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There will always be fundamental things that wont change, at the level that an Honorspren and a Highspren and a Cryptic will always have fundamentally different viewpoints. But there's also definitely a process of learning and growth and maturity that is happening, and the Bond is very likely the mechanism that makes it possible. In syl's case, she was changed by her first Bond (and the tragedy/pain of it) and I think that all the different moral conundrums Syl and Kaladin are facing are causing her to mature in her nuanced Understanding. I don think that will go away or be reversed once the Bond goes away. Granted she likely wouldnt remember any of it if she tries to stay in the material world without a Bond to support her mind, but if the Bond ended and she went back to Sahdesmare she'd be the new, more mature/experience version of herself.

In the past when the Fused Died they went back to Braize (just like the Heralds) but this time around they pop back with the Everstorm. My money is on it previously being stuck on Braize but now it rides the Everstorm the way Honor's rides the Highstorm. I see it as an escalation of the conflict. It also makes me think there's an Everstorm spren, perhaps a whole new Unmade. Among other things the everstorm did take a big ol' sacrifice of Singer lives.

If she retrieved her blade it would have had to be recent, as in since Szeth left Shin. Mr T told him that one of the Honorblades had vanished from Shin, as a way to try explain away Kaladin to him without him realizing that the Radiant's had returned. Szeth's reaction was "One of the other seven?" At the time he left at least, Shin had eight; they sent one with him, had long since lost (if they ever had) Nale's, and never had Taln's. It's also always possible that the Shin had previously lost more than the one they sent with Szeth and kept it secret, but we just dont know enough about them to really make any supported theories.

She's actually one of the oldest Honorspren around, as one of the few that were alive pre-Recreance. It's why she gets the moniker of 'Ancient Daughter'. She is from the first generation of Spren that the Stormfather created directly after Honor gave him that power (honor did it himself prior to that).

Precisely. For the bulk of the magic's narrative use, the system only visibly conserves Mass but not Energy, and you get a decrease in Entropy in the system for free with most uses. In the first anime they explained it away in the last episode as each person being connected to a parallel dimension doppelganger that was drawing nebulous life/spirit/emotion energy from a WWI era. The second eventually revealed that it was Techtonic "Earth" energy for the Western countries, and Ley Lines for the East, but by then they were also breaking down an awful lot of the established limitations in favor of the red stones that were cashing in Deaths for Power.

Im not saying it's entirely unworkable if there are other mechanisms that we don't know about, just that it seems a conspicuous gap that would have design implications. I think it's worth asking the question if anyone gets a chance.

Fair enough, your call. I just liked the image of a glowing gem-eye Mad Eye Moody equivalent.

In the case of spanreeds, they are specifically created by splitting a single gem in two and cannot be replaced/reconnected, so swapping out the gems would negate their function, unless there was some pre-arranged protocol which has never been mentioned. All the people using span-reeds have talked about needing to get access to charged spheres to recharge them rather than needing to directly charge them in a storm, and while they have often mentioned being nervous and/or taking steps to protect spheres being left out, there's been no mention of having to actually leave the irreplaceable spanreeds outside, though they are always described as being a far more impactful loss. If they have any of hte "specialized housings" or external/non-radiant methods to transfer stormlight form one gem to another, again: it has never been mentioned. And that is my whole point.

Exactly my issue with that and most of the rest of the fabrials as described. Either they dont all actually require a spren (contradicting how they are described to function), they all actually have separate functional gems from their Power gems (which isnt supported but may not actually contradict the text, Im not sure), or several of them combine their functional gems and power gems, significantly complicating the logistics of charging them in the times without Radiants that are capable of transferring stormlight directly. Or, I suppose it's possible they have a Fabrial design whose specific purpose is to transfer Stormlight from gem to gem to recharge existing Fabrials. Spanreeds are described as being created by spillign a ruby in two, then attaching it to a reed quill, which are light enough to be moved at great distance without risking breaking the way the elevators' gems might. Such a thing wouldnt do well being left out in a storm, and having to do so to recharge them has never been mentioned, it's always been worded as just a matter of gaining access to infused gems.

