Weltall

@Spoolofwhool Yeah, I remember that part, it's the specifics in Kaladin's flashbacks in Way of Kings (where there's some thoughts on how the social status of children from mixed lighteyed/darkeyed parents can work) that I'm having trouble remembering.

Heterochromia is mentioned in Words of Radiance in Shallan's flashbacks (I recall the chapter is even named after it) and while I don't remember the chapter in WoK off the top of my head I know the topic of eye color inheritance comes up in one of Kaladin's flashbacks.

Yeah, eye color appears to be inherited so that if your parents were both lighteyes you will always be a lighteyes and the same for darkeyes. When a lighteyes and a darkeyes have a child things can get wonky. The one example we know of (and according to Brandon it's the most common result) is that you're born with one light and one dark eye and you occupy a weird social niche. It's also possible for the child to take after one parent or the other, at which point their social status gets complicated and it seems like the matter would be treated on a case by case basis. There might be some more specifics in WoK where Kaladin is thinking about Laral and the children they might have but I can't check my copy right now. Edit: Welcome to the Shard!

I'm not sure what you'd see originally but we know from Wax's example that with effort you can focus your attention and percieve things that were originally a single line as separate ones representing component pieces (ie, seeing separate lines for the bullet, the casing and the primer cap) and we have evidence you can do this with genuinely single bits of metal as Kelsier was able to manipulate metal rods by simultaneously Pushing on one end while Pulling on the other. So with a bit of concentration you could probably 'see' as many or as few lines in Newcago as you wanted to. Though you might need to be a Savant to pull it off.

Smedry Talent, we know that with enough creativity you can make any of those awesome while you can never be too sure what you'll get out of the Nightwatcher. Would you rather be forced to read a romance novel with Sadeas as the protagonist or a ten volume treatise on the use of Chulls in agriculture?

Tin can only enhance what you have and doesn't possess any healing power* so it would only work on your other senses. Brandon was asked some questions about a blind Mistborn (based on the MAG but still useful as a hypothetical) and confirmed that they'd still be blind even with tin but could 'sense' things that normally have a visual component like steel/iron lines, gold shadows and atium. (here) * There's a question over whether you could heal being born blind since your Cognitive self-image would probably include 'being blind' as part of it, never having had the experience of sight

Much like one Robert Jordan who once told us that he had the last paragraph of Wheel of Time already written out and at one point bestowed upon us two words from it which told us absolutely nothing? xD Yeah, I could see Brandon pulling that one on us, though he's already done something like that (legitimately) by implying that we've seen a hint to the end of SA somewhere in the epigraphs of the first two books. Given the knots we're tying ourselves in over that, a single word would just be salt in the wound because you know he'd say it's 'the'.. Is 50 Shades by the same author who wrote Sixth of Twilight and Bands of [CENSORED]?

Are we absolutely certain Brandon isn't really Hoid's avatar in our universe, here to troll us for his own amusement? That was a work of evil genius! And I'm with everyone else, I'm going to start bringing aluminum foil to etch WoBs into starting with the next signing, just in case.

Yeah, later in that same WoB Brandon mentions how non-Nalthians can obtain Breath and he mentions it in other WoBs as well. So all you need to get Breath (and the ability to Awaken with it, plus all the passive effects) regardless of your origin is for someone who already has Breath to grant you some via the appropriate Command.

Yeah, people have seized on the implication that lerasium's power is really 'rewrite your spiritweb' with 'become a Mistborn' being only its default setting as the basis for various theories as to what Hoid is using the bead for. One possibility that makes a certain amount of sense (given that we do see him using emotional Allomancy in Shallan's Middlefest flashback) is that he used a small amount of the lerasium to give himself specific Allomantic abilities he wants/needs and he's saving the rest for further research.

