Weltall

The point is that the 'blueprint' that represents a healthy you has been altered by savantism's warping of the spiritweb so that whatever it looked like before you became a savant is no longer relevant. Healing magic will restore you based on the new savantism-altered template and attempts to heal damage to the spiritweb itself will also restore the modified spiritweb rather than your original one. The only example we have of 'healing' savantism was Sazed restoring Spook's spiritweb at the end of Hero of Ages and that's not only dealing with Shardic levels of power and access to the Spiritual Realm but a potentailly unique case given how deeply the power of Preservation and Ruin permeate everything on Scadrial. Even if another Shard could look at someone and say 'yes, this is what their spiritweb looked like before they became a savant' they might not be able to change it the way that Sazed was able to change Spook.

While the situation of savantism via a (later removed) spike would be unusual, I suspect that F-Gold or indeed any method of Cosmere healing would not do anything to the effects of savantism in that situation, whatever they might be. As far as the magic is concerned, there's nothing wrong with you that needs to be 'healed'.

The heat transfer isn't that fast and it doesn't take long for a sip of tea to work its way down into your stomach. Technically the metal doesn't even need to make it all the way, just enough for the allomancer to perceive it as being 'inside' them; there's nothing special about the stomach.

Since BioChroma doesn't enhance all the senses, the best explanation for why taste isn't included is probably 'just because'. We know color recognition was picked because that's important to Nalthis and Brandon thought it would be a neat idea and since that's basically 'perfect pitch for colors' it's not too surprising that he included actual perfect pitch as well. I suspect that extending this to other senses would have overloaded the magic with too many features, especially since none of them are as relevant to the setting as the traits the Heightenings actually bestow. Plus, can you imagine having Perfect Smell? I'd rather not know exactly what I'm smelling sometimes... Perfect Touch could be more distracting than useful (imagine having the disorientating sensation that comes when you suddenly get a huge increase in Breath, every time you touch something) and while Perfect Taste could be cool if you're a gourmand it could be just as much a downside if you're not eating high quality food all the time. If you've read Discworld, imagine the bar scene in Monstrous Regiment. I suppose it could be useful in terms of detecting poison in a food but since immunity is already a feature of BioChroma it would also be a redundant perk.

Here you go

Welcome to the Shard! Since you're not really asking a question with a definite answer, this would go better in Cosmere Discussion. The formatting of the Q&A board makes it very hard to follow discussions because posts are sorted differently here and an open-ended topic like this is likely to lead to those kinds of discussions.. Well, if they had a Nahel Bond they could adjust the weapon (within limits) to suit whatever their current shape is. We know they can make a True Body out of Shardplate and there's no reason to assume they couldn't wear it as well. We know that it's hypothetically possible for a kandra to bond a spren but it would be harder for them than other people. Whether you could get the Plate to form properly when you've got an atypical shape like a four-armed kandra is anyone's guess, since we know very little about the mechanics of it. And first you'd need to get a kandra who can handle having more limbs than normal, since they wouldn't have a 'natural' example to copy so they'd need to get the necessary bones or equivalent internal support and then work out all the biological details for themselves... but I imagine that if a kandra could manage that and also manage to bond a spren, getting Shardplate to fit them wouldn't be out of the question. Corollary: I don't think it would work for a kandra who found a set of 'dead' Plate. The examples we've seen of gaining Plate all require that the wearer at least sort of fit into the armor initially before it can adjust to their dimensions and there wouldn't be anywhere for the extra arms to go. The armor reshapes to fit but it doesn't add completely new elements and there are limits to its ability to adjust. We also get a sense of this from descriptions of how modern shardbearers ornament their armor; they have to weld decorative elements on rather than wishing them into existence and the ornamentation can be knocked off rather than becoming an integral part of the Plate.

Welcome to the Shard! As mentioned, Ym's spren (and the one Stump describes but which we don't see directly) are what a normal Truthwatcher's spren look like.

That's exactly what I was reacting to. And yeah, I liked that White Tower subplot myself. EDIT: And what you said earlier about keeping Ashaman names straight? I have that same problem with them. And the Aes Sedai. And the Wise Women. And the Kin. And the Younglings. And the... you know, pretty much everybody. Though there is one Ashaman that I suspect you'll have no trouble remembering once he shows up.

Reread the Prelude again, Kalak makes it clear that they're being tortured with literal nasty implements; Oathbringer makes it explicit this happens on Braize.

All the Shards can create bodies allowing them to manifest in the Physical Realm and interact with everything there. I'd call them avatars but that's already taken by whatever Bavadin is doing specifically. If they can do it, I can't see why that would be beyond Adonalsium.

Welcome to the Black Tower Subplot xD <readies popcorn> Remember that viewing that Min had of him back in... I think it was The Shadow Rising? Yeah, that one's just starting to pay off. xD This will get called out eventually, as will some of Elayne and Nynaeve's acts in the recent books that you mentioned. It's generally institutionalized arrogance, since the Aes Sedai following the Breaking settled on strength in the One Power as a measure of who gets to call the shots in any given situation, they have a very bad habit of extending this 'I'm stronger therefore I'm right' attitude to their dealings with non-Aes Sedai as well. Needless to say this doesn't endear them to anyone who's not already overawed by them. They've had about three thousand years to get comfortable with their self-image of being the smartest/strongest people in the room, with almost nobody being willing to call them out on their attitude. And yeah, Elaida is a picture-perfect example of everything that's wrong with their current way of doing things. The various concurrent Aes Sedai plotlines take a long while to get good (as with so many, they do get bogged down at times) but they'll get there eventually.

You would definitely get a RAFO on what Adonalsium looked like so there's little point in anyone asking. @SwordNimiForPresident We can infer that Adonalsium was 'alive' in some way because its death is what caused the Shattering. This is probably much closer to what Syl has to say about how one can only sort of kill a spren than what we'd think of as life and death (especially given that Brandon's said that the Shattering meant 'everything and nothing' to Investiture) but it does require that Adonalsium have been alive in some sense for the first WoB to have any meaning. This is of course a completely separate question from whether Adonalsium was sapient, but I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that it was.

That... doesn't actually make any sense. Dyson spheres (and more plausible variations than the solid-shell idea) are supposed to go around stars and capture their energy output, such a structure would be wasted on a planet.

That sucks, always painful when a drive fails and I hope you didn't lose too much else. Brandon's never released WoK Prime except in excerpts which can be found on the website starting here or in the Altered Perceptions anthology. You can get Aether of Night by asking here.

Welcome to the Shard! Nope, you're assuming that all mistings were treated as hemalurgic donors but we know for a fact that's not the case. Consider the case of Camon, who was thought to be a misting and executed in a very distinct way. We're told explicitly that this is how the Steel Ministry kills people who misuse the powers of allomancy and it's well known enough that earlier in the book Clubs alludes to it when he suggests the entire crew might end up with hooks through their throats. The Ministry kills most mistings, they only spike them when they actually need a fresh spike.

Nope, it's not canon. The treatment of F-Nicrosil is a very obvious example of how what Brandon has later written overrules what the MAG had in place.

Khriss and Nazh have no trouble worldhopping using the Perpendicularities to transition between Realms and neither of them is Invested in the same way that Kaladin is. What happened with Riino was more that you need some extra quantity of Investiture to see anything in the Fortune globe. Baon is also explicitly not Invested and seems ot have no problems worldhopping.

Brandon mentions in a couple of WoBs the mechanics of the bridges that Kaladin and the crew were carrying but most of the material didn't make it into the actual book.

