listerfeend

I suspect the answer is close to this. I may have to borrow some terms here, but it seems to me that access to the Surge is necessary because the object in question doesn't have the ability to change itself normally. Essentially, I'm thinking some kind of Connection is made between the Surgebinder and the object in question, giving the object access to the Surge of Transformation via the Binder. Or it goes the other way, the Binder is providing, for lack of a better term, the "knowledge" of how to transform. I suspect that, if restrictions were placed on this Surge, it would most likely be the requirement to get consent from the Object before the transformation occurs. This is completely my own theory, but I suspect that, prior to Honor's restrictions, someone with the Surge of Transformation could transform anything at will, without the intermediate step of convincing the object to change. If that is the case, then Soulcasting still works in the same way, just with a consent check beforehand. The change comes from the Surgebinder, it's their own Intent and Command that is creating the new object, and their access to the Surge facilitates that.

This Awakens my happiness slightly.

We've had a Nightblood on Honorblade interaction, and that caused a chip in the Honorblade, but this is more specifically related to "normal" awakened objects. Nightblood is a beast on its own. (I've had HOURS AND HOURS of discussions about Nightblood with @CtrlAltDepressed) I think this gets even more interesting with Lifeless though. A once living body, reanimated with Investiture. Would a Shardblade cut it, or would it pass through severing Spirt Web connections? Because, I'm assuming the Spirit Web still exists. Brandon has said it is a quantifiable and measurable thing in the Cosmere, which indicates to me that it is a part of the body. And, if a Shardblade would pass through a Lifeless, I suspect that it would pass through a cloth or rope in the same way, severing the Spirit Web connections of that item...

It's entirely possible to discuss the "echos" of Ado's death without discussing the details. I mean, that's the entirety of the Cosmere.

That was sort of what I was getting at. We could postulate that, but I don't see it being likely. With your quote, that leads me even more to that not being the case.

There is an issue with this... BAM wasn't trapped the last time any of them were sent back to Braize, or returned. We could postulate that BAM was serving a similar function for the Heralds as Breaths were for Hoid, essentially, storing the overflow in a source of Investiture, but I find it hard to believe the Heralds wouldn't have known that was the case. We know that at least Nale and Kalak were present for the binding of Mishram, so I somewhat doubt that they wouldn't have at least known the risks involved with that. This is assuming that Honor, and the Heralds (remember the Oathpact was the Herald's idea, and took place with Honor's blessing), felt this was going to last as long as it did. The Oathpact was essentially a bandaid to get around the fact that Odium provided the Fused with the ability to become CR's to continue fighting. I'm not convinced that they expected there to be the cycle of Returns/Desolations that then followed. And the last thing, reading that WoB indicates to me that the magical madness they are experiencing is due solely to them living so long past their expiration date, and they have other, more "normal" mental maladies going on in the form of PTSD from the thousands of years of torture, as well as the constant cycle of death and resurrection.

I think that this is maybe a misunderstanding of what the "theory" here is? Because, if I'm reading things correctly, the idea is that the Unmade, before being Unmade, served a vital function in the operations of the Planet Roshar. You say that they would cease to perform those functions once being Unmade, but CtrlAltDepressed is saying that they would have continued to serve those functions Post-Unmaking, though perhaps that function would have been twisted slightly, depending on the function itself, and would only cease to fulfill those functions (twisted or not) after being trapped. I'm not really sure I completely buy into the theory. As you stated, the Heralds were already showing some signs of their insanity in the very first prelude, when we witnessed Aharietiam, which means, presumably, that even with Honor alive, there were no real protections in place for the Heralds facing this type of immortality. Which is rather interesting. So, I guess this leaves me with a pretty burning question... How, in Ado's name, was Ba-Ado-Mishram able to Connect to all the Listeners, and provide them Voidlight. And why did trapping her cause the Spren to deadeye? I had a thought that maybe she had "hacked" into the system, basically making herself a super user, and then ripping out that super user caused some serious glitches in the system, but... While I was writing that, I had a different thought... We know that a consequence of her Binding was that the Sibling stopped being able to produce Towerlight en masse. Navani hypothesizes that, at the time of the Binding, Odium's tone became a Tone of Roshar. This, to me, seems to be the time when Odium became "fully" Invested in Roshar. We know Rod was reluctant to fully invest himself anywhere. I believe that, prior to the Binding of BAM and while still trapped in the system, he managed to avoid complete investment. He probably was at least a bit Invested, but not enough for him to worry about leaving that behind, or ripping out when he left. It's unclear whether BAM started the False Desolation at Odium's behest, or behind his back, but the fact that she was able to provide Voidlight indicates, to me, that at the very least it required a pretty hefty Connection to Odium. Maybe the severing of that Connection caused it to snap into place on Roshar, Investing Odium enough that his officially became a Tone of Roshar, sort of drowning out, or mixing with, Honor's to the point that it would cause the Deadeye phenomenon that wasn't there before? I don't know if any of this holds up, or even makes sense...I JUST WANT IT ALL TO MAKE SENSE!!!! I suspect we'll get some more information about all this in the next book...at least I really hope so..I don't want to wait a decade for more answers!!!!!

