King's Twit

Maybe, but Windrunners almost certainly use windspren to form their armor, and from the novella Edgedancer, it seems strongly hinted that Edgedancers get their armor from Lifespren.

We don’t know that for sure. When Rig asks where the cytonic hyperdrive is so he can try to fix/study it, M-Bot points him to an empty compartment within the ship. Maybe Doomslug’s species was used by humans for FTL travel by putting them in that compartment and exploiting the slugs’ natural abilities. Doomslug could easily have made her way into the compartment between Spin leaving M-Bot and the final dogfight. Or maybe not, maybe the slugs are a substitute for the defect; pilots without the ability could instead make FTL jumps using the slugs. My guess is that Detritus is one of the known planets, maybe the only planet, on which Doomslug’s species exists, which is why Gran-Gran’s mother took the Defiant fleet there. I’ve also been thinking that the slugs are how the Krell find human settlements, because the slugs are attracted to people with the defect. If that’s true, then Doomslug could have been protected from being discovered by M-Bot’s stealth technology.

Yeah, I think this is the answer. Just like how in space you could theoretically accelerate to any speed if given enough time regardless of the thruster used, since their is virtually no air resistance, M-Bot can reach higher speeds with the same booster because he has the ability to ignore/displace air in the atmosphere to a much higher degree than any current DDF ships. All ships in the series are functionally flying through vacuum up until the point that their atomspheric scoops are pushed beyond their limits.

Sazed does say that, but think of all the times in Era 1 that people were wrong about how Allomancy worked, as well as Sazed’s comments about how little the Feruchemists knew about the uses of some of the metals. My point was that they might have been wrong about storing/tapping while sleeping as well, possibly because it is really difficult to do.

I didn’t catch that. Maybe distilling the mists requires some contraption made out of Aluminum that prevents the Investiture from leaving the physical realm. Or maybe there’s some trick you can do to emulate what Vin did and suck up the mists to condense them that way. Or both together in one fabrial/machine

I could see the Nicrosil trick working, but I don’t think you could pull it off with Connection. From The Bands of Mourning (the book not the item) tapping Connection seems to connect you more strongly to where you are currently, not where the metalmind was created. But maybe that has to do with those metalminds being “unkeyed” and lacking an element of Identity.

I didn’t think the Lord Ruler tapped his Atium metalminds to get his youth, I thought it was from burning the metalminds that he became young, storing whatever excess their might be within Atium minds for future burning. Or maybe he only stores when he’s old in his little cabin. if he is burning the metal as opposed to tapping it, then we know that allomancers can do that instinctively while they are asleep or unconscious, we’ve seen that with at least Pewter and I think tin with Spook. Also feruchemists do store wakefulness while sleeping, and from what Sazed says it seems like the amount stored is based on your Intent before you fall asleep. Maybe with enough practice you could do something similar with other metals

I mean, some people are into that sort of thing, but I feel like there’s something extra weird about it being a person who can only be seen by one of the people involved. It’s like your imaginary friend coming along to watch

Do we know that Gavilar formed the Sons of Honor? I’m not up to date on WoB, but I had assumed that he was just a recent prominent leader within the organization

The Heralds are definitely an important motivating factor for the Sons of Honor, but Gavilar, at least, seemed equally interested in the return of the Knights Radiant. He spoke at least once of wishing to return to when men were Radiant, and his dying message to Dalinar was, barring some patented Sanderson twist, about swearing the Oaths of the Knights.

I think what seems most likely is that the two groups share an origin, but there was a sectarian split at some point in the past over what methods should be used in attempting to bring back the desolations. Either the Envisagers split away from the Sons of Honor because they didn’t morally approve of the use of innocent lives the Sons of Honor seem much more willing to employ, or the Sons of Honor split from the Envisagers because they did not think the methods used by the Envisagers were ambitious enough to ever work.

I like this a lot. Another interesting question that I hope gets answered is whether phase changes would be easier or more difficult/impossible in the Cognitive Realm. The mists seem to form within and leave the physical plane very easily, since there aren’t pools of liquid Preservation/Harmony that ever appear to form so far as we know. Maybe they, and by extension other physical manifestations of Investiture, are more “real” in the Cognitive Realm, and thus are more easily manipulated like physical matter. Or maybe Investiture only really works differently in the Spiritual Realm, and in either other realm requires tricky manipulation to mess with its physical state

Except Nightblood doesn’t consume Breaths or Stormlight until he has been drawn. While he’s sheathed, all he does is deepen colors and send out psychic vibes Also, I don’t think Shallan’s alter egos depend completely on whether or not she has produced a physical illusion. Those help, but she seems to slip between Veil, Radiant, and herself pretty easily and seemingly without lightweaving

Y’all could very well be right that Shallan’s views about herself would lead her to drawing Nightblood, but I think it’s worth considering that the reason Shallan thinks she is a monster and hates herself is because of her use of a magic sword to kill people, which could be a block to any temptation to draw another magic sword to kill people. Plus I bet Brightness Radiant wouldn’t draw the sword, so if Shallan could manage to become her when Nightblood was near that would probably protect her too.

