LiquidBlue

I still subscribe to the the shard plate is cousin spren theory. Addressing some of the objections: Shadplates crack and can be destroyed, but a shardblade doesn't. Not only is the shadblade made of a much more powerful type of spren, but it is also made of a singular spren. Cracking or destroying a shardblade would be the same as shattering a spren. Sure it is possible, but not at the power level we are dealing with. Shardplate is made up of a multitude of spren which still retain to some extent their identity as an aggregate. Spren would not consent to the involuntary trapping of other spren, even lesser spren. I think that the sharplate being gained as the Radiant progresses in their Oaths is telling. The spren are not trapped, but find common cause with a Radiant that has sworn the appropriate oaths. How does feeding stormlight to shardplate made of spren cause it to regenerate? As I mentioned above, the collection of spren making up the shardplate still retain to a certain extent their identity as an aggregate. A shardplate that is cracked or damaged is having the spren that make up the shardplate disperse. Notwithstanding, this lingering aggregate identity, the shardplate does have a singular identity as shardplate. It is suggestive that when a shardplate is damaged, the remaining pieces can be used to contest the shardplate. The shrdplate ultimately ends up with the most substantial piece fed a consistent stream of stormlight. I think that the process of reconstituting shardplate with stormlight, is similar to how stormlight can be used in Shadesmar to cause the beads to come together and form in the shape of a physical object. Shadeplate left behind in the Recreance doesn't scream. The spren that compose shardplate aren't symbiotic with the Radiant the way the radiant spren are. When the Radiants broke their oaths, they weren't ripping apart the minds of the spren that make up the shardplate. In fact the spren are perfectly content to continue being shardplate. My spren shardplate theory: Just like the radiant spren are following an existing template when they manifest as a shardblade, the lesser spren are also following a template when they become shardplate. Whether this template pre-existed the Radiants and was co-opted by them, or it was created for the Radiants, I don't know. Every type of Radiant spren is associated with a type of lesser spren, and may in fact be the same type of spren that simple differ by a quantum level of investiture and purpose. When a Radiant progresses sufficiently in their oaths, and their bond with their spren becomes sufficiently tight, and their purposes and intents become sufficiently aligned, the lesser spren find that their purposes and intents are fulfilled by becoming shardplate. Now some additional speculation to which I am not really wedded : The lesser spren do not lead an independent existence even when scattered by damage to the shardplate. The shardplate is not made from existing spren, but upon reaching (and approaching) the appropriate level, they are newly created or drawn from the spiritual realm. When a Radiant dismisses their shardplate, the spren do not return to the cognitive realm, but to the spiritual.

Yeah, I can see how he could make the Bands with just those three powers. But then he doesn't even need those two additional spikes either assuming he has a Feruchemical nicrosil medallion and a friendly feruchemist (and a friendly mistborn to share the allomantic abilities). Laying aside how medallions are created. He would only need a Feruchemical nicrosil medallion. The friendly feruchemist makes unkeyed nicrosil metalminds for all of the feruchemical abilities. Then either Kelsier uses his own ability to burn Nicrosil and the Feruchemical nicrosil medallion to compound the nicrosil charges to whatever level is necessary and continues to do so to maintain the levels he needs. Or, if Kelsier somehow returned without his own mistborn powers, he gives the Feruchemical nicrosil medallion and the the metalminds filled with feruchemical ability to a friendly mistborn, who can do the nicrosil compounding, and make nicrosil minds filled with the allomatic powers. At this point, Keliser basically has the bands of mourning. He just needs to layer metalminds onto the Feruchemical nicrosil medallion, and fill them with feruchemical and allomantic abilites. I wonder if Kelsier did have a friendly Feruchemist helping, or if he had to rely on old inquistor spikes. I think that it must have been a Feruchemist since I don't see why Ruin would make any Feruchemical nicrosil or Feruchemical aluminum spikes. (Okay maybe Feruchemical nicrosil, if he wanted an Inquisitor to have the ability increase their feruchemical or allomantic strength at crucial moments, but I think that the inquistors would have trouble finding Nicrosil to make metalminds from.)

Could Vasher manifest his Divine Breath as a shardblade?

