Nogo

A lot of Nuke talk here... Sibling can keep every spit of investiture from a specific shard out of Urithiru... I imagine that in a pinch, charged with the proper investiture of their own with a bondsmith handy, that a nuke blast would zip right on around the sides of Urithiru like Kaladin holding back the stormwinds for the innocent people in Alethkar. With the mass power available to the bondsmiths and their massive spren, I just can't envision one big boom (or even multiple big booms) just ending things. I think it would take a whole lot more savvy than fancy big boom weapons. Great thought provoking topic though! We got population comparisons, aluminum production talk, tanks on rock vs soil, skysraper size models, discussing the dinosaurs in Shinovar (yeah, no oil there I dont think). Nice work thread-leader! PS If you've been on a tracked vehicle before on anything but dirt or sand.... yeah, yuck. Tanks in Roshar would be a living hell to tank crews. And the maintenance would be nuts. However, with no mud, the tanks would have no weather limitations to include highstorms. The major mountain areas tho, as all mountains, would be inaccessible. But ouch, I don't want to be in a tank crew in Roshar. No sir no way!

In The Way of Kings, during one of Dalinar's visions, or VHS recordings done by Honor and watched by Dalinar in Ultra HD... Honor says "I am the on you call the Almighty, creator of mankind." or something really friggin close to that. Ok, in WoK we all go "right on dude, God, Almighty, whatever, Ok, got it." But then we advance in time and we discover Ashyn and Braize (Home of the best Braized meats) and the stories of humankind fleeing Ashyn to Roshar. This is where things get dicey. Did Honor create humans on Ashyn? The message we have so far (granted translated from Singers but still) says that Honor was their (Singer) God and Odium was the human God until things changed. Buuuuuut, Honor recorded on his VHS tape that he was the creator of mankind. Did Odium pull a Ruin and change the Eile Stele? Was Honor the God that the humans brought and somehow that was "the void?" I feel like the information that we have does not meld together properly. Have I missed some explanations somewhere about this? Help me (and try not to make me feel too stupid when you do)

Welcome!!! Mistborn is amazing. And it only gets better from there. Be careful of the Stormlight Archive. Once you pick up Way of Kings.... you're gonna call into work for the next week or so. Well, if you're anything like me you will. It's so hard to put down. Also, I didn't see it mentioned here... You may or may not know. A whole bunch of the books are connected in what is called the Cosmere. It's very exciting. I don't want to say more and accidentally say something I shouldn't. Enjoy the journey!

I'm not so sure I agree with the backstory giving validity to people's present actions. Even with Kaladin's backstory... I think his perspective on the lighteyes is crem. Especially as he generalizes them all together. His backstory gives the reason why, but he also was always prone to play the victim. The whole Tien situation shows it. Kaladin assumed that Tien was sent untrained to the front line, but really he went voluntarily to help his comrades. Kaladin was unable to celebrate Tien's glory and valor and honor. He instead blamed someone else (which eventually became blaming the whole ruling class). Dalinar's backstory does NOTHING to make you think he's a better person today. It's completely the opposite. However, as I am rereading OB right now, his first fight at the Rift (33 years ago, I believe) stung him deeply and shamed him. I believe it was the "tears in the boys eyes." Now Szeth is.... ok I give a weird pass to him. That dude... that dude. Enough said. And Shallan, she had a pretty messed up childhood, but what are we giving her a pass for?? She's not messed up, well, not messed up like Moash. Shallan TAKES responsibility for her actions and freely admits to her faults. I'm not sure you can make any backstory for Moash that would make me go "oh, Ok, that's cool. He's pretty much a sociopath but that's alright because blah blah blah happened to him such and such a time." Though, I would like to know if he is naturally a sociopath or if he was turned that way. I kinda think we will never know.

