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If possible I think it's in the Tension side of the pairing, since that makes things more solid vs less. It would be interesting if it could polymerize water, or even freeze it, to achieve a solidification.

Honestly Im not even sure that's would be an issue, at least for normal breaths. If it's now just a natural part of the Cosmere like gravity, then I think the Investiture flows directly from the actually Infinite Spiritual Realm 1/16th so it doesnt take any intervention on Endowments part (beyond living on the planet) or any of her resources. The Returned, on the other hand, are a conscious Slivering and more direct Endowment of her Power so if somehow that process where coopted I think you could probably over-populate Returned to eventually Shatter her (in the Death by 1000 Cuts version of Shattering).

I doubt they'd have been watching the state of the Shard, have an outpost on the edge of Scadrial, and a customized device to Connect them to the the local Shard but Not look into the local expression of Investiture. Especially one with as much potential as the Metallic Arts seems to even on the surface, with Invested metals and direct Spiritweb manipulation that anyone can use (not just the locals).

If she wanted, and she's apparently a little erratic overall. But its also not a practical concern: This worries me somewhat because of the following observation. Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second). Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath. Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing. This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing. I can see the following possible explanations to this: Endowment can give Breath to many more people than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit). Thoughts? Brandon Sanderson Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy. Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born. uchoo786 So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm? Brandon Sanderson The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak. General Reddit 2015 (Dec. 14, 2015)

Generally no, the Magic becomes part of the Physics of the cosmere so its a lot easier to just smite them:

One thing that I suspect would be a lot harder or even impossible is to replace hemalurgy with it entirely, since hemalurgy is also providing a realmic bridge to access the spiritweb that metalminds may not always be able to replicate.

Feasible I think, though I tend to think it will be different enough that it wont replicate Ettmetal from a Doyist standpoint. If a Bondsmith can move Connections enough to make the ground soak up Stormlight as if it were part of a bonded Radiant, I think it's entire within reason for the touch-based Connection of a Metalmind (Confirmed in WOB to be similar to the weak Bond of Honorblades) to be strengthen enough to work at greater than normal distances and ranges. Frankly Im anticipating this being what a Bondsmiths theoretical Spiritual Tension surge will do, and we'll see them able to make Squires operate at greater distances, touch Fabrials operate at range, etc. Within the context of the metallic arts I think it reasonable to Burn metals at touch or Distance since Leeching does this more or less, and accessing metalminds at a distance, or massive Shared metalminds. Since we're talking about Feruchemically manipulated Connection, you'd still need that metalmind to play by the original rules I think, to Connect you to the bigger thing(s), but every scaridan starfleet officer getting a small badge that Connects them to complicated Life Support systems (combining air, food, waste, heat, etc) makes a lot of sense.

Not quite, only SOME things can be fueled by any form of Investiture, and so far that list is actually pretty short (Nightblood, Larkin, White Sand charging (Kinetic only) and feeding a Divine Breath). There is nothing magical about Scadrian metal and Mistborn can use any mundane metal (of the correct alloys) to access their Preservation Investiture. For the rest that it's that different types of Investiture can in theory and with a varying amount of work be Converted, is "usually not that easy to do) and figuring out those secrets seems to be the current goal of some of the Worldhopping interests. For example, WOB says the easiest way to Awaken using Stormlight would to first convert it to Breaths, and that Vasher has been trying but hasnt figured out how . That being said, the fandom has worked out several ways that should work to get infinite Investiture, and a few more that are more debatable (but I like them). "Breaths are Easy" per WOB, and I think it's because they take on so much of their Command and target (Identity, etc) that I think you could just Command them to refill a Gem/Metalmind/etc and it would convert (at the high cost of one relatively rare pseudo-Soul). WOB says Stormlight is "fairly easy" but I dont know of any theories more specific than "some Fabrial Tech and Spren shenanigans" and Spren in particular are very difficult to move off-world because their essence is tied to the system and Shards they come from. Sel is very specifically Location locked so even magical effects from there stops working with distance, but Connection umbilical's through the Spiritual Realm should work by WOB and we think we've seen this with the Ire folks. I personally think you could take a Nathian that was ignorant of what a Breath was, talk them through the gifting Command, and then while they are still feeling terrible from the Investiture loss, heal them with ReGrowth or Gold Feruchemy to rebuild/restore their Breath. Not a particularly happy (or moral, probably) method, but I think it would work realmically.

Maybe? I thought there was one that confirmed he was hiding them inside himself to prevent their detection by Lifesense but didnt recall it actually addressing self-augmentation at all. There's another that talks about how Self-Augmentation/Healing/etc can be difficult to impossible because of the fundamental Gifting nature of "Endowment".

Nice! That did not end how I expected, but I like it.

