Quantus

Tug of War relative to who's Connection is stronger, who is most compatible with the Intent, probably other factors we dont know. In the case of the Lord Ruler who Ascended by virtue of taking up a massive stash of Preservation's Investiture in the Cognitive Realm while Leras was still alive, he seems to have used up the Investiture for specific planetary changes rather than make any direct play to wrest the power from Leras. Or he tried and failed, maybe, I dont know how we'd be able to tell.

It could go either way, I think. Being Willing to Give the Power has been pretty baked in so far, so its possible that Endowment's Intent would be too fundamentally opposed to direct Theft of Investiture to be the driving force behind it. But WOB says metal Hemalurgy could steal Breaths, so it's not 100% incompatible. But Barring some kind of fundamental incompatibility like that, I think you should be able to use Awakening to prepare an Investiture Storage Object just as much as you should be able to with AonDor, and the existence of the term [Era4/sample spoilers] supports that something along those lines is likely.

Honestly I think there's going to also be a 4th Old Magic Spren. Im guessing we'll learn that way Back in the Day when Adonalsium created the Rosharan system there were 4 moons (and a Pre-shattered Plain), 4 habitable planets (and No Asteroid belt) and 4 Ancient Spren (my current bet is on a GodSpren of the Sea, just to mirror some of the Greek classics). Tanavast confirmed that 16 was Adonalsium's number and things worked better if you followed the number schemes, and 3's dont fit nearly as cleanly. The pattern of Three's really seems to be a post-Shattering development in many ways, and Im thinking that will prove to go all the way back.

Im thinking "Awaken" as the primal action word for gaining Sapience.

Alternatively, it could be that this was always within the rules of Hemalurgy. Perhaps it's always been that you can Rip Spiritwebs with Bindpionts and Any object capable of Investiture Storage, and Scadrial simply only ever knew about Metal as an option. Who knows, maybe a spiked rock covered in White Sand microbes could work, or maybe some prepared AonDor object could do it too (Im drawing a blank on any other options offhand, but we know Gems and Metals are special in general).

I have very little support for this and Im not sure the timeline works, but I think Night was created as the Spren of a permanent Lunar Eclipse Umbra that used to roam the surface of Roshar, and she "Left" because that particular moon fell and left her without her Physical Realm Anchor.

Lightweavers dont Lie to themselves, they are forced to face the Truth about themselves. By oaths it's probably the Elsecallers or Dustrbringers as being the most focused on their personal failings and potential for harm.

I recall them confirming this in TLM but I dont remember if we got any details? Logically if the OP's user were to actively Blank their own identity any time they used the stores, then the only Identity left in the equation would be the original spiked Ferring's so there'd be no source of contamination.

It would be Ascension, but not necessarily make him Preservation. There are lesser versions of Ascension that dont let you actually take up the Shard itself. The Lord Ruler Ascended for a while but Leras remained the actual holder of Preservation during that time, for example. Also, per WOB Nicrosil Compounding would not be a path to taking up the Shard. Lerasium might be a whole different ballgame being Preservation's actual Godmetal.

Yeah, Id have to assume it doesnt act any differently than an incorrect Alloy when burned, or else the Scadrians would have found it unique enough to keep experimenting. Though on that note, it might be possible that most incorrect alloys only make you sick, and when they say it can be lethal in the worst case might actually be the case only with Silver-containing Alloys but was just lumped into the same general poison warning and they didnt realize it was unique to Silver-bearing metals.

The pale pink crystal is a rosite Aether. The Flower is theorized to be one of the Tears of Egli from Nalthis. The golden Lock is either a Royal Lock or maybe the Golden Hair of an Iriali (which is common on Roshar currently but potentially a bit special in the cosmere, if their legends of travels are true).

