Weltall

Valyrian Steel? Or the name of an Epic who's a big fan of ASoIaF, thus providing evidence that Reckoners is a Cosmere work after all? xD

Not really, he's stated as recently as 2015 (ie, well after canonizing how Shardblades function) that Nightblood was an attempt to create a Shardblade by people who knew of the things, in a different magic system (source). And as Spoolofwhool points out, making the sword sentient was all part of the plan since doing so would prove the existence of Type IV entities. Brandon mentions this in the annotations; Nightblood's sentience wasn't an accident.

Because 'the man who calls himself Taln and is almost certain to be Taln' would presumably be carrying an Honorblade rather than a garden-variety Shardblade. They behave differently; witness the Prologue where Kalak notes that Honorblades would vanish if the bearer died, which is the exact opposite of how a Shardblade behaves.

Could be deliberate, could be a coincidence when Brandon was looking for a good word since there's only so many snappy synonyms for entropy. Either way, I'm certain he's going to be teasing us with maybe-references to Aether up until the moment he confirms he's working on the rewrite. See: 'Vax'.

Yeah, I don't think Balat was even unconsciously worried about Dysians spying on him, his POV in Way of Kings makes it pretty clear he's as screwed up as the rest of the family and injuring small creatures that can't fight back is how he expresses it. He's also mentioned as enjoying watching axehound fights since at least Shallan's Middlefest flashback and one of the other brothers mentions that Balat is becoming more like their father every day. So I don't think his cruelty is meant to be significant in the same way that Hoid's quip about having nobody to talk to (to a Dysian hordeling) is significant.

It probably doesn't matter too much whether Hoid was using zinc or brass as we know that you can get pretty much identical effects with both metals. Whether you Riot the emotion you want or you Soothe all the emotions you don't want, you get more or less the same end result. Hoid could make either work for him. Yeah, Hoid already has a ridiculous powerset so he might not necessarily feel he needs every Allomantic power in order to accomplish his goals. If he wants only one or two powers, it might make more sense for him to use a lerasium alloy to give them to himself at a high level and then reserve the rest of the bead for other purposes. For example, he doesn't need Bloodmaker powers and given his apparent inability to harm people, he wouldn't derive the full benefit of being a Thug or Coinshot. Given that it's implied you could do all sorts of spiritweb rewriting with the metal if you knew how, he's probably got an incentive to keep some of it around for testing if nothing else.

Great first post! We know that Gravitation can provide all (or at least most) of the flight we've seen Kaladin do so far. Edgedancer spoiler [Nitpick] The Ars Arcana are written by Khriss so they're limited by what she knows at the time she writes any given essay, not necessarily by what the natives of the world know. Which is why she can give details about Surgebinding that nobody on Roshar who's not a worldhopper would know, like how Lightweaving is very similar to a pre-Shattering magic system from Yolen [/Nitpick] All that said, I like the general theory and suspect there's far more to Adhesion than we've seen so far so I won't be surprised if Kaladin and future Windrunners can do things that someone with only access to Gravitation can't.

Just take a look at the overall spread of abilities considered pushing: Steel (you're a human shotgun and get quasi-flight), Pewter (boosted strength, endurance and minor healing), Duralumin (do everything better), Bronze (sense other Allomancy), Electrum (anti-atium, potentially awesome with training) and Bendalloy (everything Wayne does)? Yes please! The pulling abilities can be awesome as well but if you had to split Allomancy down push/pull lines, I'd take the former every time.

My take on it is that Honor is worried (well, actually pretty certain) that if Odium is freed he'll continue on his Cosmere murder trip until he's the only Shard left and the stars going out is symbolic of that. There may be some more specific symbolism involved with the stars but I'm not convinced of it. We know from WoB that Odium made a hit list and if freed he'd probably spend a bit of time revising things based on developments in the millenia he's been stuck on Roshar, then continue killing his way down the list. Now, consider what's happening on Scadrial between the time of Stormlight 5 and 6 and how Harmony would certainly be at the top of that revised hit list...

My two sphere's worth: I'm not sure Brandon's system of exactly how Shards work was completely formalized when Aether was written so we might want to take some things with a pinch of salt. Especially as pretty much everything in the work is subject to change whenever Brandon rewrites it. The way I remember things and with some interpretation, the Former and Decay are definitely proto-Preservation and Ruin, the latter being explicitly confirmed and the former an obvious extrapolation. I don't think that Order and Chaos are Splinters of the Former though, the impression I got from the prologue is that they're natural forces the Twins were able to tap into. Agaris describes Order as 'the very substance of the universe' and since his 'pure' Aether (Illuminous) was the one that supposedly represented Order, it would be strange to have him literally be restrained by his own power, ditto Makkal with Chaos. And in terms of power levels, even if Agaris was exaggerating somewhat the implication that it was within his power to actually destroy planets puts the Twins on the same level as Shards, like Ruin or Odium. So I'm not sure we can really use them as baselines for 'a Splinter able to hypothetically have a Vessel' since they really behave more like Shards that just happen to not be the most powerful things around. As far as the Realmatics go, the Twins definitely behave like Vessels with their bodies returning at the end but we probably shouldn't read too much into that because of both the power-level thing above and because Agaris' introduction makes it seem like they retained their physical bodies with their powers originally (ie, not like what happened to Vin and Sazed upon Ascension) and it was only because of Decay that they were cut off from the Physical, as a late development.

