Weltall

As said, is this intended to be a serious theory? Your all-caps and multiple exclamation marks lead me to suspect it's not. In which case, this is the subforum you want to be posting in. If this is serious, keep reading. Hoid is from Yolen, which is part of the Cosmere. We're told that some of the stars that form the constellations in the artwork in Arcanum Unbounded aren't part of the cluster/dwarf galaxy we call the Cosmere but Yolen most certainly is. Not following how Hoid can not be Adonalsium but Splinters of the Shards somehow are? Like RShara said, the Shard on Roshar is named Odium. And he was the latecomer to the system. And has zero interest in reassembling Adonalsium, he wants to splinter the remaining fifteen Shards so he can become the most powerful entity by defautl. The Seventeenth Shard is explicitly into non-interference, kinda sorta like Starfleet if they had Investiture instead of starships. Their interest in Hoid is because they're worried his goals and theirs may conflict, but he's not their primary focus. And literally none of the members of the organization that we know of so far are Nalthian. Demoux and Aslydin are Scadrian, Baon is Taldaini and Galladon is Selish. There are Nalthian worldhoppers but they have nothing to do with the Seventeenth Shard and Vasher isn't exactly popular with them. See the first WoB I linked. From his Odinsleep? ... #SorryNotSorry Um, okay?

Specifically, a Returned is a particular type of Cognitive Shadow whose soul has been stapled back into their original body via a Splinter of Endowment (the Divine Breath) and Brandon has said that for most intents and purposes only a Nalthian can become one. This probably has to do with Connection to Endowment, which a non-native won't normally have. What happened to Wax is that he spoke to Harmony before his soul passed Beyond and while it was still possible to restore the connection between his Physical body and his Cognitive/Spiritual 'self'. Notice that Harmony doesn't do anything to heal Wax, he just talks with him until Marasi arrives with the Bands which give Wax the means to tap F-Gold and heal himself. And Wax probably doesn't count as a Cognitive Shadow himself since we've seen exactly this sort of thing with Szeth, who Brandon has described as not being a Cognitive Shadow.

We know that Preservation had a master plan (spanning thousands of years, against an opponent who could also see the future) that was cunning enough that he was able to pull it off even when he was dying and couldn't even remember what his plan was, so having a role for Kelsier beyond 'Vin's teacher' and 'convenient temporary Vessel' is certainly possible. And Brandon has been planning Kelsier's return since his 'death' so there's obviously an important role for him in the future, whether it's by Preservation's design or not. Brandon mentioned in the annotations that it's odd that Kelsier didn't snap earlier and talks about how it's believed that power correlates to how much trauma is necessary. Considering that Vin is a a more powerful mistborn than Kelsier (at least in terms of raw power) and she snapped as she was being born, this explanation smells fishy. A suspicious type (or someone who knows Brandon's love for sneaky answers) might suspect that he does have a reason and he didn't want to share it with us. xD

Sorry, should have been more clear there. She's not in Warbreaker and we only know she's meant to be a worldhopper from Nalthis via Word of Brandon. Well, her name standing out and having Hoid pay a visit to her wedding might have been a hint, but an extremely subtle one.

Three problems. First, you probably can't split the gem that many ways; all the known applications involve a single gem split in half and trying to split beyond that might just break the connection. Second, the archer has to simultaneously lift the weight of every arrow, not just the one in their hands, so even if you could split a ruby more than once, there would be a practical limit to how many you could actually fire at once. Third, someone would have to line them all up just so beforehand, since with a spanreed you still have to pre-position the pen in the right spot. If someone doesn't put every single arrow in the same position relative to the archer, you're going to have paired arrows doing some very weird things as they're fired at the wrong angles, or have force applied to them in unintended ways. Not a bad idea for out of the box thinking but I'm not sure it's all that practical.

No worries, I remembered hearing about it but it took me a while to find the WoB that revealed it, because it doesn't have the Era 3 tag.

Yeah, he first revealed that tidbit a while ago.

Brandon hasn't told us what lerasium's feruchemical or hemalurgic properties are yet. He did mention that using it for hemalurgy would be wasteful, akin to using a nuclear bomb as a paperweight.

He's Hoid, making enigmatic statements that may contain the secret of Life, the Cosmere and Everything (or may just be intended to drive us bonkers) is what he does. Feel free to substitute 'Brandon' for 'Hoid' as appropriate.

