happyman

I suspected he was talking about Dawnblades, or something. But yes, Brandon has a way of saying this which we will interpret incorrectly until book 6.

Well, we don't just have Syl's reaction to Dalinar's blade. We also have Kaladin's reaction to a completely different blade, when he decides not to take it. Something is up, and it seems likely to apply to all Shardblades.

This, or it gets used up (or recycled into Endowment).

We've tried exploring it in the past. Feel free, but the evidence is pretty slim, at the moment.

Normally I'm pretty blase about the cover art. Story is usually what catches me, along with recommendations from others. That said, that is an astounding cover. It's easily the best one I've seen for Mistborn, with zero competition. (The paperbacks? Surely you jest. The hard-covers? Better, but this is just awesome.)

I was speaking metaphorically. The city proper was unaffected, true.

If it's a splinter, maybe using the Skaze together he can see into the future? I would note that Wyrn's ability to see into the future is pretty dang impressive. Atium can only see a few seconds, and Lightsong gets only glimpses of things that are almost (but not quite) inevitable. Wyrn must have something fairly potent to get info as specific as what he got.

Since reading the annotations, my theory has been that pre-Elantris and pre-Reod, the "ur-Elantrians" were people who were slightly stronger, somewhat healthier, and could draw relatively weak aons (this would still be a very useful magic system; see what Raoden did with even the limited bits he could access). From the study of Aons, they realized that a city-sized Aon with the right modifiers would give them an enormous advantage in just about everything they did, so they built said city and created their utopia, not realizing that the whole thing was on a precipice that might some day break. When it did break, the resulting physical state was worse than before Elantris existed, just like being treated with a badly drawn Aon is worse than being sick.

Given that Hoid has definitely brought magic cross-planet, I'd say the answer is "Yes." What it does to Elantrians is unknown.

Extrapolating on this: the more breaths a person is given right as/before they die, the more of themselves they retain. Then, all it takes is one [deific?] breath to Awaken them. Is this the recipe for a Returned? If so, who is giving them enough breath to let them maintain their core personalities (if not their memories)? This is a really good theory, actually. It's hard to say though---I don't think that even holding enough breaths to reach the tenth heightening would make somebody a Returned if they were then turned into a Lifeless. I can't help but thinking that there must have been an interaction with the divine breath, as well.

I've long thought the answer was yes. Although I'd be willing to bet it's probably not a new Aon they need, but the proper modifiers to aon Shao. What's most interesting about Seala's case is that in every other case we see/hear about an Aon missing one of its basic lines, the Aon simply fades and fails to work. Since this particular case behaves in a manner decidedly different, does that lend support to Dilaf's paranoia that the Elantrian did it intentionally? Or is it Aon Shao (never confirmed, but presumably the base Aon for healing) that acts differently from the other Aons? An interesting bit of speculation. I didn't think about this when I first read the book, but now that I think about it, I'm sure Brandon knows exactly what went wrong. Perhaps if the Aon gets changed halfway through (e.g. it picks a target, and then gets modified) things happen differently. Perhaps the healer accidentally wiped out one of the fundamental lines, rather than neglecting it completely?

My guess is that Odium has left Sazed and endowment alone (for the moment) and that the reason is "Bigger fish to fry." I suspect that time passes differently for Shardholders. Their "lifespans" (as little as we have seen) are simply enormous. Also, they are not without limits. They can't be everywhere or do everything.

An interesting thought. The thing is, from the Annotations, we do learn that art in Warbreaker does have power. Endowment's magic is definitely related to color. We also have a connection in WoK to Shallan. So it's possible that there are other places in the Cosmere where art really does have power of a sort. On the other hand, lots of the religions in Mistborn are definitely false. So while it's not impossible, I don't think it will end up as more than a sidenote in the larger cosmology.

So the Almighty is Honor. I suppose that Honorspren are almost directly connected to him, then? Perhaps they're splinters, or some such thing. Perhaps their pieces of what is left of his cognitive aspect; after all, unlike most Spren, they can think.

I have to go with Helaren as the mysterious death. Galivar's death is mysterious, but it's an obvious mystery that at least a few people in-world are actively investigating. Tien's death is not remotely mysterious, more's the pity. Shallan's father's death is mysterious to us, but Shallan seems to know what happened. I think we can safely assume that the details will be revealed in the book focused on Shallan. But Helaren's death? Comes from nowhere. Given what his father was mixed up in, it probably does deserve more attention.

It was discussed, as I recall. I rejected the idea that Sazed was the recipient for several reasons. The largest one is that Hoid and the recipient seem to have an on-going relationship which included, in the distant past, a personal knowledge of the "original" Shardholders. Sazed does not fit most of these references.

