BeskarKomrk

This is actually pretty similar to a theory I've been developing, which is related to the whole topic as well. I personally believe that the various "evil" things we've seen in various parts of the books (Stormform Parshendi, Thunderclasts, and Midnight Essences) are created by Odium somehow with a form based off of a normal creature of Roshar. In the case of the Parshendi, he directly changes their form and controls them. Thunderclasts seem very similar to chasmfiends (both are described with "arrow-like" heads), but we see a Thunderclast being created directly from the stones beneath the Purelake. In this case, I think it is only the design that is based off the chasmfiend, rather than Odium taking control of an actual chasmfiend and shape-changing it. The third section of the theory is that Midnight Essences are based off of whitespines (both are extremely agile predators that hunt primarily by smell and work in packs). I don't have a ton of proof other than "Hey, this seems to fit, sort of", and I'm still working on an underlying theory component (which creatures, how, why, etc), but I figured I throw it out there and see what people think. My first guess at the rationale behind this is that Odium likes to take things that somebody else made and make "corrupted" versions of them somehow, because he hates people and all that. Thus, the Parshendi bond with the voidspren is like a corrupted version of the Nahel bond, and the thunderclasts/Midnight Essences are like corrupted versions of normal creatures. This could possibly tie into the fact that chasmfiends have a symbiotic relationship with spren as well, which may be how Odium chooses the creatures to corrupt. I don't believe we have any information either way on whitespines, which makes it hard to verify that part of theory. But I will be looking out in future books for more evil creatures and whether they correspond to regular creatures in some way. My current candidates for Odium to corrupt include skyeels and Ryshadium (as both have a spren bond at some level). These creatures could also be related to the Ten Deaths, as someone pointed out earlier.

Sazed also doesn't necessarily mean the same thing when he says "strength" as Brandon does, or as we do. So the statements aren't necessarily contradictory.

@PantsForSquares @Eki It's been a little while since I took Classical Mechanics (about 4-5 years), but from what I remember, I agree with Eki. Momentum is strictly conserved in any kind of collision (given a certain reference frame) if you take into account all the particles involved in the collision. Energy is always conserved overall, but kinetic energy is only conserved in perfectly elastic collisions. In all other types of collisions, the "lost" kinetic energy is transformed into heat/sound. The problem I'm having thinking about this now is that this isn't really even a "collision", per se. Wax is doing this all by himself. Even thinking about this a few days ago, I set up the momentum conservation equation as m1*v1 = m2*v2. But where does the mass go? Where do things stored in metalminds live? I would assume that the attributes stored in a metalmind have to have some representation in either the Cognitive or the Spiritual Realm (since it's obviously not in the Physical Realm; Wax's metalmind doesn't get heavier when he stores weight in it). So could there be some sort of cross-Realm conservation law that governs these interactions?

All of your examples have one trait in common that allows them to persist after death: they are Invested. This does not necessarily apply to Ashravan (back to the original topci). I see no evidence that he is Invested, and thus he may not stick around all that long after dying. As for the Nalthians who Return, they would likely stick around a little longer due to their Breath giving them a little extra Innate Investiture. I'm not sure how this would apply to Drabs, but I can't find any WoB specifically asking about Drabs Returning. This WoB does suggest a Lifeless could Return though, so I don't see why a Drab couldn't Return. Unrelated but now I'm curious as to what happens to the Breath(s) that a person had before they died if they choose to Return. It doesn't seem like Returned have access to those Breaths, but we don't have specific information either way.

A Sliver is someone who once held a large amount of power but no longer does. Tanavast, after holding Honor and then it being Splintered, would definitely be a Sliver. It seems like you're saying that because it's only his Cognitive Shadow, he no longer qualifies as a Sliver. However, I think that the Cognitive aspect of him would still have a lot of the knowledge/residue of his time as a Shard, and therefore would be referred to as a Sliver. Secret History spoilers: Additionally, according to the Coppermind, the Stormfather self-identified as a Sliver. I don't remember when this happened (and it isn't cited), but I'm guessing it's at the end of WoR. So I would say, based on those, that Tanavast's Shadow was definitely a Sliver, and therefore the Stormfather is as well. He is both a Splinter and a Sliver. On another note, I'm not sure why you think that Odium's "special number" is nine, but I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I dunno, I think your reasoning is solid, but I just don't think that twist would work on a meta level. We've already had one twist that the Listeners were/are the Voidbringers. I feel like it would be super underwhelming to redo the same plot.

