Weltall

FYI, multiple newer WoBs indicate that all of Adien's siblings would also be protagonists in the sequel. Fjordish fun for the whole family! But yeah, he's really good with numbers, presumably has a fairly good idea what the physical layout of Teoras is and can extrapolate the step count to a fixed location like the docks well enough to put Raoden in the general vicinity. If you know how far it is from your location to something like the center of Teoras, know how large the city is and know where the docks are in relation to the center, figuring out the right step count to the docks themselves is just mathematics.

I suspect the metal comment is a rabbit hole Brandon set rather than a sign of anything significant. Particularly considering when that WoB was given. It helps if you include that bit when you're citing from Arcanum. In this case, the WoB was from an Oathbringer signing (one yours truly was at, as it happens) at which point the questioner almost certainly wouldn't have known that the book they were getting signed revealed that none of the humans on Roshar were native to the planet.

Khriss isn't the only one. We're not sure what exactly the Initiation conditions are for Sand Mastery other than the Elantris 10A Ars Arcanum drawing a distinction between it and Scadrial where bloodline is a determinative factor, suggesting it's something else at work. We know that other children fail the test to be admitted into the Diem (which requires a complete inability to make the sand react) so it's not something literally anyone can do, and we know that none of Paxton's other children could Master either. In that specific case it's probably because there's some sort of sDNA interference going on due to Kenton and his siblings being of mixed parentage, but there are enough people who don't join the Diem who would otherwise probably have loved the lifestyle its members enjoyed prior to the start of the series if it had been an option to make it clear that there are some limitations even among those of purely Daysider heritage.

Brandon's said that the swords don't even need to be of equal power for Bad Things to happen: So imagining Nightblood versus an equally powerful Awakened weapon with a similar command, I'd probably want to be observing that from a good distance. Or from the Cognitive Realm. Or possibly both at once, just to be safe.

Because he did hold enough of the Shard to Ascend, however briefly. That was the purpose of the Well of Ascension. There's a difference between 'Ascend' and 'Ascend and become a Vessel yourself'. We don't know the exact requirements, but we know that a lot of Investiture from the Shard is needed and while some Connection is required you don't have to align completely with a Shard to Ascend, it's just easier the better the match. Brandon has used Elend's duralumin/atium burn as an example of limited Ascension where you're partially in the Physical Realm and partially looking straight into the Spiritual. We're also told that a form of Ascension is theoretically possible via Bavadin's avatars but it would take some work to accomplish.

Nightblood's sheath is kind of weird in how it acts but Brandon has implied that it was made specifically for Nightblood (though not as part of the original Awakening) so there might be more at work than it just being aluminum that makes it act the way it does. Given that Nightblood is pretty wonky, it's also possible that he sees the sheath as part of himself as long as the clasp isn't shut and as a result some of its power gets transferred through the sheath and allows it to do the things we see in Warbreaker. As for why aluminum acts the way it does, we haven't a clue. The Doylist explanation is that Brandon wanted aluminum to act as a check on magic that would become increasingly available as the magic itself became more widespread and better understood. As a metal that was extremely hard to come by before the industrial processes were discovered that allowed it to be refined in bulk, it can be extremely rare in early Cosmere stories and become ubiquitous in later ones. Brandon notes this on a couple of occasions, like here. The Watsonian explanation for aluminum being weird is... unknown.

Can't happen here due to the sand itself not being the key factor but he lichen that lives on it, but if you haven't already done so you should check out the Alcatraz series...

We know that the Dragonsteel series is going to lead up to the Shattering and all the original Vessels will appear there, so we should get introduced to all the Shards (or at least have a very good idea what they all are) by the time those books are through. Then we'll probably see or at least hear about all the Shards in the final Mistborn trilogy which is going to be the big finale to the Cosmere. In the interim, the Threnody novella might give us some information about Ambition and future White Sand projects will probably do likewise for Autonomy. Brandon has also mentioned plans to rewrite the unpublished Aether of Night, which might bring another Shard into the picture. His most recent WoB is that the aethers are a pre-Shattering magic system (which was how he made it when he wrote The Liar of Partinel) but that's probably going to change. Assuming it does, that would likely bring another Shard to our attention. And the Silverlight novella that Brandon has been talking about might introduce another Shard in some way, if only indirectly due to how Cosmere-aware that city is.

