leaving a whole bunch of Ruinspren free to roam the Cosmere and we're left, for era 4, with a spaceship full of mistborn (holding what's left of Preservation) ready go to hunt Ruinspren. a bit like Asgardians in MCU Also, if you ever were to put Preservation back together, they might have to all sacrifice themselves. Kelsier takes up what's left of Autonomy and starts a new level of Ghostbloods, using his influence with Autonomy Agents throughout the Cosmere. Again, this is just a plot-idea I think would be fun, but the fact that Discord is not a "simple inversion" of Harmony I think might hold some water

So I don't know if this is even a theory, as it doesn't really have consequences that might be proven right or wrong, but rather an interpretation that I really like of the Diagram storyline as presented. Matter of fact, I was wondering how many people defaulted to this interpetation, and I was just slow not getting it right away, or if there's anything in the text that counters it. We are told the Diagram is difficult to interpet because Taravangian was so smart on that faithful day that he had to trascend "linear note taking" and instead had to bunch information together in what became the Diagram. What I think makes more sense, is instead that Taravangian's plan was to become Odium since that day, the diagram had to be so complex to hide his endgame from both other people and dumb Taravangian himself. He needed to create the cult related to the Diagram to reach his goal, but its full understading was unattainable for them by design, if super smart Taravangian had wanted the Diagram to be understandable, he would have made it so, but hiding the endgame is vital for the plan itself to work.

So spoiler stream came around, Brandon confirmed that the atium needs to be alloyed and that Sazed will do that before giving it to Marsh, we don't even know wether Marsh is aware or not It's great to be a Sanderson fan

So I was reading the stormlight forum and came across this comment Where a WoB is quoted in which Brandon says he was asked by Marvel to do "Anything" with any charachter in the MCU, but he refused to do Oathbringer. I was not aware at all, and as a big fun facts enthsuasts (watching LOTR with me can be a taxing experience) I wonder wondering what else I've been missing of these tiny tidbits! So yeah the topic is a bit wide, but I'm very curious to see if we can put together a nice fun facts list, what's your favorite fun fact that maybe not everybody knows about Brandon?

Thi is a nice catch! I checked the book, don't have an easy way to post the paragraph verbatum from Lost Metal, but there is no mention of the safety system, only that Wayne shoots everything except the hazekiller shots. However Coppermind says on Vindication: So, while I think it might be a little slip, as I don't recall any mention to the safety system in the Lost Metal at all (and had forgotten about it myself), we don't even need to add head canon to make it make sense, you need to activate the safety to stop the gun from shooting, not the other way around.

I think that many actual in-universe metals are valid options for being "the lost metal", but I can see how you would pick out of those Lerasium at it is indeed crucial to the ending of the book. However as you could also make the arguement for other metals, if I had to pick one interpretation, I say Wayne is the lost metal I explained my reasoning in another post if you're curious

I'm of the opinion that looking into it, with him being a mistborn, there were a few ways he could have survived, but I guess we should settle for the fact that it was the biggest explosion ever none could survive the amazing Wayne explosion But I really think you should remove this post, the title is a huge spoiler, spoiler in the title is against spoiler policy

I can see how that could work! It doesn't convince me fully, we're talking Atium dust, I don't know if Marsh as he is now is gonna get into a lab and properly alloy Atium dust and Electrum, it's not like he can just mix the powders So it can make sense to me, but it seems like a workaround to make it make sense, rather than an incorporation by brandon of the Retcon in the books. After thinking about it, I think he didn't want to commit to canon the retcon just yet and just ignored the issue the composition of the metals are critical for them to work properly in Allomancy, but I mean you could also assume that Atium works anyways because godmetal

So talking about the book title I saw several literal interpretations looking around, and they're probably all correct to an extent. It could refer to many actual metals, I must say there's a lot of scarcity as god metals are the general "need" nowdays After I read the book I didn't really consider a literal interpretation of the title and defaulted to a more metaphoric one, this is how I read it (allow me to feel mildly poetic): I loved, loved, Wayne’s storyline in this. I always liked the character, I have a special place in my heart for the "church of the common man" ch. in Shadows of Self, and his arc in Lost Metal is phenomenal. How he becomes the hero, how it parallels the story told by his mom in the beginning, how, unlike in his mom’s story, the hero doesn’t make in the end, he dies, with those beautiful closing lines. But the the hero of this saga actually kind of survives, because out of the two metals that made up the “alloy of law”, one still lives on, but the other is “lost”. So to me, the Lost Metal is Wayne. Was I the only one?

So I'm pretty sure most of us will be aware of the "Atium retcon", I find myself a bit confused about how that works with what we saw in the Lost Metal. So, what we call Atium in era 1 is actually a blend, not the pure godmetal, otherwise anyone could burn it. Wax made Atium and actual Lerasium starting from Harmonium in his experiment. As we know actual Harmonium was used and actual Lerasium was made, it stands to reason that actual Atium was the other product. At the end of the book, Marsh can keep living (using the compounding trick) because Wax made Atium (which in this case would need to be the tainted Atium from book 1, the allomantic metal). I'm wondering wether I should just let this go and understand that era 1 didn't have godmetals fully fleshed out, or if there's actually a way for this to still make sense, what do you think?