The problem with a scadrian shardblade is that I am not sure that we have seen splinters of Preservation/Ruin/Harmony. The Radiant spren are splinters of Honor and Cultivation (and even a little bit of Odium), the Seons and Skase are splinters of Devotion and Dominion. Nightblood isn't really a shardblade, but the investiture used to make it was the little pieces of Endowment put into the Nalthis people. The Divine breaths are splinters of Endowment, and might be capable of being manifested as shardblades, but are different from the spren, seons, and skase because they are not self aware. But we haven't seen splinters of Preservation and Ruin. That being said, the shardblade is basically the splinter being manifest in the physical realm as a god metal. And there is Preservation/Ruin/Harmony god metals available on Scadrial. So maybe the shardblade could be created in the opposite direction. Gather a sufficient quantity of Scadrian godmetal together, then somehow cause it to transform into a splinter, which might then be able to manifest as a shardblade. (I now wonder if a Divine Breath can be manifest as a shardblade, it isn't self-aware, unless maybe the Returned counts as the splinter's awareness. What if Vasher could manifest his divine breath as a shardblade? Or, maybe transform himself into a shardblade? )

So not to be too dramatic, but I think that the Bands of Mourning are pretty simple to explain, and don't require any deeper knowledge than has already been revealed. The bands of mourning are just a single-power medallion with a bunch of metalminds layered together. As a single power medallion you avoid having to figure out how to make a crazy many-multiple-power medallion function. The single power granted by the Bands? Feruchemical Nicrosil. It then has nicrosilminds attached filled with the other feruchemical and allomantic abilities (or, I suspect, just 2 nicrosilminds one filled with "Feruchemy" and the other with "Allomancy"), and whatever other metalminds you want to have available for the feruchemical powers. PS: This might not be a novel theory, or maybe the bands of Mourning aren't as mysterious as my first impression made me believe.

@Calderis, thanks for the theory. I think that we are missing essential information that explains medallions, but this is fun theorizing. I agree that the name excisors is very suggestive, and hints that hemalurgy is involved. I think that it is interesting speculation that the charge released by allomantically burning a spike can be shunted into a nicrosil mind. It actually makes a lot of sense, so far we have only seen the capacity to use magic systems stored in nicrosil minds -- a piece of the spirit web. If burning hemalurgical spikes releases little pieces of spirit web, it makes sense that it could be stored in a nicrosil mind. The biggest leap is that the hemalurgical charge in the nicrosil mind would reach out to the person wearing the medallion, and grant them the ability. I do like how you use this to explain why the nicrosil mind isn't depleted with use, and why multiple medallions interfere with each other. If this is an actual interaction between hemalurgy, allomancy, and feruchemy, I wonder if there are other effects possible. Specifically, can any hemalurgical spike be converted into a nicrosil medallion such as human strength and senses, or even single spike hemalurgical constructs? I am still stuck a little on how the hemalurigcal charge filled nicrosilmind reaches out to the the wearer. This could simply be what happens when a nicrosilmind is filled with a hemalurgical charge, but I wonder if there might be an additional wrinkle. Metalminds can be unkeyed if filled when the feruchemist is also storing Identity, can the metalmind also be affected if the feruchemist is tapping or compounding Connection? We have seen that Identitiless Connection does tend to reach out for the nearest valid target. So maybe it is possible to make a feruchemical charge that isn't locked to a single Identity, but is also super Connected. Maybe this is all that is needed, and we don't have to worry about hemalurgically charged nicrosil, but I still like the hemalurgical charge theory. Just because the nicrosil mind charged with feruchemical or allomantic ability is superconnected and reaches out to the wearer doesn't mean that the person's soul knows what to do with the charge, but it does know what to do with a hemalurgical charge. Also if anyone could use the charge in a unkeyed super connected metalmind, then you wouldn't have to bother with nicrosil in the first place. Just distribute the charged metalminds directly. edit: Maybe it doesn't even have to be super connected. The other unkeyed metalminds might reach out with their identitiless connection, but as I speculated, the soul doesn't understand, but the soul does know what to do with the hemalurgical charge when it reaches out.

My 9 year old son just started mistborn. He has finished TFE and is a good portion through WoA. As we were talking about the combat abilities of Allomancy and Feruchemy, he opined that Feruchemy might be best because a Feruchemist could store their sense of pain. I know that there are any number of senses that can be stored in a tinmind. Has it ever come up, confirmed, or theorized that the sense of pain is one of the senses that can be stored? (If so, I am starting to think of how pain could be creatively tapped for effect.)

