Eri

It’s been said that Mistborn couldn’t Push on Shardblades since they are Invested objects. So naturally it’s been assumed that Szeth can Lash on Shardplate for a similar reason. As such, I’m not going to put this on the list, but I could if you still want.

I think the problem isn't "why cannot he lash a Plate?" but "why (in his opinion, at least) couldn't he lash while using a Plate?"... Windrunners could.

It's said that the lashing would interfere with the gemstones powering the Plate. Maybe it's because now Plates are different.

About lashing the Plate I agree with your explanation.

Is it allowed to add questions for you to ask in this topic, or there is a quota or something?

Thank you! It's the only one I use.

I think I'd like to try that. Please?

We don't know, however, how big the planet is.

Yes, short stories rocked. But he wrote some (non-Witcher) books after the Witcher saga, and each one was less interesting than the previous.

I've noticed a strange thing:

There are princes, kings, Soulcasters, Surgebinders. We never lack men and women who wish to lead.

The word "Soulcasters" is used here as "people who Soulcast on their own" (as I suppose everyone can Soulcast with a device, and I'm not sure if they were even invented yet). So, as we know, a subset of Surgebinders, right? Wrong. Because it doesn't make sense. If Soulcasters were a subset of Surgebinders, as Jasnah seems to think, Nohadon wouldn't say what he said. He'd say just "princes, kings, Surgebinders.". So... is it possible that Soulcasters were something else?

Yes, it is possible. My hypothesis is that they were a different kind of magic users from Surgebinders (like Feruchemists are from Allomancers) - using a different magic system. They were particulary good, or efficent, with Transformation (I suppose that this magic system also used the 10 surges in some way), so later the transforming fabrials were named after them and therefore now people use the word "Soulcast" as "transform".

Or maybe it was a different magic system, but not based on Surges. Maybe it was based on 10 Essences or something - and all Soulcasters could transform things. It makes even more sense this way.

And I assume their magic was strongly tied to Shadesmar and required entering it.

Observations supporting this hypothesis:

• There is a huge difference between what Kaladin and Szeth do and what Shallan does. She enters Shadesmar, talks with weird spren(?) and cognitive representations of objects. They just do things, quite instinctively.
  
• Illustrations. First color diagram shows Radiant powers, Heralds on border and map from times of Radiants. The second shows some strange glyphs (resembling heads of those creatures), Jasnah on border and map of Shadesmar.
  
• The word "Soulcast" looks (in my opinion) much cooler understood as "cast your soul (as in "cast a shadow" not "cast metal") to shadesmar" than "cast (as in "cast metal" - to shape) object's soul.
  

And I wonder, how Voindbinding fits into that. Shadesmar is kinda void (ok, it's not. But it's all black and dark. )... and Shallan kinda binds it to her will, Jasnah even more. But Kabsal(?) says that Voindbinding was predicting the future. Of course, he may be wrong.

What do you think about it? And if you think I'm wrong - how do you explain what Nohadon said?

Sure I read Sapkowski. But his later books are much worse, in my opinion. I'm not sure if they got translated. I loved Witcher when I was younger, sure. Sapkowski was the first good fantasy writer in Poland, and for some time the only one, so everybody was his fan then.

Now we have even better writers. Check this out if you have time: http://dukaj.pl/English/ReadingRoom/

More SF than fantasy (actually - some strange genre border, a bit like in Mistborn, but far more philosophical), but great anyway. I'm not sure about translation's quality - didn't have time to read and he seems hard to translate.

I actually got the feeling that she also was a... Slider? Are they the ones who use bendalloy? Or is that Pulsers? Anyway, I felt that because Lord Harms would cough every once and a while.

I didn't notice that.

I thought of a Sooter, because most Allomantic powers are good in fight, not in discussion. But Sliders are useful, as we've seen.

Or she may be something entirely else... like a cool steampunk hemallurgical robot made of aluminium (other metals Wax would notice... or metals inserted into someone's body are also invisible? I don't remember) and painted to look like a girl... (that would explain her dullness)

Followers of the Path may have decided not to worship their god, whether Saze or someone else, as a response to 1000 years of being forced to worship the Lord Ruler.

But it's their god that forbids them, they worship him/her anyway.

it would seem typical of Saze that he doesn't want to be worshiped. That's the kind of person he is. Makes perfect sense to me.

I guess you're right.

Aluminium beig inert - makes perfect sense to me. As it is something like an antimagic metal... I wonder if a cloud of aluminium dust could block Allomantic powers. It would make a good explosion, that's for sure.

