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Good point on energy efficiency Im trying to think offhand, do we know any Surge mechanisms (other than roundabout Soulcasting methods) that can directly create electric current? Anything that can create a reasonably cinematic lightning effect is going to be able to deliver the sorts of high-current bursts of electricity you need for magnetizing iron. My old mentor once built one of those giant scrapyard magnets (but was moving finished sheets iirc) to work that way where you used the burst to toggle the magnetism on and off in the material rather than maintaining it electrically.

Sure, you'd just need to know enough about the material to have the Intent to align the molecules when you create it. Probably would happen automatically with naturally magnetic minerals, since you'd know it as a intrinsic property you might not need to fully understand the crystalline structure that causes it.

As a devils' advocate statement: it's possible that he doesnt necessarily have any particularly robust divination abilities but he that as a more naturally Invested creature he's "in tune" just enough that he can sense particularly significant events like the passing of a pair of Shards, ala Alec Guinness. On the other hand, in The Traveler Hoid specifically accused him of "Watching", sooo...

To clarify: I think that Seons and Selish magics are entirely capable of creating their own equivalent of the Oathgate system, and that since they'd operate via instantaneous Spiritual Realm transport they should theoretically be capable of direct worldhopping. But I also think that it would take a far deeper understanding to of the symbols involved to figure out the needed symbols (like the Name/address symbols for Roshar, as a start) to get the Selish copy to actually connect to and work with the Rosharan Spren. Once the Rosharan Gate spren received the transport I think they'd be able to Learn & Copy enough to trace it back and complete the travel loop (since they supposedly hacked Radiants from watching Honorblades). But that's a series of Big If's, I would not want to be on that first expedition.

I think it would take some serious gymnastics to make Selish magics work, they are fundamentally tied to Sel and their effects taper off with physical distance. You might be able to work out some kind of Launcher style transport, but I think it would have to be one-way unless you could plug it into a Perpendicularity or some other energy-source . Or maybe a bridge/gate system, if one side being anchored to Sel is enough. On the other hand, Roshar's Oathgates operate on a direct Spiritual Realm Teleportation via some Spren, which more or less the same thing as Spren. It would take the Moon Scepter Im sure but it might be possible to make a Dor-based Oathgate on Sel with a pair of giant Seons and connect that to the existing Rosharan Oathgate system. Then we could get a new story about a small team explorers on a team called OG-1 as they explore new worlds and pick fights with alien gods...Waaaaaaaiiiit. (I kinda miss snarky Richard Dean Anderson, I wonder what he's up to these days)

It's really only the upper classes that wear an actual encumbering sleeve, most of the population settles for a modesty glove instead, so it isnt as severe a practical limitation for most. Beyond that it wasnt that long ago that forcing left-handed children to write Right-handed was fairly common, so lefties can learn around it to some extend, especially if reinforced by something as extreme (by earth standards) as a 24-7 encumbrance sleeve on the offending hand, which sounds like something out of a bad catholic school/evil nun story. It was an extension of the cultural idea that two-handed pursuit like swinging giant shard-blades needed to be a full "No Girls Allowed" masculine pursuit, which was then flipped to take literacy (and by extension basically all communications, scholarship, and most of commerce) as a feminie art. All that to say there's some disadvantage but it's part of a larger power balance that frankly I think the women are winning soundly.

I feel like you should somehow make them aware of the rabbit-hole that is Hoid's cameo, if only to see if any of them take the bait and get caught up in the wider Cosmere. That sort of thing was like buried treasure in a book for me back then, and a lot less common.

The Honorblades arent sapient in the way sprenblades or even Nightblood are, so I think they'd manifest more or less like any other ridiculously Invested object: they'd either have a glass bead or just stay a blade, depending on how you got it to shadesmar.

Most of those scare me a lot less because they are just different versions of "Cram tons of Investiture into a thing to make it Dangerous"; but I equate that with more the fact that anything with sufficient mass becomes dangerous, regardless of it's purpose or function. It's the efficient uses of Investiture that scare me, like somehow sparking off Nightblood with a mere 1000 Breaths but somehow creating one of the most Invested Objects in the cosmere. Or any of the conceivable tricks you could pull with the various Dor. Hell, the radiant ability to create mini-perpendicularities to World-hop, rather than needing natural Perpendicularities, is an ability equated with creating Singularities, and I suspect that's not a common ability across the cosmere. Also, I still have a nagging feeling that Invested Aluminum (apparently only possible in the Metallic Arts) is going to be significant somehow. No kidding, more than half the functionality surrounding Time Bubbles seems to be Doylistic balance issues more than narrative needs.

