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So far everything we've seen casts all forms of Future-Sight as a Voidish ability on Roshar, specifically, so I doubt that was used. Nope, he was trained, tested and swore the Oaths in sequence along with the rest of the recruits. Nale thought he might skip the Squire step (2nd ideal for Skybreakers), but since Nale wasnt present at the time of testing the other Masters followed the standard procedure with Szeth. He swore the 2nd and became KI's squire for a (short) time. His was certainly an accelerated progression, but he still hit all the standard steps. These are good points. As devils'advocate counter-arguemnts: 1)There's a reasonably good chance that the Highspren are not a monolithic group/race/organization. Im basing this on the fact that Nale & co have no issues continuing to train a Skybreaker that is on the opposite side of the current conflict. The Honorspren are more about the Spirit of law&honr and they have the Stormfather as a sort of ascendant Unifying leader (as Tanavast's heir), but it thematically makes a lot of sense if the Highspren have more diverse Factions thanks to different interpretations of the Letter of the Law. 2) I took the passage to be confirmation that Szeth had indeed Bonded a normal spren, but that he had not really developed a typical relationship with it, presumably since he's too busy developing that personal relationship with Nightblood. Correct me if Im wrong, but that quotes passage was from right after Szeth swore the 4th Ideal, which would theoretically happen long after they Radiant and spren developed a more active partnership. 3) As @Q10fanatic said, I took this to be a reference to how impressed Nale was with Szeth's absolute fidelity to the Law while he was a Truthless, which Nale went on about some at the end of WoK. But it could also be indication that he'd previously bonded a Highspren, specifically. And it could even be Both, as we're just talking about something Ki relayed second hand, and Nale may or may not have elaborated on his reasoning.

In the specific case of Atium burning to keep from aging yourself to death, I could easily buy that a compounder would instinctively burn just enough atium to keep from dying. Instinct taking over to prevent death seems like a reasonable thing, even if it might not trigger in less extreme circumstances. Given that Miles can tap Gold enough to heal even after most of his head was destroyed (which should be a bigger barrier than simply being asleep), I think it's reasonable to think that an Atium compounder coudl similarly avoid death as long as there is charged metal available to them. For what little it's worth, I do think that the whole limitation where only Bronze can be stored while you sleep is more of a Doylistic addition, otherwise nearly all ferrings would always store their max while sleeping with no literary downside, which would upset the innate balancing of feruchemy. But that's not to say there isnt Watsonian explanation, though the fact that there is an exception makes me think it's not going to be an absolute boundary.

The indications Ive seen are that this middle set is optional: the Compounder can burn and either use the energy directly, or store it into a second Metalmind for later use. But it doesnt require that second metalmind to be able to access the Compounded feruchemical charge, you can channel it directly from the burn the way allomancers do.

If you can burn in your sleep then they might be ok, the Compounding hack releases Feruchemical-ability while Burning the metalmind so it would be governed by Allamancy rules. From what I can gather a Compounder has the choice to tap the burn energy directly or store it into another metalmind if they prefer (that seemed to be how Miles was doing it). That's fair. Lets see, according to the Coppermind list he has A-Steel, A-Iron, A-Pewter, A-Tin, A-Zinc, A-Durlumin, A-Atium, F-Pewter, F-Steel, F-Gold, and F-Atium. That's eleven purely in metallic arts. He'd also need a Lynchpin spike, and could always have some of the non-metallic arts enhancements (Copper, Zinc, Steel, & Iron spikes). I strongly doubt he has any of the spiritual metals, simply because they werent particularly accessible in Era1 by design. But if you assume he has, for the sake of argument, one each of the other enhancements, that brings his spike count up to 16. Which is a number I particularly like...

I never considered the wakefulness limitation, that's really interesting. For at least a little while it's possible he'd be able to tap enough ahead of a sleep that his accelerated aging would not kill him before he woke up, but the further away from his natural age the less viable that becomes. But, it does mean he wouldnt have needed the F-Bronze until he was at least past his first lifetime, which introduces the possibility that he was able to get his hands on an early Medallion for R-Bronze rather than using a Spike to accomplish it. He's got various friends in High places in those days, at least two of which might have been able to get him access to the secret of medallions.

That was my impression as well. My current theory is that Szeth bonded a Spren, which I think was a cultural indication of the Return of the Radiants, and with them the Desolations, Voidbringers, etc. For whatever reasons, the Shin leaders rejected his evidence, convinced both him and themselves that he must have been lying, and branded him Truthless. What I still cant figure out is the deal with the Shin and the Honorblades. If they were that insistant that the Radiants would not return, why were some of them trained in the use of the Surges and/or Honorblades? And why was a Truthless sent out into the world adrift with an Honorblade?