Or an aluminium foil hat as protection from emotion-affecting powers.

Thank you everybody. I'm not exactly the first person from Poland, I've noticed one person born here, but living in the US.

And in case some of you were wandering, what HoA shares with bad crime stories...

Hello. I'm new at this forum, stalked it a for long while before.

I live in Poland (it's a country in Europe in case you didn't know), I'm interested in:

• some fantasy books (obviously); other authors I like are: O.S. Card, C.S. Lewis and Jacek Dukaj (it's a Polish SF writer, I'm not sure if any of his books was translated to English)
  
• some non-fantasy books, mostly Agatha Christie (good crime stories and Sanderson's books are a bit similar - they give reader some clues and let him guess the truth before it's shown)*
  
• roleplaying games
  
• computer programming
  
• and quite a lot of other things for which I don't have time
  

*However, HoA shares something with badly written crime stories, too. Um... how do you make a spoiler tag?

I love Sanderson's books, have read Elantris in Polish, others in English (I mean published books, not some esoteric ones like Dragonsteel...), except the WoT books. I used to like WoT but I gave up after 8th book or something like that. I like his characters (most of them), but mostly his plots, metaplots, foreshadowing, avalanches and riddles. And magic systems. And how he uses their limitations.

So I'm here mostly to discuss strange hypotesis (um... what is the plural for that?) based on obscure references from interviews and easy to overlook details in books.

Oh, and I have a one year old daughter, who is cute. And a husband, who is awsome.

edit: And English isn't my native language. I used to know it better, but now my only contact with it is by books and (mostly) the internet. So please forgive my mistakes (you can correct me if you like, I won't feel offended).

We also know that there is Travel surge (from some interviev). I guess Regrowth (from Dalinar's vision in "Starfalls") may be one, too.

Is it known, which one is Gravity, which Pressure?

As for Dustbringers - but the opposite glyphs are connected to different orders! BTW I think Dustbringers - fire (in the prologue it seems like they were able to burn things) - Chach - glyphs 1 and 2.

I think Marasi is a Soother. Or the opposite thing, I don't remember them too well. Anyway doing something with emotions. Or other strange things... but I'm quite convinced that they took her with them for some secret reason. And I doubt she's Steris' cousin:

“Cousin,” Steris said.

“Same as . . .” Waxillium asked, nodding toward Marasi.

The three regarded him with confused expressions for a moment, but then Lord Harms jumped in. “Ah, no. Different side of the family.”

I wonder, who(m?) does the Path worship. Saze? Why would he prohibit worshipping him? But I can't think of anyone else.

First - I'm new here, so hi everyone. And sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker. Now to the point:

I have WoK in hardcover, and some things in the illustrations keep bugging me.

1. On the front inside (or whatever you call that - the color picture with Heralds and glyphs) there are large glyphs, representing Heralds or Essences and small, black glyphs, representing Surges. (Sanderson* himself said so) Each of the small glyphs (large too, but that's not important now) is symmetrical - left half is mirrored right.

* or is it more polite to use his first name? I'm not sure.

But when we look closer at the small glyph connected to sapphire and smokestone and the one connected to zircon and amethyst, we can notice, that left half of one is the right part of another. (they have a symmetry like "<>" and "><").

The same happens to heliodor/sapphire glyph with ruby/diamond glyph.

In case you have problem finding them: when holding the book in normal position (with that page on left, map on right), let 1 be the topmost glyph, 2 the top right, etc clockwise. The pairs are 2+9 and 6+10.

This similarity is too perfect to be a coincidence. I wonder if there is some connection between those surges? Or is it important that there are 8 distinct halves (so, when we mirror them, we get 16, which is a quite interesting number)? I can't stop wandering about it.

Or the person making illustrations didn't have time to make 10 distinct designs? (I don't think so)

What do you think?

(And the small glyphs in the second color illustration are quite similar, only with different kind of symmetry. But that has been already noticed, I think.)

2. The map on p 12-13. It shows the equator being north from most of the continent, not south. Which is weird, as southis, by definition, the direction from which the sun shines most... therefore, the direction towards the equator.

That can have two possible explanations:

a) the word "south" isn't used in this book as "the direction from which the sun shines at noon", but as "clockwise to east". They just live on what we call "southern hemisphere" and directions are named for our convinience. Quite possible.

the dominant civilisation came from somewhere in the north... or the continent moved... or something even weirder happened.