Weltall

Haven't read Secret History yet but assuming it didn't somehow come up there, we've recently learned that Odium is aware of the weapon created by the anti-Adonalsium faction. here

Was there something about no afterlife for people missing bits of their soul? I know that Drabs aren't normally able to become Returned* but I'm not sure that's the same thing. It could be that Endowment simply can't deliberately grant a Divine Breath to someone who doesn't have at least one regular Breath, because Investiture. * Though Brandon did say that if Endowment tried to Return someone who was immediately made a Lifeless, you'd wind up with all kinds of craziness and a 'Drab God' so... who knows.

On Tin (both allomantic and feruchemical), they could do what Sherlock does and have fun with subtitles showing the things the user is observing with their enhanced senses, plus toying with the volume knob selectively. You could do similar things with subtitles for feruchemical Copper to show the memories being recalled. Cadmium and Bendalloy are obviously within the bounds of special effects. Make the edge of the bubble shimmer and speed up or slow down the inside/outside depending on the metal and the perspective. Duralumin/Nicrosil: Whatever you're doing for the other metals, but flashier if appropriate (Steel/Iron/Atium etc). Aluminum/Chromium: Nothing. Electrum: Basically the same as Atium, you could probably film this mostly with practical effects. Gold: Since this one is all mental, get the makeup artists and costume department involved to create past selves and do a little special effects work to make them look a bit spectral afterwards. And for its feruchemical application, people have had a lot of practice with rapid healling effects so that's easy. Feruchemical Steel: See above, super-speed is a pretty easy effect to create.

Do those ones fall under the no-discussion policy when Brandon has made them available on his website? Either way, I'll hide that one for now.

I dunno, I think that even if Odium started out with good intentions at this point he would be so warped by his Intent that it probably no longer matters. Assuming for a moment that Hoid's descriptions of Ati and Rayse in the First Letter are at least generally true (and nothing in the reply contradicts him there and actually supports it) then even if Rayse was the nicest guy, after a few thousand years he's probably so consumed with hate that he's forgotten about anything else, just like Ati was completely warped by the nature of Ruin. Though I do like the idea of some sort of meta-twist because Odium as the big bad guy is so obvious I'm almost positive Brandon is going to spring something on us at the end of Stormlight or in fourth era Mistborn that makes us reevaluate things. I could see it going either way. On one hand, he's said the sixteen are all going to be characters in Dragonsteel so he could postpone the answer until he actually writes it. On the other hand, it's going to be so long before we get to that point that if it's not too much of a giveaway he might give one of those semi-answers he's so good at. Actually, this all brings up an interesting thought: What does everyone imagine Brandon will release first, the final Mistborn trilogy that sounds like it's going to be where everything comes together or the combined Dragonsteel arc where everything begins? Either way would be interesting,

So far as we know of non-Returned reaching the upper Heightenings, as long as she gets enough Breath to reach the Fifth, she would actually have an easier time than Vasher because she'd get the immortality without having to consume one Breath (or equivalent Investiture) per week like he does. So it's at least possible without her becoming a Returned herself. I think we can all agree that the Cosmere needs more Shai.

Whoops, I think I might have misread the post to be 'is this an atium+something allomantic' alloy instead of 'atium+unknown godmetal'. If so, my apologies.

Harmony explicitly can't identify the unknown metal in Paalm's spikes. If it was just an atium alloy he'd have no trouble figuring it out or sensing where Paalm was while she was spiked with it (and remember, atium is silvery, not red anyways) so the obvious interpretation (and the book outright tells us this) is that the red metal comes from some other Shard that has invested bits of itself in metal and is interfering on Scadrial because... something. Brandon has confirmed it's from a Shard we know of, likely candidates are Autonomy and Odium. Also, WoB confirms that yes, all the allomantic metals can be alloyed with atium and they all produce some form of temporal effect.

In addition to that, I think the interesting thing about Ym is the story he tells. I've seen similar conjectures on the nature of God in parts of Judaism for example, and it comes up in Babylon 5 when one character is trying to make sense of the universe. Makes you wonder if Ym is (unknowingly) speaking for Adonalsium and why it was shattered. Maybe it allowed itself to be shattered to bits in order to experience the Cosmere and if/when it's reunified it will both know all and experience all.

