Weltall

Another big thing that tells against the idea that Roshone is Kalak, Jasnah recognizes Nale and Kalak as 'ambassadors from the West'. If Kalak was pretending to be an Alethi nobleman, he can't simultanously be pretending to be an ambassador from somewhere else while he's surrounded by Alethi who would know his 'Roshone' persona. And Jasnah's keeping an eye on the court so she should recognize prominent nobles, especially ones with connections to the Kholins.

These two statements are directly opposed to one another. You acknowledge in the first that multiple intents make it hard to act because you're being pulled in different directions and you have to balance them, then turn around and say that more intents would make it easier to act. Sazed finds it difficult to act because he has two perfectly opposing intents that he's trying to balance. By the logic of your second statement, Preservation and Ruin should be conflicting with each other so much (and with equal strength) that Sazed is only marginally being influenced by them. Which is, you know, not the case. We've also got a WoB that certain combinations of Shards would exert really weird pressures on the Vessel, which tells us that adding more intents to the mix doesn't lessen your problems but just gives you fascinating new ones.

Brandon has actually said straight out that Awakening will not work on a dead Shardblade. He's also said that as far as BioChroma is concerned, Shardblades and Plate are already 'Awakened' due to the way the magic works. Oh, and welcome to the Shard!

Rock's ability to see spren isn't universal among his people, to the point that they have a special word for it, alaii’iku. It's not unique to him and he doesn't actually say that it's something he gained by swimming near Cultivation's Perpendicularity. Kaladin assumes that to be the case but Rock deflects the question by saying it's not part of the story he's trying to tell. All he does say is 'Is not part of story. It is... involved' which in context does not necessarily mean 'the waters were involved' but could be taken to simply mean 'it's complicated'. So we're not sure how he gained that ability, only that he doesn't want to talk about it. Given that Oathbringer practically hits us over the head with the fact that Rock is holding things back from Bridge Four, his reticence on the subject of seeing the spren might be related to the stuff he's concealing about his past. Oh, and that god that he talked about meeting? It was Hoid. You can figure this out pretty easily from Rock's description and the way Sigzil reacts to it. This may or may not count as one of 'the last seven times' he got involved in religion and it lead to disaster, as he recounts to Shallan in Oathbringer.

Since the Ire had a way to give themselves sufficient Connection to Preservation to take up that Shard, we know that Selish magic can do things like that. Rather than faking Connection to that Shard, it would have to fake Connection to the geographic area associated with AonDor. We know this sort of thing is theoretically possible with Forgery but it would require more power than she can manage on her own to go from 'Forging to look like an Elantrian' to actually being an Elantrian. The same would probably be true of the potions, so you'd need something more to provide the push needed to fake the Connection and make it stick well enough to actually become Elantrian, rather than just look like one as Hrathen did. ...I just realized, I've been assuming that Hrathen ordered up a potion that used chemistry to fake the physical appearance of post-reod Elantrians but it's entirely possible that what actually happened is that the potion faked Connection similar to the hypothetical example Brandon gave with Shai. As for the Ire's orb succeeding at such crazy Connection hacking, being Elantrian they've got direct access to the Dor so however that thing worked, they could probably brute-force the power requirements.

He needed agents on Roshar to open a bridge to let his Investiture in. The Diagram instructed Taravangian to try and press the Alethi to destroy the listeners quickly before they could open the way to Odium. Without their work, Odium's resources on Roshar weren't enough to create the Everstorm independently. The circumstances that allowed all those necessary steps to happen weren't there beforehand.

Just for the record, Brandon's most recent announcement is that he's going to try to squeeze in some writing on the book this year if he can and it's one the works on his 'do it soon' pile. He gave it a tenative release date of 2020 or 21 depending on circumstances, since he thinks he might need a break during the writing of Stormlight 4.

