Underwater_Worldhopper

I think it just wasn't that high on their priority list. Originally they may have been afraid that the Reod was contagious, but by the time Raoden gets picked by the Shaod, Wyrn sends a Gyorn to Duladel before he does Arelon, so I can't think of why they'd wait so long unless they were just that afraid of the Elantrians.

That's similar to the magic system I theorized for Ruin if he had settled on a planet on his own, you can see that here: I really want to know what Fervor/Ardor (Or Fervency/Ardency, whichever sounds better) would create as a magic system, if (SP3) and Devotion were to conjoin.

Not sure if they turn grey, but their eyes do lighten when they consume Stormlight, and actively change to the Order's colour once they summon a Shardblade, for up to a few hours.

So, it's an illusion Hoid created, to tip Wax off that Kelsier is alive? You're gonna have to give me a bit more detail about why Hoid would do that, given that Kelsier's existence doesn't apply to Wax at all in TLM, and he doesn't even mention it.

That's an amazing idea. Here's what I could come up with by using that as a basis: Tyrannical Magic System (Name for this Art pending, suggestions welcome): Also, if Whimsy + Odium = Sadism, what would the magic system be?

Maybe that could be another Oath-based magic system. You swear loyalty or fealty to someone, and if they accept it, you get powers. There could be different positions you could swear to, each granting a corresponding power. You can't swear to more than one position, though the Delegator may have multiple 'Squires', each getting a different ability. Break the oath and you'll immediately lose your powers and can't ever swear to anybody again, your Delegator will immediately know you broke your oath, and they can no longer grant powers to other people, the bond also breaking between any other squires sworn to the Delegator, making the entire structure collapse. This makes the entire thing require a lot of trust, as a single betrayal could bring the entire thing crashing down. Up to you whether or not a bond can be safely broken if both the Delegator and the Squire agree. Very interesting, This could be a Connection-based Invested Art that's a cross between Oath-based Knight Radiant Surgebinding and Everyone-can-technically-do-it Awakening. Very interesting indeed. If Odium + Dominion = Tyranny, what would the magic system be?

This far into the Cosmere's future, the Invested Arts have been fudged somewhat, and the lines between them are blurred. I mentioned this on another thread, but they're beginning to be grouped by effect rather than the means that create that effect. For example, Illusions are referred to as Lightweaving, no matter whether they've been created by Aons, Rosharan Lightweaving, or Yolish Lightweaving. The same goes for teleportation, you could call it Elsecalling, even if it's achieved through Dakhor, Aon Tia, or through actual Transportation Surgebinding. Here, Awakening most likely does not refer to Nalthian Breath-dependent Awakening, but rather to an automated machine powered by Investiture, which means the rules change. Breaths look to mimic life, and because rocks and steel have never been alive and are far removed from it, a lot of Breaths are required to Awaken them. Applying Hijo to Awaken something, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have this problem. They're from a different Shard, and one that's based on artistry, creativity, and reimagination no less. Besides, the Hijo are also heavily Invested, though how much isn't known. Not only that, the Hijo aren't needed to make the entire thing function either. They're just Investiture being converted into energy to power the machine. It's like having Investiture take on the form of a car and then also power it, as opposed to already having a car and just using Investiture as a battery. You'll need more of it to both form the car and then power it, and less to just power a pre-existing car. Nalthian Awakening requires the Breath to both power a Construct and create the mechanisms it uses to power said Construct within it, which it usually does by following the patterns of life and the visualization of the Awakener. For example, if you Awaken a rug to lift you up onto a wall, you need to Command it to "Lift (Me)", while imagining exactly what you mean when you say "Lift (me)". In response, the Breath will enter the rug, then try and decide what form is best to achieve what you want it to do. In this case, let's say it decides that the best way is to fashion the rug into a giant hand. It will bend and roll the rug into the form of a hand, with approximations of ligaments, tendons, and muscles to facilitate the movement, with one end of the rug bracing on the floor or wall, maintain that form so that the movement is possible (all of which requires effort from the Breath), and then grabbing you and lifting you onto the wall, which requires even more work done by the Breath. The more life-like it can make itself, the less force will be required of the Breath to exert. This can range from something like a Lifeless, where it's so life-like and has pre-existing motor systems that all the Breath needs to do is provide the energy required to move (requiring the minimum of a single Breath), to a carpet made of wool, which is flexible and was once alive (and so can be manipulated into having motor systems, requiring a couple of Breaths to form and maintain the shape, then some more to provide the energy needed to move), all the way up to something made of stone or steel, which doesn't have any motor systems at all and was never alive, requiring an inordinate amount of Breaths to get it to do anything. What's going on with the Father Machine, meanwhile, is a pre-existing construct that only needs Investiture to power itself. The Hijo (and the souls of the people of Torio, at one point) are glorified batteries, used to provide energy to the Machine for it to be able to move. It's not Awakening as a Nalthian would call it, but rather just a machine trying to fulfill its code (Which becomes a Command, once Investiture is involved) that's powered by Investiture. If you infused the Machine with Breaths (with either a botched Command or through a Breath-transferring Command such as "My Life To Yours, My Breath Become Yours" or "My Breath To Give For Life To Live"), it would probably feed on them the same way and continue to function and be called an Awakened Construct, despite it not being actually Awakened with Commanded Investiture. Also, the Machine became sentient after holding thousands of Hijos' worth of Investiture for nearly two thousand years. Hoid says that after being Invested for so long, it would have had to be at least a little sentient by now, but he doesn't say that it's necessarily only a little sentient. So the Father Machine could have been fully sentient too.

