Weltall

The Heralds do seem to have powers unrelated to their Honorblades; if nothing else Taln demonstrates extremely good senses and quick reflexes when he prevents Iyatil from killing Amaram. But they don't have the kind of insane powers attributed to them in Vorin religion and we know that they don't have some of the powers of a Radiant with a Nahel Bond. No Herald has squires, which some (but not all) Radiant Orders have. Consequently Jezrien gets no benefit from the Resonance that results from combining Gravitation and Adhesion, assuming that the Heralds do get the Resonances at all. And the Honorblades can't change shape like a living Shardblade can, which Kaladin repeatedly demonstrates is quite a handy feature.

You monster, it's like you want them to all get killed off by the Chasmfiend/Voidbringer/Unmade Of The Week! - In Soviet Roshar, Shardplate wears you for protection. - In Soviet Roshar, you spy on the Sleepless. - In Soviet Roshar, you insult Wit. And then the next day you realize that he secretly Awakened your pants with the Command 'Fall off in public'. Oops.

Brandon has said that he does intend to explore this and what it means for the Shards to be 'infinitely' powerful over the course of the series. Here's a trimmed WoB on the subject. Even for the Shards, Investiture seems to work a lot like it does for mere mortals, where you have to know what something is supposed to do before you can actually do anything with it. See: Aons and metalminds. But he does seem to be stating that the Shards are infinite, they just can't handle all that power at once and may not be 'aware' of all of it, as in the Autonomy example. So for example with Ruin, he and Preservation both had power beyong what's present on Scadrial but at the end of HoA what they could access was more limited and the atium was enough to tip the balance. Well, we know he's worried about Harmony but that's more because of the raw power imbalance that a serious consideration of who would win if they clashed, apparently. As Brandon has pointed out, Odium has held his power for far longer and is consequently a lot better at using it so he'd probably win, just not without considerable risk. Brandon has said that there may be another Shard that would give Odium a run for his money. Assuming this isn't what Brandon had in mind, if I were Odium I'd also be very worried about the Dor; it's not currently in an accessible state but if someone were able to Ascend to that power they'd be equivalent to Harmony and a combination of Devotion and Dominion might have an easier time directing that power against Odium, even if its Vessel would have the same inexperience issue that Sazed does. Of course there's also Ambition, who was clearly number one on Odium's hit list...

It belatedly occurs to me that you should probably edit the topic title with an Oathbringer spoiler tag, since we're talking about things that happen within it. So you're positing a mechanic that has the exact same name as a hypothetical Shard. That seems, uhhh, confusing. Also, Brandon has told us by implication that Hoid was offered one of the sixteen (one we haven't seen yet) and someone is holding it right now, not some sort of failed Seventeenth Shard. Sixteen Vessels, Sixteen Shards, there isn't really room for Hoid to have held one. True on the lifespan thing, though it seems to be more of a 'Investiture keeps you healthier' thing unless the magic system explicitly affects aging. He's said that Radiants don't have unusually long lifespans, though they tend to live a bit longer. Setting hacks aside, the only systems that we so far know to seriously prolong life are BioChroma (especially if you have lots of Breath) and being an Elantrian (no aging but it's described as 'exhausting'). In Hoid's case, he's considerably older than a human should be even after taking time dilation into effect, so I suspect that there's some link between his lifespan and the not quite human' thing. Especially given that he is almost the oldest being around and the only person who's older is a natural immortal. That WoB is a transcript of an audio recording (there's a link to play it on the page) so any capitalization is entirely up to the Arcanist who transcribed it. I will grant you that Odium's either/or with Fortune and the Spiritual Realm muddies the waters a bit but Brandon did describe F-Chromium and Hoid's ability to know where he needs to be as drawing on the same mechanic. Trying to come up with an explanation for how Fortune is really a Shard just creates new questions, like why every Cosmere-aware individual seems to use that name in reference to future-sight. Azure and Riino both do it, along with Odium and then there's the feruchemical usage. It's unnecessary to posit that it's also a Shard when the idea that it's a shared mechanic already explains every single usage of the term. My guess on Odium's line is that Fortune is meant to be an intermediary mechanic through which one can access the Spiritual Realm and see the future without being overwhelmed by it, while looking into the Spiritual more directly is what Kelsier tried doing in Secret History and the experience nearly killed him. Err, again. That would account for Odium distinguishing the two.

