Mason Wheeler

Marasi/Suit?

WoB is that the shattering was a (relatively) recent event, as Honor personally has memories of the Recreance that he was able to share with Dalinar.

Where in my description of how Shardblades kill did I say anything about nerves being cut? Please don't try to prove me wrong by refuting things I didn't actually claim.

Why should they not have phones? Over on Roshar they can have texting via spanreeds, but on the more technologically advanced Scadrial they can't have telephones? Also, here's an interesting question. How can the Ascendant's Field--above the mists at night--have a beautiful view, when it's nighttime on a world that canonically has no moon? And all the squeeing over Steris kisses, even though Wax isn't necessarily all that great, makes me wonder. I think I know a three word incantation that can magically overload Feather's brain: Worldhopping Sterrarin Romance

I disagree. The Rosharan people, with no understanding of modern biology and medicine, may say that a Shardblade "severs the soul," but the way the deathblow zone involves the entire spine makes it clear that the nervous system is directly involved in the damage being dealt by a Shardblade.

Hmm... wasn't Wayne just recently asking her to taste him, because he felt offended by her saying humans taste nasty?

The part you don't know: with all the political unrest going on, disaffected youths in the more urban parts of New Seran are starting to stir up trouble. They're starting to come up with angry protestations of all sorts, and even a new style of music to express their discontent. Their music is heavily rhythmic in nature, at the expense of more traditional emphasis on melody and harmony. They call it

Awwwww... that kitty is sooooooo cute!

Wow. I laughed harder at your reaction to finding out Wayne was behind the water tower collapse than I did at the scene itself. I was on my way home at the time and I actually had to pull over out of the fast lane so I could slow down because I was laughing so hard!

Since you brought up Firefly, and you love bad jokes, how does a Reaver clean his spear?

If so, why do they so strongly affect things like bullets, which have no soul? The time bubbles seem like a purely Physical effect to me. (Seeing through time via atium, gold, etc is different.)

