Weltall

Her influencing Vin seems fairly likely since she's a Magical Ninja while Vin's a Magical Assassin (more or less) and they are described similarly. And we know that various bits of Aether were cannibalized into Mistborn already so it wouldn't surprise me if Brandon consciously or unconsciously drew on D'Naa after he'd decided to make the switch from Vin being a boy to Vin being a girl. I'm not sure about Shallan so much but Wyndle and the Cultivationspren generally do seem like they might have taken a few cues from Verdant and by extension Lift and other Edgedancers have some slight similarities in what they can do.

First off, Brandon has told us that Rayse is not being completely honest wtih Dalinar or himself when he says that he should be 'Passion' rather than Odium. Second, we've asked this sort of question before and while some instances have been RAFO'd we also have explicit statements from Brandon that not all instances of a word related to a Shard is necessarily an indication of a link to that Shard, especially when they come in books set on other worlds. We have an explicit example with references to ambition in the context of Shu-Dereth not meaning to suggest any link to Ambition the Shard.

Like @RShara said, there is still a cost to hemalurgy. As Brandon puts it 'hemalurgy always hurts you' and there can be other side-effects caused by the spiritweb damage.

Mmmmmm, seafood gumbo... But yeah, Brandon's told us he had Korean hotpot in mind for Rock's stews. Which is how I found myself motivated to try it. I love seafood and I love soups but I never ordered that particular combination from Korean restaurants until I saw that WoB and decided I just had to give it a go with friends. Speaking of culinary 'I thought it was more like X' stories, I always imagined Chouta as being more like a shawarma until being exposed to WoBs where Brandon gave us his inspiration for Herdazian food.

I like the color gradation and the little margin note at the bottom that resembles Nazh's notes in the Stormlight books.

@Invocation He'll share it eventually, but it would apparently give us too much information he doesn't want us having if he were to do it right now. There's some other discussion of Investiture Thermodynamics where Brandon mentions that Allomantic FTL has some connection to where lost energy in certain allomantic reactions goes and that this includes the deflection of things entering or exiting bendalloy/cadmium bubbles.

Aside from what @Calderis posted, we also know that A-Bronze can sense other magic systems so that idea doesn't really hold up. Also, Inquisitors with spikes granting feruchemical powers and thus having a connection to that magic system (and according to Sazed all of them had F-Gold) would notice very quickly that they could sense feruchemy and would have figured out the trick to why they could sense it but a normal Seeker couldn't.

Of course to keep the spirit of Codex Alera, you'd need Tavi to not bond a spren for a very long time when it's commonplace, but find some justification for it that fits into the Cosmere's mechanics. Isana being a Truthwatcher and doing some Regrowth shenanigans when he was an infant that 'filled' the spiritweb cracks a Nahel Bond would fit into until the Investiture wore off, maybe. Or since Tavi seems like he'd make a great Bondsmith, have him unknowingly bond the Sibling and they can't deepen the bond to the point of conscious surgebinding until something happens in the world that causes the Sibling to 'wake up'. Now I'm thinking of how many fun crossover meetings there would be if these two worlds collided. Let's see, Adolin and Max would probably become awesome drinking buddies and I'm sure Adolin would also be interested in chatting up dueling technique with Araris (could Metalcrafting counter a Shardblade, I wonder?), Kitai and Lift would get into entirely too much trouble together, the Cursors would have a field day trading tips with Shallan and teaming up to investigate all of Roshar's secret societies and even though you know she'd end up squashed like a bug, seeing Invidia try to out-chessmaster and then backstab Odium would be entertaining as anything. And in the background, Hoid and Alera munch on popcorn.

Vin is naturally strong because her father comes from an exceptionally pure line, so her sDNA gives her a stronger connection to Preservation than someone like Kelsier. Contrast with Elend who's even stronger because he's a first-generation lerasium mistborn with no dilution. The mists had nothing to do with her natural strength. Now, the two times in the series that she takes in the mists, what happens is that Preservation is fueling her directly without the need for metals to act as a bridge. That means she can handle more power than normal and doesn't have to worry about running out, but it doesn't have any lasting effect the first time. The second time of course she straight-up Ascends.

