Darkness

We know that there was a force determining how Adonalsium was shattered, and that it could have been shattered in other ways. Did the original 16 people that picked up shards know exactly which intent they were signing up for before they picked it up? Like did the romantically involved couple that got Honor and Cultivation get lucky that they didn't end up with Odium and Devotion?

Ah yes! You're absolutely right I was confusing cosmere-knowledgeable with age... that was silly of me haha. How do you know they get along well? Is that a personalized note somewhere? I couldn't find it with any search on Khriss.

@YataThat's a gem but couldn't he also be talking about Khriss? If she had been on Roshar around that time?

There is an unfortunately amount of wiggle room in that first question... It could be that the original holder died, then someone else took up the shard. It could be that the shard was shattered, but the holder survived. It could be that the original holder died, then someone else took the shard, then the shard was shattered, but the second holder is still alive! It could be!... you get the idea... [After searching a long while] So I found something that might help: So that definitely sounds like the original holder of Cultivation, and seems like indirect confirmation that she's alive and in possession of her shard still. More recent inquiries have all been RAFO'd.

And this is really getting juicy to me: From what I've read, @cometaryorbit is absolutely correct about the crack letting in investiture. Also, Feruchemist abilities use internal power, and not external power (#5 on the page). I don't know whether that means snapping is unnecessary... I think it should be since you don't need a spiritual 'cut' to let anything in from outside, and you would theoretically already have access (connection) to all parts of your own spirit web. As for "The actual power"... I'm not sure what you mean here. Hemalurgy steals the portion of the spirit web of the donor corresponding to the bind point the spike goes through, and staples it onto the spirit web of the recipient. It doesn't steal whatever the metal is catalyzing access to. I agree that you should be able to steal Allomancy from pre-snapped people, and quite likely spiking would cause enough of a spiritual cut to qualify as snapping. I don't know about Vin's sister... but I don't see that she would have needed to be snapped, though it probably would have helped in Ruin identifying her ability (of course, he could have picked any bind point to staple into Vin, still would give him access). @Yata I also remember that quote about Duralumin gnats being hard to find because their abilities never manifested, but do you remember where that's from? Could you please link it or quote it? Ruin not being able to see people's spirit webs would make spiking unsnapped people highly impractical. I also agree that a Mistborn would only need one crack to access all Allomantic powers. Do you know why you couldn't just have 2 or 3 Allomantic abilities naturally?

This is going to be lengthy, so I'm putting it in spoilers. I intend for it to be on the thread topic, but apologies in advance if I digress from "Mistborn and Perks". I also changed my opinion based on a few WoBs, but I still see it differently from the proposed theory WoBs: Bolded parts emphasized by me. Putting it together: TL;DR - READ ALL THE WORDS!!! Edit: To advance my spirit web being enzyme-like thought; it could be that access to one Allomantic metal uses up / inhibits connections that the other metals would need to use in order to become burnable. This could be the natural configuration of humans on Scadrial. Conversely, I can think of a scenario for having Mistborn powers: The Lord Ruler's introduction of Lerasium messed up the natural way of occasional mistings by overwriting people's spirit webs with the ability to burn all metals. This trait was passed down and whenever it manifested the active, 'mistborn' portion of the web remained relatively intact, meaning that only since TLR has it been all-one-or-none. Also, this would mean that no one outside of the direct lerasium bloodline would have the potential to become a mistborn naturally. Being a mistborn would be a dominant (or recessive) sDNA trait, such that it competes with 'misting' status should the 2 occur in the same person, and one loses out. The proper mistborn web simply hadn't been introduced into the gene pool, or spontaneously occured in any meaningful way until TLR.

This is correct, but many people think that contemporary 'Skybreakers' are more of a vigilante group / secret society than actual surgebinders. Probably because if actual magical abilities were ever shown by these skybreakers (glowing, healing, gravitation and division), they would be remarked upon. What we actually see is a whole bunch of people (even Teft's believers) that think that Radiants had some kind of vague, mythical powers that are completely extinct and haven't been seen in the modern world.

Interesting. I maintain a different view, but definitely under those parameters I have no issues with the side effects. Would be interesting to see how the 'crowding out' of effects happens mechanistically in a person with access to too many magic systems.

So is that to say that one crack (in the right place) = access to one system of magic? For whatever reason, I had the mind-canon that access is granted based on a large variety of cracks all over the spiritweb... probably because of the vast amount of hemalurgic bind points people have.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I can see that. My point was, the models proposed in this thread don't seem to accommodate the fact that ferrings and mistings don't have added effects.