I've been thinking. Each Shardworld seems to have a certain distinct "flavor" to it, and to a certain degree at least, these flavors seem to correspond with various Realms. The most obvious example is Roshar. It's clearly a Cognitive-aspected world, with cute little fragments of Cognitive stuff manifesting left and right. Power comes from consciously espousing ideas and ideals and then living up to them. 30% of the Radiants (assuming an equal number in every Order, which we already know is not the case but oh well, close enough) have direct access to a power that transports them to the Cognitive Realm. And our important characters have mental or neurological disorders showing up left and right. Kaladin: Depression Shallan: PTSD and repressed memories Renarin: Epilepsy Sadeas: Megalomania Elhokar: Paranoia Both Fallen Heralds that we've seen so far: Obsessive-compulsive behavior related to a perversion of the virtues that they used to embody Taravangian: Psychopathy that grows stronger as his IQ gets higher Lift: Not sure what to call it but something is clearly not quite right in her head All of the people we've seen who have visited the Nightwatcher received some sort of mental alteration, from Taravangian (obvious) to Dalinar (a hole in not just his memory but the very concept of his dead wife) to that one guy who had his visual perception of the world turned upside-down. Of the three local gods (yes, yes, I know about Braize and Odium, but he's still in the neighborhood and very important on Roshar), we don't know much about Cultivation, but we do know she's strongly associated with the Nightwatcher--the one doing all this mental trickery to people--in some way. We know from Syl, an Honor-spren, that the basic Intent of Honor is to "bind things [and people] together," and presumably the whole "make oaths and live up to their ideals" comes from him. And Odium embodies hatred, a strong emotion. The most important weapons on Roshar are Shardblades, which hurt and kill living beings by doing neurological damage, rather than physical harm. Conclusion: Roshar is clearly a Cognitive-aspected world, watched over by Cognitive-aspected Shard gods. In strong contrast to Roshar, we have Scadrial, which is a very Physical place. Its gods have Intents of physical destruction and physical preservation. A person gains power through their bloodline, (as a byproduct of the physical act of procreation,) or less commonly by stabbing something big and solid into someone and stealing their power, then physically sticking it into yourself, and again blood is involved, both in the name (if you're familiar with Greek word roots this is immediately obvious) and in the manner of preserving Hemalurgical spikes. Also, a physical substance (metal) is required for all uses of Scadrian magics. We don't have little Cognitive ideas manifesting in the world; instead we get Investiture itself floating around as mists, a physical substance that can be interacted with. While powers exist that touch on all three realms, the Physical powers seem very heavily represented. All the most awesome things our heroes do seem to happen while flying, for example. It becomes quite obvious once we get to the Wax & Wayne books where there are no Mistborn with all the powers that we're focusing on Physical powers: Wax's powers are to Push with Allomancy and store physical weight/mass with Feruchemy. Wayne's are to change his physical progression through time with Allomancy, (and Marasi too!) and to store and tap physical health and well-being. Also, our first villain, Miles, was a gold compounder. Gold is all but useless for its Spiritual Allomancy; what makes it so powerful is the Feruchemical (physical health) side of things. And when we end up fighting the Set, we see various different powers from all across the spectrum, but a lot of Coinshots and Thugs! Despite Harmony's lamentation about slow progression, Scadrial is the world where physical science and technology seems to be advancing the most. Nalthis is a very Spiritual place, with a God whose Intent is to give away Spiritual blessings of Investiture, and magic that deals with taking inanimate objects and Awakening them--putting a living spirit in them, using inherent Investiture that is drawn from the spirits of living beings. (It's worth noting that in ancient Hebrew, the words for "breath" and "spirit" are the same. Hence God formed man out of inanimate clay and put a spirit--the breath of life--into him to awaken him.) Seeing the future is a very important part of Endowment's plan for the physical Gods she places among men. Sel, on the other hand, seems to be a realmatically balanced place. There are several different versions of magic there, but they all seem to be based on Connection to a physical land, and rely on forming physical symbols to create effects. We see that it's possible to draw forth magic from the Dor by the use of Spiritual sacrifice (Dakhor) or Physical blood sacrifice (the Mysteries, presuming there's actually any power in them and they're not just a silly cult,) but knowledge, understanding, and logic (Cognitive stuff) are very important to be able to use Selish magics efficiently. The Shardic gods of Devotion and Dominion are all about ways that people relate to each other--Connection, which is a very Spiritual thing--but their world doesn't seem like a highly Spiritual place the way Nalthis is. Also WoB is that on Sel they have better knowledge of Realmatic Theory that most other places. Perhaps this is because they're equally aspected towards all three Realms? Anyway, this is my theory. Any thoughts or comments are welcome!

Continuing to call Edwarn "Suit" fits with the wordplay theme. We've already got main characters named Wax and Wayne. Now we have a rivalry: Mr. Law vs. Mr. Suit!

Oh, are you one of those fanfic writers who does horrible things to a character so that you can then have a reason to comfort them?

...unless they're Renarin! Also, with the way you talk about Lessie in the intro, I'm already looking forward to seeing your reaction to the Big Reveal.

My take on the infamous "please gag him" scene: Renarin happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As you've noted (and lamented!) throughout the reading, Shallan didn't spend barely any time with Renarin. She doesn't know him, she doesn't even know as much about him and his "blood weakness" as Kaladin does, let alone the rest of his family. Here Shallan is, with two highstorms and a voidbringer!Parshendi army raging outside, under a tremendous amount of pressure with the metaphorical weight of the world on her shoulders, literally trying to head off the downfall of civilization itself, and the guy with her, who is supposed to be a mighty Shardbearer, a paragon of power and manliness within their society, is having a fit! From her perspective--not knowing what the readers know about him--it obviously looks like he cracked under the stress. This is the last thing she can afford at the moment, so she blurts out "someone please get this distraction out of my hair before he ends up getting us all killed!" And TBH it's hard to blame her for thinking that way. Put yourself in her shoes, not knowing anything about Renarin; what would you have done?

