Weltall

Do we have WoB on this? I've been curious on the issue of Breath permanence from another angle (after a certain point could you lose Heightenings as the health of your Breath degrades, for example) but I would imagine the effects are similar to a Mistborn system where there's a lower limit beyond which the investiture can't degrade (Era 2 spoilers) So do we know for certain that an Awakened object will 'run out' of the Breath used to awaken it? I don't think it would work that way. (Spoilers for Bands of Mourning) So I suspect that the only way to reclaim the Breaths that went into Nightblood (assuming this is even possible and they haven't 'stuck' in the way they do with a Lifeless... and I'm willing to bet they have) would be to somehow rewrite your spiritweb to 'be Shashara'. Which seems like it would be virtually impossible.

Adonalsium Did It. But seriously, the Coppermind is your best bet. It will give you a rundown of, for example, all of the Metallic Arts as a whole and by individual metal), what we know of the Nahel Bond, Surgebinding and the applications of the Surges, Awakening and Heightenings in BioChroma etc. In a series like this, even a 'concise' explanation will take a long time and you might as well go for a source where it's already been done. If you're still confused on a point I'm sure everyone will be happy to clarify it for you as best we can.

That looks more like speculation on why Nale might be sending someone to bring 'justice' to Shinovar (aside from the obvious, that they punished Szeth unjustly and he's being sent to right that perceived wrong) than actual evidence of a connection. There are plenty of other possible explanations. And as mentioned, we have no idea how the stone shamans came to possess the Honorblades. Taravangian's note in the Diagram suggests it's something you could deduce if you had the right set of facts in front of you but unfortunately we don't know what those facts might be; likely there's some in-universe knowledge he has that we don't which would clarify things.

Another thing, at the one signing I've attended so far he was happy to sign as many books as a person brought, but he only signed so many at once (I think it was three) and then the person was asked to go back to the end of the line to wait their turn again, so if you've got lots of books to bring you'll probably want to plan on staying a while. He's also strongly recommended you buy whatever book he's on tour for at the location of the signing, whether on the day or before and whether the location has any specific rules or not. I'm planning on grabbing Arcanum Unbounded the weekend before at the location, for example.

We really don't know enough about the mechanics of Sand Mastery to know how it works. The prose version has some stuff that may be relevant to the question but the graphic novel hasn't yet gotten to the part of the story where it shows up and it's one of those things that might have been tweaked in the adaptation. That said, I don't think that how autonomous Kenton is has any real bearing on his power. One thing to remember is that acting in accordance with the intent of the Shard that powers a magic system is only one part of the picture and in most cases it's a fairly minor one. For examples from other books: So I don't think that Kenton's attitude on its own explains his relatively weak ability to control sand, though he's clearly more skilled at manipulating what he has got than anyone else, by necessity. He might have just gotten the really short end of the sDNA stick, so while he was able to undergo Initiation and gain access to sand mastery because he acted with autonomy in the right way, that in and of itself isn't going to make him powerful. Actually, it's quite possible that the reason he's got so much trouble is that his mother was a Darksider. She presumably has no sDNA for sand mastery and that may be why what Kenton expresses is weaker than you'd expect from the son of someone so good at it. Spiritual genetics in the Cosmere are already noted to be weird. xD

They are but there's also a connection of some sort to Cultivation that we don't completely understand yet. We know for example that spren can be 'of Honor', 'of Cultivation' or a mix of the two (WoB) and Wyndle (and by extension all Edgedancer spren) seems very likely to be entirely or primarily associated with Cultivation. So you've got an entire order of Radiants who have the same surgebinding powers as one of the Heralds despite their associated spren being 'of Cultivation'.