The current estimate for Dragonsteel is three to five books including Hoid's prequel story. The actual content is up in the air owing to how much stuff he's removed but he's also added things that weren't in his initial outline. As of a year ago, he'd ballparked that it would take about fourteen years until he got to it. Probably going to be longer in practice since his 'two years per SA book' has gotten a just bit out of alignment, but he'd already acknowledged that before that WoB so maybe he thinks it'll go faster towards the end? I imagine that with most of the plot 'locked in' there will be somewhat fewer decisions he has to make with each additional book, so maybe the last two will come out closer together or something like that. On the Shattered Plains thing, while removing it took out a chunk of Dragonsteel Prime's story, that in itself probably isn't a huge issue for rewriting the book. Brandon has stated that it was always a diversion, a way to get his protagonist where he needed to be but which wasn't essential to the big picture. Brandon said that it was the best part of the current draft, but the entire thing is going to be rewritten anyways so relative quality's sort of moot. And this has been your regularly scheduled rambling on Dragonsteel, so I can externalize my burning desire for the books to be out so I can devour them. He is currently the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything years old. So, plenty of time for him to write everything he wants to as long as he remains healthy. And if not, remember the magic words to say at signings: My life to yours, my Breath become yours.

In addition, the warning fabrial seen in Way of Kings is said to be a relatively new invention. Secret History takes place some three hundred years before WoK so it's pretty much impossible for the two devices to be the same thing. They may share some underlying mechanical similarities (in the same way that all future-sight uses the same mechanic of Fortune, or all illusion magic will use the same general mechanisms as we've seen with Lightweaving) but they're probably not identical. The Ire's machine is probably an application of AonDor as noted.

Nah, we actually know for a fact that he hasn't planned everything out. Elantris is a great example because he's told us that it wasn't until he wrote Mistborn Era 1 that he sat down and decided 'Now I'm writing the Cosmere for real, let's start canonizing everything'. For example he's mentioned that the pool above Elantris was created first as a plot device to get Raoden in a position to have his epihpany, without having a particular role in the underlying Cosmere mechanics. He went back to it when he was writing Mistborn and came up with the Perpendicularity concept. In between writing Elantris and deciding to really hammer out the Cosmere, he also wrote Dragonsteel, White Sand and Aether of Night, along with Prime versions of what became Mistborn: The Final Empire, Wabreaker (well, part of it) and The Way of Kings. So yeah, even though Dragonsteel is a huge work in overall story terms, we know he hadn't nailed everyhing down when he wrote it. Same's true of Aether, though as it was a later book it probably represents something closer to his ultimate thoughts on things Cosmere than the earlier books. Then you get things like Mistborn Era 2 which wasn't planned originally but has been huge in terms of what it's done for Scadrial's worldbuilding and the picture it's starting to give us of other Shards getting involved. So yeah, it's pretty obvious that as awesome as Brandon is in planning things out, there are definitely a lot of things he's still working out as he goes along or that he hasn't canonized yet. xD Brandon has said that the magic system is still canon so while there are probably going to be some changes to how they operate, the fundamentals are unlikely to change too much. Also, he recently gave us an interesting tidbit about his plans for Warbreaker's sequel, that it will involve Darro in some way. So at the very least we've got the magic system and one confirmed character and since Brandon mentioned him specifically he's probably going to be recognizably Darro, otherwise he could just make a brand new character from Aether's world for his worldhopper to serve whatever story function is intended. He's already done this, with large chunks of the 'apocalypse/gods' plot being cannibalized for Mistborn Era 1, so we know that's going to change. And he originally tried cannibalizing Aethers for Liar of Partinel before deciding to rework the former so that they no longer needed to be included in the latter. Since he and Peter have both made it clear that there's something about Aethers that Brandon wants in the Cosmere with or without an actual book called Aether of Night, we can assume that whatever has been cannibalized or changed, the underpinnings of the Aethers isn't part of it. Given that we have nothing to go on about Brandon's plans for the rewrite other than the magic system is still canon, Darro still exists and maybe that the world has been renamed to Vax, we pretty much have to base our theories on what we know about the book as it currently exists if we're to remain grounded at all. Plus, it's fun to speculate and we know that all we're doing is making educated guesses at this point.

Brandon has RAFO'd the exact mechanics of the Shattering, whether the participants knew what the Shards would be in advance, whether Hoid turned one down as it was happening or after it had happened and so on, so we don't have much to work with there. However, Brandon did state that Hoid's longevity (which is only one of the weird things about him, admittedly) isn't tied to any particular Shard so assuming that's linked to his being no longer quite human, it seems to nix the idea that he was affected by the Shattering in that way. There's also an open question as to how old Hoid was at the time of the Shattering. Back when he was writing Dragonsteel Prime and planning out Liar he put several centuries of time between those books, so.it's possible that Hoid was something weird before the Shattering. Admittedly just about everything in Liar/Dragonsteel is subject to revision (including apparently most of Hoid's role) so it's entirely possible that's one of the things on the list of things that will be changed. Brandon has explicitly called Fortune a mechanic and came up with atium to foreshadow it. Plus, since burning atium draws power directly from Ruin it would be rather hard to imagine 'Fortune' as a separate Shard or a proto-Shard.

Since it has the exact same anti-Investiture properties on Roshar, Nalthis and Sel, nope. See: Taravangian's comments on 'legendary metal', Nightblood's sheath and Ralkalest Also, metal on Scadrial is not Invested (except for the godmetals of course) and metal from any planet will do the exact same thing in the Metallic Arts, so there's nothing special about any Scadrian metals except for the ones that come directly from the Shards.

We don't know that anything was necessarily stored in the gem, as a Rosharan would understand it. We know that one of Hoid's many aliases was Topaz and it's in reference to the gem he wore. Per Frost's letter in WoR, the gem is now 'dead'. It apparently had some mystical properites but that doesn't mean it operated on the same principles as Rosharan gems. The link between Rosharan and Yolish Lightweaving is that the former is extremely similar to the latter (which is the 'original' version) and this is of interest to Khriss from an academic perspective. It doesn't have to be any deeper than that. Brandon has repeatedly mentioned that all his magic systems operate on the same principals so overlap between them is to be expected. For example, all forms of future-sight use the same mechanic (Fortune) and Brandon has said that all illusion magic in the Cosmere works on the same principles.

A comparison that I had not thought of before, but now I can't unsee it.

@dashardie You're correct, Brandon has stated that Hoid is not the person who switched the Blades. Brandon has RAFO'd whether or not Hoid knows who did.

Welcome to the Shard! We've discussed this a few times and come to the conclusion that no, this isn't the case. It's not the most obvious thing to find because searching for 'Nightblood' will return a lot of threads, but here are the highlights: - Investiture resists Investiture, so it would be much much harder to Awaken than metal is by itself. Brandon has told us that Awakening Shardlate is probably impossible because of how Invested it already is, and a Shardblade effectively can't be Awakened because it already is, in a sense. - Brandon has stated that Vasher and Shashara didn't need to visit Roshar personally, just to know of Shardblades to do what they did. He's been back and forth on whether they actually did go there personally and his most recent answers indicate that they have, but if they didn't need to then Nightblood can't be an Awakened Shardblade. - The threat of Yesteel making more Awakened weapons like Nightblood only makes sense if it's something that could be produced locally. This means that Awakening a Shardblade or Awakening some other Shard's godmetal doesn't make sense. - Vasher (who knows Nightblood better than we do) says repeatedly that it was Awakened from steel.

Insofar as River is a mentally deranged super-soldier who displays amazing physical and mental feats when sufficiently pressed and lucid, I think she'd need more than just a Twinborn package. So throw in a bunch of hemalurgic spikes for whatever you don't want to give her naturally, to get both the extra powers and the fun flavor of insanity. My guess for an obvious allomantic power would be Tin to represent enhanced senses. Other ideas for her would be A-Pewter for the enhanced reflexes, A-Brass/Zinc (about as close to her psychic powers as allomancy allows for), F-Iron to make ceiling climbing easier and F-Zinc for her super-intelligence. For Kaylee, I'm going to ignore literal application of powers and just go thematic. She's got the sunniest of dispositions so she gets F-Brass that lets her store 'Warmth'. If I were thinking more displayed talents, probably I'd have gone with F-Copper for her encyclopedic knowledge of technology, but I think F-Brass just fits her better thematically. xD For Zoe... F-Electrum sounds pretty appropriate. Not as sure about an allomantic power, A-Steel maybe? Or the ever-popular A-Pewter.

Memory seems to be more of a Spiritual aspect, to judge by what Brandon had to say about Lightsong recovering his pre-Returned memories. Emphasis on the linking of memory and soul.

Welcome to the Shard! Enjoy yourself and please continue the theorizing, but watch out for anyone asking you to give them your Breath, or who offers you cookies... As mentioned Hoid is not a Returned. His use of Awakening at the end of Oathbringer is because he has Breath (a fact we already knew, he mentions having obtained perfect pitch in Words of Radiance) and Brandon has told us that BioChroma is the easiest magic system to get access to and to use. All you need is someone who has Breath to give some to you and some behind-the-scenes things will make it so that you can use it right away. You don't need to be from Nalthis to do it, though you do need to be native to the world to Return. Hoid's immortality is a separate thing and we don't know how he manages it just yet, but while his particular flavor of immortality might be unique, immortality as a concept is not, with pretty much every world having one or more flavors of it. The Nalthian variety of immortality just happens to be the easiest one to access that we currently know of. But yeah, Hoid is so old that he makes the Heralds on Roshar look like babes in comparison and he was born somewhere around ten thousand years before Vo became the first person to Return on Nalthis. Brandon has said that Hoid is the second-oldest person in the Cosmere, by a small margin. And the only person who's older is Frost who he exchanges letters with in WoK and WoR. Strictly speaking, this isn't accurate. It's shrouded in some way so that Khriss at the time of Mistborn Era 1 had not been able to find it but it's not cut off from travel or contact in the same way that Taldain is. She speaks of the kind of life that you will find on Yolen when comparing it to Scadrial's ecology in Arcanum Unbounded (implying that at some point she was able to obtain current information on the world) and the letters that Hoid and Frost exchange require some way of getting to and from Yolen, as Frost is living there.