Maybe, but he might not be able to make Aons function if he's not on Sel. Knowing him though, he'll have found a way around it, but I think the Aluminum should keep him trapped inside. It just might kill him, Aluminum near a wound prevents every form of healing that we know of. Leaving the chest exposed could work well for Hemalurgic purposes. I wouldn't worry about the guilt, though, Hoid is far more morally ambiguous than people give him credit for.

Great names! I'm not sure about stability, Shard names tend to be culturally charged and have specific connotations, and stability is too neutral. You could argue that Harmony is too, even if he was named after musical terms instead of following the regular naming pattern, but it doesn't really matter, Stability seems like a fitting concept to come out of Preservation and Honor. I feel Honor + Preservation could also become Protection, Vindication, or Exoneration. I (and a lot of other people independent of me) came up with Evolution for Ruin + Cultivation, which seems to be a rather fitting name, since Brandon himself said that those two would be the best Shards for each other. I can't get the idea of Roshar, had Cultivation settled there with Ruin instead of Honor, where Ruin Invests the Highstorms, out of my head; Cultivation leading the fittest and most hardened survivors to prosperity while Ruin devours the weak, the two of them constantly pushing life on the planet to Evolve. If they became a Hybrid Shard, Evolution seems like the best name. I want someone to write a fanfic AU based on this so badly, I'm almost tempted to do it myself. Some people like to think they would balance each other out and become just "Change", but there's already a Dawnshard aligned with that Intent, and as I said above, Shards are generally named after charged terms to make them more interesting. Light Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (SP3) spoilers (Not a spoiler if you've read the first ten preview chapters on Brandon's website): I like the idea of a thread about just a different Shard combination every (other) day, along with what the Vessel could interpret the Intent as and any magic systems that they could induce in a planet. Should we make this thread something like the Twinborn thread on the Mistborn forum, or the Knight Radiant Order thread?

