Weltall

Because as has been repeatedly pointed out to you, Brandon does not want to give away any more information about the back half of the series than he absolutely has to. It's even right there in the second half of the WoB. Telling us who the focus characters will be isn't much of a spoiler since he's been up-front that just because a character is getting a book doesn't mean they'll be alive for it. Case in point, Eshonai is very dead but is still getting the focus in book four. Since that caveat applies to all the other focus characters in the back half (Jasnah, Renarin, Ash and Taln as well) it has to apply to Lift as well. Except that it's not a spoiler, he literally told you point blank that you're reading into his words more than he actually said. The 'spoiler' exists entirely in your head. Sometimes Brandon has misspoke or misheard a question, usually at events after he's been talking for hours, it's late and his brain isn't firing on all cylinders. In a purely written response, he's not facing any of those factors. He's not going to slip up and reveal something as big as that in an unforced situation. He told you straight-up that you're reading more into his words than he actually put there. That should be the end of this discussion and the fact that you feel otherwise is mystifying to me. Is this really the hill you want to die on?

Amusingly, people have been having fun with this for a long time. The venerable Wheel of Time FAQ made fun of the covers, or at least the earlier ones since they get better later on. It titled Lord of Chaos' cover 'The Passion of the Aes Sedai' for pretty much the exact reasons you noticed. Have a look here

Brandon has said that the intent of the shard is only tangentially related to it's wanting to hide and survive. So something like Wisdom would be more likely.

Water is not the source of Investiture in Sand Mastery; it establishes the necessary Connection, kind of like how metal in allomancy is what tells Preservation's Investiture what to do but it's not Invested itself. It's the Investiture from Taldain's star (which the lichen on the sand absorbs) that you'd need to use as fuel for Nightblood. If you can figure out how to get Nightblood to feed on that rather than your lifeforce, you could probably keep going for a good while. Cross-magic hacks aside you'd likely have to be Mastering the sand to make it work, in the same way that you need to draw an Aon if you're Elantrian or be able to inhale Stormlight on Roshar, meaning that you'd still need a supply of water to avoid dehydration but the Investiture itself is plentiful. Taldain might be the safest place in the Cosmere to use Nightblood if you can get it to work since it's so easy to get at Investiture there, at least on Dayside. Brandon mentioned that it would have been a good alternative to Roshar for Vasher to go to, if it were possible for him to have traveled there.

Brandon plans to rewrite Aether of Night, which would almost have to involve a Shard. We likewise get mentions of Vax which we know has some magic system thanks to Khriss and it's possible (but by no means certain) that a Shard is involved with Silverlight in some way. Aethet at least would be a full-blown novel. Also, anything we don't see before will necessarily be revealed in Dragonsteel where we'll see all sixteen Vessels and presumably what Shards the any unknown ones ended up with will be told to us there or at least heavily implied. In any event, we're gonna find all this out in the narrative at some point even if all sixteen don't get post-Shattering novels dedicated to them.

Here's the WoB: Anyhow, because the Fifth Heightening stops the aging process it doesn't matter if you're also able to use F-Atium, you're not going to age naturally. But very weird things would probably happen if you tried to store or tap youth at that point, due to the intersection of what BioChroma's doing to you and what F-Atium is trying to do.

I think that's where the lower boundary issue comes into play. Brandon says for example that you can only store as much weight as you have to give and that for things like speed you can't even store all of that, there's some limit below which you just can't go, and you can't pull stuff out of your body at the kind of accelerated rate that you can withdraw it. I think it's possible to store enough heat to lower your temperature to the point where you'd quickly die of hypothermia without an external source keeping you alive, but there's still limits to how fast your heat gets stored and if you're in the middle of a really intense heat source like a fire, your temperature is still going to rise faster than you can store and to a level that's dangerous if you're in there for long enough. For example, let's say you're storing twenty degrees (celsius scale) worth of core temperature, which is just a bit shy of the lowest known temperature anyone has survived and comfortably past the point when death by hypothermia can happen. Now you walk into a burning house, where the temperature is five hundred degrees or so above your pre-storing core temperature. You're getting hit constantly by a wave of heat that's far in excess of the twenty degrees you're storing so you're going to start heating up pretty quickly no matter what you do as long as you remain in that environment.

Tapping F-Brass would not grant you resistance to fire since feruchemy only protects you against the effect itself (and that within limits, see Steelrunning and air resistance) but if you were to make yourself colder by storing heat you might be able to gain some temporary resistance. However, there are limits to how low you can go when you store so I don't think you could completely overcome really intense heat that way.

ASOIAF has had five books so far to explore that world's history, plus multiple guides and 'histories'. Brandon has had three books so far out of a planned ten and no secondary sources other than the occasional WoB. Why do you expect that we'd get everything right at the start of the series instead of spread out? In fact, given that we've got two books in the back half of the series that are planned to have Taln and Ash as the flashback characters, it's pretty clear that he is saving a lot of the really juicy history for later.

That was me looking at two topics at once and forgetting which I was in for a second with that one. Which is why I edited it out, like Ruin. xD And probably atium since it's the only thing that we know can steal the ability to use atium in allomancy; it's not unreasonable to assume it's required to steal F-Atium as well. It's not as if either Rashek or Ruin is going to be shy about using that metal since the former has virtually the entire world's supply (if they were given to Inquisitors before Ruin was freed) and the latter could always reclaim it later (if they got the spikes after Ruin's release).

