Timewaster's Guide Archive

In WarBreaker, both Returned and Awakeners are what they are by their own choosing.   It appears anyone can become an Awakener if they have the means of obtaining enough Breaths and then learning how to command.

pardon my possible lack of memory, but i thought the returned didn't do it on their own...

ahh, ok thank you. I'd not seen that comment. I've only seen it said that they survived and were transformed so as to be able to reproduce as a real species.

fair enough i suppose, though it was flat out said that Leras was losing more and more stability/sentience/power(idk what the right word is here) as he kept appearing for Elend and Vin, where at first he was able to effect and even stab elend, and at the end he was capable of no more than forming a figure in the mists, and even that became too much...


when reading HoA, Human always gave me the chills when he spoke about being human and taking their place. I know that was used in the story to get vin to eventually realize that the Koloss are made from humans, but through the whole last book i had hoped there was some further foreshadowing going on there. but it's been said that the Koloss inside the Homeland when Sazed remade the world survived right? so maybe there is still some distant future foreshadowing going on there

Hey all, I'm new here, I've been reading through the last 15 or so pages of this topic(sorry, i don't have time to read all 61 pages unfortunately)...


maybe there's a good explanation for this but I've not noticed it. now I have read and know that atium is of Ruin's body, and lerasium is of Preservation's body.. is it just me, or is there a feeling of inconsistency in that Preservation's body grants allomancy(the use of all 16 allomantic metals) where as ruin's body is one of those metals? it seems almost to imply a sense that Preservation has on an elemental level a mastery/control over Ruin??  was there ever an explanation for why their body's when ingested interact with humans in this manner?

side thought: kandra and koloss clearly have metabolisms, if one of them were to somehow get ahold of a bead of lerasium, would they become allomancers aswell if they ate it?


i saw someone ask in one of the later pages why preservation would want vin to kill the lord ruler, i viewed it as, preservation set this huge scheme into motion thousands(millions?) of years ago when he first created humans. he always intended for humans to be the eventual destroyers of Ruin, and when preservation chose Vin as a new vessel, it was all part of the plan to achieve that goal.

in other posts i saw debate over why the lord ruler would stockpile atium and not just burn it right away... from what i had gathered, the lord ruler, while always hoping he'd be able to regain preservation's power through the well, never really expected to and that everything he did was planning so as humanity post-lord ruler could combat Ruin. and this extends to having the kandra stockpile it. having kept the majority of it together and unburnt, it then won't over hundreds of years regen in the pits, this way if he dies, who ever follows him can find it and deal with it as soon as they find it, as opposed to finding out they have to wait hundreds of years for it to return(which would give ruin ample time to dispose of them, or just wait them out till they die and he can go get his body unopposed).

I think Ruin wanted the aitum to destroy Preservation, what could be more important to a god-being modeled after the concept of Ruin than the destroy another god-like being of essentially equal power. but until he had his body back, he was still stalemated. and the lord ruler having the kandra put the aitum inside the huge metal lined vault and then all killing themselves(losing sentience, same dif. in this situation) would leave the aitum virtually unfindable, so Ruin would have destroyed the planet and his own body with it?


and one other question i saw that i don't think was expressly answered, someone asked about how the lord ruler didn't know that the creatures he made were of ruin... but he did, as some stated, keep them from their full potential knowing that ruin might someday take control of them so he kept them all with fail safes(and in the inquisitors, even a death pin)... but even beyond this, the lord ruler not only knew that they were of ruin, but he used that to his advantage. The person that asked about it seemed to completely forget/disregard the point made in the book that he made the Kandra as his spies, but not just spies against his humanly enemies, but as double agents that Ruin would always think were his to control when he needed. Ruin claimed that he told Rashek about Hemalurgy knowing he'd make weapons for him... and this is just speculation, but when if Preservation also whispered in his ear letting him know how he could make the Kandra more than just future tools for Ruin.