Weltall

Adding to this, we learn a bit more about her in Oathbringer and it pretty definitively establishes her as a Rosharan native. She also doesn't exhibit any of the typical worldhopper traits like an appearance that doesn't quite fit in, or unusual expressions or speech patterns.

Given that Nightblood is sapient Investiture, he falls under the same general rule that 'Investiture resists Investiture' so he would be extremely difficult if not impossible to affect with something like Soothing/Rioting and I'm pretty sure he's immunte to hemalurgy on account of being effectively impossible to stick a spike into. Brandon has said that if you could develop a truly thinking machine in the Cosmere, it would develop a soul and could be spiked but Brandon has no idea how the logistics of that would work. I suspect the dificulty of getting a spike in Nightblood alone would rule it out though. As for bonding with humans, that's pretty much what he does with anyone who he feeds on and who survives. Nightblood is clearly capable of learning from these people, but Brandon has said that some things are essentially hardwired into him due to the manner of his creation. Think of it as Read Only Memory which can't be changed or deleted. So, Shashara is alive, Vasher and Denth are still friends, etc. even when Nightblood should know otherwise. IE, Nightblood killed Shashara but that knowledge gets overridden by the ROM that says 'Shashara created you, Shashara is alive' no matter how many times Vasher might tell him otherwise. But like I said, Nightblood does have the capacity to learn, he just has certain blind spots. Oh, and as a random aside since I found this while WoB hunting, Brandon was asked if Nightblood could form a Nahel Bond with a spren. Answer: Pretty farfetched.

There are a couple of potential issues with the Shardarrow idea. - We're not sure how far away a spren can get from their Radiant partner while maintaining their fully Physical form - A Shardarrow will only seriously hurt you if you happen to bisect a limb and only kill you if you bisect the spine. A shardarrow to the eye or heart for example will not kill you. Contrast this to regular arrows where hitting you elsewhere can kill you or at least severely inconvenience you. - Part of what arrows do is they stick in you and either cause secondary wounds as you pull them out (Kaladin mentally remarks on this at one point in WoR) or at the very least hamper your movement. A Shardarrow can't stick in you without depriving the Radiant of their spren, which obiviates most of the supposed benefits of having them in arrow form. - We know from Edgedancer that some Radiants were archers... and they turned their spren into bows, not arrows. The obvious implication is that they found this far more useful than the alternative.

I think that Wayne's biggest problem is that until the end of BoM he's completely convinced that what Wax needs in his life is a second Lessie, which is why he liked the idea of Wax and Marasi becoming an item and didn't like Steris; too different. Now that Wax and Steris are married (and even Wayne can see that they love each other) I suspect he'll start to come around and put a little effort into understanding Steris.

'Pure Investiture' doesn't seem like it would make for an effective weapon, except in such enormous quantities that it causes the body to sublimate (ie, Ascension) and if you had that much Investiture at your fingertips there's way better things you could do with it. We've seen people hanging out in highstorms (loaded with Investiture) and the only danger comes from the storm itself, not the Investiture within it. Okay, there is the Dor which Brandon has described as a sort of plasma storm that will kill you if you're caught up in it, but that's in the Cognitive Realm rather than the Physical and it's an aberation. Rather than a 'Shardgun' per se, I think the most obvious way to use the Surges like a gun would be a fabrial making use of Gravitation. Instant railgun. A Windrunner or Skybreaker could theoretically do this with their spren but they wouldn't need to since they could just accelerate the projectile on their own, kind of like how Wax in Mistborn Era 2 doesn't need his guns and can 'shoot' the bullets directly when circumstances require it, because of how his power works. Well, Brandon did say that Shardblades were in part inspired by RPGs and fantasy art where you have these huge and impractical swords and he wanted to make them practical, so maybe? That would be pretty epic. Actually, I can imagine how a Surgebinder might use their blade as a focus for power so maybe a Dustbringer could pull off a stunt like that. Or Kaladin with a lot of practice, since we know that Adhesion manipulates atmospheric pressure and can be done to create things like a bubble of air. So some sort of pressure wave that functions kind of like a fantasy 'sword beam' might be possible.

