listerfeend

Agreed! We have a couple of examples of that ALMOST coming to be, I'm sure at some point we will get something along those lines! But, I'd like to clarify, I suspect that a machine made purely with fabrials, no Nalthian's required, could potentially become something one would consider Awakened, just by way of the Fabrials being created. We know that they are discovering that Intent matters when trying to trap a spren, or split one...they are getting close to understanding the Realmatics in a way that I feel will lead to Artifabrians essentially creating a "new" magic system, and I further suspect we haven't even begun to see the upper limits of what is possible. At the end of the day, Fabrials are really just Investiture with an Intent trapped in a physical item. To me that sounds a lot like something you could Awaken with

I'm still pretty new to making posts here, so I think this is the right place to talk about this, but if it's not, please let me know! So, I'm not sure how best to describe this, but I'll give it a go. I suspect that, due to the mechanical nature of fabrials, it should be possible to create what would best be described as "Awakened" (in the same way that other things throughout the cosmere have been called Awakened without needing specifically to be Awakened by a Nalthian using Breaths) constructs, similar to Yumi Spoiler My thoughts on this are essentially: It's possible for them to create sensors or switches that can be activated physically, or likely through some good timing and shielding of specific fabrials within the device, which can react to the outside world. This provides the starting point for any and all computation. An Awakened object can be seen, in my opinion, as any artificially intelligent construct designed to complete a task or instructions. One major portion of RoW was the pushing forward of fabrial tech and knowledge, understanding more about how it works, how to guide fabrials to do what is needed, how the different metals interact with the spren inside the gemstones, hints that it should be possible to create fabrials without imprisoning helpless spren... It's my theory that by MB era 4, we'll see constructs like Secret Projects Spoiler (TSM, Yumi) Thoughts?

that is assuming that Odium didn't know that, which doesn't seem likely to me. I am fairly sure that Odium very specifically did NOT share that knowledge with Raboniel, and probably wasn't super pleased that she found all that out in the first place. But was also likely hindered by Intent to not interfere as she was following her passion.

Is that canon though? Ambition, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't settling with anyone, and wouldn't have had that same weakness? Unless I'm missing something. I know Mercy was involved in that fight as well, but it's unclear to me what their involvement was. This raises more questions for me than it answers though. Who's perception matters more, is this literally a democratic debate? Where one side can make arguments, and the validity of those arguments is determined by...whichever side has the most support? I'm not sure how that plays out. Frankly, if Ado made a planet where a specific spren is required to prevent the destruction of civilizations by flooding, seems sort of like Ado is at fault for Kharbranth's destruction. I'm not making that as a serious argument, it's just one of those things where perception shaping reality makes for really weird interactions when we don't know who's perception is the one that matters.

I'm a little confused by this. You seem to be indicating that the Shard itself, not the vessel Rayse, made an agreement with Taravangian to save Kharbranth. So, I guess my confusion is, why would the deal that T had with R have any bearing now? Or are you saying that just because Todium is still bound by whatever agreements Rayse made for things like not attacking Hoid? So basically, Tod is bound to preserve Kharbranth still, and you think his actions could cause the destruction of Kharbranth, thus weakening Tod in some way? Does that about sum it up? Which leads to a secondary question. The pact was specifically that Odium would spare the city and any human born there and their spouse. If an indirect action of Tod, like him somehow making a dead eye out of the Stormfather, causes the destruction...does that count as Odium breaking the pact? Rod specifically said I'm not sure how pedantic they get to be, but, if I can interpret a secondary consequence of a previous action as "Not Odium actively destroying or killing anyone in the city" I'm sure T's perspective could take that into account, right? I know that, when asked about Honor being able to defy whatever agreement between the 16 to not settle with each other, Brandon basically said "He would say he did keep to that agreement" (I can't find the specific WoB right this instance). That does imply that whatever agreements are made by Shards, binding though they may be, they ARE up for interpretation by the Vessel/Shard/Intent

Moash has Shardplate, and is thoroughly team Odium, right? The Shardplate in the vision could very well be his. Dalinar feels something very familiar about the eyes of the champion in that vision too. That could definitely have been either a twisted reflection of himself, or Gavilar at this point...

