Weltall

The parshendi/listeners are a little different from the parshmen, having somehow severed their Connection to Odium (or Ba-Ado-Mishram) beforehand without also losing Identity, giving up most of their forms in the process but gaining freedom from their control. Eshonai implies in the Prologue that it involved a mass transformation into dullform. My guess is that it worked by pushing out any voidspren in favor of whichever one causes dullform, then the reduction in mental capacity that followed made them resistant to attempts by voidspren to bond with them. Odium seems to work best by manipulating passions and it's possible the dullform listeners were 'too dumb to fool'. And then Ba-Ado-Mishram was taken out of the equation (whether they knew it or not) and they could start looking for better forms without fear of attracting voidspren.

The epilogue has him explicitly point out that he's suppressing his healing in order for the various tricks he's using to disguise his appearance (hair falling out, missing tooth) to work and in the epilogue of the previous book, his reaction to Jasnah brandishing a Shardblade at him was 'that little thing's not going to hurt me'. We also have many WoBs that Hoid is ridiculously hard to kill.

I imagine that if you managed to get enough Breath in one location somehow, you could become a permanent and mobile Perpendicularity simply by virtue of having so much Investiture in the same place. Though we're likely talking 'enough Investiture to qualify as a Sliver' given what we've seen of people interacting with Perpendicularities in other works. And the experience would probably be storming weird.

That's actually a really interesting thought. My guess is that it would depend on how long the object had been recycled into some other state from its original one and how different that was from whatever it began as. For example, if you recycled a damaged bottle by melting it down and making a new bottle out of it, there would probably be no real difference. The bottle would still be seen as a bottle by anyone looking at it and the bottle itself would probably still see itself as more or less the same thing. Brandon's mentioned the Ship of Theseus paradox and come down on the side of 'it would be the same ship, Cognitively' so that probably holds for recycling things into very similar things. On the other hand, recycle that same amount of glass into a decorative paperweight, or divide it up and use it to make the glass portion of spheres and then wait long enough for thinking beings to see the glass as the new paperweight or the multitude of separate glass beads and the Cognitive self would shift accordingly. Then, it might remember that while it's one thing now, it used to be something else and could be easier to Soulcast. It would also depend on what you're trying to Soulcast the object to, versus what it originally was. On that same line of thinking, recycled objects would probably be much easier to Forge. That said, the Wind's Pleasure gave us an example of Cognitive entities that at one point must have considered themselves separate (ie, all the trees that the wood came from, all the plant fibers in the lines, rigging and sails, the metal in the nails...) now see themselves as a single thing with a very firm Cognitive self-image, so extending that idea to recycled materials there's got to be some point where the recycled thing has gained 'Cognitive permanence' such that it's effectively indistinguishable from the original thing, in terms of Soulcast-ability.

EDIT: Whoops, never mind...

Physical location is irrelevant to the functioning of the magic. We know that you can use metal from anywhere in the Cosmere for allomancy and feruchemy. By extension, hemalurgy should also work on all worlds using the same metals regardless of where you're using it. Also, there's this where he states that you can steal non-Scadrian powers with metals, including by implication ones from Roshar.

It's pretty clear that he wants to bond that Cryptic, at least in the short term. As mentioned the Lightweavers are the perfect Order for Hoid to join if he wanted to do that, since they come with practically no restrictions on his behavior that he'd have to work around. Why is another question, since there's not much that Radiance can really offer him so far as we know. He's physically incapable of hurting people so he gets no benefit out of having a living Shardblade, he can already Lightweave (his system may not be exactly the same but the Ars Arcanum does mention that Rosharan Lightweaving is extremely close to the Yolenese original) and his healing power makes Miles Hundredlives look like a wimp so stormlight healing isn't useful to him either. I can think of two possibilities: First, he's investigating Honor's Investiture for whatever his nebulous goal is and it would be far easier to learn what he needs with his own Nahel bond than by trying to figure things out as an outside observer. Though if this was the case, it would probably make more sense for him to have been the person who stole Taln's Honorblade since that's 'closer to the source' as it were, and we know he didn't do it. Second and what I think is more likely right now, he needs/wants access to Soulcasting for some reason. Getting it via a Nahel bond is a lot more useful that getting it via fabrial due to the essence limitations on the latter type. Random aside, we know it's difficult for a Radiant to leave Roshar's Cognitive region due to the spren being bound to it, but it's something that you could work around. We see Hoid on Scadrial at some point after SA5. So either he worked out how to get his spren off Roshar (there's no real evidence either way here, The Lost Metal might give us some indications) or at some point in the next couple of books the bond is going to be broken one way or another. And to the original question, I could see Hoid being mercenary enough to hang around potential Lightweavers looking for an opportunity like the one that arose in Oathbringer, but at the same time I don't think that's what happened here. If he was planning that from the start, he shouldn't have been so uncertain what his 'Hoid-sense' had brought him to Kholinar for. @digitalbusker That's a good idea, but given the circumstances of Elhokar's death (ie, in the process of swearing the First Ideal) he probably wouldn't have been capable of taking in stormlight. He could have been like Shallan and formed a bond (but one so early that he wasn't really aware of it) and then regressed but if you're to the point that you need to swear the first of the ideals again you haven't so much strained your bond as broken it entirely.

