Pattern

Yes, it would work... You could even be fashionable

Darkeyes from the higher nahn can marry into lighteyed families, with light- or darkeyed children - or heterochromatic, but that's probably an abberation. and These quotes imply some awkward social constellations with mixed couples. The first quote somewhat implies that a darkeyes married into a lighteyed family would be seen as a lighteyes and the marriage would increase his social status. The second quote says explicitly that lighteyed children would outrank their darkeyed parent, so Kaladins answer in the first quote regarding a darkeyes becoming a lighteyes might be a bit off-topic. Genetically it seems to be impossible for two lighteyes to birth darkeyed children. If that could happen, the whole caste system would be instable after all. Similar genetic quirks happen with hair color and possibly other traits (e.g Herdazian fingernails). After all, on Roshar you can find interbreeding of different species (Human, Listeners, Aimians, perhaps more?), so true breeding eyecolor certainly is one of the least strange things going on there.

Do we really want there to be an end? Actually, I am glad nothing was spoiled and sent to ferment out there Now lets see, Aluminum to etch WoBs, thats shooting birds with cannons...but...aluminum foil hats to become immune to soothing...that could be a thing.

That is a hypothesis others and I posted a while ago, but it's still only a hypothesis. Might be that bits of Scadrian SDNA being of Preservation are enough to make everybody able to tap a nirosilmind. Might be there is some other mechanism involved. To produce the medallions, an "excizor" is needed, which reeks like Hemalurgy for me. Also there is Ettmetal (harmonium, sazedium, whatever...) the southerners used to create allomantic machines. The usual way to transfer/grant allomantic or feruchemical abilities would be the classical Hemalurgic spike. The medallions don't pierce anything, so they are something else. The easiest solution to this would be the hypothesis, that you don't have to be a nicrosil ferring to tap a nicrosilmind. As far as I know, this theory is not confirmed, though. New WoB: Also Non-Scadrians can use the Medallions, so the part of Preservation in Scadrial's population does not play a part in how the Medallions actually work. Creation flow chart was promised after TLM, but it will also be explained in the book.

No, it's not just you, I also hope for a novel version, I am no fan of graphic novels. Editing content after the release is something I don't like either and that Brandon also only does when he sees urgent reasons, though we don't necessarily agree. The similarity of Slatrifying with Soulcasting would be a possible, if weak explanation. Soulcasting involves entering the Cognitive Realm (partially) and changing the Identity of things / people.

Ok, lets all order some copperplates to hammer in the next WoBs...

I won't make it either. Approximately 7 hours by train or 5 hours by car and a dog to care for at that weekend is too much... @mr42: audio recording would be well enough. You can ask Brandon whether you can leave your recording device at his desk. Usually he answers with Yes, though it might be that you are asked to leave out sections, where he told more than should become public. In Poland he is said to have been quite talkative... If you don't know any questions to ask, we could do some brainstorming for interesting questions. Brandon: "Any questions?" Fan: "No" always hurts ;-)

@skaa: Interesting thread, the details are enlightening. Vasher doesn't heal the girl, the girl heals herself while repeating Vasher's words. The exact mechanism remains speculative though.

Vasher changing memories always seemed odd to me. It doesn't really fit into Awakening. Any lore on that?

Lets assume Nightblood is a dead shardblade awakened with 1000 breaths. That would give it much more Investiture than just the breath needed to awaken it. It would not be awakened steel but awakened godmetal - so the awakener would still need the 9th hightening. Being of two different shards could result in a mixing and therefore corruption of Investiture when Nightblood is drawn. Against this assumption speaks the fact that Yesteel is able to create more swords like Nightblood and that Nightblood was created to imitate a shardblade in the first place... But somewhere the excess Investiture has to come from.