Yeah, combine the fact that all of the Returned are taught to see themselves as gods at the pinnacle of their society (with more than a little support behind the belief), the fact that almost nobody in Hallandren would be suicidal enough to try and harm one of them and Lightsong having decided that he was a former police investigator or something along those lines before his return (mistakenly but not unreasonably so) and Lightsong's actions make perfect sense to him.

We don't know exactly what happens when you split an Awakened object but the rope does continue to move after being split so it's possible the Breath gets split between parts until the object is too damaged (in both a Physical and Cognitive sense) and the Awakening simply falls apart. We know something similar can happen with magic systems on other worlds so it's likely the same applies here. Mistborn details and spoilers through Alloy of Law As for what happens to Breaths after someone has died (whether they were holding them or they were in Awakened objects) we know that they're effectively lost but Brandon has suggested that it might be possible to harvest at least some of these 'lost' Breaths.

The only correct answer would have to be 'your guess is as good as mine' but my instinct is that if Brandon were to rewrite the novel, the novel would become the canonical version of the story and the graphic novel would either be rendered noncanonical outright or would get some handwave-y explanation as a story passed down on Taldain that got some embellishments over time*. Wouldn't be hard to work the latter into the series since Khriss is the author of all the Ars Arcanum and she could easily drop a comment there, or mention it in some future appearance she makes. * At this point, the only things we know of that Brandon would retcon should he rewrite the novel are the idea of slatrification and Jon Akron and Cynder being unable to remember which of the two is which, and the latter was an adaptation-induced goof.

One wonders how much use we can make of evolutionary theory in a universe where godlike entities can alter DNA at will (in realtime, no less), mess with physics and successfully divide by zero. But let's try anyways. A bit of quick research suggests that skin pigmentation can take a long time to adapt to the UV of a given region, at least across Cosmere timescales. Wikipedia suggests about ten to twenty thousand years, less if there's serious selection pressure. With a Shard actively meddling in the world (Taldain wouldn't work otherwise) and the potential for Investiture to do wonky things, it's unlikely that there is severe selection pressure so the longer timespan probably holds true here. Bearing in mind that White Sand is the chronologically earliest work we have right now, it's possible that we're looking at a planet that hasn't been inhabited for long enough for natural selection to do its thing. Not that we know exactly how long has passed since humanity began to live on Taldain and us getting to see it but we're probably in the right timeframe.

We're not supposed to talk about the prose version. That said, the excerpt published in Arcanum Unbounded contains material relevant to your question so it's okay to point you to that as it's publicly available. The Sand Masters consider it part of their craft and its ultimate art but it's noted to be 'wildly different' from their other powers. If Praxton's comment can be taken as accurate, almost everyone of mastrell rank can slatrify. On the assumption that he didn't just pick the name because he liked the sound of it, the best I can come up with is that it might be derived from the Swedish word slåtter, referring to the time or act of harvesting. Maybe someone else can come up with something better.

Well, it's beem mentioned in the context of the Mastrell's Path in the graphic novel so technically it is canon right now (and might appear in the final volume if the duel plays out the same way) but if Brandon rewrites the novel then it might be decanonized. So 'canon until further notice' seems to be Slatrification's status pending Brandon's decision on how to handle White Sand's planned sequels.

@Spoolofwhool Thanks for providing that quote, I hadn't seen it before and that makes it look far more likely that there's important context missing from the WoB as it's recorded on Theoryland and I agree that from that, it seems more likely now that Frost's immortality isn't inborn. As for why I was 'pushing' for the other interpretation, like I said I didn't have that information and was trying to reconcile the book and a WoB that came out later, on the assumption the latter was more or less accurate as recorded. Yep. The day he stops surprising us the world will stop spinning, the sun will turn green and GRRM might finally be ready to think about beginning work on the next ASoIaF book. If he's not too busy.

Here's another WoB confirming that Splintering isn't necessarily permanent.