I don't hate Moash. The stormling little cremling pisses me off though! As stated by so many above... it's his inability to accept responsibility for his actions. He's a pus wimp. At the very end of WoR, when he's on the cart with Graves, he has his epiphany moment and realizes that he's been an idiot. Does he do the right thing and walk up to Kaladin and Dalinar and ask forgiveness? Of course he doesn't. He keeps his shards and goes on spiraling down the stupid cremhole that he created. After that... he just rides the winds of whatever and wherever until he winds up being the coldhearted ruthless assassin Vrye. With Odium changing vessels... Moash's life could see a significant change. Remember Graves and his whole plan was part (sideshow part mind you) of the Diagram so Moash is not unknown to Taravangian. Who knows what the new Odium is up to these days. I still don't hate him. I really wouldn't mind if he no longer lived though. Also, I don't see a real way for redemption. Does Moash really have the self-actualization to change himself? Maybe with a whole lot of the above mentioned therapy & therapy groups....

That is an interesting theory! I can't disagree with what you have pointed out. However I have (for no particular reason) paired WoK and OB together with WoR and RoW paired as well. Now this is all just how my brain subconciously paired the books up. In retrospect, I see WoK and OB being more masculine with WoR and RoW being more feminine. Those gender terms are terrible and the absolute worst way to describe but I can't come up with a better way to explain my thought on the subject. It could just be that WoK and OB's storyline has a lot of guys running the show and WoR and RoW have a lot of women. Idk. I can't explain it very well. I stand by my own pairings though even though I can't explain the rationale very well and the rationale above makes good sense to me... it just doesn't resonate with me.

So you're saying that hearing the sounds of Roshar is not done through the 3-bone system, but all their other hearing is through the 3-bone system?

I absolutely love Lift and was so happy that Sanderson made that novella. Also the Lift / Wyndle interaction is just too fun! I love how the spren is basically the conservative parent and the radiant (surgebinder, whatever) is the rebellious child. To each their own. Oathbringer is amazing IMO (tho I know this opinion is not universally shared). You'll be happy you read LIft's story before Oathbringer for reals.

Kelsier is basically I am not particularly sure what exactly those entail specifically, but they seem to be pretty powerful bindings that aren't easy to bypass. With all the identity manipulation we see in Era2, if all it took was a little of that with connection, Kelsier would have thrown the deuces already... but we haven't seen that. Kelsier is not a shard. In OG Mistborn, Much of Scandrial views Kelsier as a god, but that belief has nothing to do with powers that he has/doesn't have.

I think most here would agree that his books are AMAZING! Welcome! Roshar's whole ecostructure is very amazing. I love how after rereading the books so much, my mind actually shifts into Roshar world and I picture rock, crustations, etc etc as I read. When I first read WoK, or even any of them the first couple times, my brain couldn't shift to rock-world, non mammal (*giggles* there's another fairly current thread about this) Roshar. But it's so fun to imagine. Shallan chapters really let that manifest (especially in WoK and WoR). Glad you're here!

Welcome! I'm still a noob but trying to pretend I am old by welcoming newer noobs. There's a poll and discussion somewhere around here about which SA book is your favorite. Ahhh, there it is, I found the link. If you want to vote / comment, there you go. Again, welcome!

^^^ HUGE!!! I have noticed a constant throughout the Cosmere of aluminum being scarce. I drink out of my aluminum can of monster this morning as I type... earth doesn't have this issue. If the entire WW2 war machine aluminized (I made that up) that would change everything so much that my morning brain can't handle it. Buuuut, I love this idea. It's fun to tease out. I agree with the analysis of the responses above for the most part. Radiant > Muggles (even with WW2 tech). But Shardbearers can't hold ground. Not across the mass of Roshar. WW2 armies would run rampant wherever Radiants couldn't stem the tide. Bullets vs spears... ew. Also, numbers wise, WW2 earth armies were massively larger than Rosharian armies of the time. Dalinar took 8k troops to the tower and that was every man he could muster (I believe they mentioned 4k more on patrol etc). That makes 12k for Dalinar. Let's assume 15k troops for each highprince for a total of 150k for all of Alethkar--the accepted most powerful country on Roshar. That's NOTHING compared to WW2 numbers. And the WW2 folks have machine guns and modern (WW2 modern--meaning long range indirect fire) artillery. Roshar would not lose I don't think. But I don't think they could win until the technology levels worked itself out a little bit. Lastly, Atomic weapons don't bother me at all. End of WW2 is far from the "mutual destruction" levels of the cold war. And a simple Radiant commando team would obliterate this stockpile superfast I am sure. Even if it didn't and the WW2'ers managed to nuke some cities... whoopidy doooooo. The blast wave is basically a high storm and Roshar has dealt with 99+ desolations where 9/10 of the world pop gets killed. What's a random big boom in a random city compared to that?

