Swimmingly

"Troops! Defend the Knave Quiver! To arms, to arms!" he yelled. Swim turns to Lwd. "Are you sure you want to do this, my friend? I assure you, we out number and out gun you in this place, and you'll earn no praise from the Lady Feather for the prosecution of one she's pardoned and released to us."

Mwahahahaha! *ahem* I'm sure he's one of those epics with ressurection powers.

Buy. Elhokar is going to remember with nostalgia his time with the Herdazians, and seek to recapture it after a nervous breakdown by inviting the entire Herdaz community at the warcamps into his palace.

*surreptiously gestures to the troops standing behind Crystal with a burlap bag and a blackjack. They put them away and step back.*

Fair enough, fair enough. Still, it would make wiping out the fragile and concussed, possibly delimbed or dying survivors so much easier.

I'd guess that they've got some kind of sun-worship going on, with humans being 'of the dusk', 'of the dawn', etc. The brighter your rank the greater. The sun is the greatest, and has no need for title beside his own, and the planet is his son - the First of the Sun.

Quiver, of course. I'd call him King but he just looks too Knave-y.

No offense is intended; the business of establishing a faction such as this is simply draining. Besides, I'm just a contractor. Don't take me as a representative. You'll want to speak with the Queen or the Knave for a representative opinion.

Imyn M.G. Swil, Royal Architect and Defense Minister to the Queen: Bow, sir, you are indeed, a supplicant to our great Queen? State, then, your buisness: We've little time for the likes of you.

I'd guess that the rather intense trauma of birth is enough to trigger it now.

I'm thinking, just Soulcast the air and keep a flint and steel handy.

Buttons on the sleeves, with each button made of a different Allomantic metal (or painted to look like it?)

We need to designate some basic geography here. Will the Court be inside that original, dessicated steel spire, or the new blueice statue that glares down on Newcago in front? What does the throne look like? How large is the room? What abominations of ice and snow stand guard by the door?

No. The safehand actually contains a cache of coins, which can be shot all at once like a single-shot shotgun - a pepperpot.

Welcome to the Authoritarian Spikeocracy! You can tell the admins by the round, hard, jutting metal gleam in their eyes that continues pointily out the back of their skulls.

This is totally off-topic, but lyht's profile pic looks really awesome. Now, on topic: I wonder if the colours and numbers are intrinsic to the Shard's nature, a conscious decision to stick to a certain theme by the Shareholder, a 'pollution' of the Shard by the Shareholder's Cognitive aspect that associates certain themes with the Intent, biasing the magic system and themes, a thematic decision by Brandon that will go unexplained, or something else?

When you realise that you've read every interview, just so you can claim to have seen WoB on every theory. But barely ever actually source your unfounded accusations because phone and also lazy.

Basically, a rule of thumb in the Cosmere is that, as the Investiture (power) in an object grows larger, it becomes harder to affect. This means that you couldn't Push or Pull Blade or Plate without ridiculous amounts of power behind it, as those are very strongly Invested. Hoid is confirmed to use Allomancy on Roshar, and you can use Soulcast metal to do Allomancy. You can definetly use Allomancy Cosmere-wide, with the right materials. So, basically, yes you could push on a Shardblade. However, it would have a lot of interference. The reason it's hard to push metal that pierces skin is that the human's Innate Investiture resists the Push or Pull. Shardblades...have considerably more Investiture to them than a standard human. So, they would be that much harder. There are relevant WoB on all these things, but they make sense logically, so I won't link them. Search Shardblade on Theoryland if you want the original quotations. OK, you got me, I just hate citing things. Anyway

