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This was an idea that occurred to me during another thread, and I thought it deserved it's own discussion. Say, Hypothetically, through shenanigans (and presumably theft) Lift got her hands on the necessary items to make her a full Feruchmist and/or Mistborn (there are several options available). How might her own digestive Stormlight powers interact with those, and would it facilitate anything like Compounding? I could see the presence of another End-Positve Investiture connection result in a similar "hack" that allows for the two to interact, and I wanted to talk through the possible ways that might manifest. Thoughts?

I suspect it would be at least as damaging as the Recreance, if not moreso; it may not 100% destroy the spren in question, but it would be destroying the only physical form they had left and I have to assume it would be violating the Ideals enough to damage them on that side as well. Id think a broken chunk of Plate would be far less problematic if the goal is just to see what Powers a Rosharan God-metal might manifest. Its still technically made of Spren but since it regrows from damage around the biggest and/or most energized piece I dont think those spren are going to be as tied to (or protective of) their physical form. As to what it might do, that is REALLY hard to guess. Right now we only have the two examples: Preservation permanently alters your spirit-web to make a Mistborn, but Ruin's taps Fortune in some fashion to show you the future (despite Ruin not being especially good at future-sight...?), neither is an obvious reflection of the shard's Intent and Preservation is arguably counter to it since it's Changing things.

I dont think there will be any single "ultimate Antagonist" unless it's Adonalsium itself. I do, however, think we'll see a bunch of different people, nations, and Shards all having to choose Sides in some Cosmere-wide conflict, I hope there will be at least three sides, and I suspect that Hoid will not be on the side we might normally expect from a "protagonist".

Harmony exists in a very delicate balance, I think that their goal is to cause enough Distraction and Strife in the things (ie people) that he is most focused and involved in, enough that he will no longer be able to maintain that balance. As to why Trell (who we're agreed is a Shard, if not sure of the identity, yes?) is wanting to kick over the ant-hill now instead of leaving well enough alone, I see several possible reasons: 1)They fear the outcome of combining Shards, for whatever reasons they all agreed to at the beginning that led to the vow of non-interaction; 2)They know that Harmony is current unstable and dont want to give him the time to gain any more Experience and Control; 3) [Wild Theory] It's not Harmony himself that they fear but rather it is the evolution of the Metallic Art themselves that is scaring them. While Hemalurgy always had some scary implications but the death of the Donor made those somewhat self-limiting, the advent of UnKeyed and UnSealed metalminds, ans especially the emergence of Harmonium, has opened up a lot of implications and possibilities that a being of Shardic levels would have the capacity to more fully comprehend and evaluate. I mean, on the meta level we know they will eventually lead to FTLs and a fully spacefaring race of people; this might be all about restricting potential problems and/or rivals.

Nah, those are all reasons to attack Harmony regardless of the location. Attacking Scadrial is secondary but still affects him because it is his home, the place and people he is by far the most Invested in, and until relatively recently the only thing he knew existed; it's one of if not the only lever they have to attack him outside of a full-frontal assault that any one shard would most likely loose. To say that the unNamed antagonist in question should be attacking Sazed without touching Scadrial feels like saying Preservation and Ruin should have just fought directly and left all the people out of it...not wrong but leaving out all the situational context.

Coming late to the party, so I want to propose my pre-existing idea on that before I go back and read all the discussion. One of the relatively few things we know about the shards on a social interaction level is that at the beginning of things they all apparently agreed to go their separate ways and not live with or interact with each other, a Vow that I have to think Autonomy was a fan of, if not the driving force behind the pact entirely. We also know that at least three pairs of shards violated that Rule incidentally those are three worlds that have have been attacked. So the "Why" of Why Attack Scadrial is that Harmony is by far the most extreme violator of that Rule, having directly Combined a pair of shards (directly posing whatever danger drove them to the pact in the first place). And since Harmony is especially invested in Scadrial both through the Shards having personally created it and also Sazed as Host being a native, the best way to Attack Harmony is to seed Discord on his homeworld. There's not any actual compelling (for a shard) reason to /spare/ Scadrial in their attempts to attack, subvert, or otherwise antagonize Harmony, and it's basically the only lever they have.

