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That's the difference between a shard with a vessel (or in the case of Honor a Cognitive Shadow of the Vessel that was sort of Prepared for the Vessel's Death) and simply a giant ball of Power with no guiding influence and/or intellect. But just about everything on Elantris is part of the fallout of those two's deaths and the unusual dispensation of their Investiture corpses. It actually makes the Dor a unique thing in the Cosmere (as far as we know) as the Dor is the only place where the entirety of a shard (a pair in fact) resides in the Cognitive Realm rather than the Spiritual, fundamentally changing how that magic can work. The Dor magics are the more versatile than any other (described as programming languages for reality), but are the only ones that are fundamentally location locked, the simply do no work off-world.

If he were to go full villain, or for that matter full Shard, Im curious how Marsh would react.

Oh, sorry I misunderstood you. I dont think that is a huge barrier, at least not to anyone realmically traveled enough to want to brave the Dor. The Ire was operating right there on the border of Scadrial in Era1, and even in Era2 where there is some active force attempting to contain Harmony (ie the Red Haze) there isnt any particular barrier to Worldhopping given that Kriss had no problems getting there. On top of that there is definitely some amount of Cognitive Realm Commerce happening, if paintings from the Court of Gods can find their way to a Rosharan Spren-City. Regarding the Lighthouse keeper in particular, I have to assume he was more Rescued by the Ire rather than having any particular secret to it. And the elantrians of the Ire have access to a programming language for Reality, and are the most Versatile of the magics we've seen

For the Medallions? I dont think it would.

Edgli consistency (or lack thereof) may be more her than the Shardic Intent, but I tend to think the Hand-off attitude is relatively fundamental to the Intent of Endowment (insofar as ANYTHING is innate to the Intent as opposed to the Vessel's Interpretation of said Intent). Endowment is at it's core about a transfer of Power/Value, with all the ownership and responsibility going with it, and ideally with few to no Strings attached.

Im definitely with @Calderis that Endowment is a bad choice for several reasons: By WOB she is one of the more erratic shards (Here and Here). The her interpretation of Endowment seems to be a very Sink-or-Swim mentality, casting her as a more hand-off Watchmaker sort of God (as compared to the Lawful-Good Paladin god that is Honor, or the Guiding Hand style of Cultivation). And frankly, to me her letter makes her sound like a stereotypical arrogant royal who simply doesnt care about anything outside her own little world, and nothing what what she sees as the lesser people (ie mortals). I dont think Edgli is a very nice person, though that is likely her more than the Shard's inante Intent. Of the known Shards, Id go for Cultivation first, Devotion second, and Preservation or Ambition tied for third (both have potential drawbacks but preservation isnt going to get too uppity on their own, while Ambition at least has an innate desire to Improve upon things (the Self, mostly).

I could definitely get behind that, there is definitely a large gap between the actively moving Investiture and the sort of Innate investiture that comes with basic Life, Sentience, and/or existence. I also concur that larkin cant "eat" that sort of Innate investiture, like what constitutes the average person's Spiritweb. With regards to Passive Investiture, I do think one critical part of the Larkin's feeding ability may be that the Investiture has to be resident in the Physical Realm, such as with charged gems, metalminds, Breaths, etc, but that (unlike Nightblood or even a shardblade) they dont have their own transRealmic capabilities. That would put the average Spiritweb and/or Cognitive Shadow out of their reach, though a fully manifest spren might be in trouble. Regarding Identity, Given that a Larkin can feed off the Investiture in shardplate, I dont think keyed Identity is much of a barrier to them.

Sound like he would have objected to just about all forms of immortality, be it elantrian, Returned, Herald, etc. Ironic that his Godmetal is the key to Immortality on Scadrial.

A Possibility, though maybe not a great one, is that a Larkin might be able to eat the Fused at the moment of death, when they are freed from their singer host and are about to get whisked off to find another body. In most instances Kinetic Investiture is easier to affect/manipulate, and while that's not normally a limitation on their diet (since they can drain gems directly)it might open up some additional options. This makes me really curious as to the various Spren cultures' views on Larkin: if they can Eat Spren directly (and that's more or less what we're talking about with the Fused), they'd be the bane of all Spren, to the point where I could see some types wanting to exterminate them all for "public safety"

https://io9.gizmodo.com/brandon-sanderson-wrote-a-magic-the-gathering-novella-183101102 Brandon Sanderson has written a Magic: The Gathering Novella The link has a brief write-up, interview with Brandon, and the First Chapter as a sample.