@Figberts I can think of a couple explanations. One, maybe dragons in the Cosmere don't breath fire. Two, as Calderis mentions perhaps there are dragons that have different types of breath (fire, ice, lightning, acid, the rare Awesome Dragon that belches rainbows...). Three, who can ponder the mystery of dragons and their names, maybe Frost does breathe fire and has a good reason to be named that unrelated to his bad breath. xD Yeah, I know, I just wanted to establish the chain of evidence linking Frost to the Letters (and hence, the 'old reptile' description). I think this is down to interpretation. Brandon could just as easily have meant the second statement (he was born as one) to mean 'he was born an immortal' as it is that there's a missing sentence in there. Bearing in mind that real life isn't like books and people don't always say things with perfect grammar. Especially if you're Brandon and trying to decide on the spot how much you can/should say. Or have been at a signing for four or five hours already and are having as much trouble stringing a perfect sentence together as David is at coming up with similiesmetaphors. Same thing with the second sentence, one could interpret that as Brandon meaning 'it's a trait of his race' and he dropped a couple of words getting it out. Like Dyring says, its inclusion in that response is something of a non-sequitur unless it was meant to refer to Frost. All that said, I'll grant you that the WoB is an admitted paraphrase so it's possible there's something that got lost there but... I don't think it's terribly likely. And point you back to my guess that Frost may now be 'more immortal' by virtue of either isolating himself from the possibility of anyone/thing that can kill him, or having that situation imposed on him (by, say, some serious depopulation on Yolen removing anything that could reasonably threaten his life) as a way of explaining the seeming contradiction between the Letter and the WoB.

I recognize that there's an apparent contradiction here but everything we have indicates that 1) Frost is the recipient of the Letter, 2) Frost is a dragon and 3) Frost was naturally immortal. So I'm not sure how we resolve it, unless we focus on the 'they don't age but can still be killed' aspect and take it that Frost did something (or something happened around him) to make it effectively impossible that he could encounter anything that could actually kill him. Here's the combined WoBs that I'm working with: Frost>Hoid, pretty simple. If Frost is the only person in the Cosmere older than Hoid, then Hoid must be writing to Frost. We have another WoB (from Twitter) that more or less confirms it in a different way as well. According to Brandon, Frost was born immortal and this is a trait of his race. From these three we know that Frost isn't human which leaves dragon or the third sentient race and Hoid calls Frost 'you old reptile'. Frost apparently calls himself that as well. The last one is a paraphrase but the mention of Frost in the same context as dragons in the Cosmere is rather suggestive.

There may be no true endings to the Wheel of Time but there still are endings and unless Harriet.decides otherwise, it's over. According to Brandon, Robert Jordan was uncomfortable with the idea of other people writing in his universe but wanted the main story finished. Continuing past what he explicitly wanted done would be like exploiting his legacy and the further past AMoL they go, the harder it would be to stop. In other words, get used to the idea that it's over because Brandon rated it as about a 5% chance that more would be written past the encyclopedia. Six years ago. Nothing has happened since and I don't see that changing at all. Not to mention that fans would likely riot if more WoT work meant that Cosmere books would get pushed back in order to make time to write them. It would be neat to see what RJ had planned for those other works but I suspect most of us are rather more invested in future developments on Roshar, Scadrial, Sel and Nalthis than we are in prequels and continuations to a story that was quite effectively ended. Now if you want to speculate on what might have happened in the planned outriggers, I think we can make a pretty good guess at it: Tuon, Mat and Min go to Seanchan, kick chull and take names. Mat does outrageous things and Min Sees Things. A certain sheepherder in a new body might make a cameo appearance or he might not. We'll never learn more about Nakomi or the pipe. There you go.

Brandon has even said that he specifically included them as 'the one fantasy race' because he's a big fan of dragons. So they're probably going to have at least a few common dragon-ish traits along with his own Sandersonian touches. Other things we know: Frost (the person Hoid is exchanging letters with) is a dragon and through that we know that dragons are naturally immortal but they can still be killed. We can speculate (but not confirm) that their ability to assume human form means shapeshifting rather than having a single human form; this is based largely on the idea that Bavadin might be a dragon and what we know about her. Though since we know next to nothing about Yolen's third sentient race we can't really be entirely confident in that speculation.

