Returned Hoid

[RawToast225 he/him]

You know how at the end of Lightsong's life he got his memories back? What if Hoid was a Returned who has his memories? He could survive off of extra Breath the way Vasher did. His purpose could be to put Adolnasium back together again. That could explain why he seems to be oddly prophetic in his ramblings.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

It's an idea that has been brought forward before but I sincerely doubt it.  We have direct WoB that it is really hard to Return if one isn't a native Nalthian, and that Hoid is from Yolen.

 

The timing is also weird.  Hoid is as old as the Shards, Returned are relatively new by comparison. 

 

We know that Warbreaker takes place between HoA and WoK in the chronology.  Returned started appearing about 600 years before the events of Warbreaker (Manywar was 300 years, First Returned about that time before that if I remember correctly).  Let's be generous and round that off to a thousand years before.  That puts the First Returned at roughly 1500 years (I'm rounding up) before the events of WoK.  The Heralds disappeared 3000 years before that and existed for who knows how long before that.

 

I bring this up because we know that Hoid predates the Heralds.

 

So Hoid is immortal somehow, and we don't know exactly how, but since he had to have had it before the First Returned (in order to live long enough for the First Returned to happen) it can't be because he is a Returned.  (If that makes sense?)

[RawToast225 he/him]

Yeah, okay. But that'd make some sense out of his odd prophetic ramblings.

[king of nowhere]

on the other hand, now I'm wondering, why the returned appeared so late? the shards are several millennia old, but returned didn't exist until maybe one thousand years before present. did endowment arrive to nalthis later, or what?

[Moogle]

on the other hand, now I'm wondering, why the returned appeared so late? the shards are several millennia old, but returned didn't exist until maybe one thousand years before present. did endowment arrive to nalthis later, or what?

 

Each Returned is seemingly created personally by Endowment. I think the easiest explanation is that Endowment just didn't want to create Returned until several hundred years prior.

 

Perhaps the discovery that Breath could be transferred is what triggered this - before people learned to pass their Breath to each other, Returned would die in a week, so Endowment didn't bother. This is somewhat at odds with how the Five Scholars were the ones who did the most research into Awakening, but for Vasher and co. to have started that research, they'd have needed someone to have given them Breath.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Moogle

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Endowment being a recent arrival on Nalthis was a pretty common theory at one point, I think Windy was the first to propose it.

[RawToast225 he/him]

But wouldn't Endowment be the one who created the humans of Nalthis? Shards were taken to different worlds to copy the one they came from, right? I'm inclined to go with Moogle's theory and say that there was no point. Endowment prolly took an oath of non intervention just as the person in the Letter did, so he couldn't teach the people he created how to use their powers.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Not necessarily, some worlds had humans before the Shards.  (I'm pretty sure we have WoB on that, but I don't have time to look for it now).
 
Edit: Found it:
 

Windrunner

Did people exist on Nalthis prior to Endowment's arrival there?

Brandon Sanderson

Some planets had people before the shattering.

 
(source)

Edited November 25, 2014 by WeiryWriter

[RawToast225 he/him]

All right, so now I don't know what to think. 

[hoidhunter he/him]

Life on all planets used to be EarthLink...or all life came from a planet that was EarthLink...the the shattering happened...over time...each planet's ecosystem became bizarre depending upon the shard that lives there...and or...some planets were strange paradoxes

that humanity settled upon.