Schizoposting

It's still not capable of changing the general shape of the armor, such as giving a Radiant wings. Maybe a Lightweaver could make the helmet pointy, but that still won't be anywhere near enough. In most places guns are not commonly available, legally at least. It's only really in America where guns are wildly available, in a place like China, India, or most of Europe, your average civilian does not own a gun. In this particular case we're discussing fighter get vs Windrunner, which would be ridiculous to hold in an arena, unless if the arena is absurdly large. The original Hazekillers were elite special soldiers trained and equipped to fight Mistborn, the use of the term "Hazekiller" therefore implies that combatants will be well trained and specially equipped to fight invested beings. The only possible way to get anywhere near enough stormlight to actually stand a chance against a fighter jet, would be to be directly powered by Honor, like the Heralds during the desolations. Otherwise, at a certain point carrying all weight of the needed gemstones would have diminishing returns, as seen with rockets or aircraft.

@Aliroz-The-Confused already said this, but quite frankly, Gavilar was a terrible person who wanted to bring about the desolations, just so that he could become a god. The whole treaty was a charade, with Gavilar planning to use the Listeners as tools bring back the Fused. This, as Nale notes, violates the treaty and gives the Listeners the legal right to fight back. Even if you still think that the assassination was immoral, the Listeners still had a very strong argument for it being an ethical decision, which is not the case for genocide or other war crimes.

He's explicitly considered to be the archetypical Alethi; in fact, his war crimes are so unremarkable that they're never commented upon (even his betrayal of Dalinar is just seen as realpolitik). Well, yes, he's complaining that they care more about money than killing Listeners. So? What does this have to do the topic at hand? One immoral act does not justify another by definition. Even if the assassination of Gavilar was heinous crime (it wasn't), it still wouldn't make Alethkar's war crimes any less immoral.

I don't think that shardplate can be lashed given how invested it is. Only to a very limited extent, and only for Lightweavers. We have seen absolutely no indication the windrunners are capable at traveling at over mach 1 for any extend period of time, which would make them far inferior even to 4th generation fighters. In most places civilians don't have access to firearms; does that mean that hazekillers can't have guns? The point is that one's weaponry makes a huge impact on one's fighting prowess. Stealth is pointless against Radiants, since they don't have radar, and networking is useless without things to network to. So, many advantages of fifth generation fighters are irrelevant when facing a radiant 1 vs. 1. A PL-15 is beyond visual range, so a J-10 would just attack the Windrunner from 100 miles away, whilst the radiant would have no way of tracking it, even if they were capable at flying faster than mach 1. Why wouldn't they have access to it? If Roshar invades era 3 Scadrial, you can bet that the Skybreakers will be facing "Hazekillers" with fighter jets. In the books they have never traveled faster than ~200 mph. But even if they could travel at hypersonic speeds, they would still lack the maneuverability of a fighter jet, due to aerodynamics. And again, traveling at such a speed would take a ridiculous number of lashes, and thus Stormlight, due to air resistance.

Windrunners only travel at ~200 mph due to terminal velocity; if they use multiple lashings to try to get around this, they will run out of Stormlight much quicker, not to mention that shardplate is way less aerodynamic than fighter jets. So no, a windrunner is not beating a fighter jet. So Hazekillers are allowed to use nukes when facing someone from era 3? Who said anything about using F-35s? A J-10C using PL-15s with AEWAC support would be more than enough to take down a Windrunner.

@Frustration, I'm too lazy to dig up the exact quotes, but it's mentioned somewhere in WOK or WOR that, initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners. Also, there's a conversation (in WOR I think) where Dalinar complains that the Alethi aren't depleting the Listeners numbers fast enough. Even if their goal isn't to kill all Listeners, the Alethi are clearly engaging in very severe war crimes, by our modern standards. (To be fair, Sadeas raped his way across Alethkar, and Dalinar massacred the Rifters, so this isn't exclusive to the War of Reckoning.)

If your goal is to create some sort of "power level" system, then Hazekillers do not make for a very good unit of measurement. Even if we ignore the very contrived nature of the confrontation, you still run into the problem of equipment—a "Hazekiller" with a fighter jet, could trivially defeat a 5th ideal Windrunner in ariel combat, does that mean that a Windrunner has a score of only one? Or conversely, a regular full shard bearer could likely kill an arbitrarily large number of unarmed senior citizens. So, you'll need determine some way too weigh Hazekillers based on the technology the weapons they possess, their skill, and physical capability. This is non-trivial; how do we for instance, determine the relative worth of, say, a tank vis-à-vis one thousand riflemen? And again, the effectiveness of various equipment heavily depends on the specific environment and situation. But even if we ignore this problem or just have all the Hazekillers be identical, then there's still the issue that being good at killing Hazekillers != being good at fighting other invested beings; a military that's optimized towards slaughtering civilians, is probably weaker than an equivalent military is optimized for, well, fighting other militaries. In general, power rankings should be taken with a grain of salt, since they abstract the manifold of concrete possible situations down to a single quantitative value. Obviously, they are not entirely useless—a Herald is more likely than not to win in a fight against a duralumin misting with Parkinsons—but we should understand them as being potentially useful abstractions instead of fetishizing them as being objective measures of combat strength.

