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For what it's worth:

Investiture is a 3rd side of Reality/Physics alongside Mass and Energy. Literally all existence in the Cosmere is shaped and formed by the Spiritual Realm, with physical existence sort of emanating from it. As Magic it has to come from the Spiritual Realm of Infinity to the Physical Realm in one of the various magic ways, and then can exist inside pre-existing matter by Investing it at a quantum level, or it can Manifest as it's own as Matter (with power needs akin to making a Cheeseburger from Sunlight), where it becomes one of the three forms of matter. On Scadrial that means the Mists (gaseous), the Well (Liquid) or the Godmetals like Atium (solid, usually metal). It bleeds through the realms at the Well and the Pits to form that solid matter. In the case of Mistborn, they have a personal/internal magic Connection to Preservation that supplies power, and the burning Metals open the gate and "tune" the Investiture to whatever the magical effect is. Feruchemists instead save back a little of the Investiture that is supporting their basic existence and Life functions, and stores it in metal battery for later use. And while mundane metals burned by a Mistborn do a set of "normal" things based on their natural resonance with Investiture, if they instead Burn a charged feruchemical Metalmind/Battery it will act like a different metal and tune the Preservation Energy flowing from the Spiritual realm to match whatever was stored in that Battery (this is called Compounding).

"Extreme" is definitely not the impression I was trying to make, sorry. I was just trying to say I dont think it's a matter of anything fundamental about Bonds or the magic or Cosmere, just the choices and cultural hang-ups of the individuals involved. I do think that statistics say it's difficult to balance a life-long, marriage-level relationship between just two people, with modern divorce rates being what they are (in my country at least), so I imagine three people is at least as complicated and likely to be at least 1/3rd more. And that's likely to be among relatively similar people, not three very distinct (and often xenophobic) species and cultures of Roshar. I think we all agree that Bonding two of the same type of Spren is going to be more straightforward to balance (both Oaths and Personalities) as compared to bonding two type of Spren and joining two different Orders.

Yup. Other examples are the Lightweavers that get lightweaving much earlier than Soulcasting, and Elsecallers that get Soulcasting much earlier than their full Elsecalling abilities. By contrast Kaladin was technically using his surges even before he swore the 1st.

This was it, both part of the same thing. Taravangian kept it up later on as part of the Assassin in White terror he was trying to inspire.

Hemalurgy might do it, bridge the realmic blockage/break. But you'd need viable sources for the spikes, unless you figured out a way to Copy a Hemalurgic Spike (and you'd still need a patient Zero donor). Ditto Feruchemy/Medallion Tech. A Bondsmith could likely do it if they could get their Hands on something Connected to the whole race (which might be where BAM comes in). Various Dor Magics could almost certainly do it, since they all hold the potential of a specialized Programming Language for Reality. Any of the ones that seem to excel at self-augmentation should be able to reach it (Forgery, Dakhor, that weird alchemy that I dont think has a name). A Returned could likely Heal some amount of them by Sacrificing their Dviine Breath, but there's probably a scale limit to how much a single one could do. A skilled returned might be able to scoop up a bunch of Stormlight in the process (or otherwise piggy-back the Highstorm) to supplement the additional Investiture.

Sel Blasts them with a giant arcane Dor-Cannon, blowing up Alder- I mean, Scadrial and Roshar. Endowment Laughs from Nalthis.

Yes, that should work I think. If you can store a Sense granted by being personally Invested like the Life Sense of Heightening's, I think you'd be able to fill a Gold Metalmind and let the Stormlight you from the sickness and vulnerability of Storing it.

Story Time: In the mid-90's I played the crap out of Ultima7 and U7 Serpent Isle, a pair of old DOS game and some of the first and best Open World Games out there. But it was an old DOS game in the early days of Computers and it required a lot of work to run on modern machines. Enter the Exult Project, a fan-made wrapper program that takes the original source files and recompiles the game in a slightly updated engine for play on modern PC's. 10 Years ago there was a guy working on a port for Android but he didnt get it to a particularly strong release point before he stopped developing it. Turns out he stopped because he had a son, and he's picked it up a decade later because that son is interested in coding and they're working on it together. So Im Nostolgia-playing an isometric DOS game from the 90's and loving every minute of it.

