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In fact, converting to an armored bridgemen model might save lives overall. The reason Sadeas uses them is that they allow him to arrive sooner. While he mainly wants to beat his competition to the plateaus, arriving earlier means the Parshendi have less time to get set up and occasionally even mean the Alethi get there first. And assaulting across bridges means being surrounded to start, probably interferes with formations, and generally makes the battle much harder. There's a reason Dalinar's officer suggested the man-carried bridges for the crossings before the final assault. That attempt failed to create one that could support the weight of a siege bridge while still being portable, but it was a solid idea.

Re: Arlon A major earthquake tore a gaping rift through southern Arlon. This altered the geography of the area and therefore the Aons, which instantly rendered all active Aons nonfunctional. Elantris itself was some sort of power enhancer based on Aon Rao, and it was still capable of attempting to transform AonDor users into Elantrians, but unable to properly complete the process. This locked all the Elantrians into a weird semi-stasis where all their vital functions were suspended. When Raoden added the new line to the Elantris Aon, it returned to proper functionality.

Always been fond of Vin.

I'm almost certain the Purelaker religion "jealous brother" is a relative of Trell worship from Scadrial, where they believed the stars were the thousand eyes of Trell and the sun was his jealous brother trying to blot them out. Plus, they can only discuss their true god in special caves. Presumably ones lined with metal.

No, Preservation swapped a pair of temporals for Atium and Malatium.

Well, that's probably why Grandbows, which just reinforce phyisically, noticably predate Half-Shards. But the existance of fabrials that can block a Shardblade is a new and shocking revalation. And they took so long to make that rumors of the project existed during the assassination of Galinvar but they weren't completed until the main events of the book. It can't just be the Stormlight, because all fabrials have that. The reinforcement must be active.

He successfully pulled off an elaborate gambit that no one ever discussed outside of a metal room by which he concealed that he was transferring Atium directly from the pits to the Kandra, and not one of the nobles who "administrated" the pits ever once found out about it or even realized they were shipping empty geodes. I think concealing a few pounds of metal is well within the known capabilities of the Steel Orthodoxy.

I'm pretty sure we'd have heard if fabrials or gemhearts could block Shardblades innately. Half-Shards were a major triumph of engineering, and they actively used stormlight to reinforce the shield itself.

Since Nicrosil can be filled with investiture from other types of metalminds, he wouldn't necessarily need to compound it directly. That would mean only needing a small amount of Nicrosil.

Any Atium alloy would have worked for mistborn. I'm pretty sure Malatium mistings couldn't have burned the other Atium alloys.

What? No, seriously, you're talking about an event that happened in the very same book where it was implied Rashek had violated general relativity by moving the planet far enough to noticably expand the size of the sun and cause sunlight in the northern regions to set things on fire, in a period totaling under a minute including his desperate attempts to fix the results of doing that. In comparison, altering the behavior of a magic system powered by Preservation in a species Preservation created is pretty tame.

Hoid is not a Shard. He has magical powers of unknown extent, but he's presently just a mortal with time dilation and life extension powers to go with interplanetary transit.

There are special Spren that only appear during a Weeping. Dunno what the effect on normal Spren is.

It's actually a pretty common suggestion whenever Shard power comes up, and I've pretty much made it my personal mission to remind everyone about the counterexamples. On reflection, he might have meant it is psychologically impossible for Odium to create, but I'm a bit dubious of that. Preservation arranged for lots of things to get destroyed in order to preserve things, and Ruin intentionally backed the creation of Steel Inquisitors and Koloss for Rashek to form the Final Empire with in order to destroy everything. I will, however, agree that creating things is not likely Odium's preferred method of problem-solving and he's probably locked less of his power into things he's created than any of the other Shards. Anyways, Shards appear to need to give up some of their power to create permanent things. But I don't think they need to give up cognitive power necessarily. Preservation had to put his mind into Ruin's prison because he was locking away Ruin's mind but not sealing his power. Also, he didn't seem to need to give up parts of his mind to create humans, given that he managed to out-think Ruin prior to imprisoning him.

I am, as always, really dubious of the argument that a Shard's Intent limits what the Shard's power can do, as opposed to slowly altering what the Shardholder will do. Vin as Preservation managed to change and destroy things just fine and could still block Ruin's actions afterwards.

So, in the Q&A thread Brandon revealed that we've seen three types of Shardblades. Which, assuming Honorblades don't count as Shardblades, is one more type than I can think of at the moment.

Doubtful. It's not a Vorin feminine name. At least, I don't think so. If the center four letters become two characters in Alethi then it would fit the mild asymmetry theme. But at the moment it's like being named Gaius

IIRC, it's about a year. Kaladin flashes back to the battle with Amaram towards the end of the book, and it says "One Year Ago"

I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of Shardic power simply returns to the Shard once it stops being used for whatever. Creating Lerasium and Atium or sentient creatures locks power in those forms while they exist, but altering planetary orbits or powering their own magic system does not. The syntax on this is ambiguous. The way I parse it, what rarely comes up in the books is powering other magic systems, and that's what expends power. Even assuming powering their own system consumes power (which, given how Ruin countered Vin fueling Elend by dumping power into Marsh instead of just letting her deplete her power, strikes me as unlikely) the quote is clearly referring to the direct empowerment where the mists/Ruin's black smoke are straight-up pumped into someone, as opposed to the standard method of accessing it. Well, firstly, it's not like there is any sign that their power actually goes away. Preservation locked some of Ruin's power into Atium, and when Atium is burned more forms in the pits but apparently doesn't weaken Ruin further. Likewise, the Lerasium burned to produce Mistborn doesn't seem to have been depleted; while Mistborn by the time of the books are considerably weaker than original Mistborn, there's a whole lot more of them and no additional Lerasium was added to the population. Also, a thousand years of Allomancy probably wouldn't even deplete the miniscule fraction of Preservation's power that pools in the Well of Ascension. That's enough power to rewrite planetary ecosystems, alter world tectonics, and move the entire planet several light-minutes repeatedly over a period of about thirty seconds, and it's not even close to Preservation's full power.

I don't think Shards can really be described as being in a specific location except when they're focusing in on somewhere and visibly manifest.

These were both from bridgemen, right? It's interesting that both of them seem to refer to the Shattered Plains. This appears to refer to Kaladin, and is more than faintly ominous. Also, one you missed: Almost certainly Taln talking. What's interesting is that it seems to be a direct quote from him.

The HoA mist business indicates all types are equally likely. Now, depending on how exactly snapping works in Alloy Of Law, it might be that people are more likely to know they're coinshots. If people have to ingest metals to figure out what kind of Misting they are, I imagine very few gnats are aware of their status because that stuff is expensive and the power is useless, so the only reason to test for it is scientific curiosity or eugenics programs. But steel is cheap and useful. It's also the one most likely to be noticed, being considerably flashier than pewter or tin.

Use tin to wear sunglasses at night. Use feruchemical Atium to convince customers you are the store manager. Store identity so no one notices you are slacking on the job.

I'm kind of wondering if the Shards broadly fit a pattern similar to the allomantic metals, like so: Human focused -emotions --Honor/Odium --Devotion/??? -interactions: --Endowment/Domination --Cultivation/??? Physical -Processes --Preservation/Ruin --???/??? -??? --???/??? --???/??? The big issues are that only Preservation/Ruin and Honor/Odium are on the same world as their pairing in this system, though it might not be a hard linkage, and that the second physical subcatagory is a huge blank. I have not the slightest idea what it could reasonably be that would not be kind of dumb. Shard of Molar Mass, anyone?

Yeah, it's in one of those sections, probably when he finds out his father had been planning on marrying them.