Windrunner

I wholeheartedly agree with Lyre. Gender is never a deciding factor in whether or not I enjoy having a debate or conversation with someone whether in chat or on the forums. I'd also like to point out that there are a lot of people on the site who didn't set a gender on their profile and don't refer to it when posting. You could be interacting with a lot of female members who've decided for their own reasons to keep that information private. Another point I'd like to make is that there are a large percentage of girls who are in the chatroom who don't post as frequently. Theorizing and posting in general doesn't appeal to everyone. They're still just as active in the community as someone who posts a huge theory, but their contributions are sometimes less noticeable to someone on the site who doesn't visit the chatroom often. (Which is totally fine, I'm not trying to guilt anyone into going there.)

I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the Emperor's Soul today. The only word that I can use to describe it is incredible, and that falls woefully short. I read it in one sitting and the story flew by, it was tightly plotted, and never boring. The easter eggs about Sel and the cosmere at large were so awesome. I can't wait to get discussing this, and to everyone who hasn't read it yet, you're in for a treat. Well worth waiting months for.

We'll miss you Zach! It's not going to be the same while you're gone but I'll try to do my best acting as Substitute Quoter Extraordinaire Have fun, serve your faith proudly, stay safe, and come back soon.

Ooooh it's so pretty. I'm a sucker for Stormlight art, and since Shivertongue supports Crabwasps I'm pretty much duty bound to oppose him Two's enough for a Legion, right? I guess Stephen gets one and he's only one person.

I think you're referring to the Order of the Stonewards. It's not explicitly confirmed, but the Plate of the Radiants is described very similarly, so I'd say it's a safe assumption to assume that both Knights in amber Plate were Stonewards.

Peter said on Amazon that the ebook should be released around November 12th, and that Brandon will be doing the same type of deal he did with Legion. If you buy an actual copy of The Emperor's Soul, then you'll get a free ebook copy to boot.

I've been getting back into Reach myself. I'm super pumped for Halo 4. I've been focusing more on multiplayer though, I've played the campaign through in Legendary on both multiplayer and solo so it's gotten a little less interesting. I'm too afraid to try out the skulls though.

I have never had any desire to see Dragon Ball Z, and nothing in your post seemed to indicate that you were joking, so it's not really surprising that I didn't get it. Well considering that you've just said the opposite of what I was trying to say, I guess there's still something left to discuss. I'm going to quote the portion of Alloy of Law that we seem to be disagreeing over. You are saying that Allomancy is stronger correct? The book says "raw power" and while I understand how you are interpreting it, I disagree entirely with your statement that it, "strongly indicates Allomancy wins in a shoving match". I take the meaning of raw as unrefined, not stronger in any way, whether it be in pure spiritual power or in utilization. To me at least, my interpretation seems to fit in perfectly with the rest of the paragraph. The power is a lot less exact and knowledge intensive then the Selish magics. The rest of the paragraph has nothing to say whatsoever about how manifestations of Investiture on Sel require less spiritual energy. In addition to that, I wonder where you get the idea that "high investiture doesn't necessitate stronger outcomes". I'm totally brain-dead right now from my day so it's probably my fault, but I've been unable to come up with an example of what you seem to be describing. Would you mind providing one? My second disagreement comes from how you casually brush off the report information we've received. Sure it isn't a direct quote, but not everyone has a tape recorder to bring with them, or even the inclination to do so. The information there isn't contradicted in the books anywhere, and it fits nicely with what we understand so far. Rereading it, I can't find a point where the post seems "hazy". Until we see something from the books that explicitly contradicts it, I'm taking it as truth, but if you don't want to I'm not sure that I'll have anything left to say. I also am not sure where you've pulled the information that "Elantrins are dealing with a lot of investiture, and that investiture is hard to handle." You mention a secondary source, but I don't know where you got it from, unless I'm missing something, certainly not from the Ars Arcanum or the post.

Only because we don't have any way to detect them. Allomancers don't give off any audible sounds, I doubt that Elantrians would either. Elantris implies that AonDor has similar waves, so I disagree with you here. Brandon flat out says that Scadrial's investitures don't require as much energy as Roshar's and Sel's. I don't see what's left to argue about.

As a former resident of Nebraska, I can neither confirm nor deny visiting the Hoidcave.

I know what you guys are talking about. A new member posted it in the Ultimate List topic. Here it is, trimmed to show only the relevant bits. I don't think this contradicts with the AA of AoL. I interpret it differently then it seems most others do. I assume that "raw power" of Allomancy compared to Selish magics is what you are referring to? I read that as the power being relatively unrefined and unfocused. It doesn't require a lot of study, being more instinctual in nature. If you think about it, it makes sense that the Metallic Arts are the investiture drawing the smallest amount of spiritual energy. Look at Elantrians, Awakeners, and Surgebinders they have so much spiritual energy that they're actually glowing. This doesn't happen to Allomancers, Feruchemists, and Hemalurgists.

