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Depends on the definition of "Conventional Means" If you mean via Physical Attacks, then: If a shard Invested in any physical object (including a planet) and that Physical Aspect were damaged enough (Space-Age world-breaker super-cannons...That totally arent Moons) it would similarly damage the invested Shard(s). If you mean "With attacks on the scale of a single living , non-shardic individual" then probably not unless you can manage to weaken/distract them enough to Somehow (via severe shenanigans) access their original body (which technically still exists so could theoretically be made/forced/tricked into manifesting). If you mean a more general can you "Punch them in the Face", Kelsier managed it, but things were situationally helpful in several ways... If you mean with Chechov's Swords aka Nightblood, then yes most likely, because I think that's his whole narrative purpose.

A Connector Solo called "Let It Go"? /ducks/

We'd be talking about Melishi specifically, who was confirmed alive I thought? Possible, though I dont think that really fits with the Stormfather's distrust and/or fear of being Bonded, he seems to imply to my read that he'd be just as subject to the problem as the rest of the bonded spren.Could just be projecting a general distrust rather than a real personal danger though... That would mean that, under the context of this theory, Melishi maintained his Bond to a corrupted Godspren during and through the Recreance... That would have some pretty extreme implications. But I think it remains a workable possibility; It doesnt really fit my read of the Stormfathers mentions of him, but I dont see a solid reason why it couldnt be, and this whole series is about subverting our assumptions (*coughcough* Voidbringers)

No, and it's frustrating me to no end. Ill go back and find the Versus thread it came up in, see if anyone actually cited a references. Im starting to fear that it was a conversational assumption. Maybe not, the WOB that revealed them having Gemhearts really focused on the fact that it was hard to notice, made me think the Humans simply hadnt been doing exploratory autospies on their enemies, and that they werent obviously Gems enough be noticed on the battlefield. . Fair enough. Closest thing I thin we can say is that fossils should be easier to awaken for the same reasons that Soulcast people-statues are.

Interesting Idea. The only issue I see offhand is that if this is the case then it would require that Melishi be Bonded to one of the other two Godspren at the Time, which opens the question of how the Stormfather or Nightmother survived the Recreance more or less intact. Which has potential answers (could be as simple as the fact that None of them ever granted Shardblades per WOB).

Oh, New Question (Ill add it to the OP): If Bones are/were Living enough to only require normal Type III Awakening rather than the 9th Heightening version like for normal Metals/minerals, what about Gemhearts? Or Coal or Pearls for more mundane mineral examples?

The only one that can be considered pure without being transparent is the Smokestone (Vapor essence), but I cant see how that (or any single Essence) would work for the Universal Spren housing that the Singer Gemhearts would need to be (as compared to soulcasting and fabrials where different Spren have very specific gem associations. Put that way, it sounds reminiscent of Atium in Hemalurgy, to the point where I wonder if Singer's Bone Gems are some sort of "God-Gem"?

Not really sure. On Memories I have said almost certainly not: since they're something that can get stored as Investiture which is distinct from the actual functional chunks of Spiritweb that Hemalurgy is splicing. However according to various places on the Coppermind Wiki, per the Adventure Game you can steal memories, Intelligence, and/or Mental Fortitude with a Copper Spike. Not sure if that game is considered cannon though, it also has some unique things to say about the spiritual feruchemy that we've been RAFO'd on otherwise. Knowledge...is more vaguely defined. There are examples where it definitely happens, if indirectly. You can, for example, Spike a divine Breathe out of a person, but not normal Breathes, and either method grants a certain amount of instinctive Knowledge of Awakening up to the 6th heightening when it becomes fully instinctual. You can spike things like Connection from somebody, and And there are certain things that could be called Knowledge but if they are part of your core Identity enough they are going to be represented in your Spiritual Aspect, which can get pieces spiked out if you know how. You could Spike out Connection to a place, which among other things can grant the knowledge of a Language. Sooo... ?

Aside from, you know, the Singers Nice! To the OP: I think it was was mostly going to be a result of the general dark tone in the first trilogy, at least on the level of common folk singing. At the balls, a focus on instrumental music fits the period setting, where they were more intended as a background diversion or musical pieces to specific dances; makes sense that theyd rarely had singers as the main focus of attention unless they were showcasing specific talent or doing some sort of bardic tale. For Wayne specifically, he's musical enough and gifted with his voice enough to be capable of singing, Im sure. He's also a heavily damaged PTSD sufferer, so whistling might be his limit for his own reasons. I doubt it's actually a cultural level thing, so I expect the incoming proliferation of Radio technology will help give vocalists more prominance.