To add some more information to what @Scion of the Mists said. 1. Yolen at the time of Dragonsteel is bronze-age. This can be seen in the excerpts Brandon shared to show the origins of Bridge Four and he's mentioned the fact in WoBs as well. The technology to make steel exists and is widespread among the Sho Del but humanity is still mostly restricted to bronze. 3&4. Adonalsium created the entire Rosharan System and most of the life found there is the result of evolutionary processes, albeit ones with an obvious magical component. Ashyn was originally much more hospitable to humans before the events that forced most of the population to flee to Roshar. 5. Only Scadrial itself was created by Preservation and Ruin but they created the whole world, not just the biosphere. It's why Scadrial has the same size, gravity and atmosphere as Yolen and why its ecosystem is a copy of the non-fain bits of the Yolish one. IE, it's why Scadrial is the Cosmere's Earth-analogue. 7&8. Dayside is largely covered in sand (albeit with a lot more water and some very large mountains) while Darkside is something So yeah, half the planet feels a bit like Arrakis. We know this planet isn't stable on astronomical timescales but it's stable on the scale at which the series works. 9. We don't know if the other worlds in Drominad have manifestations of Investiture like First of the Sun does or if it's restricted to the one where Autonomy's Investiture is concentrated enough that a stable Perpendicularity has formed. Two of the worlds are inhabited though, so their ecology can't be completely lethal. What we do know about the other worlds is that they have different names for themselves than the chart gives for the planets.

Brandon gave us some information here when he told us that a Windrunner with Jezrien's blade would get some enhancement but the power of Surgebinding is more a factor of how strong the bond with the spren is and how much Stormlight you're using. So assuming you had two proper spren bonds, it seems like you should get a bigger boost (the honorblade's a bond as well, so even if it's shallower it suggests two Nahel Bonds would also stack) but the real question there is whether you could get two spren of the same type to bond one person. Just imagine how that could end... Syl: Kaladin, I though there was something special between us, but you've been seeing another honorspren behind my back. Jerk! <Kaladin wakes up the next morning to find himself stuck to his bed with Adhesion>

It's not actually hemalurgy; Brandon says that the fundamentals are similar and some Cosmere philosophers would say they're the same thing but he wouldn't. Anyways, we know that the Heralds have powers not connected to the Honorblades (they could all sense each other even without their blades) so there were permanent changes to their spiritwebs that the knife could have targeted. Considering that a Cognitive Shadow only exists because of Investiture, targeting that is a pretty good way to kill one. Whether all the changes that Honor made to the Heralds' souls come as one package that the knife could target or there were discrete changes (like the resurrective immortality ability being one, the 'sense others/share pain' talent being separate etc) we don't know right now, but we have a rough parallel in the Nightwatcher's boon/curse which we know normally would be stolen as a package but you could steal separately, so I imagine the Heralds' powers could be targeted separately if you had all the required knowledge and an appropriate metal. So whatever exactly the knife did, it could have targeted the mass of Honor-flavored Investiture that made Jezrien a Cognitive Shadow or it could have targeted only the bit that causes him to resurrect. As for what Odium's godmetal would do in proper hemalurgy...good question. Since atium, lerasium and 'trellium' can all steal different things, it's likely that other godmetals would function similarly in the Metallic Arts.

Welcome to the Shard! We know that the metal Bleeder used is from a Shard (that we know) and the same entity responsible for the metal is calling themselves Trell, which means no shenanigans where some unknown entity took metal from a known Shard. In short, 'Trell' is a Shard and not one of the six unknown ones. Given what we know, the most logical answer and the one with the most evidence behind it right now is that 'Trell' is Autonomy. Or rather, that Trell is one of Bavadin's avatars.

Welcome to the Shard! Honor and Cultivation both have godmetals; the former we're tentatively calling Tanavastium to go with the general pattern. The only reason Harmony's metal is Harmonium is because Sazed didn't like the sound of Sazedium and encouraged the adoption of another name. Anyhow, the metal that all shardblades are made out of is a mix of Honor and Cultivation's metals, essentially one alloy with ten slightly different compositions depending on the spren. So far as we know we've never seen Cultivation's godmetal on its own but we assume the Honorblades are pure Tanavastium, given their description as being made from pieces of Honor's soul. The knife given to Moash at the end of Oathbringer is extremely likely to be Odium's godmetal, which going with the pattern would be something like Rays(e)ium. The white/gold color of the knife matches Odium's favorite colors, the smoke arising from the wound resembles shardblade damage/Nightbllood and since the weapon killed Jezrien using similar fundamentals to hemalurgy (where we know other godmetals are special) it's a natural conclusion that the knife is also godmetal, but Brandon has RAFO'd just about every question on the subject.

Returned actually do need to sleep, if not for all the same reasons that a normal person would. It's necessary for their brains to have low-activity periods in order to consolidate memories for long-term storage. Since Returned can eat and drink, they must have a functioning digestive/excretory system even if they don't need the nourishment and just do it for pleasure. So yes, they probably have Returned-scale toilets (calling them 'thrones' might not be out of the question) and need to make use of them if/when they've eaten.

Given that Brandon already has Investiture vampires in the Cosmere (you might know them better as the Returned from Warbreaker) I doubt that he'd ever do something like this. It's a nifty idea though.

