Darkness

Magic Mistborn deck anyone?

Maybe it's just me, but I get a very different picture from what I've been reading on 17th shard about Nicrosil, and what I'm reading in the books. I think a few of us may have misunderstood what 'stores investiture' may actually mean... this is probably a function of our terminology more than anything else: From BoM kindle p.67, VanDell's lecture to Wax and the group: I would posit that (autocorrect keeps making me put necrosis herrings lol) Nicrosil Ferrings can't store and release what we generally refer to as investiture (Breaths, Stormlight, whatever), but instead, being one of the spiritual metals, you have the ability to narrow (store) and widen (withdraw) the cracks in your spirit web to allow you the potential to access more/less investiture safely at a time. In an unkeyed Nicrosil metalmind, this would effectually enhance the ability of someone who already had magic-potential, and possibly even create an ability where one didn't exist (I would personally put that more into Connection - duralumin, but I could see it either way). Please, when responding on this topic, due to the amount of conflicting opinion I've seen on the site, try to source WoB as much as possible. I'd love to get a proper understanding on Nicrosil Feruchemy (and the other Spiritual Feruchemy too). Thanks!

Nightblood can consume Breath, and he can also consume spren

I was going to start a new topic with this, but this one is only a month old and I'm really just adding to it, so... quote: QUESTION If sprens are pieces of the god power, and investiture is the power of the god, then can Nightblood consume spren? BRANDON SANDERSON He could theoret- Yeah, he could totally consume spren. There's not even any “theoretically” to that. Brandon has confirmed that Nightblood is way more powerful than a dead shardblade, but he's been coy about saying the same for living blades. If Nightblood can consume spren though... that could have some scary ramifications for the next Radiants (or even normal shard bearers) Szeth runs into. It also likely means that Nightblood can be fully unsheathed in a highstorm, and probably go full Rambo with the amount of investiture available.

I actually loved your anecdote. As a chess player I found it very apt and hilarious. Also depressingly true to what I often experience while playing chess... Sorry, looking at my writing, it wasn't very clear. I meant to say that the implication was that Taravangian had read about the 3 realms. It was stated that he knew about them, yes, but I don't think I would say that the quote 100% means he got that knowledge from a book. It's splitting hairs I know, and I apologize for that, but in my defence Brandon is far better at hair splitting and wiggling than I am . After all, he is still a master wordsmith. Which leads me to point 2: Brandon is speaking these answers off the cuff. I agree with your point, and looking at the answer as a whole you are probably, almost certainly, right that the exact phrasing in this specific case isn't too important. That said, I'm sure we've both seen numerous times when Brandon has used clever wording to misdirect (one signing I remember he even told the audience that he had cleverly avoided answering one of the questions in a meaningful way, even though they thought they had gotten something from it). So while I do agree, I am very cautious in reading into, or assuming anything beyond the exact words that Brandon has said. Also, it's 3am where I am, and I'm very sick, so it's very likely that I'm going regret this post and apologize again when I'm more lucid I'm getting off the shard now haha

As far as I know, you could even make a case that all 3 of those splinters have gained sentience before bonding. We don't really have a conclusive WoB on what exactly happens with Divine Breaths and the Returned. For example, is Lightsong simply the person he used to be plus a large amount of investiture and memory loss? Or is he basically a splinter with some small vestige of his humanity clinging on and giving him sporadic memories?

Couple of things here... I thought there was a WoB on the inverse relationship Taravangian has between the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms, but this is the closest I was able to find:

I'd call them "awesome", but that can only apply to one person...

Not sure if I would believe this myself, but with all the talk of Harmony wandering over to Greater Roshar for whatever reason, I thought it might be more of a twist to have Odium actually finish off Cultivation in the SA arc. He could shatter her too, and then withdraw all of his investiture from Roshar and move on to whatever comes next for him. It could even be that Odium finishes whatever he's doing on Roshar, and then hops over to Scadrial, thus preserving SA as a more-or-less standalone (except that the 'bad' guy wins). I could definitely see Brandon making his massive 10 book epic fantasy end with "and Odium reigned, everything got destroyed, Roshar was left with heaps of magical, decentralized God-dust from the bits of Honor and Cultivation left over. Then Odium left...".

I remember that bit from Wyndle about certain types of spren being less able to show/hide themselves. I was also wondering if it might have something to do with how far along the Nahel bond is... Maybe as the spren gain access to the physical realm, they become less able to hide? Shallan literally drew Pattern into physical existence, which could contribute to his inability to go invisible. Renarin is likely fairly fresh Radiant, evidenced by just recently not needing glasses, so Glys hasn't appeared onscreen (though that could be for other reasons). Syl and Kaladin are moderately far along, and we haven't had anyone but Rock notice her when she was hiding; does anyone know if it took her less effort to show herself as their bond progressed? Then Ivory has been with Jasnah for several years, and may not hide well by now, perhaps he can retreat into Shademar when he needs to be less apparent though? Any thoughts about bond strength contributing to visibility out there? Alternatively (here we go), I could also see the orders and respective ideals being a contributor. Truthspren for example could find it hard to go invisible (too much like straight-up lying, though they would probably like disguising/shrouding themselves)... Ya that's about all I can extend that to without really bending plausibility...

thanks all! So... I have a confession to make. I haven't been on the site since flagging was introduced. How to I flag someone? More to the point of the post... Breath transfer and totally engrosses me. I imagine some very closely kept methods exist for converting investiture exist, and I would tend to believe that there are several methods, and some might be quite simple, like 'unkeying' investiture through identity and connection.