The allomancy was intended as a comparison, pushes and pulls there are external forces and the crushing example shows that they don't really work at the center of mass, only the direction of the force points to or from the allomancer's center of mass. Otherwise deforming would not occur. In real-world physics external forces attach at a point on the surface of an object, so when two opposite forces push on an object, a real body deforms, depending on the points the forces attach to and the form and material of the body. If we take gravitation, each subatomic particle is affected equally in a homogeneous field. For simplicity we leave out tidal forces in an inhomogeneous field. Lashing is supposed to imitate /affect the gravitational force, so it should work on every atom of the lashed object/body. That is, two opposite lashings might deform single atoms, but not the body itself. To get ripping effects, you would need A LOT of lashings, essentially making gravitational forces stronger than the electromagnetic forces holding together the atoms. Now there stays the problem with body parts, seen as separate objects. The soul might be a real problem, making lashings of bodyparts in different directions impossible. Or not - I don't have enough evidence to come to a conclusion there.

Shall there be a genocide or not? My answer to that question is a definite NO. With humanity doing that Odium wouldn't need "voidbringers" in the first place, his goal probably would be achieved and any remnants of Honor and Cultivation would be wiped off Roshar. A genocide has nothing honorable and nothing cultivated, it would be a manifestation of pure Odium. Destroying potential evil by becoming evil oneself is no sound philosophy. So, what else to do? I don't have the answers, but a crude plan would be: - Shelter Parshmen form the everstorm - Bring them "normal" Parshendi spren to bond that give no form of Power. - Form an alliance with the Listeners, make them Radiant, if possible. - Fight against those who decided to join Odium with a common front. That will probably include some humans as well. I suspect the endgame won't be Humans against Parshendi at all. Best solution for Roshar, but not the Cosmere would be: set Odium free, let him splinter Cultivation (if he didn't already) and pass on to the next planet. Before, Odium only showed interest in shards, not the population of a planet, Sel is quite well after all. This plan probably would be counteracted by Hoid, though...

A shardblade cuts the "soul", the cut can be healed. So while the soul is cut, there would be two parts (it's a strange concept, perhaps the soul just retracts from a cut part and extends back when healed). Here comes to mind the talk about the soul of body- and vegetable-parts in a Kaladin flashback, though there might be some local superstition involved. Roshar has no real understanding of realmatics after all, so in-world information has to be treated carefully. Even a scholar like Jasnah has some opinions which contradict our understanding of realmatics and the cosmere in general. I don't see a reason why it should be impossible to separate body parts with lashing, though it would be very difficult and unfeasible (use the shardblade for Honor's sake...) With enough stormlight, the Investiture of a soul should be able to be overcome: the bandits probably didn't "want" to become smoke, flame and crystal either, when Jasnah soulcast them. This is another surge though, so it might be it's not possible to damage the soul of a living person with lashing and the whole person would be lashed in two directions, the lashings canceling each other. For the wall it's possible to lash separate parts, but the wall has no living soul, just a cognitive representation.(edited and corrected my first post - necessity arises when you answer quickly without book at hand) Question is wether or not Highspren or Honorspren would permit such a use of the surge. Using an honorblade removes that obstacle.

Assuming the lashings effect the center of mass like steel-pushes or iron-pulls in allomancy, opposite forces just cancel each other, so you would not be ripped apart. Might be that surgebinding is a bit more variable in use, so if you imagined the lashings right you could lash the head in one direction (attachment of force in heads center of mass) and the torso in the other direction. After all, Szeth was able to lash a single stone in a wall in the prologue of WoK Edit due to Calderis correction: when Szeth goes for the Veden king: It definitely needs some mental gymnastics and definitely cirumstances which don't break oaths, but there certainly can be found situations where this applies to. A physical separation of objects certainly makes it easier. Lashings attached to two different points of a body could rip the body apart, though that definitely would not happen when a surgebinder lashes himself partially.

Actually, Nightblood consumes Investiture, any form of Investiture - and while doing that, reduces the amount of Investiture in the Cosmere at a very slow rate. Edit: I found another WoB contradicting this one, so we are left with some uncertainty: (Spoiler tags for length)

There definitely is a similarity, but recent WoBs pointed more to the importance of belief. Spren seem to become what people believe them to be. So when the size of a flamespren is measured and the size is recorded, the recording is the manifestation that the person who wrote down the number believes in that measured size. In consequence the spren locks at that measured size. Additionally the written numbers could be used to convince other people that the spren has that size, so it is even more "captured".