WRT Darkness being a Herald, I was actually not surprised by that one. I had read the Lift chapter when it came out early. Then when the book was released, I got to the interlude where he finds and kills the healer proto-Radiant guy (too lazy to look up the name at the moment), and I thought, "Hey, that's the same Inspector Javert guy from the other interlude, isn't it?" And then I thought, "He's hunting people down in an extremist perversion of the ideal of Justice. Now, we've got Shalash destroying works of art, and she's supposed to be the Herald of Creativity. And so the Herald of Justice is... *flip to back of book, look at Ars Arcanum* Argh, it's not there! *look on the Coppermind* Nalan. OK, so I bet this guy is Nalan." It would not surprise me, as the series continues, to find the other fallen Heralds engaging in activities that embody their traditional virtues either taken to horrible extremes or inverted (betrayed?) in some terrible way.

I agree that a GoT-style Stormlight TV show would be great. Just... not now. We don't have nearly enough of the story written yet. Once we get the 7th or 8th book, though...

"All aboard the U.S.S. Black Kadolin." Hmm... Black Kadolin. Black Kadolin. Hmm... kado-black? All aboard! Scadrial may have its 1920s motorcars, but here we ride in style, on a brand new kadoblack! In chapter 57, you keep complaining about evil, destructive spikes in your computer. You've obviously got a Hemalurgy problem somewhere...

With all the disappointment over how well Shallan and Adolin get along, and the general lack of Shallarin ship fodder, I keep wondering, "does Feather not realize this is an arranged marriage in a Brandon Sanderson story, and is therefore contractually required that they end up being absolutely perfect for one another?" (See also: Sarene and Raoden in Elantris, Siri and Susebron in Warbreaker...) Also: "You know what an axe is, but do you know what a hound is?" "Nope, never hoid of such a thing!"

It wasn't intended as a fanfic; it was supposed to be a joke. And no one seems to get it. I feel old all of a sudden.

Edited to embed the symbol in the post. It should make more sense now.

It's truly remarkable what the Scadrian researchers have accomplished in just a few short centuries! As they further develop their Allomantic and Ferruchemical technology, they begin to move out into the vastness of the Cosmere, exploring other worlds, encountering new wonders... and new horrors. One derelict exploratory ship was recently recovered, its crew vanished without a trace, its hull badly corroded. What little Command was able to recover from the ship's logs speak of a terrible predator, dubbed the Mistroid, a floating beast with the ability to leech Investiture from the ship's drive and its allomancers in a manner very similar to the Larkin of Roshar. Neither their weapons nor their magics were able to affect the creatures in any way. Increasingly frantic log entries speak of the crew being hunted down one by one by these "Mistroids." There is a brief hopeful interlude in the log entries, in which their damaged ship was docked with by a much smaller craft of unknown origin. It describes a single figure inside, clad in what, by their description, must be some sort of Shardplate, bright yellow, and wielding an energy cannon of some form. This warrior--the name given in the log entry sounds like 'Aaron Samuels', though it's difficult to be certain--hunted down the Mistroids and drove them off, but after his departure, the predators returned. The demise of the crew came swiftly after this point This strange Allomantic glyph was found scratched into the bulkheads at several points on the ship. What it represents is completely unknown, so far. There's always another secret...

Aside from Feruchemical storage of body heat, is there any Cosmere magic that we're aware of whose effect is to chill something? (I know there's an Aon for fire; is there one for ice?)

Do any other Shardpools--perhaps ones belonging to dead Shards such as on Sel--accumulate power on a cyclical basis like Preservation's did? Or was that effect unique to the prison used to trap Ruin? Has anyone else ever gone around impersonating Hoid and pretending to be him? WoB is that Hoid and Kelsier don't get along well, to the point that bringing them together would result in "murdering" occurring. After Secret History I can understand why, but have they had any interactions with each other since then? Can a Shardblade cut aluminum? (And are the Shardblade training edge-liners made, at least partially, from aluminum?) Why does aluminum act as a shield against mental allomancy, but not physical? (ie. tinfoil hats work, but Coinshots and Lurchers can still Push and Pull things encased in it, as seen with the aluminum gun that Ranette made with a switch inside that can only be activated by Allomancy.) Would a sufficiently knowledgeable Scadrian scholar name the metal that a Shardblade is comprised of "Tanavastium"? Can Zahel suck Stormlight out of gems the same way Radiants and Szeth can? If not, how does he feed on the local Investiture?