Here's an annotation for The Alloy of Law that has some relevant information: http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-the-alloy-of-law-chapter-six/ So he can't be bulletproof and he can't store all of his weight. Where exactly the cutoff is with how much weight he can store, we don't really know. But it seems likely he couldn't make himself float just with Feruchemical Iron. I also don't have the book with me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Wax makes a comment at some point that his velocity does change when he changes his weight mid-flight. His momentum is the thing that stays constant. Not sure what this means for energy conservation off the top of my head, I'll have to get back to you on that. Edit: I haven't done any consideration of air resistance, but I don't think it's possible for energy to be conserved along with momentum.

It definitely seems like it's related to Awakening, as he also later offers to take away some of Denth's memories and Vasher specifically says "I know the Command".

This is all backwards. Everybody in Hallandren believes that the previous God Kings sacrificed themselves to prevent disasters from ruining the kingdom. Bluefingers hints to Siri that something more is going on, and Siri investigates on her own. She finds that all the previous God Kings had "sacrificed themselves" very shortly after having children, leading her to believe that the priests were forcing the God Kings to die and pass on their Breaths. During the climax of the novel, she expressed this belief to one of the priests (Treledees, I think) and he looks completely shocked by this conclusion. He is the one who tells her that the God Kings retire to an island after they find a new Returned child, and he seems (to me) to be telling the truth in that moment. The priests honestly worship Susebron as God, and Treledees seems to find the idea of killing him extremely abhorrent. What makes you think that he is lying about the retirement thing? At the point when they have this discussion, the revolution has already started and their lives are in danger. I don't think he would lie just to make Siri feel better. Meanwhile, everything Bluefingers did or said to Siri was intended to manipulate her towards the goal of starting a war. How did he become a reliable source for any of these speculations? From Warbreaker Chapter 55: And even more convincing, the annotation:

That's fair, I forgot about M:SH. That does imply to me that Threnody and Scadrial are close, but it doesn't really address whether Sel is close by or not. Also, dwarf galaxies can be fairly large (dwarf is a description of the # of stars, not the radius of the galaxy), potentially even thousands of light years across, at least from my vague knowledge and a few minutes of research on wikipedia. Constellations would definitely look different to people on other ends of those distances, so having similar constellations does imply that they're maybe within 50-100 light years of each other (again based on a quick google search). I also never thought about whether they would be far enough apart that they would see different colors of stars based on redshift until now, but as I was thinking about it I realized that we don't even have a way of confirming that the Cosmere universe is expanding like ours (and therefore that stars would even have redshift related to their distance).

I don't think there's been an implication that Sel is close to Threnody/Scadrial. We've seen that Roshar should be relatively close by, based on the star pattern that can be seen from all three.

I do want to point out that Hoid was attempting to become an Elantrian a long time before we see him on Nalthis, so he may not have had immortality through Breath at that point (or even known it was possible). We don't really know how long the magic system on Nalthis has existed.

