Weltall

Welcome to the Shard! We don't know if the singers/Parsh* were created by Adonalsium directly or if they simply evolved there naturally over an extremely long timespan, since while we know that Uncle Andy created the entire system we don't know how much he directed anything specific after the astromonical (and potential Realmatic) details were established and how much time passed between the creation of the system and any other event in Cosmere history. But yeah, they're different from all the strains of humanity because they're native to Roshar and share similar traits (the natural affinity for spren bonds, the carapace) while humans are not native to that world. And both species of Aimian are similar, with Brandon remarking that they may be able to pass as human but they're actuallly very different. One imagines that there could be worlds that would be even more 'different' to our eyes since there were three sapient races on Yolen and not all of the Vessels were human. For example, there is at least one world somewhere in the Cosmere where there are no humans and it's not Braize. * At some point, it would be nice to get an absolute term for their species so we know exactly what to best call them.

Patji fhtagn! But more seriously, they're some sort of aquatic predator that can apparently track prey from their Cognitive presence but are not immune to what passes for state of the art weaponry on First of the Sun. So... not entirely unlike Cthulhu who could be defeated by being rammed by a boat, except without the resurrective immortality part of the deal that made his temporarly defeat kind of irrelevant.

Brandon has singled out the Beyond (and the God Beyond) as things that he intends to leave up to the readers to decide for themselves so we're not going to get definite answers on anything that touches directly on them. That said, there's reason to suspect that most of the specific names you've mentioned are not directly associated with those concepts. Domi for instance is largely related to Devotion and Jaddeth more to Dominion, while Austre is up in the air. The first two and the associated vagueness probably has more to do with the power of those Shards being combined and nobody (that we know of) on Sel being aware of the exact nature of the Shards than anything sneaky Brandon is trying to do. Though we'll probably have a better understanding of how those beliefs arose once we get the planned Elantris sequels. What Brandon has said about the Beyond and the God Beyond is sufficiently vague that he hasn't committed any particular interpretation to canonical status and that's likely to never change.

With the exception of a Radiant who can summon their spren 'out of thin air' (or to a lesser extent, anyone with a dead Shardblade or an Honorblade) there isn't a currently known magic system that allows you to take something and hide it in a pocket dimension or whatnot until you need it. BioChroma can sort of do something like this if you Awaken something that can hold an object and be commanded to find you at a later time (Vasher had a contingency plan using this method when he got himself thrown into the dungeons at the start of Warbreaker) and of course, Forgery and Soulcasting allow you to make objects on-demand which can be concealed but that's not quite what you're thinking of. It's possible that AonDor could have similar applications since we know that creating things 'from nothing' was possible if considerably harder than the stories made it sound and they have at least one transportation Aon so clever usage of that could probably get you an equivalent to a Bag of Holding. Actually, it occurs to me that if you had a helper willing to spend a lot of time in the Cognitive Realm shadowing your movements, a Surgebinder with the ability to create mini-Perpendicularities (Elsecallers, Lightweavers and Willshapers) could pop between Realms and deposit things with their assistant or retrieve them quickly as long as they have enough Stormlight.

It's the technical term for magic in the Cosmere and is another state of matter/energy. Stormlight and Breath are other forms of Investiture. Everything in the Cosmere has a little Investiture in it but things like Seons and spren are Investiture that has attained sapience (it's an an emergent property) and people who can use various Cosmere magics tend to be more heavily Invested, depending on various factors. When it's mentioned that feruchemical nicrosil 'stores Investiture' what exactly that does is unclear* and the cast of any given book may not understand the underpinnings of their magic but they'll generally understand the idea of Investiture even if they don't use that term. Look at how Vasher (someone who has a deeper understanding of Investiture than most) describes a Highstorm compared to the native Rosharans for an example of how both describe the same phenomenon but use different language. * We know a little more now about how it stores the ability to use various magic systems, but native Scadrians are still working it out so we're learning it along with them.