The one person we know can revive the recently deceased was the person who killed Ym so I'm inclined to doubt it. Outside of Nale deciding to save the person he just went to the effort of killing for no immediately obvious reason, the only way we know you could survive a fatal case of shardblade to spine is if you had a lot of stored up stormlight and you were actively healing yourself with it at the time, because after you get your spine/soul severed you're not going to be in any position to start the healing process. Nothing in the narration suggests that Ym was doing that and I'm pretty sure Nale would be watching for signs of stormlight healing (unlike the assassins going after Jasnah) since he knew he was dealing with a surgebinder.

We've only seen a little bit of Vasher on Roshar so we don't really have much to go on for Vivenna's status one way or another. Since Biochroma does offer a relatively easy method of immortality and Vivenna could potentially obtain the necessary Breath over the course of Nightblood or after (and knows someone who could provide all of it in one go without really noticing the lack, if need be) I could see her still around and doing something. I agree that if she is, the end of Warbreaker makes it sound like she'd want to travel with Vasher wherever he goes but we don't know how things end up with those two in the unwritten Nightblood. Definitely something to keep an eye out for in the next book, now that we've been warned to expect at least one worldhopper from Nalthis. Edit: I realized that I'm now Pahn Kahl. That seems appropriate.

Yeah, IIRC the Era 3 books are supposed to be set around the technological equivalent of 1980 while Brandon dropped 1940 as an idea he had for a story he could tell between Eras 2 and 3. Or something like that, I forget the exact quote. Era 2 technology is more late 19th/early 20th century, with the automobile but not yet any form of radio.

One possibility is that he (at least for a while) was receiving visions from the Almighty like Dalinar and to a lesser extent Kaladin and that's what prompted him to try and warn the rest of the Shin. That would give him a reason but it would be very difficult to prove, which fits with what we know. Certainly harder to prove than if he'd bonded a Radiant spren or something more of that nature where he could show the Stone Shamans or the people at large some evidence for what he was saying.

So all of us collectively are responsible for Adonalsium being shattered? Mind blown.

Liar of Partinel sample spoilers

Yeah, while we know they're not canon and what we'll eventually get will be different in any number of ways, the Liar of Partinel sample chapters give us every reason to believe that the Hoid present at the Shattering is 'our' Hoid. It would require really big changes to everything we know and have been told about the plot progression of Dragonsteel for things to be otherwise.

That's assuming that Lift always sees things in both the Physical and Cognitive Realm, as opposed to being able to just see and touch spren (and get the most ridiculously powerful method of storing Investiture we've seen). Anyhow, I imagine that Cognitively, Nightblood looks like, well, Nightblood. Maybe with a big banner floating over its head reading 'Destroy Evil'. But there's no reason to imagine that it has a face or really 'looks' like much of anything in the other realms.

That seems rather unlikely since Odium wouldn't have existed as a separate entity until after the Shattering. But in any case, very interesting and potentially worrying discovery. Wonder if this is connected in any way to the WoB that there was something guiding the way Adonalsium shattered into the pieces it did.

Nah, Sanderson has specifically told us that the Shards don't actively create their magic systems so it's unlikely that if you were to, say, swap Honor and Preservation that you'd get Surgebinding from holding the right metals or Allomancy from... I dunno, stormlight in the right gems I guess. You'd end up with something different. http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#5

Actually, he does go by name in Shadows of Self; Wayne addresses him as Hoid in the scene where he appears.

I think the WoB was something like 'an attempt to create a Shardblade by someone who didn't know exactly how Shardblades work' and something about Nightblood being an order of magnitude more powerful. Either way, if Hoid thinks he can survive a soul-severing Shardblade decapitation or even having his head lopped off the old fashioned way, I'm not sure Nightblood would do much more to him. Brandon has called Hoid virtually unkillable and implied that he would be one of the last two charactes left standing if all his protagonists got into a brawl with all their powers so I assume that includes Vasher+Nightblood.

Probably because he seems to be the most likely person to revive a dead Shardblade (if anyone does it) which means he'd need to swear the Edgedancer oaths. Though we do have that WoB that the Dustbringers are one of the orders that would have been cool with his actions in WoR and what little we know of them seems to fit his personality so... I could see that one going either way.

Just you watch, we'll get to that point in the book and read about Dalinar approaching a figure concealed in shadows. Then he'll open his mouth but before he can ask for his boon, the light will shift and he'll see the Nightwatcher and the chapter will end with four words: I am a stick

Didn't Wayne say that he knew he was a ferring, he just couldn't get easy access to the metal he needed out in the Roughs? And even moreso with his allomantic metal.

Words of Radiance Brandon