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Too long to type at the moment, but I love the flashback scene with Dalinar and the Nightwatcher when she's trying to temp him with all these wishes and he stops her short with "Forgiveness".

I think a really big distinction here is the difference between Accelerated Mental Speed and Accelerated Mental Capacity. Speed alone is like a pause button, it gives you more time to deliberate, but it does not (necessarily) give you any particular increased mental abilities. It's easy to say "Id just flair Zinc and in an eyeblink Id calculate all the possible outcomes of all the possible moves", but if you froze time and gave me all the deliberation in the world, I most likely would still not be able to actually perform those calculations. In most cases I would not even know where to begin, and for those things where I have the knowledge/education to pull it off, I would not be able to do it all in my head, which is what Zinc alone would require. For Zinc to be truly OP as this thread proposes, I think it would need to be paired with Copper so that you could actually hold all those billion possibilities and know you arent just rechecking possibility #159,489 for the 5th time.

I could be mistaken, but I dont think that's how it works. From the other descriptions of things, a spren doesnt exist that way in the Cognitive Realm while they have been manifest in the Physcial Realm, rather they "Drop" the same way non-sapient spren like Mandra's do. So there was no Deadeye of Maya running (floating?) around Shadesmar while Adolin had her deadete corpse-blade, it was only when he physcially returned that corpse that it manifested as the eyeless person we saw. So it would follow that the rest of the Deadeye's arent living a dual existence either, and thus it would mean any deadeye we saw in shadesmar (Capt. Ico's father for example) are example of Shardbaldes that have been recovered by the spren and returned to Shadesmar. Otherwise it would mean that during OB there was a deadeye wandering about shadesmar (Maya) that really freaked out her caretakerzs when she randomly teleported to where ever it was that Adolin&Co arrive after the oathgate fiasco.

Agreed. What are your thoughts on a Radiant being able to use the Mists directly? It's been a long time since I read Mistborn so I dont recall the happenstance but I know Vin at least was able to fuel her allomancy directly but I dont recall if it took conscious intervention by Preservation to make it work.

Aimia as a whole was notorious for having a huge network of underground caves, which one of the ancient Willshapers was working to map out. That would make landmass above the bead sea, whcih I imagine would appear as sort of impressive-looking sprawling lattice landmass. And while they may not enjoy the Lights, we've been told that their primary means of travel and commerce will "waste away and die" if taken away from a human population center, so Im sure they'd learn to deal with the annoyance.

That is incorrect. Rock can, and it's not unheard-of in horneater society, but not all of them have the ability. The horneaters call those with the ability alaii'iku

Lift's spren turned into a "rod" because he doesnt like to hurt people and so chose a form without an edge, but I got the impression it was basically a round stick on a sword hilt. Either way that would most likely still be in the realm of consciously chosen form the way Syl and Kaladin favor the Shardspear. Regardless of the spren's opinion or the spren race, etc. the Nahel Bond, the Radiants, et al were still modeled off the original dynamic between Herald and their Honorblades, so I dont think the opinion of hte spren is going to override that base code (especially after the spren dies)

No worries at all. This is still very much just a "Wouldnt it be neat" sort of theory, at best, and it's likely one WOB away form being entirely sunk. I welcome the added information, disproving this sort of theory is just as useful as proving it. That's actually the core of this theory. The Idea is that if spren more closely resemble a mortal/human/etc while in Shadesmar for the purposes of Hemalurgy, the same might be the case for Breaths. At the very least the Difficulty in Awakening Metal should not be a problem, and potentially they would not be considered too Invested either (any more than being too Invested would prevent you from gaining more breaths and/or heightening). Meanwhile, Breaths are specifically an investiture that is defined as a counterfeit soul that likes to stick to things more than most. So, if the theory is true then I could see it happening in one of a couple possible ways: Perhaps you could Awaken the Deadeye in the same general process of Awakening a Lifeless Perhaps you could grant the Deadeye a bunch of Breaths directly, and their Spiritual Damage would be healed the way a human with Heightenings would Perhaps slapping a Counterfeit Soul made of Investiture onto a being that is already made of Investiture will graft on the missing Spiritweb functionality that was damaged by the Recreance, separate of any typical uses of the breaths. That is, I should point out, a whole lot of "If". There are tons of ways this might not work. The deadeye might not be dead enough to be made into a lifeless. They might not be humanly trans-realmic enough to hold Breath and Gain Heightenings at all. Being an entity of pure Investiture (and from a different shard, no less) might prevent all of this for various interference issues. All other things being equal, it should be easier to use a Breath on a being that is (in shadesmar) flesh and blood as compared to anything made of metal and especially a godmetal.

On a related note, I believe we have a WOB that a Radiant could charge gems by exposing them to any Shard's Perpendicularity (it came up in an old conversation about shardworlds going to war). So in that sense a Radiant could theoretically fuel their surges from the Well or Pits directly (or whatever their Era2 form is). It is also theoretically possible (if entirely unsupported as far as I know) that a Radiant on Scadrial would be able to inhale the Mist directly since they are both gaseous forms of Investiture.

I cant say for sure, but I think it counts those totals based on the day the posts itself were posted, rather than when the Likes for the post were clicked. So long after the calendar day is past, Likes will still be rolling in and changing the final outcome. SO if you were the front-runner but lost it, I suspect that means somebody else received a few more Likes and overtook your score.

