darniil

Dag nabbit, Joe, you beat me to it. Welcome aboard!

There's no reason that Aona and Skai had to have yin/yang style Shards like Leras and Ati did. In fact, Brandon's comment about Preservation and Ruin being drawn to each other precisely because of how different they were sounded to me like their pairing might have been unique among the Shards. I could, of course, be wrong.

It would make the stalking easier. Just sayin'.

To my knowledge, we have no idea what the group called the Seventeenth Shard has for goals. (Well, other than wanting to catch up with Hoid.) Any speculation about their purpose is, at the moment, just that: speculation. And it was either strongly suggested our outright stated that Hoid was around when Adonalsium shattered. "Around", though, hasn't been clarified. That is, does "around" mean "in physical proximity of Adonalsium" or just "alive at the time of the shattering"? I'm sure he has some kind of connection to Adonalsium, but I don't know what. Was he a friend of Adie and is now trying to exact revenge? Was he the reason for the shattering? Was he actually one of the aspects of Adonalsium that came into its own life and its own existence after the shattering? We don't know. We know Hoid was around, but that's pretty much it. (I even seem to recall reading somewhere that "Hoid" is just a title, of sorts, that can be taken on sequentially by different people. Kind of like the Dread Pirate Roberts.) It's the mysteries like these that really make me look forward to new stories in the cosmere.

o.O Um, hello. Welcome aboard. Please stay away from the Pixie Stix.

Amusing. Was that "argument" said in jest, or was that expert being serious? Hmm. That bit about energy conservation might be relevant to the Effects of Iron Feruchemy thread.

Are kandra Blessings normal spikes? They may not be allomantically-charged, but I got the impression that Blessings were true hemalurgic spikes. (Maybe just used on regular folk to steal regular intelligence/strength/endurance.)

Or, if this is being designed as if it were an artifact on Scadrial, the disc could still be metal, but the glyphs could be etched into the metal of the discs and simply "stained" black.

If only they'd tried hemalurgy while he was still around. Wait, did anyone say what state his body was in when it was found? Were there any large spike-holes anywhere? >_>

No, I think the "going against the Shard" idea is that Nightblood takes, whereas the Shard is Endowment (giving). No other entity on that world can forcefully take a Breath from someone.

Preservation is neither growth nor creation, though. The creation of life wasn't able to happen on Scadrial until Preservation and Ruin worked together. In fact, Ruin probably had a greater hand in it, since he had to "ruin" the lack of life on that planet. Preservation, as a concept and likely as the Shard, is stasis. Immutability. Lack of change. Growth is change. Probably the only reason Preservation was able to act in a certain way (a way that seems potentially to go against stasis) is because Leras saw the future, the end of the battle between Preservation and Ruin, and he worked to preserve that future.

Is it for all of them or just some of them? If all, do you have any other displays that you can check, too? (Work/home/friends/phone?) If some, which ones? (Probably don't need to give the name, especially if they're hard to see, but an outer/inner and rough cardinal direction ought to suffice.)

(Taking an opposition just for sake of debate...) Like it should? Says who? For the most part, there is no "should" or "shouldn't" when it comes to spending money. Should each of us spend some of our income on the bare necessities for ourselves and our dependents, or for anyone else we choose to care for? Yes. Beyond that, though, there is nothing that money should or should not be spent on. (Well, ok, there's a few "should nots" - I really should not spend my money to hire a mariachi band to precede me everywhere I go, constantly playing Danzig's "Mother".) Frankly, though, it's none of our business how someone else spends his/her money, whether s/he wants to be a Scrooge McDuck or an Andrew Carnegie. Scrooge is a jerk, yes, but that'll come back to bite him in the rear. It's better for everyone if people who can help others do help others, but the world becomes a very dangerous place when people are required to do or not do things with their own money.

How large is the PSD? I'd like to take a look at it, layers and all, if you don't object. If it's of a size to be emailed, my email address should be in my profile. Edit: And by the way, that's awesome.

That's how I felt about the majority of the whole post. I was seeing things that I wanted to respond to individually, but then I realized there was too much and it would take me too long to respond, (and for all I could tell, the person was trolling), so I decided to go a different route.

Personally, I was thinking Kelsier's Crew, not a bridge crew. >_>

I don't think there's enough information yet to even let us guess. (And shouldn't this be in the General Theories board? >_> )

Well, black does go well with black.

Oy, vey. 9_9 http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/the-alloy-of-law-chapter-five#213692

I'm slowly re-reading them so that I can put together summaries of the chapters. I'm finding it fun because I'm catching a lot of really subtle things that I never even realized the first time through. (Like Vin using pewter before Kelsier ever taught her about it.)

Don't forget the neo-liberals, so that balance can be maintained.

Brilliant! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I think this makes perfect sense. I had been subconsciously assuming that a person's original Breath was lost when they died, but nothing says that's what happens. I think you've got it spot-on. Man, now Nightblood really reminds me of Stormbringer. (Though, honestly, the idea of a vampiric sword isn't anything new, so I'm not suggesting Brandon stole the idea from Moorcock.)

Well, the wiki isn't etched into metal, is it? ... Huh. HDDs are our versions of copperminds. Neat.

Wouldn't that mean that the Divine Breath is consumed instantly upon their Return? Or, maybe the Divine Breath works differently for a Returned than a regular Breath. Maybe the Divine Breath will waste away over the course of a week, finally dissipating after one week, causing the Returned to re-die, unless they have a regular Breath to consume. With a regular Breath, it's consumed instantly, giving the Returned another week of animation. But no, that doesn't make any sense either. If that were the case, then Lightsong wouldn't have been weak when we first see him. He needed a new Breath, but he still had his Divine Breath. If the Divine Breath were consumed slowly, and only when a Returned didn't have anything else to consume, he wouldn't have been fatigued on his feast day. Something tells me that the Divine Breath doesn't work quite the same way for a Returned as regular Breaths do. We're told that the Divine Breath instantly takes a Returned to the Fifth Heightening, but I also seem to recall that a regular person at the Fifth Heightening would not be like a Returned - they'd have similar Heightening-abilities, yes, but they wouldn't be a Returned. They need to consume a Breath a week to exist, but somehow the Divine Breath doesn't factor into that "food cycle". I also wonder if the "fading" of the Divine Breath is retarded or even halted when a Returned "dorms down" (to steal a White Wolf term) like Vasher does.