happyman

Small nitpick: Evidence points to the body not being killed, but being sent elsewhere while the person is ascended. Evidence: Ati, Leras and Vin all produced their physical bodies again when they died, and Brandon has stated that Ati would have to "physically" metabolize the Atium in order to get his power back. This suggests that Shards keep their physical bodies elsewhere. Wherever that is.

And a useful use for this power: spike anything to taste like bacon.

This. Being a wallflower would be an awesome talent the way Schmedry talents tend to work. Of course, it would have down-sides, but that's pretty much the nature of the beast.

The Stick will be hailed as the Stick wills.

This makes a good deal of sense. I would add, though, that the pieces still retain memories of also being bricks. Which would explain why good Allomancers don't have to pull on the center of mass---they can also detect the smaller, less defined but still extant pieces.

My guess is that he is not merely dead, but truly most sincerely dead.

Harmony is the religion that teaches about Ruin and Preservation. It teaches that Sazed picked up the powers of both, and is now their god, using both together to work for the agency of humanity. This isn't really surprising; the Terris religion had been completely wiped from humanity before Sazed's ascension. The only access humans would have had to it is the words of founding and the Kandra. And I'm pretty sure that the Kandra know from direct experience exactly what Sazed is.

I think Leftinch had it. He vaguely knew about the other stuff in the Cosmere, but he never had a chance to explore. He was too busy saving/destroying the world instead. I'd add that he never really had a motive for leaving, either. He was a terrible ruler, but he wasn't so careless as to leave his species alone with just Ruin, bound or otherwise.

Noooooooooooooo! The cake cookies are a lie!

I'm pretty sure that the title of this thread is a thing. I hope it is a rare thing, and in my opinion, it should never make a canon appearance. But it is probably a thing.

Sounds like the misanthropes conference from "Pearls before Swine." Pig: How's it going? Rat: Great! Nobody's left their rooms. Edited: Incidentally, this makes more sense with misanthropes than introverts. Introverts like having friends and being with people. They just need a lot more alone time as well.

We also have the guy who saw the world upside down, and the guy who's hands were left completely numb.

So, as I was mulling about Roshar, and the Sons of Honor, and the Ghostbloods, and the Skybreakers, and the like, I realized that the Church of the Stick was missing something very, very important: a secret society within it manipulating the desolation for its own ends. Don't get me wrong; most members of the Church of the Stick are dedicated to their inherent Stickness and want to do nothing more than resist the Firebringers, but the enormous power of the Stick attracts those with less savory aims. This faction is just known as YASSOR (Yet Another Secret Society On Roshar.) They are the secret subsociety of the Church of the Stick dedicated to making the whole world Stick so that they can then bring the True Fire which will cleanse all but the truly dedicated. They have no idea how to really do this, so all they really do is sit in their parents basement playing video games, talking about their Stickiness (you really don't want to know), and brainstorming occasionally. They'll get involved one of these days, though, I swear!

Maybe the curse should be to not notice curses.

You know, I agree with everybody here saying that turning the machine on was a red herring. In fact, I would say that it is essential to the ending of the story that it was a red herring. The ending made it abundantly clear that the larger problem they are facing is the change in their relationship with the Ones Above. It strongly suggests that opening the machine essentially wrenched their world into a wildly different place, or at least drastically increased the chance that it would end up in a different, and much more dangerous, place. (I rather imagine that other events in the Cosmere, like killing the Lord Ruler, would have had similar wide-scale effects if there had been magic capable of seeing that far in the future.) Sak's interpretation of this sudden, enormous, practically overwhelming, increase in the dangers he faced was an immediate overload of bodies. It was, essentially, a metaphor saying that death now lies down all paths, not just the obviously bad ones. I suspect that Sak's power is a lot like the usual Shardic ability to see the future, but much smaller than a full shard, kind of like how Atium burners can see very clearly into the future, but only a couple of seconds. However, size can be changed in different ways. I suspect that Sak can see quite a ways into the future, but only focused on one person, and then only "attuned" to death, and only vaguely at that. Then either the bird of the human "interprets" this vague information metaphorically in a way to get the information through. Thus every time Sixth sees his body, he is really just filtering a vague premonition of deadly danger through his mind. At any rate, I think we can sensibly say we shouldn't take his corpses too literally.

But that's not useless at all!

It may have surprised him, but he'll take it, huh? Yeah, guess I got to buy an official one now.

Ah, yes. Creating a world ruled by an inhuman sapient sword, with an ever-vigilant police force dedicated to finding people causing any sort of contention. "Don't hit your brother, or you'll be dragged off to prison and be killed." Given such a command, the sword might just become genocidal. Or maybe omnicidal. Or, with any luck, people would figure out how to destroy it.

But how would a sword know which puns are bad and which are good? WE MUST BE CAREFUL WITH THIS POWER!

I suspect that when it comes to storing senses, Feruchemy is like the other metallic arts: with time and practice, you can refine you skills to have a more subtle touch. Like Marsh can tell not only what metals somebody else is burning, but how much they have left, and like Breeze can soothe specific emotions very carefully, and like Zane could push on different parts of the same coin, and like steel inquisitors could see trace metals with Steel and Iron Allomancy, I suspect that a Windwhisperers can focus their sense storage in ways that are more subtle than we have seen so far.

It's strongly implied in Warbreaker that being descended from a Returned helps you instinctively understand Awakening, and having a lot of breath also improves your understanding of Awakening. I imagine that if the situation was correct, the God-King might be able to instinctively pull off the stunt you are describing, especially if doing so is part of why they returned in the first place.

I would say that the most important thing we don't know is what limitations the respective world-hoppers have and what their goals are. Without those bits of info, everything else is speculation. For instance, we've had pretty strong hints that Hoid can't kill anybody directly. That's a strong limitation. Combine this with the fact that we don't know how other powerful forces in the universe (Shards, 17th Shard, etc) feel about his actions and it should be clear that we just don't know enough. The same goes for Vasher or other world-hoppers. We just don't know enough.

That's a really, really, really, really good review from OSC. I stopped paying attention to him years ago, sometimes because of the content but usually because I didn't like how he presented it. It's one thing to argue a point; it's another thing to demonize the opposition, and I found it wasn't improving my reaction to other people. However, I think that he really gets what makes Brandon's writing good and it comes through loud and clear in this review. As for the patronizing bit, well, I don't actually feel that way. Robert Jordan kept lots of stuff private that would have been better off clearly marked, delimited, and outlined if someone else was to finish the story. When he finally caved to his mortality and produced the notes he needed, it made a bit of a mess. I think that it's perfectly good advice to give to give to Brandon, even if he never has to use it.

I'm pretty sure this is still just a theory, albeit a good one. I know there's WoB I've seen on it, but I don't think it was all laid out in one place. As to the danger, I think Raoden is the best example: when he starts getting opened up to the Dor, it causes all kinds of problems. That much uncontrolled power actually damages him, and he's in the physical realm. I rather suspect that going to the cognitive realm on Sel is rather like swimming in the Dor. I may not be meant as a weapon, but it'll do the job if you let it.

This is a common theory, not least because Windle's relationship to the Nightwatcher seems to mirror Syl's relationship to the Stormfather. (They are Mother and Father, respectively.) However, we will have to wait and see.