He was fighting whilst being completely insane and lacking any surges, shards, or Stormlight; I don't think that performance is representative of his actual fighting prowess during the desolations.

My point is that a given fighter's effectiveness is dependent on the context; if an Elantrian steps on a landmine, their invested powers aren't going to be so useful. Besides, ambushes are integral part of war, so dismissing them out of hand is silly. It's fine you are assuming a gladiator style contest, but this would be a very unrealistic and contrived situation, one that rewards brute strength over tactical finesse; in an actual armed conflicted, nobody is going to be attacking Elantrians head on with uninvested fighters—instead they'll try and use some asymmetric strategy or use their own invested arts. If we look at the Taliban as a real-world example, they would have been obliterated had they fought the U.S. military head on, which is why they used guerrilla warfare instead, which allowed them to return to power after 20 years of war.

I think that what a lor of people forget when it comes to "who would win" type discussions, is that there is no such thing as a fair fight—in other words, any given concrete circumstance will benefit one party over the other. For example, an Elantrian in a cage match is very formidable, but if you take by surprise and just shoot them in the head with a gun, they're suddenly not so scary. This is especially true for Feruchemists, since their strength is directly proportional to how much they have stored in their metal metalminds. So, if we want to answer the OP's question then we have to first determine the exact situation that we are considering—how technologically advanced the combatants are, the environment, the degree of foreknowledge that the parties will possess, the skilled possessed by both parties, etc. Without answering these questions, the discussion is all but meaningless.

I would like to make a few more recommendations: The first would be The Black Company by Glen Cook which is a dark/military fantasy series that follows, a more or less, amoral elite mercenary group that is hired out by a dark lord to put down a rebellion. This series actually inspired the Night Brigade, so if you are interested in it, I would strongly recommend The Black Company. The original plotline has been completed, but there are sequels planned, apparently. My second recommendation would be A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, which combines science fiction with elements of epic fantasy. It takes place in a universe where the laws of physics and technological progress are dependent on one's location in the Milky Way, with the story being set in an area called the Beyond, where true AI and FTL travel is possible, but superintelligence is prohibited. The plot revolves around stopping a virus like entity that can take control of and enslave all forms of intelligence. The book is a standalone, but there's a loose prequel and a direct sequel. Finally, I would like to recommend the science fiction novel Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon; it is based on a simple premise: what if there was a cure for autism? The novel explores the various implications of said premise, and it makes for a very interesting character study. Edit: @Theory, on Windows you can use Alt + 0151 to type an em dash.

It's an interesting and original theory, but I think it runs into some potential hurdles: Firstly, I think that a lot of the details that you noticed can be explained away as being plot armor; in other words, Wayne is such a great actor, or so great at business, because it makes for a good story. It's important to remember that stories are inherently unrealistic, and thus, if something is implausible, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a supernatural explanation (e.g. John McClane does not have supernatural powers despite being unreasonably lucky and skilled). Secondly, your theory would presuppose Harmony being some master Machiavellian manipulator, which contradicts how he's presented in the books as being, quite frankly, a bumbling idiot. For instance, he was completely taken by surprise by Bavadin in The Lost Metal, and his attempts to manipulate Wax were very ham-fisted, which caused problems down the line. (Incidentally, Shadows of Self is by far the best book in Era 2 for this very reason.) Finally, while your theory does explain the relevant details, it doesn't give a particularly strong case for why we should believe in it—your specific points can be pretty easily explained away without invoking divine intervention. So, in conclusion, while your theory is certainly original, personally, I'm unconvinced. As an aside, @WitAdjacent, did you use some sort of AI program to help write this post? It contains a lot of "AI speak" such as "it's not x—it's y" or the rule of three. I don't mean to judge you—I'm simply curious.

I recently finished Lord Foul's Bane, and The War of the Flowers by Stephen R. Donaldson and Tad Williams respectively. The former, while by no means terrible, wasn't particularly interesting IMO—the prose felt rather unwieldly, the lore/worldbuilding was pretty confusing, and Thomas Covenant wasn't that interesting of a character. I guess the reason why it is so well received, is because it was genuinely innovative for its time (it was published in 1977), compared to, say, The Sword of Shannara. I am still at least going to read the first trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, simply because of how influential it was on the fantasy genre as a whole; The Wheel of Time, was obviously heavily influenced by it, and the Ryshadium are also an obvious homage to the Ranyhyn. The later I liked a lot; The War of the Flowers is a standalone epic/portal fantasy, that has some very interesting worldbuilding, and premise, whilst avoiding a lot of the bloat that tends to come with epic fantasy (although it does get a bit slow about 3/4 the way through, before the climax). Tad Williams generally has some issues with his plotting, but it seems like the standalone nature of this work allowed for a much tighter plot.

There is probably some level of significance to the story of the Uvara, but given that Ishar was unable to find them, I don't think that it should be interpreted literally. Also, my personal theory is that Puuli's story is more or less referring to the Heralds returning to restore Stormlight to the post Night of Sorrows Roshar, but this may be a stretch.

