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So, the theoretical base is sound but your test-case is flawed. In general, if you can absorb enough Investiture (of any kind) you can "Ascend" which is a lesser state on the road to becoming a full Shard's Vessel. But those are not the same things: Rashek Ascended while both Leras and Ruin were still alive, so he didnt take over the shard but he did absorbed enough Investiture via the Well to "stretch his balloon". This worked because of how unusually Invested those two shards are in the world they created from scratch, where there existed by necessity a huge chunk of their Investiture tied up in the Physical Realm where a mortal could lay hands on it. It's also how Elend manged to ascend by flairing tons of Atium, without actually challenging Ati for control of the whole Shard. You might be able to accomplish something similar if you somehow ate the Stormfather directly, or maybe accumulated literally every single Breath on Nalthis for a few generations, but I cant really say where the tipping point would be. If you manage to claim enough Investiture you should be able to Ascend, so technically yes. But Roshar has a boatload more ambient Investiture than Scadrial, and even if you gathered every shardblade in existence you likely wouldnt get to a majority of the power, but you could likely get enough to personally Ascend and become a Sliver. Technically yes again, but in Nalthis' case youre basically just talking about trying to reach the...I'll call it the 20th Heightening. And it still wouldnt actually challenge Endowment's control of the entire 1/16th of Infinity, unless Endowment's nature imposes additional restrictions. Nope, it's really just about finding a way to absorb (not just channel, which makes savants) a boatload of Investiture. This has mostly been done by finding a stash of Investiture that exists in the Physical Realm, but a strong enough Connection to a Shard might also let you get your proverbial hands on enough of the Investiture, for example. You can also apparently create objects to help claim that kind of power, based on the Ire's plan in Mistborn Secret History, though that was really just a means of creating said Connection.

I always really liked the Tin-Twinborn combo, because the ability to selectively fill each sense with F-Tin would go a really long way to mitigating the downsides of A-Tin. After that, I'd be hard pressed to choose, but top contenders would be F-Copper or F-Zinc for the mental capacity, either memory based (which I think would go a long way for me) or the "intuitive leaps" of Zinc. Actually, Zinc-Compounder could be really great too, it would be something like that "Limitless" movie/tv show. The only other ones that really appeal to me are the Spiritual Feruchemical ones. Connection would be fantastic as I love the idea of speaking the local language wherever I go, but Fortune and Investiture could be worth it even more depending on how their functionality actually plays out. I used to like that combo too, but it turns out I was misunderstanding the use of the term "Determination". It's "Motivation" rather than "Resolve", tapping it puts you into a manic state. So it doesnt make you more dedicated to your thoughts or actions, it just give you the ability to freely control a bi-polar swing. Not to say you couldnt leverage it for productivity (especially with compounding) but it would take a lot more active management than just being in a constant state of supreme Dedication

Interesting possibility. WOB says that spaces within the cognitive realm dont form at all until people start thinking about them (ie moons etc) but dont really get going until people actually get there. But that means something definitely starts happening as soon as a reasonably large population starts to think about it, and if they all thought the travel time should take a long time then I could easily see the terrain stalling them out there longer, even if it doesnt create the same amount of topography a populated area would. I also wonder how easy it would be to create area's in the Cognitive Realm that dont have any corresponding piece of the Physical, the same way Spren can exist from Ideas without a native Physical form.

@Pathfinder beat me by seconds

I cannot understand the leap of logic that got you to that interpretation. How could she have convinced herself that no radiant including herself can travel Physcially to Shadesmar when this was after she was stuck there for an extended period of time, during which she had to scrounge packs and cloths and whatnot for basic survival? I think you are reaching pretty far around the obvious explanation: Jasnah began training Shallan under the impression/assumption that Shallan was also an Elsecaller, which is the cover story Shallan was telling everyone anyway, once she was outed as Radiant. Once she figures out the difference, she realized she could not train Shallan on the assumption that they had identical capabilities. But there is really no reason for her to keep getting stuck in that sort of Absolutist logical fallacy.

Well... Sort of, but he very specifically said he hadnt actually locked it down yet, and might have to default to Shadesmar travel of he cant get it to work. That to me implies that it's realmic foundation is still a bit shaky. That being said I do agree with your core point. We're aware of instantaneous travel capabilities in AonDor, and Im assuming there are at least dedicated Breath commands needed to open the Perpendicularity on Nalthis.

His wife also starts to say something about his new position but he hushes her, which I think would have been about him being King

If nobody else was feeding it, technically yes, but I think the rest of the suit would basically need to have been left with empty gems for you to stand a chance of winning the contest. Thought I could see a really complicated heist scheme involving the Weeping and a Perfect Gem, or maybe Cultivation's perpendicularity.

You can, it was mentioned specifically a few times. It's a tactical issue, you can grow the whole set from a single piece if you feed it enough Stormlight, so leaving a chunk behind can cost you your plate; you have to feed it more than the other guy, and have more of the total. Otherwise the redundant pieces you have will just fall to dust.

