Windrunner

Unless I've missed something, I can't remember a quote where it directly says that Odium is stronger then other Shards. I've seen it referred to as the most "dangerous". That doesn't necessarily imply that he is any stronger then the rest. Sure he's Splintered other Shards, but we don't know anything about the circumstances, so I don't think that proves that he's any stronger then the ones he beat. I got the sense of single-minded ruthlessness and how well Rayse is matched to Odium as the real danger of that Shard.

That's the point. Most Aons don't do anything when drawn wrong. But for some reason, they occasionally do have a terrible effect on someone, the half transformation done by the Reod. We don't know why this only happens sometimes.

AonDor all the way! I think that with enough knowledge you could probably replicate any other power you wanted to. Admittedly some wouldn't be as awesome. If there's some sort of Aon with the right modifiers that can replicate Pushing and Pulling you still would be nowhere as effective as a Mistborn. But the logic and knowledge of the system appeal to me, and I would love to spend years mastering AonDor. I'm not a fighter anyway. AonDor has the widest application of powers that I think we've seen so far. Also, it might be a smart idea to change Skai Symbols to Dakhor Monk. Someone who isn't familiar with the names of the Shardholders might be confused.

The question of why isn't very relevant, in my humble opinion. We've seen equally unlikely things happen before. "God" also says that there are only ten Allomantic metals, but we find a man experimenting with the creation of an 11th, and a lesser noble at that. He doesn't have money to be wasting on this, yet he does it anyway. It's obvious, at least from my perspective, that the nobles aren't too terribly faithful or devoted, Sazed says as much in the HoA epigraphs. It's not like it would even be that wasteful. Sure atium is damaged by stomach acid. It's not instantaneous though. All they really would need would be to swallow it, check to see if they can burn it, and then if it didn't work, throw it back up. Or even use a few tiny shavings like TLR did. Regardless of this, I'm sorry for getting you guys off topic. My original point was this, The Lord Ruler managed to hide a lot about Allomancy from everyone. I find it conceivable that he's managed to squash rumors about copperclouds being able to be pierced. The skaa are ignorant, and I'm sure the nobility is absolutely full of spies. It wouldn't be hard for the Lord Ruler to keep tabs on people who discovered it. He wouldn't even have had to kill the nobles. I know that if I found an awesome magical secret and then a Steel Inquisitor came and told me to keep my mouth shut I would take that secret to my grave.

Yeah, the reasons why some Aons have bad effects when drawn incorrectly and sometimes they do nothing is still unclear. The Rao of Elantris was still giving off some power and the Ien that was used on Dilaf's wife obviously did something. There has to be a distinction somewhere in there. Do you have any ideas?

But nobles? The point has been made that they like to experiment with Allomancy. We've got at least one guy wasting atium trying to make new alloys out of it. You'd think someone would have figured it out. As was previously said, there's a thousand years of history. Some of the people who read Brandon's books were wondering about atium Mistings since around book one. It's a pretty basic question. So there'd probably be at least two or three people a generation with both enough wealth and the drive to test it. Someone should have got it, multiple people should have got it. But no one managed to share it.

Well, in all fairness, the same could be said for atium Mistings. They've been around a while too, but the Lord Ruler succeeded in keeping them all hushed up quite nicely. There's no indication that anyone outside the Ministry ever figured that secret out and managed to share it. Elend, heir to the most powerful house, with plenty of forbidden texts in his hands had no idea that there were atium Mistings until Yomen told him so. I've no opinion one way or another on this question, but it's worth pointing out that the Lord Ruler was a master at obscuring facts and destroying rumors.

I'm not Voidus, but I can answer the question! Brandon was being sneaky on his site. In his store, in the description of three of the Aon medallions (Ehe, Ene, and Omi) Brandon added at lot of cool behind the scenes information about the Aons. We have all three together in the Interview Database here, or if you want to look at them on Brandon's site look at his store. Hope this helps!

We have had a similar discussion to this one before, right here. Maybe some of the things we brought up will stimulate more questions for you guys!

Nothing, I think. These aren't Aons, they have no connection to the landscape of Sel, nor do they contain the base Aon Aon. Also, as far as we know, the Steel Alphabet symbols really don't have any connection with the metals that they represent. The only reason that the symbol for pewter means pewter is because people say it does. Also, the Steel Alphabet is in a constant state of evolution, with angles changing and even spikes and dots vanishing over time. If they ever were tied in any way to Allomancy, they've long been altered too far from their original form. It was a pretty good question nonetheless. It does make me wonder about an Elantrian trying to draw Dakhor symbols... (That's probably nothing too, and now that I think of it, not really relevant to this topic.)

That's more likely. I was referring to the original Elantrians, as those seem to be the ones who would have had to do the really difficult work. They would have neither a city carved with Aons or Seons to base their attempted Aons off of.