That does sound neat, but from his phrasing it sounds like this magic system will not be in the published Cosmere canon. Unless he replaces it with something more like the division surge.

True. The point is probably moot anyway, as the spren seem very unwilling to handhold their bonded humans on how to use their powers. Stormfather has bonded people in the past, but refuses to do anything but hint vaguely at what Dalinar can do, saying he has to discover it for himself. I’m fairly certain Syl and Pattern have said similar things at one point or another.

That’s true, although I thought Syl survived because her bond was only in the earliest stages of forming; do we know whether she had bonded others before that person?

Not all. The Skybreakers did not abandon their Oaths when the other orders did, and (completely without evidence) I would bet that there were some few individuals of other orders who decided to not break their Oaths. Plus there’s the possibility of more spren like Glys who potentially used to bond Parshendi but could now choose to bond humans

Sorry if this theory had been brought up before; I am in the middle of a re-read of Oathbringer, and I am becoming convinced that the Unmade are spren/splinters formed out of the corrupted essences of the Heralds. the Heralds are almost always described as being shells of their original selves, and I think this is a hint that they have been stripped to the metaphorical bone of what/who they are. The core of their being has been corrupted, or “unmade”, which has either intentionally or incidentally created beings that represent the letter of who they were while simultaneously being a complete perversion of their true intent. The reason that there are 9 Unmade, then, would be because Taln has, until now, never given in to the torture, and thus had never been “unmade” from his true self. The reason that Unmade like the Night Mother fear their radiant counterparts could be similar to the dead Shardblades, then, as the true expression of who/what they should be is being expressed again in a way that could re-make them into who/what they were originally meant to be.

Yep! That's the best part about a theory like this. No one can conclusively tell me that I'm wrong for decades

You might be right, I have no idea, but it is possible that a forged Connection would function identically to a natural one; with the exception of Khriss, I doubt anyone in the Cosmere would be more capable of figuring out a way to manage such a feat.

Sorry, forgot to mention that bit. It is strongly hinted in Mistborn: Secret History that a Cognitive Shadow can reform their Connection with the physical realm. Because of this, I think it is at least possible that Hoid could pull off a similar trick, transitioning from spren to a bonafide person

I have this half-baked theory that Hoid is essentially the first (or at least oldest) spren-like entitiy. Where Roshar's many spren are often produced, at least in part, by the way people view the thing/force they represent in the physical world, Hoid reflects what early people thought of some important concept, possibly God, possibly a messianic figure. They believed that he should always be in the right place at the right time and "do no harm", and the Hoid we know was "born". My only real evidence for this that I can think of right now is Hoid's past claim that he began as [paraphrasing] "an idea, words on a page". This could be a fourth-wall break, but I think Sanderson has, in annotations and such, implied or outright said that he is very wary about doing that sort of thing in his novels It might be that Hoid was, in a way, the Adonalsium-spren. The long-ago mortal beings did not understand, maybe could not comprehend, the reality of Adonalsium, so their early beliefs about Him/Her/It led to the formation of a conscious being that became the Hoid we know and love.

I definitely agree that Nightblood is going to be one of the most important endgame players for the Cosmere, and it does make a lot of sense that the prophetic elements of how Returned work would hint that Endowment has excellent futuresight, as it would parallel the two shards that we know have good/great futuresight: Ruin with the power of Atium and Odium with

You may be right, but I think that all of those things are consequences in the other realms from its nature in the one realm where it is special. Aluminum can't be affected by allomancy, but that might be a consequence of how allomancy functions. It seems like allomancy depends really strongly on the cognitive realm, because we've seen examples of the role Intent plays in it (Wax's push bubble) as it does in other magic systems, like Hemalurgy and Awakening. The inability of an allomancer's cognitive aspect to interact with the cognitive aspect of aluminum would then make even the most physical of allomantic powers useless against it.