The One Who Connects

He may not intend to, but we know that Investiture will try to attain sentience. We also know that the Dor is Investiture of both shards that are somewhat "melded" together. Had the investiture that composes the Seons clumped together though random chance of being nearby, they could have formed a Stormfather like entity regardless of Odium's cleaning efforts. The lack of specific timing means that it's still possible(however unlikely, there is a chance). Given that the Spiritual is not location dependent, I'm both unsure how Odium missed enough to make the Seons/Skaze, and how splintering actually looks. Does some of it "land" in the Physical perhaps? We should ask Brandon about this sometime.

I'm pretty sure that Returned babies are stillborn and then Return. I don't think the mother actually dies, as Susebron remembers his biological mother, and Bluefingers (and/or the Court) would believe that she bears the next God King if she got pregnant. That doesn't really imply dying in my book.

I like that you've sorta equated Soulcasting with Awakening where there is a base cost, and a penalty/bonus based on something. At least, that's how I'm reading into your theory. I'll sorta argue with this. I feel like there is another possibility to this. We know you can try to persuade it to want to change, which probably makes it take less Stormlight than it changing unwillingly. But what if you forcibly persuade it to want to change? You aren't forcing the change onto it, you are aggressively persuading it to want to change. It'll still cost extra, but not as much as forcing the change yourself. Am I making sense, or have I gone in circles again? If it helps, I think you'd need like Feruchemically boosted force of Identity to do this, but I feel like it could work.

If it uses Breath(Vasher says the he "knows the commands" to Denth later in the book) then it should be a part of Awakening. That's how I think, at least. Endowment's Perpendicularity. We know it exists, we know the Tears of Edgli are somehow related, and the Tears only grow in Hallandren. It wouldn't surprise me if her Perpendicularity is somewhere in the Hallandren area, perhaps an underground aquifer below where the Tears grow. Per the Annotations, Vivienna can stoke the fragment of a Divine Breath she has per her Returned heritage to do much of that form-altering, so I think its safe to say that it's a quality of Divine Breath rather than it's own magic system(unless you count Divine Breath as a magic system, which I could potentially see) Returned see the future and Return with a purpose. Is it possible that they remember something that they saw which piqued the curiosity of one of them? We also don't know what type of people they were before Returning, an inquisitive mind can do tremendous things with the authority of Godhood. If Shashara was an explorer/liked nature, she could have stumbled onto the Perpendicularity. Also, the only WoB I could find is that they are known to Silverlight, it doesn't actually say that they met with people from there. As stated, we have contradictory entries on whether it is, so this isn't as surefire of a safety as you think. Please do, I would love to read it. Given their relation the Endowment and/or her Perpendicularity, it's been speculated that they are like a God Metal of sorts. I don't know if I can say i support it, but it's another explanation. Brandon says that Lightsong can see that because of how much breath he has and because he's a Returned, so I feel like this is also attributable to Divine Breath.

I was interpreting the WoB in that Investiture is Investiture in the Spiritual. It still has the Intent, but most of the other differences are more "flavoring" when it gets drawn into the Physical/Cognitive. Not to say that really contradicts you that much, but discussion is good.

Khriss speculated that Ruin doesn't know how Odium does it because he was doing the smothering method, so I trusted Khriss that Odium was actually doing something where Ruin was not. I guess he could technically have something in mind once Leras dies, but we don't really know what.

I am 97% sure that there was a discussion on the forums a while back where we realized that we had conflicting WoB's about whether or not you could even spike out Breath. If I find that, I will edit it in.

I could argue for Awakening, but you aren't really wrong. The more flashy powers always translate better to the screen, which is why Superman got popular but some of the heroes who have more subtle powers haven't left the comics yet.

Problem with this is that Ambition fled before being killed, whereas you make it sound like the act of fleeing(cowardice, not ambitious) should have killed him then and there. It always felt like Brandon was saying that they physically can't act against their intent after a while, not that it would have an adverse effect on them if they did. That and I don't like the "turned them against themself" because it feels overdone in fantasy(which isn't a valid reason, I know).

That had nothing to do with Ruin after Leras died. Shards without a vessel will try to gain sentience themselves, which could mean that it breaks into smaller pieces while doing so. Anyway, my point was that Ruin didn't have to do anything else, where I've always felt it was implied that Odium was actually doing something to splinter them. Case in point how Khriss described the previous Splinterings as singular quick events, whereas Leras was essentially being suffocated. I agree that Odium has the foresight to maneuver events to go his way, but he has to move fast in order to not start automatically investing on the worlds he is on, which limits how much he can really influence events. Additionally, Honor appears to have outmaneuvered him on Roshar, which makes me wonder how accurate the "intents will drive them to act this way" method of planning is. Odium interpreting that Honor would stand and fight seems reasonable, but the sneaky trap Honor laid could have avoided Odium's expectations.

Glad to be of help. I guess this means I haven't committed any major fouls in my assumptions about powers?

Earth doesn't have the Weeping or essentially worldwide mega-hurricanes every so many weeks. It doesn't equate as well. Water doesn't soak into rock as well as it does into soil either If they are Soulcasting the materials, Fabrial-Tech will probably be more efficient, as you have one universal fuel source rather than multiple ones at different levels. Interchangeability means a lot when developing technology.

That's why I brought up it being invented. You can't Soulcast something that you don't know about. And worldhoppers probably wouldn't bring gunpowder to the Highstorm capitol of the Cosmere because of the water issues. This doesn't suddenly make the outdoors less humid and wet.

Those are the three that were used as an example where he doesn't correct us, but doesn't actually say that. I figured that there was a cap, but given how much nitpicking we do on here, him not saying it holds more weight than it should sometimes. Edit, ok, so I misread one of those WoBs. Reading Comprehension probably wasn't my specialty in High School

You don't actually lash to a target, you lash in the direction of the target, and Szeth seems to use the target as a "that way" so he doesn't have to devote as much mental focus towards where to lash the target. I can lash you to the far wall by specifically lashing you south, but it's less mentally taxing to use the far wall as a "direction" because it is easier to be spatially aware about the room. When a battle is going on, south stops meaning anything, while the back wall is a constant. Not feasible due to Highstorms. That's why gunpowder more than likely won't ever be invented on Roshar.

As your idea specifically calls for Returned, do you think that suppressing your Divine Breath would open you up to sickness and/or aging?

We know that Chromium takes time to drain stuff like Metalminds, so I imagine that Aluminum would do the same. Vin was only given a small amount in TFE, so we can't really say I think that it burns disproportionately fast, allowing you to theoretically get more "power" out of it, in this case, draining everything in your reserves in a flash.

Lightsong brings this up in Warbreaker too(might've been Vasher again) about how the heroic Returned look strong, the beautiful ones are supermodel-esque(i forgot exact words, but the sentiment is still there), the wise ones look old, etc... That Divine Breath they have allows them to do this, but Vasher is one of the few who ever really asked "why?" It's just second-nature to the rest and they'd call it further proof of Godhood, but Vasher has practiced and honed that skill. Warbreaker spoilers

Skaze and Seons go against your statement. It was built by Elantrians. (somehow) Not quite. See here. So Elantrians had to exist to learn the Aonic language, which they had to do in order to know what shape to make the City Which then led to this post. To become Elantrian you have to be taken by Shaod: So far it means that Shaod must have existed before Elantris. But there is this WoB: which makes it all circular reasoning since to have Shaod you need Elantris and you can't build Elantris without Shaod having already existed. And then the thread that Calderis just linked happened.

As a small aside to this discussion, someone pointed out to me that the only people who have referred to Metalminds as "full" are us. We've asked Brandon about how a full Metalmind would react to something a few times and he's answered without correcting us, but he has never referred to one as being full. The person who pointed this out to me even had a different idea of how they get filled than I did, where it becomes harder to fill as time went on, not actually having a "cap", which I thought was fascinating. Don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of them being able to be filled, but it's worth pointing out until we get confirmation that they can be.

Oh yay, another person who agrees with me I always felt that was the primary reason he wrote it down. Not to remember it, but so that both sides of his intellect could interpret it.

Oh yea. Sadeas' Grandbow against the Chasmfiend is a perfect example of why this would work. The arrow didn't kill the Chasmfiend, but it knocked it back somewhat. Here is something else that I can use to make the comparison a bit clearer: (because my first example was bad) Bullet-proof vests turn that penetrating power into a blunt force impact. It is less likely to be lethal, but still hurts like heck. A Thunderclast's body essentially has this quality in spades, making it much more likely to survive impacts of all kinds. Shardblades bypass this restriction altogether, which fits with Szeth;s reasoning for their creation in the first place. However, as stated, those impacts can knock you down and even injure you. A stone body can chip and crack just like Shardplate, eventually breaking chunks off. If you shattered a Thunderclast's kneecaps, I don't see it getting around as easily as before. If a Thunderclast tries smashing Dalinar like the Chasmfiend did in WoK, combining a heavy impact with already cracked/fragmented "bones" can lead to more damage, even turning the act of moving into a risky gamble.

It's an argument of stopping power versus penetrating power. Bullets have gone from round balls to pointed cylinders(some have rounded points, but you get my point ), and that has a lot more penetrating power relative to a non-edged projectile at the same speed. Throwing knife vs throwing rock so to speak. The rock needs to be going a lot faster to pierce the skin, but that slow impact can still KO you. Obviously the knife is more likely to be deadly, but as the size of the ammo increases, that disparity makes a difference. Which seems more likely to slow down a charging Thunderclast: a cannonball, or high caliber bullets?

Relevant WoBs: One, Two, Three, The last one implies that the drastic changes on Sel are a direct result of Odium's handiwork, rather than a natural consequence of splintering. This likely helps clear up why the magic didn't change when Honor was splintered

Higgs Field.