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Good Rating? Reasonable length? It's up to you entirely, Im just curious what you'd do with the (admittedly vague) idea.

Classic Time Travel Alternate Timeline story, but what changed was that a time traveler introduced a Song that changed society in sweeping and unexpected ways (instead of a butterfly being stepped on or whatever). Your call which song would have that power...

I think the Fused get the advantage of a Gemheart to interface with the Spiritual Realm in fun overt ways. Honor was trying to empower some Humans that didnt have that to act as a Bridge, nor the Diseases of modern(?) Ashyn, or whatever they used on Ashyn pre-Migration (which they might have been forced to leave some critical access means behind), so he created a Medallion-esk object that would Bond with Contact. And in his original design, he'd expected to personally be the gatekeeper of Investiture for them and a constant restraint on their power and use.

It's generally preferred here for people to just do one big post responding to several folks instead of multiple posts back-to-back. Nope, Age and Maturity aren't separate things, and WOB states you could Compound age enough to revert to their childhood.

This question has been on my mind too, but it's complicated by the recent Atium retcon. Now what we've seen as naturally occurring Atium is actually an Atium/Electrum Alloy and it's THAT metal alloy that affects Age. It's become reasonably accepted that Atium's Allomantic effect is to invert the Power of the alloyed metal along the Internal/External axis, but I havent seen much conversation about what would be happening on the Feruchemy side. So the real question is what is the connection between Age and Determination?

There's a big infused diamond at the base/point of the inverted Pyramid. Which as I type this, it might be interesting on it's own, since the diamond is described as Infused but it's not exposed to the sky & Highstorm.

<insert Adele meme here> Hello FROM THE OTHER SIIIIIDE! (aka. Shadesmar?) Welcome Poi! What's your favorite Sanderson work so far?

The Palenauem is Square shaped and 57 levels tall/deep; Urithiru's outer tiers are Circular, with ten tiers of 18 floors each makign 180 floors total. They also extend pretty deep into the ground where it is, so I really think Urithiru was simply birthed there originally and has never moved. But it does raise an interesting point as to the actual purpose of the Palanaeum and (Im assuming) Diamond-based Fabrial at it's bottom...

Im not sure they would, just because there is so much different scaling of social culture. The smallest denomination is a diamond chip. The largest is an Emerald Broam, which is worth 1000 Diamond chips. But the low end is literally the smallest anything a person can buy (at least with actual spheres), while 1000 of those is a significant sum by the scales of the ruling cast and can apparently support an entire prince's warcamp for at least some amount of time. I suppose that's also just the Pre-Desolation value of them on the Shattered Plains, while the local inflation in other parts of roshar would probably skew them pretty far.

From what I can find there is no consensus answer. Top two thematic options are The Dark One himself, or the Dragon Reborn. (I hate to link a Fandom wiki, but it was the only one I found). https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_of_Chaos_(concept)

There are several instances where high enough investitures grant seem to grant some sort of Intuition, but other than hitting a Seeing the Stars spiritual moment I dont know if it's a general trait of Investitures regardless of flavor. Downside: Potentially locked in the Invested System (but this can apparently be circumvented in several ways).

Devils Advocate statement on this, but I think why he said "Related" can give a lot of wriggle room in that context is because it can mean a lot of things besides blood relation, which I think is why he said the relationship is not as close as the questioner might have thought. And from this WOB, I dont think Kaladin will have a secret Herald ancestor. That doesnt prevent her from being a member of the same disgraced/exiled/Down-on-luck noble family as Navani that the Alethi conquered.

Presumably yes. Per WOB they can Retire, so unless that process is prohibitively long or difficult, they could probably run off and let Odium (and/or Whomever was helping) Shatter and disperse the Shardic power (or stuff it in Shadesmar, etc). What form that might leave then in by default is still up in the air.

Adding to the Obsidian is a type of Glass, there's a YouTuber that tried to cast an obsidian blade (long dagger or short sword) and found that re-heating the obsidian more than once or twice during the casting process removed a lot of the impurities and left a mostly clear glass. So even if it started as natural Obsidian (likely since they had so much volcanic activity in the area) it might have become indistinguishable by the end of the manufacturing process.

Yup, I think it's likely, but it might take a weird metal and Intent. The infection is providing the Bridge though the Physical World, so I think the Hemalurgy could provide the same and lock it in place, much like how it could take the fake spiritweb of a Forged allomancer and lock it in place. I think it would be similar but simpler than using Hemalurgy to Spike an Aviar's power. The infection is not sapient enough to make any choices about the Bond they have with the person. But with an Aviar you could theoretically spike the Person, the Bird, or the Worm in the bird in an attempt to steal the Power, with likely with wildly different metals and Mental Images involved.