I think that might depend on the story needs in many years when we get to the space age, so it's hard to say now. I tend to think it will be possible but will require more complex magic/Investiture processes (that might resemble Alchemy, to be honest) instead of the melting & mundane chemistry we use. At the extremes it might prove to only alloy with other Godmetals and not the mundane ones, or it might require some sort of medallion intermediate device to force them together magically. Or it might even require some magic sauce from one of the other worlds (Breaths, Gem Fabrials, etc).

Ettmetal is a "super-cesium" and acts like an Alkali metal (ie. the left-most column on the periodic table) like Sodium and Potassium. Chemically they tend to explode in contact with water, but also they tend to create non-metallic compounds (minerals, etc). When mixed with gold, for example, some alkali metals make a metallic compound but others make semiconductor materials.

It may not alloy well with a lot of the relevant metals, at least if it follows the normal patterns for Alkali metals.

It's not that sort of discrete chunk Collect-a-thon; there arent a pile of pieces to be found out in the world. The Power was scattered and it would take an over-riding and/or overwhelming Connection to Honor (the Power) to make it all pull back together, something that rises way above all the other Connections out there (The HonorBlades, all the Spren, the Radiants themselves, Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow, etc). Known ways to do this sort of thing: Use a Metric Butt-ton of Investiture aligned to the Shard to Ascend Take in the Shard's Shardpool like TLR did even Leras and Ati lived (may not be possible with Honor & the Highstorm). Manipulate Connections to rise to the top and become the Vessel Many theorize Dalinar will do this eventually, being Connected to Honor through Tanavast's Ghost, along with his access to the Spiritual Realm and Connection Manipulation powers. Use a Connection Device like the Ire built for Preservation Be physically/Cognitively a witness when it's dropped initially and sufficiently resonant with the Shard (as with Passionate Mr T.)

No Clue. For that matter, what Happens when it Taps a bunch of Cognitive Intelligence...? Deep, DEEP Can of Worms. And Godmetals are generally supposed to be OP in fun ways, being Pure Investiture.

Disclaimer that it's been a good lone while since I read the relevant books so I could be misremembering something, but: Ettmetal (or perhaps Primer Cubs that may be more complex fabrial-esk devices) will get Charged with an Allomantic or Feruchemical Power (not unlike Nicrosil Metalminds are supposed to, per WOB) adn from there it will emmit the Power as if it were a person. In the case of Allomancy it allows you to center the effects on the device (steel-pushes, speed bubbles) at the cost of slowly burning the Ettmetal away like allomantic metals do. With Feruchemy, it takes on the Power Charge, and from there allows the Object (like the Ship it's a part of) to tap and store an attribute like a Feruchemist would, which is how it will reduce the weight of a vehicle (but it doesnt Burn up, making it the better choice if you can manage it, IMO).

The Primer Cubes mostly replace the individual Ferring in the equation, so they wouldnt do anything a person couldnt do, like connect to multiple people at once. But you can indeed Charge Primer cubes with powers granted my medallions and/or Hemalurgy, as far as I can recall, and you can Compound with the right pair of them. I think it would only take the UnSealed Metalminds to have a bunch of people all contribute to a common Metalmind pool, because if I recall correctly the resulting Metalminds from a Medallion-user are naturally UnKeyed as well. But if Im wrong about that then you'd need some Identity Suppression to let a bunch of people share.

The description of Slivers is that they were expanded when they took up the shard (or a large chunk of it) and then Deflated after, leaving their spirited stretched and warped "like a deflated balloon". It's basically Savantism but to the entire Spiritweb rather than a single skewed Power. It's technically possible to bond multiple spren in the same way it's technically possible to have meaningful Polyamorous relationship: they are possible but are difficult, complicated, and require several people with with a less-than-common cultural outlook to find each other. And when (as is the case with Spren Bonds) you have wildly different fundamental Philosophies to rigidly adhere to (which may be incompatible) makes it even more difficult. Imagine having three (consenting) spouses that were each very old-school Orthodox religious, one for each of the three main Abrahamic Religions. Could you live you're life adhering to the strict/orthodox requirements of old-school Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all at once? There's a lot of overlap and academically they share common roots and shouldn't be incompatible, but in reality they have diverging interpretations of a lot of stuff. If there is so much debate over what is and is not Kosher, how difficult must it be to stay within the rails of both Kosher and Halal, as an example? Now throw Buddhism or some other religion without the common roots, and it could get even more tangled. I imagine Bonding multiple and Swearing the Oaths would be tough and vary depending on the Order. Truths are probably the most compatible since they could be personalized to jive with another order's theme. Ditto Skybreaker Oaths and Crusades, they can be just about anything so long as they are external, and a skybreaker that swears to another Order (like a Bondsmith) is likely to adopt more of that Orders outlook on the Ideals. Past those though, the Oaths start to set specific priorities that might not always be compatible, or at least require a lot of mental Gymnastics to reconcile (to all involved Spren's satisfaction, not just the Radiant's own). On the topic of Bonds, the only instance I can think of where Bonds are exclusive to each other is in the case of Feruchemcial Medallions where they struggle to grant more than two or three different metals at once (but can do it with the Bands). Somebody's old (but well reasoned) theory on those was the Connections were somewhat limited for the same reason and by the same mechanism that Mistborn and Feruchemists get One or All the powers but not random mixed bags of them. But at least in the case of Rosharan Bonds we've been told in WOB that you can Bond multiple Spren, we've seen folks bond multiple shardblades, and WOB says you could totally bond all (or at least half) the Honorblades to get access to all Surges (and wouldnt even need to be actively holding them all).