Um, what? That was in reference to the shard's again. Ah, that makes sense. I'm not entirely certain about it, though. Ruin and Preservation could not read minds, and neither could the people who used their power for other things, so it seems safe to say that those two shards were limited in that way. On the other hand, Nightblood can read minds, as well as influence them. It was created by the power of Endowment. Are we to assume that Nightblood has a power that Endowment does not? That seems... unlikely.

Actually, these are really good points. Somebody in-world almost certainly wrote that document, and it's wasn't any of the viewpoint characters so far. It's the wrong perspective for Hoid, too. So are we now looking for another functionally immortal person, this one native to Roshar? Dang. Well, at least we know what to look for now.

Fair point. The kandra become sentient by having part of a human soul stuck in them, so that's fair. Their derivation from humans is also relevant then. However, the Koloss (as a new species, post-Sazed-ascension) may have been derived from humanity, but they have become so different that they are certainly an artificially-created sentient species "now". However, their connection to humanity does make one wonder why they had to start from a human template to get a lease on life. There does seem to be some sort of limitation involved. Um, what? Even the "normal" parshmen are apparently sentient (sapient?). They may be considered a bit dim, but they understand speech and are capable of complex tasks. Somebody created them, and they are very clearly non-human. They may have been derived from humans at some point, but that's not a given.

Yes. And as someone who has actually studied Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Electrodynamics, I can state with certainty that the way the average layman understands the term photons is incredibly misleading. (Not quantum mechanics fault. It's a hard science to learn, and demands a high tolerance for abstract mathematics. But one side effect is people thinking they know more than they do.) For this problem, in this context, it's much better to think of the radiation as consisting of waves and fields. "Photons" are just a distraction; they are quantized excitations of the electromagnetic field, which show up primarily as expansion terms in Feynmann diagrams. Which tells you nothing, I know. It's not my fault. I know just enough about general relativity to know that what Gravitational Redshift affects is the time and space that the wave is travelling through, which in turn changes both the intensity and wavelength of the resulting wave. The change in wavelength would compensate for any time changes, but only by also changing the intensity of the light. That's where the frying and freezing effects come from, and yes, they would be real as far as I know. No, this makes sense. See, if you imagine a bubble of sped-up time, and you have a flashlight inside it, you could leave your flashlight on for something like twelve hours. All of that energy would enter the outside world all in a much shorter burst, resulting in much higher power (but same total energy) at a much shorter wavelength. It all hangs together. This result depends on conservation of energy to get right, in fact. Assuming conservation of energy, it works the other way. All of the nice, calm low-frequency energy in the short wavelengths would be built up in the boundary, and come out as high-frequency, high-intensity radiation. Hence the frying. I would like to note in passing that global conservation of energy is actually broken in general relativity, though, so I'm not sure how much of this applies. We've been assuming conservation of energy so far, but it isn't a complete absolute. (Violations of said law do us no good whatsoever, unfortunately. Energy is always conserved locally; it's just that there is no global way for the book-keeping to balance. To get a significant change, you need to be near a black hole or wait the lifetime of the universe.)

The jumping we think is related to windrunning is the kind where you jump several miles in a single bound, not the kind where you jump across a twelve-foot chasm. Both are impressive, but I know which I would pick, given a choice. As for the stormlight, it's a good question. Something has been missing from the plates ever since the radiants discarded them. They currently need stormlight to function, and may have always been that way, but we just don't know. The fact that stormlight is needed to fuel all the magics we've seen suggests that even when the radiants used them, stormlight was probably needed somehow. However, the Radiants could certainly make better use of it than the current users, and we just don't know what is different.

I would have to agree with the Koloss and Kandra part. They were based off of humans, and seem to have some kind of connection with them, but they certainly aren't human any more. That Sazed turned the Koloss into a real separate species, and that the Lord Ruler created mistwraiths, seem to suggest that Shard's can create non-human sentient life. There does seem to be some sort of limit on creation of sentience, though. Preservation had to give of himself to make it. It seems like it may be harder than creating other things. I haven't got the foggiest clue why. Also, we should add the Parshendi into this mix. They seem like humans in some ways, but I would classify them as Humanoid, rather than human. They are certainly sentient, and something out there most likely created them, but who or what is rather a mystery. It may be Odium, but I would certainly not commit myself to that in any circumstances.

Well, it is one of the reasons I lean towards it happening a long time ago, with the Reod just being the world taking its natural evolution after the gods are no longer involved.

I suspect that the Plate has to help them somehow. Szeth probably doesn't know how to use plate correctly in order to make full use of it. It probably does store a supply of stormlight, probably more effectively than a human body or gem, but it will still run out.

All we know is that: Shallan can see them. Elhokar can see them. Some random peasant killed by king Taringar can see them. Jasnah says straight out that these spren are connected to Shallan's soulcasting abilities. Honorspren are connected to Kaladin's abilities. Spren fuel most fabrials and seem to be connected to most known magic so far, although this is tentative. Most other people cannot see these weird spren. With these, speculation that Elhokar is a soulcaster is reasonable but speculative. So we speculate.