The only thing I have about this is...I mean, he could attend everything all the time...that's kind of the whole thing with Shards...They aren't entirely omnipresent, but they sort of are, at least in their domain. I still overall think this is a pretty good theory..though I do wonder at the existence of only 9, when everything else Honor did was ten based. There are 10 days, 10 Gas Giants, 10 Heralds, 10 Surges....1010101010101010101010

That's fair, but...Re-Shephir is already cognizant is she not? So maybe she had lost memories or something like that, but cognition doesn't seem to be something she lacks, more like an understanding of what it is to be human. This bit has been interesting to me for a while now, because it seems to indicate that, at the very least, she used to be a living thing, rather than a spren. I suspect, instead of human, she could have been a Listener long ago. Or maybe she was bonded to someone in the past? That would sort of fit with what we know of spren and their connection to living beings. Specifically, Syl relates more and more to human emotions as her bond strengthens, Stormfather begins to at least feel remorse for the things and people the Highstorm destroys, despite how inevitable it feels to him. Maybe Re-Shephir was bonded to a Listener or a Radiant at some point?

Sure! Sorry, I was away from the forums all weekend. In OB ch 32, Shallan is relaying her experiences with confronting Re-Shephir, and ruminating on them. Specifically, she thinks: Emphasis is in text, not mine. Shallan is not specifically an expert or anything in the field of Unmade study, however, she has confronted more of them than any other PoV we've had so far, and had the most intimate contact with Re-Shephir.

While reading this, I'm reminded of the fact that Shallan was under the impression that Re-Shephir (Midnight Mother) may have been human at one time. What are we to make of this? She's certainly no expert, and definitely an unreliable narrator, but, of all of the POV's we've had, she has had the most contact, and the most intimate, with any of the Unmade.

I do have a question on this... So, we know that burning metals doesn't actually give them the Investiture to Push/Pull, but instead basically "opens" their spirit web to Preservation to allow the Investiture to flow through, basically a direct link to Preservation's Investiture. The type of metal is keyed to the specific portion of their SW to allow them to do that specific Push or Pull. We also know that a Mistborn using something like the Purified Liquid Dor could use that Liquid Dor to fuel all the metals. So, would storing your Innate Investiture actually be storing pure Innate Investiture, thus allowing Nicrosil to ostensibly fuel all of the Allomantic Metals? I'm just trying to think this through, and it seems like a full Metalborn should be able to use Nicrosil as was discussed previously, unless I'm very much missing something...