I have an accumulation of Gem Related questions: We had a conversation a while back about shardworlds going to war, and it was stated that the Roshar forces can fill gems by exposing them to any shard's Perpendicularity, and also that offworld gems would work the same way offworld metals work for scadrians. Is that correct? I cant find any specific WOBs to confirm them. IF so, are they filled with Stormlight, or something entirely different. Assuming for the sake of argument that Voidlight in gems taking more specific steps on Odiums part, if some rando worldhopper took a gemheart to Nalthis would they instead get..I dont know, "Chromat-o-Light" from Endowment's perpendicularity? We know that Stormlight in Gems predates Honor's arrival, so Gems were something that could hold Stormlight back when it was operating on an Adonalsium-era magic. So if there is nothing special about Rosharan gems or about the rosharan Perpendicularities, and Stormlight as a type of Investiture predates Honor and Cultivation, it sounds like stormlight, and maybe even the Surges to some extent, are actually a cosmere-wide magic system from pre-shattering? Other Gem Questions: -Can you Soulcast one gem to another (using Diamond or Topaz), and how does that affect their economic value? -If the color of the gem, rather than the chemical composition, is the important aspect due to the Perceptions of the residents of Roshar, have those associations changed over the long history (they've certainly gained new/different religion associations. -If the Parshendi have a "mikly white, bone colored" Gemheart, is this an 11th Essence? EDIT: New question - If Bones are/were Living enough to only require normal Type III Awakening rather than the 9th Heightening version like for normal Metals/minerals, what about Gemhearts? Or Coal or Pearls for more mundane mineral examples?

Interesting. As I understand it not all spren float that easily between the Cognitive and Physical Realm (Pattern for example who cannot become invisible), so it might not be guaranteed that he'd manifest an oddball CR form the way sprenblades do. For that matter, when they are "dismissed" the spren at least is still actively kicking around the Physical Realm even if theyre invisible. Also, didnt Azures blade stay a sword when they went to the CR? I think that would indicate that Nightblood thinks of himself as a Sword regardless of his present Realm.

Go Old School: Dropped in the wasteland 5 days out, have to make it back alive. Nature is a great equalizer when it comes to Test of " intelligence, strength, creativity, agility, etc." If there's a Sand Focus for the magic itself this could double as a sort of Spirit Quest to reveal the latent magic Talent, sort of a Write of Passage between them and The Desert. How..."valid" do you you want the test to be. By that I mean is it an honest attempt to identify and cultivate aptitude for the magic itself, or are there any social/political/religious underpinnings to consider, or secondary/hidden goals? Like if the magic-users double as Law-Enforcement, there might be other aptitudes (or atttitudes, philosphies, etc) that they'd be selecting for like combat capability or investigation or some such. I recall back in college a friend was getting hammered in Organic Chemistry, not because he struggled with the actual chemistry material, but because the course was designed to be a weeding course for Pre-Med majors (my friend was a Chem-E) so they loaded it with a lot of activities and course structure they thought were important for Doctors but didnt actually have anything to do with the actual course topic.

Jumping in here, but Ive delved a bit of research on this sort of thing in the past (was doing my own bullet casting and looked into making silver bullets and such, even made some gallium ones). Couple things: On Alloys: Aluminum alloys, both inside and outside the aerospace industry, is comparable to a pretty wide swath of Steels in terms of both tensile and yield strengths, brittleness, etc. The Real world differences these days are more and more economical than functional (and titanium owns a lot of the market share where they'd make sense for us); hell, there are even heat treatable alloys. For some comparison, there are functional aluminum engine blocks, and a gun barrel is never going to see those kind of cycles. But on NEEDING alloys, keep in mind that we can successfully make guns from common 3D printed plastic these days, and wood guns/cannons have been a thing historically; arguably there are Fireworks that accomplish it in a cardboard wrapper. It mostly has to be a lot thicker than the equivalent steel, and it will have some limits on the type and size of load you could put in. I assume it would also fatigue and fail faster, but that's not going to be any more dangerous than the rest of the 19th century manufacturing that could potentially explode at any moment anyway. On scadrial they'd be well worth it even if they were literally single-use, just a bullet with a disposable firing mechanism wrapped around it (would make a certain amount of economic sense). That's all just a question about the gun body and really just about the barrel if single-shot guns are good enough. We standardize pretty heavily to certain gund designs and Gun materials because we have standardized down to the micron on Bullet design and standards, because tiny variations can have such huge (and dangerous) consequences. That's also something we expect today but likely didn't/couldnt back in the 19th century equivalent to era2. As far as the bullets go, so long as they are of a softer alloy than the barrel they will function without danger. The practical issue fabricating them has more to do with non-standard casting contraction than with the final behavior. The biggest issue for aluminum bullets is the weight issue, they would be too light to have any sort of comparable range even with good aerodynamics on the bullet. BUUUUT, that's again all just relative to an equivalent steel bullet, not to the whole ballistic range. If it would me Id design the aluminum bullets to something on the larger bore side of things, and then fill them with a heavier mass (non-metallic if you can find one). It wouldnt be as dense as lead but it would improve the function, and if you find something dense enough that's non-metallic you dont really have to worry about the thickness of the Aluminum layer, it's there more for structural support (and you'd want it to fragment on impact). My biggest Cosmere question is how much alloying can you even do before it looses it's Investiture inertness? Duralumin is 95% aluminum (and in fact one of the early attempts at hardened Aluminum) so that much clearly makes it a different metal.

She mostly sounds...haughty(?) to me, a lot of indifference to what doesnty directly impact her. But that is viewing it through my own modern and as far as I know Human perspective. Do we know anything about the Sho Del on a cultural level? PS for what it's worth Nalthis has real knowledge of Dragons:

Yup. Lift would probably love them too. You know, Ive never quite understood why one metal does both food and water but it takes a separate metal entirely for air.

Time Travel and the actual afterlife/Beyond are off the table for serious plot, so I doubt it would happen that way. I also dont think he'd put the cosmere into that sort of Wheel of Time repeating loop; consequences of everyone's choices and actions (especially on the long timeline scale of Hoid&co) seems to be a central theme, and I always felt the Wheel of Time model worked counter to that.

Right. As far as I know Old Champs is the only random bystander he's spoken to. Part of it, we know, is that Old Champs wasnt all there upstairs, though Nightblood was also more specifically exerting himself accomplish it, and we know Nightblood has abilities and shenanigans that even vasher doesnt fully know or understand.

Not until after she drew it If Im remembering correctly, which would have let it feed on her, creating the Connection. She didnt use or feed it nearly as much as Vasher did, but as far as I understand him he feeds on anything that draws him. Granted that doesnt explain Old Chaps, but in Old Chaps case we have a WOB directly that Nightblood is better at communicating with people who are mentally unhinged. I suspect that's a similar Cracked Spiritweb mechanism that is so important to Preservation&Ruin communicating to folks.

@Calderis I agree that there are not going to be a direct 1-1 pairing for each Shard, no guaranteed polar opposite. But I dont think the model requires them at all. Preservation and Ruin were about as close to direct opposites as I really expect to see, but in terms of the model they wouldnt have to be opposed; they are no more locked into any opposition than Preservation vs Dominion or Odium (as the other two Outward Oriented Decreasers). Hell, more often than not I see the relations implying potential collaboration (or at least sympathetic outlooks); Endownment and Cultivation, for example, are both Outward Increasers but are not (by my interpretation of those intents) innately antagonistic. Similarly Ambition and Honor are both Inward Increasers, but I could see them being either friendly or antagonistic depending on the Hosts outlook/interpretation.

Once Nightblood has fed off a person, there remains a Connection between them; it;s how he can sense where Vasher & Co are. Presumably the ability to communicate is part of that same Connection.

How so? I never saw that sort of restriction or implication in the model. Some are more opposed than others, though I suspect in most cases those can be laid more at the host's interpretations than the core Intent itself. Preservation and Ruin are "opposites" only in expression, because one is about ending the physical existence of things while the other is about preventing that sort of loss, but they arguably have a lot in common too.

Jumping back to the OP (because I never did finish the last Chronicle of Thomas Covenant) Im very much a proponent of the Allomantic Quadrant model of Intents, and I could see Apathy being a decent interpretation of the Physical Decreasing Inward Shard, something along the lines of the Ascetic in the old zen Separate Yourself from the Physical; it could be the Godly expression of Restraint without all the context. Similarly, I could buy into Apathy being an expression of the Spiritual Decreasing Inward Shard, a "Solitude" Shard (not to be confused with the shard that is Hiding) that is all about avoiding spiritual Connections the same way Honor is about promoting them and Odium is (arguably) about breaking them.

Id honestly just love to explore the odd dichotomy of Masculine vs Feminine food on Roshar, I think that sort of culinary boundary would have made for some interesting inovations. Then I want to blow all their feeble little minds by introducing them to Honey Chipotle. Or Thai food.

I think it depends on your definitions, but for the most part No. It depend on whether you are talking about a normal shardblade as is getting passed around Roshar, vs an actual living Radiant blade. In general Shardblades are going to be a lot harder to affect with ANY form of cosmere magic because they are already heavily Invested. But separately from that, Soulcasting an object involves connecting to it's cognitive aspect and convincing it to Change in that realm (which cascades out to the other two), and that is going to have a whole extra level of complication when you are talking about something that is or was Sentient Investiture in it's own right; such things are going to have an unusually strong sense of Self, and are going to be hard to convince otherwise, even "dead". You'd probably have better luck Forging a Shardblade instead of Soulcasting it, but of course that's a whole other weirdness.

Its vaporized in in that its destroyed, rather I think it more going into a state of Matter/Energy/Investiture Flux, shifting around between realm the way the rest of a resident shards Investiture tends to.