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So I was thinking about the time Sazed (as Harmony) offered to put Elend and Vin back in their bodies, after fixing up their bodies. If he had done this, I wonder if this would be similar to making a Returned, and if so, what piece of Investiture would be glueing the Cognitive Shadow to the body? Also if so, would all Shards be able to do this, or just some? I theorize that Ruin can, but not Preservation, since Kelsier pins his Shadow to a body by using a Hemalurgic spike, which uses Ruin's power. Theories on this?

Veil sees the colors 'muted'. (RoW 13) Has Shallan, or Lightwavers, some investment from Nalthis?

So, I've noticed a lot of Nghtblood-centric threads on this forum (as there well should be, given that Nightblood is the singular most Invested object in the Cosmere and one of the most unique), and it got me thinking about how it works and what it really is. After leafing through some other theories and looking through the Arcanum, I think I have an idea. So, a quick refresher on how Nightblood was created: So, Nightblood is an Awakened Steel sword with the Command "Destroy Evil" Now, take a look at this WoB: Nightblood, a regular Steel sword that was mined, smelted, alloyed, and forged on Nalthis, and then imbued with Breaths, which is Endowment Investiture, has Ruin's Investiture in it. Why? Well, my theory is as follows: The Breaths in Nightblood were given a Command, which became the sword's Intent: "Destroy Evil". And what happened when this Command was given to Nightblood? Does that ring a bell? The Command breaks down into two basic concepts. "Destroy," and "Evil". I think that, upon receiving the Command, the Breaths were corrupted with Ruin's Intent, that of Destruction, which essentially makes the Breaths part of Ruin's Investiture. All of those Corrupted Breaths, now being forced into a single sword, oversaturated it with Investiture, and so it started leaking it, letting those Corrupted Breaths dissipate. However, here's the problem: Investiture can't be destroyed. The closest it can come to being destroyed is when it's exposed to Anti-Investiture, where the Investiture simply becomes energy, which can presumably be turned back into Investiture. So, how can the Breaths follow their new Intent? The closest it can come to 'destroying' Investiture is Corrupting it and keeping it stuck in the sword, forcing it to stay out of the Investiture systems for as long as possible. Nightblood is, functionally, a prime manifestation of Ruin's Intent, doing its best to destroy Investiture by Corrupting it and trying to keep it compressed within the sword. This is why Nightblood has grown in power over the centuries; it absorbs the Investiture from everything and everyone that it possibly can. The "Destroy" half of the Command essentially dictates the method by which the sword works. All this is separate from the "Evil" part of the Command. That part forms the basis of Nightblood's 'test'. If you want to use the sword for personal gain, extortion, killing your enemies, etc, you will be drawn to kill others with the sword, and then yourself. If not, you feel nauseous. Use the sword and you become Bonded to it, and you become immune to the test. "Evil" determines the test by which the sword decides whether someone is evil or not, and the "Destroy" part ordains how it will kill someone who is decided to be evil. The fact that Nightblood-inflicted wounds cause blackness to form on the corpses through its Aluminum sheath just goes to show how powerful it is. It suggests that Ruin's magic system could have been far, far darker than Hemalurgy. Had Ruin settled on a planet other than Scadrial, alone, it could have resulted in a magic system more like a twisted, nightmarish version of Breaths and Awakening: A world where you can kill other people and suck their Investiture out as they die, with more Investiture gained the more the agony the victim is in as they pass. Collect enough Dying Breaths and you can create creatures or constructs out of Midnight Essence. Infect someone with Dying Breaths and you can possess them through an Entropy Bond, controlling them like a puppeteer, their eyes leaking black smoke all the while. Each use of Dying Breaths expends Breaths in a way that they can never be recovered, always driving people to kill more to gain more power. The more Dying Breaths you have at any given moment, the more sadistic and masochistic you become, reveling in pain. Luckily for the denizens of the Cosmere, Ruin never gets a chance to truly express his Intent, beyond wanting to destroy Scadrial. Nothing we see him do is unique to him; Any other Shard could recreate those effects, Intent notwithstanding. Nightblood is a tiny window into the truly destructive power Ruinous magic systems can have. Thoughts?

Do we know if a second generation singer is born on Nalthis would they be granted a Breath? Would the offspring of Nalthians who previously migrated off world be granted a Breath?

