Eki

Again, do we know this is how it happened? I haven't read the excerpts from Edgedancer, but I get the feeling that the bond happened a while after she had already gone to the Old Magic, not at the same time... The Ring said "She has visited the Old Magic" (or something like that), past tense. I feel like this indicates that the choices were tactical and based on study (at least Jasnah and Renarin, since Shallan began her bond long ago). To me, that sounds more like a decision made by council rather than individuals. We also have reason to believe that Elhokar has been watched by a group of spren. That feels like research. I have a feeling Pattern spoke about how he came to bond Shallan... I don't have an e-book, so I can't really try to look it up. I would also like to see other kinds of Knights (and other kinds of Edgedancers specifically!). That's one reason why I'm sad about Ym's passing. He would have been a very different Knight.

Is this really true? Wyndle says it was a decision made by some kind of council of spren, the Ring, but they used the fact that the Nightwatcher had granted her a blessing as an argument. As far as we know, this could be how most Knights are chosen - Kaladin might be a rare exception. After all, we know the Stormfather never wanted Syl to bond with him. I'm guessing it comes down to the order - some spren tend to choose by themselves, but others are decided by council.

XD is just a smiley, where the X is eyes and the D an open mouth. I don't remember that WoB, but I assume the Honorblade would go with them to Damnation, which supports the idea that the Honorblades are important to the Pact.

Oh, sorry! You mentioned a quote by Hoid at the Kholinar gates, and that he was "discovered", so I assumed that's what you meant. Apologies. If the Honorblades really are important to the Oathpact, then he may have abandoned it involuntarily when his blade was separated from him. I'm guessing he hasn't though. But regardless, he was supposed to return just before a Desolation, and he did. If this really is the last Desolation, whether he broke the pact or not doesn't really matter.

The one he arrives with in Kholinar is his Honorblade - it's swapped somewhere between then and him arriving on the Plains. Well, the idea is that if they used the same mechanism as the Honorblades do, they accidentally create the same situation that allows Odium to hold them on Braize. They aren't really part of the Oathpact, but they give Odium power over them. You are right that Szeth didn't seem to go to Damnation when he died, but we don't know if he still had a connection to the Honorblade when he died, or if he would have gone there if he hadn't been revived. Or, indeed, if the connection is the same if someone other than the original Herald uses the blade. Your connection between spren and Heralds is interesting. I do think we have a WoB that says that anyone in the Cosmere who did what Szeth did would hear screaming, though, so that's probably not because of him having an Honorblade.

We know of at least one other Herald who is also active (Ash), and we have suspicions about others as well.

I'm not sure. The whole "Stick your shardblade in the ground and walk away" thing mirrors what the Heralds did in the interlude, though. And I don't know if most Knights did it the way Dalinar saw it. Honor said they were the first, but maybe the others really did just leave quietly.

True! There were Desolations before there were (non-Herald) Surgebinders though, so that may depend on how old the idea of the Tranquiline Halls is.