Oh, nice! So we do know that Breaths return to Endowment. I thought it was unconfirmed, and there was a WoB somewhere asking if Nalthis was incredibly Invested due to people with Breaths dying on it, so I wasn't sure. I'm not sure what you mean by my theory, I only outlined possible things that happen to the Breath post-mortem: They return to Endowment, stay locked in the body, or stay with the body until it decomposes and then return to Endowment. There was a whole other section that I cut from my post before uploading it with what ram-shackle proof I could get my hands on based on the book that Breaths return to Endowment (because that's what I personally believed), but I decided it was too convoluted to be worth anything. I'd looked at Lemex's death to see if his color aura weakened as he died, but I had no idea what to make of the pulsing, so instead I looked to Arsteel being Awakened back into a Lifeless, which would have been harder to do if his corpse held Breath (which we know it did, since that's how Vasher killed him) but there were too many unknown variables surrounding his Awakening that I eventually just gave up. I don't know whether to be relieved or offended that there was just a WoB that just hands us the answer outright, but at least now I know for sure what happens to Breaths, so thanks! ^v^ In hindsight, I should have checked the Arcanum, but it usually take so long to dredge up the right WoBs from whatever half-remember words or phrases I keep in the archives of my brain that I just didn't bother this time. Serves me right, I suppose.

Almost definitely, but maybe not for the reason you're thinking. The Breaths presumably only become irretrievable because the Awakened Construct becomes sentient, but a Type IV Invested Entity is specifically one that has been given sentience, which requires a very complex visualization. Awakening steel or rock without Awakening it to be sentient will likely work like any other Awakening, since there is no sentience and therefore no Identity for the Breath to key to and become irretrievable. However, if you don't retrieve the Breaths before the Aether is allowed to decay, you'll likely lose a massive amount of Breath, because they'll have diffused into the entire object, and as it disintegrates away, the Breath held in those parts will be lost. But before that, so long as you don't create a Type IV Entity, you should be able to retrieve the Breaths easily. It would act like the Polestone breaking, so most likely it would just be set free. They wouldn't return to their Awakener. They certainly won't go to Nalthis, since the planet itself has nothing to do with the Breath. What I think you meant was if it would return to Endowment, and this is possible, but we can't say. We don't know whether the Breath just remains Invested in the corpse of an Awakener when they die, forever inaccessible to anyone because they're still keyed to their Identity, whether they return to Endowment right at the moment of death, or somewhere in between, where they remain with the corpse until it decomposes, and then return to Endowment rather than remaining with the whatever the individual's decomposed body turns into.