I was wondering for a bit about methods to purify a Shard of intent, most likely by dividing it into small peices with a magic system and putting them back again. Extremely difficult, but theoretically possible. Just in case, spoiler here The important part is that Endowment can take herself apart via Breaths. Not to the point that it would ever naturally happen via people being born, but it can happen, especially if Endowment is signing on. So my idea is this Gather up Endowment’s entire power into Breath and put them in tons of people, who would get 10+ Heightenings. Have them dunk those Breaths into an object with some Command. You might need to rely on the Eighth Heighening to keep the train going, but if that doesn’t work, you just give the Breaths to the new object like you might a person (presumably you can) Now, i have three questions about this setup. 1. Can you turn an Awakened object into a Shard? I assume yes, though it probably has to be sentient like Nightblood is. 2. If yes to 1, can Endowment do this without the middlemen for something like Nightblood? (regular Awakened objects likely won’t do) 3. Would the Command given have any effect on the new Shard’s Intent? I would guess yes and no. I would suggest that the Commands might form a sub-intent or other psychological quirk, but the Intent would still include Endowment. Best case scenario is you get some Endowment-hybrid like Harmony is. However, you might still be able to use other Cosmere magic systems like Forgery to pull the trick instead. If all of this is possible, I nominate a toilet to become Endowment. It’s Command is “Clean things”.

This is a theory I've been kicking around in the back of my head for a little while. It takes the WoBs about Nightblood's creation (Endowment's involvement and Ruin's Investiture) and mixes them with some timeline analysis to get a final result and hopefully partially answers the question of Nightblood's creation. To summarize in a single sentence: Nightblood was made as Ruin died. I think that Endowment waited until she knew that Ruin was about to die, then pushed Shashara to make Nightblood. She took some of Ruin's Investiture, momentarily free of any Vessel's control, and mixed it into the Breaths used to make Nightblood, resulting in the sword we all know and love, rather than a normal Awakened Sword like Vivenna's Blade. How do I know these events line up? Info from Warbreaker, Stormlight, and Mistborn Era 2. We know that Era 2 starts 341 years after the Catacendre. Era 2 takes place between Stormlight 5 and 6. Warbreaker takes place before SA, probably between 10 and 20 Rosharan years (extrapolated from the fact that Vasher trained Adolin) though we don't have an exact date. The Manywar was ~300 years before Warbreaker, though again we don't have an exact date. Adding the extra 10% from Rosharan years and given that we also don't know how long a Nalthian year is, its possible that the Manywar was happening during Mistborn Era 1. Especially if the Nightblood book adds some extra years in there or if the Manywar over 300 years before Warbreaker. What do you all think? Reasonable? Crazy?

In Oathbringer, Hoid/Wit tells the story of Queen Tsa of the Natanatans and Mishim the moon. In it, Mishim tries to get Tsa to get up into the sky by telling her how beautiful the star's speeches are and how lovely the view is, saying that it's a pity Tsa can't see and hear the things. Tsa always responds with "It is a pity, but..." something something something. I don't remember the rest of the story. But I was reading through the epigraphs of the different Stormlight books, and in Oathbringer, one of the epigraphs says "You mustn't worry yourself about Rayse. It is a pity about Aona and Skai, but they were foolish--violating our pact from the very beginning". The Coppermind says this letter is written by Endowment. I'm not Cosmere scholarly enough to know what this implies, but I thought it was interesting. Am I reading way too much into this? What do y'all think?

So I just had a crazy thought that I'll probably turn into a Fanfic one day, could Endowment Smite someone then immediately Return them? And manipulate their Vision so that they'd see only what she wants them to see? I'm just thinking about if Endowment decides to get involved with the greater Cosmere, this could be one way to do it, with an army or a whole organization of Returned loyal to her, doing her bidding across the Cosmere. Of course, this probably won't happen but still, I think it's worth thinking about.

Can Endowment choose not to give a Nalthian a Breath when they are born? Or is that beyond her control? Just curious for thoughts.

What do we know about Endowment's Intent? It is a lot less intuitive than the other Shards. Does it simply want to "enhance'' sapient life and sort of ''endow'' them with greater power, or is it something more?