While there is some ability for your Cognitive perception to alter your Spiritual aspect (like the potential to change your biological gender to match self-image) the kind of changes you're thinking of are far more beyond that, since you're not only talking about mixing Investitures but essentially creating Connections that do not exist to another Shard and to a specific region on another planet. Brandon's said that Shai (who's magic system is actually designed to do things like this) would need a huge source of external power to Forge herself into an Elantrian and even then she'd probably just look like one without getting any of the actual powers of a genuine Elantrian. A gold ferring just isn't going to manage that.

Given that the premise of the topic was to pick a Shard without considering the Vessel, facts like Edgli not being the most consistent about picking who Returns and having a hands-off attitude towards the rest of the Cosmere are kind of beside the point. And for my part, I'm very leery of Cultivation. Sure, she's a Shard that plans ahead and she's currently doing 'good' things but that Shard left to its own devices could very easily wind up becoming a danger to the current inhabitants of a world if whoever is holding the Shard decides it's time to nurture something else. Say, a promising new species that wipes out a lot of whatever was there before, or microorganisms that do the same thing. I take everything Odium says with a big heaping spoonful of salt but I don't think he's completely lying when he tells Dalinar that Cultivation's idea of what's best for Roshar in the long term might not be in humanity's best interest. We know there are Vessels that are very good at resisting the influence of their Shard, just as there are some (like Ati) who eventually succumb to it completely. I don't think we can say that all of the Vessels will lose themselves to their intent just because some did.

Alas, this immortality comes at a terrible price, for some at least: A total inability to get so much as a buzz out of alcohol. I wonder if there was an unconscious influence from Brandon's LDS beliefs on alcohol regarding how Cosmere healing treats it. Though given that it is technically a poison (albeit one a lot of people enjoy in small quantities) it could be just as simple as that. But yes, I'd agree that in general keeping Breaths for their passive benefits outweighs the short-term advantages of using them to fuel other magic systems. But when you're in an emergency or you have an opponent who thinks you've got no access to magic and you have the opportunity to surprise them, it does make for a very useful ace to have up your sleeve. Brandon's eventually going to canonize the exchange rate between magics and he mentioned just last month that there are people working on it now, so we can look forward to that in the future.

Well... sort of. Brandon's made it clear that atium compounding is not a means to true immortality because eventually you reach a point where you can't tap enough stored youth to counteract your Spiritual aspect trying to force you to the age it 'knows' you are. But yes, Ruin would very likely object to any kind of immortality and probably most forms of life-extension with the exception of those that (temporarily) serve his interests. So yeah, I imagine that after dealing with just the Ire he'd probably consider the Elantrians as a whole to be the next best targets for a taste of inevitable entropy.

Shinovar still gets highstorms (and thus stormlight) even though they're not nearly as violent as in the lands further east. We know they've got plenty of access to stormlight since Szeth trained with the Honorblades long before he was declared Truthless and that requires a good supply of infused gems. Szeth does think that the Alethi custom of using infused gems for mere illumination is profane but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't do that in Shinovar. Until we get a better sense of Shin beliefs we can't really predict what would be considered an acceptable use, but I can imagine a couple ways that they could use stormlight lamps without falling afoul of whatever strictures Szeth had in mind when he made that thought. Plus as mentioned, fires are easier to start on Roshar but they're not massively dangerous and we've seen plenty of examples of fire being used throughout the books. Humans have known how to control fire without burning their homes down around their ears for millenia, there's no reason for it to be any different in Shinovar.

As said, Ati knew there were other worlds out there and he wanted to get to destroy those as well. The fact that Sazed has only the vaguest notions about Adonalsium neatly disprove this.

I'm going to add my vote to Endowment. Even without factoring in Edgli's 'I'll stay off your lawn if you stay off mine' attitude towards the other Shards, you've got a Shard whose focus is all on giving things to other people. I figure that's harder to go wrong with than a lot of options. Also, both Hoid and Brandon would be tempted by this Shard and if the God Beyond Himself thinks that way... Tanavast was also dying at the time so I think we can excuse his going (slightly) mad at the end.