Ash thought

Hmmm, interesting.... It can essentially be done with traditional Compounding of a store of "Mistborn Allomancy" of even a slowly collected copy of each metal from a bunch of medallions into separate metalminds. Here's the issue I see with the whole thing: Lerasium's effect is an instant and Permanent Change to your Spiritweb, it re-writes it, and the default version of that is to Connect you to Preservation via something that looks and acts awfully like a Luhel Bond. That Connection then allows you to Draw and Tune Investiture from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical one for various effects, which is where metalminds & medallions usually come into play. Im not exactly sure where in that Investiture circuit the Nicrosil Metalmind will interact, but Im not sure it would be able to store and stack that kind of permanent effect or if it would still be kind of a local battery that would run out of juice like the Bands. So instead, what if you Store the Mistborn's Luhel Bond Connection to Preservation directly in a Duralumin metalmind, then see about Compounding that?

Honestly I was thinking back to an old DnD setting (Arcanis) where the Dwarves were actually cursed Giants forbidden the afterlife, so they all carried Stones to catch their Souls when they died, to be stored in the giant crystal in the center of their city. Personally I think a means to convert other Investiture into Breaths would basically be the holy grail of Cosmere economics, so for Doylist reasons alone I assume it'll be both difficult and complex, and probably requiring several different magic systems working together. Or, you know, a Nightblood Sibling with a really specific Command. Maybe a Mask awakened with "Grant Breath" that would consume non-specific Investiture like Nightblood or a Larkin and metabolize them into more traditional Breaths. The only other way I could envision the Nalthian's manufacturing Breaths without off-world aid would be doing something funky with Endowment's Shardpool to convert Shard-Juice into Shard-Gas. They are already (presumably) using it for worldhopping at least, so there's interaction and experimentation happening.

To be fair that other story had a very practical enforcement of that care-giving: if the donor died the recipient lost the Boon, giving them a personal vested interest in their donor class. Endowment is very fundamentally a "No Strings Attached" intent so I dont think it would allow that level of lingering Connection. As a Side Note: I wonder if it's possible to make a device that would capture a person's Breath at the moment of their Death, so there wouldnt be as much loss over the generations. If you could make some sort of awakened device or [SA Magic] or something that would capture and hold the Breath's investiture in bulk storage (ideally in a form that strips the Identity of the Breath so anyone can recover it), you could give energy DnD style soulstones to wear that would catch the lost breaths from when non-drabs die before giving their stores away.

It's not weaker for a time, it a permanent stat reduction across the board. They'll live crappier lives, be more prone to disease, physical and mental illness, etc and most likely die much earlier. It'd be a magical version of living with extreme malnourishment in a polluted slum, with the quality of life and life expectancy reduced across the board. If it's going to be Mandatory for society, it'll have to be late in life or even at the extreme end of it regardless of a breath investiture strength reduction. They'd still accumulate quite a bit over generations, especially if they focus on achieving Heightening's over active (& costly) Awakening. Otherwise it'll force an extreme Drab class stratification, and some other group will be the repositories instead of the ones required to give them up. Which could still work if they did it like the better parts of Runelords and those that Received the Breaths would be expected to provide care for all those that donated their essence to strengthen their leader. If getting new Breaths meant you were agreeing to provide and care for the Drabs you were creating for their whole lives to ensure they didnt suffer from the lack, they'd be less likely to treat the drabs as disposable.

On the other hand, supposedly Singers generally feel emotions less strongly than Humans, as a stated reason the Emotionspren respond to Humans more than Singers. That could be an in-world misconception though. But it might tip their scales in that direction more. If you really wanted to freak them out with emotional Allomancy, drop them into a Coppercloud and suddenly cut them off from the Rhythms. That would probably distract a Singer at least as much as being suddenly granted tons of Breaths mid-combat (as a completely random made-up example).

We barely had confirmation that Adonalsium was a sapient being, and almost nothing beyond that, Im afraid. But this WOB does imply that having Four might be a more balanced experience than Two:

Hello! Ill start things off: Do you practice any form of Art?

I was actually surprised to learn that there was a time where air-power rifles were objectively better than their contemporary gunpowder rifles. Specifically there was a rapid-fire air rifle that the Lewis & Clark expedition carried for hunting. It had a muzzle velocity of 1000 fps and was accurate at 100 yards, compared to 50 yards of its contemporary muzzle loaders. It also held 20 lead rifle balls that could all be fired in 30 seconds (thanks to the air reservoir and a ball gravity feed system) compared to the single-shot reload time of the contemporary muzzle-loaders. The issue was that it needed a separate compressor rid to recharge the air tank stocks that powered it, which was a beast to do by hand. A Zephyr-Water reaction could do that by basic physics even if it's slow, and would never need to come in contact with Aluminum during the reaction. If it's fast enough the reaction might be able to replace gunpowder directly. https://lewis-clark.org/tools-and-techniques/weapons/lewiss-air-gun/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/lewis-and-clarks-girandoni-air-rifle/ Darts and harpoons would have all the same challenges with heavier ammunition. Zephyr-propelled Rockets, on the other hand....

Ah, sorry, yeah that makes sense. Oh, absolutely, my concern would only be with trying to manipulate the Aluminum/air mixture in an ongoing way or trying to create the pressure purely from Intent and Investiture with the Aluminum present and interacting (it should collapse such effects just as much as the Target's healing). But if you just create the Aether-air in a pressurized container and let physics take over, an aluminum shot airgun should be entirely possible. For Tress aethers the mechanism would basically just be a RL miner's Carbide/Acetylene lamp: a container with a bed of reactive solids that release a Gas, and a controlled water drip mechanism over it. Then you just nee a barrel and a feed tube&basin for the Aluminum shot/dust somewhere between the design of a normal sandblaster and a normal paintball gun.

The issue Im imagining is that Aluminum's interreference is a field effect per WOB, it's not line of sight or contact only. So while something like the vines of a Verdant Aether might have a better chance since it would be external/surface contacts only, Air or a fluid trying to move Aluminum around would need to form too much of a mixture that would saturate the whole thing with that field effect.

It would still take some of the gold reserves to push out the sand and repair any cornea scratches that might have happened (took me antibiotics and a few days with an eyepatch, as a kid). Sandblasting at significant speeds (and especially with some sort of sharp particulate like pumice or volcanic ash or Rosite Aether) could do enough actual flesh damage to require Healing the eyes or otherwise. Though Fire would probably be easier and more effective per BEU. The only caveat might be if aluminum dust collapses the zephyr Investiture effect and negates any air pressure/movement touching/driving the dust. If feels like it should disrupt that effect just as much as if you tried to mix aluminum dust in with White Sand and them manipulate it.

Did the video's you read mention Sanderson's Laws of Magic? That's a lot of it. EDIT: FWIW on the issue of Genericness, he's mentioned a few example choices he's made for that reason, if it helps. He thought elemental magic was over-done so he made the Surges more about fundamental Scientific (or Realmic) forces instead of classic primal Elements. He held off on Dragons forever because fantasy was saturated with them. Breaths were a twist on the classic concept of Soul Trading economics along with an editor who said his stories had been dreary and needed more color. He wrote the math-heavy Rithmastits just to write something that wasnt Dragonsteel. Allomancy came from a seed of just liking the idea of playing with opposing forces of different kinds along with a foggy drive once, and feruchemy came from wanting to Store Wakefulness when he was young and in school. EDIT2: So I was laughing over my young niece saying she was going to "Hit Pause on her book for dinner", and here I ask about the "video you read".

Yes, barring perhaps something specific about a Shard's Intent that might prevent it from carving off a chunk of their own power or granting it sapience (which we dont have an example of but is theoretically possible). Per WOB Seons and Skaze are essentially Spren from Sel made when D&D were Shattered, and Nightblood is considered a Robot Spren created using Endowments Power (with a Lot of Ruin in the mix for unexplained reasons that we think is from the Destroy part of his Command). That being said, Spren born to other worlds will most likely have different functional traits than Rosharan Spren since they wouldnt have the same Realmic Investiture water cycle. So for example another shards' spren made on Sel might manifest more like Seons or Skaze, while if that same Shard moved to and Invested in Roshar it could manifest more like Spren. In the same way that Magic Systems arise from interactions between the Shards and the Planet's population, etc and not purely the Shard.