I wouldn't suggest that actually using Lerasium as a spike makes sense in terms of power potential. I am just speculating and offering a theory about Lerasium hemalurgy.

Thanks for the WOB. I wasn't thinking about producing other metals from the mists, just godmetals. I was thinking specifically of Lerasium, but I vaguely recall that there are Ruin mists as well. The implications are interesting -- hence the question. If the technology is sufficiently efficient, the god metal(s) become more generally available, at least until you start running out of mist.

Are the mists on Scadrial as prevalent in Era 3 or Era 4 as they are in Eras 1&2? (Does technological allomancy turn the mists into a technologically usable resource?)

Are there attributes that an Atium hemalurgical spike can steal that a Trellium spike cannot steal?

As I understand it, in hemalurgy, atium is a universal spike capable of stealing any attribute (if the person making the spike has the proper knowledge). We also know the feruchemical and allomatic properties of Atium. We don't know any of the feruchemical, allomatic, or hemalurgical properties of Lerasium. Assuming that Lerasium can be used in hemalurgy (which seems reasonable, Trellium is hemalurgically viable), I propose that it would make spikes that don't suffer from hemalurgical decay. The attributes are preserved. Lerasium shouldn't compete with Atium as a universal spike. Without any real evidence, I'll suggest that Lerasium spikes can steal allomatic power (since it is Preservation's magic system), and perhaps human attributes (since there is a little more of Preservation in humans than Ruin.) Further theory: Harmonium, if it can be used without blowing up, is both a universal spike (from Ruin), and doesn't suffer from hemalurgical decay (from Preservation). sidenote: Is Trellium a universal spike? In shadows of self, it steals both allomatic and feruchemical abilities, and is used to make the hemalurgical constructs (apparantly from stolen animal attributes)

There is no implosion. Being at the same pressure means that there is no net force at the boundary. She may have done it intentionally. But even if not, it might have been an unconscious thought. Shallen expected the volume of smoke to exceed the volume of the boulder because of conservation of mass, Jasnah might have had the same expectation. If Jasnah didn't do it consciously to feed into the expectations of the audience, she might have done it unconsciously because of her own expectations. This was one of my thoughts when I first started to think about it... That the difference in mass can be explain by the conversion of investiture to mass. However, I don't think that it is so simple. This would mean that soulcasting to a dense material would require more investiture, likely much, much more. And doesn't explain what happens to the missing mass/energy/investiture when soulcasting to a less dense material. My theory at the moment is that the investiture is acting as a catalyst allowing the change from one essence to another. Even though the soulcasting is done by speaking to the cognitive aspect of the object, I think that it is effecting a spiritual change... Instead of rearranging what is there, soulcasting is changing the essence of the object. This I think is a good explanation. Mass/Energy conservation comes from the time invariance of physical laws; however, for realm, such as the spiritual realm, that doesn't experience time, I don't think that mass conservation should be expected to hold true.

Density doesn't have anything to do with it, only pressure. I've conceded that the soulcasting of the boulder wasn't just soulcasting to room pressure smoke since the outward flow was much too vigorous for that, but it wasn't nearly vigorous enough if mass was being conserved. I think that the boulder was soulcast to pressurized smoke, because that was the result people expected. I doubt that hollow structures is really the answer, but let's look at it. What if we soulcast Dalinar Kholin into a nice (hallow) marble statue. I don't know how tall Dalinar is, or how much he weighs so let's use Hulk Hogan. He is about 200cm tall and 137 kgs. Marble has a density of ~2700 kg/m^3. So a Dalinar mass of marble occupies .05 m^3. The surface area of the Dalinar statue is about 1.9 m^2, so a hollow, volume conserving statue would have a shell with a thickness of .05m^3/1.9m^2 = 0.026m = 2.6cm. Which doesn't seem too unreasonable, but the structural qualities of the soulcast material become important (both to support the shape of the object and support it against the vacuum in the void of the object.)

The fun thing about thermodynamics is that it really isn't a physical law, but a mathematical law. In other words, despite any differences in the physical laws between our universe and the cosmere, the cosmere should still respect some sort of thermodynamic laws. You're right about being careful to define what the closed system is. Since we see communication between the three realms. The closed system must include all of the physical, cognitive, and spiritual realms. Now here is where we run into trouble, which may not be resolvable without further information. Thermodynamics tells us how a system evolves over time, but it is not clear that the spiritual realm is subject to time or even changes.

