Weltall

We're well beyond min-maxing here and into outright godmode hax. I also think Frankenstein's Monster would take a look at the resulting twisted abomination and feel sorry for it... and Harmony could turn you into a fingerpuppet at any time with that many spikes. if you want all the Metallic Arts powers you'd either run out of room for more spikes (that's thirty-four separate spikes if you want atium as well as the sixteen base metals) or you'd need the Bands of Mourning or an equivalent copy. Uhhh, with all the powers you're hypothetically amassing you wouldn't need to worry too much, since the Divine Breath doesn't care what you feed it so long as it gets an amount of Investiture equivalent to a Breath every Nalthian week. You could probably feed it Investiture from compounded feruchemical storage and you could definitely feed it Stormlight. I suspect that a hemalurgic Divine Breath would still need to be fed or it would dissipate, but since it's not actually anchoring your mind/soul to your body like it is for a Returned, it wouldn't kill you if this happened. Galladon shows that Elantrians can travel freely, they just lose the visible signs of it and the ability to use AonDor. For my part, despite the amazing potential of AonDor if you can make it work at a distance, I'd avoid this one for two reasons. First, you'd be in a lot of trouble if there was ever a second Reod. Second and more likely, Brandon has said that it's very exhausting to be an Elantrian. I figure it's not worth it, if I decided i want immortality for any reason I'd go for a natural accumulation of Breaths until I hit the Fifth Heightening. So far as we know it's the most consequence-free method (unless you count being unable to get drunk as a negative), it comes with nice benefits in terms of color and tonal appreciation and you can Awaken with it as well. While Brandon has indicated that it's possible to steal a Nahel Bond without killing the spren, he's also said that 'it wouldn't end well' and even trying to do it would be a very dangerous thing. Go to Roshar with spikes and Odium or one of the Unmade might just come knocking on your door. Also, that spiritweb damage is going to drive most spren away and the more you do, the more likely the spren is going to decide it wants out. All that aside, if I were going to go wild with hemalurgy and didn't let the ethics of it get in the way, I'd go for a smaller slate of metalborn powers. A/F-Steel for both powers being awesome and the ability to compound the latter, plus F-Zinc and F-Copper. Four spikes. Then two spikes (one for regional Connection and one for the power) to gain Forgery and I'd leave the option open for another spike or two in order to make that power work away from MaiPon, assuming that there's some combination of stealable traits that can appropriately hack the system to get around Sel's region-locking. Call it seven or eight spikes total. A that point I'm definitely starting to resemble a pincushion but I've got a nice selection of powers with a lot of flexibility. Rule number one from that point on: Chat with Harmony often and make sure to not get on his bad side. That many spikes, definitely open to direct control.

Welcome to the Shard! Metal on Scadrial is not itself Invested (except for atium, lerasium and harmonium) but instead acts as a sort of conduit to the power of Preservation in the Spiritual Realm. As far as the Metallic Arts are concerned, metal from anywhere in the Cosmere will work as long as it's the right purity or for alloys, composted of the right ratio. Now, a feruchemical metalmind can block a Shardblade because in that case, the metal has been Invested by the user. Separately Brandon mentioned tha a hemalurgic spike would also resist being cut.

Brandon has said that there is a quantum of Investiture but it behaves 'weirdly'. In other words, it's something that can't be broken down any further and thus doesn't result in, say, one Investiture Particle plus one Ambition Particle = one unit of 'Ambition's Investiture'. He's also described the different Shards' 'assigned' Investiture being the equivalent of a magnetic state or particle spin, rather than each Shard getting a different quantum of Investiture. So my guess is that while neat, the particle idea doesn't hold up. Sel already throws a wrench into things because it's only got one magic system even though it's got two Shards, three Realms and a whole host of regional variations that build on the same 'programming' concept. Nalthis also has only one system of magic (and no weirdness in any Realm, like Sel has) though it's got some slightly regionalized spins on it, for reasons Brandon hasn't revealed but which aren't as dramatic as what Sel has. If your idea was correct we should see three relatively distinct magic systems minimum on any given world but we don't.

Amusingly, this may actually be part of why Hoid still has some sort of feud with Bavadin. We know that Hoid likes instant noodles but we also know that they aren't Yolish and Hoid's using his 'Hoidsense' to know where he can eventually get them; I got that out of him at a signing. xD The root cause of his feud with Bavadin can't be that, as he wouldn't have had any instant noodles for her to steal before the Shattering. However apparently he has had them since then... on Taldain. So he already had some reason to dislike Bavadin but now he may really dislike her because in interdicting Taldain she cut off his supply of instant noodles until some other planet manages to invent them.

In addition to it being the only way to Realmatically explain teleportation powers, we have a WoB (which includes Oathbringer spoilers) that it's indeed possible to use the Spiritual Realm for travel between points in Physical space.

Any kinetic Investiture will turn the sand white so it doesn't seem like it could detect anything that subtle. The presence of and general direction of the Investiture seems to be its limit, which is still pretty useful. A-Bronze can of course tell the difference and Brandon has RAFO'd whether a listener/singer could 'hear' the pulses the way they hear the Rhythms on Roshar so it's a potential avenue he hasn't denied at least. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an Aviar that could do something similar.