I think you misunderstand how Splintering works. Devotion and Dominion have been broken up into tiny fragments, instead of being one massive piece (Admittedly I don't know how the Dor fits into this). That doesn't make the users of their system any stronger. Elantrians, Dakhor monks, people using ChayShan, or (almost certainly) Forgers aren't holding Splinters of the Shards. Those are probably the Seons and Skaze. Am I misunderstanding you, or have I forgotten something?

Yeah I totally agree (although I do still fall in line with the end-positive belief) Awakening isn't end-negative, especially not because color doesn't come back. Metal doesn't come back, Surgebinding gems don't come back. The label end-positive, neutral, or negative seems to have do with what happens to the Investiture in a system, not what happens to a magic's physical component.

There has been destruction of written knowledge in the past. One of Jasnah's notes makes reference to a burning of the original Palaeneum, losing most of its records. Although, that does somewhat hinge on whether it was destroyed during a Desolation or not.

Yep, that's what I was getting at. I don't think Splintered Shards would offer any significant resistance to whatever a full Shard was trying to do. And the information about when Aona and Skai died comes in sort of two parts. This is the relevant quote. Seons don't seem like a recent development, so this seems like a long time ago, at least a couple centuries in my opinion. He hints that Odium could have done it, and maybe I'm totally wrong and Odium is absolutely behind this. There's only one potential rationale I can see here. We know that any person can take up a Shard. It does seem likely to me though, that being a magic user could be helpful in doing so. So if Odium created the conditions for the earthquake way back when, as a sort of insurance to destroy any future users of Devotion's magic. I still don't love the idea, because I think it probably would have worked equally well for him to have just made the chasm then, or even better yet, totally rearranged the whole continent. However, we don't have all the information by far, so I won't discount Odium being behind the Chasm entirely.

Absolutely, this is all one hundred percent accurate information.

I really doubt Odium was behind the Chasm. He visited Sel, hundreds (if not thousands) of years before the Reod. Sure, you can make the argument that he set in motion the events that led to the earthquake, but I think that if he wanted to destroy AonDor, he could have just caused the Chasm. Vin could turn a world in an instant, I bet Odium could put one measly crack in the ground if he so chose, especially if he waited until after Devotion and Dominion were Splintered. Now, I do think that it's possible that he was behind the extinction of the original Elantrians though, for when the Aonic peoples migrated to Arelon they discovered Elantris abandoned there. Brandon has made references to people building Elantris before, so obviously something happened to those people, and I think Odium might have had something to do with it. (And who knows, maybe Dakhor was known before too and he killed them off as well)

There is an answer to the timeline question here. Emperor's Soul occurs a little bit after Elantris but not very long after. I imagine that it probably occurs before Elantris 2 would be set, so that's a ~10 year window.

Context! You're taking it out of context! D:

I don't think that's the way it works dyring but you're free to interpret the quote however you like. Weaker Allomancy is never implied to lose random energy, they can just pull less through the metals. I think Feruchemy decay works the same way, they can just store less, no power just vanishes. Voidus, I was basing the decay thing off of this, from the first chapter after Part 3 in HoA Chaos has made some points to me though, that Marsh could have simply been referring to the relative usefullness between decayed Feruchemy and decayed Allomancy, so it's pretty much up to how you read it until we get confirmation from Brandon one way or another.

Well there are a couple factors at play here. One thing to remember is that while they will be healthier then a regular Feruchemist, assuming they received a fresh spike, the difference wouldn't be that great. If it was an older spike, which often happened as Feruchemists were difficult to find, the resting would still be a good idea. I wouldn't want to patrol Luthadel at 85% health as an Inquisitor. They have an aura to maintain. Staggering around and sickly or having trouble seeing, or shivering, (all things that happen when storing) would kind of ruin that image. So they stay inside when weak, but it takes them longer to achieve a reasonable charge. That makes sense to me. I think you're misjudging the effect of decay here as well. Most Allomantic spikes are driven directly from the person who made the spike into the person who is being spiked. The amount of power lost is minute. Feruchemy however is much rarer spike for the Ministry to get a hold of, so they'll use any they can put their hands on. These spikes will last longer then Allomantic ones do (Allomancy decays faster, presumably because the system is of Preservation) but since they are outside of bodies more often (being used on multiple generations of Inquisitors) they will tend to be weaker.

That's because it was in the book No worries though, it was just a quick mention. Very easy to forget or miss.

I don't think it's strange to have a spike that would just steal a Shardblade. Presumably, some sort of spiritual connection is attached to a person's Spiritweb when they gain a Blade, so a spike would just steal that piece that connects the two. It's possible, since it seems that in the past, Plate could be summoned and dismissed in the same way as Blade, that a spike of the same type could be used to steal the spiritual connection to the Plate as well. Anyways, we were actually having this same discussion in chat last night. The only idea we had, was that the more the spike decayed, the longer it would take to summon the Blade, like 15 heartbeats instead of ten. Also the question about Feruchemy decay has been answered. Remember all the time Inquisitors spent resting? It took them far longer then a normal Feruchemist to store up the same amount of power. Whereas a Keeper could store, lets say, 20% health at a time, an Inquisitor might get 15% or less.

The 17th Shard chatroom is where it's at yo!