Well, we know that beheading was sufficient to kill Karata because she didn't come back even though she died mere minutes before Raoden 'fixed' the magic so there's no reason to assume an even more thorough destruction of the body would be survivable. Whether an Elantrian killed by fire is actually dead or not, I don't think we know for sure but I certainly hope it's the former. If beheading is properly death (and there's no evidence that an Elantrian who's lost their head is 'alive but hoed' so I think that's the case) then it's possible there's a Cognitive aspect at work. You think such a thing should kill you no matter what, therefore the Dor can't sustain you. So a burned Elantrian should be dead too under that assumption.

Remember that not all Inquisitors live longer, some 'burn out' earlier than a normal human lifespan per Brandon. If constantly burning metals meant longer lifespans, someone would certainly have noticed that Seekers tended to have a longer average lifespan as we're told that they frequently become Savants without even realizing it. Also, again, Rashek's entire problem was that his compounding was a stopgap measure. He 'knew' that he was 1000+ years old and needed to keep compounding to maintain his youth. We don't know how long he could have survived while doing this but we know there was an upper limit. And this is the guy who's a Sliver and was at or near Savant-hood in every metal. You pretty much can't get more Investiture-heavy than he was short of being an Elantrian or one of the God Kings of Hallandren and he didn't get any anti-aging benefits outside the hack of the magic system that he figured out. Ditto Miles whose nonstop gold compounding meant that he enjoyed excellent health but didn't keep him from getting old just like everyone else.

Not long after writing Elantris Brandon mentioned his plans for the sequels and he's reconfirmed the general idea more recently as well. Elantris 2 would take place about a decade after the first book (so before Emperor's Soul) and star Kiin's children.

Brandon has said that we need Elantris finished before we can get Era 3 Mistborn. Now, this could be for plot-specific reasons (theories like 'Trell is a reformed Dominion') or it could be more general Cosmere stuff that we need under our belt before starting the back half of Scadrial's story. Arcanum Unbounded implies that Elantrians by the era when Khriss writes her essays know a lot of interesting things that she'd give an arm and a leg (or maybe one of Nazh's arms and legs) to know so it could easily be that Sel's importance is more general than specific. Perhaps something to do with how to hack different magic systems, as the Moon Scepter from Emperor's Soul is mentioned as being sort of like a Rosetta Stone for Selish symbols. The planet's location-dependent magic is absolutely ripe for a plotline where someone works out a specific hack (like how to use AonDor effectively in Fjordell) which could tell us something about how magic systems can generally be hacked to work on other planets. Brandon has generally been tight-lipped about that sort of thing so maybe he's planning on revealing it sooner than we think, in the Elantris sequels?

Yeah, Breaths prolong life because it's a specific quirk of the magic system that they do so. To actually slow aging on Scadrial requires atium compounding or (sometimes) Hemalurgy, as WoB is that Inquisitors generally live longer, though not always. Bear in mind that this is a world that Khriss specifically points out is Investiture-rich and the guy who's probably held the most power other than the Shards themselves still needed compounding to attain a form of immortality. The only examples we have of extended lifespan on Roshar are from non-humans and the Heralds, who aren't exactly normal. Investiture is pretty common on that planet as well but nobody has mentioned that Surgebinders live longer. So I don't think it's as simple as 'lots of Investiture=longer lifespan', you need a magic system that specifically allows for it, whether naturally or via a hack.

Bendalloy seems to burn pretty quickly so it's possible you could burn a small lump of the stuff before the metal poisoning started to be an issue, especially if you were desperate. Or Wayne and could tap stored health. And after I wrote that I remembered another example we have. Secret History: But yeah, as interesting an idea as it is, turning Harmonium into a sneaky anti-Allomancer bomb probably won't work under normal circumstances since we don't have any actual confirmation of someone ingesting metal in a solid lump other than atium. Which I suppose you could use like Zane did with the lead pellet. If you had anyone on Scadrial who could burn atium right now. And had some atium. Hmmm, file this one away for Era 3 and its supposed Mistborn serial killer, maybe? "Hey, Mistborn McMurderface, look at this funny metal bead I found. Oh, you want it? Here ya go. *BOOM* He ate something that disagreed with him. Well, job done."

Wayne talks about getting bendalloy in nugget form on occasion and one is mentioned in context of how much bendalloy equals how much compressed time, but we also see him take a vial of flakes that was all Wax could get on short notice. I don't think we ever see Wayne swallow a whole nugget but I imagine he might if it was an emergency and he didn't have time to shave it down. Other that that possible exception, yeah, I think we've only seen metal downed in flake form.