Okay, I just had a flash of an idea. We don't know the spren involved in making most of the forms, as far as I know (other than stormform and that they think creationspren give artform). But we know there would need to be spren around for the newborns to bond to if they were going to be anything other than slaveform. Here's a question for you that I will shortly answer in the form of a theory. Are there spren that would be attracted to something being born, making it easy for the newborn to find one to bind? I think it's reasonable to suggest that this would be true of lifespren. So here's the theory: Listeners transform into either dullform or mateform by bonding with a lifespren. Lifespren are always present at a birth, so newborn Listeners bond them and begin life in that form. I think dullform is more likely, personally, but I can't think of a good reason for that at the moment. I also believe that the transformations require Investiture (e.g. Stormlight), which is why they transform out in a highstorm. We can't be sure without a WoB or a scene, but I theorize that Listeners give birth during highstorms or around infused gemstones to provide the necessary Investiture for the baby to bond a lifespren. Parshmen would not have access to these sources of Investiture and thus would have babies in slaveform. Thoughts? Also @hwiles I think you mean spren are Splinters, not Slivers

Yeah, definitely not before Vo. I'm not aware of any solid information about when how long before the Manywar Vo lived, but I definitely don't think it was over a thousand years. The country founded by Vo's crew (Hanald) was one of the major participants in the Manywar, with Vo's line of succession still intact. I don't think that sort of political stability is likely.

Yeah, Vasher would need to be thousands of years old to have been there before the Recreance, which seems very unlikely. We know that Warbreaker takes place after The Hero of Ages and that the Manywar was ~300 years before Warbreaker. We also know that WoR is around 300-340 years after HoA, so at most the Manywar would have been 600ish years before WoR. If Vasher had been on Roshar before the Recreance, he would have had to live over a thousand years before the Manywar. I suppose this isn't impossible given that he's immortal (as long as he gets Breaths), but nothing in the text suggests to me that he was alive for that long before the Manywar. So I agree it's very unlikely that Vasher was on Roshar before the Recreance.

I don't think they would've given up without trying it, even if they thought it wasn't going to work. This is the Emperor; they're going to try everything they can to save him.

I have always interpreted the quote that @Yata cited as meaning that the Hierocracy ended five to six hundred years ago, with the Recreance being long before that. There's another WoB where he refers to the Recreance and "ancient history" whereas the Hierocracy is "recent history". This, combined with the Letter from the WoR epigraphs, suggests to me that the Recreance was 2000+ years ago. See here for more discussion:

I like this theory a lot, and I'll have to give some thought to how it might tie into another theory I have. I do have a few other comments though. Are you suggesting that the third Bondsmith in the past (who was presumably non-Parshendi) was also bonded to Moelach? Or are you theorizing that this is a new development with Eshonai? I don't entirely agree with the premise that this section of the Diagram is about the Unmade, as he specifically ends Paragraph 15 by saying the Unmade are a distraction and he needs to discuss kingship.

We discussed this a bit in another thread here: Based on those WoBs that you mentioned, as well as the Letter in the WoR epigraphs, I believe the Recreance was at least 2000 years ago, probably a little more than that.

Emperor's Soul is after Elantris, but not too long after. It is before Mistborn. Source

I think what Argel said covers a lot of it. We've never seen a Herald using an Honorblade, so we don't know that they would work exactly the same way for them. Here's one specific instance, regarding the ten heartbeat point: source It seems likely that it doesn't actually require ten heartbeats to summon an Honorblade, but because Szeth believes that to be true, the blade doesn't appear until then. I also wanted to add that we don't know what other powers the Heralds had. The Honorblades granted Surgebinding to them, but they may have had access to other magic before that. source

Who said Vasher is working with Khriss? I said Nazh is working for Khriss. Vasher and Nazh are two different people; Vasher uses the name Zahel on Roshar. As far as I'm aware, nobody has ever suggested Vasher is working with Khriss (though it's kind of interesting now that you mention it).

We know that Nazh is working for Khriss from various WoB and, more importantly, Mistborn: Secret History. source We know from this quote that Baxil's Mistress is specifically destroying statues of Shalash, at multiple points in time. Kind of an odd thing for Khriss to do. There's also a Death Rattle that suggests that Shalash (Jezrien's daughter per WoB) is destroying representations of herself. See this post also:

The interview is after WoK came out though, and it's supposed to be a hint to keep fans busy while waiting for book 2. He says that an important discovery was made, not will be made. Seems to me like that should be an interlude from WoK.

@Yata it was on reddit. Sorry I forgot to mention that before.