In the dark core of the frozen steel city, flame washes out, melting ice, heating metal to white brilliance. Ash Ewok, a cruel and dangerous Epic, smashes his whips of blowtorch flame out of a swirling, ashen cloak. He laughs maniacally as the lines of hot fire spread across the ground, widening and cooling into liquid metal trenches before and about him. Ash Ewok wades these easily, the dense currents of ash he wears deadening the heat as he marches into the depth of the cold. "FIGHT ME!!" he screams. A running citizen is reduced to ash, a pale substance that swirls briefly before being sucked into his cloak. "DEFEND YOUR CITY, COWARD QUEEN!" But the spire of glowing ice is silent, pulsing eerie blue above Newcago's dead streets. He makes it to the fortress, ripping blazing strips of steel from the streets all the way, with no attack. Sometimes, fleeing denizens are burnt and assimilated, but far less often than one would think; they almost seem an offering to a visiting Epic, a declaration that a few deaths are meaningless. Their gift makes them meaningless, and Ash Ewok's lips twist, unsatisfied - even the new souls for his flame and ash for his cloak is not enough to slake him. He must hunt, burn, take and damnation to himself for eternity. Nothing less will do, and these paltry offerings are insults. At the base of the dark and glowing pinnacle, he screams again. "I WILL HUNT YOU, COWARD QUEEN! YOUR HEART WILL BE ASH, YOUR SOUL WILL BE FLAME! CHALLENGE ME!" For a long moment, all is silent, save for the trailing whips of blowtorch hellfire. They eat at the ground, heating it to glowing puddles. Then the first attacks come. A pale blue beam arcs down from the throne room, aimed for Ash Ewoks heart. He screams in pleasure and rage, lashing upwards with his whips of flame. They cross as they meet the beam, and there's a pulse of white as it explodes into a shower of ice, bridging the street and held in place by some strange art. More beams follow, as Ash Ewok slashes them from the sky, filling the air with frozen traceries of boulder-sized icebergs. Ash Ewok laughs with each engagement, his fires dashing brighter and brighter. He plunges the whips into the puddles of steel, then hurls them upwards, flecks of molten metal eating through the mountain of suspended ice. He clears the area above his head of obstruction, walking closer and closer to the spire. Beams of dazzling blue fall like a terrible hailstorm, each met by a flick of the whips, spraying boulders of ice across the air with each shot. "I SEE YOUR TRICKERY, COWARD QUEEN!" he screams. "I'LL CUT YOUR ICE FROM THE SKY!" And with a simultaneous slash of both his whips, he cuts into the tower. The cut digs deep, nearly severing the tower; the entire structure shudders and falls a few feet. House-sized slabs of ice break off the upper spires, tumbling down to shatter on steel streets below. And, for a moment, a clear, cold laugh fills the air. Delighted, like a connoisseur of wine tasting the most delightful of vintages. The laugh echoes, not stopping. It grows louder, harsher, becoming a sob and then a wordless scream. Sound ripples across Newcago from that aweful sound, a slow, slow wave shaking steel and everything else. What isn't steel, becomes it. A creeping blaze of power and metal impossibility flees down the icy tower, turning all to hard, unyielding steel. Entire spires and crenellations scream and collapse, the metal unable to stand the pressure. Still the scream echoes, and now it reaches the floating boulders; they become steel as well, dropping from the sky with screams and sparks to pile up around the fiery Epic. He survives by virtue of his ash, hurling himself out of the way, but the steel boulders meet where he had stood with a blaze of fire and sparks, connecting with worlds shattering force. A single figure descends from the steely pinnacle, floating on a cloud of blue gleam. She lands in front of the ashen Epic, and looks him in the eye. "Welcome to Newcago. Please enjoy the remainder of your stay," she says. Then, hands raised, Elsa Steelheart calls an iceberg to dwarf a skyscraper into the air, where it dominates the sky. She releases her hold, and it falls. A blaze of light filters through the statue, the red of flaring hellfire. For an instant, Ash Ewok is seen within, desperately holding the whips of flame before him. The thump rattles the entire city, and the hellfire is extinguished. Elsa Steelheart begins her work on the only piece of inanimate, solid matter made of anything but steel for miles. She has a statue to carve.

Or crystal, or fire, or smoke.

He picked up a Shard and shanked Odium with it.

Are there five Iridescent tones? Also, the number of Breaths need for each Heightening are just rough estimates, because different Breaths have different strengths. So, 42 breaths with an average strength of 1.2 times the average breath strength on Nalthis might be enough for the first Heightening.

Buy. Oh, buy so much. I want to see Szeth hunting down and killing dark incorporeal gods with a cold green vengeance in his eyes. Szeth has so much potential to be an actual tragic anti-hero, instead of the kinda symapathetic semi-anti-villain he's been so far. His coldblooded slaughterings of evil will balance out Kaladin's heroic slaughtering of evil and Shallan's gritty investigation of evil nicely. Death releases Investiture. This can be trapped and used by things other than Moelach.

Other materials mean anything that isn't exactly one of the Essences. Kind of like each essence is an ideal, and the further from that ideal, the harder it is to Soulcast until you hit the next one. So water, being not one of the essences, is harder than blood, which is, and both are presumably easier than Allomantic brass, which is a very specific mix of two metals, as well as having an identity of its own.

What book haven't you read? Welcome to the forums!