Weltall

They're in-universe artistic depictions of several of the Heralds: Ishar, Shalash, Jezrien and Vedel, in that order.

For future reference, the female Radiant in that vision is a Stoneward; Dalinar notes her as having tan eyes and her armor glows amber. Hence, she needed that fabrial to provide healing services as she doesn't have Regrowth, and as already mentioned the gems used are associated with the essences she's trying to heal.

Trell's Last Roadtrip: The real explanation for why this mysterious entity is involved in Scadrial; they're about to settle down and start a career but wanted to tour the Cosmere and get wild one last time. They probably don't even remember the whole thing with Paalm or working with the Set due to how much Horneater White they'd brought along from the previous leg of the trip.

A Shard needs a sapient mind to direct it and will either accept a Vessel who can provide it that mind or (if sufficiently intact and left alone for enough time) will develop a mind of its own. Splinters (of which spren are a subset) are already made of Investiture and even though they have minds, they can't Ascend in the same way that a mortal Vessel can. Brandon's analogy of 'electrifying electricity' doesn't exactly tell us what makes a sapient spren different from a sapient mortal but we can guess from the context that some of it might have to do with how connected the latter is to all three Realms, while splinters seem to be largely Spiritual/Cognitive entities that require special circumstances to have a full connection to the Physical Realm. Mistborn Secret History: The thing that prevents someone from pushing/pulling metals inside the body (which can be overcome with enough strength) isn't related to the ability to Ascend per se, it's the innate Investiture in the person interfering with the external source of Investiture. We see the same thing happen with some other magic systems.

F-Nicrosil pretty much already stores the spiritweb, insofar as its known application lets you store the bit of it that grants the user access to various magic systems and (via a process we don't understand yet involving the creation of an unsealed metalmind) allows anyone else the means to temporarily have that same power as though it were their own spiritweb. One idea that's frequently tossed around is that since atium can steal anything in hemalurgy, lerasium can store anything in feruchemy as a sort of parallel. One thing to keep in mind is that lerasium doesn't necessarily need to have some awesome use; Brandon has stated that using it for hemalurgy would be kind of like using a nuclear weapon as a paperweight (as in 'you can do it but it's completely wasted on that') so it's entirely possible the same is true of its feruchemical application.

The only WoB I was able to find on this is largely a RAFO, all that Brandon gives us is that there are differences. For whatever it's worth, Brandon didn't challenge the assumption that Renarin still swears ideals.

Brandon's said that everything in the Cosmere on that level of power is related to a Shard. Thanks to that WoB, the only way to get something on that power level independent of Adonalsium would be for something to come from outside the Cosmere. Somehow, I don't see the franchise ending on that note. Well, there's the idea of the God Beyond which could possibly be something on that scale but Brandon has been very clear that it will never be canonized beyond 'this is what certain people in-universe believe about it' so whether the God Beyond truly exists, much less how powerful it is or is not, will never be relevant to the stories. More likely to me if there's some Cosmere-endangering threat (as opposed to lower-scale conflict when worlds come into contact) is that one of the reasons the Shattering happened in the first place comes up and has to be dealt with; We know some of the Vessels saw killing Adonalsium as a necessary action so we can't rule out that some of them thought that a living Adonalsium was more dangerous than not. If so this might possibly related to fainlife since that's one of the big things we have about Yolen right now and we.know it doesn't play nicely with the other half of the planet's ecology.

Pewter primarily boosts strength and reflexes, with faster healing being an added effect. It would help while storing in F-Gold but it wouldn't be anything akin to compounding.

Hoid once ended up worshiping Taln by accident. Taln once went to Patji for a tropical getaway but he came back finding the island too quiet and boring for his taste. The God Beyond was originally what Honor called Taln. Taln is the secret seventeenth Shard of Adonalsium And one last fact for the Wheel of Time fans:

The last bit I'll give you but the former just isn't very Sanderson-esque at all. No doubt people will die and there will be despair but considering the tone of the endings for the various sub-franchises to date (and most of the component books not named Shadows of Self) I can't see the ending as a whole being so grim..