While creating a radiant diving suite does seem plausible, I'm not quite sure what the point would be, at least in the SA; aside from Nergaoul, there's probably nothing particularly interesting about the seafloor—I highly doubt that we will see an underwater civilization, given that we have seen zero foreshadowing for such a reveal.

@SeekingShards I am not an engineer or a physicist, but I think that there quite a few issues with your idea: Firstly, creating a bubble of air would be problematic because it would rise to the surface due to it having a lower density than the surrounding seawater, resulting in most of the oxygen being wasted. More realistically, you'd probably want to simply filter out the oxygen without actually trying to create a bubble around yourself. Secondly, since the oxygen is dissolved in the seawater, the force applied on said sea water should also be imparted on the oxygen, which would negate the repelling, at least to some extent. I actually think that it would be better to get rid of the water repeller altogether, and to simply attract oxygen instead. Thirdly, while you're right that there is plausibly enough water to supply the oxygen, actually extracting it at a usable level will require a massive amount energy, orders of magnitude stronger than the strongest fabrials that we've seen so far. This will also probably result in some very turbulent currents. Fourthly, you would need a way to collect all the oxygen that you've extracted so that you can breathe it in, without allowing it to escape. Finally, as I've already said, it's just easier to use more conventional designs; the optimal form of your idea would involve having some contraption that would suck in huge amounts of water, extract the oxygen, send it to the diver through a tube like the ones used in diving suites, and then eject the processed oxygen-poor water. But again, this would be so impractical, that it would be much easier to just make a regular diving suite.

Autonomy, at least as it's interpreted by Bavadin, is essentially the shard of hyper-capitalism: But capitalism necessitates winners and losers—what Schumpeter called "creative destruction"—not to mention that it's an anti-egalitarian system, one which can lead to staggering levels of inequality. Therefore, according to this interpretation, there is no contradiction between Autonomy's intent and her attempts to "out compete" the other shards; on the contrary, they go hand in hand.

I don't have access to the Cosmere RPG, but I think that your design is impractical, because of physical and practical constraints. There is on average less than 10 milligrams of oxygen per liter of seawater. Supposing that a person needs about 250 milligrams of oxygen per minute to survive*, then the device would have to process a minimum of 25 liters of sea water per minute, assuming an efficiency of 100%. Even if this were possible, it would likely be so difficult and energy expensive, that it would be much easier to just build a regular diving suit, or a submarine. So, I don't think that your device makes sense. *This is just a rough estimate, but the real value should be somewhere in that ballpark

You can always come up with some sort of ad hoc explanation to hand wave away any and all issues, but this leads to an ever more convoluted theory to solve a non-existent problem. You can certainly believe whatever you wish, but I don't see what this is supposed to add to our interpretation of the Cosmere. I'm sorry but this is an example of the problem with the emphasis on "lore"; I am discussing the narrative and thematic purposes of a twist.

The problem is that positing that Rashek is Spook's great-grandfather, creates more problems than it solves. The specific things that you noted are completely circumstantial and can be easily explained away; contrawise, it's implausible that nobody would be aware of this close relation—any child of the Lord Ruler would be a big deal, and people would almost certainly keep track of them and their immediate descendants. I think what a lot of fans forget when it comes to plot twists, is that they should serve some purpose; from a narrative perspective, Spook being Rashek's descendant would serve no purpose other than cheap shock value—which would be bad writing.

It's almost certainly true that Spook is descended from Rashek, just like Vin, Kelsier, or Wax. In fact, almost everyone with noble blood is descended from the Lord Ruler. Suppose that he had two children, and each of his descendants has an average of two children of their own every 20 years. That would mean that over the span of 1000 years, he would have ~2^50 descendants... which is many orders of magnitude higher than the total population of the Final Empire. Obviously, this calculation is flawed, because at a certain point, Rashek's descendants would have to start having children with each other, which would make the number of his descendants asymptotically approach the total population of the Final Empire. It's the same way that basically every person with European ancestry is probably descended from Muhammad or Ramesses II. So, there is absolutely nothing meaningful about this relation, even though it almost certainly exists. Edit: @Qianweilian, this ancestry would have zero genetic impact on Spook, since even a great grandparent can be expected to only contribute about 1/8 of a person's genome. And if Rashek was closely related to Spook, then we'd expect him to be a very powerful allomacer.

No, it's explicitly stated that Odium would conquer the cosmere, despite being trapped on Roshar: So, even if Dalinar left Roshar, with all the Azish and Alethi (Taravngian would no doubt forbid those under his rule from leaving), Odium would still be able to build up his armies to conquer the cosmere. That's not to mention that Honor is also trapped on Roshar, so even if he got of his people off world, then Dalinar would be unable to help them further.

Actually, she was:

Isn't that what he's doing with Dan? Also, if he has other people write in the Cosmere on a large scale, then he risks turning into James Patterson. IMO, he should cut down on the secret projects, and other less relevant series, and instead focus on the core narratives.

We have direct confirmation that everything except Azir, Urithiru, the Listners, and the majority of the Tai-na, is controlled by Retribution one way or another. This totals up to about 90% of Roshar.