I agree that any bond granted should still be up to the discretion of the spren involved, so even if they havent spoken the Words yet they could still see some Bond benefits and power loss if the Spren thinks they are acting improperly, much like we saw in Kaladin's early days.

Ah, ok. Now it sounds like Hoids story (including the shattering) will be the primary focus of the trilogy rather than a tie-in.

I very much like this theory and agree with your assessment of what's happened so far. As an alternative possibility to Dalinar's Spiritual Connection powers being the trick, I suspect a Radiant with Regrowth might be able to heal the Spren if used on their native Cognitive Realm form. This would accomplish a very similar thing in flooding their essence with Investiture to restore what was ripped away (the way hemalurgy damage can technically be healed). I think a lot of the same continuity logic would apply (none of the right kind of Radiant to try before) but it would give Renarin and Adolin a really cool scene/quest together, and frankly Id rather given Renarin that Win. Though I do also like @Traveller's suggestion of it taking one of the other Bondsmiths, just because Id find it cool if the three God-Spren granted slightly different abilities.

Oh thats right, he returned it since Dalinar traded it for all the Bridgeman's lives that time. Thanks. The plate seems like something that would be more palatable to Rock than the blade. I think we can reasonably assume that it's in Bridge 4's keeping at the moment, even if Rock is ambivalent.

Im not convinced he doesnt already have that title. He's hiding something... BTW, Amaram had two blade and a set of Plate when Rock killed him, does that mean he gets them all?

I thought those were the preliminary Dragonsteel titles?

I agree, but I wouldnt be surprised if Rock & Co dont do this on a regular basis. Being a part of Bridge Four has been great for him.

Huh, interesting point on Gems. We actually know that the gems come through when you travel Physcially, and the stormlight inside it for that matter. They had their store fo gems, and even teh spren where using Gems to contain the stormlight. In fact, they made use of the properties of Perfect Gems for long-term storage. Given those thing's thematic proximity to containing Spren, its possible that bringing the spren to shadesmar while imprisoned physically in the gem would not free the spren. Well, if the transit lines where used by actual Masses then they could provide those maintaining Thoughts. They might not fill in a whole lot of terrain in between but I think they could conceptualize a Road or Tunnel or Bridge simply enough. Whether it takes a lot of the planets PR population to know about the trade route is hard to say right since we've barely seen how any of them work and Roshar is a fringe example. I'd like to get a closer look at Nalthis's Customs operation. I dont see the danger. They are already making the trip through whatever temporal effects are in play, so traversing it in a vehicle shouldnt change the function; I cant say there arent dangers and I have no idea how time went for Vivenna on her trip (from an objective reference or her own subjective one) but the existence of established trade routes indicates that worldhoppers have already managed to overcome them. Or wait, are you suggesting that there is some speed-dependent relativity going the way a Physical Realm FTL would? That would be...interesting and possible but I have no data on the temporal terrain of the CR, or its potential relativistic effects. Good Point, that's entirely fair. If it was informed consent in exchange for a form of Invested Immortality, I wouldnt have much to say against it. It wouldnt be the brutal slavery harvest I was initially picturing. I would probably find some other way to invest them than walking them into the Shardpool itself, just in case they decide to grab more power than you want, but it should more or less work. I still have my own general discomfort with the idea of long-distance Human-power freight as a technology, indentured or not. Even the idea of palanquins that are so common on Roshar weird me out, so extending that to freight or long distances rubs me the wrong way.

You missed my point: the OP posited trains for the terrain of a given world and Planes for travel between them, I was trying to say that the space between the worlds is minuscule so if trains are enough for within the world they should be good enough for the space between them, so long as the terrain itself allows for overland travel. Yes, planes are always better, though trains were and still are indeed used tor traverse thousands of miles, Just not for public transit in the US ever since the Wright brothers killed the public travel part of that industry, though Europe has a different opinion. Excellent point, and that does pose a larger problem for Rosharan tech as the cosmere moved toward a trans-planetary communiity. I wonder if you can manifest a complete Fabrial from shadesmar the way you can manifest the Physical realm form from inside a Bead? Perhaps that version doesnt bring the Spren into shadesmar enough to revert to their native form? Pure speculation on my part. Given that Silverlight, the Ire, that Lighthouse guy, and Spren have all managed to build permanent structures in Shadesmare I think it's reasonable. But liek literally every detail of the Cognitive Realm it will entirely depend on the planetary region As much as they do for the current Shadesmar worldhopping Caravans, so close enough for practical purposes. Almost certainly not since there wouldnt be Beads anywhere else, but they other regoins will almost certainly have their own equivalents since that (and the air itself) was added for pure story reasons. Animal spren are already in use, and both Awakening solutions wouldnt surprise me. Cognitive Shadows seems...obscene to me somehow, turning a person's Afterlife into eternal slavery... Those are defaulting to a Chemical Fuel solution, but that is not the only option they'd have. Traditional train tech really only needs Heat , which is something you might be able to create from all kinds of Realmic mechanisms (beads being a great one). There was also one WOB I recall that indicated other Nathian cultures used Breaths and Awakening in wildly different ways than the Helandrian Awakening we've seen, with hints you could do thinks like awaken a Wheel to perpetually turn (This is a vague recollection so I will try to find the WOB for proper details). We also had a thread a while back that had different mechanical designs for a driven wheel/engine using standard (non-Ettmetal) Allomancy, using cyclic pushes.