We can only assume the Father Machine wants to stick as much to its prime directives as possible because those are its Commands, as an Awakened Construct. It is driven to stack rocks, lure and trap Hijo, then use them to sustain itself and create Hion. When it was activated, there presumably wasn't enough energy in it for it to work at maximum capacity. The intention of the scholars probably would have been for it to work its way up, luring in more and more Hijo until it can achieve maximum efficiency. However, an Awakened rope does not modulate how powerfully it grips, it simply does the most it can with the amount of Investiture it has. Neither does the Machine. It didn't have enough energy to immediately begin fulfilling its Command, so instead of working its way up, it took the quicker root of ripping out the power of the people around it to jumpstart itself. The Shroud was the product of the Corrupted Investiture that was produced when the Machine used it to power itself. Once it stacked enough rocks to attract enough Hijo to keep the process going, it would have stopped using souls, as that wasn't part of its Commands. Using souls was just a means to an end of kickstarting the Hion-production process so that it started off strong, and once that start was achieved, it was no longer necessary to deviate from it's Commands to do so. You're right that it won't act in accordance with human decision-making, but it isn't solely a machine either. Investiture carries with it an innate sentience. Not only is the Machine an Awakened Construct, but it has also been extremely Invested for nearly two thousand years. In Awakening, just a single Breath can develop sentience and presumably sapience if it's put in a suitably life-like body. Even if it takes effort and an unimaginably accurate caricature of a human as a vessel, the potential is there. And that's just a single Breath. The Father Machine got Invested with thousands of souls, and though he releases them to form the Shroud, he only does so once he can replace them with Hijo, every single one in the nation of Torio and probably the entire planet, which are even more Invested. And then he keeps hold of them for millennia, slowly replacing itself with pure Investiture. The Father Machine would have absolutely developed sentience by then, and that would give it reasoning abilities beyond just a machine, or even an Awakened Construct. That's for a regular machine. The Father Machine is Awkaned, its sole purpose is to fulfill its Command. It will deviate and do other things to facilitate it, but only if it's needed, and then it will stop deviating once the issue is resolved, because it's Command does not include it. Harmony is inexperienced, and Odium is bound and limited in how he can interact with Rosharans. Unhampered Shards, like Endowment, can detect him easily, she knows he's there every time he shows up on Nalthis. Hoid doesn't run his security measures on purpose, they're automatic and get employed as soon as something tried tampering with his soul. Assumedly, his hiding is also something he's constantly maintaining as opposed to something he only does on occasion. Either way, He also did survey the planet before he touched down, and he decided it was safe enough for him to land on, and there was no Shard in residence. Or an even simpler explanation: No off-worlders other than Masaki, Design, and Hoid are relevant to the story, and so aren't mentioned. Worldhoppers aren't always called out. Nothing special is noted about Felt in either Mistborn or Oathbringer, despite him being a Worldhopper. And you're right, there isn't any evidence that human off-worlds would be unaffected. That's why I posit that needing Virtuoso Investiure isn't a requirement for being affected by the Machine. Also, technical correction, Maska is a Swarm. Hordelings are the individual insects that she's made up of. You can't just be 'immune' to Investiture, the only way you can resist Investiture is by either being Aluminum or being Invested yourself. That's how the Yoki-Hijo resisted the Machine, even though it technically, superficially, killed them. Design's machine shows that Nikaro, and assumedly all Komashians except for the Yoki-Hijo, aren't very Invested. You can't be immune to the Father Machine's draining effect than you can be immune to Nightblood. More likely, I think that the Machine didn't absorb everyone at once, since that wouldn't have helped it function for long enough to stack rocks, but rather did it over a longer period of time (still short, but not instantaneous), feeding on souls until it could draw and trap enough Spirits that it could feed solely on them, working it's way outwards of the Torio City population, until it had enough Hijo to stop relying on souls, at which point only the people on the very outskirts were left. I do not agree, based on what I said above. Here's what I believe: Father Machine activates, and in trying to fulfill its Command as best as possible, it starts draining souls to kickstart its Hion-making process It uses the souls of the people to fuel itself as it starts stacking rocks and capturing Hijo, producing the Shroud as a byproduct of using souls in the way that it does Once it has enough Hijo, it stops converting souls since it is a function outside of its Command that it no longer needs. By the time souls are stopped being used, only people on the very outskirts of Torio are left, who are soon trapped in the darkness of the Shroud. When the Hijo break free and contact the people of Futinoro, the Father Machine sends stable Nightmares to kill anyone who might know of his existence. Father Machine senses Hoid, realizes there's basically another Yoki-Hijo that needs to be neutralized, and tries to do something to him, possibly mess with his memories and pull him into a simulation but is unable to do so before Hoid's soul goes on lockdown. When Nikaro and the others find out about his existence, Father Machine sends Nightmares to destroy the city, as it is a solution that has worked for him in the past

I stand by the idea that the Aetherbound needs to be Invested to use Investiture to fuel the Aether, not the Aether itself, though you could maybe manage to keep the Aether from decaying once separated by Investing it in some way. But if you Awakened Roseite, probably the Breaths would just be inside the Roseite, Awakening them to do what you want without actually helping sustain the Aether. You'd want to retrieve them before the Aether begins decaying since you'd lose the Breaths if the mass vanishes completely, or lose part of them if only some of it decays by the time you retrieve it.

You store wakefulness, so not really the sleep but the beneficial effects of it, which is what I assume you meant. But yeah, that makes sense, the Bronzemind storing sleep probably wouldn't be restful at all. Another Bronzemind question, though. If you were fully rested and energetic before you started tapping, and you keep tapping for 24 hours or so, when you stop tapping, will you return to that original state, or will all the fatigue you've been keeping at bay hit you at once like a tonne of bricks to the face?

