Shardcast: The Returned

First, before I forget, on the WTCC, while he has several children, I HIGHLY doubt that Straff has ever had a "romantic" relationship.

With that out of the way, I wanted to say that when you were discussing the annotation I realized that whatever allows Returned to have kids, it must have been happening with Siri and Susebron (otherwise, what would be the point of it all), meaning that it has to be something that works evenif the participants don't know about it. Maybe it is just a specific type of food or something. If it were some sort of fish or other sea-based ingredient, it would make sense that Vo could have had it by accident on a boat.

EDIT: Word of @Argent or WoA (pronounced "Whoa!") 

Having the Returned die without being given Breath each week encourages people to give more which serves her purposes. 

Maybe after people kept not figuring it out in time and most returned died in a week she gave more of hint and that led to the religion. 

Either that or something changed in the Cosmere that made her want to increase the odds of her Returned living long enough to fulfill what they are being sent back for.

Watching this, I feel like we can maybe break down most cognitive shadows with bodies into two elements:

Power/Fuel. Some investiture which keeps the CS around and makes up their spirit web. Most seem to need a constant supply of it. For Returned, they need breaths. Kelsier, the Heralds, and the Fused are all fueled directly by a Shard.

"Glue". This glues a CS to its body. In Kelsier's case, this seems to be a Hemalurgic Spike. For returned, this is their divine breath. In many cases (returned, heralds, fused) this seems to do double duty and also serves as a fuel.

This is just the way I think about cognitive shadows, but, if it has some truth to it, why do Returned die if they lose their body? They should still be fueled by the breaths they have. Mabey returned who have been killed actually hang around in the cognitive realm for a whole week (or however long it takes for the breath they have accumulated to wear out) before transitioning to the beyond?

Also, on returned children, I like the theory that the child is always stillborn for whatever reason, but is then artificially returned somehow. Or, maybe Endowment has some motivation for always returning the God King's children.