So, I'm not going to continue arguing about Stormfaker v Stormfather, but I did want to talk about these a little bit. The only one of these that I can see that he is actively changing his mind is the one about Ishar. The rest of these seem more to me to be things that he couldn't avoid, or actions he could take in relation to actions he couldn't. I'm hazy on the details of him stopping the Everstorm, but it felt to me more like he couldn't stop them, all he could do was rush the storm that was already on the way, hopefully putting an end to the eternal cycle of war. It seems to me he's required to accept oaths made in earnest and in the correct manner. In the scene with Dalinar, he didn't want to be bonded, but the Connection was there and the Oaths were made correctly. He didn't want Syl to go back Kal, but he couldn't stop her. He didn't specifically hide that Dalinar could use Connection to speak other languages, Dalinar never asked. There is a big difference between not volunteering information, and actively hiding it. I know the Honorspren believe he has changed recently, but it's unclear to me if that is because of the Bond. He warns not to push him, but that seems more like "you're not supposed to do that, there could be bad consequences"

Yes. 100% Everything was based on the outright lie that the other 9 have died and passed on to Damnation. Disregarding everything else, even though we agree that Gavilar had way too high of an opinion of himself and how smart he was, I really do not see him misconstruing a lack of correction or letting Gavilar assume they are dead as SF outright telling him they are, and Gavilar says, to SF, that he said that. There was no correction, no witty "I never said that, you did" nothing like that. I think we are just going to completely disagree here. Even if Honor is only about bonds, a statement I strongly contest, a bond based on lies is not binding. This sort of comes down to morality and definitions and what people think Honor means, and is even more salient in the context of the Cosmere.

I'm really not explaining my thoughts very well, but basically: Misleading someone about the path they are on, about what they are going to be accomplishing by making these oaths (bonding with the Stormfather in this case, which was done by Dalinar as part of his quest to unite Roshar, and had nothing to do with becoming a Herald or any of that) and about the character of the entity you are bonding with, is way more akin to what Ullim did with Venli than what the extant embodiment of Honor should/could do. Basically, regardless of which way we slice this, if it is the real SF, he has intentionally mislead: Gavilar (by telling him he could become a Herald and restore the Oathpact, intentionally misleading him about the nature of Aharietiam, and I'm sure a few other things from the Prologue that I am not recalling at the moment), Dalinar (If what he told Gavilar was all true, then the reverse goes for Dalinar), or both of them (we haven't had the truth from him at all, which means almost everything we think we know about desolations, Aharietiam, the Heralds, the nature of the Oathpact, etc... is all suspect) Intentionally misleading, either by withholding crucial information, or outright lying, is not Honor, is not of Honor, and therefore should probably be against the very NATURE of the SF. True, however, they were spoken to a thing that was misrepresenting their own motives and intentions. If Dalinar hadn't meant the words, they wouldn't have worked. If SF hasn't represented themselves accurately, they shouldn't work either... Unless we are saying that SF is just a bad guy and can trick people into bonding him...that seems like a can of worms we don't want to open. Everything you've said about S5P SF being the real SF would indicate that even his opposition to being bonded is suspect. Did he just say that to further try to entice Dalinar into the Bond, to further SF's own goals? Everything about Aharietiam was different from Gavilar's perspective compared to what we were shown in the very first prelude in TWoK. You say you don't trust Gavilar's thoughts about something the Stormfather told him in the past, but you trust that the SF that we see in the Prologue is the one that we see throughout books 1-4...so Obviously that doesn't sway you. We can take SF's words as true, but not Gavilar's? Gavilar even confronts the SF we see about the lying, and there is no rebuttal. He doesn't even pretend that it isn't true, he just mocks Gavilar for knowing so little. This by itself, to me, is proof enough that, while Gavilar certainly had a very high opinion of himself, the things that he believes to be true: The Heralds are all dead, Restares isn't one of them, etc... he believes because he has it on what he thinks is good authority. Even if Gavilar never asked about Restares being one, he felt he didn't have to because he was outright told they were all dead. That one lie accounts for sooo much. You say lying and oaths are two separate things, but your word is your bond. Even Odium has to abide by that, but now the SF doesn't? How does that track? Honor is not just about bonds, that is very reductive, and doesn't reflect how making an oath based on lies makes that oath worthless, as the entire situation is disingenuous. For example, swearing fealty to a person claiming to be a King could potentially be considered treason if that person was not in fact the King, however, the second that it is found out the person is not a King, the oath of fealty is no longer enforceable.

