Ari

For sure. That's because like any definition, they're a fuzzy concept. Broad terms like "good," "evil," "lawful," and "chaotic" are even more fuzzy, even within their narrow meanings for the alignment system. You can still be placed in the same slot on the alignment grid even if you are a "milder" version of good, or chaotic, or if you have completely different reasons for that alignment that change how you'd act.

Heh, Windwinners- freudian slip? I'd actually argue that they're great illustrations of why Lawful Good and Chaotic Good are both non-ideal extremes, and that the "best" good is actual True Good, where you're okay with obeying just laws, but push for reform of unjust laws without unnecessary violence. Of course, that's not as fun to roleplay.

TLR turned the Terrispeople into mistwraiths while he held the fraction of Preservation's power at the Well. Preservation and Ruin didn't have anything to do with it. edit: looking back at this post I should clarify that he only turned feruchemists into mistwraiths, not all terrispeople. Hurr durr.

Best to refer to stealing an attribute with a spike and receiving allomancy or feruchemy via a spike.

I always thought the reference to Hoid not living all of those years might have been related either to some Cognitive shenanigans, or simply to using Temporal Metal Allomancy when his Feruchemy tells him he needs to wait a long time. Indeed, if Yolen had some sort of proto-feruchemy, I'd expect there wouldn't be any metalminds involved, but rather the Yolish focus would be required instead.

Seems like a reasonable interpretation of the doctrine of non-interference, not that that's the only way to be True Neutral. Harmony is another good example of True Neutral, viewing both Preservation and Ruin as necessary opposites that must be held in balance. The normal example of True Neutral is someone who doesn't care about moral justifications or making consistent decisions and just wants to look after their family and friends, but Brandon hasn't really done any characters like that IIRC. Killing someone for a technical violation of the law is not a neutral thing. Even if you believe in the death penalty I think many people would agree Nalan was "evil" to apply it the way he did. He's certainly VERY lawful, but I fail to see how he's neutrally aligned.

Or they could be using Stormlight in a different way. Remember just because Radiants use Spren to access their powers doesn't necessarily mean that's the only way you can do things on Roshar.

Desolation? Sure, but that doesn't make him Lawful Neutral, as he was killing people with flimsy evidence that it would meet his personal goal- and whoops, turns it that it was correlation not causation that the radiants start appearing in greater numbers before desolations. Doing bad things for good reasons doesn't make you neutral, it makes you evil but with good intentions.

There's a topic about how it works in the BoM forums. The short version is that you need to combine the powers of nicrosil feruchemy, aluminium feruchemy, and whatever actual power you want the medallion to give, all in one person. (and also a relevant Feruchemical store, in some cases) On top of that, there's apparently a hack to let people who aren't initiated use the medallions that Brandon will show in a future story. There are multiple potential ways you can combine those powers, however in the beginning, you would either have needed a full feruchemist or someone spiked with additional feruchemical abilities to start off manufacturing the relevant nicrosilminds. From there you could presumably have a Nicrosil compounder to move to mass production.

I'm sorry, but Nalan as Lawful Neutral? lol no. Remember, he's killing people because they're Radiants, the breaking the law is just the excuse within the framework he operates, as he refuses to kill unlawfully. I would definitely peg him as Lawful Evil. Arguably Szeth is Lawful Neutral, at least for people who find him sympathetic. (I personally think that SA fans give him too much credit, and judge him about as harshly as Kaladin did)

I have a feeling that Odium was prioritising Shards that were either too opposite to him, or too similar to him for him to leave them free to act. If we look at the Shards we know he's shattered, we have Devotion, Dominion, and Honour. Devotion and Honour both seem quite opposite to his intent- Devotion brings people together through bonds of love, and to some degree in Seons, servitude. Honour brings people together by forging agreements and creating examplars for others to follow. Odium seems to operate by turning people on each other to distract them until he can bring his full power to bear, so shards that could directly oppose this strategy so neatly within their own Intent would be high up his kill priority list. He probably would have gone after Ruin soon if Harmony hadn't happened for similar reasons to Dominion, because he'd presumably want to have something left to rule/hate. If we assume Jaddeth is the cognitive shadow or memory of Dominion, then Skai and Rayse would have the other kind of issue, where their goals are too similar. Odium wants to rule it all as the only remaining Shard. Dominion clearly wants to rule his own kingdom, and as far as we can tell from Elantris, his followers don't seem to think there should be any limtis to that kingdom, so he might have the exact same idea.

I'm pretty sure you're right that all godmetal spikes have the universal stealing property, as the hemalurgical proporties of various metals seem so broad that I imagine there's still room for Brandon to add an extra category or two of things that can be stolen. It might even be that all godmetal spikes also work better, and that the Atium effect is non-obvious.

Really? I'm definitely with Khyrindor on wanting a source for that. I think it's eminently possible that something like Feruchemy exists or has existed elsewhere in the Cosmere, but I didn't think we had confirmation that this was how Hoid was able to use Feruchemy.

It absolutely is baseless in terms of there is no direct evidence for it in any text that anyone is referencing. That's what "baseless" in "baseless speculation" means, you feel good about it, (and could even be right) but there's no real evidence to date to back it up. The Ire's interest was in Preservation, not in Scadrial, remember. If they have continued interest in Scadrial for its Shards, they've essentially made the jump from scavenging from a dead vessel to wanting to murder a live one. I'm not sure you can assume that when we have direct evidence suggesting Odium's involvement in whatever was going on. We have no evidence that the Ire's interest in Sel has morphed into a different type of interest and continued. We have no evidence anyone from Sel is even on Scadrial yet. They're speculating to fuel speculation because they've invested very heavily in their theory.

I don't disagree.

It certainly has some good explanatory power for why there are legends about being exiled from the tranquiline halls. (although if the Liar preview chapters are set on Yolen, that seems like either some huge glorification of that planet, or that it would have to have become a lot better by the end of Dragonsteel) That said, it's equally plausible that there are plenty of other reasons for Hoid visiting Braize to be a RAFO, including a bunch of other interesting possibilities about what Braize was like during the past. So right now I think this qualifies as one of those "cool really out there theories".

Look for someone suspiciously afraid of acid, or surviving normally-fatal accidents with nothing worse than broken bones. Or someone who is failing to act in character, I guess, although Kandra are usually very good at that.

Arguably, storing investiture in a Nicrosilmind is storing a very specific part of your connection to Preservation, or your balance between Preservation and Ruin. It sounds like they've badly misnamed the ability you're storing though, as you're more storing your initiation into a magic system, or your capacity for magic, rather than just storing blank investiture that could be used for anything. (otherwise Nicrosilminds would work rather like spheres in SA)

I hadn't seen we had WoB on him having allomancy, cheers for pointing that out. We've had tons about him having Feruchemy, so...

Well that was a slight necro. You can always start a new post if the topic you're interested in has died off... I'd say they've covered everything, the only thing I'd question is whether the hair is Iriali or the royal locks- whichever one fits better in a collection of Invested Objects I guess. The "tree branch" definitely best fits a Dakhor monk bone at this stage, and the pink crystal is probably an Aether.

Yeah, that hasn't been confirmed, sure. It does seem like a lot of coincidences though that we now know that the cognitive sky represents the spiritual realm, and one of the expanses is called the Expanse of the Broken Sky, and that Sel has weird localised magic that seems consistent with its investiture spilling into the cognitive realm instead of staying in the spiritual realm. It all seems to support the theory that Sel's investiture is sourced from the cognitive realm.

Climate temperature is mostly determined by distance from the equator. (there's other effects that can cool or warm particular areas, as iirc Europe is cooler than would be expected given its proximity to the equator, which I think has to do with cool ocean currents or something?) So that wouldn't suggest that Scadrial has flipped what's referred to as North and South. The only way to figure that out is to see which way water rotates as it drains, which Brandon hasn't described, iirc.

I'm not sure Secret History particularly illuminates much on how the specific Unmade handling Death Rattles works. (Was it Moloch that did death rattles? All I remember in terms of name/power combos is that Nergaoul, or however you spell it, does the Thrill) From the dialogue in Secret History, it seemed like people's shades came into the Cognitive briefly, but it was always well after their dying words. (reference the Lord Ruler not mentioning Ruin to Kelsier the same way he does to Vin) If Moloch or whichever unmade actually does Death Rattles works using that mechanic, he's somehow making the transition to the Cognitive more gradual, or pushing something into people's minds before that transition takes place.

Indeed. Besides, we know from WoB that Hoid uses Feruchemy all the time to help determine where he needs to go and what he needs to do. We've observed him using Allomancy once. If the Nicrosilmind medallions existed that far back, it's possible he used one to gain access to emotional allomancy, and that he either used the Lerasium to hack in Feruchemy, or is keeping it for reasons unknown.

Aluminium should have similar effects on all investiture, IIRC there was a WoB on that. We've seen Silver, which is also allomantically inert, doing interesting things to Cognitive Shadows on Threnody. If you pay careful attention to all of the extras, you can figure out that he is in fact Nazh, Khriss' assistant. Nazh is from Threnody originally, but we know he's worldhopped a lot.