Just throwing this in there...With the models being proposed, shouldn't it follow that the people with the fewest interactions takings place should have the most 'secondary effects'? How do we explain single-power persons (ferrings for example) not exhibiting obvious perks?

I'm in Sydney, Australia (Parramatta if we want to be really precise) now, but originally from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. I just saw this thread now because of profile stalking haha

Fair enough. I was actually thinking about slings as I wrote my post. I don't know how effective a sling would be against anything with natural armor. At best, you'd have to score a direct hit to even penetrate the shell. To me that's the penultimate predecessor of a railgun (ultimate is throwing a rock by hand). But all things considered I'm not really surprised that the easterners at least don't have slings... I mean, are chull-herders going to be able to ward off whitespines with pebbles? More likely they have spears or something... Now maybe they have slings in Shinovar to keep the rogue chickens in line, but who knows? All I'm saying is, while it would be awesome, I don't see that Rosharans have all that much impetus to develop that avenue of technology. As a point in the other direction, I could easily see fabrials going that direction if Cultivation decides to take more of a direct hand.

If I remember correctly, they dont have crossbows. They have bows, shardbows, and a blowgun (possibly from offworld), Amaram seems quite confused when he sees it. Also, I highly doubt the Alethi at least have even a basic understanding of electromagnetism. They dont even have electricity, and the great majority consider cymatics (more related to waveform than magnetism I suppose, but still similar thinking in my mind... Probably because I did it with a magnet and iron filings in university physics) to be magical proof of the Almighty, since it's 'incomprehensible'. Something like a railgun would be leagues ahead of where they seem to be right now, so I'd say it's highly unlikely we'll see it, but if we do it will definitely be a major game changer.

That's what I was going to reference too @dyring. Aim shouldn't be Wax's side effect, since he's originally a terrible shot in AoL. Could someone ask Brandon if a person who stole Wax's powers through hemalurgy would also gain the same side effect? I'm wondering if the effects could be manufactured. Also, I wonder if 2 powers that aren't naturally paired would gain a side effect if hemalurgy put them in the same person... both for same-same (illumination and gravity) and same-different (illumination and lurcher) magic combinations.

That's completely reasonable, since our 'hours' are a structure that was contrived to conveniently break one day into equivalent segments. Minutes and seconds are the same. Really, if we want a more accurate comparison we should look at things in terms of nuclear decay rates. Of course, even if the atomic structure is organized in the same way, investiture might mess with that too haha. So ya, 1.1 seems like the safest scale to use.

just use 365.25 days/year to account for Earth leap years. From what I see: we have 365.25 * 24 = 8,766 hours per Earth year. They have 500 * 20 = 10,000 hours per Rosharan year. This is, as TheOneWhoConnects figured, a factor of 1.1408. For example of a character's 'Earth-age': Jasnah was born in 1139, current time of her travelling to the Shattered Plains is 1173. This makes her either 33 or 34 Rosharan years old, depending on whether she's had her birthday in 1173 or not. Regardless, on her 34th Rosharan birthday, she would be approximately 38.8 Earth years old. So it's not an extremely drastic change, but someone that the book says is 90 would actually be around 103, so it does scale up the older you get. Like if someday in SA Hoid says that he's 6000 Rosharan years old, he'd be 6845 earth years old. Of course, if he doesn't specifiy 'Rosharan', he could mean 'Yolen', which could mean anything.

@Orderbound keep going! This one may not have panned out, but I really like the way you thought through your conclusion. I have no idea how much you've lurked on the forum, coppermind, or WoBs in general, but I'd just say keep reading, keep posting, and treat yourself to a cookie!

I really came here to say I think the clothing Adolin will get to wear is just a wedding uniform, but then a disappointing thought just struck me. What if Adolin's only purpose now is to show that Shardblades can be resurrected (not getting into mechanics, which could derail the thread)? After he shows that and everyone cheers, Nalan comes around and executes him for bringing back things that people shouldn't mess with and killing Sadeas

I don't have any information to add, but my head canon is that Vivenna's death in Nightblood is part of why Vasher left to be on Roshar. Like Vasher is in huge trouble, Vivenna wields Nightblood to save him (maybe from Yesteel), and ends up killing herself. Vasher walks away, refusing to keep Nightblood after that - or maybe locks Nightblood away somewhere - and ends up worldhopping to Roshar. It's got a lot of blanks to fill, but that's what I imagine.