What would the reason to RAFO it even be? It's not that shocking of a revelation that Seons have Aons on them. There's no real reason to hide the fact that people just copied them. Devotion and Dominion have been on Sel longer then there have been Seons and Skaze. Since the Shards were there, the magic was probably there as well. Those people would have been unable to copy the Seons. I simply can't see a motivation for RAFOing something that isn't that big a deal. Do you see a reason I'm missing?

While this makes sense, Brandon has pretty much explicitly stated that the original Elantrians just basically guessed at the Aons.

I totally agree with Happyman, I don't think Sazed's changed Allomancy so there can't be Mistborn. Also Ferrings did exist in the past. It's also not 100% due to diffusion of power that Feruchemy has split. Brandon once mentioned that in addition to the lines of Feruchemists becoming more diluted, now that Feruchemists are marrying outside of their own race, their Feruchemical sDNA is interacting with the Allomancy sDNA which has resulted in this fracturing. While this may seem to counter the quote that there have been Ferrings in the past, I think he just means a new development in general, as Ferrings obviously weren't a big part of Scadrial before the Final Ascension. But anyway, no hint of Sazed messing with full Feruchemists, so I doubt he messed with Mistborn either. Brandon's explanation is suitable enough, for me at least.

Those little gold marks are representative of your post count. They go up at certain levels, like rep. The groups you mention are staff groups, we each help the admins run various sections of the site. There's no real application type thing, if admins want someone to be staff, then they'll contact that person.

Hmm, what gave you the impression that Scadrial has more metals then Earth?

I'm no professional, but I hope you don't mind me mentioning something I noticed just glancing at it. You refer to your character by his first name almost always. I think the paragraph as a whole would benefit from using "he" or "his" a little more frequently. But I do like the hook!

I would like to announce that Brandon has written the first chapter of Stormlight 2! I've never been so excited to see a progress bar at 1% in my entire life!

So incredible! I can't thank you enough for sharing such a fascinating piece of information! Welcome to 17th Shard!

We should be okay. There are two Windrunners now, so the Knights Radiant are standing again. I can lend you guys some Dawnshards and we'll be good to go. Do we have any volunteers to be Odium's champion?

That doesn't mean we get to abandon all logic. Sure this is a fictional universe, but it is one with rules that make sense. You're setting too much store in coincidence. This is the equivalent of me realizing that both Vin and the Alethi race have dark hair, and determining that since Vin is part noble, then the whole noble class of Scadrial came from Roshar and that the only reason they can't use Surgebinding is because they are so dishonorable in their actions. Come to think of it, people who are descended from Returned have odd hair colors and so do people on Roshar. Does this mean that they are related? No it doesn't. The saddest part is that I have exactly the same amount of evidence for both those ridiculous propositions as you have for yours. At least Dahak admitted that this was probably a coincidence. Why does this theory even appeal to you? In other words, we're not Mistborn, we need to make at least a little bit of sense.

Well it could explain his power with bronze. As I said before, we have no idea what kind of spikes these were. They could have granted bronze and it seems likely that's what he got but we can't really know for sure. I still think that as the Well got stronger, any Seeker would have been able to hear its power.

If I'm not misunderstanding you, then you just contradicted yourself. The Lord Ruler can't only give Allomancy to 8 people, while not being one of the Original Nine Allomancers. That quote doesn't specify that TLR was one of them, so I'm sticking with my assertion. The way I interpret the quote, "ancient Allomancers" refers to a lerasium Mistborn. It doesn't make sense to me that he would be one of them, for the same reasons I mentioned above. Noble families are proud of their heritage, I'm sure being a direct descendant of one of the Allomancers would be something to brag about. So surely someone would realize that only 8 of the Allomancers were accounted for? TLR wanted people to believe he was a god, he would not have allowed himself to be counted among a group of more regular men. If people realized that his powers were not divine, he would have been in significantly more danger. I understand how you interpret that quote, but in my mind, TLR being counted among the Nine doesn't make sense.

Hmm, by "light-bend" do you mean Lightweaving? I don't think that Kaladin can learn to do that, unless you've seen a quote that says otherwise? Manipulation of light is listed by Teft as a Radiant ability, so I've always assumed Light to be a Surge, like Gravity, Pressure, and Travel. Brandon mentions Lightweaving in the Stormlight Archive. We've probably already seen Hoid do it when he tells the story of Derethil and the Wandersail. The Radiant illusion magic probably works in a very similar way to Lightweaving too, as Brandon says that when two of his magic systems have a power in common, they both do things in the same way. Like how Regrowth and gold Feruchemy heal people in the same way. (At least according to the description) They aren't the same system though, simply an identical power. I doubt, unless it's stated elsewhere, that Kaladin will learn the Radiant equivalent of Lightweaving, both of his Surges have been identified. Did I misunderstand you?