Weltall

Here's the WoB on Bavadin if you're interested. As far as being a Dysian, we know that all sixteen original Vessels were Yolish which means Bavadin was a human, Dragon or Sho Del. The use of the third person probably has to do with how she creates avatars on various worlds and so she's using the royal 'we' in a particularly literal sense.

The similarities probably come from Brandon taking whatever he liked from the Sho Del (or whatever would work on Roshar at least) and transplanting it to the Singers, but there may be a deeper connection. As for the fungus-based ecosystem, I'm not sure Brandon's said it directly but it's implicit in the Sho Del's description as being unnaturally white (which is how all fainlife is described) and the description of the Sho Del as being Fain/coming from 'Fain lands'. Since fainlife is linked to the skullmoss, they're part of that ecosystem. Which is about all we can say on that particular subject right now, as much as I'd love to know more. xD

Frost isn't a Vessel. It's entirely possible (in fact I'd say probable) that at least one of the Vessels is a dragon. Of the ones we know, Edgli is a likely candidate since Nalthis has an expression related to dragons and there's a reason for this even though dragons are mythical on that world. The other obvious candidate is Bavadin, mainly because Brandon has told us that we shouldn't focus too much on gender or appearance when considering her. Dragons are known to be shapeshifters so there's a possible link there. The description from the excerpts make them sound very similar to humans in appearance, except for their bone-white skin, their (almost) all-black eyes and the features of their faces being too angular. Their skeletons are noted to look almost identical to humans, though they seem to have at least one unique bone. This might have been appropriated for the Singers with their gemhearts, since there seems to be something magical/dangerous about that bone.

You may have noticed that no Cosmere work takes place on Earth. This is because Earth does not exist in the Cosmere, the entire story takes place in a star cluster (Brandon's previously used the term 'dwarf galaxy') and humanity in this setting originated on a world called Yolen. Realmatics and Investiture are underpinnings of the Cosmere that do not apply to Brandon's other works. Basically, trying to include Earth in the Cosmere (even an alternate universe Earth very different from ours) added far too much baggage so Brandon didn't want them to co-exist. There are some of Brandon's non-Cosmere works that occupy shared universes (or shared multiverses) but none of them relate to the Cosmere. For example, Reckoners and the planned but currently on hiatus Apocalypse Guard take place within the same multiverse.

Assuming Odium has only a single Perpendicularity (which is probably the case since he avoids Investing any power in a world that he doesn't need to) then his is probably located on Braize since it's the Physical/Cognitive 'nexus' of his power right now and one would have formed there naturally over the course of his many thousands of years stuck in the Rosharan System.

What @Calderis said. While there's the possibility of some 'higher' God in the Cosmere or the wider universe that it's a part of, it's not something that would be relevant to the story or something Brandon would want to canonize, for the same reason that he leaves the nature of the Beyond up to the individual reader.

So far, not a thing. Since we know precisely nothing about the important period between the end of White Sand and Khriss and Baon leaving Taldain it's pretty much impossible to speculate what motivated them to leave. Then from there the question of what prompted Autonomy to interdict the planet is equally mysterious. There's two obvious plot threads that the Prose version doesn't resolve (the new Kerzian leader and his coup at the very end of the book and the implied Darkside plot involving the Dynasy) and either or both of those could have led to all sorts of radical developments that we can't predict So there's a ton of possibilities for Kenton (died before Khriss left, chose to remain, left either with her or at some other point and is/is not still alive...) and no way to even guess which options are likely.

I don't think so, or at least they've shown no evidence for it yet. They're being subversive insofar as they've figured out a way to convey more complex ideas in writing than men are supposed to learn but there's no indication they're using it for anything more complicated than recording information that can't be conveniently recorded using the 'proper' glyphs. That the Sons of Honor have taken their system and are using it for their own purposes doesn't necessarily mean the stormwardens themselves are up to something. Brandon has said that the stormwardens use a lot of information to arrive at their predictions, including information that's not actually relevant. Whether you think that makes them less likely to be Up To Something (because if they were, shoudn't they only be using the necessary stuff?) or more likely (because if they're ever found out, they can point to that stuff and claim literal ignorance) is I suppose up to individual interpretation right now. But my thinking is that there's nothing special about them right now, until they're seen doing something really suspicious.

Yes. @Wandering Investor is paraphrasing a Word of Brandon where he confirms two specific interpretations of the word as being applicable to Odium. There's another where Brandon mentioned that he originally planned on calling it 'Hatred' but changed his mind; Later he specified that he just thought 'Odium sounds cooler'. xD

Pssst, you bumped a thread that was over a year old just to add more speculation after a well-researched timeline was already posted which does everything you did, in much better detail. Just saying, next time you might want to look at the date of a post and make sure you're contributing something new before pulling thread necromancy. Elantris and connected works happen after White Sand but before everything else that's been published. As was already established in a posted WoB in this very topic which you evidently didn't read. Silence happens before Stormlight Archive. Also, Brandon provided us this handy relative timeline for his published books which makes explicit everything that's in @RShara's favorite timeline.

