Weltall

Brandon has said that Cultivation and Ruin are actually the most compatable, if the latter were to take up another Shard. They're opposing in the sense that one embodies (net) destruction and the other (net) growth but both of them share the general theme of 'things changing'. Given that both need external things to act upon, I suspect they could have come to some sort of equilibrium where Cultivation grows things according to her Intent for a time, then Ruin destroys but not completely, then Cultivation guides the surviving life into the new Scadrial for time, then Ruin mostly destroys it, rinse and repeat. Both carry out their Intent and as long as the Shards can maintain an agreement on how often the cycle happens, they wouldn't come into conflict in the way that Preservation and Ruin inevitably did. So, not really what would happen with only Preservation, but a more stable equilibrium than pre-Catacendre Scadrial had.

Yeah, a Shardweapon needs to be a single piece so a gun or a bow and arrow aren't possible. Well, Brandon has said that you could have two separate things but this would require splitting the soul of your spren and 'they wouldn't like that at all'.

No. Just 'I want to stab myself' is not enough, you have to specifically intend to create a hemalurgic spike. Nightblood has absolutely no reason to have the kind of knowledge that requires and so could not transfer it to his wielder. Now, if for some reason Nightblood was granted sufficient understanding of hemalurgy then I think the kind of control he exerts could transfer the necessary Intent but again, there's no reason for Nightblood to have that knowledge and the sheath's obssrved properties can be explained entirely as a function of the thing being aluminum. Relatedly Brandon has implied that the sheath was created to contain Nightblood's power before the sword was Awakened. In other words, it's always been like that.

Setting aside that the sheath can block Nightblood or an ordinary Shardblade because it's aluminum*, there's also the impossibility of it being a spike. Creating a hemalurgic spike requires Intent with a capital I, The Intent can be provided by an external source (Ruin was doing this regularly during Hero of Ages) but 'accidental hemalurgy' isn't possible. Nightblood has no reason to know about hemalurgy and is thus incapable of providing the necessary Intent. I suppose if a hemalurgist were ever to go stab-happy with Nightblood it's possible they could create a spike out of the sheath as they'd have the requisite knowledge but at that point they're being controlled by Nightblood so it's hard to imagine them having the necessary mental control to form the Intent or to stab in the right way to actually steal anything. * WoBs for reference: (OB spoilers) In other words, aluminum resists the the Spiritual damage a Shardblade causes and can block the Physical damage if it's thick enough.

Yeah, some of these works started out as digital-only, or with limited physical release. Mistborn Secret History is another example of a book that started out that way before it got published physically as part of the Arcanum Unbounded collection along with about half of the remaining included stories. I think Brandon's mentioned that at some point he plans to do a similar compilation piece for his non-Cosmere short stories.

Well, we know that Inquisitors have a spiritweb that's so frayed they need that central spike to hold everything together, so it's possible there could be any number of complications that could result from that. Openness to Shardic influence could be one such complication, in a similar vein to how mental instability made it easier for Ruin to influence people even without spikes.

Yes, according to Brandon hemalurgic traits are heritable but there can be complications, at least if you have a lot of them.

I'll directly quote the WoB that I only linked to earlier. So no, between the fact that Brandon has no plans for feruchemical Savants and the explicity drawing of a line between Savantism and compounding, I don't think compounding can create Savants. And @Calderis has the Realmatic explanation.

Brandon didn't originally plan on there being feruchemical Savants and so there really isn't such a thing as a 'compounding savant'. Compounding doesn't really trigger the process that pushes someone towards being an allomantic Savant (because the feruchemical effect overrides the allomantic one) so if Brandon doesn't plan on there being feruchemical Savants you can't really become one that way. Brandon even draws a distinction between compounding and Savantism at once point. However, a compounder who burns a lot of their allomantic metal normally certainly could become a Savant. We don't really see anything that would lead us to think Miles is one and he doesn't seem to burn gold often enough to reach that point, but it's not impossible.

You could, but a kandra blessing is already two spikes and as mentioned the net effect of extra spikes for TenSoon wasn't a huge jump. So I'm falling back on Brandon's statement that uplift is hard and so the result of H-Copper would result in a smarter wolf but not a sapient one.