If Harmony were to spend enough time on Roshar, he could create Splinters of his own, or possibly give some of the existing spren a 'Harmony charge' (see here for a long WoB where he talks about how Investiture is associated with Shards) if some of them were very closely aligned with Preservation or Ruin. Decayspren for example could conceivably be more Ruin than Honor/Cultivation and over time might become associated with Harmony. However, even if Harmony were able to Invest in Roshar, whatever magic manifested would still be shaped by the Rosharan system and the sDNA of the people on the planet, so it would be very hard to say how it would function, except that it would work in a similar manner to the current magic systems. So you'd probably get something able to form a Nahel Bond and it would probably result in powers that still draw upon Stormlight as fuel but it might interact with the Surges in slightly different ways. Brandon has mentioned that someone with a Seon bond traveling to Roshar would have powers come from the bond, but they wouldn't do the exact same thing as a Nahel Bond, for example. If you created a 'Harmonyspren' on Roshar, it would probably be much closer to existing Rosharan systems, but still not quite the same.

Nightblood feeds on Investiture but isn't strengthened by it. Brandon has RAFO'd whether sapient Investiture (which includes Nightblood) can Ascend but a slighlty newer WoB suggests that 'it doesn't work that way'.

All the examples mentioned so far have clear roots in Rosharan culture. Lopen for example is clearly a native, not only does he have the Herdazian fingernails (which come from his ancestors interbreeding with the Parsh) but, well, he has a mother. Kind of hard to imagine him as a worldhopper. Teft's got a background too, etc. They have a worldhopper observing them (Nazh, pretending to be an ardent in order to get close to them during WoR) but none among their number that we can determine. Just being important doesn't mean worldhoppers have to be directly involved. Case in point, the entire Kholin family.

Here you go. Brandon says: Yes.

I think before the main story, but during Wax's time in the Roughs. He mentions Jak and how he's actually been to the Roughs. Combine with the contemporary stories in the broadsheets (like mention of the Breaknaughf) and his adventures must have happened before Alloy of Law. Though the Nicki Savage story in BoM that he lent his publicity to seems to have taken place around the time of that book, given the presence of Khriss and Nazh in New Seran at that time.

Well, we have multiple WoB that F-Aluminum could in theory be used to cleanse the body of other forms of Investiture (for example it would be better than F-Gold to cure Shade withering on Threnody) so it's not completely useless on its own, it's just extremely situational. A-Duralumin now... pretty sure that one's completely useless unless you have some power it can operate on. But a Duralumin Gnat might become a lot more important once allomancy-granting medallions become more common in northern Scadrial. Who's laughing now when they can do things nobody else can? xD

Brandon has described it as storing calories in a couple of WoBs. Likening Lift's ability to the feruchemical ability to store nutrition (as calories). Agreeing by implication that bendalloy stores calories. Explicitly describing F-Bendalloy as storing calories in the context of a discussion of how feruchemy could work in D&D.

Just to interject since that's 'my' WoB, I really wish I'd had a recording of the exact words he used there. I got the strong impression that it was basically a non-issue but I had to go from the notes I jotted after the fact. If there is a weakening effect even at higher amounts, there's probably a limit to how much weaker a breath can get so you would eventually hit a point of maximum degradation and they wouldn't weaken further. I also wish I'd had a recording from that signing for something Brandon said about instant noodles (nothing lore significant, just a curiosity) but that's neither here nor there. xD This one came up recently and I very much doubt that we can consider it canon. In the wider context of the WoB, he's soliciting ideas from his readers and mentioned that he liked the idea of breath loss in Awakening and would incorporate it, but if you look at the various drafts and final product it's clear that he didn't actually put it in. Since it's a matter of an offhand line and there were plenty of opportunities for him to do so but he never put it in, it's possible he changed his mind. The WoB is more aspirational than definitive, I think.

The problem is that's how Cosmere healing works. It alters your body to match your Spiritual ideal. In Shallan's case as in Kaladin's, there isn't anything wrong with her Spiritual self as far as the magic is concerned. And Shallan already got a similar 'vision' from Hoid (and a motivational speech to go with it) and it clearly didn't help her the way you're imagining it would, because she got even more lost in her personas during the climax of the book.

Totally stealing this from @Leyrann but it's too good not to use.

I get the impression that their name comes more from their unusual 'See what is happening in the world' power, which lets them watch and know the truth, without it being filtered by others' perceptions or biases. And then you get Renarin and the nameless Truthwatcher from the Gem Archive who see the future instead of the present. Only if Shallan sees her personas as something wrong with her that needs healing. Just like Kaladin's slave brands aren't healed when he uses Stormlight (or for an even closer example, his depression) and just like healing wouldn't work on Kaza because the magic wouldn't see anything wrong with her, Shallan's personas are part of her. If she can't 'heal' herself whenever she takes in Stormlight, it's not likely that someone using Progression on her would work any differently. She has to work it out herself.