We see Kalak in the Prologue of Words of Radiance, as one of the two men Jasnah overhears talking about how they're worried about Ash and that she's 'getting worse'. Only the Heralds call Shalash that, we know the other man was Nale and we can account for the other three male Heralds so by process of elimination that was Kalak. Jasnah briefly sees him and notes that 'he could have been Alethi'. If he'd looked Thaylen, as Vistm most definitely does, Jashah would have noted that. Ergo, Kalak does not look Thaylen. Also, that scene suggests that Kalak's particular form of Herald insanity is paranoia or hypochondria. Neither of these words fit Vistm at all. It's not a bad idea, but it doesn't fit what little we know of Kalak.

Sorry to burst your bubble but no, they do not all have opposites. Also, Sazed is a special case but not because he has two Shards with actual opposite intents. Sazed is special because he can understand and appreciate the need for both of those intents. It's the reason his personality isn't (so far) being adversely affected by the intents in the same way that Leras and especially Ati were. If Sazed didn't have that mindset or if someone else took up Preservation and Ruin at the same time, the result could have been very different. We know from another WoB that under those circumstances, the resulting Shard would have been Discord.

Given that he hasn't written it yet, your only options are to wait or invent a time machine. Welcome to the Shard!

Well, the exact appearance would depend on the Cognitive region but using Roshar as an example because we've seen it the most, the flames that represent living things would all vanish and the beads representing inanimate things would change to reflect their new Physical state, though anything outright disintegrated would probably vanish quickly, in the same way that the Wind's Pleasure would have been subsumed into the ocean rather than remaining 'a bunch of water that used to be a ship' Cognitively. As for the terrain, I imagine that would take longer to show any change. People on the Physical side would have to begin thinking of the area as being different before it would alter the corresponding Cognitive area.

On Oathbringer's appearance, here's what the pendant of the sword looks like. For my part, I always imagined it to look similar to Tidus' iconic sword from Final Fantasy X, but with the hook on the other side of the blade. He's called that game his favorite RPG so I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some influence there.

@Monomanamaniac First off, welcome to the Shard! Second, going forward you really should check the last posting date before bumping a topic. This one was dead for almost five years. And yes, Rashek tends to be on the top of the list for 'most powerful entity that is not a Shard' with everyone else fighting for second place, assuming he actually bothers to go all-out.

I've got hazel eyes too and I'm quite certain I'd be considered a darkeyes. However, it really depends on whether yours tend to look more dark or more light, and how light.

While SA does have the broadest crossover between series and some of the most blatant examples, Brandon has repeatedly stated that it's intended to be a stand-alone story where you don't need to read any of his other works before it and vice versa. It would be helpful to have read Warbreaker before Words of Radiance for example, but it's not essential. The actual Big Cosmere Crossover is going to be Mistborn Era 4 which is the last major work that Brandon has plans to write.

Shards exist in the Spiritual Realm, they don't need a Physical vessel to 'move' through space because where the bulk of their power resides, there is no space in the way we perceive it. Bavadin can interact with worlds like First of the Sun and create avatars there and on other worlds even though she's Invested in Taldain and that's her 'home' in Physical and Cognitive terms. Brandon has even said that motion is irrelevant to the Shards, which means they don't really need any Physical counterpart to their Spiritual 'movement'. Given that there's no evidence that Scadrial was formed over two moons and everyone who's discussed the subject has said that they simply created the planet from the ground up when they arrived, this is literally making up evidence to fit your idea. I'll grant you that there's something significant about Roshar's moons and the fact that they're in unstable orbits, but I don't think that's evidence for your theory... especially since Odium isn't even on Roshar, he's on Braize... which has no moon. Khriss mentions that the fight between Odium and Ambition mostly took place (insofar as it had a Physical dimension) in the space between the planets. There's no indication that the arrangement of planetary bodies in the system was actually shifted by the conflict and I'm pretty certain that if Threnody had a moon at one point and then didn't, someone would have mentioned it by now. Also, there can be locations in the Cognitive with no Physical presence on the other side. The Ire fortress is a good example. Scadrial is a very special case because Preservation and Ruin permeate that planet in a way that other Shards do not, even if they're heavily Invested in a world. That means that Vin was especially locked down to that Physical/Cognitive region. Plus, y'know, she was busy fighting against Ruin so it's not like she had much time to explore other possibilities. Rashek actually had enough time during his brief Ascension to learn that there were other worlds out there in spite of having both a time limit and access to a lot less of Preservation's power. Give a Shard enough time and they can interact with other worlds even if they're more limited in what they can do on a world they're not directly Invested in.