Where is Yolen and how/why was it 'shrouded' so that Khriss wasn't able to find it as of Secret History? Is there special significance to the Red Rip/Taln's Scar? As @RShara mentioned, Hoid's immortality is in some way related to the weapon used to kill Adonalsium, but at the same time he started aging oddly even before the events of Dragonsteel (though that's not strictly canon yet). Frost is a Dragon and thus naturally immortal. And Brandon has been very coy on the subject of Vax. All he's willing to admit is that it's heavily suggested to be a place. Technically we don't know it's a planet yet, even though it almost certainly is. The Heralds had direct access to Honor's Investiture.

I suspect Syl would be the most awkward to have around by far, going by what happens when the subject comes up in Oathbringer (see above). Pattern may or may not be less awkward now that Shallan's properly married and he doesn't have to go NO MATING on her and Adolin and the Stormfather's unlikely to have any sort of impact at all unless someone accidentially uses his name as an exclamation. Which... would actually be pretty funny but it's unlikely to be something Brandon would write, and he already used that joke in OB anyways.

Have you finished the series yet? Because this gives me the opportunity to let my inner RJ/Brandon out to play:

As mentioned, Yolen is the world where humans first appear. However, we know from things Brandon has said outside the books and from the essays in the Arcanum Unbounded anthology that almost every world in the Cosmere was inhabited before the Shattering. What we know about Ashyn is pretty limited. We know that it was inhabited by humans before the Shattering and some time afterwards (and after Honor and Cultivation had already arrived and taken up residence on Roshar) a cataclysm ruined the surface of the world and the majority of the surviving population fled to Roshar. We know Odium was involved on Ashyn but we don't know if he was actually worshipped by the people there and we know that the magic operates on the same general principles as Surgebinding but we don't know the details. We do know that the current manifestation of magic on Ashyn (where diseases give you magical powers as a side effect) is not exactly how the magic worked earlier.

Atium compounding isn't 'true' immortality, you need more and more stored youth as your true age increases because you need to counteract the increasing pressure that your Spiritual aspect (which 'knows' how old you really are) exerts on the rest of you. Eventually you hit a point where atium compounding just stops working because the amount of youth you can possibly tap at once doesn't pass that threshold. Also, whether someone with the Fifth Heightening (by either method) actually has infinite youth to tap is debateable.

Yeah, the Honorblades used to provide a direct conduit to Honor's Investiture which meant the Heralds didn't need to use Stormlight to power their Surgebinding. That makes it very obvious that they're only a tiny fraction of Honor's power in and of themselves. That conduit is also now broken so carrying around multiple Honorblades would give you crazy Surgebinding potential but you still need Stormlight to actually do anything with that power.

Presumably she was there as part of her ongoing research into the Voidbringers and hoped there were records in the city that could help her. We know the Tukari are fighting the Emuli over a city that's claimed to be one of the Dawncities so it's not unreasonable to think that there might be useful information there. Also, it's non-Vorin so the chances of finding information that wasn't destroyed or censored by the Hierocracy is a lot higher. As for Jasnah knowing about Tezim being Ishar? No, I really don't think so. Consider how Dalinar reacted when the Stormfather casually dropped that bombshell on him. Jasnah knows how important this information is and would volunteer that sort of thing if she knew. Say, during the point where she proposes going on a Herald Muder Hunt.

As far as we can tell this isn't the case; it's extremely expensive but not actively forbidden. The Ars Arcanum notes that getting above the Sixth Heightening is rare, which means that there must be enough people who do reach that point that Khriss could study the effects with a reasonable degree of confidence.

It very much depends on the type of spren. Honorspren in general don't like humans (given that they see themselves as closest to Honor's ideal and thus take a very dim view of the Recreance) so Syl was seen as a rebel for choosing to bond one. They're mentioned in Oathbringer to the the spren thought to be least likely to bond again as a result but clearly this isn't the case any longer since we see them taking an interest in Bridge Four and the other Squires and several have already formed Nahel Bonds. There's probably still suspicion and other Honorspren might not like that the others are bonding but it's no longer just Syl versus the rest of them, so clearly others approve of what she did. Similarly, the Inkspren weren't interested in bonding again but Ivory insisted on doing it and went against the others to bond Jasnah. They're probably going to work out similar to the Honorspren (resistance at first with those who do bond being ostracized, then the rest will slowly start to come around) but right now we only have a sample size of one. By contrast the Cryptics have been bonding for longer and were keeping an eye on potential bond partners before the Honorspren. The Cultivationspren have a council of sorts that decides who to bond and we know that in addition to Lift they were interested in Ym and by implication at least a few other people since Wyndle mentions other people he could have gotten as a partner instead of 'Storming Awesome' Lift. So clearly it's something approved of and being chosen to form a Nahel Bond is a big deal for them. Wyndle also mentions being carefully prepared for his bond, which is why he remembers more after making the transition to the Physical Realm than most spren. And as mentioned, the Highspren seem perfectly fine with bonding (and allowing others of their kind doing the same) since their associated Radiant Order has continued to exist for the past two thousand or so years. They're also apparently willing to share what they know, since Jasnah apparently spoke with them during her time in Shadesmar.