Preservation is a special case. Given that Brandon explicitly qualified his statement about smiting with a reference to location, I'm pretty sure that it is in fact relevant. Yes, Preservation couldn't smite because of his Intent but Ruin sure as hell could based on his. Yet we know that even though Odium would love to kill Hoid he still needs to work through intermediaries on Roshar rather than doing the job himself, and he clearly has no problem killing since he's murdered his way through four Shards already. With smiting on Roshar, it's pretty clearly degree of Invested-ness, not Intent that's holding him back.

Natural biological healing in the Cosmere wouldn't work the same way that the various magical forms of healing do, because natural healing doesn't involve messing around with one's Spiritual template. Edgedancer spoiler:

I think you're reading too much into this WoB: The key bit there is 'depending on where they are', I think. Endowment could smite someone in Warbreaker because she's Invested on Nalthis and has more influence on what happens there. Odium can't smite someone on Roshar because his Physical/Cognitive 'location' is on Braize and he avoids directly Investing himself in a world as much as possible. If you were on Braize itself you'd have good reason to worry about smiting but on Roshar we know Odium has to work through intermediaries. See the epilogue of Oathbringer for example.

Singers sound like they could be one of the coolest options given all of the potential Forms (the ones that don't require bonding a voidspren at least) as long as you're at a time when knowledge of how to attain those Forms is available. Be fun to decide 'I feel like being artistic this week' and shifting to Artform, or the other options. Venli's Envoyform also sounds like it could be awesome, if not for the whole 'voidspren influencing you' aspect. Pity the Cosmere doesn't have those... the Sho Del might be the closest equivalent but we know almost nothing about them and a lot of what we do know is from a non-canonical book subject to revision.

Nale went back for his blade and we know that the Heralds infrequently swapped their Honorblades with each other so it's not completely impossible that one of them might have retrieved Taln's blade for some reason, either to use it or to protect it. It doesn't seem all that likely but it could have happened. As far as the Ghostbloods knowing things, Truthwatcher could certainly explain it (especially as a 'normal' one views the present, not the future) but we know they've got worldhoppers with potential access to multiple magic systems (Mraize's trophy collection is full of Invested objects from other worlds) so having a member with some means of viewing the Spiritual Realm or making use of Fortune a la Riino's sphere is at least as likely as them having a Truthwatcher on their payroll.

@aneonfoxtribute That's pretty much what I was arguing. I was responding to @Ookla the Prolific's suggestion that it could give her immortality on its own if she could figure out how to work it.

It's extremely likely that one of Gavilar's spheres is this prison but we have no idea how he got his hands on those things at present. One assumes that the Radiants who imprisoned BAM put the gemstone somewhere they thought it would be safe. Aimia wouldn't necessarily be a bad bet, except that as far as we know its secrets are still being kept. It's not hard to imagine other places on Roshar where you could hide a small object and be fairly certain it won't be stumbled upon, especially if you've got surgebinders who can get at places not easily accessible by ordinary people.

We don't know the circumstances surrounding Re-Shepir's apparent imprisonment to be able to say whether it was done in the same manner proposed for Ba-Ado-Mishram and seen with Nergaoul. Since the Gem Archive was recorded just before the plan was enacted and it described imprisoning BAM as making use of the theory that an Unmade could be captured like an ordinary spren (see here) it sounds like whatever was done to Re-Shephir was different, otherwise it wouldn't be a theoretical possibility but a tested fact. It's possible that the imprisonment used an unrelated method but another possibility that seems likely is that Re-Shephir was imprisoned in an imperfect gem which sufficed for a time and gave the Radiants the idea that a perfect gemstone would contain an Unmade indefinitely.