There are limitations on how much one can edit about themselves via Awakening due to Endowment's Intent. However, you can fuel a magic system with another Shard's power. So, if you were to use Odium's Investiture to fuel Self-Awakening, you likely could change a lot more about yourself since Odium's Intent seems to be the opposite of Endowment's Intent; Odium is about caring about one's own self while Endowment is about giving to others. We even see this with the Fused as they cannot seem to do as much as Radiants when it comes to something that doesn't involve themselves.

Endowment's investiture seems to be the best at sticking with people and objects that we've seen so far. So if someone make a Hemalurgic spike from a Nalthian, would it decay slower than normal?

So, in Endowment's letter to Hoid in Oathbringer she mentions that "If Rayse becomes an issue he will be dealt with." This implies she has something of a plan in case Odium comes to Nalthis to try and Splinter her, and I think I know what the plan is? I think Endowment was going to wield Nightblood and use it to help her Splinter Odium or just kill Rayse. We know from a wob that Endowment was "involved" in the creation of Nightblood somehow, which means that she saw something in what Vasher and Shashara were doing and helped them along. We've seen that Odium was scared of Nightblood and for good reason, given how RoW ended. Now, maybe a Shard can't wield Nightblood for complicated Realmatic reasons or something, but if that's the case then Endowment could've planned on having a champion use it. Thoughts? Disagreements? I wanna hear everyone else's opinions on this because I don't have irl friends who I can talk to about this

BEWARE! THERE WILL BE ALL OF THE LORE SPOILERS FOR DAWNSHARD AHEAD! I only put this post here instead of the dawnshard board because there is a bit of things relating to RoW, and I’m not supposed to put spoilers for RoW in the dawnshard forum. So. Endowment. Let’s break down the magic system. We have heightenings and the whole breath thing. The hightenings come from breaths being grafted onto your spiderweb, as seen in dawnshard. They are very color-oriented. They make colors pop. This is very useful to know given that color is a fundamental part of shards. We have their light or color, and the anti-light, and color. This doesn’t seems to be a specifically Roshar thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can have anti-Ruin light and so on. So perfect color recognition helps in that respect. it also helps with perfect pitch. That allows you to make the anti-light in the first place much more easily. so basically, the heightenings are very useful for creating anti-investiture. Endowment has created a magic system to specifically allow for this type of thing, with the breaths sticking to your spiderweb, and whatnot. now there are commands. These are based off of Intent and Command, which we learn in Dawnshard is the fundamental part of all of magic in the Cosmere. In other worlds, it is more veiled. The command is symbols in Sel and the molecular composition in Scadrial. But in Nalthis, it is just verbal, which is the most fundamental form there is. The third part is investing objects. This makes them harder to tamper with and make much more powerful objects, such as Nightblood. The final part is the divine breaths, which is all about stapling the cognitive shadow to the physical realm. This is seen in many other systems, but this is given so freely by Endowment, and she made it part of the magic system as well. Nalthis’ magic system seems to be made off of the fundamental building blocks of the cosmere. It is built to allow gateways to all parts of the Cosmere’s magic, within easy and straightforward access. This is quite surprising and quite dangerous. What is Endowment doing? She has plots that involves all of the raw power of the Cosmere within easy access. Why is she doing this? And what does it mean? This is a thing that seems very deliberate on Endowment’s part. I’m quite worried how dangerous she might become later on.

So who is/was Austre? He is associated with the first Returned, Vo. He is a 'he', while Edgli, Endowment's Vessel is a 'she' Was he a different Returned who was conflated with Vo? We see Vasher's diverse set of names and how history can forget things. Is he a Splinter of Endowment? An Avatar of Edgli? This WoB confirms it's not just Endowment in a fake moustache: Other people have speculated on Austre being an Avatar of Autonomy based on the religion's values and Autonomy's interference comment by Khriss Does Austre actually have anything to do with Returning? I don't think so based off of Lightsong's memories. Was Vo's Returning different somehow with the Five Visions or is that history tying itself in knots over time?

So where do the the Returned return? Lightsong died in the sea, I assume he did not Return deep in the sea? Did Llarimar somehow manage to get his body out? I doubt that... Did he just appear on the ship? In some random location? Somewhere that was important to him? Do the Returned return to their own body or like the Heralds (& possibly Kelsier) do they get a new body? Their Divine Breath is a Splinter, so a new body is possible...

