ChillPenguin

Couldn’t the charging of spheres be linked to intent? If he’s that smart, T-Odium doesn’t need to pay attention, he just sets up a permanent filter. If you put them out and are actually against him your intent blocks the charging.

We don’t know if Hoid could even hold Nightblood. He might get sick, like Vivenna or worse! We assume also that because Hoid is kind to others that he is good but we don’t really know that he is good. He could be extremely manipulative. Given that Nightblood reacts due to a person’s perception of themselves (if they are evil or not) it’s really hard to say. I’d bet Hoid doesn’t want to take that risk.

I think the reason the Grand Knell works with instruments is because it is so big. I’m not sure there is anything in the physical realm like that except for pools/perpendicularities. Maybe the Highstorm could have been such a thing but I’m not sure that would be big enough to work at cosmic distances. I expect these kind of things follow the 1/r^2 rule of reduced intensity.

I think it depends on whether you are a fight tyranny no matter the cost or a survive to fight another day kind of person. I’d know Odium was up to something and that by myself I didn’t have much leverage. Even though I’d wonder about another leader’s motivations, Jasnah being there would show she intends to support. If I knew the position that the singers and Fused have with Odium there is no question I’d refuse him - why would he treat humans any differently?

I hear what you’re saying - it’s frustrating to not have mistborn at all but Sanderson’s books have to change or else it’s stale. He’s redistributed the power to get more longevity out of the magic system. Now that I think about it, something similar has happened in Stormlight. I think we will get mistborn back someday and this shift adds more depth while reducing the possibility of power creep. We see in Sunlit Man that Radiants and still feared but they’re now mixed in with regular people that have access to investiture tech. Making the Radiants and Mistborn take a step back gives the regular folks a chance to develop and have some impact. Well this rosy outlook depends on how the future books go.

This probably belongs under Mistborn or cosmere but yeah, I feel you. He burned out young but he sure burned brightly. Hats off to Wayne!

Maybe the ability to communicate with the dead dragons involves some magic that dragons don’t typically know, or don’t have access to (e.g., being warped by a dawnshard). Hoid isn’t the only ancient cosmere member to hide things from others (Vasher).

I doubt he’d say in a WOB - why not just say it in the book? If he wanted to reveal it he’d have done it there. Hats off to anyone that tries but my money is on a RAFO card for this one. When Ed’s faith is questioned he gives this reason so it’s something that has deep meaning to him. This doesn’t mean it’s a cosmere/planet shaking event. If it’s not though then how does anyone know about it? Anyone being escorted after dying won’t be around very long and can’t tell those in the physical realm about it - maybe Wax is the only person who lived to tell that tale. Does Sazed talk to other Pathians? Keep in mind that Sanderson has messed with us on wording before. Kaladin was close to the 4th ideal and licked his lips and said “I will” a few times but ultimately his fourth ideal did not start with “I will…”

Patji and the islands always had an autonomy/avatar sort of feel to me. I suspect that if the perpendicularity was due to a shard being present it would be more obvious to the Cosmere and easier to find so I don’t think the perpendicularity is hers. She COULD be there. We don’t know how long it takes for a shardpool to move and maybe there’s some intent related to that. I completely missed this reference and I give it a pretty good likelihood that she’s there hiding from something.

There are a few glimmers of hope around. For starters, Retribution is probably not as in control of both shards as it seems (and we really don’t see much). There were enough seeds planted in WaT that one or both shards could rebel against him. We already saw precedent for a shard abandoning its vessel with Tanavast. Another bit of hope is that there are other planets out there that are strong. They’re going to be the other side to the Sunmaker’s Gambit. This pressure will only increase issues from my first paragraph. The last piece is that our heroes are learning and getting stronger. Yes there have been losses along the way (Dalinar) but they weren’t fruitless losses. Things really are grim, and I didn’t enjoy seeing our heroes lose, but Sanderson wrote in some openings. Once it looked like Odium (Rayse) was going to be a real pain and then all of a sudden he just gets stabbed with Nightblood. Just like that poof. Yes some things will get worse before they get better (like TOdium happening), but I’m not worried. I just hate the waiting part.

I agree, I’m not sure the plate was actually dead, not in the same way Deadeyes were. We know they were content, not screaming like the Deadeyes, so maybe they’re more like the old Fabrials without an energy source. The old fabrials seem to not mind being an Oathgate spren etc, and the Sibling wasn’t upset, just sleepy. You’re correct though that the unoathed spren found another way to be connected to the spiritual realm (Investiture is conserved in the Cosmere so it had to come from somewhere). A shard of Honor makes the most sense based on what we saw in WaT.

My guess it has to do with some kind of resonance. Frequencies seem very important in the Cosmere (tones of Roshar, pulses for metallic arts). The Radiant has their own “spiritual frequency” and so do the spren. If they match well enough, they can start to bond and then shift more into alignment with one another, kind of how Navani and the Sibling brought their tones into alignment to make one tone, Towerlight. So maybe it’s like Windrunners are from 100-102 MHz (you know where the popular music is) and Elsecallers are around 90 MHz (news and NPR). I’m sure spren and Radiants can stretch outside their normal band but it would be unusual for them to resonate outside their usual band of frequencies. I didn’t use Skybreakers in my analogy because I don’t know what kind of music they’d be. To circle back to Aux and Sigzil, I think it’s more like Sig is both Windrunner and Skybreaker. Aux helps him tap into the Spiritual Realm and Sig will probably always have some connection to Windrunners, unless it’s severed by someone else.

Up until WaT, I had a hard time identifying with Lift. A big part of that, I think, is that Brandon is hiding her trauma/issues for the back half and we just see her messing around but don’t see why. I tried to chalk it up to her being a kid, and that helped a little. I understand that Brandon will explore these things in the last 6 books, and she’s not the only character that’s been given this treatment. I can’t say I would definitely like her if I knew more about her, but it might help

I’m pretty sure it’s because Ruin’s intent blocks the creation of the pits. If I were that shard, you bet I’d block becoming weaker, especially when it looks like Ruin is going to win out. Maybe Sazed could create a huge amount of destruction to make Ruin happy and distracted and “whoops I made the pits too? Oh well.” Something on that scale though would probably go too much against preservation… and so Sazed as Harmony is in deep trouble. Maybe another shard could help him but why would they?

You are right and yet two things: 1. We know some infinities are bigger than others. All whole numbers are infinite but then the set of all rational numbers must be twice as big, although that is also infinite. 2. It’s not just the potential in the spiritual realm but also the investiture that the vessel can use. In the spiritual realm, the amount of Honor and Odium are the same (same size infinity), but some of the investiture of Honor split off and is already in the Heralds Unless Odium did something similar, the available investiture to Taravangian would be Honor Infinity < Odium Infinity. Brandon has made comments about other cosmere things related to this but I won’t mention them here. Odium may be able to drive Retribution’s intent but that doesn’t mean that Honor will be happy about it At least now, it seems that will be his biggest weakness.