I'd forgotten that the annotation on what Vivenna could learn to do (this one) mentioned age, but now I'm wondering how that works mechanically. It seems like it would be something of a cheat and a violation of Brandon's second law to have a means of immortality without an associated limitation. The Returned need to feed their Divine Breath to live indefinitely, Fifth Heightening Awakeners need to amass enough Breath, atium compounders need their metal, it's exhausting being an Elantrian etc. So indefinite age manipulation just feels off. I'm wondering if by that what Brandon had in mind wasn't that she could remain a given age indefinitely but that she could affect her apparent age, so that she looks whatever age she wants to regardless of her actual biological age. We know that your Spiritual aspect 'knows' how old you are and unless you have a method of tricking your soul you'll eventually drop dead even if you're in perfect health as a result of this. I wonder if what Vivenna has is more of a Physical cosmetic ability, while she would continue to age in Spiritual terms. She'd still live longer than normal due to having a lot of Breath and could become functionally immortal if she hit the Fifth Heightening but wouldn't be able to prolong her life indefinitely on just her fragmentary Divine Breath. That's where I'm thinking, anyways.

Well, while most of the Mistborn characters in Era 2 and the still unwritten Era 3 will presumably be long dead of old age by the time Era 4 rolls around, we know that you can do some one-way time travel into the future with sufficient reserves of cadmium and you could probably extend that even further if the allomantic grenades can produce a comparable overlap effect, so it's vaguely possible that Marasi could still be around in Era 3 or maybe even 4 (though that would be much more of a stretch) if for some reason she felt it was necessary to go to those lengths. Beyond that we've got Vivenna who's joined the Worldhoppers Club and has at least one homegrown method of potentially extending her own lifespan if Brandon wanted to keep her around. Then we've got the members of the Seventeenth Shard who use a method to slow aging that's not dependent on any one magic system and can apparently be learned by anyone. Thus, there's an avenue for Brandon to bring characters into later works if they work out this method on their own or are taught it. It seems like it involves the Cognitive Realm (we're told you do age there... asterisk) which might be a bit of an issue for Rosharans just now... Anyhow, it's not necessary for characters to become actually immortal for them to potentially show up in Era 4. That said, we have Word of Brandon that he's not really intending Era 4 to be the Cosmere equivalent of The Avengers with characters from this work and that appearing so much as it is the worlds we've seen coming into contact with a few characters we'll know so at the end of the day there probably won't be all that many familiar faces in Era 4.

You mean the star a given world orbits? I wouldn't think so, as it would have its own 'space' in the Cognitive Realm created by people on the world or worlds around that star perceiving it in the same way that a visible but unexplored moon would have a small Cognitive presence. Since they have their own space, I don't think they'd have a bead or other representation on a different celestial body.

The three Realms predate the Shattering and there's no reason to think that Adonalsium was any different from everything else in the Cosmere vis a vis existing in all three, given that he was the source of all the Investiture that makes up the Cosmere. PS, just saw your custom title, very nice. 俺もスティックです。

We also have these:

It seems like increased strength with A-Atium (whether you get it via hemalurgy or lerasium) would increase your efficiency, letting you get more out of the same amount of metal than a weaker user:

Probably every bit as well as 'Destroy Evil' is working for Nightblood.

Well, technically it wouldn't be draining Breath because only Nalthians have that but the fact that the color-draining is exactly what we see with the Lifeless is too obvious a similarity to be a coincidence. We know that the color-draining is using the body's own color as fuel for the Awakening that makes the Lifeless (rather than the Awakener providing an external source) so there's probably something similar at work mechanically when Azure's sword cuts something. I wouldn't be surprised if the color-draining fuels the sword like Nightblood eats the Investiture of whatever it strikes, but I'm not sure if that extends to the sword actually consuming Investiture, since that's not what the color-draining is in Warbreaker. Could be the case but I'm not sure we can determine it just from the color effect. But I wouldn't be surprised if the sword was intended as an anti-Lifeless weapon originally, since a corpse that's already been drained of color won't have any for that Awakening to work on.

The Dula probably had their own manifestation, it just appeared differently. Jesker was aware of the Dor and its practice attempted to understand it so it's possible there was an associated magic system to go along with it. We know that it's something Brandon plans to explore in the Elantris sequels and that it retains (or retained) information that newer religions did not.