Szeth is likely not the most Broken of the POV characters, or even the most Tortured, given that there are Heralds in the running who were literally tortured for tens or hundreds of lifetimes in a deliberate attempt to Break them all.

It's also worth noting that he doesnt just break down and destroy your spiritweb, he entirely devours you in all three realms.

That's a good question, actually. I was defaulting to the notion that if they had the Intention to burn them together, they would be able to pull it off. But easily that may not be the case.

Well, we know it is not possible to push or pull on Aluminum, which was one of the the main points behind aluminum bllets in Era 2. But that's not what we are talking about here, because Aluminum metals natural ability to resist all forms of Investiture (Soulcasting, Forgery, Nightblood, etc) is entire distinct from the Allomantic effect that happens when you burn Aluminum. When Burning, the aluminum is entirely destroyed in the act of creating a conduit to Preservation's Investiture, and the manifest allomantic effect is still an Investiture effect. It's the same as how Aluminum Metalminds are still Charged objects with Investiture in them, independant of Aluminum's natural and wider utility.

Interesting Idea. Id give it a solid Maybe. On the one hand they're using an Aluminum sheath to contain the power of Nightblood the rest of the time, so the mechanism should work. On the other hand you are talk about directly opposing Investiture effects, and Nightblood is waaaay more invested than any Allomancy the average Mistborn could use, it would likely require a flair at least, and maybe some Duralumin enhancement.

Agreed, though I see a difference from the Hemalurgic influence because with spikes they are ripping holes that any Shard can exploit regardless of what Charge is placed in the spike, whhereas the evidence suggests the Influence that the Songs were talking about was that if the spren is tainted by odium it give him (specifically) some influence over you. The difference being that spikes make you vulnerable innately, whereas the Gemheart only makes you vulnerable if you let the wrong spren in, but just having one doesnt appear to give a shard any additional influence.

I like the sound of that one. I generally considered Soulcasting to be one of the powers with far more potential to become brokenly overpowered (right up there with Forgery), with the biggest limiter being the actual advanced knowledge/Understanding the Surgebinder in question could leverage, and Hoid has more than anyone born since the Shattering.

Im fully onboard with the idea that manipulating Compounding is going to play a major role in the eventual Scadrial FTL Tech. But I dont think F-Steel is going to be the primary player, because it's far less useful in space. Steel is Physical Speed, but it just grants faster rates of movement, not any new form of locomotion, so it's going to be of limited value in space where moving your arms or legs faster doesnt do anything. Allomantic Iron/Steel might be able to do it, but that cant be compounded so there's the normal Burn/Flare rate limits to it's overall power. Personally I think the key is going to be in the Temporal Feruchemy. The current way I see it going down is a combination of Time Bubbles and Connection manipulation: Time Bubbles are zones that already naturally counter some of the more dangerous issues with manipulating Relativity, and they lock in place but that location is at least somewhat mutable and/or perception dependent, because it's geographically locked, it ca/will move with a train, for example. So it defaults to a planetary/Geocentric definition of "not moving", but can be made to use other reference frames. So what I think they would do is make a Time Bubble, but also use Duralumin to manipulate the bubble/vehicle's Connection to Scadrial such that the "Not Moving" reference frame temporarily some other planet/star/location. Once that happens, the bubble will still technically Not Move, but while it's Holding Still relative to some distant point, the rest cosmere galaxy would basically move around it.

1. Those are two different things: Honorblades use more Stormlight than a radiant for an equivalent effect because (per WOB) the Bond between Honroblade and wielder is much shallower than that between Spren and Radiant, and in both cases it is the Bond that is emitting the magic into the world. But it's still just normal Stormlight use, and when the available Investiture runs out the effects stop. When Nightblood Feeds, by contrast, he much more actively sucks in the ambient Investiture of the wielder, and if they have no extra (Breaths, Stormlight Etc) it will eat the Investiture that makes up their own Soul. Nightblood then takes that Investiture and uses it for his Trans-Realmic Annihilation attack, and I think the jury is still out on whether the Investiture of what's annihilated gets returned to the Spiritual Realm as normal or Absorbed by Nightblood himself. 2. The Honorblades (or more likely the Heralds themselves) used to have a direct conduit to Honor and got unlimited Power directly from him, as if they were standing in a Highstorm at all times. Now that Honor is gone and the conduit with him, the Honorblades require that their wielder get Investiture themselves like any Radiant, Inhaling it from a Storm or a Gem. 3.Per WOB Honorblades where the prototype and then Spren later figured out how to mimic them. Their Powers are less efficient with in their use of Stormlight because the Bond between Honorblae and wielder is very very shallow compared to a Radiant. Radiants get more efficient with each Oath because the Oaths dramatically strengthen the Bond, but Honorblaes are basically at the 0.5 Oath level. The Nahel Bond is kind of like the Antenna for the Surges, and Radiants get an increasingly bigger antenna, while the Honorblades where always inefficient prototypes.

