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I dont think this is the case, by all indications I can find the placement of the Spike in the recipient has more impact on the functionality of the spike than the point used to steal the spiritweb in the first place. If the initial charge spiking was the only thing that changed the effect, and the placement was just a pass/fail compatibility issue, then I dont see how the Kandra would get benefits form having Fluid Binding Points, or how there could be any distinction between placing a spike in the left vs right eye

No, I entirely get that Red Eyes indicates one shard Co-opting another, and that it is very much a cosmere-wide effect. This can be explained in two ways that I can think of (if and only if certain assumptions prove correct): 1) if you are correct and the Set's Faceless Immortals are not Kandra at all but are instead Svrakiss, then logically their eyes should be glowing Red because they are using Harmony/Discord Investiture to fuel their own Dor-based Selish abilities; it's still one shard hacking another system, just in the opposite direction of what the location implied. 2) If the Red effect has more to do with the Host and/or Cognitive aspect than any fundamental differences in the shards Investiture, it would imply that the Red Effect is a shardic-level equivalent to Identity, and thus a dramatic enough Cognitive Fracture might be enough to cause the Red effect. To be clear, while I think #1 is just a logical extension of the Svrakiss=Set's Immortals theory and as likely (or not) as that parent theory, #2 is an extreme stretch, and more of a logical rabbit hole paved with assumptions. If you'd expect Copper ferring Dissociative Personality Disorder to have a qualitative differences in Identity and issues tapping each personalities metalminds, it would go a long way to supporting this. If there was any evidence that the Red effect was impacted at all by a change of Shardic Vessel, it would also go a long way. Well, to be fair we are barely half-way through Mistborn, so by the time it takes center stage it would likely have gotten a lot more build-up and foreshadowing. @Fanghur Rahl I think the reason why I just cant get behind your Set of Three theory ultimately boils down to the fact that three has no symmetry in Sixteen and I find that...aesthetically displeasing, I suppose. If there is one set of three Id expect want them to all fall into similar triumvirates. It's why I tend to default to various sets of 2 or 4.

I like this idea a lot, if for somewhat selfish reasons. I had an idea about the sibling and it fits really well with the idea of the Sibling being Stone/Earth themed: I submit to you that the entire Rosharan landmass is the result of a giant, motionless/slumbering Cryptic, whose fractal form is causing a raised ripple in the surface it's resting on, just like Pattern but on a planetary scale (as you'd expect of a contemporary of the Stormfather).

I was thinking that if Trell is just Harmony's personal Mr Hyde and Set's Immortals are actually Svrakiss that have figured out how to operate using Harmony/Trell's Investiture instead of their native Dor, it could cause the Red Eyes. Granted I cant say why a personality of Harmony's wouldnt be able to make their own Kandra and so not need anything from Sel. But to chase the rabbit a bit, it might be possible to explain the redness as involving some equivalent to Identity on the Shardic level, and that a split-personality of Harmony would have to hack their way back into the metallic arts like any other shard. The real reason I want to chase the thought is just that we look to Autonomy almost entirely through process of elimination, so I thought there might be another option hidden in the list we were working from. Im not thinking of it as Splinters of Harmony warring against him so much as Harmony being unaware that Sazed himself has become cognitively fractured in two different personalities; in other words it's more just that Harmony is warring against himself in a far more literal way than we previously suspected.

Very true, unless Set's Immortals are not Scadrial Natives. If they are in fact Svrakiss that are being powered via Harmony-as-Trell rather than the Dor, that should explain the Red Eyes.

Something random occurred to me while I had my head in comic book matters: Could Trell be Discord, as in a dissociative splinter personality of Sazed, something that he's not aware of? It's a common trope in comics for powerful characters to manifest enemies from their own subconscious, could Sazed's internal conflict have manifested in a rival cognitive aspect fighting for control? It would explain how this new godmetal got plugged into the system when Rosharan godmetals would not on their own. It would mean that Harmonium and Trellium are both new mixed shard godmetals, rather than Atium and Lerasium being replaced by Harmonium alone in the Investiture ecosystem.

Yup, Steven King novels, sorry.

A bounty hunter has an existential crisis and doubts the nature of morality and his own existence, then kills some folks and retires. How about: The Dark Tower

DishSponge: "Gather Investiture, and release it as I Command." Nightblood can gather any type of Investure few things (larkin, maybe dragons) but there's no way to get that Investiture back out and make any real use of it. The image behind this command would eat investiture and release it in discrete chunks more or less like artificial Breaths.

I suspect that this would fall into a similar vein of "can you Awaken with Grey" which is technically a color, and that the answer would be that it depends on your Heightening; if a 10th heightening can come along and use the Grey that a lesser awakener leaves behind, then I suspect the definitions of light and color might get more flexible around them too. At some point it seems like they get to just plain ignore the limitations of the system, and Im guessing it scales right up to ascension. In general, the Awakener doesnt need to be aware of or direct the Color-draining aspect of the awakening, so I think it's less tied up in the Intent than for example the Spoken Command part. That tells me their opinion and/or perception of Color doesnt factor into in the equation, otherwise blindfolds would be almost as effective as gags for stopping an awakener. That means that, barring some other sliding scale on the Heightenings, the ambient light levels are subjective and shouldnt matter, at least up to the absolute level of total and complete darkness. But once you've reached the point where there is literally no light (past the point where even a Tineye cannot see anything) that might be enough of a real Cognitive difference that the object would no longer qualify and ALL awakening stops working.

I tend to agree, though I would qualify it by saying that Im not sure which side of that line Compounding would fall on, since it's a combination of the two systems. The WoB makes it sound like more of a Doylistic decision not to feature them for narrative complexity's sake, rather than a Watsonian and/or realmic-theory reason it wouldnt ever happen. Mostly just as a spit-balled possibility if the result is not going to be an added benefit (and since it's a Hack of two systems that seems like a reasonably possibility). Memories are arguably the most "complex" form of Investiture stored in feruchemy by far, in the sense that it is a Charge but also a recorded Signal, if that makes any sense? If Investiture is like electric charge and the different forms/effects are different "frequencies" (in the same way Microwaves and Radio waves are just different frequencies of EM energy), then a Copper metalmind might be more akin to an actual recorded song (and Identity is kind of like the unique recognizable "voice" pattern of the singer, btw). Operating under that paradigm, if the normal hack works because the pre-charged metalmind is "ringing" with the feruchemical effect's frequency, amplifying copper by cramming a ton of extra energy into that signal might easily override and scramble the actual contents of the signal, resulting in just a really loud but largely incoherent mental shout.

I supposed one possibility is that (at last in the case where you let the compounding Investiture flow directly into another copper metalmind) you'd end up with a heavily Invested metalmind that had the sort of "corrupted Sectors" issue that you get if you try to change the metalurgy of a charged metalmind. If so then I'd guess trying to receive that "corrupted" memory directly would not be pleasant. I wonder, does compounding F-Tin have the same sort of drawbacks that a-tin does with Flairing, Duralumin, etc? In general Feruchemy is better at protecting it's user from over-use that Allomancy, but if Tin compounding had the same sort of downsides when hacked Id think it more likely that Copper would have similar compounding dangers.

Well, for various reasons Brandon has said he's not planning to do it, for what that's worth. That being said, the "Cosmere" itself is a particular finite dwarf galaxy, it's not a complete Universe in the traditional sense. We dont know much about the nature of it relative to something Outside that galaxy or Before Adonalsium, but speaking purely in terms of Why Not reasons, you could always call Reckoner and Earth still part of that larger Universe and just blame all the Cosmere-specific stuff on the local effects of Adonalsium. Spoilering this because I dont remember if it was book 3, but Reckoners did also establish I dont know how to respond to this without potentially ruining some really cool things in book 3, but indefinably definitely circle back to this when you finish Calamity

I can get behind that. It doesnt quite fit with how I was imagining the Spirit-web chunk in the spike behaving, especially if burned, but I cant think of anything to contradict it. I had previously thought of a spirit-web as being a more cohesive construct than the sort of "Investiture Charge" like in metalminds that are subject to the Hack; Id thought the Investiture Charge in the spike was just there to facilitate the realmic connection and anchor the chunk of Spiritweb to the physical realm, and wasnt thinking of the Spirit-web chunk as an Investiture Charge in and of itself. Corollary: If Excisor is basically just the Southern Scadrial term for Hemalurgy, it would imply that they had no tradition of Hemalurgy prior to the Sovereigns return post-harmony. That would be interesting in a random sort of way.

Ya, it could be as simple as them having an Intent (in the literal and non-technical sense) that does not align with any of the 16 Shards Nah, Id call them a Ruinous thing, since the Atium burn is the only one that actually taps Ruin's investiture instead of Preservations.

Which part of this do you consider the "Excisor" of the process, the bit that was gifted them by the Sovereign? Would it be the Volunteer/Donor? The Identity-less Spike? Something else? Bands of Morning implied it was an object and/or device, though Ive had my doubts on that.

Well, if Im not mistaken Era 2 was originally supposed to skip to the more "modern" timeframe that is now set for Era 3, and Alloy of Law was originally slated to just be a fun one-off. It was successful enough that he decided to expand it out to it's own full arc. In fact, I believe I read that he ended up writing all of Bands of Mourning while in the middle of Shadows of Self. All that to say I think it's less about fitting it into an overall plan (the way Dragonsteel or the Warbreaker sequel do) and more simply about when and how the story's inspiration strikes him.

I wonder if the source Shard of that Investiture has any effect on the nature of those changes

Im with you on that, I see it as the difference between holding & releasing a boatload of Investiture that just happens to be from Preservation, vs actually bonding/connecting/holding the Intent of Preservation and thus having a theoretical connection to all aspects of Preservation throughout the Cosmere.

That's a fair point, especially with the mists which Leras could actively control, though I suspect that the Lerasium at least was out of his direct reach in the same way the Atium was no longer in Ati's control. Presumably the Investiture in the population would be bound up in them too (he could fiddle with them via that connection, but probably not retask the investiture for any other use). That's more or less the root of my thoughts as well (though "Connected" to it is an interesting idea I hadnt considered). Basically I think that ascension is a non-specific process that just happens to always come with holding a shard, similar to how perpendicularity dont technically need a shard. I think of Ascension as an advanced form of Savantism, where you've held enough Investiture that your cognitive and spiritual aspects get permanently deformed all in one go, as opposed to via repeated exposure. It seems to be significant because it represents the point where Investiture starts acting funny (the way there's a quantitative scale boundary between normal physics and Quantum physics. As far as actually quantifying that threshold, I find myself really liking @Bigmikey357's idea: Ascension requires that you hold an amount of Investiture that would otherwise naturally create a Perpendicularity. This is certainty something the Well qualifies, regardless of where the rest of Preservation's power was, and it makes a ton of realmic sense that that is where the Investiture's behavior would start getting weird (Divide by Zero style). And it's a natural, logical and most especially a pre-existing Realmic function, which appeals to me.

I think Autonomy would scoff at your petty attempts to Ship them with anyone at all. They need no-one else, they are Autonomous

There are a few instances where he said "All or most" of a shard, but aside from that closest thing to a "threshold" I can find is that it by definition has to be enough that the simple act of Holding the Investiture at all causes permanent expansion/changes to the bearer's spirit-web, and becoming a vessel is simply the most common (by far) method of amassing enough Investiture to accomplish it. Personally I think the only reason that he didnt go with 100% "Former Shards" without all the "most or all" equivocation is just because of the specific circumstance on scadrial where there existed an active Shard who had already had the bulk of his Investiture taken away and left up for grabs. If nothing else it does explain why he settled on "Sliver" as the term. @Fanghur Rahl Correct me if Im wrong but it sounds like your main issue is that the (confirmed, non-vessel) Sliver Rakesh* specifically held the Well but not actually the shard. It sounds to me though that you believe that the well constitutes a tiny piece of the Vessel's availible Investiture, but I was under the impression that it represented the majority of it. *Im discounting both Dalinar and the Stormfather as more examples of in-world people using cosmere terms inaccurately, since there's too much debate over the Unity moment and the Stormfather cannot qualify by the WOB definition).

You might be right, but Im not sure that would make as much sense from a timeline persepective. As far as I understand it he was making the aluminum decisions more or less concurrently. By that I mean he was designing the metallic arts overall, seeding hemalurgy in particular as a cosmere-wide mechanism, and deciding he wanted Aluminum as the Inert material that starts rare and becomes common via advanced industry all at the same time (correct?).

I dont have any idea what it will amount to, but the more I see and read about Aluminum's role as THE magically Inert material of the Cosmere, the bigger that Metallic Arts asterisk seems to get.

@hwiles, setting aside that we have WOB that specifically states that brass does not work the way you think it should, I do see your objection. It's not unlike my hangup that if bendalloy can store food and water separately, that should extend to oxygen as well and not require a separate metal. They way I look at it is this: Feruchemy allows it's user to temporarily alter some natural part of yourself, and the whole self temporarily adjusts to this redefined "You". In the case of Iron it changes your mass and the rest of your Self (as defined in your sDNA) adjusts to match, but only Internally (because magic), which is why they get stronger only for the purposes of Self but not for any external interaction, even if the physics of it should be the same. For Brass I think it both changes the thermal effects and also changes what the ferring's "natural" temperature is to match; so they dont get hypothermia because their body's natural target temperature has been changed concurrently. Hell, we're picking on brass and Iron, but Atium is hands down the most vague in terms of practical effect (outside of the purely psychological ones).