Brandon's said that he wants the books to be readable as self-contained works except for the 'conflux novels' which originally meant MB4 but more recently he's added the back half of Stormlight as well in terms of books where you'll have to be onboard with the Cosmere, so it's not impossible for major Cosmere-altering events to happen at the end of SA. That said, Adonalsium being reformed shouldn't be one of them since MB3 will take place after Stormlight and we know Harmony is still around then by implication. It's an interesting idea through and I'm sure that whatever Dragonsteel reveals about Adonalsium and the cause of the Shattering is going to blow us away... and the fans being how we are, undoubtedly there will be someone here who guessed it correctly in advance even if it was only in a throwaway joke they never intended to be taken seriously. xD

Except no, the feruchemist having blank Identity doesn't mean they can use any metalmind, it means they can make a metalmind that anyone else with that feruchemical power can use. Brandon has explicitly stated that blank Identity in and of itself doesn't make you able to use any metalmind. The key here is that a normal metalmind doesn't look for 'Identity X or nothing', it looks for 'Identity X' and if you're not that, it's not letting you play. Having a blank Identity would be no different from having the wrong Identity.

Division works by splitting molecular bonds so... no, I don't think you can make it work that way. Well, not unless you're looking at something like a sea star with regenerative abilities where a separated part of a body can regenerate into an entirely new organism. It definitely wouldn't work for most organisms since Brandon has said that even in a perfect bisection, the soul of the original being would jump to one half or the other and regenerate under Cosmere healing. So using Division and then Progression on something that can't regenerate naturally wouldn't multiply a living thing.

Secret History was written in 2016, making it one of Brandon's most recent works. The other place Vax is mentioned came out the year prior and was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his first published work. I'm pretty sure Brandon knew exactly what he was doing with that line of dialogue and I'm even more certain that he doesn't want to tell us what it is yet.

@Wyndlerunner Yeah, if you can play CS1 and 2 on PC first, it's a really really good idea to do so. There have been a couple streamers I've watched who started with 3 and enjoyed it but they got the definite impression that they were missing out on a lot of context. Since CS3 is a continuation of the first two games, the bulk of the core cast (ie, everyone but Juna, Kurt, Ash and Musse) are people who have already had two games worth of development and pretty much all of the key plot points from those games are treated as something the player should already know. This is especially true concerning the protagonist, who has a couple of really important things happen to him over the first two games which are better experienced firsthand than having them all thrown at you in a whirl. If nothing else, it'll make you much more invested in the worldbuilding and the characters. There are also five games that are part of the same franchise from before the Cold Steel games, but those aren't required to play CS. From the perspective of someone who's played the whole series and knows what the references are, CS1/2's callbacks are interesting and help place some things in context but they work fine in retrospect, so if you get into the games with Cold Steel and go back to the older games later, you'll be in good shape. CS3 has deeper ties to past arcs but does a good job of explaining all the stuff from those older games that's immediately relevant to its own story (thanks to a couple of characters who help fill in the blanks) so the references you won't catch aren't plot-critical and still work fine in retrospect. The fourth and final Cold Steel game now... well, that one's not even announced for localization so it's a non-issue for the time being. Good luck trying out the series and I hope you enjoy it! I'll never tire of telling people who like Brandon's writing to give it a go and vice versa. If you've got any questions, feel free to ask away. xD @Eluvianii Yeah, Falcom spent a lot of time as a PC developer until the unexpectedly poor performance of Zwei II caused their distributor to drop them, then they shifted to Sony consoles which are the only platforms they develop for directly. It's a shame because the game was amazing and didn't deserve that reception (not to mention it killed what could have been another full franchise) but them's the breaks. Falcom also licensed their games out to other companies, which is why you can find their oldest titles on pretty much everything that could run games in Japan in the 80's and 90's, then a slightly reduced list of platforms from the turn of the century onward. EDIT: We've just gotten release dates on the PS4 ports of the Crossbell games and with them, confirmation of a very cool little tweak to the games: They're including relevant characters from the later Cold Steel games as cameos. This means Gideon from CS1 (who was already there, they've just given him unique art so we know it's him) and Juna from CS3/4 (who 'would' have been there but we didn't see her). There's a good chance for some more cameos as well but none confirmed yet. Fingers crossed that they're picked up for localization so more people can experience how great they are; I still consider them among the best in the series.

