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A Sliver is created when a person wields enough Investiture. It doesn't have to be full Shard, just a lot, such as from the Well of Ascension. I suspect that if an organization (or someone like Rashek with superpowered Compounding) were to find a way to fill a huge Metalmind (100-1,000 tons amount of metal) to the brim with Investiture, someone could tap it and expand themselves into Sliverhood. This would be hard to do (and probably not worth doing for most cases), but I think it's hypothetically possible with enough Compounding (or enough Identity-Blanked Feruchemists working in unison over a long enough period of time) and enough metal. What do you guys think?

I remember that once you give up the power of a Shard, you become a Sliver and your soul is expanded. So would this mean you could handle more Bonds, or maybe attract more Spren to you? I read a few WOB's and one of them said that it was technically possible for multiple Spren to Bond with a human, though they wouldn't like it. Perhaps because the average soul can only properly support a single Nahel Bond and it would be difficult for two Bonds to advance to any meaningful degree, thus leaving the Spren unable to gain more sapience. And perhaps a Sliver could properly support more Bonds, thus preventing their spiritweb from getting clogged up by the number of deep spiritual Bonds. And yeah I know that it's also because of potentially conflicting Oaths but not all of them are going to conflict, I'd think that one could easily uphold the Oaths of both a Windrunner and a Willshaper with minimal difficulty.

What happens if someone sits around in a Perpendicularity for an extended period of time? Would it begin to expand and permeate them as it did Kelsier when he sat in the Well of Ascension? What if it is a Perpendicularity that holds investiture that the person isn’t Connected to? For example, if a Scadrian traveled over to Patji and soaked in that Perpendicularity, would it have a different effect for them than soaking in Harmony’s Perpendicularity? Would you eventually become Connected to the investiture by virtue of you Spiritweb being familiar with it?

All people have a Cognitive Aspect which is formed of Investiture (as technically everything is). Upon death this Aspect begins to dissipate, just as the body begins to decay. An infusion of Investiture to the body will heal it and an infusion of Investiture to the Cognitive Aspect will maintain it. Living people are effected by other people’s perceptions. The effect is simply minimized for unknown reasons. In contrast, the Cognitive Aspects of objects and non-sapient creatures do not have whatever safe guard minimizes this effect on living sapients and are strongly effected by perceptions. Shadows seem to fall into an in between area. They’re less effected by perception than non-sapients, but they’re more effected than living sapients. Whatever safeguards living sapients appears to be damaged, though a strong enough infusion of Investiture or exposure to the Spiritual Realm may help. What’s even more interesting is that there’s some indication that the whole problem is tied to memory and the limits of human capacity for it. It’s possible memory is the safeguard. There are some indications that an ordinary living sapient who lives too long will begin to have the same issue as a Shadow. And others that indicate natural immortals may avoid the issue. It’s also worth noting that Vessels seem to have a similar problem and some take advantage by trying to shape perceptions of themselves in particular manners. (Note that most Vessels are alive.) To me this indicates that the problem is less of perception and more a matter of Spiritual Connection. If the body is the physical function, and the Cognitive is the consciousness, it seems like the Spiritual is the totality of our lives experiences: the web of memories and connections we form throughout our lives that define who we are. It seems to me that as the Cognitive Aspect reaches its natural threshold for recall, it begins to lose its ability to access portions of that web, almost like a magical version of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s as though the Connection between Consciousness and Experience begins to fray, leading to the weakening of the Self. I’m going to call this the recall threshold: the point past where a Cognitive Aspect can access the sum totality of its Spirit Web. If something happens to expand the Cognitive Aspect’s ability to ‘recall’ or if something stimulates this, the Cognitive Aspect will ‘remember’ itself. In the absence of a whole link to the Spiritweb, I think perception takes its place. That’s a type of Connection too, but it’s one formed by the collective experiences and memories of other people. If you don’t know who you are, then you have to take it from other people. Imagine someone with amnesia, being told ‘You are X. You work as a Y. This is your family.’ etc. and determining who you are based on that. Except on a much broader and unconscious scale. In this hypothesis, as the ties from the Cognitive Aspect to the Spiritweb fray, the collective Consciousness, the perceptions and Connections of and with other people, act to shore up the fraying supports. Over time, as the ties between Realms continue to weaken, this collective consciousness becomes a pseudo-Spiritweb shaping the way the Cognitive Aspect defines itself while still allowing that self to maintain some definition. This has little to do with whether it’s the original person, or soul, or not. It’s not a problem of perception - indeed, perception would actually be acting as a symptom reducer - but a problem of Connection between Realms. The problem that Shadows face would simply be a result of those ties being damaged by having died. Just as a person loses their Connection to the Physical, they also lose their Connection to the Spiritual upon death. When a Shadow has their Cognitive Aspect stabilized, it stops the severing process and may even reverse some of the damage. But it seems reasonable that these Connections between Realms are no longer whole. The Connection to the Physical, for example, needs to be intentionally restored. If the tie to the Spiritual remains damaged, then it would be more vulnerable to breakdown than that of a living sapient. So while both living and Shadow will experience the recall threshold problem, a Shadow will experience the effects much sooner. This effect would apply to all Shadows over time. In fact, it would apply to all non-natural immortals. Even natural immortals could, in theory, eventually hit their (presumably much higher) recall threshold and experience the effects of the loss of Spiritual Connection. In conclusion, whether or not a Shadow is the original person’s consciousness/soul is immaterial and remains a philosophical problem (as per WoB). The problem is one of Realmatic Connection that would ultimately effect all sapients, with the closest Physical Realm equivalent being something like Alzheimer’s or other disorders of memory. The fact that increasing the recall threshold or decreasing the distance between Realms can heal this damage would be indicative of this problem not being tied to original personhood of a Shadow, but to a greater Realmatic effect to which Shadows are simply more susceptible due to their weakened ties to the Realms.

Most cognitive shadows require some intake of investiture to sustain themselves, while others don’t. In the RoW headings written by the hearalds, it says that the heralds needed the bond of the Oathpact to stay alive, and so when Jezrien was captured with a raysium dagger, it also cut him off from the Oathpact, eventually causing him to die. Would Kelsier, being a Sliver, die if he were to be captured in a gemstone, or would he remain “alive”?

Adolnasium needs to be destroyed as well as its aspects. In The Lord of the Rings, the way everything was resolved was magic being taken out of the world. In this, magic, shards, slivers, and all, will have to be abolished throughout the universe for true peace to be acquired. The shattering of the Almighty was a mistake. The only way to fix a mistake like this is to get rid of it and maybe start over to do it better. This is just a theory, but I'm fairly certain that it will have to happen for a true resolution. Thoughts?