I doubt they've gotten off-world because they are still spren and that would be difficult. We've seen that some deadeyes are being cared for in Shadesmar, so that accounts for a some amount of missing blades at least. Various groups on Roshar could conceivably be stockpiling them with the Shin, the Skybreakers, and to a lesser extent the Parshendi potentially hoarding some. The Ghostbloods might have some, but I doubt the Sons of Honor do (they seem like a much more recent development).

Less of a "Hole" and more of a Socket; it's not an unnatural missing piece so much as an innate ability to augment with accessory pieces. It's like if a person where born with a hemalurgic spike in them, but had to go through a ritual to "invite" one of several types of Investiture Charge to inhabit it. The main difference is that while a Spike is "Ripping a Hole" in the spiritweb which makes the person vulnerable to Shardic influence, the Gemheart is an entirely natural feature of the spiritweb.

Minor (but I think crucial) Nit-Pick: The 2nd Law doesnt technically say that, it says that the total Entropy of an Isolated System "cannot Decrease". It still allows for the Ideal Case where the isolated system remains in Equilibrium, which very well may be the case in the Cosmere where the interactions of the Three Realms are what are defining reality rather than a purely Physical model. The only instances of "losses" that we've seen in the cosmere are in Hemalurgy where the lost Investiture is returning to the Spiritual Realm (per WOB) and in the Stormlight Leakage which is part of the fundamental nature of Stormlight (specifically) that wants to leak back out and rejoin the realmic cycle (but per WOB is still not lost to the system).

To add to what @Pathfinder a big part of the debate stems from the whole Beyond thing (which Brandon has said he's intentionally leaving unresolved). So for example, a Spiriweb is made of Investiture which can be placed into a Spike via Hemalurgy, and per WOB the Investiture that is lost via the End-Negative nature of Hemalurgy returns to the Spiritual Realm reservoir that is/are the Shards (just like any other "destroyed" Investiture). But that is entirely distinct and separate from whatever it is that Goes Beyond when you die, which is entirely beyond the reach of the Shardic Vessels. Even in-world there is a debate about whether and to what extent a Cognitive Shadow is still the original person, and that's another thing that has been periodically referred to as a Soul.

There's also the perpetual philosophic debate on whether the SpiritWeb and the Soul are the same thing or not, which has implications on the whole Beyond discussion.

This is my thought as well. The Balance enhancement is more along the lines of the getting a marksmanship bonus: Pewter grants more precise muscle control to achieve whatever your goal is. There is a sensory aspect (internal balance, eyesight, etc) but that alone wont actually let you balance on a spearpoint or shoot a fly off somebody's ear; within the normal sensory limits the precise muscle control is the more critical thing. In the case of a "Sense" of balance, it wouldnt surprise me at all if you could store one in Tin given that you can Store Bronze allomancy-sense, Awakener's Lifesense, and other such things, so long s the feruchemist considers it a Sense that can be increased/decreased so the proper Intent is there.

For me the biggest Chekhov's Gun has always been Nightblood. I feel like he's going to play a much bigger role in the final act of the cosmere than just about anything else we've seen.

I doubt it would work out of the box, and would just result in Dullform like other failed form attempts. I suspect that it took more active shardic intervention to make the Fused work the way they do. Though the fact that the Fused worked means that other Shards and/or magic systems could very likely pull it off with some active effort.

I could get behind that. We were told spren wouldnt be able to split their bodies, but in the context of a sapient spren transforming into a pair of weapons. It seems to be that lesser spren are more amenable to changing by mundane means (split a rock and get two rocks with their own spren) and/or are less attached to their former Identity (if the Plate=Lesser spren theory is true). I wonder if the "special way" they split the gem is similar to making a Cognitive Shadow, in that you simly add extra Investment and it gives the Identity of the original Whole gem more longevity.

Definitely Plate, I like the fact that it comes with a lot of non-offense enhancements like the strength and mobility enhancements. A shardblade is a lot less useful when there isnt also an ecosystem of blades and plate and duels in the world, but Plate has non-soldier applications.