Lemex was able to reach the Third Heightening (~600 breaths) while not attracting undue attention to himself either by the purchasing or the having, both of which would have been entirely counterproductive in his work as a spy. Ergo, it can't be that exceptional for people to purchase that many. It's also how Vivenna is able to get into the Court of Gods to see the assemblies. She's automatically considered 'important enough' to be let in without a second glance, but it can't be that uncommon or the guards would know everyone with that many breahs on sight and wonder who this new person is. So there's probably a lot more breaths in circulation and we just don't see as much evidence of it.

Oh, interesting WoB I found that's somewhat on topic. Missed it earlier because I was looking for topics on the Returned and this deals with Lifeless. So based on that, assuming you could get a koloss to Return (the easiest way would be to spike a native Nalthian) and assuming the spikes don't interfere with the process, what you would probably get is a Returned that wants to revert to its original human form rather than the koloss one it had prior to death. We see recently killed koloss in the Cognitive Realm in Secret History and we know their self-image is still human (see also: Human the Koloss) so that makes sense.

I'm reminded of that one episode of Star Trek TNG where Data confirmed that he was 'fully functional'. The episode ended with Yar going 'we're gonna forget that happened, okay?'. Anyhow, a few WoBs on Arsteel/Clod that are interesting.

We have no idea with feruchemical applications since we know a grand total of zero of them so far and don't even know what pure lerasium does. However, we have a Word of Peter that atium alloys don't necessarily follow a pattern and an older WoB that atium alloys all have temporal effects in allomancy. We do know for a fact that the allomantic effects of all lerasium alloys are the exact same thing as pure lerasium, except that instead of making you a mistborn they make you an extremely powerful misting. The mention of godmetal alloys in the recent Ars Arcana suggests we'll be seeing at least a few alloys in time.

Huh, I hadn't caught on that the symbol he used was the one for Gold but that's a neat bit of trivia. We know Sazed tried experimenting with malatium but in Brandon's words 'he didn't get far'. Another possibility (which could still fit your theory) is that since A-Malatium externalizes the effect of A-Gold, perhaps F-Malatium doesn't so much invert F-Gold but externalizes it as well. Thus, it stores someone else's health (perhaps based on contact, a la A-Duralumin/Chromium) and this stored health can then be used to heal other people. Would be a way to have externalized healing that's not dependant on an unsealed F-Gold medallion and if the storing of health works like F-Gold does, using it on someone could indeed be torture if you crank it up enough. Either way, great food for thought on F-Malatium and props again for making that connection with Ape's symbol,

Resonances don't necessarily have anything to do with the powers themselves (ie Windrunners get more/stronger squires, which has nothing at all to do with their powers) but in this case, I suspect a Gasper/Thug combo would do the sort of thing you're thinking naturally, without needing any Resonance effects. The F-Cadmium lets you go without breathing and you can hyper-oxygenate your blood (which is a method used to cheat at athletics in real life) which would synergize well with the A-Pewter.

Oh, were you thinking that Steris might wind up having some allomantic power that she doesn't know about, which would come out in the last book? Sorry, couldn't tell that from your post. I mean it's possible but it sounds like the new snapping threshold is extremely low so it doesn't seem too likely that she'd fail to snap or that she'd snap and fail to realize it. Wayne mentions that he knew he was metalborn even though bendalloy isn't exactly easy to come by and isn't something you'd ever be exposed to by accident. We still might get more info on snapping mechanics in the next book, even if it just comes out as a bit of incidental dialogue. Kind of like how we know there are laws of some sort governing allomancy and especially Rioting/Soothing, because of offhand mentions.

Probably not, he's been willing to mention some of his plans for the book (including that he intends to use it to start introducing more material from Aether of Night into the canon) and that why Vasher and Nightblood are on Roshar is not a focus of the story, so it's probably not going to spoil a lot. Brandon has said that the main reason Nightblood keeps being pushed back is that it's a side project for him and he's gotten into various commitments where he's either explicitly promised to publishers or implicitly promised to readers that he's going to see some series through (Reckoners for the former type, Mistborn Era 2 for the latter) and he's had trouble finding time to slot the book in.

It's in Chapter 16, with the non-dialogue bits trimmed: Like I said, I suspect that Odium agreed at the time he did because he was utterly convinced (not without some reason) that Dalinar would become his champion.