Weltall

@Isilel The terminology on metalminds and medallions hasn't been canonized yet and from context it's very clear that Brandon was being asked about metalminds that anyone can use, not the Identity-less ones that anyone with the right power can access (asking if Hoid has more of them, with the one being the coin he gave Wax) so you'd have to really twist things to get 'Hoid is a feruchemist' from that. As far as making a Connection to Ruin goes in the absence of feruchemy or unwillingness to use hemalurgy goes, well, what is atium again and what does it do in Realmatic terms? xD

He says that and also mentions aviation to Wax in Shadows of Self (while letting slip the existence of the southerners), then in the next book VenDell and MeLaan talk about how he 'accidentally' mentioned movies. So yeah, he's thinking ahead and is actively trying to encourage the Scadrians to develop technologically.

I think you're getting your wires crossed. Darro just has an Amberite bond and a strong one, Raeth is the one with the combination of Night and a very weak Amberite bud. In the current story, Raeth doesn't have any enhanced strength with Amberite at the end (he mentions that all he's got after Makkal left was his original bond 'as pathetic as ever') and it became a potential issue in trying to keep up the masquerade of being Hern since he wouldn't be able to reproduce the full armor if he needed to. Fortunately, behind the scenes plotting meant he didn't have to. My guess is this won't change too much in revision, since Brandon likes writing limitations and having characters come up with clever ways around them and that's a lot of Raeth's character. Though depending on the nature of the Twins in the revision, he might end up with some permanent side-effects. And now that I'm thinking about the mechanics, I wonder what Savantism might look like in this setting. I could easily see an Amberite or Verdant bond being like the soulcasters on Roshar, where they have bits of their body permanently transformed to crystal/vines and that could even be a way to explain Corpates, though that would require Ferrous bonds to have something else they could do with their power before reaching that stage.

It would be hard to construct a timeline for him since it's been very strongly implied in places and outright stated in others that he's been to worlds multiple times. For example, we see Hoid pay multiple visits to Scadrial during the time of Era 1 then at least one visit during Era 2 assuming he didn't just stay the whole time, with the implication that he's been to the world on other occasions as well (possibly having some involvement with the Worldbringers for example). Oathbringer spoiler So with multiple visits going on, we can't really construct a definitive timeline since it's quite likely that he's revisited lots of places many times, and what we can do is tentative until we get a canonical timeline of events. But for a very rough guess, agan tagged because of Oathbringer matters:

Brandon has said that Hoid doesn't want to use hemalurgy because he doesn't want to open himself up to being influenced by a Shard. He's also mentioned that yes, Fortune is involved in precognition. The wonders of Arcanum will reveal much to you, just plan on finding yourself losing track of time. xD We've also gotten multiple confirmations in recent books that Fortune is involved in seeing the future, in Secret History and twice in Oathbringer.

As Rainier says, I suspect that swallowing a gemstone to create a bond isn't something that works generally but is either unique to Yelig-nar or a very small subset of similar entities. It's mentioned that bridgemen would sometimes try to swallow valuables like sphers, so over the course of hundreds or thousands of years you'd think that someone would have eventually swallowed a gem they'd stolen from a fabrial and would notice if it did anything special. It's probably required. We know from WoB for example that you can't draw an Aon by accident and Bands of Mourning gives us two very prominent examples where Intent was needed: Odium explains that the smokestone he's giving to Amaram is a vessel for Yelig-nar and will give him the power that was promised, which should be enough to form then necessary Intent. I want to say that it probably doesn't matter exactly where it is in the body as long as it's considered 'inside' you and is able to stay there. Brandon has mentioned that metal in allomancy doesn't have to be in the stomach for example, the mouth is enough and a metallic suppository would work too, which Brandon confirmed but then added 'possible, but gross'. If you want to get nitpicky, a Cognitive Shadow is a soul that's been permeated with Investiture and thus persists longer than it should before passing Beyond. However, we've seen these take several different forms. The Returned have a Divine Breath stapling their soul back into their original bodies, the Fused possess new bodies (killing the original Cognitive/Spiritual aspect of the person who used to inhabit it), Shades have a weak Physical manifestation but are barely corporeal and separate from their original bodies... and we're not quite sure what the Heralds do in order to get new bodies when they resurrect, though it seems like when their connection to the Physical is restored at the start of a Desolation they simply manifest a new body to match their Spiritual ideal. As far as killing Jezrien goes, I suspect that what happened was that the knife stole the part of Jezrien's spiritweb that bound him to the Oathpact/the other Heralds (which is why Ash felt it right away) while at the same time it also happened to be a fatal stab wound, so when he died that time he died permanently. So, it's not that it would have worked differently on a normal person per se but it was taking something from Jezrien that a normal person didn't have, just like a hemalurgic spike can be used on an allomancer or a human with no magic system, it just can't steal all the same things from the latter that it could from the former. But the mechanics are still the same. .Brandon has implied that Investiture condensed in solid form will always be a metal, as a little rule of the Cosmere that he's set up. He does mentione Aethers aren't metal but those aren't currently canon and he leaves that one open, so it's pretty much a hard and fast rule.