So I just finished listening to the Nightblood 2 Shardcast (I know, it’s an older one) and several things sort of coalesced in my head that sort of make sense. Interestingly, they started down a similar thought path regarding Endowment at the very end of the episode. I had never heard that Nightblood was modeled after shardblades, btw. Interesting. Anyway, realizing that Endowment was most likely afraid of Odium coming to Nalthis to destroy her, it totally makes sense that she might intervene in Nightblood’s creation. Also, knowing now that the five scholars had been to Roshar, it seems vary possible that they knew of Odium as well. I find myself wondering if Nightblood was an attempt to create something that would destroy Odium that went very wrong in the process. First, Endowment intervened and gave it a supercharge of investiture. This gave Nightblood way more power than anticipated. The second happened in the Command. If part of the purpose of creating Nightblood was to kill Odium, then a command was needed that would work across realms to destroy, but would only destroy the intended target(and other bad dudes). That’s why it took so long to come up with the perfect command. Understanding the importance of Intent in the command, any mental imagery had to be avoided that would corrupt the Command, such as thinking about Odium. Trying not to think about something after you’ve told not is nearly impossible, however. I wonder if somehow, subconscious thoughts and conclusions about Odium entered in to Shashara’s visualizations and that magically allowed a bunch of his random investiture (Some of Adonalsium’s investiture that was sitting around on Nalthis at the time of the shattering and was was assigned to Odium), to also get sucked into Nightblood, corrupting Endowment’s investiture and supercharging it even more. This is sounding way too complicated now (not sure I like it) Oh well. Whatever happened, Shashara thought it was great. Vasher not so much. They fought, Vasher killed Shashara. Vasher took Nightblood into protective custody. Years pass, Vasher meets Vivenna, they go on an off world Yesteel chase where something really bad happens on the planet. Vivenna decides to return home and stay out of other world business. Vasher, saying he is tired of living off of other people’s breath, says goodbye to Vivenna and heads for Roshar taking Nightblood with him. He assures Vivenna that he is just going to live a simple anonymous life and keep the world safe from Nightblood. I’m sure he is also thinking that it can’t hurt to have the weapon designed to destroy Odium in the same system that he (Odium) resides. Sometime after returning to Nalthis, Vivenna happens across a member of the 17th Shard, finds herself in agreement with their policy of nonintervention, joins up and accepts an assignment to go fetch Vasher and Nightblood back to Nalthis. This is just an example of the crazy places my mind goes when listening to Shardcast episodes. Now you know what kind of nonsense goes on in the frightening recesses of my mind. You may now all commence tearing apart and completely disproving my meanderings. PS. Apologies for any misspellings etc. Autocorrect and my iPad both hate me.

So, after finally getting someone to ask this for me, we got this WoB. Having gotten this answer, it made me wonder, what caused Ruin's Investiture to seep in? If that's how the WoB is meant to be understood. I decided that it was because Endowment's Investiture can't actually do anything on it's own. It only gives things the capacity to do things. Awakening gives an object the ability to do more than it normally can. Holding Breath makes an individual have greater capabilities than they had before. Endowment can only grant capacity, it is up to the object to execute. Ex. It can't materially affect the physical world or be used to alter physical states. But it gives an object or person the capacity to do things they otherwise would not be able to do. This also would explain why only Endowment's Investiture was insufficient to fulfill the "Destroy Evil" command. Because Investiture is universal, something else rushed in to fill that gap, Ruin's Investiture. Thoughts?

We know that the shards that even those who are mostly self-involved(Harmony) have some knowledge or aren't completely blind to what's happening around other systems especially Roshar(it seems that everybody knows the chaotic situation there). We know that Autonomy has seemingly been spreading her influence everywhere, Cultivation/Odium stuck with each other, Harmony and Endowment doing their own thing on their own world while the others being dead or we don't even know the other shards or where they are ATM. The other shards also have their own side business aside the worlds they occupy, all but endowment. Any WoB or any information regarding what she's been upto apart from managing her own world ? She has a very interesting shard and she actually seemed generally nice for a shard but we have so little information of her or even her shard. Conceptually her shard should as interesting as Autonomy and just as flexible but we have nothing about her.