Given that Brandon was quite emphatic that he's not bringing WoT and Cosmere into the same universe, the odds that he would pick that kind of thing as a secret is so remote as to be pretty much impossible. Plus, we have a far better explanation for that flute that requires no violation of Brandon's assertion: The flute that Hoid gives Kaladin might have originally belonged to Rashek Also, despite Stormlight Archive throwing all sorts of Cosmere Crisis Crossover things at us, Brandon has said on multiple occasions that he wants to write the books so they can be understood as an entirely standalone work. He's aware that some of his readers are particularly obsessive and dive into the little details and connections like crazy but he doesn't write the books with us in mind. So when he says there are secrets in the ending of WoT that were foreshadowed in the last few books that people haven't yet picked up on, he's got to be talking about something internal to WoT, even if he wasn't quite clear that it should be taken as something completely separate from everything else he's done. With that in mind, it's only more apparent that whatever he's talking about, it's not some sort of hidden crossover. Since I mentioned it earlier, the glass pillar ter'angreal in Rhuidean could be related to these secrets in some way. People have asked Brandon about the future that Aviendha saw but to my knowledge nobody has asked him specifically about the device or the impression that Aviendha received when she tried to use her 'identify ter'angreal function' Talent on it, that the device might have been alive in some way. On his own Brandon mentioned that it was "the most audacious thing I believe I pitched at Team Jordan" so it wasn't part of Robert Jordan's notes and we know that whatever Brandon had in mind for mind-blowing secrets was something he came up with. I can't think of anything specific in the ending that this might relate to offhand but it does at least meet the limited critera we have. Other than that, I can't think of anything good offhand but I haven't reread WoT in quite a while.

I'm fairly sure that whatever we're missing is something entirely related to WoT, some development at the end of the series that for whatever reason hasn't stood out to anyone yet, or if it has it's not been to someone who's had the opportunity to ask Brandon about it. So, not Nakomi, not the pipe, nothing related to the outrigger novels and probably nothing related to the future Aviendha saw in the ter'angreal since people have asked about that. Yeah, here's one quote I found and I'm certain there are more. So yeah, I doubt there's anything like a cute nod to allomancy hidden in there. In terms of subtle 'Brandonisms' I feel like Androl is the sort of thing we should be looking for, a character who finds out creative ways to use one particular talent really well, in ways that are internally consistent but which other characters (and perhaps the reader) didn't think about until we saw the author do it, then we all had a good laugh at the cleverness. But I'm fairly sure that's not the sort of thing Brandon is talking about.

The WoB about how the people of Ashyn taking to the floating cities were fleeing the same disaster that brought humanity to Roshar makes it pretty clear (as does the fact that Brandon asked the questioner if they'd finished Oathbringer) that yes, Ashyn is the inspiration for the Tranquiline Halls. There's also a death rattle that (potentially) takes on new significance now. If this is a human speaking of their original conquest of Roshar, then the implication is that these humans were fleeing a burning environment. Which matches the description we have of Ashyn's surface perfectly but doesn't fit Braize at all. They actually fit into the local ecology, which humanity does not. They naturally bond with spren like some of the local wildlife, while humanity couldn't do so until the spren started imitating what they'd seen Honor do. They have gemhearts, like greatshells. They have carapace, like most Rosharan life. They've got the same moldy-smelling blood as the chasmfiends. Etc. Here's a helpful WoB. Since humans didn't appear on Roshar until after the Shattering (they were worshipping Odium when they arrived, QED) but the planet was inhabited before the Shattering, the obvious interpretation is that the singers were indeed native to Roshar, not just a race who arrived there before the humans did. There's also the Aimians to consider, but regardless all the evidence points us to the singers being native to the planet.

