Weltall

That would require that he either get access to Selish magic (which is really hard) or tell a Forger an incredible amount of information about himself (which is unlikely). And on top of that, the stamps would be useless except in the regions of Sel close to MaiPon because Forgery, like all Selish magic, can't even be used planet-wide much less offworld.

Ahu is Jezrien, which is why Moash shanks him at the end of the book.

Yeah, unless you're trying to fight Renarin and he just happens to have one of his visions pop up during the fight (in which case, your respective uses of Fortune start to interfere with each other) there's no reaosn that A-Atium won't work to predict what a Surgebinder is going to do.

Per Brandon, if he's writing the story a lightsaber can't cut a Shardblade. There's also this semi-relevant WoB:

If we assume for purposes of discussion that she's been commissioned by some authority to go fetch Nightblood, then her actions strongly suggest that her instructions were something like 'Go get Nigthblood, and bring Vasher back too if possible'. As noted she passes on an easy opportunity to fish for information on his whereabouts or to stick with them, knowing they'll eventually lead her to Vasher. Instead she tells them to warn him she's coming (she's confident they'll see Vasher before she finds him) which suggests that she can complete her job without having to confront him as long as he makes a token effort to avoid her. If she's in this on her own, getting Kaladin and Adolin to warn Vasher also suggests that she's either trying to avoid having to confront him (for whatever reason) or that she doesn't want him to be surprised when she finally does locate him.

Welcome to the Shard! Yeah, as mentioned Hoid does not use hemalurgy because he doesn't want any Shard able to influence him and even a single spike would give Harmony (and before that Ruin) a foot in the door. We know that Hoid's healing ability is pre-Shattering and it's implied that his use of Fortune is also very old. He's also known to have started aging weirdly before the Shattering, since Brandon has said that there's evidence of it in Dragonsteel Prime which happens before the event. As for his observed powers, he probably purchased his Breath (which you probably can't steal with hemalurgy anyways), he got his allomancy from a lerasium bead and he's bonded a Cryptic to get Surgebinding powers the only way you can. He tried becoming an Elantrian through similar methods but that failed. He's got a jar of Taldaini sand but we don't know if he can actually do Sand Mastery or not. No hemalurgy in any case.

She claims to be hunting Nightblood and Vasher, in that order. Exactly what she intends to do with them once she finds them is anyone's guess. She refers to Vasher as an old friend and tells Adolin to warn him that she's looking for him the next time they meet, but she's still hunting him. Nightblood however is her primary objective.

Ahhhhh, we're not supposed to talk about Aether of Night outside its dedicated board. Also, until Brandon rewrites it none of the magic is strictly canonical.

Good luck learning enough about Hoid's past to ever manage to get a stamp that would actually work on him, given that this would require you to learn about Yolen in general and more importantly, Hoid's own very mysterious history. Also, he's heavily (like, really heavily) Invested with a combination of magics which means it would be even harder to get a stamp to take. Probably requires more Investiture than a Forger normally has access to even assuming you could get a stamp that would work on Hoid in the first place. Gold only helps you with your own past, Shai would find it useful for creating Essence Marks but it would do absolutely nothing for creating a stamp meant to affect someone else.

Division splits at the molecular level, not the atomic level so you can't make nuclear explosions with it.

We've discussed the idea of Fabrial Railguns before, but they require more knowledge than the Rosharans have about using 'mechanical' Surgebinding. We know a fabrial can theoretically replicate the effects of any Surge so it's possible but nobody knows how to do it right now. They've got the fabrial Soulcasters that replicate Transformation (albeit in more limited form) but they don't know how to make more of them right now, so they'd need to either find a surviving Gravitation fabrial (assuming one exists) and advance their knowledge enough to reverse-engineer it and then apply it to weapons, or develop the entire thing from the ground up. Normal Soulcasters of course could be terrifying at close range if they can replicate what Jasnah does, but we know that even for her it generally requires a lot of effort to transform anything sapient and a fabrial might not have the flexibility or the power needed to manage something like that. But if they do, you've got someone who can kill you as long as they can touch you, which is pretty scary. Division obviously can damage or break things quite well but we don't know enough about how the Surge works to guess how exactly you could weaponize it. Navani's painrial can be weaponized by reversing the settings and she also came up with what's essentially a fabrial taser, so we know those exist. In theory, you could stab someone with a spanreed (assuming it's sturdy enough) since you have a rough idea where the other party is located relative to you. Of course, it's not exactly a subtle assassination tool since by definition they'll know who's supposed to be on the other end and you could only attack the person actually doing the writing on the other side, since you can't predict the locations of anyone else who might be present. And if you wanted to stab the scribe, you'd basically have to stab yourself to put the spanreed in the right position to stab the other person. Interesting thought experiment but not terribly practical. Fabrials that increase heat could probably be used as a triggering device for explosives, with a bit of creativity.

