Weltall

The more Shards you take up, the more you have to fight off the influence of multiple Intents. Adding another Intent to Odium might make that particular Shard less likely to do the sorts of things Rayse is doing (bearing in mind that he's still in control and is the impetus behind what 'Odium' does, because he's so well matched to that Intent and is working in harmony with it) but whichever Shard you do it for, it's going to exact a toll on the psyche of the Vessel. And when you already have a Shard that's trying to juggle two opposing Intents, adding a third to the mix is just asking for trouble. And as RShara says, Cultivation is probably an especially bad Shard for anyone already holding Preservation to take, since those two Intents are to a degree opposites as well. If Sazed was just holding Ruin, it would be a lot safer.

I already provided a couple that quite sink this theory. 'Trell' is a Shard or at least the Splinter of a Shard, this much is absolutely certain. The only Shards that Kelsier has Connection to are being held by Sazed and as a Cognitive Shadow it is very difficult (though not impossible) for Kelsier to go anywhere else. And Trell represents a Shard that we know, all of which are currently either being held by someone or are splintered and not in a position to be picked up by our favorite Survivor. And Harmony is the only Shard on Scadrial at the time of Era 2. So yeah, Kelsier =/= Trell I, the Weltall, have spoken. You may applaud as you feel is appropriate.

Oathbringer spoilers:

'Trellium' is a godmetal meaning that 'Trell' is a Shard. Brandon has said Trellium is from a Shard we know. Those are all pretty well accoumted for and Kelsier would have issues Ascending to anythimg but especially to any non-Scadrian Shard. The evidence all points well to 'Trell' being Autonomy or a Splinter thereof.

That last sentence is interesting, it looks like Brandon changed his mind on Taldain's interdicted-ness between then and now, since Brandon's mentioned how the planet is currently inaccessible when talking about how Taldain would have been another good place for Vasher to get easy Investiture, except that he can't go there, and Khriss confirms that the interdiction is ongoing at whatever point in the timeline she wrote the AU essays.

Relatedly, Brandon has mentioned that Bavadin is (possibly) his favorite of the Vessels. This was before we knew anything other than 'exists, set up on Taldain, Hoid has something against them'.

Offhand I don't think he's ever done any events in Hawaii, though he's mentioned how he went there on his honeymoon and used it as an inspiration for some of Warbreaker's setting.

Kalak's recollection in the Prelude suggests that they do heal from whatever they experience and very quickly. So we can hypothesize that whatever they experience during their tortures between Desolations can be healed from (my guess is that as Cognitive Shadows, their CR 'body' probably reforms to match their Spiritual ideal once the active torture stops) but it repeats over and over until they break and from that description we can assume that what happens to them is really nasty.

@Calderis This seems to be borne out by Kaladin's aptitude for the spear. The WoB that talks about Connection was triggered by curiousity about Kaladin's skill and while it's not explicitly referenced there's that one scene of him as a child practicing staff combat with the others despite his lack of any training. He seems to have gotten a bit of wonky Connection-based muscle memory (a Physical thing) from the future in that scene, explaining why it felt so right to him.

I don't think that it's supposed to be symmetrical by itself, it's supposed to be close to symmetry by virtue of being derived from Shalash, who as a Herald is considered holy, so her name is allowed to be that way. In this case, the 'Sh' is a single letter/syllable. In case you're curious, it's got to do with how Japanese works. Much like the examples in Llaramar's posts, Japanese writing (specifically the alphabet used for transliterating foreign names) is phonetic so the way it's written also tells you exactly how to pronounce it. And because Japanese has only so many sounds to work with, transliterating foreign words into the language results in some fiddling around at times to get the closest sounds. The 'S' and 'Th' sounds are frequently assigned the same Japanese syllable (Su) which results in Szeth looking symmetrical in Japanese. Other names that might be symmetrical in English wouldn't work so neatly in Japanese while keeping the pronunciation intact, due to the sounds not working out so neatly. I should probably dig through to find how the translator rendered the Almighty's tenth name (Elithanathile) which is meant to be super-holy and thus perfectly symmetrical, because while the usual way you'd go about rendering that in Japanese produces something with no symmetry it's possible with some fiddling to get something that's truly symmetrical and only stretches the pronunciation a teeny bit.