Honestly that is a descriptive issue I have with a lot of fabrials. The same could be said for Spanreeds, which if Im not mistaken are described as only having a single Gem in their construction. To the bet of my knowledge Humans dont have any mechanism for transferring stormlight from one gem to another without Radiants, so they would need to be able to swap a Power gem separate from the functional gem, meaning all fabrials would need a minimum of two gems in their construction.

@Invocation I like it! That all makes a lot of sense. How would you feel about adding Eyes to the list of possible (if perhaps difficult) prosthetic, maybe allowing for Senses to be one of the Physical Enhancements? It's not as critical in functional terms as most major organs. You could even go really crazy and allow clockwork Ears or a Tycho Brahe Nose attachment, but the Steampunk glowing crystal Eye in particular is really cool image.

Id call it a hard magic system. It's very scientific in it's use and application, and by and large it's limited to known physical and chemical processes. They just get to do them with magic circles instead of complicated tools. The Law of Equivalent Exchange holds true for the most part (with a high value on Life as an exchange option), and the Taboo's are limits that become major plot points. All in all there's relatively little hand-waving in it, by and large you understand the limits of it's capabilities to be pretty close to those of natural science. If Harry Potter is the example of the middle of the spectrum, Id put FMA on the Hard-Magic side of that. Minus the Second Law of Thermodynamics, at the very least.

Personally I dont think she is directly hunting Vasher, or else she would have stuck with Adoline and Kal. I think she clearly figured out that Vasher had trained them both, and the difference in their familiarity with the training kata would indicate that he's stuck around long enough to train two different pupils at different times. So she now knows Vasher is a swordmaster in the Kholin orbit.

I really like it! The physicality of having to craft the clockwork limb as the physical focus is really intriguing, and visually all kinds of steampunky fun. In addition to @Ixthos's, I have questions: Is the replacement body-part functionally critical, in that design and materials make a significant difference? Or is it more about the element of Sacrifice (where theoretically a peasant could work something up with lesser materials and/or craftmanship that would still work? Does the magic support the amputation before Ascension (ala Hemalurgy), or is it going to require a medical professional to help the person survive the removal and replacement of the arm, eye, etc? Are the Rankings about power and/or skill with a single chosen specialty, or about the mastery of multiple? Or both? Is there an upper limit to how many can be possessed at once? Is there any body part that is entirely off-limits, either functionally or just social taboo (heart, brain, etc)? As in, is it possible that there any Zesten that are 100% replaced Argo's? Who does the testing, is it fair, and can anyone access the Caves if they are willing to take the risk?

And the award for least helpful WOB goes to:

Having existed pre-shattering, it wouldnt have happened when the shards arrived on Roshar, it would have happened as soon as Adonalsium was shattered. At the moment of the Shattering, all investiture Cosmere-wide was allocated to one of the shards; it just means that pre-shattering the Stormfather was made of Adonalsium's more 'honorable' flaovred investiture, while the Nitchwatcher had a more of a cultivation-y leaning. They would have been a little different (because it was traumatic for the whole cosmere), and may not have been the top-tier spren we see before Honor and Cultivation showed up and Invested a disproportionate amount of their specific investiture in the planet. I think it likely that there are other spren on Roshar that would have gotten boosted to god-tier if a different set of shards had arrived; maybe Ruin's Investment would have supercharged a leader of the Ashspren, for example. Yup, Tanavast anticipated his demise and was taking steps to prepare for it. This included granting the Stormfather the ability to birth/create new spren (of which Syl was one of the first) as well as preparing the Visions to be sent to future Bondsmith candidates. We dont know how or why, but there was a period where Honor was "dying", which he knew, and being a shard he was able to perceive at least some of the future to prepare. Though for what it's worth, his behavior was also changing, in that he'd previously supported the radiants and convinced them that their cause was the righteous one any time they'd learned the truth of their migration, but with the last generation he instead "raved, speaking of the Dawnshards, ancient weapons used to destroy the Tranquil Halls. Honor...promised that Surgebinders would do the same to Roshar" (OB. Ch 113) His words were that he was "not fully awake, I was but the Spren of the Storm. Then I was like a child. Changed and shaped during the frantic last days of a dying god" (OB Ch. 113), which I took to mean that being merged with the ghost of a human (or dragon or sho-dal, we dont really know) changed his perspective from the more skewed and primal mentality of a Force of Nature to something more like a mortal's. It's the reason he said he hated them before but since has started to understand where they were coming from. He said he could "Understand them as I never did before", that where before he'd just blamed them for their broken Oaths and weakness, now he understood that they were trying to protect Roshar from themselves.

