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I was going to, but I've been on message boards where people act like the world is ending when you start a duplicate thread, no matter how long it's been since it's been posted in. I'm new around these parts and didn't want to accidentally offend the community.

I know I'm late to this party, but I got an idea of what might have spooked Vin. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but it does at least include the one bit of information we're given about the scene: Hoid is humming. Maybe Vin subconsciously picked that it was perfectly on-tune, which someone idly humming would generally not be, and it felt odd to her. I think this theory is a little weak because surely musicians hum on key all the time. It's more likely that her brass was picking something up, but since it wasn't allomancy, she couldn't feel a pulse. I just can't think of any other reason for the humming being significant, and I can't imagine that the passage was intended to be completely without a clue to its meaning.

Maybe I don't get what you're saying, then. Wouldn't she have had the Cryptics watching her for a long time? Cryptics seem very different from, say, honorspren, and I don't see members going off on their own to bond with humans without oversight from the others. It was my impression that The Way of Kings was written to make us think that Shallan was just then beginning to draw the Cryptics, and that lent impact to the reveal of Shallan's backstory in Words of Radiance.

Cultivation probably created the Listeners, along with all of the distinctive plants and animals that are adapted to Roshar's harsh weather. I think the local humans and the more Earth-like plants and animals from Shinovar are from a different planet. My guess is that it's Braize, and that it was originally Honor's planet and the source of the legends of the Tranquiline Halls. I'd be surprised if the Parshendi spren-bonding magic isn't from Cultivation. Something about the way it changes their form strikes me as belonging with the idea cultivation. The idea is kind of vaguely formed, but it makes enough sense to me. I'll let someone else take the time to reason out concrete explanations for why that is.

Laral's perfectly symmetrical name, as we learn from Saedeas's POV, is something of a minor scandal, presuming too much holiness in its symmetry. In Laral's case, we're probably seeing bumpkin lighteyes giving their daughter an overly grand name, not realizing the faux pas. But that's also significant, in that young Kaladin saw her as just that grand. If he meets up with her again, I think it will be a life lesson sorta moment, where he realizes that he saw her as more than she was.

I don't think Listeners can be Radiants, but I do think Eshonai will get a chance to redeem herself, probably in the 5th book. I could be wrong about Listener Radiants, but only, I'd wager, because things are different this time than in previous Desolations. I don't really want Eshonai flashbacks. I think we know enough about her past. Her sister, on the other hand, is clearly hiding something very interesting. I project that Shallan will be in the second half as a Jasnah-like figure (Jasnah herself likely dead for real), and Lift will probably take a prominent role. I think she'll be refined and eloquent but without haughtiness, informed by a sense of humor derived from her rough roots. Renarin might fill Dalinar's role as the honorable elder statesman. Also, I think the Aimians will stay in the background until the second half, and then we'll get more info about them. I also think it very possible that the 2nd Mistborn trilogy (not the Wax & Wayne inter-trilogy) will in some way influence the second half of the Stormlight Archive. I honestly don't have any idea where it will go. I do think someone will ascend and pick up Honor's Shard, though. Probably either Kaladin or Dalinar. Maybe even Eshonai. Whoever it is, that will be in book 5, I'd say. But who knows?

That's not the first time she attracted the Cryptics. That was the first time she noticed it again after having suppressed it from childhood. She had already bonded her spren; she just didn't remember it.

Should anyone be using a Herald's blade? I think the Stormfather will provide some insight. Something seems wrong about how it drains Stormlight so quickly. Maybe it's just that Honor is dead, but maybe normal humans shouldn't use them.

Shallan bonded her spren before she had her secret. I think they're drawn to potential, not actual lies.

He doesn't need them on Roshar: the Stormlight takes their place. I don't think anyone outside of Nalthis has any. That said, the chronology seems all wrong for him to have been on Roshar for that long. EDIT: I hope it's okay that I didn't use spoiler tags. I figured that what I said was vague enough that if you needed them, you would have no idea what I'm talking about.

Maybe you couldn't create additional Breaths, but I'd wager that you could create super-Breaths, like the Returned's divine Breath. Investiture may mess with things, but if it can be feruchemically stored, then surely there's a way to create more or boost its magnitude. There is some heavy foreshadowing that this will become an important part of the plot (otherwise, why be all mysterious about what it does in the Ars Arcanum?). I doubt Breath storage will ever come up, anyway, though. Investiture may be relatively easy to get at on Nalthis, but it's even easier on Roshar, where you don't have to convince someone to give up what they may believe to be their soul. If any cross-world magic happens with Investiture, I'm pretty sure we'll see it there. To be fair, we already have--just not in a terribly dramatic way.