I was more responding to the comment that during the time of the Knights Radiant, it seems like only the Radiants had shardplate/shardblade (though of course not all of them had both). There are a lot of ramifications to my question that I didn't really have time to list, as I was using my phone on the transit ride home. I'll put a few of the thoughts I had below. Assuming that there were Radiants that stayed true to their oaths for their entire lives, did their blade: Die with them? (Possibly being buried by other Radiants alongside the body? I can't really see the Radiants allowing other people to inherit or use the blade, given what we know about the intimate nature of the Nahel bond. This would mean that contemporary blades were either never buried, were dug back up again, or are the blades from broken oaths.) Survive the Radiant's death, but lose connection to the Physical Realm since the Nahel bond was lost, aka revert back to the unbonded, lesser-spren-like form? I find this unlikely, though possible, since then it would follow that either: One spren could bond with multiple generations of Radiants... although Syl does seem to have personal memory. She remembers more as her bond with Kal grows, so maybe she was bonded to a Radiant previously? I think it's more likely that she just has an innate appreciation of what Kaladin is capable of. Or they simply exist forever in their unbonded state once their one compatible Radiant died, but I don't believe that since Brandon has hinted that blades can be brought back to life under very specific conditions. Ha! Unless that condition is for the former Radiant to return to life and reclaim the blade Survive the Radiant's death and maintain connection to the Physical Realm? Not too likely. The Nahel bond probably doesn't survive the Radiant going beyond, and if it did we'd probably see a few more of the highly sapient spren around. That and the Stormfather wouldn't really care about letting humans bond them... and there's Pattern's comment that all the formerly bonded Cryptics died (that seems to include even the ones who completed their bond before the Recreance). Something completely different. Maybe they retreat to the Cognitive Realm or something, but for the same reasons as number 3 it doesn't seem likely. I think number 1 is the most likely, but I wonder what happens to the Investiture in the spren if they die? Seems like if the Investiture is forever trapped in Sharblade form, and doesn't recycle itself back into the Shard it could be the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. It would be a continual drainage on Honor and Cultivation; a subtle, but growing, weakness over time that could give Odium the upper hand. Even as I write that last sentence, I think a simpler answer would be to dispose of the dead plates/blades in Shardpools, to both set the spren at rest, and return the Investiture to the Shard. I dunno... just throwing it out there. Similarly with Shardplate; if we knew what happened to Shardplate after the wearer's death, maybe we could have a better idea of what it's made of: If it could survive the Radiant's death and still be useful (aka function without gemstones), I think we would have seen that already. All evidence says non-Radiant plate locks up without a steady flow of Stormlight (kind of like Returned without a steady supply of breath, but that's another discussion). If it could have survived the Radiant's death at all, I think we would have seen old shardplate being used at least by the squires at Feverstone Keep. Desolations are kind of an 'all hands on deck' situation. Unless of course the relationship of Radiant to plate was personal like a blade, and got buried with the Radiant. Or maybe they just didn't have the gemstone technology figured out, and heaps of old plate sat about collecting dust over time. In that case, I think we'd see a disproportionate amount of plate to blade in modern times, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Another option is that plate doesn't survive the Radiant's death at all, and just reverts back to being whatever it was before it became plate. But if that was the case, why would abandoned plate act differently? Maybe it's made of lesser spren, so the lesser spren revert back to whatever they were if the Radiant dies; but they would get locked in place if the Radiant breaks his oaths? Maybe it's solid Investiture (which is not sapient in any way). I.e. it's a crystalline growth that obeys mental commands, glows when it's attached to an infused Radiant, and regrows from a seed if given Stormlight. If this is the case, see plate number 4. Maybe there's something completely different going on here. I lean toward plate and blade being spren (lesser and greater) that each have a personal bond to the wearer. I think that when those bonds are broken through going Beyond or betrayal of oaths, the flow of Investiture and Connection through the bond is severed, the resulting trauma puts the spren in endless agony, and the bodies (plate and blade in the case of the Recreance) are left more or less inert. I think that in the days of the Knights Radiant, they reverenced those bonds and therefore had a ceremony to dispose of any dead spren. Maybe they buried them, but I think it's more likely that they took them to Shardpools to 'give them back to their Maker'. There is an added point to this that I'll make below. So those were my thoughts in longer form. To address marianmi: As for the Radiants who never wore plate, but progressed far enough that they could have. I think that if a Radiant died / betrayed oaths without the plate (or blade) actually summoned in that moment - regardless of whether or not they had access to it - then their bonded spren wouldn't be locked in blade or plate form. More likely, they would be locked in whatever form they had when the Radiant died (so for Windrunners it would hypothetically be windspren and honorspren, which would be mostly indistinguishable because the honorspren would lose the extra sapience granted through the Nahel bond). This would drastically reduce the number of burials needed. Also, I don't think we've actually seen a blade or plate materialize after a Radiant's death - or even after breaking oaths - since we've never seen a sufficiently progressed Radiant die or break oaths without a full set of shards on hand and summoned. Finally, the last thing I was pondering was what happened to Ym's spren after he died. TL;DR - I think plate is made of minor spren; going Beyond or breaking the Nahel bond makes spren functionally inert and Cognitively traumatized; for various reasons we probably don't see a lot of blades or plates from Radiants that died with the bond still intact; and I've probably missed something important, so all this conjecture will turn out wrong