The different Orders will interpret even the First Oath differently, and I think the one we got in WoK is more the Windrunner and/or Bondsmith interpretations. And honestly it seems like the Skybreaker's Oaths are some of the most versatile short of Truths. According to WOB and Ishar, Nale is supernaturally crazy with brief supernatural windows sanity if he's near a Radiant that swears an Ideal. He's also been overly influenced by the Highspren which are "wacky"...

Maybe? I thought there was one that confirmed he was hiding them inside himself to prevent their detection by Lifesense but didnt recall it actually addressing self-augmentation at all. There's another that talks about how Self-Augmentation/Healing/etc can be difficult to impossible because of the fundamental Gifting nature of "Endowment".

There isnt a specific WOB about the scene with the little girl, but it's a topic that's come up several times and that was the consensus answer, made significantly stronger when it was shown that Hoid stores memory in Breath. There was a WOB somewhere (Im struggling to find it today) about Vasher storing his breaths in his own flesh to hide them from Lifesense.

Humbug. Ill be over here in my comfort zone, thank you very much!

The little girl (with vasher's guidance) "encoded" the memory in the Investiture of the Breath as it went into the object, more or less like a temporary Coppermind. But when she took it back she just drained the raw Investiture back into herself where its busy making her a non-Drab instead of storing a memory. Vasher (and presumably Hoid) knows advanced techniques that let them Invest breaths into their own bodies, so my guess is that Hoid is doing that to more specific effect. But he has lots of unexplained abilites so we cant really say what went into his Memory Storage trick (other than something like it is apparently within reach of the Heralds).

Scadrian, because I can make reasonable guesses at what they'd be made from (and it's likely to be Wheat). Rosharan food could be anything....

The primary reason for the Change is that he felt it didnt make sense for only Mistborn to be able to burn it. Which implies that pure Atium would be usable by anyone, whatever it's pure allomantic effect would be. And we know the Ire at least was actively studying Scadrian Investiture so they'd have the means, motive, and opportunity to horde some.

They are at least involved in the Radiants use of surges, or some of them. We've seen Syl use Adhesion (and maybe Gravitation, or she might just ignore it), WOB says both the radiant and the spren would need to understand the material to Soulcast it, and we've seen Lightweaving get attached to a radiant's Cryptic. So in the case of Cohesion it's possible the spren can use it, or at least help aim and/or focus the Surge somewhat.

I wouldnt discount it entirely, but it might take advanced/computer equivalent fabrial tech. Or perhaps there's a way to get the Spren to help; Inkspren can shrink, perhaps Peakspren or Lightspren can too, and would be able to focus the power at molecular levels?

Yup. Alkali and Alkaline are not the same thing, but Alkaline and Alkaline Earth Metals are indeed the same.

Alkali is the first group on the periodic table with sodium, etc. Alkaline are different, they are the second group that contains Calcium and magnesium.

It's confirmed to be in the alkali group and behave similarly, but it is not literally sodium or anything, it's a magical alkali metal with similar properties.

Perfect Gemstones have to be perfect in the sense of being perfectly pure and also structurally perfect in terms of the crystal alignment. They shortcut the purity because Gemhearts are pure, but not guaranteed to be structurally pure. It's possible to make gems (with Science) but the crystal grain structure is fundamentally different (spherical/curved grain instead of linear) and are hard to keep pure. With surges, I think it could be entirely plausible for Cohesion to reshape them enough to fix the crystalline imperfections. This assumes that Cohesion can manipulate things at a microscopic level (and doesnt require the radiant to manipulate it with their hands, for example) and that whatever prevents Transformation from affecting Gems will not block other surges. But there's been no realmic explanation for why gems are off the soulcasting table so we cant say how far that might extend.

Precisely what I was thinking. Though Im not clear on whether the black and white Mists have merged in the modern era, so it might still take the two different "pure" tones of Preservation and Ruin instead of what I think would be the equivalent of the Hybrid tones. Which brings us to the other gaseous Investiture: Breaths. They can generally stick to and Invest any object so they dont really need any special properties of Gems (or metal for that matter) to house Breath. But on the other hand Breath innately doesnt seem to play well with minerals, so maybe the polestone Gems would be easier to Invest than your average rock?

It's possible in theory but I dont think it would be as simple as leaving the Gem out in the Mists. I think you'd need something additional to actually suck it into the gem, something Stormlight (or at least the Highstorm) seems to do naturally but the Lifelight and Voidlight dont. Lifelight in particular is present as a green Mist in the Nightwatcher's valley, but even though it is regularly visited there is no mention of stories (you'd expect Navani and Jasnah to seek out) of people accidentally filling their pocket change with a strangely behaving non-Storm Light.