Relevant WoB: The most anyone has gotten out of Brandon on Vax is 'it's strongly implied to be a place', along with 'I could tell you more but I'm not going to' (you can imagine the cheeky expression he must have had). It's almost certainly a planet based on the context in which Khriss mentions it but Brandon won't even give us that much... xD I'd like to know more about both too but I think Vax is far more likely to be seen at some point given how it's come up multiple times while Obrodai could just be an incidental mention.

@Quantus We actually have one other potential data point: Frost claims that Rayse is 'what we made him to be' and that it's also what Rayse wanted to become. Which strongly suggests that the Vessels either knew in advance what the intents of the Shards were likely to be or they had an opportunity after the Shattering but before Ascending to work out what they were and who would pick up which one. But there was definitely some degree ofjustified anticipation if Rayse could have wanted to become Odium or something resembling it beforehand, and the others present could push him towards it.

I agree that it would be harder to detect but not impossible, Wax thinks of it as being 'very hard' but not 'impossible' certainly. And if you're putting on some sort of serious competition and don't want any question about the integrity of the results, hiring some people very experienced with A-Steel/Iron and enough metal that they can afford to flare it might be worth the expense. We know for example that Smokers in politics use the fact that they can't be manipulated with emotional allomancy as a selling point in elections, so I imagine there's incentive for a competition or exam or whatnot to be able to say 'We ensure that all entrants are on a level playing field and nobody is using feruchemy to gain an advantage' to enhance their prestige.

Here's the most on-point WoB I could find. There is a relationship between volume and the amount of charge that can be stored but it's not a direct scaling.

@Ark1002@MountainKing My guess is that there's more to the application of F-Chromium than 'just' being able to better predict your near future, though Brandon's keeping mum on specifics. I've tried getting a hint out of Brandon before as I'm really interested in how it's going to work and gotten RAFO'd. That said, the Ars Arcanum (which means the best of Khriss' knowledge as of whenever she wrote it) does say that Spinners are able to make themselves luckier when tapping (and unluckier while storing) so there's probably some indirect effects beyond just being better at guessing what's going to happen in your near future. Though even if that is all there is to it, you could probably find some way to gamble with it and beat the odds. But we'll just have to wait and see. On the broader issue of illegal feruchemy, we know that the police search people for metalminds so I imagine that any competitive event, examinations or what have you would use similar searches. We know that A-Steel/Iron users flaring their metal can 'see' hemalurgic spikes and metalminds, so even swallowing one shouldn't hide it. See an athlete with a lump of metal in their stomach? Assume it's a metalmind and disqualify them. The one example we have where someone didn't find a metalmind was Miles and it's possible they didn't bother doing an internal search because they were going to keep shooting until he was dead anyways, so it might not have been worth the effort. But we did see Wax able to recognize Kelesina's bracelet as a metalmind (due to its 'steel line' being far fainter than it should) even though it was stupendously Invested so anything short of the Bands of Mourning should be detectable as well by a Coinshot or Lurcher actively looking for them.

The sDNA to burn a metal has to come from somewhere and we know that even a mistborn (with their 'burn anything' sDNA) wouldn't get anything out of a foreign godmetal without either that Shard doing something or without themselves creating some sort of Connection to that Shard. Trell would have to actively tamper with the spiritwebs of Scadrians for there to be trellium mistings/ferrings and I suspect Sazed would notice that sort of thing going on. Also, it's probably not something a foreign Shard could just march in and do, since Scadrians are all literally made of Preservation and Ruin which granted them (and Harmony) a much greater degree of influence over them than another Shard would have. If Odium can't directly influence the sapient races of Roshar in the same way Ruin could touch the minds of Scadrians for example, it's hard to imagine that Trell could manage a much more intrusive degree of spiritweb alteration.

An atium/lerasium alloy would make you a Seer. And yep, harmonium 'should' be called sazedium to fit with the pattern of other godmetals but we know that Sazed didn't like how it sounded. xD

There's one about aluminum where Brandon has said that you can't Soulcast it into other things but you can al least Soulcast other things into aluminum. Maybe that's the one you're thinking of? I suspect that Autonomy's avatars would all produce 'Bavadinium' since they all come from the same individual ultimately, but we do have WoB that a different Vessel for a Shard could produce godmetals with differing properties so it's possible that over time you'd get subtly different metals. Kinda depends on how the avatars work, I imagine. But I think that even if it was the case that Autonomy's avatars could produce slightly different metals (maybe we could think of them as isotopes?) you couldn't soulcast them into each other for the same reason you can't make more atium or lerasium that way: It's not the flavor of Investiture that's problamatic, it's simply that they're Invested period and that interferes with any attempts to affect them with Investiture.