Not sure if something similar has been proposed before. When reading this thread, I started thinking about some things we know about the Heralds, the Honorblades, and the Nahel bond. Unlike normal shardblades, Honorblades don't seem to disappear if you drop them. (Presumably, you have to consciously unsummon it.) This can be seen when Taln collapses in the WoK epilogue, and when Szeth drops through the highstorm at the end of WoR. Taln's Honorblade was with him when he returned from Damnation. The Shin never had his blade. The other Heralds left their blades behind when they abandoned the Oathpact. These things seem to suggest that the Honorblades themselves are very much connected to their specific Heralds, but also the Oathpact itself. Taln's blade seems to have gone with him to Damnation when he died, and the Heralds who did not want to go back left their blades behind. Why would they do that? Was the Honorblade the thing that facilitated the Pact? We also know that the Nahel bond was an attempt by spren to copy what the Honorblades did. We've assumed this means giving access to stormlight and surges, but what if it went further than that? What if all Knights Radiant, by virtue of having a Nahel bond, were accidentally partially included in the Oathpact, in some way? What if any Knight who dies while still connected to their spren is sent to Damnation, to be tortured indefinitely? What if that revelation is what led to the Recreance? Who would want to continue being a Knight, if it meant eternal Damnation? There are some problems with this. For example, it doesn't explain why the existence of Surgebinders could lead to a new Desolation, which is something that many people (including one Herald) think. I would be surprised if the Recreance wasn't connected to that issue. Also, in the case of the Heralds, the Blade goes with them (or they go with the Blade), as a part of the Oathpact, according to this theory. However, we can be fairly certain that this is not true for the spren who create the bonds - they can be traumatized by the death of their Knight, but they aren't sent to Braize, and can rebond with someone else. This could just be explained by the fact that spren and Honorblades are different. Spren are alive, for one. A bit of a cop-out answer, but hey! Lastly, the Heralds return at every desolation, and no dead Knights do. And we have heard that keeping the Desolation at bay has been Taln's burden alone. If my theory is right, I think this can be explained by the fact that the Knights were never included in the Oathpact to begin with. Their inclusion is just accidental. That means that Odium has no obligation to fulfill his part of the bargain (whatever that means) with them. They are sent to Braize (because of the bond that imitates the Honorblades), but other than that, they don't affect the Desolations, they don't get to be sent back to Roshar, or anything. Just endless pain. On that cheery note, what are your thoughts?

I think there's some WoB that says that most people who burned enough pewter to potentially reach savantism, died long before they achieved it. So I doubt Vin was a pewter savant.

The magic on a planet seems to be a combination of the shards themselves, and the actual planet. There is some kind of analogue to a "soul" of a planet. So possibly, neither Preservation nor Ruin are necessarily connected to metal: it might be Scadrial itself. The equivalent on Roshar, for example, seems to be gemstones. It's also possible that the metal focus grew out naturally from both shards Investing in the same planet. We know an interaction like that can result in a third magic system (Feruchemy), so it might have other effects too. I believe more in the first theory though. I think Leras couldn't create life on his own because life requires change, which went against his Intent to Preserve.

The argument Argent made was that the reason he could speak modern Alethi was because the body could, so for that first point, him being a Herald doesn't really matter. Otherwise, I agree with you. For the second point, from his description, it really seemed like he arrived from Damnation very recently. I doubt he could have traveled very far, between the state he was in, and the presence of highstorms. You could argue that he was as exhausted as he was because he had traveled that far, but considering he had just been tortured for thousands of years, I think that would have the bigger impact, even if it was only psychologically. There is a WoB that says Taln (along with Ash and Sigzil) has the pigmentation of a black person on earth. I don't think anyone of Alethi decent is ever described as such. So probably not just a tanned Alethi.

I think his actual appearance is very much unlike the vast majority of Alethi though. And I doubt a darkeyed person would willfully immigrate to Alethkar. It's possible, of course, but unlikely. I think it would be more likely someone from the west would learn Alethi, in that case. But Taln showed up in Alethkar... Wouldn't that mean the body he supposedly possessed was in Alethkar too? I dunno. I feel like his appearance combined with how he speaks was deliberate from Brandon's side, to show that this person isn't from any of the current cultures of Roshar. I think there is a special bond between the Honorblades and their respective Heralds, but I also think they keep their own bodies. Or at least, the same look - they have to be repaired after dying or being tortured, of course.

I'm fairly sure it's a god metal, probably Harmonium. But the "base" metal (ie the metal that is wrapped around the spiritual to create it) could very well be an alkali metal. If it isn't a god metal, it just feels so odd that it would enable magic like that. When in use, it's like it's being burned, except outside of an Allomancer.

They could have used Adonalsium's own magic to do it. Presumably, he was invested in Yolen. Also, Adonalsium left lots of splinters and stuff all over, so the power was spread out a bit over the Cosmere.