Given the distances and the difficulty of laying telephone cables without someone noticing, it's a safe assumption that it's a radio. There is a WoB on it and while Brandon doesn't directly say 'it's a radio' the questioner does repeatedly and Brandon doesn't correct them, while definitely confirming that it's pure technology without an Investiture component.

Brandon actually discusses the question of Soulcasting uranium or plutonium here, the gist of it is that you'd need a better understanding of physics than Roshar currently has and you'd need to properly convey all of this to the Surgebinder and they'd have to convey it to their spren, but it would totally be possible. Making antimatter would be a lot trickier since it has this lovely little property of reacting violently with normal matter. Like, say, the air surrounding it. You'd probably need the cooperation of a Windrunner to create a vacuum bubble and you'd still need a way to prevent whatever you're Soulcasting into antimatter from simply falling due to gravity and hitting something it'll react with. So far we haven't seen Windrunners able to create anything like a 'bubble' of zero gravity (they have to touch things to lash them, which would be Very Bad in the case of antimatter) but maybe that's something they could learn to do. Anyhow, the WoB about nuclear material and Soulcasting sets out the general issues with making any of those things but also establishes that most of it should be possible with the right knowledge.

One more potential 'conspiracy' group that we could consider is the Ones Above. We know they're from a world we've seen before and they appear to be trying to circumvent some restriction in how they're allowed to interact with the people of First of the Sun but we don't know their motivations for doing so or whether this is a self-imposed restriction they're trying to sneak their way around or if it's some externally imposed restriction. Depending on what the underlying facts are, there's room in that relationship for more cross-Cosmere groups also involved at the same point in the timeline. Related to that, do we want to count the interstellar trade that went on through Ruin's Perpendicularity during the Final Empire? It's not exactly a conspiracy group per se but it's people aware of the wider Cosmere (to some extent) operating under the nose of the Steel Ministry, even if their goals seem to have been strictly mercantile and Rashek was aware of it and let it continue. Yeah, there's definitely lots of room for potential other groups and tons we don't know about the groups that we do know of. One thing Brandon has revealed is that the name of the Ghostbloods refers to specific events in the Cosmere and would probably be recognizable to people in the know like Khriss.

Yeah, as far as cross-Cosmere 'conspiracies' go, the Ghostbloods are the really big one. The Aimians are up to something but we don't know how far their interests stretch, only that taking the dust jacket quote and Arclo at face value, they seem to be aligned towards Honor. Oh, and there's a WoB that the Dysians will have a major role in MB Era 4 but we don't know if they've got serious interests outside Roshar right now or if that's entirely to come in the future. We could probably distinguish the Set (who are solely interested in controlling Scadrial) from 'Trell' who is pulling their strings and definitely has multi-world interests. On that note, we could consider Autonomy and her avatars to be a 'conspiracy' in and of itself since she's meddling in multiple worlds. In purely local terms we could also add the Keepers from Terris, who kept alive the knowledge of the pre-Final Empire world until it could be shared again after Raskek fell. We might add the Worldbringers who were their predecessors as well, if only because they seem like they might have been somewhat Cosmere-aware (Kwaan was apparently researching things relating to the Cognitive Realm) and because Brandon's confirmed that the similarity of names with the Worldsingers is intentional.

I noticed the Well of Ascension one myself (since you can see the inscription get altered subtly with words changing as Sazed rereads it over the course of the book) but I missed the significance of the phrasing at the start of Hero of Ages, so it wasn't until the epigraphs started talking about Vin in the third person that it clicked and that was still most of the way through the book.

Go to Arcanum, type 'Lift&survive' into the search field and have a look at what comes up. I will tell you what you will not see, and that is Brandon explicitly confirming that Lift survives to the back half. Every single time he mentions her role in the second half of the series, it's with the explicit caveat that those POV characters are not guaranteed to be alive by the time they actually get a book. He also doesn't confirm that any given character will not survive into the back half. All he's doing is making clear that characters who are getting focus books do not have Plot Protection until their book rolls around.