This part bothers me as well. How can the entity that is literally the source of Honorspren, also the biggest representation of the Shard of Honor that we have left at this point, be able to lie so thoroughly to Gavilar? Maybe I'm misinterpreting what a spren is and what they are and are not capable of doing, but that seems very...at odds with how I would expect a spren like the SF to even be able to behave. Further, I'm curious what the effect of a bond made with a spren who has been lying and manipulating would even mean. The SF that we've come to know through the current books is obsessed with oaths, with not breaking them, and with what I would consider to be the classical interpretation of "honor". Is all that a lie? How does one so obsessed with oaths get away with misrepresenting and misleading people into making those oaths in the first place? That's neither honorable, nor in the spirit of making those oaths in the first place. The whole point of the oaths is the Intent behind them, that's why the specific words don't matter so much as the general Intent of the oath being made. Basically, if it is the Real SF, then it feels to me as though the Nahel bond between them was forged without informed consent on Dalinar's part, which sort of feels like it shouldn't work in the first place. That last part is pure conjecture on my part, and I don't know if that is the case, but that is..I guess the feeling I get about the oaths in general. In essence, that seems more like something a creature of Odium could and would do (what Ulim did to Venli, in fact) more than something a creature more tied to Honor, like the SF, would even be able to do? If that makes any sense?

So, I've been team StormFaker since I read the prologue. I felt like he was very very off on my first read, and everything here has only pushed me farther into that camp. One point I have to bring up is specifically related to how much information we have gotten from SF from TWok through RoW. IF , and I really think it's a big if, the SF we see in the S5P is the same SF we see in books 1-4, then EVERYTHING we have learned from the visions and the conversations between Dal and SF is now suspect. The visions themselves are suspect. We are told BY the SF that he was given the visions and "forced" to give them to someone. Some of the events of the visions have been corroborated, however, all of the best lies are based on truths. It's been a little bit since I've read everything, I'm gearing up for a re-read of the entire series before SA5 releases, but... Does the possibility of SF fabricating all of the visions change anything we think we know about the world? Or are all the salient points of the visions themselves corroborated by secondary sources?

A secondary question would be, if you were to have just a thin sheet of Aluminum in your hat, how much would that mitigate a powerful Allomancer like the TLR?

I've been searching through the WoB's about this, and the closest I can get to a viable answer are these. Here he is saying that the thickness of the Aluminum does matter, especially in the case of emotional Allomancy, but also in relation to pushing and pulling. There is also another one that states that it is not necessary to have a full "shield" of Aluminum for emotional Allomancy, as it essentially creates a "field" that will protect the wearer. So, I think with these quotes, we can conclude that, a thin sheet of Aluminum may not be enough to protect against the most powerful of Allomantic emotional manipulation, but there is an amount that definitely will, and that seems to be a thick enough piece that you can still bend it with your hands, but not fold it over.

I would say that it would likely be due to however limited Raysium actually is. If Raysium is severely limited in its production or their ability to get to it (we don't know the mechanics behind god metal manifestation) then it would make sense for them to have maybe just a core of Raysium in the spear, with a wire that attaches to the gemstone. Then cover the haft of the spear in something more readily available, like aluminum.

Bro, same! That's why I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. No worries about anything hahaha Yeah, all that tracks. Honestly, I think what I was mostly trying to do was come up with reasons why it hasn't seemed to happen in the past, since it's so clearly possible now. All of the arguments about what the outcomes could be and potential reasons why this wouldn't have been a high priority item in the past seem valid enough. And the fact remains, we have very little in the way of actual information on the mechanics behind MANY of the things we see happening. The Oathpact, the nature of Odiums binding to the system, what rules he has to operate by and why, etc... So basically all of them are acceptable reasons, but I somehow doubt that anything we have discussed is going to be the real reason

I hadn't considered that possibility. This would have "worked" in the past, but not in the same way. And it would be likely they would need a perfect gemstone to prevent them from leaking in general. Those we know are super rare.

Ok, so this tracks well enough. I struggle a bit, still, with the "we've used it for the last several Returns" part. If that means the previous desolations, that means Honor was alive and therefore would have been enforcing any boundaries he placed on Odium, which means they had enough to make at least several spears operate this way. If that means "the past few times we've been respawned this conflict" then everything lines up and that would explain everything very neatly. Also, I'm not sure why he would have recently decided to Invest, I sort of took it more as "he's been trapped so long that he was Investing merely by existing there", which would also explain why there wasn't a ton of Raysium used before, except, again, there is that "several Returns" quote, and that is the one that keeps messing me up. So, how was a Desolation ended then? Only one of them had to die? And they returned back to Braize willingly? I seem to remember that Ahraietiam was special because only one of them died, that being Taln. Maybe I have my facts wrong, but I sort of assumed that it was the case that they would die every Desolation. Regardless, the Heralds are definitely not unkillable, and, as I've stated previously, they need to win every fight. Odium's forces would only need to win one. I know he's in no rush, but, it doesn't make much sense for him to not take an expedited end if it presents itself. My entire point is that I don't think it would be necessary for someone else to have studied Raysium. Rayse, as a Shard, should have REALLY REALLY good insight into all of the connections, spiritual aspects, everything that makes a Herald a Herald and how the Oathpact works. That's basic Shard knowledge stuff. He's intimately involved in the entire situation. He should also be INTIMATELY aware of how Raysium works. It also doesn't make sense to me that a Shard living in that system, for that long, wouldn't know that Spren are able to be captured in gemstones. It's completely reasonable that the Fused and Humans wouldn't know that, but, I feel like it should be child's play for a Shard to make those connections. It's pure Realmatics and Investiture. To me this seems like information Odium should have had very very quickly, without the need for scholars to discover it somewhere in the Cosmere. I know he's content to wait out the Oathpact as he was pretty well convinced he'd come out on top in the end, but his name is Odium, not Hubris. He would have been actively searching for ways to end the Oathpact, there's no way he wouldn't have been, right? It just seems like all this information should be readily available for a Shard. None of this is super complicated, really. Investiture IS Investiture, and it acts according to rules that the Shards are pretty intimately aware of. There may be different "spins" to Investiture, Identities, Connections, etc etc... and that dictates how that Investiture acts in any given situation, but, at the end of the day, the Shards are the foremost experts on the subject, right?

I am always open to discussing possibilities and want everyone's opinions on this. I'm not trying to come across as super negative, and if that has been the case, that hasn't been intentional. Ok, so, that's fair enough, I've essentially been operating under the assumption that this Desolation we are seeing is representative of the Desolations there were in the past, with Odium essentially at the helm, utilizing the Fused as his pieces on the board. Perhaps this is not the way it was done in the past, but I suspect that this is at least similar to what was done in the past. Regarding Lerasium and Atium, I don't know how much Lerasium comes into it. The crux of all this is essentially that though: How much do they get to control? That's honestly the crux of all of my confusion regarding most Shardic things. Ati was producing a TON (in relation to Lerasium at least, and any other God Metal we know of) of Atium/Electrum, but that was somehow related to how Leras trapped him. He specifically forced his Perpendicularity to be under the pits. Perhaps the fact that Ruin had no physical representation of his Investiture on Scadrial is why there was so much created. Leras had both the Mists as well as the Well of Ascension, two hyper concentrated forms of his own Investiture, thus, less God metal created. Ruin was the opposite. But, as you say, we have no idea what the availability of Raysium, but we do know that it would be within Sazed's power to create more Lerasium, as such it should follow that Rayse could create more Raysium. Now, we have no idea if Honor did something similar to Odium as Pres did to Ruin. I suspect it's something different, due to the fact that we know Odium has resisted, as much as he can, Investing in a system, which would make it difficult for a Perpendicularity to appear. This could also mean that he doesn't have a place to create a bunch of Raysium, so there is that. I'm not saying that it's easy, by any means. Just that there are many opportunities. An assassination attempt might be easier, since the Heralds wouldn't necessarily be on the highest of alert at that moment. They are very capable fighters, definitely, but you really only need one success. They have to win every time. Heralds have still been killed in every desolation. IF Raysium can be generated by Odium and given to his soldiers in any way (we see the Shanay-im have been incorporating it into their weapons for at least "several returns", and the gemstone thing was only recently discovered. That's the part I take issue with the most. And, so far, there hasn't been anything said that would refute that Odium definitely should have known a lot of this information. Been able to access it from somewhere. He doesn't even need to know super specific details. "I NEED a way to get rid of the Heralds, how do I do that...? Oh yes, I see, they are CS's now...their existence is pure Investiture... We can store Investiture in a gemstone..." etc... Even if Honor's death is what makes it so that Jezrien super actually died, trapping them in a gemstone (this is conjecture on my part, and if it's not true would completely make all of my points moot) while they are on Roshar should leave the Respawn point open for the Fused, right? That would be my expectation. If the Heralds are not returned to Braize, then the Fuzed can get to Roshar, that's sort of my understanding, anyway. It's safe enough to assume that trapping a single Herald was beneficial to the Fused in some way, or at the very least to Odium's plans, since he sent Moash/Vyre to do the deed in the first place. It doesn't take much to assume that if trapping one is beneficial, trapping the others would be as well? My point wasn't that gemstones are rare, obviously they are not. My point was that, mid battle, fiddling around with a gemstone attached in a very specific way to the pommel of your weapon to try to replace that would make it a single use weapon. There is no way you are going to swap that out mid fight. If you are correct and they could re-use the same gemstone, this isn't an issue at all. (I may be remembering that wrong, or making assumptions that aren't supported in text here.) Especially if we are operating under the assumption that, pre-death of Honor, they would be trapped instead of dead. I would assume putting more than one Herald in a gem would be much like trying to store a memory in someone else's coppermind, not possible, since it is basically keyed, or full in the case of the gemstone. This is basically the handwaving part, to me. It's possible that he didn't want to do this in the beginning, I fully accept that. He was trying not to get invested. However, again, the Fused have been using Raysium on their weapons for the "past several Returns" which kind of means that he's made enough for them to use it in battle, at least for the Shanay-im (Heavenly ones, I may be spelling that wrong). Which kind of directly refutes the "the risks to having this on the battlefield outweigh the benefits" point you and others have made. Granted, we don't know how many of these weapons were used, but if they have enough to cover spears in it, they have enough to make daggers like we saw. Even if it is just plating the outside of the spear, that's a LOT of metal, more than enough for a few daggers, vs one spear used by one individual. The fact that their spears are coated in it means that it doesn't really matter what the rest of the dagger is made out of, as far as I can tell, you just need a conduit of the Raysium that leads to the gem. I recognize that it has been stated that he's in no rush to get out of there, but that also sort of goes against his other motivations (not wanting to be Invested, he still wants out to continue his plans, etc..) He's willing to wait as long necessary but he is quite obviously going to take the opportunity to get out as soon as possible. It would make no sense for him to be like "well, I could get free now, but I can wait for another thousand years so I will." This is very fair. Also, I just want to point out, I'm not saying it would be "easy" to kill the Heralds like this, just that it would certainly be possible, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that Odium wouldn't have known about, at the very least, trapping the Heralds in gemstones. The best explanations for this are definitely that Honor made it not an option before, somehow. Maybe he was able to place restrictions on what Odium was able to provide for the Fused, maybe he put restrictions on how much Raysium could be made (though he was still alive for the "several Returns" that the Heavenly Ones were using Raysium on their spears, so I don't know that that holds up very well). Or it could very well be something like "You can't take the Heralds out like that". I think you may misunderstand my point in all of this. I'm not saying it's bad writing. (Yes, I've used memes from Pitch Meetings, but it's really only cuz I thought they were funny, and sort of fit). Literally every story ever written is going to have some things like this, where people do stuff that don't make much sense to us. I have full faith that Brando will make it make sense, but it's basically a year before we get to read the next book, and almost a decade till we get to read the book after that. This is all speculative and basically "but what about"s until we have better information from Brando. I'm not upset about any of this, this doesn't break the world for me. This is me trying to get other people's opinions on why this is just now becoming a thing. And if we all agreed on this, then, well, we wouldn't be having this conversation, and that would make me rather sad actually. I love the fact that we can get this in depth in these conversations! EDIT TO ASK: When they say they have been using Raysium for the past several Returns, do they mean "the past several Returns this Desolation"? Or do they call a Desolation a Return? Now I'm not sure. If they call every time the are respawned a Return, and mean that they have been using Raysium the past few times they have been respawned in the current conflict, everything I've said goes out the window and none of it matters