A Rosharan 'month' is fifty days, divided into ten weeks of five each, and a year is ten months long. That a year is exactly five hundred days long is probably due to Adonalsium tweaking things Just So, and I suspect the exact division of month and week was arrived at because Vorin culture has a symmetry fetish. We don't know what calendar systems the non-Vorin cultures use so they might divide things up differently. Since Rosharan days are shorter than Earth ones (aka 'Cosmere standard' which is based on Yolen and by extension Scadrial) that actually tracks pretty closely. I got curious about this when Jasnah mentioned Amaram being seven months in the womb during her verbal beatdown of the man, looked at what we know of Roshar's timekeeping and ran the numbers. They're closer than you'd think once you do the math, despite the gestation period on Roshar being seventy days longer than the average one here in the real world, assuming exactly seven local months is the Rosharan average. Edit: Multiply ninja'd on the exact breakdown of days, weeks and months. xD

Nightblood already is a hybrid of magic types, in a sense. It's the result of two people using Magic System A to try to replicate something from Magic System B, when the two systems function on very different rules and have different fundamental applications. Which nicely explains why the end result is weird without needing to posit additional details that require multiple completely unproven assumptions. Occam's Shardrazor is perfectly applicable to this situation. And would you please address the repeatedly raised point that the danger of Shashara releasing the secret of how to make more swords like Nightblood (and Yesteel in the present) could possibly be a serious threat if it requires huge amounts of a godmetal? Which, I must again point out, requires more atium than actually exists in the post-Catacendre world.

Obvious Oathbringer spoiler

Yes there are, specifically for this instance.

No, Brandon has said that you actually need to intend to create a spike, not just to kill, otherwise it would be theoretically possible for 'accidental hemalurgy' to happen and Brandon has said this isn't something that could happen. You could argue that Odium was able to provide the Intent in the same way that Ruin did, but there's no evidence yet that Odium knows enough about how hemalurgy works to supply what's needed. And while in-universe philosophers would argue otherwise, Brandon himself says that what Moash did wasn't hemalurgy, though it uses a similar fundamental. My own guess is that the knife ripped out Jezrien's soul (or at least the bit of his spiritweb that linked him to the other Heralds and bound him to the Oathpact, assuming it could be isolated) and trapped it in the gemstone, but it doesn't have the property of transferring that soul to someone else like a hemalurgic spike would. As long as Jezrien's soul or fragment thereof is stuck in that sapphire, he's out of the equation, the Oathpact is consequently weakened and Odium has what he wants.

Sadly, this contradicts what Brandon says in the Warbreaker annotations. Had the coup in Warbreaker not been stopped, Yesteel would have used his knowledge of how to create more Awakened swords and it would have led to a new Manywar. That doesn't make sense if you not only require the godmetal of another Shard but a huge amount of it, per sword. Unless you also want to argue that Nalthis somehow has a massive stockpile of the stuff just waiting on hand that Yesteel could have put his hands on. Also, Brandon has said more recently that aside from what already existed in the world, there is no more atium. Harmony isn't making more. If he wants to siphon off his 'extra Ruin' into a metal, he could put more Ruin into harmonium. Which might help explain why it has that little propery of 'explodes violently if it gets wet'. The Lifeless squirrel that Vasher creates, which is able to interpret extremely complex Commands even though this shouldn't be possible, suggests otherwise. This is due to the skill of the Awakener. It can make the completely mindless able to carry out intelligent actions autonomously (see Vasher's 'fetch keys' dolls for example) and it can increase intelligence in things that already have minds. Creating a complete mind out of nothingness is just a combination of things we already know that the magic system can do.

Clearly, Alcatraz is a victim of a Librarian misinformation campaign, which got passed down to the patsy whose name he publishes the books under in the Hushlands.

His soul (separate from his Cognitive self-image) would still 'know' that he was older so that wouldn't work even if he could somehow perfectly envision himself as being immortal. And we know that he does actually grow old; he thinks himself that his gold compounding doesn't affect aging or the need for sleep. You need different metals for both of those things. And welcome to the Shard!

Atium does not look like steel, Vasher would have noticed the visual differences, to say nothing of likely being able to sense that the metal was already Invested. At the Seventh Heightening you can detect when an object has been Invested with Breath; that likely works on other forms of Investiture as well. And making a sword would have required far more atium than actually exists, given that Marsh only has a bag of the stuff, the rest was burned away by Elend and the mistfallen at the end of Hero of Ages and Sazed isn't making any more of it.