True, they'd be left far more vulnerable to a whole host of things, but the lack of identity permeating the rest of the spiritweb would not negatively impact the actual function of those pieces. The reason I lean toward some spiritweb "organ" idea is that hemalurgy is always described as removing a discrete functional chunk of the larger spiritweb, something that has actual edges. So by extension any of the things that could be stolen by a spike, be that Identity or any individual Power, would need to be similarity localized into a discrete region. Organ seemed as good a term as any, though admittedly my original image was more of cutting into a circuit board to steal specific functional pieces. I think that even follows with how you would have to spike both sides of a Nahel Bond, because the Bind is a connection (Connection?) that is anchored onto specific regions of the web. The only exception to that I've seen is the idea that Aluminum Spikes are negating the powers in the target by destroying the relevant spiritweb without actually stealing anything or gaining an Investiture Charge, and that similarly Aluminum metalminds are technically suppressing Identity rather than storing it. That's a theory I really like because it reconciles the Metallic arts with the fact that everywhere else Aluminum is entirely resistant to Investiture.

That's entirely fair. Part of the tinfoil roots of the theory is the idea that Leras and Ati went to all the trouble (and metaphysical expense) in Creating whole a new planet, rather than settling on a pre-existing one like all the others (we know of) seem to have done, was that they were trying to Create the metallic arts specifically, by creating a planet and population that would allow the Arts to arise. And since neither Preservation or Ruin are thematically about original creation, maybe it would make sense that they knew of something pre-Shattering that they were using as a model/template. And the metal focus of scadrial made me think Dragons, that maybe this was an ability that only dragons previously had, and they had very intentionally taken actions to make it available to the rest of the cosmere. Which is a whole lot of 'Maybe", I fully admit.

Where are you drawing the line between "something similar" and "built from the ground up"? When I say I think it was based on pre-existing principles the primary precedent I had in mind was Lightweaving, which was not even a Rosharan thing and predates the shattering. So the similarities as I imagine them would be limited to basic functional principles like Using the blood as a gateway to access the spiritweb directly, and maybe the idea of investing physical objects to graft spirit-web chunks from one being to another. Things like the 16 metals (or even metal as a focus at all), and probably the specifics of the bind-points would be part of the scadrial-specific manifestation.

While it certainly permeates the entire spirit-web, I think it's possible (if entirely unproven) that Identity in a spiritweb is emanating from some central spirit-web structure/organ that could be ripped out, leaving a permanently blanked/toneless spiritweb that is otherwise functional. And I only say functional because apparently there arent any debilitating side effects from Blanking it via Ferchemy, it would still be severely damaged. I tend to default to wave&sounds analogies with a lot of the spiritweb, so I tend to think of the Identity as the Voice-box of the spiritweb, were it can be destroyed but you'd still theoretically be able to breath and talk and any other breath-based functions, just without all the distinctive vocal timbre that it once had.

This is pure speculation on my part, but given how the fundamentals of Hemalurgy are cosmere-wide, I suspect that there was something similar in the cosmere pre-Scadrial, and that Ati co-opted and reconfigured it in a similar way to how honor co-opted the Surges and the whole Stormlight-in-Gems mechanics.

No worries. The Coppermind link at the top of hte page is the best place to get started, it's a wiki compilation of what we know (and some of what we suspect). After that, there is the Arcanum link which is a glorious rabbit-hole of WoB's ("Word of Brandon") that include quotes from Q&A's, lots of little tidbits, clarifications, and other obscure information.

Atom-splitting thing?

Nah, I will never believe Roshone to be that significant anywhere at all. But it was technically Amaram that sent him off, and that put him on the battlefield instead of the messengers...