Weltall

We know that storing Identity opens you up to all sorts of things in the Cosmere and it would be easier to affect you with a soulstamp, so I imagine that someone who's currently storing Identity and tries to burn gold would get some very weird results. On the other hand, tapping Identity while burning gold would probably do some cool things. Maybe it would make the process less unpleasant, or the 'extra Identity' might extend how far back into the past you can look with A-Gold or give you more finesse over what you see. They could, but that's with F-Gold and A-Aluminum which is the opposite of the hypothetical twinborn... though I imagine that if medallion tech spreads there would be a huge market for ones granting those powers on Threnody. Actually there would probably be a huge market for F-Gold medallions in general, for obvious reasons.

That is totally not a response to my question. You said that "most splinters assume the form of a sword when pushed into the physical realm enough". That a Seon might theoretically be made into something like a Shardblade does not mean that it would default to this shape or that it's some sort of Cosmerological constant that Splinters pulled into the Physical Realm take sword-form.

Name one naturally-occuring Splinter that's not associated with Roshar that assumes a sword-shaped form in the Physical Realm. Nightblood doesn't count, its Physical form was created specifically for it, in order to mimic a Shardblade. Even the radiantspren default to a sword-shape only because they're patterned after the Honorblades. Nightblood is copying them copying the Honorblades but there's no evidence that this is some sort of fundamental rule of the Cosmere.. I don't think any 'hack' is required, it just needs the Seeker to be exposed to non-local Kinetic Investiture. For example, we know that Vin could theoretically detect a Shardblade in the process of being summoned because at that point the Investiture is in motion. Taldaini sand doesn't require any hacking and will happily detect any Kinetic Investiture in its vicinity, A-Bronze shouldn't be any different; the only thing we know it has trouble with is detecting feruchemy and that's a very subtle system where you're moving your own Investiture around through time, compared to something flashy like AonDor or Surgebinding where there's a transfer of power from the Spiritual (or Cognitive in the case of Sel) to the Physical.

Welcome to the Shard! As everyone else has said, there's no real order to Brandon's books except that when it comes to individual series within the Cosmere you obviously want to read those in-order. Here's something you might find interesting: https://brandonsanderson.com/books/where-do-i-start/

Yes, allomancy can fuel Nightblood just fine as can feruchemy. Kelsier has a physical body again (the eye spike is anchoring him to it) and the situation isn't unlike a Returned who has their Cognitive/Spiritual aspects stapled to their Physical body by the Divine Breath. We know Returned can obtain Breath and Awaken with it and Vasher has figured out how to use Stormlight to fuel the Divine Breath, so it should be possible for Kelsier as he is now to make use of other forms of Investiture assuming he meets the various requirements to do so.

And five is right out!

The only WoB I found that sort of touches on this is the question of what would happen if a Windrunner also had Jezrien's Honorblade. Brandon said there would be a slight compounding effect but that the strength of the spren bond and how much Stormlight you are using is the main factor. That suggests that if you were able to juggle two bonds that happened to share a Surge, you'd get more of a power increase than 'Nahel surgebinding plus Honorblade surgebinding'. One thing that also might happen as a side effect of having two Nahel Bonds is that you'd lose whatever Resonance you had from your first bond as you started developing the second, since we know that too many powers overrides the subtle effect that produces the Resonances. We just don't know how many qualifies as 'too many' so it's possible that adding only one more surge would either leave you with both possible Resonances or you'd get some sort of triple-Surge Resonance instead.

Vessels can't permanently change their Shard but they do have a lot of influence in how their intent is expressed. The names given to the Shards aren't necessarly what they are, so much as they're the words the Vessels have come up with to describe the piece of Adonalsium that they're now bonded to. Sazed's a good example here because he's holding two Shards and his interpretation is why the combined power is 'Harmony' instead of 'Discord'. Brandon's also mentioned that he chose the name Harmony and did it because 'it felt right'. Given that the power of each Shard can be safely described as 'infinite' and the Vessels themselves can only filter the intent, it's safe to say that no amount of people believing that a Shard represents something different will actually change what that Shard fundamentally is.

There's a couple WoBs that all support it. Spren bonds are essential to making the science of Roshar work and predate the Shattering: The singers were created to be a vital part of the Rosharan ecosystem: Spren bonds with singers, greatshells etc. are part of the natural cycle on Roshar: The singers predate the Shattering:

Per Word of Brandon, Odium is killing Shards and not absorbing their power because he's inherently selfish and wants to be the most powerful being in the Cosmere, he's only using the idea that some of the Vessels violated whatever agreement they had as a pretext, given that he went after Ambition first because he saw her as a personal threat. We know that splintering can be reversed.

The amount of Investiture in a Shardblade is way higher than the innate Investiture of a baseline human. Note how a Shardblade resists being cut by another Shardblade but a person... doesn't. For contrast a metalmind (which barring crazy things like the Bands is mid-level Invested per Brandon) can resist a Shardblade to an extent. So Forgery working on humans says nothing about whether it could work on a Shardblade.

FortC is drawing a distinction between magical power and political power. Hoid is very definitely interested in the former but shows absolutely none in the latter. Setting aside the general reasons others have provided why Hoid doesn't ever take political power, there's also massive social hurdles that would prevent him from doing so in Alethi society. He's not descended from the Sunmaker so he can't claim any legitimacy that way and the other way the Alethi decide who's fit to rule is nixed because that would conflict with his 'no causing harm' deal. All very good questions. Needless to say, we have no definite answers. Brandon's danced around this by mentioning that it looks like Hoid is trying to reassemble Adonalsium but that seems far too obvious. Brandon was asked at one point where he fits on a D&D alignment chart and (caveats aside) he put him literally all over the map depending on who in-universe you asked. From that, we know that Hoid's motivations could be considered selfish rather than selfless, or at least some of what's motivating him is selfish. We know he's got a grudge of some kind with both Rayse and Bavadin but while the former has standing 'try to kill on sight, massive collateral damage is totally fine' orders regarding Hoid, the latter is willing to work with Hoid under certain conditions and at least some of her avatars are more favorably disposed towards him. So... whatever this grudge is about, it seems more one-sided on Hoid's part with Bavadin. If you assume that The Traveler is completely canonical then we get the implication that at least part of his motivation has to do with someone (or multiple people) who died and Hoid is trying to bring them back. He thinks that for some reason 'the old rules no longer hold' and brushes off Frost's clam that what he seeks is impossible. He also mentions that he's heard of 'a place' which seems connected to this, but we haven't a clue what that's referring to. He does however deny that his motivations are just about the dead, so he's got multiple things driving him. One possibility that would be very Brandon is that while Hoid is sort of being presented as the Cosmere's hidden protagonist, he could wind up playing more of an antagonist's role in the final stories. We know he's going to be a major character in the final Mistborn trilogy (ie the Big Crossover Climax) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he winds up at cross-purposes to some of the other protagonists of that time period in the pursuit of whatever his ultimate goal is.

Good point... though in that case Vin's homicidal hat trick was directed at people who were all trying to kill Elend so I don't think he was in a position to hold any of those against her. Don't have anything else to add, just wanted to get to say 'homicidal hat trick'. xD

We are all Ookla.

Brandon has said that it's possible for someone whose Cognitive self-image is a gender different from their Spiritual/Physical one to change their Physical gender with magic but one imagines that would require a very strong Cognitive image and a higher-than-normal amount of Investiture to affect the change. He's said elsewhere that the main way you'd do this;in the Cosmere is indeed by using healing magics, though.we know that the Nightwatcher can change your species so it should be well within her power to change gender as well, for another way of reaching that result. That's where the Cognitive comes into play. Kaladin's Spiritual template says 'no scars' while his Cognitive self-image says 'scars' so it essentially overrules that part of his Spiritual image, but it doesn't change it.

He didn't but the WoB is from a signing on the Skyward tour so I'm pretty certain he isn't refering to any of the aliens from that work. xD

Syl's first bond was completely broken because the Radiant she was bonded to died before the Recreance, which is how she survived it. She was left catatonic afterwards because she was very young and unprepared for the trauma of losing her bond partner, but she wasn't harmed in a long-term sense. Mayalaran on the other hand is like all deadeyes a spren who's had a chunk of their soul forcibly ripped away. At one point Brandon used the analogy of someone who had a cybernetic implant in their brain and it was forcibly ripped it right out of their head, that's sort of like what's happened to Maya. So yeah, there's a very definite difference between Syl and Maya here.

We actually know that Kelsier's bones survived the Catacendre so... it's not impossible. But it's also not really necessary so we can't really read anything into that fact. We know for a fact that it's not Spook's body. Yeah, it's an extension of how Cosmere healing works, where your Spiritual template (mediated through the Cognitive) overwrites your Physical one. The same reason why Kaladin's slave brands don't heal would ensure that any body Kelsier acquires would have his scars; they're a part of his identity in the same way.

@Aryanath Very cool, thanks for sharing that!

Sorry, that sort of question is above my pay grade. Better call in the Cosmere's greatest specialist on the subject: Nightblood. Nightblood: Stupid bird, can't even hold me properly, it can't be good or evil... Yes, but that only works if you already have the sDNA to use both allomancy and feruchemy and it makes use of a very specific set of circumstances built into those two magic systems (namely how the power comes directly from Preservation). Lift doesn't have a way to access any other form of Investiture beyond surgebinding so she doesn't have any sDNA to tell her body what to do with 'foreign' Investiture. Eating any Invested food isn't going to work for her because she has no way to get nutrition from it and if it's her own Investiture then it lacks the loophole that compounding uses to break the rules of feruchemy by substituting the rules of allomancy. Again, if she gets anything out of it at all, it would be whatever Investiture she put into her food before eating it. Not a net gain.

Given that she has to use Investiture to do that, even if she somehow could get back that Investiture from eating the food (which I doubt, because of how Brandon's said her metabolism operates) she'd probably only get back what she put into it, like the hypothetical example of an Awakener-allomancer burning a metal they'd stored some Breath in.

Oh, and welcome to the Shard.

Lift isn't doing that either, she's metabolizing the energy content of what she eats into Investiture rather than into sugars. She's not getting any nutritional value out of Breath stuffed into something, or a lump of atium, or any other form of technically edible Investiture you can imagine. Hence she's not getting anything that her supernatural metabolism can work on.

Wrong Burning a metalmind only gives you something extra if you could access the Investiture within it on your own. Humans can't get any powers from the worms the Aviar eat. Lift isn't going to get anything special from eating an Aviar aside from whatever nutritional spike the extra protein from the worm grants. And she'd be a horrible person for doing it.

We actually already have that, technically: