Weltall

This is sort of what we're getting, as Brandon has mentioned that Dragonsteel has a much more traditional fantasy feel, albeit one set in a bronze age-level society rather than a medieval one. This is borne out by the excerpts we have from the book, which show that humanity primarily uses bronze, though they're aware of iron and steel but lack the means to make heavy use of it. While there's undoubtedly going to be a lot of changes in the books we eventually get, we already know that the work is going to include the definitive 'fantasy' species (ie, dragons) but it's not going to be a straight-up medieval romance with Sandersonian magic layered on top;It's also got Yolen's unusual ecology and apparently some 'strange geography' as well.

One WoB out of many:

Per Brandon, none of the Shards are good or evil. Odium and Ruin are no more inherently 'evil' than Honor or Preservation are inherently 'good'. Does it have to completely go over your head? Because I'd listen to those four talk for hours and hours if I'm allowed to get at least a fraction of what they're saying. xD

@Element of Chaos Thou hast summoned me... why?

If this means we get an animated series about Hoid's mirror universe twin (does he have a goatee? That's always a giveaway) and Dioh is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, I'm all for that.

Read the linked Coppermind article for everything we know about him right now (bearing in mind the possibility of spoilers for any books you haven't ready yet) As far as who he could beat in a fight... pretty much nobody unless it's a battle of wits only. Hoid is incapable of causing physical harm to people or even thinking about it, but insulting them is perfectly okay. In other words, he'd be pretty lousy in a fight. Brandon's even said that if you threw all his characters into a brawl with no restrictions, Hoid would be one of the last two people standing... and then it would just get silly. All the really juicy details of Hoid's past are being saved for the Dragonsteel series.

Well, let me be the first to say congratulations! And also, wow, you finished that fast.

One more to go... <readies popcorn>

While a person with incredible levels of power like Rashek, a user of the Bands or someone fueled by the mists might be able to perceive metal atoms in the vacuum of space and push on those, the same mass issue means that the amount of propulsion you'd get from them would be negligible. 'Solar wind' is mostly subatomic particles, meaning there's no metal that an allomancer could actually push off. Air likewise is basically oxygen and nitrogen (ie, nonmetallic and thus not subject to pushing) and any trace metals in the atmosphere will have the same issues as trace metals in space, except that with gravity and air resistance in play you're not going to get any movement out of pushing on those. The reason that Marasi and Wax are able to effectively use Steelpushing for quasi-flight when using the Bands without a coin supply is that the trace metals they're pushing off are buried in the ground and thus anchored.

How's your recollection of elementary physics? Remember that the effect of pushing/pulling is proportional to weight and follows Newton's laws. When you push a coin normally, it goes flying because you weigh so much more than it does. When you pull a coin, it moves towards you for the same reason. If you manage to line up two coins perfectly like in your situation, you're still not going to be able to pull yourself towards the far coin; The combined weight of the two coins is nowhere near enough to serve as an anchor you can draw yourself towards. Also, almost all the force you're exerting on the two coins cancels out and the only thing that you'll accomplish is to slow the rate at which your steelpush is moving the two coins away from you.

Welcome to the Shard! On a related topic, a Vessel giving up a Shard would see the influence of its intent on their thought process fade over time, though having Ascended there would be some permanent side-effects.

You'd get pushback from all the people who wish he'd do that exact thing, just replace Stormlight with Mistborn, Elantris, Rithmatist or any other series as the one to do first. Not to mention, pushback from Brandon himself. Here's just one example out of many where he's discussed why he bounces from project to project instead of sticking with one:

As a thought, when you're quoting WoBs you should really use the quote tags (look for the quotation mark symbol when you're entering your text) since the way you're writing now means that the text you're quoting and the text representing your own thoughts are indistinguishable. Also, the all-bold's pretty distracting. Anyhow, yes, Scadrial has to become very Cosmere-aware for Era 4 to happen so some big revelation in Era 3 is likely. We've already got the Set who are Cosmere-aware and working on their own goals with Trell's influence and Harmony is deliberately pushing Scadrial in that direction even now, so with the stage is already set for the big picture to become public knowledge sooner rather than later. Hoid and the other unknown force or forces pushing the development of instant noodles may also have a role to play.

Maybe a bit more androgynous-sounding, given the spoiler Wandering Investor posted, but that works really well. Say, in his K2S0 voice because he's got that whole 'You're not using me properly' thing going. For my part, I've imagined him soundling like a slightly hyperactive little kid. But Vaaaaasher, you said you'd let me Destroy some Evil todaaaaaay!

Yep. Here's the WoB: In other words, it's just Brandon having some fun at his characters' expense.