Let me see if I've got this. We know that some of Hoid's interest in Scadrial is because they're the closest to developing instant noodles. Instant noodles can be associated with '1337' culture and nerd culture and we know Scadrial is going to develop its own nerd culture by Era 3. Therefore Hoid is in some way connected to 1337ness. Or since the full title is 'So l337 Hoid Can't Compete' it could just be a silly rhyme, of the type Hoid would probably love. xD

Brandon mentioned that he was 'very fond of Bavadin' when asked who is favorite of the original sixteen Vessels, though he didn't actually say Bavadin was his favorite. Anyhow, worth noting because there's clearly a story there he's going to tell us eventually.. Yes, but this way allows him to tease us by making us think he's said something significant and then getting a chuckle as we read far more meaning into it than he ever intended us to. True, we have other reasons to suspect a Rayse/Bavadin team-up has happened or will in the future but the answer is broad enough that we can't really use it to confirm Autonomy played an active role in Devotion/Dominion's splintering. Still got more out of him than my first question which earned me a RAFO though so cheers either way. And welcome!

Roshar has seasons (sort of) but they're very weird, lasting for a period of weeks and coming randomly. Brandon mentioned in an episode of Writing Excuses (transcript) that they're less what we'd think of as seasons and more temperatue variations interpreted as seasons via translation convention. Roshar apparently has no axial tilt and the combination of that and the semi-unpredicatble highstorms do fun things to the planet's weather patterns.

The way a Shard's power molds its Vessel over time can be seen very dramatically at the end of Hero of Ages. Leras had held on to Preservation for so long that he couldn't act outside the intent of his Shard. Vin however had only just picked it up so she was able to use that power for destructive ends. The annotation for the relevant chapter points out that if Vin held on to Preservation for thousands of years as Leras had, she'd have been bound by its intent as well but at that moment in time she had no such restrictions. We also have WoB that even for a Vessel who's held on to a Shard for such a long span of time, if they were separated from that power the influence of their Shard's intent would eventually fade, though there would still be some permanent side-effects. So while a Vessel will be strongly affected by the Shard they hold, it's not a permanent overwriting of their original personality. There's probably a sliding scale of how much the Vessels are affected by their respective intents though, depending on the Shard in question (ie, what it does) and how well attuned the Vessel is to that intent in the first place. Rayse for instance is probably harder to distinguish as a discrete entity from Odium both because he and his power are supposedly a perfect match for one another and because that power (Hate) is likely to have more of an influence on the thought processes of its Vessel than something more broadly defined like Honor or Endowment.

Okay, fair points on the potential for hemalurgy on some of the other Earths that Sanderson has written but I was more or less assuming assuming our Earth. Unless you're secretly an Epic or something? Has Calamity come and nobody told me?!

We have WoB that Vasher (currently at least) can't Awaken with stormlight but nothing prevents him from using any stored Breaths he may have for that, just as people with Breath (ie Hoid) still have the passive effects of Heightenings.

I don't think you could keep going back to the Well each time it refills. Brandon has mentioned that feruchemy works on the basis of multipliers and at some point, Rashek would have been too old in 'real' terms for the atium compounding trick to keep him alive any longer. So unless the Well could literally reverse age that wouldn't work forever. Not to mention that the idea of 'hanging around but not taking power' runs into a small problem: You need lots of atium and it's a lot easier to get ahold of that stuff when you're the one who controls its source, though we know that with a generous but finite supply of the stuff you can keep going for at least a few centuries so that's probably not a completely insurmountable obstacle. Anyhow, sounds like a great idea for a campaign or a 'what if' style fanfiction.

Hemalurgy would be next to useless on Earth since nobody has investiture, so all you could steal would be the 'human' powers and those aren't exactly subtle effects. Actually, the only Mistborn setting where I could imagine hemalurgy being a desireable option might be Era 4, because as a crossover there's the potential for really crazy hacks of the magic systems. Still distasteful but if I had to use it, it would be then. So, for Earth I'd go with feruchemy because it's subtle but you could do a lot with it. If I had to pick one metal, I'd go with zinc or chromium most likely. For Scadrial Era 1, I'd probably accept the risks of getting hunted down by the Steel Ministry and go with feruchemy because at that point in time if you've got the talent, you get all the metals. Even if you never figure out the 'secret' metals or the ones learned later that's still a really versatile set of abilities. For Era 2, I'd definitely want to be a Coinshot. Imagine how fun it would be to ping-pong your way through a city where there's metal all around you. xD Though if being a twinborn was an option, I might have to revise that because there's a lot of potentially neat combinations.