There are quite a few unpublished works, how many of them are available is a completely different pot of Horneater stew. - White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell were earlier drafts that were later combined and polished into White Sand (Prose). Brandon doesn't give the older versions out but as mentioned you can get the 'final' version from Brandon's newsletter. - Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime were two unrelated works that were later cannibalized to form the basis of Mistborn: The Final Empire. Mistborn Prime has an early version of allomancy but not the setting, Final Empire Prime has the setting and proto-feruchemy along with early versions of Vin (male here) and the Lord Ruler. You can find the Prologue to the former and two chapters from the latter on Brandon's website but not the full books. I've heard Brandon will give out Mistborn Prime to people who ask for it specifically but not Final Empire Prime. Don't know if that would still be the case now that he's changed how people can request/acquire the two drafts that he usually gives out. - The Way of Kings Prime has had several chapters released to the public (mostly focusing on Merin, who became Kaladin in the published version) and Brandon has on occasion mentioned plans to release the full thing eventually. Probably won't be for quite a while. - Mythwalker (aka Warbreaker Prime) was never completed but Brandon made the entire existing draft available on his website. Aside from the obvious plotline that he cannibalized for Warbreaker, he's also incorporated elements of this work into Mistborn and The Way of Kings. - You know about Aether, which is slated for a rewrite at which point we can officially redub the current draft 'Aether of Night Prime'. - Dragonsteel Prime is in the same position of being up for a rewrite and it is technically possible to read the complete book but you need to have access to a library that can request it on an interlibrary loan or you have to physically go to BYU and read it there. And it's on the list of Things Nobody Can Talk About so even if you do get to read it, you couldn't discuss it publicly. Brandon released the chapters which he cannibalized for The Way of Kings (where the Shattered Plains setting and Bridge Four came from) and those can be talked about on the Unpublished Works board. Brandon also kinda discourages people from reading this - Lastly I suppose you could count The Silence Divine, a novella set on Ashyn which Brandon has done some writing for (you can find a transcription of a reading he did from its prologue on here) but hasn't finished it.

That's sort of where my own thinking is going right now. We know that Vessels can have children so I'm thinking that what we'll get is a Shard (whatever Intent Brandon wants to assign to the Entity-Formerly-Known-As-The-Former) which had two children and at some point decided to give up their power, which Vessels can willingly do. My guess is that rather than creating the Aethers directly, each of the Twins got assigned some of the original Shard's power much like all Investiture in the Cosmere got assigned to one of the sixteen Shards after the Shattering of Adonalsium. This theory does require two assumptions, that it's possible for a Shard to willingly split off such a significant fraction of its power to essentially create two super-Splinters and that these be capable of bonding with humans (or Dragons/Sho Del, depending on the original Vessel) which doesn't quite fit our current understanding of Splinters and how they can be interacted with. Brandon did leave the door open for something like this to happen in the WoB about giving up a Shard, saying that what happens next depends on a lot of factors including 'whether sapient beings are involved'. There's also a brand-new WoB that if a pregnant woman Ascended, there would be an effect on their children so for all we know, that could be a workaround to how we currently understand Splinters to work Failing any of that, the easy cheat would be for the Twins to be sapient Investiture rather than humans having taken up a large chunk of Shardic power, since we know that can happen if it's left to itself and we could imagine a scenario where a Shard's power split into a couple large chunks instead of a single whole.