I don't see those as being terribly different things. If you can't Forge something to sapience (and the same WoB puts soulstamps on the 'low' end of Invested-ness along with hemalurgic spikes) I don't think you can spike sapience into something that isn't already sapient. The kandra for example aren't uplifted by their spikes, they're just short-circuiting a Cognitive block that was put in place. We've even seen what happens when TenSoon got extra blessings and the effect was an enhancement but he wasn't suddenly twice as strong because he'd gotten a Blessing of Potency. So even setting aside that a hemalurgic spike doesn't meet Brandon's requirement for a lot of Investiture, I don't think that a spike containing 'intelligence' would be enough to drive a non-sapient animal to sapience because it wouldn't transfer enough intelligence regardless.

You're reading a bit too much into it, though the fundamental idea is sound. Lerasium can have a different effect if you're already an allomancer and burn it (we don't know what that is) but even someone with no sDNA for allomancy can burn lerasium.

All we can say for certain is that they're the only ones who were willing or able to take the steps that led to their being unconnected to Ba Ado Mishram and thus unaffected by her trapping and the backlash that had among the rest of the Parsh. There may have been others who wanted to take that step but weren't able to do so, but we'll never know now. Here's what Eshonai's mother had to say about it. So according to the listener songs, the Parsh weren't given a choice in the matter of fighting (but probably didn't want to) and the group that became the listeners were assigned to figh in a more remote area. They might well have been able to slip away unnoticed or at least, BAM would have had much more pressing things to worry about, while other Parsh groups could not. But since they're the only ones who could have any memory of those times and they're well aware of how much they were forced to forget by going into dullform en masse, we're not likely to learn what the rest of the Parsh thought from their own words. We might get some post-Recreance recordings if there were any Radiants who thought to leave a message after the event but before breaking their oaths (maybe in Akinah, we know at least one Willshaper intended to go there after abandoning Urithiru and we know that there's at least one important thing still there) or a written archive that's actually been preserved. But nothing we know of right now.

The former example is likely how the 'Chimaeras' in Shadows of Self were created, except with nothing on the 'human trait' side balancing things out. For the other way around, you probably wouldn't get a sapient wolf though you'd get one that's more intelligent as long as the spikes are in. Brandon has said that uplift requires a lot of Investiture and there's not a lot of Investiture in hemalurgic spikes.

Not that I'm aware of at least. It would be a lot of effort for something that wouldn't be suitable for inclusion on the Coppermind (unpublished and not canon) and it's all subject to revision depending on what Brandon ultimately does with the rewrite, so there's probably not much motivation to do something like that. And the draft comes in an easily searchable/scrollable format which makes it handy for casual skimming. On the other hand, we Sharders are an obsessive lot so it's always possible someone has written up a private summary for themselves.

Given that we're told that Darkside kind of resembles a perpetual rave with everything fluorescing, the boombox is clearly foreshadowing the eventual unification of Taldain's two primary cultural groups and that the planet will eventually become the party capital of the Cosmere.

Psssst, this topic was dead for three and a half years. We know that atium alloys can't make someone an allomancer because that's Preservation's magic system and thus requires lerasium. You can't burn atium or alloys of it if you're not already an allomancer; the revelation that Seers exist and were a secret of the Lord Ruler is based on this. Unless you already have sDNA for allomancy, the only metals you can burn are lerasium and its alloys. The combination of lerasium and atium would make you a Seer.

Brandon has mentioned that storing Stormlight in metal is difficult so I imagine that it would be equally difficult to store Breaths in metal, regardless of what metal and whether it's already been Invested or not. Like Calderis said, there's not likely to be any benefit to doing this over how you can already store Breath in various inanimate objects. But if you were to combine Breath and feruchemy, you'd be using Nicrosil since it's already made to store 'Investiture'. Brandon was asked at one point if a nicrosil compounder could compound other magic systems. Can you guess Brandon's response?