I wish there was a way to flag @Kurkistan to this post... he's the one that nailed down the spiritual-ideals-represented-by-spren thingy way back when...

It is interesting to consider that Lift subconsciously converts food into Stormlight now. Perhaps her body will automatically synthesize the power it needs to stay young (even the God-King's of Nalthis would age to maturity, and then stop). That would make Lift functionally immortal for as long as she has food.

Wow, been a while since I wandered the forums... I was re-reading the tor.com re-read of the Way of Kings (that's a hefty amount of re's to work through), when I had a brand new thought! I searched back through the forums and found a delightful conversation in which we finally (more or less) nailed down that spren are pieces of cognitive manifestation for their spiritual ideals, that have an increased ability to enter the physical when they bond with people. They could (I think) also be described as tiny pieces of shardic power that have taken on specific intents (little "i"). In other words, they are - at the most basic level - made of the same stuff that infuses spheres during a Highstorm: little bits of Shard that coalesce and take on identity over time. They are obviously much more substantial and self-aware than the Stormlight that resides in spheres, or even than the single-minded cognitive directive of almighty Stick; to the extent that even the smallest, dopiest spren takes some kind of form in the physical world, and likely is able to move around quite a bit when it resides in the Cognitive world. (I personally attribute their level of self-awareness to their level of connection to humans, but I digress). Anyway... here's my thought, and please feel free to disagree, or better yet disprove, but if I run with the vein that spren are basically souped up nuggets of self-aware Stormlight, then they likely have some ability to power-up their Radiant counterparts in a pinch ( ) once they are sufficiently attuned to each other (i.e. the Radiant accurately reflects the spren's Spiritual ideal, and is able to key into power via the spren ). They would only be able to help out the Radiant they are attuned to, since sDNA is quite finicky . Actually, as near as I can figure it, Stormlight can be used by anyone precisely because it doesn't have any sense of identity... or at least beyond being perceived as simply 'Stormlight'. Either it doesn't have any sense of identity (maybe because it's so transient), or it's identity is actually some weird Spiritual ideal of 'power'. It also seems quite diffuse in comparison to the innate power in spren. We should also just make note that perception/identity plays a huge (YUUUUUGE!) role in the Cosmere at large. And here's the application question: If I'm right... would meddling with a spren's sense of identity (i.e. reducing it's identity to 0, either through magic or by everyone simply perceiving it as lacking identity) allow that spren's power to be accessed by anyone/anything? Like a tiny pool of super-Stormlight? Or like ? Furthering this thought... if Odium found a way to reduce a spren's identity to 0 (*cough* Feruchemy *cough*)... could he go around depleting the identity, and then power, of spren to get a massive burst of energy? The example that came immediately to my mind was I guess it helps that messing with Invested stuff (probably including spren) is magically really tough, but I can't help thinking there could be loopholes around that, and the 'Voidbringers" literally bring nothingness to spren... Thoughts? The thought is quite abstract and off the cuff, so there may be someone that can easily dismiss it and I can move on with my life lol

At this point I don't really see Hoid as a good guy or a bad guy, antagonist or protagonist. He's more like an 'agonist' to me, a guy with an agenda certainly, but not specifically against or for any of our heroes, his game transcends them; both in time and in magnitude. I'm really excited for when Hoid is brought to the forefront to be a main character. But when that happens I don't really expect him to appear as protagonist or antagonist, more like he'll be his own focus and all our other characters will draw their lines around him (if that makes any sense). He'll be a major plot driver, but not necessarily on the 'good' or 'bad' team.

Not to hijack the thread, but I'd love to see a Kaladin vs. Kelsier fight. .

Like investiture messing with other investiture... I like it!

Is that actually a typo? I'm not well versed on that aspect of grammar...; I don't often put commas after ellipses, but I don't know if it's technically incorrect.

I just had a bit of a jolting realization: Spoilers for Mistborn first trilogy

... Spoilers for Mistborn: Secret Histories and Bands of Mourning

Pretty sure the typo is that Kara Stewart isn't Kara $tewart

I'm pretty sure that was indirectly addressed by Calamity not being present on other dimensions. He chose to leave earlier in other dimensions, so he must be a separate entity in each reality. It would make sense if the book really only dealt with the concerns of one reality, and there are other dimensions where Calamity is still around.

So, I think Prof, Calamity, and a couple others were fully fleshed out in the dialogue, but did anyone catch David and Obliteration's actual weaknesses? Obliteration overcame his 5 years previous, but I don't remember if it was referenced in previous books, and David only realized that he was sharing Calamity's fears in his nightmares as far as I could tell (ps. Part of me thinks it's hilarious that at least part of Calamity was terrified of sneezing). Along with this, my other question would be what powers/weakness Mizzy has... that reveal at the end took me completely by surprise. Part of me was toying with the idea that David's power would be to avoid death, or perhaps convince people to change their minds, but I kind of like what actually happened instead.

Sorry, I should probably put sarcasm in green or something instead of just saying "Gasp!" I was not seriously thinking it was a possibility.

What if Yesteel is actually Nalan?! Gasp!