I think it's more likely that the Listeners/Parshendi came first and the Parshmen are the aberration where for some reason they can't hear the songs/bond with spren. Actually, there's a recent WoB that states that prior to the end of Words of Radiance, a Parshman simply couldn't bond with a spren (though he wouldn't say why) even if a Listener took them out into a Highstorm with an appropriately trapped spren. Dullform still involves a spren bond even if it's physically similar to the Parshmen (aka Slaveform) and results in greatly reduced intelligence. Eshonai specifically calls out Slaveform as 'the form without a spren' which doesn't make sense as a distinction unless all the other forms (Dullform included) do have spren. Re: Jasnah's 'resonance' we don't know for sure but it makes a certain amount of sense that it could be 'Soulcasting at a distance' since it seems a logical combination of her two Surges. That said, the Skybreakers appear to get 'supernatural ability to determine guilt' as theirs (the epigraph says it's not related to a spren/Surge but we can't be sure the author knows how resonances work) and that has no obvious relationship to their Surges, nor does the known Windrunner resonance so we can't be certain. It's possible that anyone with access to Transformation could do ranged Soulcasting and Shallan simply doesn't know how yet.

One possibility is that the Bondsmith's ability was in some way related to the transformation from Listener to Parshmen, making it impossible for them in some way to form bonds with spren. That could account for its use as an alternate strategy to fight the Voidbringers. I'm not sure that knowing that some of your number used their powers to turn an intelligent race who (if the Last Legion is representative) really didn't want to be Voidbringers in the first place into a slave caste qualifies as something that could have broken the Radiants but there could be a connection there. Whatever the secret is Taravangian thinks he knows it and thinks that it could be used again, for whatever that's worth. There's some basis for this, in the one epigraph Darkness is citing, it's mentioned that Ishar (the Herald who shares the same Surges as the Bondsmiths and became their patron) was the one who essentially founded the Knights Radiant as an organization and it implies that the oaths might well have been his doing as well. Taln later refers to Shallan as 'one of Ishar's Knights' when he sees her Surgebinding. So it's likely that Ishar, as the sort of Ur-Bondsmith, could indeed have been responsible for the Oaths. "But as for Ishi’Elin, his was the part most important at their inception; he readily understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws "

You're trying to put your definition of powers in Brandon's mouth and assume that he means the same thing you do when there's no indication that's the case. What he's talking about in both those instances is where a manifestation of Investiture appears to act in a way that doesn't fit the Intent of the Shard whose power the individual is drawing on. Note too that one of those WoBs is over eight years old and dates to a time when the only works we had in the Cosmere were Elantris and Era 1 Mistborn. When he talks about getting power, he was asked about burning atium. As he's said repeatedly, the metals are a key that shapes Preservation's power but they aren't actually the powers themselves. That's a far more obvious interpretation than trying to establish a difference between 'Power' and 'Investiture' which Brandon has never once established, rather he refers to all the different manifestations of Shardic power as Investiture. And in the second WoB you cite, the person was trying to figure out how things like Steelpushing represent the idea of 'Preservation' and Brandon explained that the Intent of a Shard is related to how you get access to the magic in the first place but has no real influence on what you can do with the power once you're able to tap into it. In other words, you can use Allomancy (Preservation's power) to do things that aren't in tune with the Intent of the Shard, don't have to act autonomously whenever you're Mastering sand, you can blast things with Aon Daa without needing any devotional attachments... Actually Brandon is pretty much saying the opposite of your point in both of the WoBs you're citing, noting that the Shards can fuel all sorts of interactions in the one (reinforcing the actual point he was making that Intent=/=how the power must manifest) and in the other by pointing out that what could be done with one Shard's power could be done with another, just not as easily.