Neat idea, though that Brandon has said that all Investiture became associated with a Shard regardless of location so even if it started out that way, it would have become a Splinter of some specific Shard after the Shattering. He's also called the Pool of the Forgotten a shardpool (this was before he canonized Perpendicularity as the 'proper' term) so the Twins too would be associated with whatever Shard the Former is associated with. And since the Former and Decay were on the same level of power and we know that the latter was intended to be a Shard, I suspect the Former is still going to be one rather than a Splinter of one. That reasoning aside, we also have six Shards left to reveal and not all that many known Cosmere projects in which we could see any of them other than Aether and the Silverlight novella. Seems like it would be a great opportunity to give us one more.

That was so cool I had to find it. So he's not technically canon yet but he plans on working Darro in sooner rather than later, since I think it's safe to assume Nightblood is coming out before the rewritten Aether. My guess is that he'd be a worldhopper and tease us with hints of future Aether material, since if he were intended to be a character from Nalthis there wouldn't be much point in using Darro specifically, rather than making another character very much like him and calling them something else. And Brandon does mention unprompted that he's an Aether character, which rather suggests he wants us to know he's making parts of the story canon as we go along. On the assumption that he's going to be a worldhopper, this gives us a rough idea where Aether is meant to fall in the timeline. Brandon has said that Nightblood will be the book right before The Way of Kings timeline-wise (in the sense of 'no other works will be set between them') so we can assume that Aether takes place on a similar timeframe to Warbreaker and closer than not to Stormlight Archive. We can further assume that the ending of the story will be sufficiently different to leave at least one Perpendicularity in place or it will still be possible to use some form of Aether magic for transportation, which could make accessing the Cognitive Realm for worldhopping possible. Neither of these were true of the original ending. Now I want Nightblood to come out even more...

Autonomy is creating Splinters which by definition cannot be Vessels. Lots of things can have Connection to a Shard but aren't considered a Vessel. Here's a selection of WoBs on the subject. Brandon later was more direct and said that it's 'probably impossible'. The Vessel is specifically the entity who holds a Shard Brandon draws a clear line between a Shard/its power and its Vessel: And Brandon doesn't say it in so many words but he's effectively confirmed that Autonomy is creating, errr, autonomous Splinters as part of her plans. So yeah, Autonomy is leaving bits of Investiture around the Cosmere for whatever reason and at least some of these Splinters if not all of them are sapient, but they're not considered Vessels and it's unlikely if not impossible that they could actually Ascend even if Bavadin for some reason gave up her Shard. The Stormfather is an analogous case, being a (large) Splinter of Honor and has actually merged with Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow but even then, he's not considered a Vessel.

Brandon has said that they were all written at the same time and are contemporary with 'most of the books'. Context clues tell us that it must be some time between Hero of Ages and Sixth of the Dusk and Brandon's comment suggests it's somewhere close to the events of Stormlight Archive/Mistborn Era 2.

Brandon has stated that Wyrn follows Dominion, whether he knows it or not. Jaddeth is therefore not 'of Odium'. Brandon has also said that Odium didn't leave behind any Splinters. The mindless power he talks about is Devotion and Dominion's power, stuffed into the Cognitive. Jaddeth may well have bit of Devotion as well as Dominion (since all magic on Sel is described as regional variations of a single magic system and draws on their combined power) but he's definitely not of Odium. Just as a heads-up on this, Brandon has mentioned that he hadn't nailed down certain aspects of the Cosmere when he was working on Elantris. The pool for example was written because he needed to get Raoden in a position where he could see Elantris from above and make the connection between the geography, the Aons and the chasm line and he didn't have a place for it in the worldbuilding at that time. Since then it's become a very important cross-Cosmere element as an example of a Perpendicularity, but he didn't have that laid out back then. Elantris also predates Brandon establishing for himself the concept of the Shards; the first work where he seems to have nailed that idea down was the unpublished Aether of Night, which postdates Elantris. So any references to Passion are a conicidence, not foreshadowing Odium; For all intents and purposes Odium didn't exist yet.