If you're a Windrunner or Skybreaker you don't even need a bow as long as you've got a projectile; just Lash it in the direction of your target and it will literally 'fall' straight at them. Works for knives and javelins too. Though actually using the weapons 'properly' conserves Stormlight so it depends on what you're most concerned about. Of course, if you've got Gravitation you can pretty much turn anything into a lethal long-ranged weapon. And yes, they've definitely got crossbows on Roshar. Shallan gets shot with one in Oathbringer and Rysn has to figure out how to cock one without working legs, and they're mentioned on a number of other occasions. I suspect fabrial winders will become a thing eventually. Shardblades are light relative to their size but they've still got some heft to them. Still, when you're a Radiant it's not a big deal either way since you get a strength boost from holding Stormlight (and healing if you damage your muscles) so even if they were as heavy as they look you could swing them effectively. And then you throw in Shardplate once you get to that point and it becomes even less of an issue, since we've seen non-Radiants with Plate casually swinging weapons so heavy that a normal person has trouble just lifting them.

Aaaalmost, Brandon has implied that there are Perpendicularities with equal or greater Investiture. It's probably safe to assume that when 'full' Preservation's Perpendicularity at least had a higher concentration of Investiture than Nightblood, But pretty much everything else would be less. And that practically requires something different to be happening with Nightblood since as everyone has noted, a thousand Breaths alone can't account for what Brandon has said about his relative Investiture level.

An additional factor to remember with Kelsier and Connection is that at the time he became Preservation's Vessel, he was a Cognitive Shadow; That caused extra trouble for him since he wasn't anchored to all three Realms. We know for a fact that Preservation or Harmony could be said to embody the idea of Preservation everywhere in the Cosmere even if the Vessel doesn't have the mental capacity to actually process all of that at once. Consequently, one should be able to forge some degree of Connection to any Shard whose Intent you act sufficiently in accordance with regardless of relative Physical location. For example, anyone on the path to becoming a Windrunner probably has a slight connection to Preservation. However, slight Connection by itself wouldn't necessarily be enough to actually make use of the Investiture of these other Shards. We know for example that allomancers can't naturally burn the godmetals of other Shards, but there might be ways to bridge that gap without the Shard itself needing to intervene. We definitely know that you can force the Connection since that's what the Ire device was meant to do and it would in theory have worked on an Elantrian (ie, someone not nearly as Connected to Preservation and who was already massively Invested) so other methods presumably exist.

Yeah, I didn't mean to discount that so I should have phrased that a bit differently and we have WoB that supports the idea but was mainly seeking to point out that there is no Investiture that's 'purely Adonalsium' and not associated with any of the sixteen Shards.

That doesn't jive with Brandon's confirmation that 'Trellium' is metal from a Shard that we know. For a metal to work with Scadrian magic, the Shard would have to do something deliberate. Which means that you'd need to have Autonomy actively taking part in some things on Scadrial in order for those spikes to actually work, but to somehow not be involved in the specific instance at the end of Bands of Mourning. That's... just a bit strained. As for controlling people being against Autonomy's Intent, bear in mind that we don't actually know what 'Autonomy' represents, something Brandon himself has pointed out. And whatever that Intent represents, it doesn't necessarily rule out doing things that technically go against the Intent in the short term in order to fulfill that Intent in the long term. Consider Ruin as the embodiment of entropy, who was still able to create things for the purpose of later destruction. Some Intents are clearly more flexible than others in that respect and Autonomy is a very flexible concept.

Technically speaking, while the Shards didn't create the spren that were already there, those spren became associated with the Shards so they're now 'of' Honor or (largely) Cultivation. So the pre-Shattering spren aren't really 'Adonalsiumspren' any more. The Stormfather is a great example, he's the embodiment of the highstorms which existed since before the Shattering but he is now very much associated with Honor. You could technically call all spren 'Adonalsiumspren' in the sense that they are sapient Investiture and all Investiture came from Adonalsum, but it's a meaningless label since we know that the most sapient spren (the honorspren, the cryptics, the highspren etc) didn't exist until the Shards came to Roshar, ie after Adonalsium no longer existed as a discrete entity. Same thing with the Seons and Skaze, which didn't exist until after not only the Shattering but until Devotion and Dominion were splintered by Odium. They're Splinters just like the spren of Roshar and because they're Investiture they're a very tiny piece of Adonalsium, but they also didn't exist before the Shattering.

Yeah, keep (re)reading and you'll see what ReLuur was actually referring to. Hint: Not from Roshar.