This doesn't take into account that Odium is apparently in direct charge of his forces. He tells them what to do, and when to do it. You're telling me that the guy who is actually leading the battles, and is the SOURCE of the metal required to do this, can't get his hands on some, or tell them how to get it? They literally died every Desolation though. And Odium has 1000's of disposable, reincarnating troops. They have enough Raysium that the Shanay-im can now incorporate this into their weaponry. He just got access to that now? That seems improbable at best. And again, lots of chances to retry, lots of chances for Rayse to make more of his own metal. Lots of things going on there. Even more opportunities for assassination than death on battle field. We know Odium has had humans on his side in the Desolations in the past. 10 Dead Heralds is worth Odiums freedom to continue his plans...He doesn't need the Heralds to fight for him, he needs them out of his way. Once the Heralds are dead, the Desolation will never stop, and there is no way for humanity to stand against infinite respawn. This is a fair enough point, though I don't think the risks outweigh the benefits here, personally. Still, Taln with a dagger would probably be a pretty dangerous foe, though, I don't think they quite work that way right? He'd have to fit a new gemstone to the dagger every time he killed one, wouldn't he? That would greatly limit its effectiveness in battle, and still favors the Fused more than the Heralds. This is HIS metal. If he's not trapped, how can he NOT control who has access to it? I admit we don't have a lot of detail on what control Shards do have over the creation of their metals, or their control over them, but I have to assume that they can at least do what Preservation did to Ruin and make it grow somewhere completely inaccessible by conventional means. Or, in my opinion more likely, make it manifest somewhere no one will ever find or know about it. Or not at all, potentially. It's important to note that I'm ok with this being "So the story can happen". It's literally probably just "Well, Honor enforced some boundary against that while he was alive." And that's totally fine. However, I still think it strains reason for Odium to not have figured this out eons ago, and had the Fused start doing drawing up plans. This was a "recent" discovery. It was made by Radiants, who trapped Mishram in the gemstone during the False Desolation and that's when Fused became aware that you can trap spren and Cognitive Shadows into a gemstone as well. They didn't even know spren can be trapped in gemstones before that. RoW ch 84: I know it is a recent discovery, I'm saying it stretches credibility that it is so recent. Odium is stuck, right? He wants out. I know that time isn't a factor to him or whatever, but obviously he wants out as quickly as he can be. We've been told by Brandon that Shards have the ability to instantaneously get any information they need, but they have to search for it and find it in a format that they can parse. He also said that they get a general brain blast of information about things like Investiture, Realmatics, etc... If they've been using those weapons for several Returns to drain Stormlight, Odium should INSTANTLY be able to make the connection to what the Heralds are, and how that would work. That's just the way of these things. Now that it's been explained to us, it's a pretty logical conclusion. They are essentially CR's, which means they are basically just Investiture, like everything else, and Raysium draws conducts Investiture. Rayse would have been able to put all that together, along with the fact that they wouldn't be held by the gem, and they would die, thus essentially making the Oathpact completely impossible to fulfill, turning on the infinite respawn cheat. Very true, but doesn't change the fact that Odium would understand the Investiture aspects of everything pretty much intrinsically through the Shard, and would know intimately what his own metal does. Even if he didn't, he'd have access to the information on ONE of the planets out there, and would have cause to go searching for it, which the WoB I posted indicates would lead him pretty much directly to the info he needs. I suspect this is truly the answer.