I would be careful to draw this conclusion, since a soul is Investiture: I guess the attributes stored by two identity-blank Feruchemists would just add up (superimpose) in a metalmind, the different souls involved being temporarily indistinguishable. This would be analogous to the which-way-problem in quantum mechanics, where interference between two paths can only occur as long as it it unknown which path actually is taken. So when the Investiture knows which soul stored them, they won't interact.

Well, I have already seen other threads using the assumption that unkeyed metalminds can be burned by any misting to create other hacks. So until we see anything that definitely says that this is not possible (new WoB or The Last Metal) I will go with that, contradicting every time would be a waste of time. The assumption is at least easy and likely enough to do so. Brandon will be quite near in two weeks (500 km), perhaps I can shuffle free some time to go to the reading/signing events to put in one or two questions. Chances are bad I will make it, though. We'll se...

First an answer to @8bitBob It's not being discarded, Spiritual connection is just assumed to be Identity here as it matches the description of Identity as stated by VenDell in BoM, as I have said a few times now. It fits into my theory, and I have explained why the word Identity would not have been used pre BoM before. I have argumented several times now, why this cannot be used to support your theory - which arguments you just don't accept and wiggle around. Saying several times that it does, does not make it so. So I repeat one last time This WoB can be summarized: "A misting (what Miles is as soon as his feruchemical power is stolen) can compound his old metalmind, because it has his Identity." Unfortunately the "because" is missing in the WoB. I imply it from context, you threw phrases like "correlation does not imply causation" - in a rather condescending way. So Brandon would have been intentionally misleading. Usually he RAFOs, if he doesn't want to tell something (he even does it in the end of this quote). So I take the "Spiritual Connection" - which probably is just another term for Identity - as the reason for the compounding to work. As we all agreed, you don't need to access a metalmind to compound, so no feruchemical ability should be needed for compounding. So this does not contradict that a ferring who got his power ripped away cannot access his metalminds anymore. He would not have the ability anymore. A twinborn who still had allomancy after getting ripped away feruchemy could still burn the metalmind and would get power from it (actually from Preservation filtered through the metalmind), if the metalmind is charged with his feruchemical charge. To the tangent of resonances: Ok, I am convinced, compounding is a hack, not a resonance. As are the medallions: Defining a hack as a clever way of (ab)using the magic system. Some tangent to Biochromatic Breath: So I guess the main topic is exhausted, we get more and more to other tangents. Though interesting, this won't really help the thread. I agree that it is a plausible scenario that a misting can burn an unkeyed metalmind to get access to the stored feruchemical attribute, though that would degrade the spiritual attribute of Identity to a mere key to one's feruchemical charges. To like that or not is a matter of taste, I feel this would be an anticlimactic solution for the mysterious spiritual attribute(s). "The Lost Metal" hopefully will give us more insight to that.

@SpoolofwhoolWhere is it confirmed that TLR is not having resonances? I think the memory ability enhances lightweaving a lot, so I wouldn't say it has no effect on the surges. @8bitBob Yes, Wax's abilities interfering with separate metals yield a resonance. Now you don't really want to tell me that this would not be the case if the metals did coincide, like it is with Miles. There is some resonance at work, if resonance is a real thing. We know that there are types of Investiture which are linked to Identity and others not. Need to look up the WoB, that could take a while though. Biochromatic Breath should be in the "Investiture with Identity" category, "Me Breath to Yours" comes to mind there. Stealing breath after all is not possible.

Exactly. Two types of Investiture within an individual (having an Identity) lead to resonances. Compounding is the kind of resonance happening for a X-X Twinborn (X denoting any allomantic/feruchemical metal). Twinborn with two different metals have more subtle resonances.

I used the video on YouTube from the Boskone reading of the Oathbringer prologue to update the transcription made by /u/RyanEl on Reddit, @Kanrei and @jofwu, since @jofwu said he lacked the motivation after transcribing the Interlude. Also I transcribed Brandon's recent introduction and replaced the old one. The reading in Boskone didn't cover the whole prologue, since there wasn't enough time, I will mark in the transcription where it ends. A little remark to the Condensation of shardblades: That explanation is physically just wrong. Condensation (resublimation, strictly speaking) is an exothermic process since atoms/molecules get bound and the binding energy is released to the environment. Also the entropy is reduced, since a condensed (resublimated) state has more order than the gas phase (less possible states to occupy). Even in extreme regions of the phase diagram this does not change. Condensation/resublimation stays exothermic. Additionally, while discarding the shardblade (with endothermic condensation at summoning), there should be a release of heat as this would be the reverse process. Let's just wait for some realmatic explanation, physics clearly doesn't work here.

