happyman

Given that TLR was Preservation's champion (no idea if he was an official Champion, but he was a champion), I'm guessing that Ruin made wheedling him a high priority. If Ruin had to spend most of his energy reaching a single unspiked person (and given the powers involved, why shouldn't it be possible?), it would be TLR.

If I were to sum everything from this thread up, there are two main conclusions we can draw: (1) Soulcasting has limitations we aren't aware of. You can't turn anything into anything, at least not easily or in one step. No surprise there, really; what soulcasting we have seen has been pretty, well, elemental. This means that many of the tactics proposed are harder/more expensive than we originally thought. (2) Even within these limitations, the Alethi could have done more if they were motivated to actually win the war. Culturally, though, they haven't because their priorities are all screwed up. I'd add that there is one more conclusion that needs repeating: (3) Brandon is several steps ahead of us on this. No surprise there, really.

This all seems quite reasonable, and matches what I have long believed. Some time ago, I floated the belief that the Shard's ability to see into the future is essentially "Atium, writ large," which is what I think you are saying (More accurately, I would say that Atium's ability to see the future is Ruin's ability to see the future, writ small). It makes sense. I would like to add that both Preservation and TLR appear to have had this ability writ large, or at least much larger, given that the Kandra prophecies managed to predict both Ruin's attempt to claim the Kandra and Elend's last stand at least a thousand years in advance. As for the future splitting---well, clearly if two shards interact, they will have multiple "Atium shadows" writ very large, which would certainly explain the glass shattering analogy Honor used. However, based on the notion of Shardic sentience, I suspect that humans themselves have the ability to, after a long enough time or with enough people, change the future as well, thus splitting the future even with only one shard present (see Warbreaker). (Shards are just much better at accounting for all the splitting possibilities, I'm guessing).

Two points: We don't know that the Spren researcher is immortal. We do know, though, that he isn't human, so he could well just have a very long lifespan. As for how the interludes relate to the book, they don't. They do relate, however, to the overarching world-building and larger plot developments, as per word of Brandon.

What? Nobody's voted for Red? I'm disappointed. It's kinda like choosing a House at Hogwarts. Nobody goes for Slytherin...

My take is that health, like age, actually is a limited resource. In some ways, it's a more limited resource. The older you get, the more diseases you face, both internal and external; the amount of damage you take grows exponentially past a certain point (roughly in your 80's). It's very sad to watch, but I've had enough old relatives to know that it's true. A human's ability to heal actually drops quite drastically with age. I have absolutely no doubt that a Gold Compounder could live quite a lot longer than the average human, but I also doubt they could get anywhere near TLR's trick with Atium.

Actually, since we know that Mistborn is including space travel, it wouldn't be remotely surprising to have book centered or using multiple planets, including ones that were never "standalone," especially if no Shards were present on some of them. Also, if Mistborn goes FTL, there's nothing to stop the other parts of the Cosmere from doing the same. There's no reason for the climax to not include planets that have nothing to do with any of the places we have yet heard of.

I would have to go with the idea that most aspects of Awakening are end-Neutral. I think the analogy with Feruchemy is quite good; you endow breaths on things, and the awakening does something, and then you get it back with no loss. The color disappearing doesn't mean any more than the metal disappearing in Allomancy. Nightblood and Returned, on the other hand, seem to be end-Negative, without question. So it's an interesting question, and one that's hard to resolve.

Heh. This mechanism is called Evolution by Natural Selection. This forum is emphatically, definitely not the place to discuss its real-world status, but I would note that if Brandon tried to make it remotely realistic, it would do all kinds of strange things to the timelines of what we think are involved. They'd be a lot longer, for starters.

According to Sazed, Feruchemy obeys the law of diminishing returns; the more quickly you tap something, the more of it you lose. Being 50 times as strong for 2 minutes requires much more than 49 times your own total strength to have been stored.

Two good points. I think that first point needed to be said. Full stop. As for the second one, I'm guessing that House Landrian is the only one whose leader is whole-heartedly in on the conspiracy. I'd think that even a second major house working with them would be able to access Aluminum on the sly in a much less traceable way. Don't forget, though, that the theft's had multiple purposes. They had three uses to the Set: give them a less traceable way to get the job done by working through pawns, distract people from the kidnappings, and give the thieves a clear and "honest" motive which would cause people to generally not look harder at the little details.