Some things like this will inevitably become more viable as the Cosmere moves into the Space era when Crossover between magic systems would be more Likely by simple numbers. WOB says stamping metals to a different one is possible but it would unravel when the stamp is damaged and so not work great for allomancy (as the example use in that WOB). But Forgery, much like the Commands of Awakening, are all about how you invasion the History of the Object. You'd have to reach all the way back to star creation to change the atoms of a lump of metal, but it's a lot easier to re-write a ring to have been crafted (or even just purchased) with Silver instead of Copper, for example. Personally, I think the true power of this combo goes in the other direction: Soulcasting makes permanent changed to an object or person from the spiritweb up, but the Radiant and Spren both have to do understand, envision and hold all the details in their minds to pull off anything complex, and the further from the target's current self-Image the harder it is to make the Change. Forgery is temporary, but it's a Far more complex Language for making alterations to a Spiritweb. So you Forge a person and then use Soulcasting to make it permanent by telling the object to just "Be This Now" and providing the Investiture to make the change stick.

The actual Shards are literally 1/16th of all creation in the Cosmere. Matter, Energy, and Investiture are all different states of the same thing, and in the Cosmere it all emanates from the Spiritual Realm where it's only Investiture and Space/Time barely exist and mostly dont matter. So the infinite Shard is literally 1/16th of everything that is. The Vessels of those shards (also called Shards, kinda like The Crown can be the object, the office, or the person) are the inheritors and masters of their 16th of Everything, but while they are wildly expanded they are still themselves Finite, so they cannot access and control all of their 1/16th at a time, limited mostly by their perception as far as I can tell. Slivers are Super-Savants, former vessels (or others) who have held so much of a Shards Power that it permanently changed their Spiritweb (per WOB it's like a deflated balloon that's been stretched out). Splinters are pieces of a Shard that were carved off for some reason. It can be a granted chunk of power like the Divine Breaths or Honorblades, or a chunk that has gained Sentience like a Spren or Seon. Dawnshards are something weird that predate the Shattering, and I think are Splinters that Adonalsium created to empower someone or something. But semantically they are like the shards where the term refers to both the ball of Power and the person that holds it. The one we've seen was Invested in a separate physical mural in a way that closely resembled a Breath, but didnt have a native physical form.

This one?

Welcome to the Shard! Tell us a little about yourself: Who's your favorite Character so far? I'm guessing the lack of published works has them nervous about getting that sweet, sweet SanderFix. Should we tell them about the Arcanum rabbit-hole?

We know theirs is (very specifically) a supernatural thing and not a normal mental illness. It's related to their ongoing natures as Cognitive Shadows. Hoid implies that steps like storing their Memories externally could help. I suspect there other things that could help too, and Feruchemy excels at personal/internal manipulation so it's likely a good bet. Vasher has not had the opportunity to complete his Purpose for Returning, so I doubt it's (just) about healing the Heralds, but could be about a related but more pivotal specific moment.

Devil's Advocate Statement: There is a very real (but unconfirmed) possibility that Aluminum still can't be Invested even when used for Metalminds and Hemalurgy. WOB says Aluminum Compounding (and presumably Tapping) wont give you much, and that burning Aluminum Metalminds just destroys the metal without effect. But that just means Feruchemy might not actually Increase your Identity, it still could be possible that increasing Identity would have some of the effects you describe.

For what its worth, it's in-world debatable whether the Planet (or any inanimate physical object) can feasibly serve as a Vessel in the first place. But if a Shard can make a new planet whole and move them around in their solar systems and whatnot, I think a full relocation would be possible, if absurdly disruptive in unfathomable realmic ways.

No, they are different Homelands to different people in the Minds of those people, so the boundaries are metaphysically relevant (and currently mutually exclusive for the most part). But (and this part is more speculation) if the whole planet became more unified and the people intermixed, they might see themselves as a Single people and see more cross-over in the Dor magics and users. In the Space era where there are whole other worlds for them to Unite against, I think it might become more likely.

To take up a shard you need to have a massive, overriding Connection to it, which is a Spiritual Realm thing. Shoving it all in the Cognitive is closer to shoving a bunch of Investiture into the Well or in a godmetal, it takes some more specific form and becomes more limited by doing so. In the case of the Dor it became a massive Plasma storm that you have to be able to survive and navigate to Worldhop there. And because it's in the Location-Matters Cognitive Realm, it Connected to a bunch of different Lands/Nations which will make it very hard to Connect to it all (which as far as we can tell would be required to UnShatter the two Shards). If someone were to actually Conquer the whole World of Sel though, and bring it under one Nation in the minds of the population....

Extremely so, and to me (not having read the comics) it felt out of tone with the rest of the series. Everything was fairly high concept, cerebral, and visually Beautiful...except for that one sharp detour into self-mutilation and extreme graphic gore. Live Action? "Real"? This Side of the Uncanny Valley?