This is a good point. I had a really well-written follow-up theory for that, but my browser just crashed and lost it so I'll cut to the chase: Returned are a suspiciously recent development when compared to how long Endowment and other shards have supposedly been settled on their worlds. So what if the intermingling of the two worlds is even deeper: What If Returned are the result of Endowment attempting to copy the Heralds?

You definitely arent wrong, though I think most of them have severe potential to break various worlds. The metallic Arts have enough temporal manipulation and eventually developed magic-tech that I fully expect them to be able to recreate all the most destructive things we have on Earth, plus a whole host of FTL-based dangers. Sel is literally hacking reality using several different programming langauges. Greater Roshar has multiple magics, races, and planets that are proven world-breakers, and I would still not be surprised if Dawnshards turn out to be something as simple as Soulcasting fusion/star-matter. Oh, and Nalthis made Nightblood....

In know right? That kind of thing would cause all kind of extreme tidal and Weather effects. Whatever would the populace do? It IS interesting that everything within the Inner Space of the solar system is very prominently Three's with the Ten Giants outside of them. And also how only Roshar has any moons, when Gas Giants usually have bunches more than their solid brethren

It kind of depends, How do you want to name each of the four subcategories. Bending is nice because it naturally fits slapping the element on the front while standing alone as a generic term for all for four, while Bending in particular because it's used as a verb and evokes a sense of externally warping something already there. But my point is that you need to find a fitting set of Five names. As @kaellok said, what you use will depend a lot on how you want the magic to be viewed in context. So a fundamental question might be whether you want it to be a Verb which characterizes the action of using the magic, or a Noun that characterizes the user of the magic. For example: Are your people described as Using Lashings or Being Windrunners? Or is it all just Awakeners doing Awakening? That being said, here's a random suggestion. Since your talking about the four scientific fundamental forces I went with more academic than mysticism: Call the Magic force Impetus, call a generic user a Conatus, but with more colloquial names for people who use each one, possibly with a second set of names/titles for those that can use combinations, all very descriptive of their flavors of abilities. Very Metallic arts in concept Gravity = Attractors (slang: Pullers, Crushers, etc) Electromagnetism = Oscillators (Slang: pulsers, zappers, Ringers, etc) Weak and Strong = ??? (Depends on the sorts of visible abilities each will manifest)

Any theories on what it took for Odium to shift Braize to a 9-centric? I cant decide if that's him importing a Nine significance from somewhere else or just a manifestation of some significant "Ten minus One" event/action.

Favorite Word = MINE!

I believe so, based on how Jasnah spoke of it. They have far more versatility per WOB and they dont have the same gem requirements. But It is apparently a lot harder to soulcast something within an essence versus a new one. Granted that might be more of a psychological limitation since she learned the Fabiral use first.

Sooo, this starts getting into the even less supported theory I have that Dragons feed on Investiture the same way Larkin (aka "Dragon Bugs") which would put a dragon in much the same boat as Vasher in the sense of needing a stead supply of Investiture to survive. Scadrial Era1 would have been attractive to such a person for it's realmically ignorant population along with it having an established economy based on the trade of a Godmetal (something I have to assume qualifies as a significant raw Investiture source), while on Roshar it literally falls from the sky. And based purely on the undeniable fact that Dragons always Equal Awesome, it may be that such a person would be willing to risk it between desolation. Of Course, the Everstorm marks this as something else, something Vasher at least is supposed to be worried about. Dragon-Felt might be in the same boat on that side of things as well.

Two things: First thing is that I also dont actually see any compelling connection between the Allomancy dilution and your proposed Royal Locks dilution, but you were mentioning it as part of your intial through process so I wanted to mention it as relevant that even /that/ instance of dilution will always still leave some base ability. At most the analogy I see is that an eventual "dilution" effect might be that the heirs have less ability to control the Locks or perhaps loose the ability to learn other Manipulations like Vivenna has, but Id expect the base effect of the Locks to stick around. @Weltall WOB kinda calls that into question (Id missed that post before) since there is apparently some mechanism for the Locks to only appear in a single Branch of the royal family tree. The main issue I have with that statement is that breath and Divine Breath are fundamentally different from each other in how they interact with the Spiritweb: unlike normal breaths the Divine Breath very much Does meld with and change your Spiritweb. Similarly per WOB you cannot use Hemalurgy to steal Breathes but you CAN use it to steal the Returned Breath: That bolded part is the big difference, and is why Heighenings alone dont grant all the same variable form abilities that the Returned get. (Note that this was from 2015 and since he has more definitively stated that you can indeed steal Divine Breaths with Spikes. Not at all, we're just kicking around theories here, and this is a rabbit hole I havent chased before.