Hi, Sorry for trying to resurrect this thread. I just want to stimulate a little more discussion. I really think that all of the canonical examples of soulcasting show that it is volume preserving and not mass preserving. Even the rock to smoke example shows this. The boulder was changed to smoke which then billowed out. This isn't a counter example, Jasnah either consciously or subconsciously soulcast the boulder to compressed smoke, but there was not nearly enough smoke to account for the entire boulder's mass. So does soulcasting violate conservation of matter/energy? Maybe... probably... does it matter? It seems like soulcasting isn't rearranging the nucleons/atoms/molecules of the object, but simply replacing the substance of the object with a different essence.

Awesome! It's good to see the work. How did you estimate the TNT equivalent? I tried to avoid using a molecular theory since I wanted to avoid coming up with a molar mass for "smoke". Instead, I think that we can do a good job with pressure, volume, and air density. I used for the density of the boulder 2.7 g/mL, and for smoke 1.3e-3 g/mL, giving a pressure for the compressed smoke, ~2000 atm. (Hmm... I claimed 770 atms before.) Let's do a consistency check with your numbers. Density of the boulder is 26.91 kg/m^3 (Already we see a problem, the density of styrofoam is 45 kg/m^3), density of smoke (at STP) = 58 g/mol * 1/22.4 mol/L = 2.6 kg/m^3 => Pressure of compressed smoke is ~10.4 atm ~150 psi. Okay, so we didn't get the same answer even using the same numbers, but I think the two methods are roughly consistent. (160 psi vs. 150 psi). The problem is, it seems like you were using the wrong density for the boulder. Although it is of lesser importance, I don't agree with your choice of the molar mass of smoke. In the scene, the smoke is shown to rise, so it must have a density less than air. (I used the density of air in my calculation.)

Spoolofwhool, I'll have to disrespectfully disagree. If mass is conserved, then it is the exception and not the rule. Volume conservation seems to be the rule. When the boulder was soulcast, it results in a wind, but can be explained simply by having a bubble of lighter than air material surrounded by a denser gas, you will observe convective movement. It does not however result in an explosion of the equivalent of 55 lbs of TNT, as it would if mass were conserved. It seems like ever other example of soulcasting also is volume preserving, or at least there is no indication that it is not. Another good example are the men in the alley. The man soulcast to crystal is not remarkably smaller, but instead appears as he did in life. The men soulcast to smoke did not produce the explosions I previously discussed, and we didn't get a man's mass worth a fire exploding out of the alley. (If we use .3 kg/m^3 as the density of flame, and assume the thug has 100 kg. the mass preserving soulcasting would produce over 300 cubic meters of flame). The only real evidence of mass conserving soulcasting is the inrushing air during creation of stone structures from air, but this is also a special case where the object being soulcast wasn't already a specific shape or volume. It is also special because it is soulcasting only a part of what is otherwise a continuous whole (a technique that we haven't seen before), and it is not clear what would comprise the cognitive aspect of the atmosphere.

