soulcastJam

In HoA, a spike is kept out for 5 days and is described as not having enough charge to grant powers. Presumably, if Vin's were out for the same amount of time hers would also be near useless as far as granting extra power. I think the first spiking does something different from subsequent spikings. For example, the first spiking requires blood to touch the spike, but when Vin puts her earring back in she isn't exposing it to blood again. My theory is that the first time the spike is placed, the blood connects and seals the amount of allomantic potential in the spike so that it stops decaying.

Does a hemalurgic spike lose power whenever it is outside a body? For example, if you receive a spike in a non deadly place and then take it out for a year, will it be decreased in power when you put it back in, or does that only happen before the first placement?

Control over her is not necessarily the same as talking to her.

Interestingly, I believe Moash had the power to release Kaladin from his obligation to be complicit in the murder of the king and thus could have saved Syl. Kaladin kind of tried to back out but didn't explain (even when he understood) the true consequences of Moash's holding him to his agreement. Perhaps things would have changed if he had.

Perhaps the loss of most of the Shin will get Cultivation more personally involved as they appear to be her primary worshippers. Although I don't really like that idea as its too soon in the series for direct godly intervention.

The people could retreat to the caves if they happened to be near enough to them to get there before the storm hit, but it's not as if there are hours between when you see the storm and when it hits. Even accounting for the everstorm being slower than a highstorm, I would expect few people to be within range of the caves.

Shin typically only experience the minor effects of a spent highstorm. The storm's power is used up for the most part while it is sweeping across the continent. Consequently, there is no reason for them to build buildings with highstorms in mind. We are told that the rest of the continent slopes their roofs to block the wind, but they presumably also use strong, heavy materials (like stone) and they have a near infinite foundation of stone to build on. Shin don't use stone in their usual buildings (I believe), they have soil instead of bedrock everywhere, and we don't have evidence that they have any reason to build particularly strong structures (such as frequent storms, earthquakes, etc). So with the everstorm sweeping from the west, can we conclude that most of their buildings were destroyed? Are the Shin left in the storm without protection, and therefore dead? There is a mountain range protecting them to the east and west, but I doubt tempers the storm enough to protect them. So here is my theory: The Shin as a people are nearly wiped out. The Stone Shamanate survived. This is because they use stone in their temple/religious building, which is OK for priests to walk on it because they are holy and for people participating in holy rites. There is a small cluster of people that gathered at the temple, but for the most part the Shin are wiped out. Depending on the number of stone buildings (if there are any) more or fewer people would have survived. Edit: I am also including caves in the "stone buildings" category. So when Szeth comes home to confront the Shamanate, they will be the leaders of a very small population (fewer than 500?) that survived the everstorm. He will then have to decide if he will kill even more of his people. It's possible that in the process he will become the last survivor (that he knows of) of the Shin which will make for an even more emotionally unstable character. Yay problems!

20 breaths a week ~ 1000 breaths a year. That wouldn't really dent the population of a large city, and there are probably more babies born every year than breaths taken for the returned.

Not to clutter up the thread, but have an upvote phantasmagorically just for your icon.

While I liked Elantris, it was the one book by Brandon that I had a harder time with some of the dialogue and character emotions. I always attributed it to this being his first published work and not quite as mature writing as later works. I'm glad that other people didn't have that experience though. I should re-read it again (for probably the 5th time) trying to be more invested.

I'm not really sure what you want. I agree there has been little progress. I also think that your arguments have merit, but I don't take them as sure. As I see it the possible reasons for little/no advancement are: 1. Fundamental: There is little to no advancement possible (highly unlikely as you've pointed out) 2. People stopped researching: Unlikely. 3. Not sharing: There is advancement but it is a kept secret because knowledge of awakening gives huge advantages. I believe this is a reason actually cited in the text. (Vasher's army is a good example of an awakened secret). However, it's unlikely that no one is altruistic enough to share. 4. Conspiracy: Someone/something is supressing the advancement. This could be accomplished by killing researchers, or by wiping their memories. This could be combined with reason 3 in that one person is gathering knowledge and suppressing it from being shared. 5. Brandon messed up To me, all of these seem possible even if there are arguments that make them less plausible. You seem to be arguing against the 1,2 and 3, and I think I agree with most of your arguments. 5 is always a possibility but hard to prove. So that leaves us with 4 which is fun to speculate about, and I think that's what you want us to do here, but forgive me if I want to speculate about 1,2 and 3 also. I tend to think it's a combination of some of the above reasons, which is why I brought them up.

To sum up some of this discussion and my own thoughts: 1. There is no longer an institution (5 scholars) that researches and publishes about awakening (and presumably much of their research wasn't published anyway) which greatly reduces the efficiency of research. Researchers have to reinvent the wheel. 2. Much of this discussion suggests that Awakening is fundamentally as complex as electromagnetic theory or physics in general. It is possible that it's not nearly that complex? But if it is, what would you consider an advancement worth pursuing? For example, can you come up with a way to use awakening to fly? That could be cool. 3. There are 4 types of entities so far. They have a nice symmetry to them which suggests the number 4 is complete, or else there are another 4 or 12 which would follow symmetries we've seen elsewhere but seems unlikely. The discovery of each of these entities represents the largest leaps forward in awakening research as it opened up new areas of research. If there are only 4 then there will be no more leaps forward of the same magnitude. So far, the only type that seems to be poorly researched is sentient inanimate objects like Nightblood. This is, of course, very dangerous and very costly, both of which limit the research. The cost is two-fold. The initial cost of the awakening is huge, but the operating cost is also huge. That means that there isn't really any point to making simple machines out of sentient objects (like a wheat mill) because it would be continually costly. Of course, you might be able to make some really high-end machines like the equivalent of a hadron collider that is meant to teach about physics or something. I wonder if you could make a supercomputer. Or nano-robots! Or maybe you could awaken a gas! 4. How can we divide up research into categories? Please suggest other categories that can be explored. a ) Entity type b ) Spoken Commands c ) Intent of Commands d ) Form of the object to be awakened. Mostly this includes making it more human in form although I don't see why ichor-alcohol is used instead of blood to make the best lifeless since this is clearly less human in form.

I imagine it has to do with the legality of setting up this system. No one would have allowed the system to be setup if certain things weren't guaranteed. Also, I'm glad he didn't go into Lancing. It's too overpowered to be an interesting subject as it can do pretty much anything.

Yes, good idea! @The Only Joe, I want to like every one of your posts because I like your signature quote so much. =)

Uh... Tensors?

OK. That didn't really answer my question about what Brandon said about living/dead shardblades. L'sigh.

So when Eshonai puts on her shardplate she is putting on a dead radiant who was imitating a parshendi warform over her own parshendi armor? Whats the next escalation? Double shardplate?

I'm also interested about the shardblades. His wording makes it a little ambiguous. I think he means that you cannot be healed from a wound inflicted by a dead shardblade but you can be healed from one inflicted by a living blade. But his wording suggests that the living shardblades actually have spiritually healing properties. Anyone else wondering about this?

It's easy to build a library without a catalog. It's a lot harder to use one though...

I hope you finish this. I want to read it.

OP: I don't think you're right but I like the idea.

Maybe we're overthinking this and they are really just Paranoia spren. =)

Show some faith man! Besides, when has someone actually put down a Sanderson novel after starting. =) I'm pretty sure this is a RAFO. If he answered then there's no question of whether David actually has power and hasn't used it or will get it in the future.

I think his powers are dream-based. As long as he's sleeping he can make his dreams a reality.

Also, why do we suspect Dawnslight has any ideas about how epics work?