Brandon has been thinking about what may come at the end of Volume 3. Doesn't tell us much, but he doesn't discount the idea that we might get a rougher sort of 'notes' rather than a proper Ars Arcanum, if we do get something. Makes some sense, as the Ars Arcana are written with a cosmere-aware perspective while Khriss as of White Sand doesn't know of anything beyond Taldain.

All good points. I'll just add that Brandon has stated that the land/water inversion isn't universal across the Cognitive Realm. We just haven't seen any examples to the contrary yet.

Brandon says straight out (and multiple times) in the annotations that Vasher killed Shashara. With Nightblood. She's very very dead. Random aside, Brandon was asked whether being killed with Nightblood means you don't go Beyond. His response was 'nobody knows' saying that it's a subject of debate in-universe and even Vasher doesn't know the answer for sure. Since this touches on the Beyond and we know that's something he wants to leave up to the readers, it may be a question we never get answered.

@StormingTexan It does seem to be a rather big obstacle. That said, the door has been left open in Mistborn for feruchemical power to be used by someone other than the original feruchemist via Identity manipulation; VenDell mentions that early research into the possibility 'is promising' but the story doesn't delve into it, in lieu of Identity-less Investiture being the focus as it's much more of a game-changer. So, we have at least one magic system where it's theoretically possible to manipulate your Identity in such a way to access Investiture keyed to someone else's Identity. This may not be possible with BioChroma and if it is, hacks involving other magic may well be required to make it work, but we can't completely rule out the possibility. It's just... stupendously unlikely. Vasher called, he wanted me to tell you that even Vivenna would have been ashamed of that pun.

Here then, have a cookie. If you feel a slight pricking sensation, think nothing of it. I certainly didn't stick a hemalurgic spike in it so I could subliminally give you commands (YOU MUST GIVE ME YOUR BREATH) or anything like that... Welcome to the Shard! Umm, I'm not sure if you've yet read Oathbringer or not but some of the things in that book are very relevant to this topic and they can't actually be discussed here. We don't actually know whether what Ishar did forced the proto-Radiants to swear these Ideals in order to gain their powers or whether he forced organization upon them, in the form of the Orders and giving them additional precepts to follow that aren't directly related to their surgebinding. We have for example Dalinar's vision of Nohadon where the latter talks about surgebinders in a way that implies that they were a destabilizing influence and that the Knights Radiant hadn't yet been established. The system of Ideals could well have been in place beforehand. And no matter how you slice it, proto-Radiants were binding Splinters of Honor before the Radiants emerged, even if it's only the proto-Windrunners whose spren are closest to Honor. But to go to a later point, we know that some 'Radiantspren' are 'of Cultivation' and others are a mix of the two. Brandon has said that all three Shards on Roshar (or their spren) are able to work within the bounds of a magic system that already existed. This is probably why he's said that depending on how you slice it, Roshar can be said to have three or thirty different magic systems. And extrapolating from that, we can assume that Roshar doesn't strictly follow the 'rules' that Mistborn seems to have laid out, since Preservation and Ruin created Scadrial from scratch, while the Rosharan trio arrived to find worlds already in existence, with magic in place. Brandon has described the Old Magic as 'its own weird thing' rather than one of the systems. Though it's quite likely that even though it has an association with Cultivation in the present, it had its origins before the Shards arrived, with Adonalsium. Good observation. Yeah, as I mentioned above, Roshar's situation is a bit different from Scadrial so it may break the 'rules' about the number of magic systems. Another example of this in the Cosmere is magic on Sel, with its regional flavors of what Brandon has said are all a single underlying system, some of which may lean more heavily towards Devotion or Dominion. Don't worry about it, we all have to start somewhere. Enjoy yourself, read more theories as you find the time and the wonders of the Cosmere (and our crazy theorizing) shall open up before you. Also, if you don't already know about it, Arcanum is an amazing resource for what Brandon has said outside the books themselves. So in the future if you want to source a quote, that's become the go-to spot.