I'm going with post-Reod Elantris as well. That place drove immortals mad within a few years and you never lose the pain of even the slightest wound, which is worse than what the Heralds had to deal with. Kalak's thoughts in the Prelude imply that the Herald's 'bodies' get repaired each day, so there's at least some time when you're whole and not currently experiencing pain. In Elantris you never have that tiny respite. It's worth emphasizing that while the Heralds might have endured hundreds of years of torture at a time (up to five thousand years in one go, for poor Taln on his own) they still retained at least the appearance of sanity, while the Elantrians who went through the Reod were insane within ten years, even if Riino clearly recovered afterwards. Take that away and being a Reod Elantrian for thousands of years would really really suck.

As already noted, no. Just like you can't heal Savantism with normal methods (because as far as the magic is concerned, there's nothing wrong with you) you couldn't 'heal' a curse from the Nightwatcher. It isn't even a 'this should work' situation, Brandon has confirmed that if you know what you're doing you can steal what the Old Magic gives you with hemalurgy and it's even possible (though much more difficult) to take only a boon or curse. Brandon also said that Cultivation really wouldn't like this and raised the possibility that she could do something to you if/when she found out about it.

Ham: This is a very interesting philosophical question you pose. Have you given serious thought to all the implications of putting one's own creator on trial? I have some musings I'd like to share if you have two or three hours...

Evidence from The Bands of Mourning suggest that it stores the ability. Marasi and Wax both need to ingest metal vials before they can use allomancy while using the Bands, which means they're not storing Preservation's Investiture already 'keyed' to particular uses but simply the ability to use the powers and they have to get the Investiture separately. Likewise I imagine that a medallion made by an Elantrian would (setting aside all the issues with Selish magic generally) store the ability to use AonDor but you'd still need to know the symbols to do anything with that ability. Surgebinding should work the same way and Brandon has said that the Honorblades granting the surges work on the same principles, so you'd get the ability to take in Stormlight and use whatever surges the medallion's creator had, but you'd need to have a Stormlight supply handy.

While that would be a particularly nasty trick, it's got a huge problem: Targeting the bacteria themselves. Remember that anything inside a body is going to be 'shielded' by the innate Investiture of the soul and require more work to push through that resistance. Locating the stuff you want to grow and affecting it is going to take more power and hence be inefficient in terms of stormlight required. Also, it's going to require that the Progression-user knows about bacteria and what they do. It should certainly be doable but it would be a lot easier at that point (not to mention more merciful) to just stab them with a shardblade.

She says that because that's how old she was when she visited the Nightwatcher and it happened three years ago. Hence she considers herself to still be ten because up until Edgedancer she assumed that she'd gotten her wish and wasn't aging any more. Her freaking out over suddenly having a period doesn't make sense if she's older than we've been led to think. Also, the text and Brandon have both stated that she's really thirteen, so it's pretty well established how old she is in absolute terms.

Evidence from Oathbringer makes it very clear that Bavadin is still the Vessel of Autonomy.

We can infer from her own thoughts that Lift asked to 'not change' in some way and whether it was the Nightwatcher or Cultivation that granted the request the magic didn't really know how to interpret that, hence the weirdness. We know she's not actually unchanging because she has her first period during the events of Edgedancer, which scared her because it meant she was changing. And her inability to use Stormlight normally and the consequences of needing to get it from food (depriving her of nutrition in the process) can be seen as both awesome in the non-Liftian sense and a curse. We really don't know which is which for her yet. On that note we really shouldn't assume any given thing is a boon or a curse until we get a good amount of information on their wish and the consequences of it. Taravangian for example assumes that his intelligence was the boon and the fact that it changes daily (with an inverse relationship to his compassion) was the curse but it's entirely possible he misinterpreted that, and the compassion was the intended boon, or the fluctuation of the two was itself both the boon (you get to be smart enough and compassionate enough to do what needs to be done) and the curse (because you can't have both at once and you have to work out how to balance the impulses) to give the most prominent example. And as Dalinar shows, even if the gift comes from Cultivation it's still a double-edged sword, the only difference is that you're playing into Cultivation's long-term plans with what you get rather than the whims of the Nightwatcher who's sort of making it up as she goes along

The intent of a Shard is relevant to how you get access to a magic system, it has no relation to what you can do with the magic once you've got it. With allomancy, you preserve yourself by reaching out to an external power, with hemalurgy you must intend to ruin someone else or it won't work. We don't know how Initiation for feruchemy began but the magic can easily be seen as an interaction of the two Shards. You must weaken (ruin) yourself for a time in order to preserve that strength for when you have a greater need for it. Also, Brandon has been quite explicit about this: Sorry, the argument that feruchemy is a magic system involving a third Shard is simply a non-starter.