Several years ago (before I really got involved in the shard) I posted a reddit theory proposing that we could map the Shards to the same splits as the Allomantic Table and use that to predict the unknown Shards at the time. It was pretty popular on Reddit and Branderson stopped by the thread to RAFO it. Much more recently Dawnshard as all but confirmed the basic concept (if not my own actual placement guesses) and quite a few of my guesses at the unknown Shards came pretty close. https://www.reddit.com/r/Cosmere/comments/7hylwm/all_a_theory_on_shardic_intents/

Codex Alera by Jim Butcher is fantastic and similar in many respects. His Dresden Files is an absolute classic but it's a modern setting and is ongoing.

Looks like Sauron will have a persona that will eventually earn the names "Annatar ("Lord of Gifts"; anna = gift and tar = king, lord), Artano ("High-smith"), and Aulendil ("Friend of Aulë")" but all those seem more like earned titles more than actual names so who knows when they'll emerge.

Ill Play, though I havent watched the eps yet, so sorry if I miss something obvious and feel free to spoil anything. I think they are going to try for a twist with MeteorMan. It will end up being either Gandalf, Sauramon, or possibly Sauron himself (in one of his various corrupting guises?), but they'll stack all the evidence in the other direction to get the audience to sympathize with the "wrong" side. But I reality I think we all know who it will be...

Fwiw, somebody with the Surge of Transformation can manifest Beads with Investiture, as can some randomly talented spren. You could do some buddy roadtrip odyssey story about a radiant travelling with a spren or 3, with at least one of them able to manifest objects.

Nope, Tension. In terms of the Surges, Cohesion allows the softening and reshaping of solid object, while Tension is the one that stiffens things and makes flexible things rigid. To me it's kind of like how the Surge of Friction actually acts to reduce it and making things more sticky falls into Adhesion. Oh god I dont know. I think last he was asked he still hadnt fully decided if Shadesmar had it's own weird state of matter (some sort of pseudo-godmatter, I would think). On the other hand, it does have actual water humidity. On the other, other hand, a lot of what's there is the Cognitive Expression of stuff from the physical realm where everything is at least a little self-aware, so for all we know the landmass is actually the body of a giant spren (or something equally wild and/or Invested). All that being said, those two surges are specifically known to be easily defeated by even a little investiture in their target, so for practical purposes I doubt it.

Depends on the Spren The Honorspren had been trying to take over all of shadesmar and had been warring with several of the other races including the Inkspren. The Cryptics were being mostly isolationist, but they were the first to try to reBond Radiants in preparation. The Cultivationspren had been nearly wiped out by the Recreace and never reformed a Nation, but their leadership jump to Bonding as soon as they saw the Cryptics doing it. The Ashspren are still really mad about the recreance and blame organized worship of Honor, so they are either trying to stay out of it or actively supporting odium. Some amount of Highspren where Bonded to Skybreakers and thought they were working with Nale to prevent the Desolation. The rest are Isolationist in shadesmar, as far as we know. The Inkspren were warring with Honorspren, and also seem mostly unwillign to attempt a Bond again, but we dont really know what they are up to as a group. Lightspren were working heavily as merchants, traders, and sailors, and may or may not have any settlements of their own. But they seem to be the first to "forgive" the Singers, or at least a few have. Mistspren are the most willing to be Enlightened by Sja-Anat... Also, for what it's worth The Everstorm showed up in Shadesmar a lot earlier than when it manifested in the Physical realm, and it started spewing Voidspren, so there was a lot of upheaval there too.