No, it's something that applies to Soulcasting when done by a Surgebinder whether they're faking the use of a fabrial or not. Brandon elsewhere mentioned that gems potentially breaking is a quirk of that Surge, which has restrictions the others don't. We don't know the Watsonian reason for it but the Doylist one is probably that Soulcasting (whether via fabrial or a Surgebinder) is so potentially story-breaking that it needs some extra limitations to stay within the bounds of Sanderson's Second Law.

Brandon has said that it's not hemalurgy per se but it uses similar mechanics and some in-universe scholars would think they're the same thing.

Another factor that could be in play is that it's harder for Odium to find Hoid on Roshar for the same reason that he can't smite someone but Endowment can: Location, location, location. In other words, because he's 'on' Braize rather than Roshar, it might he harder for him to see Hoid.

...maybe you should, I dunno, finish the first book before you criticize what you perceive as poor writing or plot holes, or express disbelief that there are more books?

Mistborn was partially inspired by heist stories and Brandon picked the specific powers in allomancy with the concept of 'what would be useful to a team of thieves' but it's not just Ocean's Eleven with magic. But if you like a good caper story, that part of Mistborn should be right up your alley.

Yeah, A-Aluminum is potentially a very useful ability to have in conjunction with other magic systems but standing alone it's really only useful to prevent metal poisoning or in the very specific scenario it's used for in The Final Empire. There's an old WoB where Brandon said that compounded aluminum would be one of those cases that wouldn't be particularly useful. Of course, this was before we started learning what Identity can do, so that WoB probably no longer applies.

Odium has always been Odium since the Shattering and we know that Rayse refuses to take up other Shards because they would change his nature and he doesn't want that. Ambition's Vessel defeating Rayse and taking up Odium makes no sense because Edgli is aware that the former is dead and Uli Da was 1) female and 2) a Sho Del. Odium's projections are neither of these things. And Hoid and Frost both agree that Rayse is still Odium's Vessel. Your theory doesn't fit the facts or the observations of characters who clearly know more than we do and it's based entirely on Odium not fitting your mental image of what 'hatred' is supposed to look like. As @RShara put it, hated doesn't have to be hot, it can be cold and calculating. I'd direct you to Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo for an excellent example of the latter. Also, Odium is not just hated but that which provokes hatred. Brandon has confirmed that both of these definitions apply to the Shard and the latter definition most certainly doesn't need to represent the kind of hot-blooded anger that you think Odium is missing. And lastly this WoB is extremely relevant (spoiler-tagged because it involves Elantris and this is the SA forum):

Even Final Fantasy V didn't have this much VOID in it...

As mentioned, she probably didn't leave the bones behind. As a kandra she'd need them to move around and there's no sense in wasting a perfectly good skeleton. She probably faked being dead until the body was buried, then dug herself out, cleaned up the gravesite so it didn't look like it had been disturbed and then left. As long as she covered the signs of her escape, she had basically nothing to worry about as the likelihood of anyone exhuming her remains and finding the body missing were effectively nil. What's that you say girl, little Wayne fell down the well? He was drunk, wasn't he?

And this right here is the problem, because you're trying to draw a distinction that does not exist. Did you read the WoB I linked to? Because Brandon looks at this exact question and explains why your personal definition of 'the system' is flawed. Thematically, with feruchemy you're Ruining yourself in the short term by storing some trait, Preserving it until you need it in the future, with the result that there's no net change either positive or negative. The End-x designations are being used to describe how they affect the individual user, not the system as a whole so the fact that matter is lost in the conversion of Investiture to action is irrelevant. Here's another WoB that explains this very clearly.