AlmightyGir

Sorry, I was nitpicking

The shards themselves lack intelligence, so... Yes, you are.

I think you're misunderstanding the point of that quote. And eye for an eye means that if you cut someone, they can cut you. If you take their cow, they get their cow back and get one of yours. If you murder someone, their family gets to murder you. The quote indicates that, if you continue down that path, everyone just kills everyone else in the end, it escalates. The purpose of a judicial system, involving juries and trials, etc. Is that the victim is removed from the process of administering justice, and a person or group of people who have no personal stake in the outcome do it instead, thereby removing (as much as humanly possible) emotion from the process.

Sazed gonna be all: I will Preserve your Honor, and Ruin your plans, and seek Retribution for all you've harmed in the Cosmere.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. While you could see it as a form of justice, it isn't fair, and more importantly, it's an emotional response. That's what Retribution is. Emotionally charged justice.

That might make some sense... I cannot fathom a Cosmere in which Retribution does not know that the Heralds still exist, and hold his investiture, and would not immediately find a way to either control or dissolve them. In the same vein, the Heralds are currently going through a phase of growth...

That's how I interpreted it as well... Stormlight is a temporary Investment, the energy passes in and out of your spirit web as you acquire and use it. But Kaladin's power is now anchored to his web in the Spiritual Realm, it's now a static part of his being.

From my understanding, when or shortly before becoming a Returned, Endowment asks them if they want to become one in order to change a potential future event (they're given a vision). Vasher has been around for so long, and done so many things, that my question about him is: What the hell did he see?!

10/10, would learn some new Rhythms from any of them.

No powers, words only. They're arguing philosophy. Who wins?

We should turn Braize into a giant metalmind.

I'm sure there will be many. But the match-ups you're picking are just too uneven. Wax would be a good match-up for someone like Moash.

The biggest problem with the premis for your "X vs X" fights so far man, both Rashek vs Taln, and Wax vs Kaladin, is that the only way either of the Scadrielians stand a hope is with prior knowledge of the fight, and ample time to plan, and assume nothing goes wrong with that plan. Essentially, they both rely on Batman feats to win. In a straight up impromptu 1v1, neither stands a chance in their related match-ups.

The only moment in time that this fight would even remotely tip into Rashek's favour, is the moment in which he's holding the Shard of Preservation, but was able to act without the Shard's influence. Outside of that, Taln rocks him 10/10 times.

He did... He said goodbyes in various forms to his family, and then left. Dalinar is gone. It's sad, but I think we should all accept it.

I'm not sure how valid an example this is. And I should be clear here my knowledge of atomic physics isn't the best, but my understanding is that Uranium is easily splittable, because it's an unstable element, but in theory if you knew what you were doing, you could split Iron and get Magnesium and Silicone. The problem is that Iron is very stable. If we were to apply this (admittedly back of a beer mat knowledge) to the Cosmere and the idea of Axi, we could consider something along the lines of: Each Shard has a "Spiritual Weight", this number is to Axi, what electrons are to Atoms. There is already some evidence for this, with some shards favouring some numbers. When Shards combine, the new resulting Shard has a new Spiritual Weight. You can split the combined Shard's metal, by specifically splitting it's Spiritual Weight. This is likely what happened when introducing Trellium to Harmonium. The resulting reaction is incredibly energetic (as seen in real-world fission), and produces two new Axi, each of the original Shards. In a lot of ways, this makes some sense. But it also leans me towards the idea that the various God metals likely all have the same Axial structure, except for their Spiritual Weights... Meaning that they could all be iron (for example) at their base, but with differing amounts of Spirit attached to them.

There is also the possibility that instead of being worshipped, Kaladin is instead reviled, and his name cursed, as someone who left when the world needed him the most, on a fools erand to the other side of the world, on a quest nobody, not even he understood... And everybody knows that Kaladin's presence at either of the two major sites of battle would have turned the tide, because he always did before. But he didn't, because he abandoned everyone. This, I believe is going to be the unfair perspective of the common man. The Windrunners, and everyone in Urithiru, even many of the fused would know it's not true, but to the commonfolk of whom Stormblessed is a legend... I don't see time or history being kind to him.

The idea that Autonomy wouldn't work with any other Shard is strange to me... Dominion would be a very good fit for Autonomy to merge with, conceptually and thematically. Harmony might even be a good fit for Autonomy in a lot of ways, balanced self-sufficiency and all that. BUT, Autonomys actions in the cosmere thus far are not what I would call self-sufficient, in fact some of the actions feel like a departure from the idea of Autonomy (as a word that we have a definition for, anyway) in some ways. Autonomy is pushing for conquest on their own terms, at the moment.

Why? Harmonium isn't called Sazedium.

I think it's *really* important that we make a distinction between godmetals and investiture for the purposes of this discussion. Tanavastium and Raysium both exist, and one should imagine that Retributonium(lol) would also exist, in the same manner that Harmonium does. But those are not the same things as Storm, Void, or Warlight. In theory, Retributions metal could also be split into its components the way Harmonium was. But that's not the same thing as splitting or changing the nature of his investiture.

I think it will be Big T, and I think he will achieve it by taking one of the other shards that he's splintered and put into the Cognitive realm. But I also think it will backfire on him in some way, and make him overall less effective.

Great points all round! To add my £0.02 to the thread... Sanderson is my favourite writer, but not because of his writing style. More, I'm just really enjoying the content, and the storys he is telling. In terms of if he's a better writer? It depends by what metric you're talking about. He's certainly the most prolific fantasy author of all time. I don't think his writing is as good as GRRM, but he beats GRRM because, well... He storming finishes his books. Like, could you imagine if GRRM wrote at an even half-decent pace? The reason I say this about Sanderson, and I don't mean this to be disparaging at all, is because it's obvious to me that he has a formula, and it works, and people like it, so he keeps doing it. But he hasn't really done anything to break the typical Heroes Journey mold that most fantasy seems to follow. In fact, Kaladin, Vin... The main protagonists of most of the Cosmere fit the Heroes Journey mold so well that while the specific details of Kaladin's rise, fall, and then rise again might not have been obvious, the overall journey from WoK to the end of WoR was entirely predictable. But, that's honestly part of the reason the writing is so enjoyable, I suppose. It doesn't try to pretend to be something it's not. It's good old fashioned good vs evil, small man rise up, save the world fantasy writing. And that's dope. I'm just glad Sanderson is able to pump this stuff out fast enough

That sounds much more like Autonomy or Invention to me...

The thread title is a quote commonly attributed to the greek philosopher Aristotle's definition of the Law. If we were to contextualize this quote within the Cosmere, then Honor certainly seem(ed) to be just that. Honor, the power, didn't like how Tanavast would justify bending or breaking oaths made, just because they didn't feel right. Honor only cared that the oath was upheld. Similarly, Big T having taken up both Odium (Passion) and Honor, now calls himself Retribution. Another word for Vengeance, and almost the antithesis of Law, at least in this context. While Big T can certainly appease both powers for a time, by giving in to Honor's desire to punish oathbreakers, and Odiums desire to, well... Dominate everything. I don't think the two powers can coexist meaningfully in the long term of the Cosmere. But, it does raise an interesting question to me... If Law is Reason, free from Passion, does that mean the shard of Reason itself is, in a way, an actual working combination of the concepts of Honor and Odium?

There will be an actual, in-universe crempost.