I propose a #6 which is that they simply stumble on a way to pull off FTL easier than navigating through shadesmar with all the varied hazards and foreign powers active; possibly something closer to a point-to-point Jump transportation. As an example, one theory I saw about travel with Metallix Arts centered around the idea that manipulating Identity and Connection properly could theoretically more or less wooosh you off to another planet by essentially convincing the Cosmere and/or your own spirit-web that you are actually supposed to be over There. Or there's the precedent of the Oathgates that are implied to operate via Spiritual Realm rather than the Cognitive. In general I think Shadesmar is not that great a way to travel in all sorts of ways so it wouldnt take all that much to make an alternate method appealing. Also as a #7, which is that War comes. Scadrial era are supposed to help act as the measuring scale of the overall cosmere tale, so Era 4 is going to be toward the end of things, when Id generally expect the Shardic infighting to be getting into full swing.

I think she's called "The" Nightmother, too. But at god-levels the line between Name and Title (and occasionally Function) will always blur some.

That's true, at his level of healing there's not much that rises to the level of actual threat. He's not literally "Immune to Sword Damage" or anything like superhero tropes, but if he can regrow his own head and soul-web damage, then he's pretty safe. The cool thing is that theoretically he should be able to heal Hemalurgic Spike damage, which WOB says gold could do. I have this horrible image of somebody with soul-healing using themselves as a Spike factory. I know Hoid's a special case, but I have to wonder what the long-term effects would be of repeated Spiking on on a gold ferring or compounder.

A lot of folks thing the Windrunner's 4th is "I will accept that I cannot save everyone" but I really dont think that is quite right, it catches some but misses other parts. I feel like "I will Stand Aside when I must" is more what things were building to, it's less about the situational specifics and more simply accepting that sometimes the Radiant simply cannot actively DO anything at all. The 2nd ad 3rd are about who and where the Radiant should ACT, but the 4th is about when they must not, which is philosophically often harder. This also sort of makes sense that it's the ideal that turns Windspren into inert, unmoving metal: the first three Ideals are about when and where you SHOULD act, while the 4th is about when you need to restrain those natural tendencies. It's the crux Serenity Prayer, in other words: Know when to Act vs when to Accept.

So by the Epigraph text is sure sounds to me like they are calling Urithiru "the place nearest to Honor.” I find that very interesting. I have been trying to apply my professional experience to Urithiru (short version is that I design heavy industrial factories) and the base design point that I keep coming back to is "Why There?". All Factories are where they are for specific reasons: either it's being built near the natural resources it needs (raw materials, transportation, and/or water are most common for industry), it's being built to AVOID something (climate&weather, political/economic concerns, etc), or it's being built right on top of some other pre-existing Site/System. There are no obvious geographic benefits (other than riding above the Storm, which aint nothing), and nothing specific about the site for Raw Materials, unless there's more to it on the Shadesmar side, or some other Stormlight/Investiture. So that's what I keep coming back to: that there must be something about that site specifically that made it the best choice for this city-sized Spren-machine, either on the side of its upstream needs (Fuel) or its downstream needs (Function). And somewhere right in the middle of all that sits the Sibling...

Llarimar for me. I guess you could consider him an adjunct to Lightsong, but there interaction is some of my favorite of the whole cosmere, and gun-to-my-head Id have to say that Llarimar is my favorite of the two.

One the first, I didnt read it as Arrogance in his case, I read it as a literal statement that he is immune to the sort of Spritweb damage that a Shardblade would impart. Especially since we know for fact that he is not immune to ordinary physical harm. On the second, Hoid was the Court Wit for some years, I'd been assuming that was what all the familiarity he was referencing. I could be wrong, but I dont know of any specific evidence that she knew him from somewhere else.

By your list you should definitely give Codex Alera a shot, its a complete six-book series by Jim Butcher. It's great and each books is (imo) better than the last, until it end with a phenomenally epic finale). His knew series (Cinder Spires) is off to a great start but only has the one book out so far, it's all crystal power and steampunk airships and talking cat mafia. You seem to favor the High fantasy side of things, so for those Id also strongly recommend the Fionavar Tapestry (great classic trilogy) and also as much of the Shannara series as you are willing to bite off. The Sunnrunner series by Melanie Rawn is another classic. If you want to instead look into the Urban Fantasy side of things, try the Dresden Files first and Iron Druid second (listed in order of both length and quality)