That's a lot of it, I think. Ferruchemy where always rare thanks to the Lord Ruler, and has only declines and diluted since they ended their Era1 isolation. The odds of having any feruchemy is pretty rare, and since Feruchemy and Allomancy genes compete, it is the rarest of rares to actually have both. IN general on the OP, right now I think it's really just a coincidence, but I could easily be wrong. I just dont think we have enough datapoints to say either way, not just yet. Of the three twinborn we've seen, both Wax and Miles had combo's that were uniquely functional together, so it could just be Rule-Of-Cool coincidence. But the examples we have do fit that pattern, so it could still prove true

Can you explain a bit more of what you mean by mixed magics in this context? Are you talking about trying to mimic the effects of one using another, or fueling one magic with the Investiture of another shard/world? Something else entirely?

It is widely believed and strongly supported, but not confirmed, that all radiant orders get their plate at the 4th ideal.

I think your definition of Identity is off the mark. If it were the actual link between the Cognitive and their Spiritual, then blanking it via feruchemy should have much more direct impact on sentience, more along the lines of how those humans became Mistwraiths when they lost that connection (a connection that needs hemalurgy to repair).

I have a barely supported but rather fun theory on the scouring: We know that in spren in shadesmare rely heavily on Mandra's to pull ships for trade and commerce, and we know that greatshells and other rosharan creatures rely on mandras to be able to survive to the great sizes they do without being crushed under their own weight. We also know that, for reasons the spren have not figured out, the mandra's do not survive away from human population centers for long. Scouring the human population from amia would have both caused a sort of embargo on the spren city that is likely to exist opposite an Oathgate city, and also would have collapsed the Greatshell ecosystem that Amia was/is famous for. Either or both of those could have been attractive goals for Odium's forces, separate for anything particular gained or feared from the Aimian kingdom.

Those are all relating to an attempt to awaken a Shardblade itself (ie a chunk of god-metal that exists in the Physical Realm). he idea here is based on the way Hemalurgy is believed to operate differently for Spren in Shadesmar vs the Physcial Realm, how they can only be subjected to hemalurgic spikes if used on their 'real' form in Shadesmar. Assuming something similar would happen here, a breath were granted directly to the actual deadeye would not be an act of Awakening, or at least not an act of attempting to awaken a godmetal (which is extra difficult from both the 'god' and the 'metal' parts of that), it would something be closer (though I assume not identical) to awakening a Lifeless.

While physically in Shadesmar, Azure or Vasher gives Maya a Breath, which acts as an investiture graft to heal the damage to her spiritweb. Not even sure that would work, but if we're talking about wishful thinking, that's my Maya wish.

Relevant new WOB:

Eh, from a practical point of view Zinc compounding to that extent would mostly just grant a very limited form of A-Bendalloy where you couldnt Move inside the bubble.

Fill an UnSelaed Coppermind with all those horrible memories, then feed said coppermind to a Larkin.

Navani.

There's also this one that qualifies it a bit. I think it depends more on the Intent with the Final Product. We have the WOB's that in most instances it is indeed Mass- conservative, but we also have several examples of light objects being Soulcast into Metals or Stone without any (obvious) loss of mass. And at the end of the day, scientific laws arent much involved in the process, it's a realmic mechanism that's all about re-writing the Identity/Sense of Self of the target object . I strongly suspect that soulcasting defaults to mass-conservative, especially in most common uses where the Caster is only interested in the material (Stone-to-Food, etc). But when the Caster is actively interested in preserving the original Shape of the original object, be that a corpse becoming a statue or just a crafted object that they want to become Metal, they seem able to do so without being limited by rigid Mass Conservation, so long as that Intent is present in the working. For what it's worth, I also suspect that this would be that sort of thing that a Radiant Soulcaster has a lot more flexibility to exploit, compared to a Fabrial-user, so we may get more into the weeds of its functionality eventually (fingers crossed).

Oh, no worries, I totally agree that Dalinar would consider it the couwards way out if he just sort of left it to them to find the fact in his book. I more think of it as him using the book as a sort of prepared statement, and only because I expect him to agonize over how to break it to his sons and how they will react. So I could see him wanting to get his words right, and to be very deliberate about it. But on the flip side I do think that every time he spends time with his sons and he doesn't tell them, it would become more and more of a cowards excuse. So waiting to get his words right might happen, but it would be an exercise in incremental stalling on Dalinar's part (something Navani and even the Stormfather would likely give him crap for); to last a whole year he'd have to hide behind some excuse like them being out on assignment, stationed in a different city for most of it, etc. To the OP: Eshonai interacting with our current cast of Radiants, bridgemen, etc. I know we've known it wouldnt happen, but I still do wish she'd lived into the current events.

Im...pretty sure that's not true, but i will check as soon as I get home. They may or may not have known the name or broader details Ghostbloods and she certainly didnt know they were targeting Jasnah at the beginning, but Im pretty sure they knew that their father was involved with some nefarious group that had loaned him the Soulcaster, some group that they were afraid of and whom they were trying to get a working Soulcaster to appease.

I dont disagree, though I could see it going either way. On the one hand, as you say, I dont really see him waiting for months and months. On the other hand, I could see him agonizing over it and waiting until he'd worked out exactly how he wanted to say it, which would itself be the process of wrigint the book. Also, waiting aside I didnt picture it being a Cowards Way Out because I pictured Dalinar being present when it was read to his sons (by Navani most likely, but possibly by Jasnah or by Dalinar himself). Agreed. It might have been different eariler in the story, but Adolin and Renarin have each come a long way and I dont think either of them have too much righteous indignation in them any more. Adolin's been affected quite a bit by his murder of Sadeas, which I think has him in a place to accept Dalinar's efforts to become a better man. And Renarin was basically pushed to the edge of suicide (or at least over-acceptance of death), and in general doesnt strike me as the sort to hold that kind of grudge. And in Renarin's case he was too young to have a whole lot of memories of their mother to complicate his emotions on the matter as much as Adolin that was old enough to remember those times.