I've been thinking about the physics and realmatics of soulcasting. We have seen quite a bit of it on screen, but there are, of course, still mysteries. Going down the soulcasting rabbit-hole, I came across the following WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105-17th-shard-forum-qa/#e1139 Unfortunately, this seems to disagree with the canonical description of soulcasting. I imagine Brandon said this because in general he likes to preserve the laws of physics. (In this case the conservation of mass.) But how does mass conserving soulcasting contradict canonical soulcasting: 1) Soulcasting is shape preserving. We have seen this in every case where it is possible to see the shape of both the original object and the soulcast object. However, not only is it shape preserving, soulcasting also seems to be volume preserving. We have never seen a soulcast object, when soulcast into a denser material, shrink. This would be a very visible effect. It looks like marble has a density of about 2.7 g/mL. A human body has a density(if we include the air filled lungs) a little less than water, so let's call it 1 g/mL. If soulcasting conserved mass, a body soulcast to marble would shrink in volume by about 63%. This would cause a 6 ft. man to become a 4' 4" statue. 2) If soulcasting conserved mass, soulcasting to a lighter density material would cause catatrophic explosions. The analysis would be easier if she had soulcast it to air, but let us consider the example of Jasnah soulcasting the boulder to smoke. The smoke floated upward so it is less dense than the surrounding air. It looks like air at Standard temperature and pressure is about 1.3e-3 g/mL. If the boulder was 1m diameter sphere (This is being generous, it was likely much larger), it would have a mass of about 1.4 million grams of 1400 kg (using the density of marble as above). If soulcasting conserved mass, this would result in smoke that really wants to occupy about 1 million liters. To put that in D&D terms, that is 307 5ftx5ftx5ft cubes. Upon being soulcast the smoke would initially be at a pressure of 770 atms. A rough estimate would put the resulting expansion of the smoke at the equivalent of 55 lbs of TNT. (This last figure is very detail dependent and it is possible that I made some mistakes in the calculation. To make the conversion to equivalent pounds of TNT, I referenced http://ftp.feq.ufu.br/Luis_Claudio/Segurança/Safety/GUIDELINES_Chemical_Process_Quantitative_Risk_Analysis/0720X_02e.pdf) My conclusion? Soulcasting doesn't preserve mass, it preserves volume. Breaking conservation of mass is always problematic if you want to have physics behave in any way like we are used to, but I have some realmatic thoughts about that that I will share soon. I think that you can avoid the troubles associated with non-conservation of mass in a realmatic way.

Can Rosharan gem spheres become infused by the radiant aura of a high level Nalthis heightening?

This is a minor theory. At his death, Miles gives what sounds like a death rattle. I propose that this has nothing directly related to Moelach or the influence of a shard. Rather at the moment of his death he was burning not only feruchemically charged gold, but uncharged gold as well. (Maybe he instinctively drained a gold metal mind instead of burning it, then inadvertently burned it for gold allomatic effect.) I think that looking into the spiritual realm by allomatically burning gold at the moment of death would be enough to trigger a death rattle.

So I want to talk about the Skybreakers. I know that they are conflicted because of their oaths, but it doesn't seem as straight forward as "we will support the parshmen as the lawful heirs of Roshar." I don't think that the Skybreakers are going to simply start taking orders from Odium. The Fused want to eliminate humanity from Roshar and Odium seems to have promised this to them. But it seems like Shinovar was given to the human so I can't see the Skybreakers supporting an Odium/Fused assault on Shinovar. The Aimians also seem to be native to Roshar, so I can't see the Skybreakers supporting Odium over the Aimians. There are humans with Parshendi heritage. I think that the Skybreakers will have trouble working against them. This includes the Horneaters, the Herazidans, and perhaps the Natanatans and even some of the people from Jah Keved. Odium is the interloping shard, Honor and Cultivation are in some sense the native shards, so it becomes difficult to support Odium over Honor and Cultivation. The translated stele says that the Parshendi were commanded by their gods to welcome the humans, that seems to legitimize human presence on Roshar. The Skybreakers are in a tough place, but I don't think that their oaths require them to support a genocidal campaign against the humans.

I think that the Radiants broke their oaths because what they had done or were about to do to the Listeners. How can you uphold the oath "I will protect even those I hate" if you are about to lobotomize an entire sentience species. There are still a lot of mysteries surrounding the recreance. I don't think that the revelation about the origin of humankind on Roshar is the whole story.

I thought that Shallan made the sketches after being brought into the vision of the heralds abandoning the oathpact. But that wouldn't explain the picture of Taln unless she saw him in the war camps or had very good description given to her by those that did. Ash's thought suggested to me that Oilbringer(Is that the name of the famous artist whose style Shallan learned from?) is another of Hoid's aliases.

Oathbringer had some interesting clues about surgebinders. In the expanded, original Nahodan vision, Nahodan laments that due to a war with a surgebinder they were not prepared for the desolations. IIRC, his book laid the foundation for some of the KR oaths -- so this would mean that there were surgebinders before Knights Radiant. I cannot recall the reference, but I also believe that the heralds were extreme wary of the KR until Issai instituted the oaths. With Honor gone, it seems like there may be limitations removed from surgebinders. We may see surgebinding and nahel bonds not constrained by the oaths, and dangerous and destructive aspects of the surges unbound. (I suspect that this also played a part in the Recreance, they (like Nale) felt that surgebinding had to be supressed and maybe even deliberately killed their spren so that they wouldn't bond to others.)