Did anybody else not quite like the ending of Yumi? I liked the book a lot: the art was amazing, the storyline was sufficiently plot-twisty, and the vibes were immaculate. I loved the neon-and-black color scheme of Kilahito and the heat-based ecosystem of Torio. The characters were fully flushed out and realistic, it really spoke to me as an artist (through both Yumi's single-minded devotion to her art while not thinking her best is enough and Nikaro's apathy and lack of interest/inspiration due to his artistic accomplishments falling flat) and I loved the ending, character-wise. However, the Shroud (and with it, the Nightmares) dissipate at the end, and the whole mood of Kilahito that I loved so much just fell apart. I like brainstorming my own stories in these settings. For worlds like Roshar, I love that feeling that the world existed long before you or the characters and that it will continue once you stop reading and the characters die. Even though the ending was magnificent, the loss of such an amazing setting dampened it slightly for me. Was this the case for anyone else?

Suddensmash is a criminally hilarious name, I love it

You could maybe achieve what you want through charging Primer Cubes with Tapping or Storing, but not with Medallions alone. You could maybe create off-shoot technology from Medallions that have enough of an Identity of their own to follow a Command and do the things you suggest, but we don't even know how regular Medallions work yet, so that's a topic for the future. As for the Bronzemind storing thing, I think that you're still (and only) aware enough to be able to tell how long it's been and to be able to choose to stop storing. I do wonder though, does Bronzemind storing actually provide the beneficial effects of sleep, or is it more like you have to sacrifice waking hours to lie there becoming as useless as a sleeping person without actually falling asleep? Because if it is indistinguishable from sleeping, it easily becomes one of the easiest attributes to store, since you have to sleep every night anyway. If it doesn't, it becomes more balanced, but I almost hate to have it confirmed to be the latter and lose such a useful and easy-to-use ability.

Right, I meant they didn't notice as fully-fledged Elantrians.

I was going to say that Heightening-like abilities could be the result of having a lot of Investiture specifically become part of your soul as opposed to just holding it, which is about the only commonality I could come up with between Breaths and a Dawnshard. As for why Elantrians don't have it, I had intended to bank on the idea that maybe the Dor doesn't truly become part of their soul, but we don't really know that for sure, and in light of the Lighthouse-in-Shadesmar scene it seems that they likely do. It depends on whether Brandon wants to keep the ability from them and introduce a workaround for why not, or if he's going to just go with the idea that it was always there and they just didn't notice. But yeah, I think that just holding a lot of Investiture won't be enough to get a Heightening, it has to become part of your soul to take effect, and Yumi probably had it. Edit: But if Yoki-Hijo are more Invested than Returned, how come they aren't ageless? Yumi and the 13 other Yoki-Hijo don't seem to be immortal (at least prior to becoming Cognitive Shadows, at which point they obvious were)

They're both Corrupted Investiture made largely of people, they're essentially the same thing.