So the experiment crucis would be to give a medallion to an non-Scadrian and see whether it still worked or not - or ask Brandon about that. My proposition would be: Scadrian sDNA (with parts of Ruin and Preservation) + Investiture stored in nicrosilmind => Abililty available from which Investiture is stored in nicrosilmind.

It is really a nice research of different WoBs and quotes from the books, much more supporting than the original two WoBs. Your theory is definitely plausible, but to call the alternative flimsy is a bit too confident on your side. You do extend what we have seen so far, so you add something unconfirmed, strictly speaking. The thing bothering me is that in your theory Identity is just a lock to someone's feruchemical charges. An unkeyed charge in a metalmind is treated the same as a charge keyed to the ferring/twinborn. Nothing so far contradicts this. It does make the spiritual attribute Identity kind of cheap, though. The " Yes, that would still work. It'd still have a Spiritual connection to him." also would have to be discarded. I don't want to create another wall of text to address every point you wrote. Just one thing: 1. ) You propose that Identity blocks Investitures from mixing. 2.) I propose that Identity enables different types of Investitures to interfere with each other: Investitures can only interfere if they fit to the same sDNA. We only know so far that Investiture with another Identity cannot be accessed by a Feruchemist (supporting 1, but not contradicting 2) and we only have seen Compounding with Identity matches (supporting 2, but not contradicting 1), so both propositions are the same kind of stretch, both not really far stretches. Your proposition would mean that an unkeyed metalmind could be compounded by a misting, my proposition would mean that this would not work, since the Identity neccessary for interference would be missing in an unkeyed metalmind. Access by another Fering would work, since there is no mixing of Investitures involved. Mixing/Interference of Investitures is to be understood as an interaction of different powers, here Allomancy and Feruchemy. In the Ars Arcanum from BoM it is hinted that the mixing of different types of Investiture has curious effects.

To put my bit to this discussion: Assume we have an unkeyed nicrosilmind, filled with Investiture - the abililty to burn metals or tap metalminds as the kandra decribe it. This is obviously not the cosmere definition of Investiture, but it should describe what the feruchemical does correctly. Otherwise VenDell would deliberately give us misinformation. What we know from old WoBs (I am really bad at finding them) is that every Scadrian carries pieces of Ruin and Preservation in them, since they created humanity on Scadrial together. My part of theorizing: Those pieces in the sDNA might be enough to give access to an unkeyed filled nicrosilmind which acts like an amplifier for the stored ability, so the person becomes a fering in that ability. The ability to draw and tap from an unkeyed nicrosilmind would be inherited from Preservation and Ruin. This possibility is also there for any other unkeyed metalmind, but the person could not use the power, because there is not enough of Preservation and Ruin in the sDNA (otherwise the person would already be a Misting, Mistborn, Fering or Feruchemist) . This would make nicrosil not really different from the other metals, just the fact that Investiture is stored in it instead of e.g weight. This stored Investiture (more of Preservation?)) in combination with the sDNA from Ruin and Preservation would be enough to get access to the magic. Question is, would that nicrosilmind run out of Investiture as it is used or is it just the presence of more Investiture together with the bits in the sDNA that is enabling the ability but no Investiture is drawn from the nicrosilmind while using that ability? If no Investiture were drawn from the nicrosilmind, it would not even be necessary for the person to draw from the nicrosilmind. The presence of sDNA from Preservation and Ruin together with the stored unkeyed Investiture would somehow merge in the spiritweb and this would be enough to make the person a misting. Taking off the Medallion would also take away the additional Investiture from the spiritweb so the person becomes "unmagical" again. The problem I see here is: Why is physical contact necessary, if location is of no import in the Spiritual Realm? Wearing a Medallion for a long time should yield permanent effects, which we are not shown so far.