This is directly contradicted by WoB. By this we can tell that all Shards DO represent cosmic forces and natural laws. Ruin isn't just "a God's desire to destroy" it's the source, if you will, of entropy throughout the Universe. (I'm STILL not clear on if the Cosmere is a "cluster" sized universe, or simply a "cluster" within a larger universe, and WoB's don't really clear that up for me haha) Except, a couple of points before that, you just said that if Honor can be reformed, it's not really dead, right? And they can be right and wrong on both accounts. WE know that Honor isn't God, because we know about Ado. But they don't know about Ado, so Honor is God to them. Tanavast is dead, that's true, but part of him lives on in the Stormfather, and the Shard of Honor can presumably be remade, so, is God the Shard, or the Vessel. Was Ado a Shard or a Vessel? We don't have that answer, and we won't until Dragonsteel is over, more than likely. Brandon doesn't want to answer the question of "Was Ado God, or was Ado god" for pretty understandable reasons. As stated, he wants to be able to have Dalinar and Jasnah both exist in the same story, and not have the audience going "tee hee Jasnah is so dumb, how can you be an atheist when Ado was so obviously God of Everything". This doesn't mean we aren't going to get explanations about the claims of the Aether, for example. Just that he isn't going to canonize whether or not there is a God Beyond, if Ado was the end all be all, what happens when you die, etc... Personally, I have BIG faith that, whatever Brandon writes, it's going to be satisfying, and probably leave me wanting more. And that will be true up until there are no more cosmere books and beyond. So far, he and his team have been very successful in making all of this work in satisfying ways. The ONLY things I've been dissatisfied by have been WoB's that seem to contradict themselves, or the texts. And those are only dissatisfying until he has time to fully flesh out the ideas and get them into the books.

this...murders my happiness in ways that I don't know how to cope with

Probably for the same reason Wax didn't notice he was a Mistborn... "I'm a Misting, I can only burn Steel, why would I ingest other metals"

It's possible that LR DID use pure Atium for himself. It granting broader insight into the SR, and thus giving a more expansive form of Future Sight, would be instrumental in planning and maintaining his grip on the Final Empire. It could be that he specifically hid this information from everyone for fear that it would be used against him? Malatium is pretty obviously an alloy of Atium, Electrum, and Gold. There is no need for Kelsier to have had access to or knowledge of "pure" Atium. Though, I will say, it does cause some problems simply due to the nature of material science on Scadrial. To make Allomantically viable alloys, they have to be able to TEST those metals for the correct ratios, and even if the common metalurgist didn't know what Electrum was, they should still be able to detect that the Atium they were using had something else in it... Unless something about the God Metal somehow blocks that kind of detection? But that seems a little silly. I sincerely doubt that Ruin's pure investiture would grant a powerset related to a mixture of Ruin and Preservation. But, this could go back to my original point about Future Sight, how it could be used against the LR, etc... As for the rest of your points...they are pretty valid. Why wouldn't the other Shards, especially Autonomy and Odium, try to make use of these powerful metals? Obviously they have access to them, their acolytes are using them for nefarious purposes, but it seems like they are only interested in their material characteristics and not their other effects.

There is a lot to digest here, and I was just thinking to myself I need to figure out how to get a WoB on the matter. In my example, Preservation/Ruin would have settled Nalthis on their own, but as you said, Nalthis and Scadrial are sort of both bad examples for this, since the life there was created by the Shards in both cases. Perhaps a better comparison would be having Preservation and Ruin initially decide to settle on Roshar (instead of Honor and Cultivation), or another planet that had life prior to the Shattering. In which case I am assuming that the Metallic Arts, as we know them, would not have formed there. that portion of the WoB is where the Coppermind is getting its "much of the system is dictated by the planet itself" line, and that sort of still feels, to me, like he's saying Allomancy/Hemalurgy/Ferruchemy were not invented by the Shards, but more interpreted by the people/planet/system, and Shard's are able to limit some of the variables surrounding how that interpretation manifests. In the end, "they have SOME influence" seems accurate enough, but I'd like to get a WoB on the matter

This has been a contentious topic between myself and my coworkers, and I've made an account just to ask this question. For context, the Coppermind tells us And This seems to indicate to me that, had the Shards we know decided to Invest in different systems, we would still end up with very similar expressions of Investiture on each planet, with differences lying more in how the Investiture is accessed. I might not be using the best vernacular here, so let me use an example to try to explain. In my head, the above tells me that, had Ruin and Preservation decided to Invest on Nalthis, instead of Scadrial, Preservation would have begun fueling Awakening. The way to preform an Awakening would likely change, for instance, Breaths might never come into it, they may still have used Metals to fuel Awakening, or some other way. But the end result would be something basically like Awakening, and not the Metallic Arts. Likewise, if Endowment had Invested in Scadrial, then the Metallic Arts would have been fueled by them, and we'd see some other manifestation of how to power that. The other side of this argument is that the Shards have a LOT of influence over the use of Investiture on their Invested Systems, however, this seems to contradict the "much of the system is dictated by the planet itself" line. So, the question becomes: Which is it? Do they have a large influence, or a not so large one?