In a similar issue of 'same word, not same term' we have Shardblades, Shardplate and the Dawnshards (whatever those are) on Roshar. Yes, the first one at least is technically a very tiny splinter of a Shard but that doesn't mean it is a Shard or that the person taking one up is a Vessel, Applies whether you're talking about dead blades or those formed from a Nahel Bond; the latter aren't Vessels any more than anyone else in the Cosmere with access to a local magic system is one.

As noted, all Radiants do not share the same code, they share only the single Ideal: Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Journey before Destination. After that, any given Order can have Ideals that don't play nicely with those of any other Order. Windrunners and Skybreakers are an obvious example and we also know that the Windrunners and Lightweavers (or at least their spren) had issues with one another because of the latter's flexible approach to the truth. There's nothing inherently contradictory in what we see, as Shallan doesn't swear additional Ideals and we have no idea what the Elsecaller oaths are at this point. Though if a Skybreaker had been in that alley with Jasnah and Shallan, odds are they'd have done the exact same thing, they'd just have done it with a Shardblade instead of Surgebinding. We also have Word of Brandon that while some Orders wouldn't approve of what Adolin did at the end of WoR, others would be totally cool with it. The 'honor' in this case comes from keeping the oaths you specifically swear, not one single overriding view. I wouldn't get too hung up on the 'male/female morality' thing; we know from Dalinar's visions that the Windrunners and Stonewards had male and female members and the in-universe Words of Radiance mentions a male Lightweaver. And then you've got the Dustbringers.

No, not really. If you're thinking of it as the opposite of atium being able to steal any attribute, remember that's how it works in Hemalurgy. We can't automatically assume that a different metal in a different magic system will have a similar effect, just because. Now, it's possible that's lerasium's Feruchemical property but it seems unlikely. Atium is useful in Hemalurgy because it works better than any other type of spike and (rather obviously) it can steal the ability to burn atium itself. Its Allomantic property is its best attribute and its Feruchemical property is interesting, becoming downright broken if you can compound it. Given that, the other godmetal should do something useful in all three systems as well. We know it's ridiculously powerful in Allomancy (and has the potential to do other things to the spiritweb besides 'make you an uber-Mistborn') and it would make little sense to waste it as a metalmind, when the other metals are readily available in far greater quantity. We know that with a lot of work you can make a metalmind out of all sixteen metals (possibly seventeen, we don't know if our example included atium) and thus get the ability to 'store anything' without having to waste lerasium.

Or remembers her dying during the events of Nightblood, her dying of old age at some point between then and the present however long that's been... But there are mechanisms by which she could still be around so maybe she'll appear. Or maybe she'll still be alive (whether on Nalthis or as a worldhopper) and Vasher will wonder what she's up to but we won't see her. Whatever the case may be, I'm expecting a hint of what happens in the Warbreaker sequel.

We also know Yolen is still inhabited. Word of Brandon tells us that Frost (a character we only know about from WoB and, apparently, he shows up in Dragonsteel Prime) isn't a worldhopper so he's still on Yolen and Arcanum Unbounded's essay on Scadrial uses the present tense when it notes that life on that planet is similar to what 'you'll find on Yolen'. Not what 'used to be on Yolen' so there's still life there. Granted it's not confirmed that humans still live there but we know the planet isn't dead. The essay also confirms that at least one concept from the Liar of Partinel draft regarding Yolen's ecosystem is being canonized but that's neither here nor there. This is what I get for being so foolish as to paraphrase on a forum where everyone goes through things with a fine-toothed comb and this kind of distinction may be significant. xD

@Spoolofwhool I just looked for the quote. You're right and my memory was faulty, he indeed links 'creator of mankind' to being identified by Rosharans as the Almighty rather than claiming that role personally.

Once Dragonsteel and Mistborn Era 4 are done. I'm envisioning either a small shelf worth of books (one per series) or a truly massive book that will need its own special cart and small crane just so you can move it around.

According to Arcanum Unbounded, all but two worlds were inhabited by humans prior to the Shattering. And one of those worlds was Scadrial, which was made from the ground up by Preservation and Ruin. It's assumed by the writer of the Second Letter that Adonalsium had some sort of Divine Plan and the Shards and Hoid are mucking everything up by stumbling around blindly and meddling with things. So, in almost every case it's likely that the Shards found life already existing on the worlds they chose to Invest in. In Roshar's case I'm pretty certain that there's WoB out there that the Listeners were on Roshar before humans, which makes it sound like Honor and Cultivation either created humans in place (Tanavast calling himself the creator of humankind suggests that at least some Rosharans may have been created in this manner) or brought them from somewhere else. Or more likely, both. We know the Iriali arrived on Roshar from somewhere, at an unknown time. Yes and no. Yolen is the original homeworld of humanity but we know that humans were on (almost) every planet before the Shattering so most of the Shards would have found humanity already in place.