I don't think there would be a poor conversion ratio. Feruchemy is end neutral. What you put into it is exactly what you can draw out. Allomancy is end positive: you get more energy out than what you put in. Combining the two is how you get people with effectively endless feruchemical reserves of a given property. If Breath just doesn't work well with Scadrial's magic systems for some reason, the allomantic portion of a double-nicrosil Twinborn should still compensate for that. If not, the conversion ratio would have to be so poor that Breath would basically be useless in Scadrian magic systems. If that is the case, nicrosil compounders should still be able to store so much native Investiture that they could Awaken metalminds. Enough Investiture will create an Awakened object like Nightblood; it doesn't need to be Breath. I don't know that it would need a command to function, as that seems to be part of Nalthis' particular magic system.

It might be expensive, but I don't think it would matter for a double-nicrosil Twinborn. I mean, look at the double-gold Twinborn (can't remember his name) from The Alloy of Law. The way he compounded health, even if Investiture is much harder to store, it seems like nicrosil Twinborn would be really dangerous.

I don't know about that. I thought that it was Ruin's power that steals the power, but it remains powered by whatever Shard powered it to begin with.

Devotion and Dominion both are involved in all the magic on Sel, I think, and are both basically "good" shards. I'd say Devotion shapes the magic (all forms require some type of devotion), and Dominion is what binds each magic system to a specific geographical location (its dominion, if you will). So I'd move Dominion to the good column. As for evil, I think Bavadin might belong there, but we don't even know what Shard he holds. It's hard to definitively call some of the Shards good or evil. Cultivation, for example--I'd say that Nightwatcher is using Cultivation's power, and she blesses and curses at the same time (in the same way that gardening involves pruning as much as allowing plants to bloom).

Oh, hey! What if Rayse and Bavadin aren't allies? That the 16 Shardholders may not have known each other that well may suggest a conflict between them, pre-shattering. What if Hoid's grudge isn't because he's mad at a particular faction? What if he's mad about the outcome of the conflict in general, and Bavadin and Rayse were actually the leaders of opposite sides? I know I'm drifting off-topic here, but it is related to where the discussion has been drifting and didn't seem worth starting a whole new thread over.

And here the only theory I'd had about Sebarial to this point was that he should be played by Ray Stevenson in a movie adaptation (not that such an adaptation would be a good idea).

I've been thinking Sazed may pick up more Shards. Not in the near future, mind you, but what else would the endgame of the Cosmere story be, if not a resolution of the shattering of Adonalsium? Reunification isn't the necessary resolution, but it's not unlikely. Sazed currently has a narrow lead in holding all the Shards and becoming a neo-Adonalsium.

Yeah, that's what I think, too. I don't really imagine it as a war, but who knows? I suspect that Rayse and Bavadin were the architects of the shattering, and that's the source of Hoid's grudge.

I especially want to know about Leras. What if Leras was kind of a jerk? Or a stodgy conservative that was a perfect fit for Preservation? It would be especially interesting if Leras' personality contributed to Ati's corruption.

Well, I already assumed as much (with the exception of the geographically bound Elantrian magic). What I'm getting at is, it seems that mentioning that hemalurgy could be useful on Sel--immediately after saying it isn't necessarily evil--was a hint that hemalurgy could be used without all of the nastiness that goes with it on Scadrial.

In the Ars Arcanum in The Allow of Law, the author mentions that hemalurgy, not being intrinsically evil, could have some interesting applications on Sel. My first thought was, Well, sure, you could spike an Elantrian, and it probably wouldn't kill them. It seems like there might be caveat or two, there, but I didn't give it much more thought. I didn't even think about soulforging. Could a spike be forged without having to actually kill someone? Could a soulforger forge their own soul, such that they could temporarily become an Inquisitor (or a less thoroughly spiked-up hemalurgist)? Not knowing much about Dahkor monks, I don't know how to begin to think how hemalurgy would apply to them, but I thought the soulforging idea was interesting.

True or not, wouldn't soulforging bypass that? It's not actually creating the Investiture, it's just rewriting the metalmind's history so that it was naturally filled with Investiture.

I don't know, but I can tell you that a double-nicrosil Twinborn would be very dangerous. They could very quickly turn a metalmind into a Nightblood-like Awakened object.

Huh. Well, I guess the blades being switched remains a mystery, then. Whether or not honorblades can change their shape and size, they definitely don't scream like dead shardblades, so it's not the same sword.