Brandon has said that he's avoiding these because he thinks they're so used that it's hard to find a fresh take on them, though it sort of comes up with Surgebinding and he's mentioned several other authors' takes on it that he likes. Still, probably not going to see any straight elemental magic systems in the Cosmere, just cases like Windrunning where the specific powers tangentially happen to involve the classic elements. Do fabrials count? Because you could argue that the 'half-shard' is basically an enchanted shield and other applications are probably possible with the right gemstone and spren combination. Aaand I just realized quoting everything is going to get tedious so I'll just skip it for the rest. - Alchemy: Well, there's Forton's potions which could (maybe) function like the alchemist's elixir of life insofar as it could give effects similar to most forms of Cosmere healing and Forgery already has a means of turning lead into gold (albeit it's really hard to find a case where that's plausible) while Soulcasting can transmute materials as well. But yeah, given that alchemy is basically proto-chemistry and Brandon's all about the application of the scientific method to his magics, we're unlikely to see any 'magical alchemy' like Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle or Full Metal Alchemist in the Cosmere. - Astrology/Augury are just ways of predicting the future, which there's a developed mechanic for. You could pretty much count any application of Fortune. Something more on the lines of 'prediction through omens' might work on a 'minor' shardworld where the magic is more a part of the environment and people mostly interact with it indirectly. - Shapeshifting is... pretty much what the kandra do, just with a Sandersonian take on it by requiring bones and a lot of practice if you want to become something other than a copy of whatever you just ate. And as already mentioned, we know dragons can do this. - Hybrids: Well, the 'hemalurgic chimaeras' started out as humans that got something spiked into them. You could probably do more with enough knowledge of hemalurgy and you'd be a horrible horrible person for trying. Forget mad scientists, the true horror is mad hemalurgists. - Magic rings and such: Setting aside fabrials again, there are some applications of AonDor that could probably work similarly, with the appropriate Aon chains and modifiers carved into them. - Sex magic: Brandon being Brandon, I'm guessing we're never going to see anything like this. - Exorcism: Does throwing silver dust at Shades not count? - Ley Lines: Uhhhh, I guess you could sort of count the giant power modifier that is the city of Elantris, though it only works for one subset of Selish magic.

@Invocation@Gasper It might be safe to say that the kandra are generally the most warped Realmatically while looking the least warped, at least when in human form. I base this on the fact that we know koloss (post-Catacendre) and Inquisitors are capable of reproducing with humans while Brandon has been back and forth on whether or not it's possible for a kandra and human to have a child together and it's currently a RAFO. As mentioned, we know who both of these people are and neither is from Scadrial. The man in the lighthouse is from Elantris and we didn't even need Brandon to confirm his identity to figure that much out; he swears by 'Merciful Domi' when he realizes Kaladin is Invested. Azure is, as mentioned, very obviously someone we've met before and she's not the only worldhopper from that planet that we've seen in Stormlight Archive... if you don't know who I'm talking about you have a fun and exciting time ahead of you as you read more Cosmere books.

If you're able to have this conversation with Nightblood in the first place, it's because he's already decided that you aren't evil. Unless you do a mental about-face and start thinking about doing the sorts of things that Nightblood 'knows' are evil (ie, you fail the Nightblood Test even though you must have previously passed it) he's not going to make you go murder-crazy just because you've made an idiotic statement.

Yeah, it's not something that's applicable across magic systems, it's just a factor of how Breath works compared to Stormlight. Other examples of Investiture leaking or not: - Allomancy draws all its power directly from Preservation and the key that you use to tell that power what to do isn't either 'leaky' or 'sticky', it just needs to get into your body and stay there long enough for you to burn it and follows the same pattern as anything else you might ingest. The only time you'll run into an 'Investiture leakage' system is if you're using so much of it that you're getting close to Ascension. - Feruchemical metalminds do not 'leak' Investiture, the only way it can be lost is if the metalmind itself is damaged, which can 'corrupt' the Investiture like damaged sectors on a disc. - Hemalurgic spikes do leak because they're Ruin's magic and entropy is pretty much his whole theme. Even so, there's a threshold beyond which a spike won't lose its charge. - Invested sand from Taldain can apparently lose its charge if you keep it away from any Investiture source for long enough, which probably has to do with the biology of the lichen that's actually storing the Investiture. - Aviar talents are permanent, so long as the bird remains healthy enough to keep the worm alive. - For we know of Ashyn's magic, the power lasts only as long as you're sick because it's essentially a magical virus that your body becomes immunized against. It's 'built in' to the system that it's a temporary magic. - Forgery isn't 'leaky' but the effective duration of the stamps depends on how plausible the Forgery is, in the case of inanimate objects a really good Forgery can last effectively forever. They fail within a day tops on humans because they change so much that the shifting Connections and Cognitive changes make what was a plausible stamp no longer so. - The magic the Dakhor monks use has no 'leakiness' to it and is noted to be somewhat better at dealing with the range limitations that all Selish magic has. - Forton's potions retained their effectiveness despite needing to be shipped to Hrathen and then stored until he had the opportunity to use them. If these decay, it's probably due to whatever goes into the potions going bad (a la milk spoiling) rather than the Investiture itself fading. So yeah, it's all down to the individual magics and how they operate.

Re-Shephir also has some similarities in role (if not really name) with Lovecraft's Shub-Niggurath, mentioned as having 'a thousand young'. The descriptions we've gotten of the Unmade so far definitely have a Cthulhu Mythos vibe to them. This is probably not coincidental.

Ahhh, okay. Probably not then. Aluminum's Investiture-sink property is universal, it's only on Scadrial where there's actually a magic that can Invest it. I don't think that just because it does something else on Scadrial, that its associated metals on that world would somehow have an inverse effect of aluminum. So far as we can tell, the only factors that determine pushing and pulling effectiveness are relative weight, anchors and whether the metal is Invested. Okay, and if you're using duralumin to enhance your pushes or pulls since it can make a difference since you're applying all that force at once, but that's not a question of reactiveness to the pushing/pulling. I think that if duralumin was easier to push than an identically-massed chunk of another metal, somebody would have noticed in three hundred years.

No. You can alloy aluminum to do things like make the guns seen in Alloy of Law (because pure aluminum wouldn't work) but that doesn't enhance it's Investiture-sink properties. Adulterate aluminum too much and you'll weaken the effect (because of how little aluminum you have) or possibly lose it altogether, as with duralumin. And if you try to use alloys of aluminum at all in the Metallic Arts other than the specific combination that gets you duralumin, you've got a lump of metal that won't do a rusting thing because in Realmatic terms it's not a valid metal.

Brandon has said that Cephandrius is one of his earliest aliases, not that it's the earliest. He's also said that it's closer to his original name than Hoid, but that doesn't mean much since we know that the basic idea from Liar that he took the name 'Hoid' from an old master of his is canon (Frost confirms it in the WoR letter) so anything he called himself on Yolen other than maybe Topaz might be closer to his real name than the one we know isn't the one he was born with. The questioner in that second WoB didn't appear to know about Midius being another alias, so it didn't come up in relation to Cephandrius. As for why Ash and presumably the other Heralds know him as Midius, well, who's to say he can't go back to other aliases when the mood strikes him? We know he's gone by at least two aliases on Nalthis for example, since he calls himself Hoid during the events of Warbreaker but Vasher knows him as 'Dust', a name that Brandon used in the first draft of the book and which gets name-checked in Words of Radiance. Why not reuse Midius with the Heralds for similar reasons.

Dragonsteel is the story that will lead up to the Shattering, Liar is a prequel to it. So yep, Liar is going to be the earliest Cosmere work once it's rewritten and canonized. Here's an old WoB where he made it really clear. Mind you, he's now contemplating reworking Liar into something more lije Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle so it may be that the main focus of Liar predates Dragonsteel but it will have a framing story set at some other point on the timeline.

It turns out Brandon answered this more directly than I thought, as I discovered when I went to close the Arcanum page I had open to find that one WoB. He didn't directly say 'no' there but the way he immediately jumped to 'she can only convert what she can metabolize' makes me suspect that Lift is no different from non-Horneater Rosharans when it comes to being able to get nutritional value out of shell and horn.

Lift with lembas would be pretty scary. Not quite as scary as that picture of course... I doubt it. She basically metabolizes food into Investiture rather than sugar but that requires her to be able to metabolize it in the first place. Because she's not a Horneater, I don't think she could convert any Horneater food into Investiture other than the stuff that, say, Kaladin would also get nutrition out of.

Pretty much every form of gaining immortality we've seen in the Cosmere has some associated downside, or you have to be born with it. For examples of the former, atium compounding requires a steady supply of a rare metal (and has an upper limit on how far you can prolong your life) and being an Elantrian is described as exhausting. Both types of Aimians appear to be immortal via either biological control (Siah) or distribution of consciousness (Dysians) but you can't just become one of them, similarly while sapient Investiture is naturally immortal you can't just become that either. Cognitive Shadows generally have their own issues, though it depends on which variety you're talking about. All of them are locked into the Physical/Cognitive region where their Investiture comes from and need to learn how to leave and they require you to die first, under the right conditions. Returned have the extra burden of needing a constant Investiture supply and while the Heralds don't seem to have that limitation, they're all insane. So yeah, if you want immortality of the 'doesn't age, at all' variety, have lots of money and the moral question doesn't bother you, the Fifth Heightening is really the way to go so far. As a bonus, you get perfect pitch, color perception and life-sense, plus virtual immunity to disease and physical ailments. The downside? You can't get drunk, ever. Oh, and if you give away enough Breath you'd probably start aging rapidly a la Rashek (though.Brandon's not canonized that yet) and temporarily giving only some away shouldn't be a big deal since you would still be getting dramatically slowed aging. So yeah, you'd need some spare Breath on top of that if you want to do intensive Awakening. After the Heightening option, I'd go for the currently unknown method that Khriss and most Seventeenth Shard members use to extend their lives. We know it doesn't stop the aging process but considering that it can be learned by non-Invested people and it's kept Baon going for hundreds of years (maybe up to a thousand or so) it seems to be a pretty good deal. Since we're talking immortality in the Cosmere, Brandon has mentioned that there are other things Rashek could have done which would have been more efficient than atium compounding but which would have required more active effort, by manipulating Connection. Possibly it involves some sort of perception trick like what Vasher uses to 'hide' his Divine Breath, only instead you're somehow hiding your age and manipulating Connection to make your soul think that time hasn't passed since whenever you stopped aging. I've no clue how you'd do that, since Connection seems to be more to places or things but he did say it would take effort.

The original body of the Vessel sublimates when they Ascend so there really isn't a body for Nightblood to hit. We know the Vessels can create projections of themselves to interact with the Physical Realm but that's not the same thing and 'killing' it wouldn't kill the Vessel. We even see Leras creating projections of himself in the Cognitive Realm that are each holding independent conversations with a lot of recently dead people, so these projections are just a miniscule piece of the Vessel's consciousness.

It really doesn't matter, Kalak was seen by the entire Alethi court at that party, including Elhokar and Jasnah. If you want to pretend that Kalak was already playing Roshone beforehand, people at the court would have seen him and wondered why a brightlord was pretending to be someone else (and an ambassador, you aren't exactly going to overlook them) and if you want to pretend he adopted the Roshone persona afterwards, you still have Elhokar meeting the man as 'the western ambassador' first, along with everyone else at that party who might later encounter Roshone.