I read the first one as someone asking about Frost being a dragon in the middle, but that part wasn't transcribed. And that's why he says "He was born as one. It is a race.". They might all be immortal, but I don't think that WoB says so. And like Spoolofwool says, in the second one Brandon specifically avoids answering. I agree that it's likely that not all of them are human, but the WoB doesn't say so.

Give every barrel unique ten bit binary number, then assign each prisoner to different bits. They taste all barrels where their bit is one. If they die, that means the poisoned barrel has a one in that position, and if they survive, that position has a zero. This will give you the binary number of the poisoned barrel.

I think Birthright was supposed to take place around year 500 after the Ascension, or something... I think Brandon wrote the story for it already. Anyway, I think a game would work better if you had abilities rather than just raw control of the metals. You could use a launch skill that shoots you in the direction you want to go, by just combining pushes and pulls that result in what you want. That's basically how Allomantical instinct can work, for someone practiced. Of course, there would have to be enough metal in the right places to allow for that direction. Maybe there could be some visual representation to help players see that (other than just the lines, of course). For fighting, I think general "push on weapon", "push around you" or "pull whatever is in the cross-hair" skills would be better. Bullet time would also be great, allowing you to select individual metal lines/objects to push or pull. The emotional metals could be used for debuff skills.

Your post gave me an interesting question: We know that Honorblades don't disappear when you drop them, right? (And in any case, normal blades drop when the bonder dies.) So why did Taln's blade not drop when he died? He had it when he returned. That does seem to suggest a special bond between the two. I don't think it's quite the connection you suggest, but there's probably something going on there.

Adonalsium didn't shatter on Roshar, so I doubt any potential splinters from that event (except actual shards, if you count them) ended up there. I think Adonalsium left spren on Roshar when he designed the planet, as a part of the ecosystem. The WoB from @The One Who Connects supports that. And we know of humans that weren't created by Adonalsium as a whole (Mistborn spoilers): That still makes them have a piece of Adonalsium in them, but not equal amounts from all shards. And from what we can tell, this doesn't necessarily change how they work - they still act the same as any other human. The only difference is that some of them can access specific kinds of magic that others can't. (Which probably means there are other kinds of magic that they can't use, but humans "of Adonalsium" can. Who knows though) We don't actually know the full origins of humans on Roshar. I think they are refugees, possibly from Yolen, who Cultivation and Honor took with them to Roshar. But it's also possible that these humans were created by the two shards. And I wouldn't say that humans are the "blueprint" for sentient life, that bringing something closer to Adonalsium necessarily means making it "more human". More sentient, perhaps, but there are many sentient species in the cosmere, Listeners included.

I could see an Adolin novella happening.

I dunno... Stormlight is one of the most plentiful sources of Investiture that we know of, I think. Breaths are really, really rare, because you actually have to make a whole human just to create one. If you could use Stormlight (or something else) instead, that could potentially be revolutionary. Imagine if someone managed to trick stormlight into working like held breaths - it would be relatively easy and cheap for any worldhopper to stop aging.

I'm thinking maybe you could interlace or wrap stormlight in breath, to "contain" the stormlight within it. Probably not possible if they act kind of like gases. Or maybe you could use Connection shenanigans, and trick the stormlight into behaving like breath...

Yep. You only needed to do 4500*1.1 = 4950 though. Not sure if we know if leap years are a thing in the Cosmere. And yeah, Rosharan days are shorter. I think the Coppermind might have the actual calculations. I think the most interesting implication of this is that all the characters are actually slightly older than we would normally think.

First time through, I had no idea it was Vasher (didn't know about the Cosmere), but second time through, I did notice he used colored stones, which made sense. I never connected it to that particular game though. I'm surprised he doesn't hate it, actually. Maybe he's being nostalgic. I did notice Nightblood though! That bombshell was my first introduction to the Cosmere (even if, for quite a while, I thought it was just this one thing Brandon had thrown in from another book...). I'm actually glad I didn't know about the Cosmere, because the surprise of Nightblood popping up there was absolutely fantastic.