I am not going down the mammal rabbit hole here... but I have to say, until RoW the Parshendi, Parshmen, Listeners, Singers, whomever... were more crustation and less human. Then I saw the drawings in RoW and was amazed at how human-like they are. My mind's eye lied to me until I saw the picture (even though I should have known better by the Shen/Rlain storylines, among others). Random comment about the 3 ear bone thing... do the sounds of Roshar have any influence on that argument? If Singers & Listeners heard through the 3-bone system could they hear the sounds of Roshar? Or are these two separate types of hearing. I don't have an opinion--the question just sort of jumped into my mind. Also--tangent--getting a pic <1MB to post in the profile thing is a challenge that has turned me off from getting a profile pic. <---- Only mammals would say something like that... so it's not THAT off topic.

Such a hard question. Especially since we don't know what all of the orders completely do. I'm not moral enough for a Windrunner, and I don't see me being so Bondsmith is out... I have been very interested in Stonewards and even though we don't have a lot of information about them to date. So i'm going to go with Stoneward. Runner up would be to be a Releaser.

That's a lot of holes in my hairbrained idea. Welp, it was a hairbrained idea. I was hoping maybe you could keep the sword inside as a spike and keep absorbing the investiture until it was super invested. Guess that's wanky. Oh well. Back using a kazillion breaths or bonding a spren.

Thank you Much appreciated

I'm not one to stifle creativity... but I don't think thousands of spikes into a sword is an efficient way to go. Plus, if you kill all the dang Allomancers and Feruchemists you won't have anyone left to spike (children will stop being invested). You got me thinking though... if you manipulated some connection, identity, and got some allomancy and ferucheonomy compounding directly into a hermologic sword, then you just might create your shardblade like weapon. So like basically having someone compounding and spiking at the same time... sucking all that compounding out into the sword/spike. Thinking on that route... if you made a nicrosile compounded blade, would you be essentially an investiture thief killer? What would happen if the investiture stealing blade clashed with Nightblood? Probably 50million holes in that thought process... lets here them

I'm saying that even though having spikes makes you vulnerable to emotional allomancy I am not convinced that more spikes makes someone more vulnerable to anyone except Ruin (or using Ruin). It seems to me that the more spikes and the more variety of spikes that you have makes you harder to control versus easier. And honestly I have zero evidence of this. I haven't gone back and researched any of this. There was never a real action that proves this... but allomancers could control Kandra easier than Inquisitors... because Inquisitors have more spikes limiting human control. But Ruin could control inquisitors better than Kandra because Inquisitors have more spikes. If you think about it, allomancers are Preservation and Ruin is, well, Ruin, so the inverse relationship of controlling spiked individuals sorta makes sense. A huge flaw in my argument is that if that were the case... than Vin should have been able to control Elend's crazy mistborn brother (why can't I think of his name!?!?!?) and Vin would have felt a weird sensation (like when she hit Ten-Soon with soothing) whenever Breeze or Kelsier or whoever else used emotional allomancy on her. And then there's all the Era2 piercings (spikes, whatever) and that goes down even more of a rabbit hole. In the end, I still stand my ground that I don't think a mistborn even with a duraluminum push and Marsh without metals would be able to control Marsh like a Kolos.

So, I cruised through the responses and didn't see this... The Lord Ruler controlled his Inquisitioners. At the time the inquisitioners had only a pre-approved set (or different sets, not sure) of spikes. Post-Lord Ruler... Ruin was able to control Marsh (with his kazillion spikes including a bunch a feurch spikes). But that was Ruin not a mortal. Marsh is so powerful that amount of spikes has to be a hinderance to the attempter to control vs. him just becoming possessed. I can't really imagine a situation where the new, extra spiked/ protected inquisitors could be controlled through emotional allomancy. It just seems off to me, though I realize that I don't have a good argument here against your nicrosil / soother ambush. It just feels like it wouldn't do crap to Marsh.