Welcome to the Shard! We know that Hoid was born well before the Shattering and uses magic that predates it (his Lightweaving and his healing), so he wasn't given life by that event. We don't know exactly how much time passes between his birth and the Shattering but we know that at one point Brandon intended for his origin story to happen about five hundred years before Dragonsteel, the series that will eventually showcase the big event itself. That's subject to change but he's still comfortably older than the Shattering. We also know for a fact that Hoid is the second-oldest person in the Cosmere and only slightly younger than Frost, the oldest. In other words, he's been around since before even the Vessels were born. We do not know what he meant by his claim that he began life as a thought, except that Brandon has confirmed he wasn't breaking the fourth wall and he meant that statement literally. As for exactly what Hoid is, we really don't know. Brandon has been asked if there's anything of Adonalsium in him (in the same way that the Stormfather merged with the Cognitive Shadow) but Brandon of course gave a Read And Find Out response to that one, at the same time that he acknowledged a common fan theory on what Hoid's up to without confirming that it actually is what he's up to. So yeah, it certainly looks like Hoid is trying to reassemble Adonalsium but we don't know if that's actually the case. Even if he is, it won't be the endgame of Stormlight Archive because Brandon has been very clear that he intends the series to be readable standalone and it's not the Big Cosmere Crossover, in spite of it being more crossover-y than other works so far. It's the final Era of Mistborn that's going to be the huge crossover and the last story in the timeline. Hoid is going to be a major character there and in the Dragonsteel books all the way on the other end of the timeline.

Yeah, Brandon's said that Nightblood is chronologically the closest book to The Way of Kings so it will bridge the gap as close as it's gonna be bridged, though the book isn't going to be about Vasher and Nightblood leaving Nalthis. And it's also going to act as a bridge for Brandon to start working Aether of Night material more directly into the Cosmere before its eventual rewrite and publication, which I'm really looking forward to. So many upcoming books and I want them all now! And while I'm at it, I might as well wish for a lerasium bead, a bunch of Breath and a highspren Nahel Bond...

As mentioned, she isn't really trying to trick them, she just needed a name that wasn't 'Shallan Davar' and an obviously fake alias is as good as anything. The Ghostbloods really don't care (and of course they see through it fairly quickly) and our primary point of contact with the group also goes about using something that is not his real name. Mraize is a title (likely Thaylenah) rather than the man's name. Random aside, I cannot read any of Oathbringer and the parts that include 'Radiant' without immediately thinking of Laura Arseid from the Trails of Cold Steel games. She's actually kind of similar to Shallan's persona in mannerisms, she largely defines herself as a swordswoman and her entire body of technique incorporates the word Radiant, which is also part of her father's nickname 'Radiant Blademaster'. And her sword is aaaaalmost big enough to be a typical Shardblade to boot. This has been your geeky digression for the morning. xD

We know the Thaylen language is part of the Vorin language family, which means that it had to have diverged at some point during historical times but it's not a completely separate family, unlike Iriali (its own family) and Shin (part of the 'Dawnate' family). So the linguistic evidence says they're not latecomers to the party. Their religion definitely sounds like it's connected to Odium even if they've forgotten the connection; possibly they started out as a sub-group of the humans who became the broader Vorin peoples and were among the ones who gave Odium more of an ear after he arrived. And then it eventually became irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as humanity wound up becoming primarily 'of Honor' while Odium became associated with the singers. Humans did fight for Team Odium throughout the cycle of Desolations (there were some in the Aharietiam vision, surprising Dalinar) but we know that the people who became the modern Thaylens were firmly on the side of Team Honor before then as one of the Silver Kingdoms was Thalath, encompassing modern Thaylenah. So they might have followed Odium at one point but assuming that's so, they certainly haven't consciously been doing it for a very long itme.

Get cyberpunk copperminds implanted in our heads?

Yeah, just for funsies: Brandon originally wrote a draft of The Way of Kings (the 'Prime' version) which included Vasher going by that name. He wrote Warbreaker in part to give Vasher backstory, before the rewrite that gave us the Way of Kings that we know and love. So he was always intended to be part of Stormlight Archive, though Brandon decided to have him use an alias in the final version. One thing I love about Brandon is how open he is about his writing process (excepting the parts that he keeps back because of spoilers of course) so you can see how he recycles or reworks ideas from unpublished and incomplete works to make what we all get to enjoy. It's a lot of fun looking for and geeking out over these connections. xD

See above, I edited in an explanation for why the scars are ultimately irrelevant that you might not have seen when you were typing that up.

Kelsier's bones + Kelsier's Cognitive Shadow + mystery hemalurgic spike + Mistwraith = The Sovereign??? It's certainly one theory for how he found himself that new string at least. xD The scars don't require that Kelsier's original body be intact (as we know it isn't) because Kelsier's self-perception would make any body he obtained change to match his Spiritual template filtered through his Cognitive self-image, which would include his iconic scars. It's the same reason why Kaladin's slave brands don't heal; he sees them as a part of himself and so whenever he uses Stormlight healing they're treated as such rather than as a wound to be healed (contra Lopen who doesn't have a similar Cognitive 'filter' so he was able to regrow his arm). It's the same ultimate reason that Savantism can't be 'healed' by normal methods, your Spiritual template is the ultimate arbiter of who you are and as far as it's concerned there's nothing wrong with you. Kelsier sees himself as having those scars, therefore any body he obtains will shift to match his Spiritual template and then his Cognitive filter will add those scars.

All Investiture in the Cosmere came from Adonalsium and was 'assigned' to the Shards at the Shattering. Brandon has said that this includes all the spren that were on Roshar at the time, so while you could point to spren that predate the Shards, they're now associated with them rather than being 'of Adonalsium'. As for the idea of an 'Adonalsiumspren' singular, well, wouldn't that just be Adonalsium? xD Brandon's said that the Rosharans would probably even call Adonalsium a spren if they knew of him because that's how they think of sapient Investiture Brandon has repeatedly RAFO'd the question of whether Adonalsium left a Cognitive Shadow behind, which is the closest thing we'd really get to a 'spren of Adonalsium'.

While Brandon has not explicitly ruled out the idea of an 'Anti-Adonalsium' he has made it very clear that he did not intend to suggest one existed when he mentioned that there was a force opposing Adonalsium and that we're getting too hung up on the idea. And we know that all Investiture in the Cosmere comes from Adonalsium. Brandon has left open the question of whether there is something beyond Adonalsium (ie the idea that the God Beyond symbolizes) but that this is also something he does not intend to answer (along with what the Beyond is, ie whether the Cosmere has an afterlife and what form it takes) and instead leave that up to individual readers to decide for themselves. Ergo, it cannot by definition ever be a major plot point because that would require Brandon to give a definitive answer to something he's stated he doesn't plan on answering. Oh, and here's another supporting WoB that a Shard is definitely at work on Scadrial. You may interpret Brandon and Ben's mirth however you like.

Yeah, you can try to map Rithmatist metaphysics to the Cosmere because it was originally conceived as a Cosmere work and so it has some clear parallels but Reckoners doesn't share that and so trying to link the two isn't going to go anywhere. And then you remember that Reckoners metaphysics includes a multiverse with something like half a dozen known alternate universes and the implication of many more and you can see why trying to work this into the context of a Cosmere discussion will go nowhere fast.

Welcome to the wonder that is the Cosmere! It's Brandon's term for the shared universe and you've seen it mentioned at least in Stormlight Archive, though you might not have understood the significance. Now, if you did know about the connection and were thinking more specifically that the worlds have something in common, Brandon has said that there are certain similarities in the way their magics work which make them both relatively easy systems to get power out of for people using non-native magics. There's another very important link between Nalthis and Roshar that you've seen and might have missed and I'm spoiler-tagging in case you want to go hunting for yourself. The similarities between magic systems however is not intentional on the part of anybody in-universe but a quirk of how magic in the Cosmere manifests.

As mentioned, it might be weird with a singer and their Identity bonding with something that used to be human but we know that Splinters other than spren could form something similar to a Nahel Bond (Seons are the most obvious example) so it might be possible. Brandon has of course RAFO'd what a bond with Kelsier would do or if it's even possible. He doesn't necessarily need to possess one, even if that might be the most elegant explanation. The Heralds are Cognitive Shadows and create new bodies when they reincarnate. I imagine it works because Investiture is supposed to be another state of matter/energy and the Spiritual template creates a body from some of the Investiture that the Cognitive Shadow has been saturated with. Now, the spike definitely makes it look like Kelsier found an existing body and literally stapled his 'soul' to it but it doesn't necessarily need to have been that way.