Welcome to the Shard! Paalm was being influenced by 'Trell' but not directly controlled. Also, the kandra (like everything else on Scadrial) are literally made of Preservation and Ruin so they're probably much harder to co-opt in the way that we see happen with the Listeners and a single hemalurgic spike isn't enough to do it. The 'faceless immortal' we see at the end of Bands of Mourning is being directly controlled by some entity related to Trell (with the implication that whatever it is, they're possessing a native Scadrian and using their body like a puppet) and they do have the red eyes. Basically, it seems to be a matter of degree.

That is the correct allomantic ratio, yes. However, there are two reasons the answer to your question is 'no'. First, if you want those metals to mix you're talking about drinking molten metal. That's going to kill you long before you can do anything with it allomantically. For the record, tin melts at 232 Celsius, which is about four times hotter than you'd generally want to drink your morning tea. Lead melts at around 327 Celsius. Second, the metal actually has to mix and alloy in order to stop being tin and lead and start being pewter, both physically and in Realmatic terms. That's not happening on the way down your esophagus into your stomach and even if you had some other power like F-Gold to keep you alive through the process, your body is not a crucible, the metals won't alloy properly in that environment and even if some of the molten tin and lead did stay molten long enough to meet somewhere inside you, they wouldn't be in the right ratios any longer. So basically, what you have is less 'poor man's pewter' and more 'a gruesome way to commit suicide'.

Way more than that, even. If you put the events of Elantris as far apart from Stormlight Archive as possible on the timeline within the bounds of the WoBs we have (the gap isn't 'thousands' of years and there's about a thousand years we could place on a timeline ourselves) that would still put it at maybe a thousand years before SA tops. Probably a bit less than that since Sixth of the Dusk was out at the time of that WoB and we know it's the latest work on the timeline to date by a fair amount. We know that it's been about five thousand (Earth/Yolen/Scadrian) years since Aharietiam and Odium was stuck in the cycle of Desolations long before that (and also needed time to hunt down Ambition after taking on D&D) so we're probably talking about six thousand years or more passing between his visit to Sel and Hoid showing up to steal the Moon Sceptre. And this has been your daiily dose of Weltall Timeline Geekery, you may now return to your regularly scheduled discussion. xD

I think the 'big picture' reason why there isn't a Radiant Order with any special affinity towards water is because the Surges are based on the Rosharan conception of fundamental forces and none of those have any special place set aside for water as a 'force' any more than we do in the real world where we see four fundamental forces (strong and weak nuclear interaction, gravitation and electomagnetism). There are some forces that can interact with water in more obvious ways but that doesn't mean there's a water-centric power and there's no reason for there to be one. Incidentally Brandon avoids magic system based around the classic elements because he feels those are overdone. Therefore we're unlikely to ever see any explicit 'water magic' or 'fire magic' or what have you in the series, though we'll occasionally get stuff that looks more elemental when the specific combinations of powers interact just so, as with Windrunning and the Stonewards. As a bonus, the same WoB where Brandon talks about elemental magic is also one where he explains Roshar, so have a two-for-one WoB:

They came together.