El

Plenty of input on reading above... OMG I read these two back and forth 3 or 4 times because I figured that I had missed connections. Nope. Well, there are connections, but only very subtle in the magic arena. Emperor's Soul is very easily read as a stand alone and one of my very favorites because it keeps my mind running for days afterwards. If you go by copyright dates... you can't go wrong. If you try to go by Cosmere timelines... you might have to do a whole buncha rereading.

and I am no longer the Noob!!!! You are amazing! .... and that guy above me there never asked me about chulls. I got grilled about my soul and stuff like that

I skimmed a whole buncha different ideas getting here. I thought some of them were tremendous. One of the things I wanted to keep in the forefront when considering this question is "what did the radiants swear millennia ago?" Above were a lot of discussions about Kaladin doing Kaladin things... and yes all ideals are modified by the swearer to reflect their own image. However, I think we should keep history in mind when dealing with this question. First, as mentioned quite a bit above, Windrunners were created in the image of Jezerien. The King guy. Leader dude. Top Dog. Best human ever. Yeah, that guy. I know the Bondsmiths led the radiants (or maybe I assume that based on readings...) but Jezerien led the Heralds. So presumably, at the 5th ideal, there is a huge leadership jump for 5th ideal Windrunners (presumably small in number) to correlate to Bondsmiths in a manner similar to Jezerien and Ishar's relationship. Maybe I'm stretching though. Idk. Second, I think we have to assume that the 5th Ideal is not merely a continuation of promotion but a great leap. I get the feeling from the Skybreakers that 5th Ideal Knights are rare... like maybe a couple in a generation rare. However, once again, this is just a feeling and I have no evidence that this is true or applies to Windrunners at all. Jasnah hasn't been particularly forthcoming about her "leveling up" but I don't think she's 5th ideal. I Imagine that pisses her off something fierce too. Anyways, I'm rambling off topic. I think 5th Ideal is going to be something very profound and not specifically obtainable. Lastly, I think that the 5th ideal will have to do with battle / war / leading troops. Windrunners seem to have been the "green ajah" of the Knights Radiant. They were the infantryman, the tip of the spear, the teeth of the dragon. The 5th ideal windrunners are going to have to be not only top dog individual soliders, but also kickass leaders and be able to lead combined arms (or dare I even say joint) coalition armies against the enemy. Him joining Szeth for the mission in Shinovar (I can't wait for that btw, like omg PLEASE come on!!!!) is definitely a combined arms thing especially as the Skybreakers historically were rival to the Windrunners and currently mostly enemies. OK, so sorry, I'm creative like a rock... so here goes.... "I will lead all who are willing to protect even if we are not on the same team." Yes, I know. I am NOT a wordsmith. But think of the implications and references in that statement...

I am an Infantryman who fought in the streets of Ramadi and Baghdad back in the 2000s... and I have always marveled at how well Sanderson makes combat situations, emotions, and reaction ridiculously realistic. He amazes me ALL THE TIME with his visionary understanding of something that he hasn't actually experienced. Soldiers in combat do weird things. It just happens. When you are presented with a situation that you have not been trained for, you make a split second decision and have to roll with it. This is why units train battledrills so that soldiers immediately react to situations you tend find yourself in while in combat. Kaladin had never even contemplated that two of his own forces would be fighting each other. He had zero training to that affect. There's no way, in that situation, that Kaladin makes the best decision. Him being who he is, you know that he won't attack either side, and that idea that he's going to go and come up with a perfect "use a blunt object and intervene" plan is unrealistic imo. I think that the fact that you didn't catch this until you re-read the book (at least one time) shows that in the spur of the moment, the ideal situation is not intuitively obvious. Having made some hairbrained / nutjob / absolutely stupid combat decisions myself... I think that I can relate pretty well.

I think stormlight would taste like air... being that Sanderson has never (as far as I know) hinted about a taste or smell to it AND plenty of people have consumed it completely without knowledge of it. I figure someone along the way would be like "Hey, something tastes metallic beyond normal stormwater" or something like that if it had a taste. Also.... never heard anything about any other lights based on taste or smell either. Noob Question: how do you put the blacked out (grey'ed out) stuff to prevent me from spoiling peoples' lives?