Three words: Not enough Investiture. It requires a lot in order to remain in the Cognitive Realm for any length of time and there's zero indication that listeners innately possess enough to remain indefinitely, and evidence against it from the fact that Odium had to actively take steps to make the Fused possible. For an example from Mistborn: SH Now, remember that conversation that Odium has with one of the Fused, where he threatens to take away whatever is sustaining his existence if the latter doesn't fall into line? That tells us that 1) The Fused are not being directly controlled by Odium and have some degree of autonomy and 2) Odium has to actively do something to create the Fused. Both of these things effectively disqualify Eshonai from becoming one: She was already trying to resist Odium's influence so he's unlikely to have made any special effort on her part and he's got to be aware that if he did, it could backfire on him. Given that he's stated to be worried about getting attacked by Cultivation while he's distracted dealing with what Tanavast left behind, he's unlikely to want to Invest any more heavily than he absolutely has to, in order to keep his strength where it is. He basically has nothing to gain by making Eshonai a Fused.

Maybe I can Soothe your worries away*. The first WoB says that aluminum works like a field rather than a direct shield, so you can't bypass the protection of a tinfoil hat (and oh how amusing a coincidence that was) by getting underneath the wearer and then trying to soothe/riot them. The second is about taking control of someone who's been spiked, which involves the same allomantic powers but isn't exactly the same thing and involves exploiting the 'flaw' im hemalurgy that Ruin took advantage of. So I'm not sure there is any contradiction when he says that an aluminum spike wouldn't affect a soother's ability to control a spikee. Different applications of the magic at work. Unless you were thinking that the presence of aluminum generally should also block emotional allomancy via the 'aluminum field' effect he mentions? Possible thoughts there: The field effect isn't present or as strong in a hemalurgic spike due to how it's Invested, or emotional allomancy needs to 'see' the head of the person you're trying to control and the field from a spike placed somewhere else in the body isn't large enough to reach the head. * I'll just get my coat then. Oh wait, Wayne has borrowed it.

We have WoBs and Arcanum Unbounded confirming that Yolen has two competing ecologies so it's not really 'unpublished' per se, even if all the specifics we know about fainlife come from an unpublished work that we know is going to be massively revised before it's published and becomes canon. Anyhow, given how obvious the 'making a new Adonalsium' theory is, I'm tempted to go with restoring Yolen's complete and pre-fain ecology just on the basis of it being less obvious. Another possible interpretation is that there was something specific on Yolen that no longer exists, possibly independently of fainlife (the recently shared Dragonsteel Prime chapters show wars going on for example, even if that specific sequence was lifted for Stormlight Archive) and Hoid wants to recreate it and needs to tinker with lots of different systems of Investiture in order to figure out how to do it. Actually, my first suspicion for an alternate interpretation of that WoB would be that Hoid is seeking to recreate his favorite flavor of instant noodles, except that apparently those didn't exist on Yolen before the Shattering so Hoid wants them even though he's never had them before.

Yeah, for all we know someone in Era 3 just asked Harmony for his secret recipe for Terris Cheesecake and was given it. I understand it tastes divine.

The Set follows 'Trell' and Brandon has said that for now, we can think of the unknown metal that Paalm was spiked with as 'Trellium'. Trellium is from a Shard that we know. Therefore, the mystery entity that appears at the end of Bands of Mourning (known to Suit and obviously affiliated with this Trell) is from a Shard we know as well. My money's on one of Bavadin's many personas.

Welcome to the Shard! Mistborn didn't exist before Rashek handed out the lerasium beads (Brandon has mentioned that Allomancy first came with the Mists snapping people during Alendi's time) and the bloodlines with the necessary 'Mistborn sDNA' were largely if not entirely wiped out prior to the Catacendre, with the most powerful two (Vin and Elend) leaving no descendants at all. And Spook was made to be a less powerful Mistborn so the sDNA he could have passed onto his children was weaker and consequently less likely to express itself. So, less of the necessary sDNA for Mistborn to exist at all and what there was, wasn't as strong as it had been during the Final Empire. So to the extent that Sazed deliberately made Spook a weaker Mistborn you can say that the lack of them in Era 2 is sort of Sazed's fault, but it's got nothing to do with the changes to the snapping process and most of it just boils down to there being very little 'Mistborn sDNA' left in the population that could express itself.