Wild Speculation: Dragon. He's a shapeshifting dragon the met a girl and got real married and is trying to settle down somewhere with an established Investiture economy. After Scadrial went full Apocalypse and burned off their Atium reserves, he decided to try someplace with more abundantly available flavor, and is probably unhappy that Interesting Times have found him again.

I cant find the WOB at the moment but as I understand it the Reason Allomancy has seen dilution over the generations is specifically that it has a competing alternative in Feruchemy that requires some of the same parts of the spiritweb to function (to the point where natural Fullborn are supposed to be all but impossible. Also, for what it's worth even in Allomancy there is "a maxiumum level of dilution": It certainly calls it into question, but I dont think it invalidates it entirely. Denth's reflexive Royal Locks response there at the end was by all indications a distinct thing that other Returned would not do; they can Consciously manipulate themselves with training and practice and they all reflexively dictate their initial forms, but only a person (Returned or otherwise) born with the Locks seems to have it so deeply wired into their reflexive responses that their body has it on the list of possible reflexes to flail about during the last stages of of death. Blushweavers form did no so much as flicker as she bled out.

Oof. Didnt consider that but I think if you combined Dominion with Ambition you'd get something very expansionist, Imperialism or Manifest Destiny: The Shard. Add Odium on to of that and I think it would just become more innately antagonistic, especially toward the concurred.

OK, I have a theory, but it's so far out there and lacking any but the most tinfoil-hat of support, I dont think you are going to like it: A Returned, or some other agent of Endowment. We know that Warbreaker was conceived as to provide backstory for Vasher and Nightblood that were already part of the proto-Stormlight. We know that the honor-blades represent a Version 1 of such blades, with Spren-blades as the Version 2 and Nightblood the Type IV Robot Spren is Version 3. We've been told that the Radiants were not intentionally created by Honor and Cultivation but rather because the spren figured out some of how the Honorblades were working. We know that Worldhoppers have been traveling between Nalthis and Roshar for a really long time, and that the prophetic Paintings from the Court of Gods on Nalthis are legit enough to be marketed to offworld spren (and seemed to anticipate some of Roshars stuff). And we know that Endowment has a Strong tendency to manifest the Number 5 in her orbit (Nalthis Mostly) which could imply her meddling is involved. I know that she did not give that impression in her Letter, but that seems consistent with both a) her retaining plausible deniability in Writing, and b)the general nature of Endowment seems to have and/or imply a relatively Hands-Off approach to problem-solving in the sense that she grants others the knowledge and power to accomplish things themselves, and then stands back and lets them succeed or fail on their own. I could see her acting against the obvious threat that Odium represents in this sort of round-about way. Given how unsympathetic she was about the slain shards, I dont really see her just waiting for Rayse to arrive at her doorstep, but I could see her arranging that the fighting happens elsewhere

Ill Play: Maybe, though adding such an innate Destructive Drive on top of Divine Anger might make him a lot less efficient and/or controlled, and almost certainly reduce his available options and/or behaviors. Concur Acutally, this might help, as it would make him far more prone to settle on and/or Invest in his own Shardworld, as opposed to his current untainted goal of Seek and Destroy. I dont think he'd be capable of being as blase as he currently is about abandoning Roshar and ripping his essence from it so destructively. Best currecnt candidate for a polar balance as I see them, so this might get him to a Harmony-like inability to act. But it will be equally as fragile Id expect. I dunno, I feel like this shard is the most compatible with ANY of the others, as it is more base Augmentation, so it wouldnt have much in the way of specific conflict with the desires of the others. It is specifically Augmentation of Others, so it would mostly make him more prone to Investing in a world similar to Dominion (Investing in the People rather than the Place). I dont know about that, Honor as interpreted is mostly about Rules which if nothing else would make the conflicts more organized. But there's strong evidence that the Honor shard can be re-interpreted as Unity, which is another that might fundamentally opposed, or at least temper, Rayse's interpretation of Odium Oh dear god NO. Cultivation is IMO the worst possible addition to Odium. She encourages Development but has no innate drive to protection, nurturing, or anything like that. You'd be taking Ultimate Hatred and adding Ultimate Mastermind Planning: the result would be unstoppable. Setting aside the probably new MO of cultivating World-ending Plagues, you be taking the God of Hatred and making them also the God of Foresight and Careful Planning. Good luck opposing THAT...

Oh, the Punnage!

I have zero support for this, but I could see a Watsonian explanation that the nature of the Stormlight cycle and ecosystem on Roshar, gems cannot be soulcast from one to the other because they gain just enough extra Investiture to resist it. At least on Roshar that is, not sure if it would work offworld, but then Im not sure if Metals would still glow in the CR for a Scadrian offworld. But from the Doyistic stance that is enough to protect Rosahr's gem-based economy and the narrative control that the individual essences impose on Soulcasting.