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If someone pounded some spikes into Lift and gave her Feruchemical and Allomantic Bendalloy so she could compound nutrition/calories, would she have unlimited awesomeness?

As the title indicates, this is a thread for people to just post their first thoughts and impressions on worldbuilding. We have theory threads popping up like mushrooms, but I think there's value in everyone just throwing down everything that struck them and then we can arrive at a faster gestalt as a community, rather than accidentally fixating on one or two details and missing the forest for that one particularly interesting tree. So, mine: Lift: (copied from a PM right after I first read it, for authenticity's sake) That is a This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules-ton of new info. Like, some fundamentally enlightening info. And Cultivation is the same person as Nightwatcher, and we got 2 new surges and an oath, and everyone has a Shardblade, and rival Surgebinders need those creature things to drain stormlight, meaning you can't steal it conventionally, and ... *brain shuts down* Shadows of Self: Nothing Realmatically new that I can see, unless Tan used Southern tech to come back to life or something. Some new worldbuilding info on Scadrial's development and society, as well as Elendel. Legion: Looks interesting enough, but non-Cosmere, so let's table it for the moment. Sixth of Dusk: Hmm. Very very interesting. Temporal abilities are usually "related directly to the pure essence of a Shard or to a Splinter," but I'll apply an Electrum veto on this one. In fact, new theory (yes, I'm breaking the implicit rules that I wrote): Temporal abilities are uniquely Shardic except for your own future (/past?), as seen with first Allomantic electrum and now this bird. Besides that, I'm mostly just waiting on more of the story. The creatures seem to detect Cognitive activity, though I suppose it could also be Spiritual, with a damper!Bird acting exactly like a Smoker... --- And now it's your turn! No theories, if you can help yourself. Just throw everything that you noticed out there for public consumption.

So, in the philosophy of identity, there's a bit of a discussion as the extent to which "things" are part of us. How much is your homeland or house or favorite book a part of who "you" are? To what extent can you claim them as an extension of your self, a part of your identity as a person? Now, as I've said before, philosophy actually matters in the cosmere! There's actually an interesting discussion to be had as to whether objects gain some "sympathy" with their owners (oh, that is interesting...), but that's not what I'm looking at today. No, instead, I will look at clothes!!! You see, it turns out that (I think) your clothing is a proper part of your identity in the cosmere, at least to some extent. At least some magics operate on a level at which affecting "you" means also affecting your clothing. Examples: 1. Jasnah's combat-soulcasting. When she soulcasts the thugs, she wipes them out completely, clothes and all. She doesn't turn a man into a statue with clothes on it, but everything from hair to boots into crystal. This implies a deeper level of connection between clothes and identity because we already have fair reason to believe that soulcasting works on the level of "objects" by default: A goblet, an entire stone, etc. Shallan's blood when she was poisoned is an oddity here, but we might be able to explain that away as either Blood being an essence or Jasnah making a special effort there. 2. Lift's "Slick". This one is the one that caught my attention, actually. Lift, it seems, includes her clothing in the effect whenever she goes "Slick". I scoured the interlude to make sure that it wasn't just her bare skin, but at one point she slides full-body across the floor, so that suggests (unless she was secretly nude the whole scene) that her clothing is included. And she's not exactly a master of skill and subtlety, so I doubt that she included her clothes "on purpose" by some extra effort. In fact, I'd wager (just because) that Edgedancers can only actually "Slick" themselves, not necessarily their surroundings, which would lock in clothing as part of the self. --- This isn't 100% at the moment. For all I know, Lift makes a special effort to include her clothing and/or soulcasting is entirely based on the soulcaster's perceptions of what an "object" is. I'm inclined to believe, though, that instead people's Cognitive aspects possess a (very very weak) perception of their clothes as a part of them, and that at least some magic systems are sensitive to this perception. This might mean that clothing is included in Basic Lashings, for instance. Thoughts?

One of most interesting parts of the Lift interlude for me was what Darkness had to say for himself when speaking to Lift. What strikes me about this is that if Darkness is who we think he is, aka the herald Nalan, then I think his response here may give us a clue as to the cause of the recreance. From the prologue to the SA in the WoK we hear from Jez that his expectation is that the people will be fine because they have the Radiants now... but what if some time post 'last desolation' and prior to the recreance the heralds realised that another Desolation would be coming regardless of their attempt to have their cake and eat it? What if they started to believe it was the presence of the Nahel Bond connecting the Cognative, spiritual and physical realms together within the Radiants that was drawing a Desolation or Odiums attention Roshar's way? The quote above makes me suspect that it was the heralds or mabye just Nalan himself that asked/required the Radiants to disband and discard their bonds. What do you think???

What is the Ring? it sounds like they assign spren to surgebinders to form Nahel bonds to make them into KR. Does the Ring only assign Cultivationspren or Edgedancerspren?

Hey guys, I've been skimming over the associations between the 4 developing Knights Radiant we've seen (including the one from the WoR interlude) and the Heralds. It makes sense that they seem to have matching character attributes (e.g. Kaladin clearly has Jezrien's "Divine Attributes" of protecting/leading), but I noticed that all 4 Knights also match the genders of their respective Heralds. I want to throw a few ideas around for discussion: Brandon's mentioned that we've met multiple Heralds already, beyond the opening chapter in WoK. Is it possible that there's some reincarnation or amnesia element that could make one of our main characters an actual Herald without us knowing? If this gender aspect is, in fact, not just by chance, it opens the way for new guesses on people who could develop into Radiants. Note that there can only be one new female character that becomes a Knight (since we've got 3 female Radiants already out of the 4 female Heralds), and that person would have to match the attributes of Chach (bravery/obedience) I haven't seen anything that completely nails down the mechanics of how spren are involved in the evolution of a Radiant, but does it matter that Syl is female while Kaladin is male?

So, how about them larkins? Is the stormlight sucking ability they have reversable? Is there some other way to effect the same kind of stormlight sucking? What will Rysn do with her larkin? What implications do the larkins'presence on the KR table have now that we know they suck stormlight?

Okay, now that you've seen the Theoretical version of this post, you may now gush about less Realmatic happy things. Like how the line "Lift pressed her hand against the seeds, then summoned her awesomeness" was so hilarious and unexpected. The line about Lift's ultimate goal in life being to eat other people's dinners was a close second. EDIT: To be clear, this is open for all works in the Steelhunt, not just Lift's interlude.