That's a good quote. It makes sense; after all, we have exactly one documented case of the Shards changing hands, and evidence that some of the other Shards haven't changed hands (e.g. Hoid refers to the various Shardholders by name in his letter without any comment, suggesting that the individuals being referenced are the same as those at the splintering Hoid is referring to).

Just... just finish. There's nothing sensible anybody around here is going to tell you.

This is a good outline, and is definitely what the people on Roshar generally think happened (barring the specific knowledge of Honor and Odium as Shards, although pieces are left). The trouble is, didn't one of the Knights in Dalinar's vision specifically state that the Midnight Essences were not Voidbringers?

True, that's a good quote. And it occurs to me that there are good reasons why Endowment (or many other Shardholders) would not want to give up their power, namely that they have learned how to use it effectively and anybody they gave it to would not be able to handle it as easily.

Because the Intent of Endowment is to give of ones self (like Breath), after sufficient time, Endowment would feel the need to give, give, give, keep giving... Until he/she has given everything. It seems to me that if there is a shard that would be able/willing to pass on their power voluntarily, it would be Endowment.

Oh, OK. Well, I don't mind the chance to put it all out in a clear, coherent form, then. Actually, this theory is making a lot of sense. The power always has to be filtered through something to determine what it does. With Scandrial, it's metal. With Sel, it's shapes. With Awakening, it's the cognitive command. I'm guessing but (I think somebody said it earlier) with Stormlight, it's the virtue of ones life. Maybe Roshar has a Spiritual filter?

Let me put it this way: To us, this stuff is all fictional. Just a game. Fun, but of no consequence. If there were a world in which these abilities were real, somebody, somewhere, would have sat down to work out names for every combination, no matter how rare they were in real life.

This. Note especially that in the massive chess game that was the history of Scandriel from the creation of humans to the end HoA, having all the Atium burned was Preservation's next-to-last move. It was the set of Pawns that stopped the enemy queen (e.g. Marsh) from being able to checkmate before Preservation's game-winning moves, in the form of Vin's counter-attack and Sazed's ascension. Preservation paying special attention to this little detail, and taking care of it well in advance, makes sense.

I've said it before, and I'll doubtless say it again: I believe that Jasnah is at least party right, or the reveal would mean nothing. Also, her evidence seems quite solid. On the other hand, we don't know what the term Voidbringer really means, or why. We just don't know enough to place her discovery in proper context. Thus the reveal is probably both true and yet dead wrong.

Nice catch. I doubt it's an Honorspren, but it might well be a Spren. It's entirely possible that the Spren hasn't revealed itself to him because it can't---the bond is still too weak for it to manifest as strongly as Syl does. After all, it took a while for Syl to seem to be anything besides a windspren, but we know Kaladin was already forming a bond with her.

That's why we say it is essentially cognitive. You have to say the words correctly, but that's probably just to make a sufficiently stable pattern in your mind to channel the power correctly. Saying it, then hearing it while saying it, provides feedback, which makes your understanding of the sound much more stable, mentally. It's a classic feedback loop. This goes a long way towards explaining why it has to be in your native language (the understanding has to be as clear and natural as possible), why the same commands can be flexible in interpretation, why practicing the visualization is important, and presumably why enough Breath allows you to break the "rule" with training---if you have enough breath, the Cognitive aspect can be foggier and it will still work, thus allowing non-verbal commands.

It's been mooted. It's possible, but generally considered unlikely. My basic argument is that there can't be that many planet-hoppers chasing Hoid around. Until we get further evidence, Occam's razor strongly suggests that Galladon is part of the 17th Shard, and that they are looking for Hoid.

I would add that if I had to guess, ChayShan, the other Selian magic we know of, is probably end-neutral, like Feruchemy.

I don't remember if Brandon explicitly stated that Ferings existed before, but it makes sense as a working hypothesis. It's just that with full Feruchemists around, the powers would probably seem pretty low-key.