Weltall

Rysn has had chapters in both books so far. I suspect that rather than alternating, Brandon assigns Interludes to whoever is currently in a position to give us a glimpse at whatever other part of Roshar he wants us to learn about at a given time. So we got Axies in WoK because he wanted to introduce us to him/Siah Aimians, Cusicesh and anything else that chapter might have been setting up. Rysn got two so far because Brandon wanted to show us Shinovar firsthand, then the Reshi Isles, with both giving us a bit more about Thaylen culture as well. That's my guess at how he decides what Interludes will appear, any rate.

I can't find a WoB right now but I've seen mods and admins both say that Brandon has confirmed that the similarity is just a coincidence and the two aren't even meant to be pronounced the same. One example

Setting aside the pointless necro, yeah, he's a great character but Kaladin isn't anywhere near the top of the list of powerful characters. Brandon's been asked various 'who beats who' questions and while his most common answer is some variety of 'it depends' he's pretty consistent about putting Kelsier near the top of the list because the man just does not fight fair. To get directly to the point, these questions include hypothetical Kelsier/Kaladin matchups (Kelsier wins), Vin/Kaladin (Vin wins) and generic Mistborn/Szeth, who has most of the same powerset as Kaladin (the Mistborn will usually win). And his Oaths actually make him a lot less effective than many of the ridiculously powerful Investiture-users precisely because he's somewhat constrained in how he uses those powers if he wants to keep them. And on the other point that we've never seen a Shard un-splinter, we've already got Devotion and Dominion as possible candidates for that to happen and there's no particular reason that Honor reforming has to be done (if at all) within the context of Stormlight Archive itself. If Brandon wants to do that within a book as opposed to leaving it sort of offscreen, doing it with the Shards on Sel would be narratively more satisfying since it wouldn't be the same as what we already saw (in the most important details) in Mistborn. Honor could just as easily be reformed as a whole Shard between SA 10 and Era 4 Mistborn as during SA itself.

Yeah, he may or may not be a PoV in Oathbringer but I have to imagine he'll at least show up in one of the interludes. I'm sure the Everstorm will be of great interest to the spren-spotter extraordinaire.

We know they can bring others along with them, it's mentioned in the in-universe Words of Radiance. Given that time and space effectively don't exist in the Spiritual, I'm not sure actually visiting there is possible for a human. The only known interactions with that Realm have involved those able to peek into it. Brandon mentioned at a Q&A that travel to the Spiritual is possible but it would be 'very different'.

I'm not sure it's a distinction with a difference in this case. He uses 'Shadows' as an oath, shade and shadow are derived from the same root, the book that introduced Threnody and is all about the Shades is called Shadows for Silence... and we have two sources implying that Nazh uses Shades in some way But whether you think he was talking about a Shade specifically or a Cognitive Shadow more generally, he's explicit that it's something you could do deliberately, with attendant rituals. That should extend to Shades as well as more self-aware manifestations.

If you assume that the listener's 'forms of power' are what Rosharans generally think of as Voidbringers and you consider how Eshonai and the others get into that state, it's pretty clear that what makes them Voidbringers are the spren they bond with, which can indeed come from Braize without violating any of the quotes you bring up. Bear in mind that spren are Splinters or would be considered as such.

You're missing the point. They're locked in a big safe because they're valuable, otherwise there would be no point in Vin using sapphires as a bribe later in the story. Just because one reason for their value is as a status symbol isn't a good reason to leave them lying out where anyone can see (and possibly try to steal) them. The atium that Kelsier was aiming to steal in the first place is an even bigger status symbol and if it doesn't surprise you that Straff would lock it away, the fact that he locked up gemstones that he wasn't actively doing anything with shouldn't be suspicious either.

@RonaldinhoReagan As I mentioned above, we do have mentions of gems in Mistborn during Era 1. One reference I was able to find pretty quickly is that Vin-as-Valette bribed Kliss for information she had on the assassination attempt against Elend, with a sapphire necklace that she was wearing as part of her disguise. Gemstones are hardly unknown on Scadrial so there's no reason to assume that just because Straff Venture had a cache of them, they come from Roshar. They clearly have independent value in the Final Empire's economy for the same reasons they do on our world: They're pretty and make obvious status symbols.

@Kinnsayyy The interplanetary trade thing doesn't need to have involved the head of the Ventures. And we do have mention of gemstones throughout Era 1. Vin is mentioned for example as having gemstone jewelry as part of her Valette disguise. There's no reason for Scadrial not to have gemstones of its own (it's the Earth-analogue of the cosmere after all, after Yolen) or for the people who can afford them to want to use them for decorative purposes.

The mysterious kandra worldhopper WalDo (oh how I'd love it if Brandon made that fan name official) proves it can happen and it wouldn't surprise me if Sazed wants to expand his knowledge of the cosmere, as some of the epigraphs in HoA indicate. That said, he's definitely expending most of his present attention on whatever Shard or Shards are messing with his world (as of the interval between Stormlight's two halves) so he's probably not paying that much attention to other worlds just yet. And as already mentioned, Mistborn Era 4 is the one slated to be the big crisis crossover and Brandon has said that he wants to keep Stormlight more self-contained, even though it is currently the series with the most 'big picture' focus, mostly thanks to the increased prominence of Hoid.

Yeah, Nazh pretty much shoots down the idea, interesting as it is. He even mentions in his Secret History appearance that one could choose to become a Shade, at least at some point in Threnody's past. And there's indications that he uses Shades to perform his 'grumpy James Bond' stunts.