I dont think you actually need a shards cooperation, their initial perpendicularity should be as accessible as always, unless they do something Rude like bind it to a Storm... Granted they could make micro-perpendicularities (Elsecalling style) at a whim, and probably grant you some means to control them for customs purposes, at least on their own planets. Though if you had a shards full cooperation you could probably pull off Spiritual Realm Mass Transit, which could be instantaneous like Oathgates and might even be able to reach uninhabited planets that dont yet have a developed their own CR. For a purely mechanical approach, Trains would probably be enough for a lot of the terrain, there's not actually much distance between worlds so there's not a big distance that would need to be jumped between worlds. Im a little unclear on how available Ettmetal is, the Southerners are using it for transit but it might still be rare enough to be more of a reserved military resource kinda like like Atium was, so you might have to wait for Navani to complete her Fabrial Airships. You'd probably switch to riverboat barges for a lot of the Rosharan bead-sea, and maybe something similar for other worlds. Sel is still going to be tough, but it's hard to say what the specific challenges would be. If Scadrial is called the Expanse of The Vapors, Im curious of the CR Mists we saw there could be used to support blimps and dirigibles and such (which would fit their steam-punky nature nicely).

Yes, I think it's possible, for Maya and for the Sibling (who I think is in the same general boat of Damaged). "Birth", "Life" and "Death" are all turning out to be more distinct from the human definitions that we originally thought. Pattern also mentioned once that Spren cant heal themselves but can be heal from outside forces. Both those make me think that Deadeye's can be revived. I have to wonder if it could be as easy as Elsecalling with a Regrowth user and healing them directly from Shadesmar; there's WOB indicating hemalurgy woudl work on spren only in shadesmar, perhaps regrowth would operate similarly if used on their "native" body. That being said, I think it could go either way on whether Maya getting revived and Adolin becoming Radiant have to come as a package deal. It doesnt bother me as much as some others, mostly because I can see perfectly reasonable realmic explanations for those close to Radiants to themselves become Radiant. I think Id rather that than him die dramatically on the cusp like a certain somebody.

I could get behind that, as an emergent use in the post-medallion era, when Compounding should become more available anyway.

So far all we know is that it will do something, but ever other time it's come up he's cited a blanket RAFO on all questions about unrevealed compounding, saying he wants to save them to be revealed in the stories.

"God" and "Divinity" are phrases that get thrown around an awful lot on Roshar. Humans call Spren divinities, Spren call Heralds divinities, "God" as they know him was once just a man who arguably stole power from a "real" god.

I think Gavilor will be a force in all of their lives as he gets older, he'll be coming of age during the mid-archive break. While that could certainly be a factor in him gaining Radiance, I dont think it will be the primary driver for him. Mostly because I anticipate him and Shallan following cultural norms and having children of their own, though Gavlor being raised along side those Cousins would also play into the closeness you describe.

Agreed. At the time I thought it was pertinent because it seemed like the argument you and Karger were making was that ALL Cosmere healing worked by the exact same Spiritual Ideal mechanism as Self-Healing thus there could be no additional limitations. I was desperately trying to show that there was indeed Healing variations in the Cosmere, to show that it was possible for ReGrowth to have additional limits or factors. It's definitely a bad comparison in nearly all ways (Cognitive Dor, a System that arose post-shard shattering, etc) but it was the only other form of healing that wasnt Internal, and I think that is a key distinction pretty much everywhere in the Cosmere systems. I was pretty sure that it was Renarin who had told Dalinar there was a limit, as well as Renarin himself who told Rysn the same, so I was giving it the weight of a First-hand account rather than a tangential supposition (Ie Dalinar's guesses). But I dont have the books with me to check for actual quotes. I think this is really where we were disagreeing. You put more weight on what Dalinar said (I think because he was the one that said it to the Readers?) I was putting more weight on Renarin's opinion which should be first hand, as well as my own observations of Rysn still instinctively trying to stand (which is the biggest sticking point). You could be right, Renarin could be letting Dalinar's guesses misinform him and his patients, or even actively limit him, and maybe the Time limit is just a misinterpretation of their evidence. Well, I see that as more of a fringe possibility, but you do make a good point. Your counter-argument will be a lot stronger if she ends up bonding a Spren herself vs a becoming a Squire, Id say, just because it takes less personal growth to accomplish. If she were to find herself spending time with a radiant and unexpectedly started glowing as a Squire, I doubt that would come with as the significant sort of Growth/Change so Id see that as reasonable evidence. As a general statement I dont personally think the Self-Image changes as often or easily as you describe, where peoples self image can change and then changes back with the ups and downs of depression, but time will tell. Self-Image and Self-Esteem are wildly different things, to my mind.