AlluminumMisting

I saw several reading order suggestions, but none of them appealed to me. They were based mostly on the order of publication and personal preference, with little regard to how the stories work together. So I made one of my own. I attach the order in form of an image. I would love to transcribe it but it is not very linear, so it would be difficult. I apologize for poor quality of some pictures, I am hopelessly unable to draw so I did my best with tracing and collaging pictures from the internet. Now explanation (will avoid referencing specific plot events, as a reading order is mainly for those who have not read the books yet): The stories are designed, on purpose, to work on their own, so making a strict, linear order is really not in place. Some of the stories, however, work better after having read others first. I put Warbreaker before Stormlight Archives for two reasons. One is that a character from Warbreaker appears in Words of Radiance. But the more important reason is that Warbreker provides the backstory for something else that appears near the end of Words of Radiance. I originally wanted to put Warbreaker between the two Stormlight books, but then I thought it would work better this way. I put Stormlight Archives before mostly everything because they reveal so much more about the common universe than any other series does. Many people read some of the books without even realising they are supposed to be set in one universe. Stormlight makes some very unsubtle references to the shards and the Cosmere and hopefully will get the people on the right track. It also focuses on Hoid's story more than any other series so far, so it will help people notice his importance and make it easier to spot his near-cameo appearances elsewhere. I put Emperor's Soul after Elantris even though there is no connection between them aside from being set in the same world. This is for minor reasons. Emperor's Soul contains some references and nods to Elantris and I think it feels better if the reader understands them. Questions? Ideas?

Thanks!

He is a Returned, yet he walked around as a Drab on several occasions, near the end he used the "my breath to yours" command on Denth, so there is no possibility he was merely "masking" his Breath or something - he certainly managed to live without one. How is it possible? The Returned are supposed to die the moment they release their Breath and it went that way with Lightsong, who used the exact same command.

This is not really a theory. Just some thoughts. I'll start with something that some may consider off-topic, or probably it is something painfully obvious and well-known, but I can't help but include it here. According to this (or probably also some text-based sources but I honestly don't recall seeing this bit anywhere else) Atium alloys have mental and temporal effects while lerasium alloys have enhancement and physical effect. Now, my point is: I have been a little bothered when the perfect binary pattern (physical-mental, inner-outer, pull-push +2-3 "noble" metals that were supposedly different) was kind of broken when the metals were split into four arbitrary groups. However, if there is some connection between the mental and temporal metals and enhancement and physical metals, we get back to binary tree again by splitting them into "atium family" and "lerasium family" and then into "common metals" and "rare metals" to get the same 4 groups that are suddenly not arbitrary at all! Now to the specific god metals: Atium I see frequent theories about its connection to electrum, even some stating it is actually its alloy or otherwise related. For a while I also thought it, but now I don't. Yes, the gold-malatium atium-electrum pattern is sure interesting, but I don't think two metals is enough to set a pattern. The pattern has 2 issues: How would this pattern extend to other metals? In order not to go too far, let's take another temporal metal - cadmium. What would its reverse effect be? Slowing time instead of speeding it up? That's bendalloy. Speed it up for everyone else instead? That's again bendalloy, just from a different frame of reference. (On a side note, would bronze let me see what metals I am burning? That's almost as beautifully useless as aluminum!) Referring to the same picture again, Atium seems to have an additional effect to seeing the future, that is, enhancing mind. This fits Atium's connection to mental and temporal metals I talked about earlier and also sets it apart from electrum. To sum up: Atium is a temporal AND mental metal. Its similarity to electrum seems to be just a jolly coincidence. I don't dare guess what the actual atium-electrum alloy would be like, but probably something other than a direct opposite as is case with gold and malatium. Also note it is related to the Ruin and is the hemallurgic wild card (hemallurgy is of Ruin, according to Sazed in HoA). I am pointing this out because I will refer to it later. Lerasium By giving people incredible power, lerasium clearly identifies itself as an enhancement metal. The connection to physical metals is, unfortunately, not as clear as atium's to mental ones. I don't really want to theorize on this because I don't have anything I could base the theories on. Maybe it has some physical effects on body we don't know about. By turning anyone into a full mistborn, lerasium (related to Preservation) is an allomatic (which is of Preservation) wild card. Harmonium Here my frustration partially returns: THREE metals! Not a power of two! And what groups will it belong to? All four are taken! Oh well... I'll return to this later. For now: feruchemy is, according to Sazed "the power of balance". Harmony is not quite balance, but they are synonymous enough for me to say it will be the feruchemy wild card. What exactly would it do? Universal storage would be in line with hemallurgy and atium, but it would be boring. Maybe it could store feruchemy itself, so perhaps it could be used to bestow one's feruchemy to someone else (it would need to be an exception to the general rule that one can only use their own metalminds, but then, everyone can burn lerasium also). Nothing lost, nothing gained, just transferred. Now for the patterns: this is very long shot, and I myself don't believe it at all, it's just a silly little thought: there would be a fourth god metal, and harmonium would govern the "rare metals" and the other one the "common metals", or the other way around. Thus, each of the familiar four groups would be an intersection of two god metals. Alternatively, they could be split into "those that govern other metals" and "those that don't". Another alternative: hamonium would be the "ultimate all-ruler" and the fourth one would govern none, giving a weaker pattern, but still a pattern. I am confused about what wild card would this metal be. It would need to be one, though. My thoughts were: there are three things hemallurgy can steal: allomancy, feruchemy and basic attributes. So this metal would be related to basic attributes? I have honestly no idea how it could work, a powerful vitamin for everyone to eat? Better abandon this train of thought, I think.

Thank you. So, basically, koloss are no longer made from ordinary humans, but rather are some new race that has some minor resemblances to koloss, like continuing to grow and being stronger than normal people, but more importantly, can take the koloss spikes without completely losing their mind? Interseting, though it makes it near-impossible to determine which traits are inherent to this race and which come from hemallurgy. Kandras aren't going to give us any example of what their children would look like, so that leaves us with inquisitors, whose children were confirmed to be more likely to be allomancers. I'm inclined to go with Oudeis's explanation; it probably has nothing to do with conventional genetics and is related to this spirit world stuff

I never said they need to reproduce, neither do inquisitors, but that is not the topic. The topic is whether or not offspring of a hemallurgically altered organism inherit the boost from hemallurgy. Thus, the hypothetical scenario of kandra reproduction is relevant even if they in practice only "reproduce" by spiking wild mistwraiths.

Reproduction in general has everything to do with whether or not hemallurgy (or literally anything else) is hereditary. Kandras are mistwraiths, so their reproduction is tangentially relevant.

It is rather counter-intuitive, because the power never truly "belongs" to the person, it is stored in the spike and can be removed or passed to someone else at will. However, it seems like there are koloss half-breeds that inherit some of the artificial traits. Does this mean that all hemallurgic traits can be permanently passed from parent to child? Could an inquisitor pass allomancy/hemallurgy to their children? And what about kandra? We have never heard of them actually reproducing, they made new generations of their race out of wild mistwraiths, but technically they should be able to. Do mistwraith reproduce via some asexual method the kandra find distasteful to perform themselves? Can't they form genitals and reproduce sexually (even with each other, I'm not sure they are still genetically compatible with humans)?