I would like to ask Brandon what happened to shardblades and shardplate in the past when a knight radiant died while staying true to his/her oaths... But I can't see a way to ask it that doesn't end in "RAFO"

Ya, this is basically the conversation I wanted to have We have pretty scant evidence (I like the Kaladin point though! I forgot about that scene) of magic being used in other Realms. But it seemed to me that since Shards exist on all 3 Realms, and fabrials can be used in the Cognitive and Physical, then there might be a way to access Shardic Investiture in each Realm. Though maybe it depends on how much a Shard has invested into that Realm... maybe they only substantially invest themselves into the Physical? I think it makes more sense to me that since humans were created in all 3 Realms, and the sDNA (including the part of the spirit web that allows investiture access) seems to be mostly - if not all - of the Spiritual Realm, then magic users should be able to use their ability in all 3 Realms, since they have a connection to each. Actually, this just gave me another thought. I'm typing as I think here... terrible habit... leads to all sorts of messiness. Perhaps the use of magic actually takes place in all 3 Realms simultaneously. In the Spiritual, your spirit web funnels investiture through your web's specific pattern, which interprets the expression of the power (determines what kind of magic you use). In the Cognitive, you develop the intent to use the magic and guide it's expression (determines how you use it). In the Physical, you interact with it's effects. By physically entering -as in, going in with your body - one of the other realms (like Shadesmar), your Physical aspect integrates itself with your Cognitive, but the Spiritual aspect is still connected too, so I don't think it would make you unable to use magic, though the observable effects would be in the Cognitive Realm instead of the Physical. In this way, innate magics (like healing with Stormlight or heightenings, or the quirks of Savantism) seem to be what happens when a more direct connection is established between the Physical and the Spiritual Realms, so it becomes an automatic process. The Cognitive is less involved, but the magic still somewhat relies on - and shapes itself in response to - your perception of yourself, the world, and the magic itself. @The One Who Connects yours is the post that sparked my thoughts Thanks for that! @18th Shard my opinion is that Kelsier couldn't use allomancy because his connection between the Physical and Cognitive Realms was severed. His spirit web retained the relevant pathways for alomancy, and cognitively he knew how he wanted to use it, but he couldn't manifest that ability physically, in either the Physical or Cognitive Realms, since that connection was severed through death. Basically, to restore himself, all he needed was to re-establish the connection from his Spiritual and Cognitive to the Physical, and then he would be able to use his magic again too. I don't think that it was simply because he couldn't physically burn the metal, although that was probably an issue as well. For example, I don't think the cognitive shadow of a Feruchemist could have used Feruchemy if he had access to physical metals (like that screw Kelsier ate). I think it's more to do with the connection the individual has between Realms.

I agree with Yata. The scene with Lightsong Returning is indicative of the process. Finally found it: Sounds like it's the soul Returning to its own body, and Breath just facilitates that process. I'm sure the spirit web is altered somewhat (maybe that causes the memory loss), but I think it's still the same soul. Kind of parallel's Kelsier's return (supposedly through hemalurgy) if so.

there is a surgeon who is shocked at the number of scars Dalinar has. I can't remember the exact reference and I'm on a bus atm, but it's noted that Dalinar shouldn't have been able to go on as he does with that amount of previous injury. It's implied that he's been using stormlight to help his body heal over time. Likely he still has scars because the healing is subconscious and he believes he should have scarring, even if it isn't as bad as it should be. It will be interesting to see if he realizes that he doesn't have to keep all that scar tissue what could a fully healed blackthorn do?