Huh, that's an interesting idea. Brandon has said that he got the idea of the safehand from Korean tradition, though more from the general concept that showing the soles of ones feet is considered offensive and building from there. And the in-universe explanation for making women cover up one hand was an attempt to halve the number of people able to claim Shardblades. But it's possible he had the hanbok in the back of his mind as well, when coming up with that particular bit of the worldbuilding.

To add a bit to the discussion of the Shards, while we know ten by name, world and (aside from Cultivation) by the name of their Vessel, we also know a very small amount of information on at least one other Shard. Brandon has told us that there is one shard that just wants to hide and survive. He's also told us that this 'survival' thing is only tangentially related to its Intent, mostly it is just aware of Odium going on a Shard Murder Spree and is smart enough to want to avoid that. There is also a Shard that is not currently on a planet which is probably a separate Shard but all we can say for certain about this one is that it's not Ambition.

A-Tin is everything or nothing, F-Tin is selective.

Ninja'd by Calderis as I was typing... oh well, don't want the effort to go completely to waste. Silver has a role in Threnody because Brandon wanted the metal to be useful somewhere after it didn't wind up fitting in the Metallic Arts. The story can be found here. I don't think we can make the jump from 'metal is part of an alloy' to 'metal has a use in the Metallic Arts apart from that alloy' since otherwise you'd have to account for other alloy components like bismuth, antimony and lead also having some potential role. Since the metals are just 'keys' and the Investiture is looking for the right molecular signature, I don't think that the components of an alloy have their own uses except when the components are already viable metals. To illustrate, consider the case of bad alloys. If the proportions are slightly off you might get something that you can burn, but it won't work as well as it should. If the proportions are way off or you've added additional metals, you get something that won't do anything except give you metal poisoning. The 'key' doesn't match any of the patterns that Preservation's Investiture is looking for. So I don't think that there's any special property of silver just waiting to be discovered in the Metallic Arts.

My guess is that if you had a native Rosharan who became a mistborn via lerasium or the Well (circumventing the lack of an inborn Connection to Preservation) that still wouldn't be enough to make shardblade metal viable for use in the Metallic Arts. He was asked about a hypothetical Threnodite mistborn being able to burn silver allomantically and said that bloodline alone wouldn't change what metals are viable. He's also mentioned that a Shard that wanted to do something like make an allomantically functional metal would have to take deliberate steps, which are possible but wouldn't be an automatic thing. Where this gets fuzzy is in a case where someone already has a strong Connection to a Shard managing to gain a similarly strong Connection to another. Say, a Surgebinder ingesting lerasium. Would the combination of strong Connections be enough to let this person burn the metal from a Shardblade, or would the originating Shard still need to do something special? I don't think we have an answer to that just yet. And if special steps are necessary, can they still be done for any Shardblade which includes 'Tanavastium' now that Honor is splintered, or would the Shard have to be reformed before that could happen?

There is an upper limit to how large a spren can manifest and we've basically seen it with the large Blades. So no, gigantic Sprenbolt isn't an option.

You can't.

There's been a lot of theorizing to the effect that 'Trell' is one of Bavadin's many personas but it's not been confirmed yet. The possibility of Autonomy and Odium working together to move against Scadrial has also been proposed and we have WoB that Odium would be willing to work with another Shard to accomplish a mutual goal, as long as he got to be in charge. So yeah, Miles could (knowingly or not) be pointing us in that direction. Of course, there's also an indirect association between just plain Autonomy and the color gold, as it's the color of a Mastrell's sash and the Sand Masters are the primary manipulators of Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain.

Aside from its specific use on Threnody... it looks pretty? And it's very useful on Scadrial even though it's not allomantically viable itself because it's necessary to create electrum, which is an allomantic metal. A couple other tidbits on silver: In-universe they do not currently know why it does what it does Brandon has explicitly nixed the idea that silver can operate the same way as aluminum in being an Investiture-sink Brandon has RAFO'd whether other Cognitive Shadows are harmed by silver in the way that Shades are