We actually have an explanation via WoB So, for a currently unknown reason, some Inquisitors had a spike for F-Atium. Marsh already had a spike for A-Atium. Combine the two and you get an atium compounder.

Relevant WoB here, one day we might be able to grab a pencil and paper and do this kind of calculation.

You can't force a spren bond. What Nale does is set things up so that it's more likely that a highspren will bond a person that Nale thinks is worthy of becoming a Skybreaker (because by making them a squire, they're in a position where highspren will be more likely to notice them) but there's no way to make the spren form the bond unless they chose to do so. As others have said, the type of spren is entirely relevant. Each type of spren is looking for different things in a potential bond partner and the different types of spren have different ways of deciding who to bond. Sometimes you'll get a situation where multiple spren might be attracted to the same person (Ym) but that only works in limited circumstances. See what happens to Kaladin in WoR for an example of how badly wrong things can go.

To add to the above, Brandon has indicated some interest in writing additional stories involving Reckoners continuity. Apocalypse Guard was intended to answer some of the questions raised by Calamity for example, which may or may not have allowed him to explore that question. He's also indicated that if he writes anything explicitly in that setting his first thought would be to do a story focused on Mizzy, which would probably include at least some of the other Reckoners by default.

If implemented I imagine this would result in a serious increase in the number of people too l337 for Hoid to compete with, given that title's margin of error for points (ie none).

Take another look at the Edgedancer ideals. Take another look at Adolin. Remembering the forgotten, listening to the ignored? He's doing that, in his own way. Some of his actions may not sit well with a Windrunner or a Skybreaker but we know there are other Orders that would be perfectly okay with things we've seen Adolin do. To borrow a meme, 'Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Journey before Destination. I do not think that Ideal means what you think it means'.

Atium can be pushed/pulled (as Kelsier does to destroy all the geodes in the Pits) while a Shardblade is so heavily Invested that you'd need a duralumin boost or something similar to get through all that Investiture interference.

I wish I could answer that but I've never read it myself. The library's description says it's about 230 leaves, which could be single or double-sided. The latter seems a safe assumption considering the length of the excerpts Brandon has shared and how he's described the Shattered Plains sequence as a 'diversion' from the main story. With that assumption, I'd guess you'd need to dedicate a good chunk of a day to it if you wanted to read it in a single sitting, even if you're a pretty fast reader. Going to Provo and reading it for myself is on my bucket list, should circumstances ever put me in the general vicinity. But until then, I'm just working off what other people have said and some guesswork.

A spren can't 'become' a hemalurgic spike. They could become a bit of pointy metal and be stabbed into somebody in the right place and by someone with the right Intent to do hemalurgy but... it wouldn't actually work to make a spike. Which is exactly the point of the WoB that @Shqueeves posted. They're so heavily Invested that there isn't room for them to hold a hemalurgic charge.

Leechers are confirmed to be able to drain Breath and they could 'kill' a Lifeless this way, setting the question of 'leakiness' aside Stormlight and Breath are very similar so a Leecher should have no trouble affecting stored Stormlight as long as they can hold on to the Surgebinder long enough for their ability to work. We also know (albeit via a paraphrased WoB) that a Leecher could prevent Surgebinders from summoning their spren in weapon form. In general, a magic that does one particular thing is going to be following the same underlying principles as any other magic capable of doing the same thing. F-Chromium and Larkins are noted to be like this and Brandon has called out things like A-Electrum and Sak's Aviar talent, Yolish and Rosharan Lightweaving and Kokerlii's talent compared to A-Copper.

Dustbringers setting things on fire is probably a combination of their two Surges, with Abrasion being used to increase friction (and thus generate heat) and Division breaking things apart But using it the way Lift currently does to easily glide around a battlefield is likely as well, just like Lift could learn to increase friction to climb impossible surfaces without using Wyndle as a makeshift rope.

Not exactly. Stormlight is gaseous Investiture and it predates the Shattering of Adonalsium. Shardblades are made of a mix of Honor and Cultivation's godmetals (ie their Investiture in Physical form) and the Honorblades are pure 'Tanavastium'. Per this WoB (discussing Mistborn) the form of Investiture is very important. Solid Investiture does different things from liquid Investiture does different things from gaseous Investiture. Stormlight has an Honor/Cultivation 'spin' to it but it's usable as 'raw' Investiture for things like feeding a Divine Breath or causing the characteristic reaction of Taldaini sand. And just because you have Investiture in solid form doesn't mean it's immutable. Shardblades may seem indestructible but there's likely to be a point where even they'll break (if only once Nightblood gets involved and has a few good whacks at them) and we know other manifestations solid Investiture like atium can be melted and alloyed.

Marcus Cole: I do, actually!

We actually see an example of this from the spiker's point of view elsewhere in the book and they're waiting for the guidance that they know is coming which will tell them exactly where and when to strike to get the right effect. Someone less open to control can't be directly possessed but Ruin can still provide the Intent and give them the nudge to strike at the right time.. It's possible but nobody knows how to do it right now. Also, the donor would be left 'worse than a Drab'.

@Calderis I stand corrected. xD