It's possible to be affected by a Shard's Intent without ever Ascending (for example, the more Breath you have the more you're influenced by the ideal of Endowment) if that's what you're asking, but what you're describing with siphoning power doesn't seem possible. Using Endowment as an example again, Brandon has said that she can't 'run out' of Investiture to bestow upon people. Even the Shards that created an entire planet for themselves didn't lock up that much of their power in the grand scheme of things and the very nature of that creation means that it's difficult for them to 'move' Physically/Cognitively beyond that system and expend a similar armount of Investiture in creation somewhere else. Now, if you Ascend and then de-Ascend, you're a Sliver and there will be some continuing influence that way Rashek remained influenced by Preservation's Intent and if Ati had been able to give up his Shard the influence of Ruin would fade but there would still be permanent effects.

Elantrians can die without the pool, as in the case of Galladon's father. And that pool does have a different use, it's a Perpendicularity just like the Well of Ascension, which means that it's a place where it's very easy to transition between Realms. With the pool near Elantris (strongly assumed to be Devotion's Perpendicularity) what really happens when you enter it is that you pop out in the Cognitive Realm... and then unless you're prepared or extremely lucky you get annihilated by the Dor. Out of universe, the Perpendicularities started because Brandon wanted to get Raoden into an elevated position at the end of the story, to have his eureka moment. He then went back and figured out how to tie that into the Cosmere's wider workings when he got published and needed to begin finalizing all the details.

Vessels aren't bound to their Intents immediately so even if Honor compelled Tanavast in that way, it would have been something he could have resisted until after he and Cultivation were on Roshar and it was too late to make a difference. Also, it's possible that he had some pre-Shattering understanding with Cultivation that would have superceded any other promise made among the Vessels; this is quite likely as we know they were lovers. But yeah, I'm with Calderis in that whatever agreement the Vessels made to stay out of each other's way, it must have been made before they Ascended. There's no way we could get three dishardic planets if they all promised to split up after the Shattering.

Since we're talking Brandon Sanderson and game parallels, I sometimes feel like he's got some sort of freaky Spiritual Realm connection to Toshihiro Kondo (the president of Nihon Falcom) since they're both responsible for a franchise that handles worldbuilding in very similar ways, have a fanbase that loves to do really intricate theorizing and they're both utter trolls when it comes to knowing just what to say to get the fans to drive themselves crazy. xD Not that I'd suggest any actual connection for a couple obvious reasons, but it's fun to look at the parallels sometimes. Just for reference, Brandon has indeed confirmed that he's a huge fan of the series, FFX in particular. Though perhaps less so than Scott Lynch who named his protagonist after FFVI's Locke. xD Anyhow, Brandon has stated that Odium will survive the first half of the series but left open whether Rayse would survive. Which could be nothing more than 'let me say something provocative and watch them theorize the hell out of it', Brandon being Brandon. But if anything did happen to force Odium to change hands to someone far less experienced, I'd honestly be more paranoid about what might happen with Cultivation if she stops having a serious check on her influence. It might not be nearly as apocalyptic as what Rayse clearly intends to do if he wins but things could get really interesting really quickly.

Brandon was asked this once, here's what he said:

'Cosmere Standard' is Yolen, which just happens to also fit Scadrial because Leras and Ati deliberately patterned the world and it's biosphere on what they were familiar with. Hence Khriss' comment that pre-Final Empire/post-Catacendre Scadrial resembles the non-fain parts of Yolen. And Brandon's been very explicit that unless we're told otherwise, we can think of Scadrial as being like Earth. Here's some more examples.

Kelsier had to cheat his way into becoming a Vessel, using the Ire 'Connection orb'. For the same reason that he couldn't Ascend on his own, Vin couldn't simply grab Preservation's power again and Ati couldn't do the same with Ruin's. Speaking hypothetically, Vin could have remained a Cognitive Shadow on account of being a Sliver but Elend was on a time limit. Even if they'd been willing at that moment to stay bound to the Cosmere and Sazed intervened, what we saw with Kelsier was that a Perpendicularity was required to serve as the necessary source of Investiture. At the time of the Catacendre, both existing ones had been disrupted and even if Harmony's Perpendicularity had formed immediately, there wasn't time to get Elend there. And more generally, Brandon has said that all the Vessels have things they might want to forget, if they stopped being a Vessel. Combine that and how quickly both Rashek and Ati passed Beyond (when there was no external pressure to do so) and it's likely that a lot of the Vessels would choose that course even if it wasn't forced upon them.