Do we have WoB on this one? Because everything Brandon has said so far tells us that Shards don't consciously create their magic systems, but that they're the result of interactions between a given Shard, the world they invest their power in, 'Realmantic interactions' and sometimes genetics.

Brandon has made it clear that silver is alomantically inert so it's unlikely to have any direct relationship. Though perhaps he used it in Shadows specifically because he didn't get the chance to do so in Mistborn and still wanted to do something cool with the metal?

Yeah, he hasn't officially confirmed the title as final but every time it's come up for at least a year now (maybe longer?) he's said that his current intent is to name it Oathbringer and it's not likely to change at this point.

Yeah, nice find! Their 'large eyes' are relative. Word of Brandon is that pretty much everyone on Roshar other than the Shin have epicanthic folds. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1ced7z/iamstilla_novelist_named_brandon_sanderson_ama/c9ftd2b/?context=3

A Divine Breath is known to be a splinter and gives the equivalent of two thousand Breaths in one, Nightblood has at least half that and it's the mass of investiture that made it sentient so yeah, I'd say it's functionally a splinter of Endowment even if it wasn't deliberately created by the Shard in the way Divine Breaths are. Maybe Nightblood would become a cognitive shadow if the physical blade were destroyed? Though given that WoB says it's about the most heavily invested thing out there it would probably be really really hard to manage that in any case.

I'm not sure so much that a 'day of ultimate compassion' would be enough to make his 'day of brilliance' plan work but it certainly could give him perspective on whether or not his assumptions concering the Nightwatcher's boon and bane were correct or not. After all, he asked for 'the capacity to save the world' and he's just assuming the hyper-intelligence was the boon that answered the wish while the shifting and inverse relationship to his compassion was the bane given to balance it out. Give him a day when he's on the complete opposite side of the scale and things could get very interesting. Also, nice catch on the 'million-to-one' thing. Now as we know million to one chances happen nine times out of ten.... xD

On the 'who can have squires' thing, the Radiant in Dalinar's vision of the Purelake had them and was by all appearances a Dustbringer so I don't necessarily think we can use chart placement to figure that sort of thing out. That said, I'd bet on Edgedancers being one of the orders to have squires, especially if they're expected to act as combat medics owing to having Progression. And I'm sure it would be highly entertaining to see Lift's squires so I'm hoping that I'm right. *counts down the days until Arcanum Unbound releases*

Bumping this because I put in an order today (yeah, very late) and they were still offering the $250 edition, which surprises me given the limited number but it looks like if anyone out there wants to grab it, they've still got copies unsold.

Since 'plausibility' is the name of the game when it comes to major alterations, I wonder if this would be covered by the example we're given about how changing lead to gold is effectively impossible (because who would make something intended to be lead out of gold instead?) but the reverse would be pretty easy. So, instead of taking an innocuous object and Forging it to think that I Am A Dagger, it might be more 'plausible' for a blacksmith to think 'I'm tired of making weapons, I'll use this bit of metal to make something pretty instead'. Of course, that means you'd have to hide the presence of the stamp but in the Rose Empire at least, that might not be a problem. Shai points out how so much of the art in the palace is Forged so a servant carrying a stamped tray might not really attract any special attention. Either way, neat idea.

This got me interested so I looked up a few things and found out that sea silk is (or was) a real thing. Now scale that up to match Roshar's fauna... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_silk

I wonder if everyone's first thought on seeing Aarik/Eric was 'Is this Hoid?' since I know it happened to me. There's a WoB that Hoid's appearance in the prose version was an offhand mention to one of Ais' old cases that was intended to reference him without actually naming him. I've tried to find that but haven't been able to, despite being willing to swear to having seen something that sounded like that on my first read. Tis a mystery... Anyhow, the musician/storyteller seems like a promising candidate as Hoid has adopted a disguise like that before. Spotting this kind of thing requires a whole new skillset though and one I'm clearly rubbish at; I didn't even realize there was a pattern of faces in the clouds until it was pointed out here. xD