Darn, I was typing up a long reply and the board ate it, or there were two topics and the one I started posting in was removed or something.. Okay, quick recreation instead. Honorspren: There's a bit of a wind theme going with known names, as Sylphrena sounds like sylph or sylphid, a wind spirit, and Notun and Borea are very close to Notos and Boreas, the Greek names for the South and North Winds. We've got a few that don't fit this pattern though, so far as I can figure out. Pattern: As mentioned, their real names are composed of lots of numbers and 'very hard to say', so they're probably all going to be like Pattern and between them and their Radiant they'll decide on a name for the sake of convenience. With a sample size of one, we can't really say there's going to be any pattern at work, pun not intended. Reachers: We have two names to work with and no clear pattern. Timbre is readily understandable but that's what Venli called her and we can't assume other Radiants bonded to Reachers would give their partners names with a similar theme, my guess is that most would go by the actual names. Cultivationspren: We have two names to work with but no clear pattern. Glys: We don't know what kind of spren he is and we've got no way of deducing a theme (if there is one) from a single name. Inkspren: We have one name to work with and Ivory picked it for himself as a symbol of rebellion so it's doubly impossible to puzzle out a naming convention from that. Ashspren and Highspren: We have one name each here and in these cases there is at least the seed of a potential pattern since 'Spark' fits with the Dustbringer's focus on destruction and 'Winnow' with the Skybreakers' job of separating the innocent and the guiilty, but we'd need more examples to say whether this is a theme among them or just a coincidence.

Between getting to see the early drafts of the books that contain content that doesn't make the final cut (and which we only sometimes get to see bits and pieces of when Brandon shares them) and direct interaction, yeah, they do. On the 'will some of this stuff be made available in the books' I imagine that all the really important stuff will be. Mistborn Secret History and the Arcanum Unbounded essays for example 'canonized' the existence of Autonomy for anyone who hadn't seen the WoB where Brandon first revealed it and the epigraph in Oathbringer similarly 'canonized' her creation of avatars on multiple worlds and implied her involvement on First of the Sun, which had been mentioned in WoBs. A lot of the tiny details might not get this treatment, though it's always possible that at some point Team Dragonsteel will put out a guidebook or a series of them that can contain a lot of that stuff without Brandon needing to figure out how to weave it all into the stories themselves. We know he's considered doing a book for Stormlight Archive specifically, for example. Welcome again, enjoy yourself and please don't eat any hemalurgic cookies if someone offers you one.

To add to what @Quantus said, I was interested in how Brandon conceived Sel so I asked him at the SF Oathbringer signing if there were intentional Confucian parallels in the Shards in the same way we know written Chinese influenced the idea of form-based magic and he said it was deliberate. Depending on the Vessel, an idea like 'Dominion' could easily produce something like classical Chinese civilization which was stable and not (usually) tyrannical. Pair it with Devotion and you're much more likely to get something like that. This goes hand in hand with Brandon's assertion that none of the Shards are inherently good or evil.

Yeah, AonDor leans more Devotion because of the involvement of the Seons (proximity to Devotion's Perpendicularity probably didn't hurt either) and the magic of the Dakhor monks is heavily influenced by the Skaze, but all the magics are going to have some influence from both Shards. We've also got Forgery which could easily be seen as balanced between the two Shards (you need devotion to study and knowledge to make a good soulstamp and you're exercising dominion over whatever you're affecting with it) and we don't really know enough about other systems to guess how they'd fit in. Just have to wait for the Elantris sequels, I guess. Actually, it pretty much is Dominion in the 'Domination' sense. Brandon's said that the reason the Skaze are power-hungry is because of the nature of Dominion's intent. The idea of 'Domain' really doesn't carry any inherent drive to expand (nor does it really fit the template of other Shardic intents) and most of the theories about that meaning of Dominion were premised on a limited understanding of why Sel's magics are region-locked which has since been clarified so we know that it has nothing to do with the nature of the Shards before Odium came calling. We even had a pre-Arcanum Unbounded confirmation that Dominion's nature isn't related to region.