Just to add on the lerasium bead issue, so far as we know right now there were three unused beads. According to Word of Brandon, Rashek used the power of the Well to make himself a Mistborn rather than obtaining the power through a bead, which is why he was even more powerful than a pure lerasium Mistborn like Elend. We also have a Word of Peter that there were at least twelve beads. Peter didn't mention that Rashek didn't use a bead himself but his math results in us having one more bead than we have known users. Nine original Mistborn who recieved lerasium beads from Rashek (as mentioned by Sazed in the HoA epigraphs) plus Hoid's bead plus Elend's bead... and then there's the 'at least one more' Peter mentions.

@The One Who Connects Brandon has confirmed that Shardblades are a godmetal. Whether they're 'Tanavastium', whether some are Cultivation's godmetal or whether they're an alloy of both we don't know.

There's nothing really special about soulstone in that respect though. It's prized because it's easy to carve precisely (essential to making a proper stamp) and when fired it hardens and ensures the stamp stays as you carved it but lots of material can be used to make a soulstamp. You could carve one of Shai's Essence Marks onto a similarly sized cylinder of wood and as long as you could attain the necessary precision you'd get the exact same effect as a soulstone stamp, for long as the wood held its shape.

It's noted in Gavilar's account of the first meeting with the Parshendi that when a greatshell appeared, one of them held out his hand as if preparing to summon a Blade, then quickly stopped but was still noticed. Ergo, they had shards before the treaty and before the war and it's even discussed by Jasnah and Shallan that this discovery might have been the motivation for the treaty in the first place. Given that the Parshendi were also noted to possess fine weapons that don't seem to match their observed level of development it's safe to assume that if they could find caches of arms and armor from Stormseat, they could have found a couple sets of Blade and Plate as well in the time since the Recreance.

The obvious reading is that Hoid is talking about Rayse and we have WoB that makes it even more likely because Hoid and Rayse used to be friends. And as Pagerunner noted, Hoid and Kelsier are definitely not friends. Brandon even implied the two wouldn"t get along years before Secret History came out.

There's been some speculation that the 'chimaeras' that attacked Wax in Shadows of Self might have been created by spiking humans with some trait stolen from an animal species.

Well, since Oathbringer isn't going to be out for another seven months and you have to read Words of Radiance first anyways...

Everything I'd say has already been handled by others so I'll just add one detail because I didn't know it until recently and it's worth spreading around. And here's what I want to add. Brandon has confirmed that we've seen the final phase in the chasmfiend lifecycle, they don't turn into anything else once they reach the point we've already observed on the Shattered Plains.

Kelsier doesn't even need to know exactly how Inquisitors 'see' to figure out that the kandra might want to stay away from them if they don't want to be detected because we know that their spikes can be sensed by Allomancers. True, Wax had to flare his steel to get even a faint read on TenSoon's spikes and he's a Savant on top of that but even so, it's possible and being a steel Savant himself Kelsier might have had personal experience sensing those metal lines. And he knows Inquisitors have A-Steel so he could put the pieces together just by combining things he already knows or could know, whether or not OreSeur told him 'don't let me get near any Inquisitors, it would be Bad'.

As noted, there is a ten paragraph gap between the last passage we know talks about the Unmade and the question of a traitor so we can't simply assume the latter is on the same subject as the former, though it makes for interesting speculation.

Yeah, I was wondering about that sort of thing as well. We don't have many examples of worldhoppers being affected one way or the other by Roshar's reduced gravity but it will probably come up eventually and no doubt the issue in general will come up in Mistborn Era 4. Good thing Scadrial has weight-manipulation available to anyone who can get their hands on a medallion and Roshar has gravity manipulation that could theoretically be replicated in a fabrial.

I don't think there's any reason to think that Shards directly require belief, but as noted it makes it easier to carry out your Intent if you have people who see you as a god and are willing to do things for you on that basis. Harmony makes for an interesting illustration as he flat-out tells people not to waste time worshipping him, but he's happy to use their belief in his divinity to nudge people in the right direction via the Pathian earrings and his kandra and mortal agents. @Themasterhunter You mean Endowment creating Splinters? It's carrying out her Intent and contributing to whatever her motivations are, whether this leads to anyone specifically believing in her or not. She's evidently not too concerned with accuracy in belief because the religion that seems to recognize Endowment's existence posits a male deity and the nation that's built around her Splinters doesn't follow Austrism any longer. Of course we have no idea what the rest of the Nalthis believes at this point. In Honor and Cultivation's case, they seem to have been copying what they already found on Roshar, as there were spren on the planet before the arrival of the Shards. They too don't seem terribly concerned with strict accuracy among the people who believe in them, though they were also kind of busy dealing with Odium and the Desolations so maybe Honor never had time to set the record straight before his death and Cultivation... well, who knows.

Brandon has confirmed that Nightblood will feast on your delicious soul (which is, after all, Investiture) once you don't have anything left to feed him with and it's not limited to Breath. So at this point drawing the sword would be as fatal to Szeth as anyone he was trying to fight and even if you could convince it to go after sphere-held Stormlight first despite it not being a part of you, there wouldn't be the feedback you get with inhaled Stormlight or Breath to tell you when you really need to sheathe the sword again if you want to remain among the living. Fortunately for Szeth, he can still use it like Vasher does for most of Warbreaker and just chuck it at anyone he needs to fight. Whether he knows this is another matter but since it would be rather silly to introduce this whole plot thread only for it to end the first time Szeth tries to draw his new sword, I think we can assume he'll figure it out.