It's less a matter of specific books being lesser than others (other than maybe Crossroads for being purely a "Meanwhile" book, but it was still good for what it covered) and more that throughout the middle books the characters and storylines diverged quite a bit, to the point where there are whole books that never feature some of the main characters, who are by then all scattered and doing their own things. Then the fringe characters from those diverging storylines started getting their own independent storylines and things diverged even more. I personally think it was less that those middle books were a slog persay, more that until probably Knife of Dreams there wasnt much on the horizon that looked like an Ending, just a lot of characters that had not interacted in a long time (if ever) and some prophesy handing over them all, so for a while it felt like just following all the branches of a developing world more than actually seeing a cohesive story unfold. But the thing is, most people I know really enjoyed at least one of the main threads going through the slow middle books, and in most cases they seem to have enjoyed different threads and character's stories. I just havent found many folks that were equally engaged in all of them, so no matter what you are enjoying there will likely be whole books where no progress is made on the tale you were personally invested in following. In terms of broad appeal that is not a bad thing, but it does make the series somewhat huge and intimidating. Ive reread some of the early books but Im not sure Ill ever just sit down and go through it all again (total series comes to ~4.5 million words).

Very much so! Ever wonder what a Superhero Apocalypse would look like? Strap in

I second the checking out of Reckoners, it was fantastic and a unique (and oddly realistic) take on the Superhero genre

I was generally thinking he'd used Spikes to staple his now Sliver-ized spirit back onto his body in a Hemalurgic equivalent to the Returned. I dont know how much that would need to be his original body or if he could make a donor body work, though the way Cosmere Healing works would suggest the body could be "healed" back into his proper form regardless of it's starting state.

By WoB we know they can sense somebody "using" magics from other worlds. The catch is that Seekers sense "kinetic Investiture" meaning the Investiture that is actively being used. It;s the difference between sensing a Radiant actually Using Stormlight to do something, vs just sensing that they have a Store of energy. In the Case of the Heightenings I dont think they'd sense it directly any more than they'd sense the Nahel Bond or a filled metalmind; however they would sense the act of Awakening or actually using a Surge. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120-warsaw-signing/#e7413 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/166-steelheart-chicago-signing/#e3008

On the first one, that is pretty much the Plot of OB, I dont think you'll be able to find any spoiler-free Discussion until you've finished it (or accept the Spoilers, I suppose). On Hoid, we know that he manages to just happen to be in the right place at the right time via an application of Fortune, and that while he can Show up he does not always actually know the Why of it. My own theory is HERE but that is also in the OB spoiler section, but we dont have a definitive answer yet. In general there is a whole lot of Cosmere meat in OB, to the point where its going to seep into most any of the broader conversations and be hard to avoid

Probably laugh and refuse to believe you. If pressed I could even see him making an argument that he cannot, by definition, be 'Evil'. His measure of this abstract and undefined concept of "evil" seems to be whether a person can hold Him, so he's Immune to the test by definition. On a more philosophically meta level, I think I would agree with him. He's doesnt seem to have enough independent Drive and/or Agency to really be Evil. He's Destructive as all getout, but Evil implies a more specific motivation to my mind and he's basically just along for the ride wherever his is. He's Dangerous, Destructive, and a touch Chaotic, but he's still acting as a tool to execute his wielder's interpretation of his Command, no more or less.

It works. The gloves start touching you...in places. Nothing your own hands haven't done before at one time or another, but... Control exists, but it seems limited to a general Intensity adjustment that goes from Gentle to Industrial Gravel-Crusher; there is no Off command. I want to awaken Alexa with the command "Defeat Siri"

Your car turns into a transformer, able to effortlessly transform from Servant Mode to Transportation Mode. And he will take you to your destination. Then immediately to you next destination. And the Next, and the Next, without a moments pause to actually experience each destination. You thought the transformer capability was Cool? Well, it means your car is not restricted to road and garage, it can follow you and even Kidnap you if it means keeping you moving from one destination to the next without pause. I want to awaken a set of glasses with the command "Remember all that I Remember and All that I Forget."

To the OP, if Presence and by extension Power are relative to the sapient population (as seen with it's effect on Shadesmar topography) it would make a certain amount of sense that the Sea would be a tier below the Land and Sea Sky given that the vast majority of the sapient population is land-based, even if they were part of a common elemental set. Even in classic earth mythologies, the Sea was more often characterized by it's alien mystery more than anything. I wonder if the Singers have a Sea-form?

Whatever is needed I am at your service!