We don't know. Nightblood may be an exception to the rule that Breath can be recovered from Awakened objects as he's sapient and may not follow the rules of the Type III (typical Awakened objects) entities. However, even granting for purposes of argument that those Breaths could be recovered (and I have to imagine Nightblood would resist any attempt at doing so) it would not be an easy process. Breath keys itself to the Identity of the user and they can't be recovered from Type III entities except by the original Awakener... who in this case happens to be very dead. Those Breaths might hypothetically be recoverable via Identity manipulation but that's getting into 'crazy Investiture hacks' levels of magic. Basically, you have at least two hurdles to overcome, either or both of which could be impossible for all we know.

Stormfather's matched up against Iorek Byrnison. In fight plausibility terms that one's a no-brainer but in terms of actual voting... tough call.

There are some hints for what he thinks that can be gleaned from Oathbringer, if you haven't read it yet.

I suspect that Brandon had a quiet word with the artist and asked hiim to kindly tone it down, since he's said that while they're meant to be there in Volume 1 they weren't supposed to be that prominent.

As noted, the Taldaini are effectively removed from consideration because as far as the fanbase at large is concerned, that world didn't 'exist' at the time Brandon told us we've seen the Ones Above before. When he does talk about unpublished works, he's either explicit about it or it's in response to a direct question about one of these works. The gap isn't that big. Brandon has said that we're 'closer to a thousand years' in terms of a timeline with events that we've seen and can place, not counting things like Aharietam or the Shattering of Adonalsium. Given the timing of the WoB, that means we can put Elantris at one end of that line and Sixth of the Dusk at the other. Brandon went back and forth on whether Elantris or White Sand was the earliest in the sequence until he finally nailed down that it was the latter. If he was doing that, they can't be that far apart chronologically or he'd have been certain which goes where. Not disagreeing that Taldain should have quite impressive technology by the time we see them next, but even if they weren't ruled out of consideration they're hardly the only planet that could produce the Ones Above. We already know for a fact that Scadrial is going to develop FTL travel, which is the reason they're such an obvious pick. Also, everything we see the Ones Above do (other than the FTL travel itself) can be explained with extrapolations of their known technology/magic and possibly the presence of a kandra. And the restrictions they appear to be laboring under (and the ways they appear to be working around them) don't sound out of line for the kind of things Harmony might impose on them once they start travelling to other worlds. But literally every major shardworld we've seen (except possibly Nalthis, but there's a lot about BioChroma we still don't know) has magic systems that seem like they should be capable of producing sci-fi starships eventually. Assuming they ever work out the whole range limitation issue, Sel has Aon Tia and potentially multiple other ways to manage FTL travel, Roshar has the surges of Gravitation and Transportation and as mentioned Scadrial's getting FTL even if we're not sure how yet.

Brandon also just confirmed what we've long suspected, that the crystal in Mraize's collection is indeed an Aether. Whether this means the Aether is useless in the same way that the bud D'Naa tried to take from Raeth was useless or whether it could be useful to someone but Mraize lacks whatever is necessary for Initiation into the magic system, we still don't know and won't until the rewrite.

Sort of. Brandon released sone sample chapters from it but the complete work isn't available to anyone and Brandon has made it clear he wasn't at all happy with how it turned out. You can see some of his thoughts on it here. Even though parts of it are available, it's one of the things that he actively discourages people from reading (in part because it would 'give us the wrong ideas' about certain characters) and he's mentioned how the book is going to be completely rewritten when the time comes. But if you want to have a look, you can find a link to it here: