Weltall

What he probably did was force the Stormfather to manifest Physically just enough to serve as an Oathgate key and the latter was so surprised that Dalinar was doing it that he wasn't able to stop it from happening. We know that Bondsmiths did not have Shardblades historically so it's unlikely we'll ever see Dalinar with a full blade and we'll probably never see a repeat of that scene either.

Almighty is just another word for 'God'. It doesn't require that the Shard in question be the strongest, only that the people applying the term not know of anything stronger. Given that Vorinism is a revisionist religion that has tried to downplay the equal importance of Cultivation and thus elevated Honor to the position of One True God, there's nothing inherently special about the use of that word and we have no evidence that the Vorin Church is that Realmatically-aware in any event. To the contrary, Oathbringer made it clear that even while Honor was alive the humans closest to him (the Knights Radiant) didn't have the full picture.

If nothing else, we know that we're going to see the original Vessels and the Shattering in Dragonsteel so we'll know who they were as people pre-Ascension and if there are any Shards that haven't been revealed by that point, we should get a pretty good idea what they are from the big event itself. And with that followed by the Big Cosmere Crossover that is MB Era 4, I imagine that we'll get hints of what the remaining Shards have been up to even if we never see their worlds firsthand. There's also the possibility of reveals via Khriss (as we got with Ambition) or in a manner similar to the Stormlight Archive letters formally introducing Frost and giving us a direct line to Endowment and Autonomy.

There's no in-universe explanation for why some metals work in the Metallic Arts and others do not. The out of universe reasoning for the ones that were chosen is that Brandon wanted some powers to be 'hidden' which meant that they had to make use of metals that wouldn't be in common use during the earliest parts of the timeline. He mentioned elsewhere that he considered repurposing silver for what aluminum does but the former was simply too common so it wasn't reasonable for it to be a 'secret' metal in the way that it needed to be. Similarly the Temporal and Enhancement metals revealed in Era 2 are all things that you're not going to discover by accident.

Both parts have it; one of the two available exceprts is a rewritten version of the first chapter and that's where we're introduced to the Hoid who was the 'old master' whose name our Hoid is hiding behind, per Frost's letter in Words of Radiance.

It's not, with special emphasis on extrapolations regarding the Metallic Arts. We've already seen this with the MAG's treatment of F-Nicrosil versus what's been canonized as of The Bands of Mourning, for example. And at a signing I asked Brandon about F-Chromium and didn't even mention the MAG when Brandon, unprompted, said that we shouldn't take what it has to say about that power as canon. Which makes more sense now that we've gotten a bit more information about the underlying mechanic of Fortune.

Ahh, then that one was yours, nice one. Yeah, I saw it while perusing Arcanum and it's the quote I was thinking of.

Assuming it could be done the mechanics would probably be the same as the Honorblades which also aren't 'made' of a spren but must go somewhere when they're dismissed.

In theory, just about anyone who we don't see pass Beyond could remain around through to the end through one method or another, though to keep the list from becoming completely unmanageable we could probably exclude anyone who dies Physically where we don't know of a reasonable method by which they could become a Cognitive Shadow. IE, unless they're from a world where becoming a CS is known to be 'easy' (Threnody or something like Brandon's hypothetical 'Tenacity' Shard) we can probably assume that unless we're shown otherwise, everyone we see die Physically has passed Beyond and is out of the running. That still leaves us with the various methods of Cosmere immortality, which I will now exposit on because I have too much time on my hands. Spoil-tagged for length.

Most of my post wasn't directed at you specifically, just musing on what might distinguish Vivenna's sword from Nightblood. But the part I did direct at you was simply pointing out that we don't know of any Type-IV entities other than Nightblood, so we don't actually know that it's traits are "not present by default in other Type IV Awakened Entities" because there is no 'default' to compare it to, yet. Dunno, maybe I thought you weren't clear on the distinction between stone/metal Type-III entities and our one Type-IV? If so, apologies.

Yeah, all the evidence is that assuming equal quantities of Stormlight being fed to the fragments, the largest wins. This should work in reverse, so as long as one person feeds more stormlight to an equally sized piece, they'll get priority and will eventually regenerate the full suit. Under some kind of crazy laboratory condition where equal quantities of Stormlight are provided to equally sized pieces at an equal rate, my guess is that you'd flip a coin to see which one regenerated. Possible support for this, though it's not certain given that we don't know how Shardplate functions yet: Brandon has said that someone perfectly bisected with access to sufficiently powerful healing would have their soul randomly jump to one half or the other and heal from there.

Brandon has said that a Vessel who gives up the Shard would regain their Physical body (Kelsier excepted because he didn't have one) and the influence of the Shard would fade with time but there would be 'some permanent effects'. Elsewhere he describes the Sliver effect being like a deflated balloon and that it does some weird things to the soul.

