Terisen

I think we might rule out #1. Kalak sounded pretty broken in the Prelude. He even called Jezrien and the rest broken.

Mistborn spoilers There might be something similar going on with the Heralds. Not hemalurgy, per se, but something that drives the spren away that gives them their other abilities.

I don't know if I see it as a suicidal boyfriend/girlfriend thing, necessarily. The whole concept of Honor is really strong in Asian cultures and we already have Brandon saying that he's done some stuff with the Alethi culture based on Korea. Not that hard to say that the notion of Honor on the whole planet has Oriental influences. For instance, take the concept of seppuku in Japan. Honor was such an important concept that it was better to die with honor this way rather than die some other way, like at the hands of an enemy. Breaking your oaths to your lord, for example, was something very grave and death (albeit, for the betrayer of the oaths) was common for the samurai. Here, we can consider them as oriental "knights". I know it's a tad different with the Surgebinders as they themselves don't necessarily die, but I think the linkage of death with honor is built-in to the overall concept of honor, especially if we consider influences on the world.

Hmmm, I had always thought the memory modification thing was something the returned could do that functioned like the changing of hair or even body shape. You would modify your brain to disconnect the neural pathways, effectively forgetting. But the point with the girl is a plot point that I'd forgotten. Interesting...

The "metal as an Investiture resistor" idea is one that I actually like quite a bit. You have different levels or resistance based on the specific atomic pattern of the metal, much how you'd create different resistors (though that's with different amounts of windings in the resistor).

If I were to venture a guess, I'd say it's repainted just because it's something that's not inherently part of the plate. Same with the ornamentation that's attached. Otherwise (if my theory is right), it would be a sort of Hemalurgy to graft something new into the soul and I doubt that's very much the case here.

Wait, what did I do now? I'm lost. A bit of chaos in my mind, as it were.

The problem here is that it wasn't Vasher, it was Nalan. And he used a fabrial instead of Breath.

Ah, but you misunderstand. I was not trying to gain his power! (Heaven knows I wouldn't want any more responsibility)

Welcome, welcome! Looking forward to seeing you in some of the many discussions here! Which books have you read/are interested in discussing?

Thanks for the explanation. I was very much in the dark as to what is was. Is this how our Lord Chaos gained his powers?

You very well may be right about the fact that it's not a majority of their spiritweb, only a portion. There's 8 gemstones that power Shardplate (I think) and I'm fairly certain there are more Hemalurgic points than that, so it would make sense that the Fallen Radiants still retained a portion. It would still put them somewhere between a Drab and a Lifeless. Before I thought of this, I had assumed the same thing. They were just, well, bummed and didn't want to talk about it. But all 200 of them acting in pretty much the same way? You'd think you would get a greater variation of reactions if everyone was still "intact".

This is how I always interpreted travelling through the Shardpool. Those Elantrians who disappeared did so because they had enough suffering. Raoden, however, has a change of heart. Definitely seems like intent has a big part to play with the pools.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was going for. Woo hoo! Rampant speculation! I'm in! I'm of the opinion that, if you can visualize what the sense acts like, you should be able to Awaken an object that has that sense. In the case of you with your nearsightedness, I'd say you could Awaken something that had perfect vision because, despite not having perfect eyesight, you know what perfect eyesight is like and could visualize it (no pun intended!) As for the hammerhead shark electroreception, I don't know how well that would work since it still may be hard to visualize. I mean, you could try, but it may not come off quite correctly. The case of Nightblood is really interesting. You're right about how he talked to the fisherman before the fisherman even knew that Nightblood was down there. Is it possible that there are senses that the Returned have that they can impart? The Five Scholars were all Returned, so it's possible Nightblood got a "boost" from that.

Lopen. Definitely The Lopen. I just love his attitude and quick wit.

Would certainly be an interesting discussion. Though I do think there would be a sticking point on the whole "you can't kill to protect". I think Dalinar has moved away from the love of bloodshed in his youth to a more moderate position now, but he still views things like fighting as necessary at times. Lirin, on the other hand, seems far more of a pacifist, where killing is never OK. Maybe Dalinar will have to retrieve Kaladin from Hearthstone and we get to see this exchange.

Outis: Gotcha. Didn't answer the inherent question. Let me give this a go then. Lot of questions there. Let me see if I can group them. I think that you can only Awaken with "senses" that you already possess. That is, you can't impart something to an Awakened object that you have no idea how to do yourself as that would be impossible to visualize the Command. Take, for instance, your Command of "Sit on my should and tap me when I'm about to bump into something". It might be possible to do this, but it's going to accomplish this the same way you would (with a cane, feeling around, etc) if you've been blind your whole life and that's the only way you personally would know if you'd bump into something. If, however, you had sight at sometime in the past, you'd know how to visualize that Command, so I would say it is possible for the object to "see". It essentially boils down to your own Cognitive Identity. This might be possible, I'm not sure. I'd lean towards "no", but I have nothing to base that on. In fact, all of this is purely my speculation.

At first, I was thinking the same thing about the Stormfather not being a sword but something more. OK, so far, so good. We have a loophole. He said "simple sword". Still good. He can come as he pleases. Still open to a super-mega-awesome shard weapon. Crud. That slams the door shut, it seems. Bring on Nightblood for Dalinar! Let the Stormfather and Nightblood argue inside Dalinar's head. Though that just might drive him insane.

Well, we get some hints on this from the annotations Brandon wrote. Basically, Vasher had to mentally visualize how HE would have gone about trying to fetch the keys (ie, what's the process for finding keys for the cell) and place that into the little straw man. That, as noted, is an incredibly complex Command. So I don't think it's a matter of telling it discrete steps (go here, go here, open that, etc) but implanting a tiny amount of consciousness so that the straw man could problem solve.

Looking at my post, I phrased it funny. I didn't mean to imply that Jasnah was a full Radiant, just that, before seeing her Shardblade in the novel, I would have been more surprised to find out she didn't have a Blade than I would have been if she showed up as a full Radiant. Does that make sense? I still don't know if I'm phrasing it right.

I certainly don't think that execution is impicit for the Skybreakers when enforcing the law. We've only really seen it when Nalan was hunting down the Surgebinders. In fact, I'd go so far to say that simply executing everyone who broke the law would be in violation of other laws, so they wouldn't attempt it.

Done and done.

Yeah, you're gonna want to keep reading Words of Radiance! We get a little more information about Gavilar there that will probably answer your questions. To sound like Brandon: RAFO!

Here's the WoB:

I don't think it's unexpected. After all, she bonded Ivory over 6 years ago. We saw Kaladin advance to the point where he has a Blade in less than a year. I'd be more surprised if Jasnah wasn't a full fledged Radiant now given that length of time.