Hey everybody, I know this stuff is probably easy to find and I am not trying to use you guys as my personal Wiki, but I was wondering if anybody can help me out. It has been a while since I read Warbreaker and I am unable to search for stuff on line. So any help is appreciated. So endowment lets individuals return, generally to fulfill specific purposes, correct? The returned do not know what their "mission" is until its pretty much time to complete it, correct? Vasher has not fulfilled his yet? Working on a theory and I was trying to think of the answers but couldnt recall any hard info about this stuff.

If Szeth son son Vallano went to Nalthis, how similar to the returned would he be? Would he have to consume a soul every week?

Do other types of investiture suffer/benefit (depending on how you want to view it) from overuse of their powers similar to misting savants?

We know that a divine breath is a splinter of Endowment, which is given to every Returned. We know that every Nalthian has a breath, which is the power of life - " a certain BioChromatic Investiture" according to the Coppermind. Nightblood required 1,000 breaths to create. We know that splinters can, over time, develop sentience on their own. Can investiture (not necessarily a splinter) develop sentience on its own? In other words, could Nightblood be considered a splinter of Endowment, since it was created with a significant amount of Endowment's investiture?

Something I saw on the Cosmere Q&A sparked this idea. The general process of Returning works thusly: A person dies, their soul is shown a picture of some bad future (or at least some facet of it that they care about), and then the soul is given the choice of whether or not to Return. If they accept, they gain a Divine Breath and Return as a 5th-Heightening amnesiac that needs an additional Breath each week. However, there's something odd going on. Why do the memories not return when the person does? If it were the actual soul (or rather, the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects of that person) returning, the memories they had would come with them (as part of the Cognitive aspect of that soul). This is very much not the case (as it would severely simplify and obviate the major mystery of Lightsong's character, among others), but what is interesting is that muscle memory is maintained (juggling vs. pottery, for example), attitudes are maintained (Lightsong instinctually rebelling against the gods' lifestyle, instinctually calling Llarimar "Scoot"), but not memory. My conclusion is that the Returned is not the original soul but is instead a Divine Breath in the shape of the original soul. The spiritual Connections remain in place, and the Physical body of course has not moved during the process of Returning, but the Cognitive is absent entirely. The process of Returning, therefore, is a "half as long, twice as bright" version of making a Lifeless, that only Endowment can do because She can see into all 3 realms. What happens to the soul? I suspect that this shaping forges a Connection between the soul and the body, and therefore the soul sticks around as a Cognitive Shadow, watching their body work toward the goal set by Endowment's Awakening. (Maybe that's why the Returned needs so much Breath - it's all going to sustain the original soul in the Cognitive Realm)

SPOILER ALL COSMERE related possibly Shards are considered as "gods" and most powerful thing in the cosmere as of the moment but out of all the shards that have been revealed through the cosmere novels Mistborn, Stormlight Archives, Elantris, Warbreaker, White Sand, even WoB's and whatever form of story that i missed that Mr. Sanderson produced that is cosmere related. So out of the limited information and exposure we had with the shards who did you find most interesting whether it'd be due to the intent, the vessel behind it, the shardworld he/she/it resides or interaction with the other shards, even the ire from Hoid counts too and/or just the things that shard has done so far ? Also some questions i'm curious about Do you guys think Odium has a big opposite shard not Honor and doesn't have to be like perfect opposite kinda like preservation/ruin ? Apparently Bavadin(Autonomy) is Mr. Sanderson's favorite shard, thoughts on the dude especially for White Sand readers ? Do you agree that he's a menace like Hoid suggests in his letter grouping him up with Rayse ? Would you count him as ally or enemy in general ? It seems that Tanavast mentioned in one of Dalinar's dreams that Odium tasted defeat too many times and would not wanna taste defeat again. Do you think that means that Rayse was actually losing between him and Tanavast before Honor got rekt ? Or it was just a stalemate. How many other malevolent shards are there apart from Ruin and Odium ? Possibly Chaos maybe Though we have limited knowledge about shards my favorite is probably Ruin, he seems earnestly thinking he could help people by ending them lol . I would've said Harmony but if only the dude acts more like Ruin than preservation, he feels like a caretaker more than somebody who is actually half Ruin tbh, i wish he was more malevolent since he still represents enthrophy/change/death/destruction. Well that's all . Thoughts?