This one's kind of weird because it conflicts to a greater or lesser degree with later material where Brandon discusses the interdiction. For reference, the WoB indicating that it's no longer interdicted is from October of 2015. March of 2016, Taldain is 'inaccessible currently' in the context of where Vasher could get Investiture, meaning he's mentally connecting it to Roshar. Arcanum Unbounded (November of 2016) in the essay on the Taldain System it's explicitly stated that the world is currently interdicted. The essay was written some time after MB Era 1 (it describes the reversion of Scadrial's orbit and ecosystem) and before the end of Words of Radiance (else Khriss would surely have mentioned the Everstorm) which doesn't confirm that it's interdicted at the latter point but it definitely was interdicted close to it. January of 2017, 'Taldain is extremely isolationist because of its Shard'. It isn't clear if that means you can't go there currently or if it's now possible but the locals won't want anything to do with you if you try. March of 2017, he discusses the isolation but is vague as to whether it's ongoing or not.

Vivenna's sword is noted to be related to Nightblood but explicitly different from it (where Brandon described the latter's creation as going 'horribly horribly wrong') so yeah, it's either because her sword lacks whatever made Nightblood the way it is if there was some external catalyst or because the Awakening was more refined due to a couple centuries passing between the two Awakenings and whoever did it (Vasher or Yesteel almost certainly) was thus more experienced than Shashara. This may be related to a question Brandon was asked about whether one could create a weapon like Nightblood that wouldn't feed off the weilder's Breath and he said it's possible but that it would be 'a dangerous thing to do'. @Spoolofwhool Technically, Nightblood is the only confirmed Type-IV Entity. There's a difference between a Type-III Entity that's Awakened from inorganic material (requires the Ninth Heightening and a lot of spare Breath) and Nightblood (essentially a Type-III that attained sapience).

Yeah, Brandon's even been asked this and got to use his favorite analogy, about turning lead into gold via a particle accelerator. This would apply to either turning a non-Invested sword into a Shardblade or doing anything to alter an existing one. So for all practical intents and purposes you can't Soulcast Shardblades or alter them with Forgery. They're about the hardest thing to affect with Investiture that we know of other than Nightblood.

Like Calderis mentioned in your other topic, no relation. Vasher's just thinking that if his life sense was a bit better he could distinguish the feel of the lichen on the grass from the feeling he gets from the grass itself, as a way of illustrating to the reader how that aspect of BioChroma works. Though as an aside since you've brought up White Sand and Vasher, Brandon has mentioned that Taldain is one of the easiest planets to get Investiture out of for someone like him, though actually getting to Taldain is a bit tricky right now. Similar aside, on Taldain it's not the lichen that's the source of the Investiture, It's actually the light from the star.

While I really want Nightblood (especially now that Brandon's said he wants to use it to start canonizing more elements of Aether of Night) I have to vote Elantris 2. There's so much potential on Sel and so many unanswered questions that if I got to chose which to see first, it would be that. I can wait a teeny bit longer for Warbreaker's sequel since that doesn't leave as much unresolved and we're getting bits and pieces of information out of Stormlight Archive that also scratches the Nalthian itch, as it were. And yeah, the sooner we get the complete Elantris trilogy the sooner Brandon can start working on MB Era 3 so between just wanting those books for their own sake and whatever Elantris can teach us in advance, I'd like to see Sel's remaining story first.

Nale also confirms the relevant 'problematic' piece, so there's not much reason to assume that there's any deliberate mistranslation at work. Plus, there will be others scholars looking at the thing and it doesn't do Taravangian's plans any good if it can be proved that 'his' scholars deliberately distorted the truth.

Insofar as they revere the Heralds (with Szeth calling Nale the 'Son of God') and are sitting on the Honorblades, they certainly seem that way. We also know from the Aharietiam vision in Oathbringer that the Shin were fighting alongside the Heralds and against the singers and the humans allied with them at that time. But no, we don't know their motivations for a fact.

It's definitely a fuzzy point. Brandon has said that the singers assumed Odium was their god because he came after the humans but they didn't necessarily 'bring' him to Roshar in a literal sense. But he's also said that Odium was instrumental in what happened on Roshar and that once on Roshar the humans gave him more of an ear than the singers did at first. The humans may not have been actively worshipping him on Ashyn or shortly after their arrival on Roshar but he was definitely involved with them on some level before the migration. But I don't think it makes too much difference to my current theory on the ethnic split between the Shin and everyone else whether humans worshipped Odium or not; the relevant factor for me isn't what the Shin believed vis a vis their gods but whether they chose to participate in the outwards expansion or not. They could have started out as a 'neutral' faction who didn't necessarily worship Odium or Honor but just didn't want to break the agreement they had with the singers vis a vis living in 'their' land. Then things spiraled out of control and they wound up on the side of Honor regardless.

I'm thinking that Szeth's chosen crusade has many potential issues, worked right into the way he phrased it. Dalinar has to agree to it, or else Szeth needs to choose a new personal quest; that's also part of his sworn Third Ideal so even if he hadn't said that, he'd have to follow Dalinar's decision on his crusade anyways in order to keep that oath. Then there's the question of what it means to be a false leader and how he would go about 'cleansing' them, with Dalinar's approval of his methods also hanging over his head. I'm certain there's a lot we don't know about the Shin that will complicate matters but I don't think that technicaliies surrounding what is or isn't a Voidbringer is one of them; Nale says that Szeth didn't deserve to be named Truthless and he knows the truth of the situation and has had interactions with the Stone Shamans (at least insofar as he had to go fetch his Honorblade at some point) and is pretty familiar with Szeth's specific situation. Brandon has said that the humans fleeing a cataclysm caused by the Surges came from Ashyn and while there was a separate migration, it was the Iriali. Odium 'followed' the humans from Ashyn. My own guess as to what makes the Shin distinct ethnically is that rather than being a separate group of humans, they're the original Ashynate (Ashynite?) stock and all other humans were modified by Honor and Cultivation at some point. Here's my thinking: We know that the humans who arrived on Roshar were given a region of land terraformed to suit them, which we now call Shinovar. At some point these humans (or at least some of them) expanded out from the land alloted to them and in the process they began to obtain Surgebinding. We get this in both the story of the Girl Who Looked Up and the Listener Songs. At some point in this process the humans and singers essentially switched gods (and that's sure to be a story worth hearing, whenever Brandon sees fit to reveal it) and I think that's where the epicanthic fold suddenly became relevant. We've now seen all three Vessels from Dalinar's perspective and Rayse is the only one that's been noted to 'look Shin'. My thought is that if Tanavast and Cultivation's Vessel do not 'look Shin' then what might have happened is that they modified all the humans who came over to 'their side' to look more like they did, as a sign of their covenant as it were. Hence, the humans who became 'children of Honor' were marked with the epicanthic fold that Tanavast already had. The people who became the Shin weren't initially a part of this and so they didn't get marked, though at some point they wound up largely on the side of 'Team Honor' anyways, but kept their original appearance. We know this kind of mass modification is possible since Rashek did it to the humans of Scadrial with only part of Preservation's power and then Harmony did it en masse in the Catacendre and a minor change to the eyes would be a far simpler change than what happened on Scadrial. As I see it, this depends on three factors: When did the Vessels agree to isolate themselves? Exactly what was the wording of this agreement? Did those two have some promise of their own that was made beforehand? If the agreement was made before they Ascended, it's not binding in the way that the Vessels are bound by their oaths per the Stormfather's comments. Even if it was made afterwards, the exact wording is critical because as Leras demonstrates with how he tricked Ati, loophole abuse is totally okay and what Honor/Cultivation agreed to might not be what everyone else thought they agreed to. The third point is the fallback and I don't think it's necessary but since we know the two were lovers, it's possible they had some agreement between themselves that they felt had priority over anything they promised the other Vessels. My own guess is that the agreement to go their own ways must have been made before the sixteen Ascended since at least four other Vessels have technically broken it and that makes more sense if the agreement was done beforehand and thus not magically binding.

Welcome to the Shard! Snapping and the Shaod are local terms for the broad Cosmere process that Khriss calls Initiation, essentially how one becomes able to use a given magical system. We know the specifics of some systems (for allomancy you need the right sDNA and then some event that causes you to 'snap' and reach out to Preservation's power, for Surgebinding you need to act in a certain way in order to form a bond with a spren etc.) but Khriss admits that even she isn't sure exactly how it works for AonDor. Given that all the systems we know specifics of require the user to act in some way in accordance with the intent of the Shard that powers the magic, it's more or less certain that access to AonDor requires one to express Devotion in some way before the power of the Dor will enter them, possibly with a bit of Dominion as well since the Dor consists of both Shards, though AonDor is noted to be more Devotion-leaning so it's probably where most of the emphasis would go.

Welcome to the Shard! Yes, there's a difference between the two and it has to do with how healing in the Cosmere works. In most cases, what happens with healing is that you're taking someone's Spiritual ideal and using it to overwrite their Physical form, healing any damage to the latter because it isn't part of their ideal image. However, the Cognitive aspect of a person acts as a 'filter' on this healing, so if the person consciously or unconsciously perceives something as being a part of themselves, it won't be healed. Wayne doesn't see himself as being fingerless in the same way that Sazed sees himself as being a eunuch, as he's 'always' been one in his mind. Here's a Word of Brandon where he explains this in the context of Stormlight Archive, but it applies to F-Gold and other forms of healing as well.

@Calderis already covered atium not decaying. Intents are not directed inwardly, so Preservation can take actions that will lead to the death of its current Vessel, Ruin isn't driven to destroy itself, Odium doesn't hate itself and so on. Brandon also left open the possibility that the base metals that are burned eventually get recycled back into the system by some sort of matter to Investiture to matter process. It may look a bit weird at first but it does work out.

We know that a Nalthian week is a bit longer than a normal Earth week (eight days versus seven) and we have Vivenna mentally running the numbers at the end of Warbreaker and noting that Vasher needs fifty Breaths a year to survive, so the end result is that their year shouldn't be drastically different from an Earth year. Given that Nightblood is planned to be the last book in the timeline before SA begins and it's a direct sequel to Warbreaker, the gap between Warbreaker and Way of Kings isn't likely to be a terribly long one. OB Spoiler I also now have a mental image of Vivenna trying to teach Nightblood how to play pogs and it is glorious. xD