Eki

Actually, the quotes above heavily imply it. Pattern says there were many fewer spren with minds back then - and spren are splinters. Honor splintering would massively increase the number of splinters on the planet. I never read the quote as necessarily saying the Stormfather was bonded to a Knight who gave up their oaths, though. Just that he survived the Recreance, which very few did. I guess it is a possibility though. Even likely. I can think of a few different ways a spren could survive the breaking of oaths.

The problem with this is that Shallan, as far as we know, hadn't broken any laws worthy of capital punishment at that point. I forget exactly how the events happened, though. I think it was her mother who actually tried to kill her? But in that case, the Skybreaker would have tried to stop her, since the killing would be against the law. (Assuming the guy actually tried keeping to the Skybreakers' beliefs.) Her mother definitely had a strong opinion that Surgebinding had to be stopped, even at the cost of her daughter's own life, but I think it's more likely she (and/or the other guy) was part of some other organization or sect.

I haven't read Secret History, but I thought it was fairly well established that if Kelsier hadn't taken up Preservation when Leras died, it would have splintered pretty soon thereafter. I guess in that particular case, it could have been Ruin who did the splintering... I always assumed those WoBs referred to if the shard was splintered, but now that I look at them, that's not exactly what they say. I was sure I read somewhere that a shard left on its own would splinter, but now I can't find any reference to that... Sorry about the confusion!

It seems like without a holder, a shard splinters. This is probably because the power is just too great for it to be stable without someone controlling it. The resulting splinters would then be small enough to be stable, and would develop sentience over time. Whether adonalsium - the actual power itself - was sentient, or if there was a holder who took the power... that's an interesting question. If a shard is too big to be stable without a holder, then surely adonalsium itself would have been too... But what if adonalsium just started out sentient from the beginning? You say that the fact that adonalsium split into 16 shards indicates that adonalsium was self aware, though. I agree that adonalsium was self aware, but I don't see the connection you're making. We don't know the details of the Shattering, but we know that someone or something opposed adonalsium, meaning it might not have Shattered itself. Personally I think adonalsium was in on it to some degree, but we don't know anything about that yet. About divine breaths: We don't actually know if they are self aware or not. They don't seem to interact with the Returned, but it's possible that they actually are aware regardless. The only way I see a shard attaining its own sentience, would be if someone managed to keep the shard intact for long enough, without actually picking it up. If the shard was unheld, but whole, for long enough, maybe it would develop enough sentience to be able to control itself. That would be interesting.

I'm far from an expert in this, but pretty much, there is something called the Higgs field, which is what gives fundamental particles (like quarks and electrons) their mass. The Higgs boson is an oscillation (a wave, or a shaking, pretty much) in that field, kind of like how a photon (a light particle) is an oscillation in the electromagnetic field. The boson itself doesn't do much, but finding it would give more evidence for the existence of the Higgs field, since the theory predicted it would be there. Since scientists are now pretty sure they really have found a Higgs boson, the theory seems very likely to be correct. However, most of the mass in for example a proton doesn't come from the Higgs mechanism. The Higgs only gives mass to the quarks within the proton (which is very important, because anything without mass travels at the speed of light. If the quarks wouldn't slow down, protons would never form in the first place), but most of the mass comes from the actual energy it takes to bind the quarks together. In the case of relativistic mass, the object behaves like it has a higher mass in every way. The particles really do have more mass when travelling in relation to an observer. In the case of Feruchemical iron though, the person acts like they have more mass in some ways, and their normal mass in others.

We don't know if she was bonded to anyone at the time of the Recreance (or if she was, but her Knight died without giving up thier oaths). It's possible that her fading into non-sentience would be similar to what happened when Kaladin started breaking his oaths though, since Kaladin had only sworn two oaths at that point. The process was probably much more drastic for the poor spren who got trapped in shardblade form.

@PantsForSquares In our universe, in a closed system, momentum is conserved. In a non-elastic collision, momentum is just transferred to other particles in the system (and so is energy, by the way. That's why a bouncing ball heats up). Energy is also conserved, of course. I think the expansion of space messes things up, but on a local scale, both of those things are true. When you start introducing magic though, none of those things have to be true any more. In this case, we have a WoB that says that momentum is conserved, but the laws of magic are under no obligation to conserve kinetic energy. So the extra mass kind of works on the whole cognitive image of you? In the same way that an object is either inside or outside a speedbubble? You just add mass uniformly to yourself, and that mass only "kicks in" in certain situations.

I don't remember this... That would be really interesting though! Did the merging with Tanavast's cognitive shadow revive the spren? Did it overwrite its mind? Did Honor revive it before he splintered? Did highstorms occur when he was gone (if he was)?

I'm guessing you could sense stormlight being held, since it leaks. I think that leaking is "active", even if the holding itself isn't. Probably easier to use your eyes in that situation, but yeah.

I think that was the WoB I was thinking about! From what we know, Investiture isn't used up. Nightblood might be an exception, but nevermind. So if the magic creates "normal" energy (which it does, if you push on a coin, it gains kinetic energy), and the Investiture isn't used up, that means energy is added. I forgot about the metals disappearing though, that would decrease the amount of energy, provided that that energy doesn't go somewhere else. I'm not sure what investiture having entropy would mean, but I just meant normal entropy. The cosmere is supposed to work pretty much like our universe when magic isn't involved.

Definitely understandable! About the direction of the arrows, I was mostly thinking about the second arrow from the right, which looks like it was fired from the left. I guess you could explain it in other ways though.

But the thing is, density is literally mass divided by volume. By definition. It's a derived value, not a fundamental property. And we know that it's mass that is stored (with a few quirks), not just the interaction with gravity. Of course, there is handwaving, but regardless of how the magic works, density will be the mass of an object divided by the volume it occupies. That's what the word means. Some of the effects that higher density (and mass) would normally have seem to be different when storing or tapping iron, and that's where the handwaving is.

The books don't say it outright, but the Listeners have legends about the Rider of the Storms that go back a very long time. Probably long before Honor even arrived on the planet. Likely, he is about as old (if not exactly as old) as the highstorms themselves. There are also WoBs that heavily imply that the two merged.

I was sure there was a WoB about this, but I can't find it. If I recall correctly, it said that the effects of a shard's magic don't necessarily reflect their Intent. This is true for other shards too. (For example, changing how gravity acts on you has nothing to do with the Intent of Honor.) About Lerasium in particular, making a person into a Mistborn seems to be almost... a side effect. What it really does is give your soul a stronger connection to Preservation, which happens to be something that makes you Mistborn (in some ways, the two are the same). There is a little more to it than that, I guess, since apparently you can use Lerasium alloys to create Mistings. But yeah. That question boils down to if Allomancy itself matches Preservation. Some have argued that it's odd that the magic of Preservation adds energy to the universe (which interestingly enough is the opposite of why you think Lerasium is unfitting for Preservation!), but I would argue that you actually need to add energy to a system to preserve it, or entropy will change it. Regardless, of course, things like pushing and pulling on metals don't have anything to do with the concept of preserving. Atium would be the same: the actual effect it has, seeing into the future, doesn't have to have anything to do with the Intent of Ruin, just like Soothing or whatever doesn't have anything to do with preserving. Also, atium Feruchemy doesn't allow someone to live forever, unless it is compounded. Normal atium Feruchemy only allows temporary age manipulation: in the end, you would live just as long.

The Stormfather existed before then. When Tanavast died, his Cognitive Shadow merged with the spren, to create the being we know now. More on the Coppermind: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Stormfather

If you want some really nitpicky things, the arrows probably wouldn't stick in the ground, since there is no soil. Anything loose gets swept off in a highstorm. Makes for a more interesting scenery if they do stick in the ground though. Also, if the archers are all to one side (I don't know if the scene says, but it would make sense. Otherwise they would risk hitting each other), the arrows in the ground would point in approximately the same direction. Unless they bounce off of the chasmfiend I guess...

No, momentum (which is mass times velocity) is conserved: So when his mass decreases, his velocity goes up. Of course, he loses a lot of the momentum to the air, which slows him down. This would be true for any Iron Ferring, but they don't move as quickly, so they probably never really notice it. @Oversleep, did you mean to write "density doesn't change"? Because the post you linked to says that you would float like a balloon, which implies that your density is in fact changed.

Just for the record, depending on your browser, there are probably extensions that allow you to set a mouse shortcut for going to the top (like, rightclick+scroll up, for example). Very useful for other sites as well.

Nope, it's mass, with some oddities: Which would mean that the density does change. Also, I'm pretty sure what Wax says is that when he stores mass, he does speed up.

I'm assuming he will be some kind of ambassador from the Listeners to the humans. He's probably the only one who has had a postive experience with them since the assassination.

Well, considering what Vasher did before (and even during) Warbreaker, there are a lot of things he could be referring to.

You should probably put a Warbreaker spoiler tag in the topic title, since this is the Stormlight subforum. I'm actually kind of hoping she hasn't joined the 17th shard... Not because I don't want to see her as a worldhopper, but because so many other characters from other books are in the organization. It would be more interesting if she was looking for Vasher or Nightblood, or just off doing her own thing. I think she might be on Nalthis though, as a regent over Huth or Kuth (or both!). Or she's dead, as Yata says. Depends on what happens in the Warbreaker sequel.

We know that Scadrial is supposed to be pretty earth-like. We don't know exactly how, but presumably gravity is one of the similar things. So unless the planet has a vastly different chemical composition (possible, but probably not), it should be about the size of earth as well. Right now, only a small portion of it has humans though. Unless the Southerners have migrated to lots of other continents (if they exist), of course.

I think Jasnah says "That's not how it happened in the past" after Hoid mentions the storm is going eastward, so maybe that's the difference from before. That doesn't quite match what the Stormfather says, but maybe there's something else to it as well.

I wouldn't be so sure it was because he "failed". He knew that he couldn't wield a shardblade, because it screams out in pain every time he does. So why continue training with shardplate? Everyone would expect him to use it with the shardblade. And at that point, he may even have developed his friendship with Glys enough to care about his feelings as well - spren are very uncomfortable around dead shardblades, understandably. I think it would reflect worse on Renarin if he did continue his training, knowing it would cause pain to the spren in his blade, as well as Glys. That said, I don't want Renarin to become a soldier either. I'm fine with him learning how to defend himself, and of course use his surges, but I don't want him to just change completely and become some badass voidbringer killer. I think the whole reason he wanted to learn how to fight and stuff was because of his society's views on masculinity and being lighteyes. Now that he's a Knight, he has a new purpose. That may include a bit of fighting, but not necessarily being a soldier.