Welcome to the Shard! Yeah, because 'time' doesn't exist in the Spiritual Realm there are some odd things that can happen with the Nahel Bond when you have souls bonding to one another. Here's a WoB that shows how this also works for things in the future.

Brandon has said that Rashek would have made 'an okay Skybreaker'. Just based on their apparent powers and love for wrecking things, Kelsier might fit in well with the Dustbringers. Elend as a leader who wants to reform things could fit as a Windrunner (protecting/leading) or an Edgedancer ('listening to the ignored'). Wax and Miles would both be obvious Skybreakers, just having sworn different versions of their Third Ideal. And Wayne would have to be a Lightweaver, not only is their powerset well attuned to wnat he already does without his metalborn powers and not only does he fit their 'Creative' divine attribute but he'd be great from a writing perspective when it comes to speaking truths to progress.

Brandon has mentioned that there's some 'translation' between Alethi and the English that most of us are reading his works in, so some names that don't look much like palindromes to us are much closer in-universe. As far as translations go, I can attest that the Japanese rendering of names doesn't try to capture this aspect of it and the language works so differently from either English or Alethi that you couldn't pull it off without the pronunciation being butchered. Amusingly, the most symmetrical name in Japanese that I can recall offhand is one of the least-symmetrical looking ones in English and one that's not from a Vorin culture and that's Szeth, which is perfectly symmetrical.

Brandon has clarified the whole 'force that opposed Adonalsium' thing; it was an open-ended question that left him far too much wiggle room and we read more into his response than we should have. Now, this doesn't preclude the idea that the God Beyond is an entity beyond Adonalsium (Brandon's likened it to Gnostic ideas) but that wouldn't be something opposed to Adonalsium and so wouldn't be a good candidate for the Cosmere's 'bigger fish'. Especially as Brandon has implied the God Beyond is one of those things he intends to leave open for in and out of universe debate. Intresting aside: We have a Word of Isaac that not all the stars seen in the picture are within the Cosmere.

Without dipping into the many previous threads on the topic and just going off the top of my head, I think we can't really judge Vivenna right now. We've had a lot of discussions on Awakeners versus other magic users and while there are some potential combat applicatons that could help her in a fight, we don't know enough about her Heightening level, her fighiting experience (aside from 'it's improved since we last saw her' or what her sword can do, to fairly judge her. But unless it does something spectacular, she's probably not going to be able to overcome the common problem that BioChroma isn't really a combat-oriented magic system while the other two are. Which then gets to the issue that comes up whenever 'Mistborn versus Surgebinder' arises: Does the mistborn get to do their favorite trick of stabbing their opponent in the back before they're ready or do they actually have to fight with some degree of fairness? Brandon's generally come down on the side of mistborn due to them being willing to fight dirty, Even in a more straight-up fight in an arena environment, Vin can use sneakiness, manipulate the environment and create opportunities to get the drop on Kaladin. Put them in an open battlefield though and as you say, Kaladin suddenly looks a lot better due to the environment favoring his experiences and powers while disadvantaging Vin. Then there's the question of what resources the parties get in terms of metal vials or infused spheres, and which metals in Vin's case. For example, does she get any atium? Lots of factors at work here. Oh, and one of Brandon's own explanations for why he favored Vin over Kaladin in one question was that Kaladin's not very good at hurting people who aren't threatening to hurt people he cares about. So, what's the motivation of the parties? Is Vin going to be going all-out? Is Kaladin going to be holding back, whether deliberately or unconsciously?

@The One Who Connects According to Brandon, there are some Spiritual-only entities. What we see in The Rithmatist started out as an example before Brandon removed it from the Cosmere and an Arcanist like Khriss would have recognized them as such.

BioChroma is end-neutral. The Breaths that are consumed (or rather the Investiture they represent) still go back to Endowment just as they would when a person with Breath dies.