That would be an interesting use, I like it! Devil's Advocate Statement: It's possible that the sort of spiritual bond that such things usually would need may prevent the Gold from affecting it. The two mechanisms at play are the general case were Invested [anything] is more difficult to affect with other Investiture, so the Ashyn diseases might be resistant to magic healing. And separately (and far less confirmed/documented) is the fact that F-Gold can heal spiritual Damage but not the "damage" that is the initial Snapping, or else Gold would inherently remove Allomancy. Also, and this is just my own theory, but I suspect the Ashyn disease magic is basically just a Nahel Bond with the single-cell equivalent of Spren.

Oh Right! I'd forgotten that entirely, thanks.

More or less. Electricity is, for the most part, a relative measure of Potential Difference (typical AC power for example just bounces back and forth across the Zero/Ground level) and under that model the shattering had a lot to do with the shatterer's polarizing the Investiture (more or less ripping it apart along multiple metaphysical axis) which may or may not have involved an Investiture "prism" even though those two analogies dont really fit together. This is a theory that Ive been percolating for a while now, but I havent had the time recently to sit down and type it all out (end of the year overtime at work) but Im hoping to get to it over the holidays. PS. Dont get your hopes up too much, a lot of it will look like I Googled "frequency" and put the results into a blender...

To the OP: This probably wont make sense outside of a larger "Investiture-as-Electromagnetic Energy" model Ive been working on, but for what it's worth my current (largely useless) theory on the 4th Law is that "Adonalsium = Ground State of Investiture"

Did we actually see

Sazed is technically able to learn more about the wider world, and ascension itself would have widened his awareness/capabilities to an extent by virtue of his new Spiritual Realm perspective but the shards have to actually exert themselves and Choose to actually Look. Also, there are forces attempting to actively prevent Sazed from becoming more aware. Probably because he's most likely the single most powerful being in the cosmere at present.

There's more to it than that, though I agree that the exact mechanism is not fully understood; per WOB "Aluminum resists Investiture generally, even when it’s not Invested itself." You cannot heal around an Aluminum bullet/weapon, and aluminum can pierce/negate physical effects as well as mental/detection ones, and even block Push/Pulls on other metal if it has enough aluminum shielding. It also resists both Forgery and Soulcasting. You cant charge it with surges like Adhesion or gravitation, and will even prevent a time bubble from forming if an aluminum object is in the way of the boundary.

:'( I choose to remember the Life Lived

Ok, then it seems like we've come full circle: Either the Cosmere is a Closed System and Brandon's statement that the 1st Law applies to the Cosmere (defined as a Dwarf Cluster) is valid, or else the WOB that says as much is Incorrect (or possibly Incomplete, given the unknown 4th Law) in the face of evidence that there is more universe visible to Shardworlds than just the ~100 stars in such a cluster, since the starlight alone would constitute outside energy Input. That about sum up the two sides/possibilities?

We are agreed on that part, it was @Ripheus23 that said Confused was incorrect in that statement "or else the 1st Law of Thermodynamics wouldn't apply to the real universe in the first place", which is what I was asking for clarification on. Since the First Law of Thermodynamics (and it's more general form The Conservation of Energy) does hole true in the real world as far as Science can tell, I cannot figure out what Riph was trying to say.

How do you mean? Being an isolated system is very much part of the First Law of Thermodynamics in the real world.

Sometimes it's fun to argue with Doyle, other times it's fun to argue with Watson. Both are valid.

All the ideals are going to be very personal interpretations of the same general Ideal, but subtleties are going to be added or removed in the translation. Dalinar's is making a personal statement about bearing Responsibility for both Past and Future, Both the Journey AND the Destination. For comparison, look at the differences in Kaladin vs Teft's Third Ideal: Teft's relates to a much more personal issue, one that will most likely not apply to most Windrunners. "I Am UNITY" is something else, definitely not an Ideal. Best guess (that I dont know if it has been confirmed in WOB yet?) is that Dalinar temporarily Ascended and took up some amount of the Honor shard, but where Tanavast interpreted the Intent behind "Honor" as a matter of Oaths and Bonds between individuals, Dalinar is taking a broader society view of it, turning the more personal Honor idea to a more Community-oriented one.

Preserver Truth Promote Sentience (Danger = Skynet) Create for the Benefit of All

Curiouser and Curiouser. Flip it then, if you only had only two Allomantic powers (via medallions or Spikes) would eventually developing Resonances be possible?