I like the idea that @GoldMisting presented, that it saw Hoid as something approximating a 15th Yoki-Hijo. It didn't need the energy, which is why it doesn't eat Design or the other Komashians, but it realized that Hoid was too Invested for it to eliminate if need be, so it tried to preemptively neutralize him some other way, which is what triggered his protection protocols. Eating them would raise questions. What happened to Kilahito? How? Why? Why not just send in an army of Nightmares they can't possibly defend against, something they already think they understand and something that has been historically documented? Nightmares are an easy solution that won't raise too many eyebrows. The alternative, eating them, is more convoluted and will require more effort to cover up in a way that leaves no loose threads. Those are two different people. @Werewolff Studios, who made a frankly excellent analogy explaining the motivations behind the Machine's actions, and @GoldMisting, who was theorizing why the Father Machine chose to attack Hoid (Which is correct, in my opinion). Refer back to Werewolff's post about the Father Machine's motives. The Machine's motives are fulfilled by the time Hoid arrives. It doesn't need to drain constantly because it already has a far more efficient source, the Hijo, which it is continually draining. That's why it doesn't just eviscerate all humans on Komashi, which would have been the case had it been consistently draining all Investiture it could get its hands on: it doesn't need to. The same applies to Design, a single Spren's worth of Investiture isn't anything noteworthy at all to the Machine. Hoid is attacked because he's a potential threat. The answer lies right between Werewolff and GoldMisting's theories; Werewolff supplies a holistic rationale for the Machine's actions, and GoldMisting gives a convincing reason for why Hoid was attacked. I will say, I don't buy that Virtuosity's Investiture is needed for the Father Machine to influence things. I like the idea that Virtuoso Investiture is more impressionable than other types, just the same way Endowing Investiture severs Connections with its previous holder and wholly adapts to its newest holder, something we know is unique to it. However, I don't think that it's required for the Machine to be able to affect you. Hoid is a prime example of this. He doesn't have any more Virtuoso Investiture in him than any other off-worlder would, yet the Machine can affect him, enough so to trigger his protections. If that little bit that he would have in him naturally counts, it would count for all other off-worlders, which eliminates it as a factor altogether, since it's universally applied, except maybe to Drabs or Hemalurgy survivors. Connection would not grant him Virtuoso Investiture either, unfortunately. Connection can blur lines, but it doesn't introduce new Investiture into his soul, and the Connection itself wouldn't be Virtuoso in nature either. If it for some reason was, it would still at most only open the Connection itself to the Machine's tampering. If it didn't work this way, Design would be vulnerable too, since she's Connected herself to the planet too. However, even that isn't the crux of why I don't think it's needed. Because the Father Machine is basically the same as Nightblood. Nightblood is an Awakened Construct whose Command drives him to Corrupt Investiture to Ruin's Intent, sucking in other Investiture to do so (more information on this topic here) in accordance with its Command. The Father Machine does basically the same thing. It too is an Awakened Construct*1 whose Command drives it to Corrupt Investiture. However, while Nightblood has a Command that's far more nebulous and open-to-interpretation, the Father Machine's Commands, as is the nature of coding, are far, far more specific. It doesn't need to Corrupt and Destroy whatever it can get it's hands on, only the specific amount needed to stack rocks, capture Hijo, and create Hion through them. Once it achieves an equilibrium of nothing getting in the way of it's "food" source and creating Hion through that food (alongside sustaining itself), it doesn't bother doing anything else. It's essentially Nightblood, but one that can be sated and it useful for more than destroying and killing. And since Nightblood doesn't have any problem Corrupting different sources of Investiture, the Father Machine shouldn't either. The main difference in their actions is that the Father Machine doesn't actually Corrupt Investiture, that's not part of it's Command. The Corruption of what becomes Shroud is a result of the souls of the dead getting shredded together as it feeds on them. That's why it can't get rid of the Yoki-Hijo, they're too Invested for it to destroy, something that Nightblood wouldn't have a problem with. I will reiterate, however, that I don't think the whole theory about Virtuoso Investiture being impressionable is wrong, it's just yet another reason to tack onto the list making Hijo and Nightmares vulnerable, which I listed in my other post: To put it more simply, Identity acts kind of like antigens do on cells; it guards your soul and Investiture from outside influence by creating an actual intrinsic property to make your Investiture distinguishable and resistant to merging or being influenced by other Inevstiture just the same way antigens make your body's cells easily recognisable to your own immune system, so that foreign objects can be identified and eliminated. Without it, anything could come along from the outside and mess you up. This is why Nightmares can be Painted away, and to a lesser extent also applies to the Hijo, who can be harnessed to create useful tools. *1(though it's an Awakened Construct only in the sense that it's an artificial Invested creation to fulfill a specific purpose, not in the "Someone Awakened it with Breath and a Command" sense) Edit: Just thought to add that Hoid's protections aren't specific to keeping his memories safe from tampering, though that is what inspired him to apply them and they do protect them:

Could be, but he's good at showing up at important places at important times (and knows who the important people are there) because he has access to Fortune. That's why he know the when and the where but not the why.

There was specifically Connection shennaniganery going on behind the scenes on Komashi during the events of the book, so I doubt it, although it isn't entirely out of the question.

Suppose so, that's the thing that threw me off.

I'm just gonna say that you're quite off about a lot of things, so it hasn't been spoiled as much as you might think. Posting twice in a row, back-to-back. If you have more to say after posting, go back and add it onto your post through the edit function.