It's a combination of factors but it seems the important thing with the Koloss isn't where the spikes are placed but what's being grafted onto them. Given that the Koloss have less than half the spikes of the least-spiked Inquisitors and spike placement has more to do with whether the hemlurgy works on the recipient or not rather than what's ultimately transferred (because that's down to where you place it in the donor), the fact that Koloss are given multiple charges of physical strength must be what warps them so much compared to Inquisitors. So for a hypothetical multi-charge spike, you're getting the same effect as two or more of those charges in one, which would probably start warping you much more than a single ordinary spike with the same power simply because there's more of it.

It's brought up in Secret History when Hoid chastises Kelsier for upending an entire mercantile system by destoying all the atium geodes in the Pits of Hathsin and thus destabilizing the Perpendicularity. Here's a WoB on the subject. Felt was confirmed as being Cosmere-aware and involved with the trade during Era 1 but whether or not it was direct involvement is a RAFO.

Brandon has said that it's thought that you can't steal multiple things from the same person or put different charges in the same spike (see here and here) but that leaves open the possibility that you can do something like steal the same attribute multiple times in a single spike and people simply don't know how to do it. But as Sazed says there and Brandon's said elsewhere, there's a finite amount of charge any spike can hold so even if it's possible to stack charges of some attribute to get a stronger than normal spike, you'd still have some upper limit to just how powerful that would be. Given the current state of knowledge on Scadrial, if you want to get to Rashek-levels of power with a single ability, it's probably easier to make yourself a compounder if you want super-feruchemy or give yourself F-Nicrosil if you want super-allomancy. Oh, and multiple charges of something like physical strength in one spike would mean multiple spiritwebs grafted to the recipient. That might end up giving you Koloss-levels of warping even if you don't have multiple spikes, depending on how many charges you've stacked. I don't think it's the number of spikes that determines physical warping so much as it's how many bits of other people's spiritwebs you've spliced to your own.

Probably more of a coincidence than anything else, I think. Brandon's mentioned that Fjordell grew out of his interest in the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church and what would have happened if an even more warlike culture had undergone a similar political/religious arc. Fjordell is basically what might have happened if the Scandinavians had conquered all of Europe, collapsed and then reimagined themselves as a theocracy. Arelon is supposed to feel 'Renaissance Mediterranean' with some particular Spanish touches. So any resemblence to World War II is probably unintentional, albeit an interesting coincidence.

Taldain has been interdicted by Autonomy for reasons unknown, meaning that nobody can visit the world and more imporantly, nobody can leave. They might well become the first society to develop non-Cognitive interstellar travel simply to get out of the system, even with a Shard actively making it harder for them to learn about the wider Cosmere. We know their local Investiture could be used to power a solar sail (which would probably be really effective since you get the normal propulsion from the photons plus whatever you can do with that Investiture that accompanies them) so they've got at least one avenue to explore there. People from Sel can do amazing things with their different magic systems but they're very limited in their ability to spread any developments based on them because they stop working once you get far enough away from the Physical/Cognitive area each system is associated with. Forgery and AonDor for example simply won't work in each others' territories and none of the magics can be used offworld. That's a factor that's going to slow any kind of interstellar exploration. Plus, while Sel isn't actively interdicted in the way Taldain is, there's the big honking plasma-esque storm that is the Dor sitting in the Cognitive Realm. It's very hard to traverse, meaning that getting to or from Sel requires knowledge and preparation. Even Hoid finds it hard and he's one of the best-equipped people in the Cosmere to handle something like that. Worldhoppers from Sel do exist and at least two characters from Elantris have made it offworld (Galladon and Riino) but Sel as a whole isn't going to be a major presence in the Cosmere as long as the Dor is such an impediment to travel and the magic is so restricted.

Haha, welcome to the endgame! I've got another friend that I've been trying to get into the Cosmere (and I'm pretty sure she'll love it) but she wants to finish WoT first and she's just getting through book 10 right now. I figure once you get past that point, the rest is easy. xD

@Calderis@RShara Arcanum-Fu to the rescue! This doesn't account for what we know from Oathbringer about how humans aren't native to Roshar but it's still Brandon saying that the Shards didn't create the humans in the system. Or at least the majority of humans, because who knows where the Iriali come from...

That's literally the one I provided to back up my assertion. But I bow to your superior Nitpick-Fu when you point out that since humans technically weren't on Roshar until the Shards had arrived, it could count as the second planet in Khriss' description.

The humans who came from Ashyn to Roshar predate the Shattering. As far as we know, there are only two inhabited worlds in the Cosmere whose populations don't predate the Shards and Scadrial is one of them. The other is implicitly not a world that we've seen so far, or Khriss would have mentioned it in Arcanum Unbounded.

They don't, it's mentioned in the excerpts that it's far easier to tell human and Sho Del remains apart by the remains of their clothes and armor than by the bones since they're so similar. The Sho Del are mentioned to sometimes ride reptilian creatures described as having four small legs in the front and two larger legs in the back, maybe that's what you're thinking of?