Brandon has confirmed this on multiple occasions. In the case of Aons the most obvious example is Ati. It's a coincidence that there happens to be a prominent character sharing a name with the Aon, having to do with the Aon being derived from a real-world person that Brandon wanted to write into a story and that particular combination of syllables was the only one that he could have used. Other examples he's mentioned offhand are Roshar and Nalthis both having a letter/glyhp named 'shash', Baon's name sounding Selish and Kalad sounding similar to Kalak. So yeah, sometimes in the Cosmere, a coincidence really is a coincidence. xD

I'm imagining that one scene in one of the X-Men films where a guard gets injected with extra iron that Magento then weaponizes... Anyhow, yes, if you can successfully use A-Steel/Iron to rip trace metals from someone's body (and bear in mind, you have to be very powerful to do this, even Rashek didn't go that far when attacking Vin) then you could theoretically take that same metal and burn it. Mind you, you'll be looking at all non-allomantically-inert metals which doesn't factor in metal type or purity so you wouldn't want to do this without sifting that metal first for the ones you can actually burn safely. I'm sure someone here could give you a fair guess at how much metal could be found in the average body that's allomantically viable. We do know that Scadrial is the Earth-analogue of the Cosmere so what applies for a real-world human would apply there too.

Related to this, we have WoB that a kandra can gain powers via hemalurgy the same as anyone else and that they can burn lerasium to become allomancers. We saw evidence of this in Shadows of Self, since Paalm was able to gain various allomantic and feruchemical powers via hemalurgy. By extension, a kandra can gain powers through the Southern Scadrian medallions just like a human.

It wasn't the amount stored per volume of gold that surprised him, just how much health there was. Bloodmakers have it very rough because you have to spend a lot of time feeling awful and you can burn through stored health extremely quickly. After his big expenditure of health about halfway through Alloy of Law, Wayne mentions that he's storing as much health as he can while still being able to move around and by the end of the day he'll have enough to maybe heal a scratch. He normally needs to spend weeks in bed to store enough health for useful healing in an emergency. So what that bracelet represented to him was more stored health than he'd ever had access to, free for the taking. Oh, and we have this WoB about metalminds that's relevant to discussiing Era 2. And more generally, this one that talks about how volume of metal relates to how much of a charge it can store

Even non-compounded F-Gold can do it.

Except that Autonomy is literally doing the opposite of what Brandon has told us about this mystery Shard, and Brandon has said that the 'hide and survive' thing is only tangentially related to the Shard's Intent. Our mystery Shard knows what's going on and is smart enough to get out of there Autonomy by contrast is creating Splinters of herself on numerous worlds, including those claimed by other Shards if you assume that 'Trell' is one of her avatars. We know she's directly with at least three (maybe four) worlds and by implication with many more. And she has a very well known 'base of operations' as it were and she is not subtle about it as she's effectively interdicted the system from worldhoppers. That is not hiding. Also, OB spoiler So yeah, not Autonomy.

Brandon was asked this once and his response was, predictably, RAFO. I seem to recall he once stated that there are questions he doesn't intend to ever answer, leaving them for us to discuss (and for characters in-universe to debate) and the God Beyond was one of those things. What Brandon has said about the God Beyond is that it's sort of like Gnostic beliefs and refers to the belief in a god beyond the Shards. Whether this got started as a reference to Adonalsium or to something beyond even that, we don't know and likely never will unless someone in Dragonsteel (thus predating the Shattering) swears by the God Beyond in a way that clearly distinguishes the two. We've also seen Hoid mention or swear by the God Beyond on multiple occasions, Wayne mentions the belief as well and Shai's Unknown God is a reference to the same belief. So it's sort of a Cosmere-wide exclamation.

As you say, seeing the future isn't literally 'of Odium'. The other Shards can do it and anyone in the Cosmere with a way to access the Spiritual Realm can have a form of it as well. However, there does not currently appear to be any combination of Surgebinding powers that works in such a way. We assume that what Renarin is doing is not typical of the Truthwatchers for a couple reasons. First, Ivory explicitly says that Renarin "sees not what is, but what is to come. Odium's power.". Thie clear implication here is that a Truthwatcher is not supposed to see the future, but the present. Also, we have a recording in the Gem Archive that implies the exact same thing. Specifically, they say "Don't tell anyone. I can't say it. I must whisper. I foresaw this.". In other words, they saw the future but they can't allow others to know that they did. We know the speaker was a Truthwatcher because the stones correspond to the Order of the Radiant speaking and the recording was noted to be a 'particularly small emerald'.