The magic systems are the result of an interaction between a Shard and the world they Invest on, so if Devotion/Dominion and Honor/Cultivation had swapped planets, we wouldn't see Rosharans using AonDor and Elantrians using Surgebinding but we'd see something different. Numeric associations go with the planets and the Focus of a given system also appears tied to the world rather than the Shard, so Honor/Cultivation on Sel would probably have resulted in some variety of form-based 'programming' magic while D&D on Roshar would have involved bonds. I base the latter in large part on how we know that spren bonds were a part of Roshar's ecology even before the Shattering, so I'm convinced the Focus on Roshar is bonds. Anyhow, there is a link between the form that magic will take when it manifests on a planet but in general the magic is not going to be limited to use only on that planet. Worldhopping isn't really a magic system unto itself, it's just using the Cognitive Realm to shorten the travel time between worlds by making use of the way empty space is compressed there. You don't need to be Invested even to travel to the CR, though access to some is rather necessary to actually get around safely once you hit things like the bead seas on Roshar or the mists on Scadrial. But we've seen worldhoppers who aren't Invested (Baon for example) so it's not required as long as you have some assistance. Perpendicularities are the most convenient way of transiting between the Physical and the Cognitive, so once you get to the other side you just walk (or sail or whatever) to the Cognitive region that you want to be in and then transit back via the nearest Perpendicularity. Or if you've got other methods of bridging the gap between Realms (Elsecallers, the Oathgates in theory) you can use those instead.

Brandon has said that it's possible to get more out of A-Electrum than we've seen and it could be pretty useful with practive, but Vin and Elend didn't have a need to experiment with it or really any good opportunities to do so given that they had atium and the end of the world breathing down their necks, respectively.

Yeah, I too interpret that WoB about Tenacity as a purely hypothetical case of 'what would happen with this specific Intent in this specific situation?' and not really applicable to any known situation. Threnody has so many Shades because of (some of) Ambition's uncontrolled power permeating the planet, but with Honor he had the spren already in place to act as a safety valve on his Investiture, so the magic doesn't seem to have changed in a huge way. Radiants would not be Invested enough to persist as indefinite Cognitive Shadows. A lerasium Mistborn could only hang around for a few minutes and that's someone who had a very strong Connection to their resident Shard. A Radiant isn't going to be significantly more or less Invested than that, setting aside that upon death they're also no longer Invested (we know that normally the spren is traumatized by the death of their Radiant partner but will survive just fine and they're the source of the Investiture) and so would pass Beyond pretty quickly. A Shard can provide the Investiture to allow someone to persist as a Cognitive Shadow but even people who can persist indefinitely still have a choice and can always decide to pass Beyond. We see this happen repeatedly in Secret History, with Slivers choosing not to hang around for one reason or another.

She doesn't notice anything supernatural about his eyes, just that they're colorful even without Skycolors. Though with one parent from Darkside, it's possible he's got some sDNA for whatever makes Skycolors work... but Khriss wouldn't be able to tell that on Dayside for the same reason her own isn't visible. On the name, my guess is that the Darksiders observed that their fluorescence happens when they're exposed to the light of their 'dark sun' (because the effect is caused by the ultraviolet radiation) and so they developed the association between the colors and the sky. It sounds like using Skycolors for dramatic effect is common among the nobility a least (Khriss mentions them in connection with balls) which suggests that their architecture favors designs that let in the light from the outside; a completely enclosed structure wouldn't let in the light needed for the Skycolors. So again, probably an association between being outdoors or at least being exposed to light from the sky and the fluorescent effect.

There's also this WoB Since harmonium has the 'super-volatile substance' angle covered we can safely assume that an atium/lerasium alloy would follow the second theory and make you a Seer.

Wax wasn't healed by Harmony though; he healed himself with the Bands. The situation is analogous to the end of Words of Radiance with a character restored to life very shortly after what would normally have been a fatal incident and but before they were 'dead dead' and would have needed some special conditions to keep from passing Beyond. Harmony may have cheated a bit with keeping Wax's connection to the Physical Realm from snapping but the actual healing was the standard Cosmere model and not the same situation as the Returned or Kelsier.

Adding to what @Calderis said, we have a WoB that directly states this wouldn't work.

One of the reasons the gems (specifically emeralds) are so profiable is because they can be used to Soulcast food.

Welcome to the Shard! And yeah, Warbreaker is a good starting point if you want a shorter standalone read, the original Mistborn trilogy if you want to jump right into the deep end. Or if you want a good primer on how the three Realms work and a shorter and more 'personal' story you can also try The Emperor's Soul.

Well, it might be more involved than just snapping a finger. Endowment needs to provide the Returned a Splinter in order to stick their Cognitive/Spiritual selves back in their Physical bodies. It might be this has more to do with the Returned being vessels to carry out her Intent (ie, by doing it that way she makes it possible for them to Endow someone with that Divine Breath later) than a limitation of Cosmere mechanics, but we don't know.

Divide the bead, burn part of it and save the other half until I know what its effect is when you burn it as a mistborn. So, be a mistborn and buy a F-Chromium medallion. Compounded Fortune? I'm pretty sure that however that ultimately works, you could find a way to gamble with it and make money while still keeping the other half of a lerasium bead. Not on Earth definitely, but if you were on Scadrial we have the possibility that you could distil godmetals out of the mists.