Ahhh, ultimately the only correct answer has to be 'both, of course!' but as a personal opinion, I enjoyed Warbreaker more so that would be where I'd spend your credit if I were in your shoes. Also, depending on what else you've read, Warbreaker is more immediately relevant to the big picture of the Cosmere, though Elantris is apparently going to have some important implications in its planned sequels; You can't go wrong either way though, so I don't think you'll be suffering buyer's remorse whichever you pick. xD

Of the ones we know, Ashtermarn feels the most likely and there's some interesting resonance with the voice Shallan hears (which appears to be this Unmade) addressing her by name, which is interesting since Ashtermarn is said to be one of the 'mindless' ones. This could be a hint that he's been observing Shallan for longer than just her trip to Kholinar. Or that some other force was providing that voice, but that's a whole other kettle of cremling claws. xD

We have WoB that a Vessel can express the Intent of their Shard differently but the core of that Intent can't be changed and that the Vessel is essentially filtering something of Adonalsium. Thus, if Dalinar were to reassemble Honor the result might be expressed differently but it would still have to resemble the fundamentally same concept. And according to a recent WoB, the Shards know what they are, though some (like Odium) are resisting it for whatever reason. So whether 'Honor' as expressed in the making and keeping of oaths could become 'Unity' as seems to be represented by the Bondsmiths and their Ideals would depend on just how big of a change that is to the fundamental concept that the Shard represents. I think that to get a major change you'd need to combine Shards, like happened with Preservation and Ruin. We know that combined Shard could be expressed in different ways if someone other than Sazed were to hold it or if Sazed wasn't able to balance the conflicting Intents. Well, he strictly said there was another name Sazed could go by, but I think there's enough of a difference between Harmony and Discord that we can call those two different Intents. But there is that whole refrain of 'Unite them' and we don't know just what Tanavast meant so... it's definitely worth considering. And both could be true, if Tanavast was thinking in the really long term and not just setting up Roshar to survive the next Desolation.

The thing is, four is only the currently known number of hemalurgic constructs. That number is clearly not absolute and is subject to change pending additional experimentation. Sixteen on the other hand is a number solidly associated with Ruin because it's the number of viable base metals, which is the same with Preservation. Because sixteen is associated with Scadrial and thus, both Shards on it.

I assume this was responding to my post? I'll repeat what I said before, we saw in Words of Radiance that it is possible for someone who has been killed by a Shardblade to be revived for some time after the fact, as Nale had to wait at least as long as it took Szeth to fall from the sky, assuming that Szeth's Mostly Dead body happened to fall right at his feet. Brandon still considers that possibility canon and mentioned that he was sad to lose that sequence but it worked better for Kaladin's character to be what the rewrite did. And Wyndle says that a Shardblade wound is healable after the fact, Lift simply couldn't do it at that time. Now yes, I agree that the Shardblades do cut the soul directly but the point I was trying to make in my response is that it's not instantly fatal and thus, a Shardblade isn't a guaranteed OHKO.

Ixthos, when you're responding to a lot of different points at once, do you think you could quote exactly what you're responding to? I know working with the board software is a bit annoying when it comes to quote tags but it's kind of distracting when there's half a dozen separate things you're responding to and you have to go back to the original post to see all of them and figure out what response goes where. Just a thought to make your responses a bit easier to parse. Oh, and thank you. Any day that I can discuss Brandon's works is a good day in my book. xD There are many many differences between a fish and a crab so I'm not sure that analogy works as well as you're thinking. Yes, both taste good (whatever Brandon may think about seafood, a viewpoint with which I'd passionately disagree xD) but the most immediately obvious physical difference between the two is that one has an intenal skeletal structure and the other an exoskeleton. That's not different behavior, that's radically different biology and they would only be considered subsets of the same category if you go to the broadest possible biological classification (ie, Kingdom Animalia). Anyhow, the spiritweb of something that began as human and then became a Cognitive Shadow is going to look very different from something that started out as pure Investiture because it started out as human. There's also degrees of difference in how connected they are to the Physical Realm and how they perceive the world. Consider how often Syl or Pattern find something strange about their respective bond partners or the world around them. You could 'test' one pretty easily by talking to it and figure out where it originated. Brandon has some interesting comments on this when discussing how Rithmatist started out as a Cosmere project and the various supernatural entities there were originally going to be from the Spiritual Realm. And how if you were an Arcanist, this is the kind of thing you'd immediately be able to recognize. Well, yeah, that's what the bind points are all about. What they're doing is grafting the stolen bit of spiritweb onto the recipient, and there are some places where a given spike will work and others where it won't. For example, either eye and the heart clearly work for A-Steel but there would be other points on the body where they don't work because for whatever reason, the spiritweb from the spike and the spiritweb of the recipient won't integrate properly. .What's happening with the koloss and the chimaeras is that the spiritweb has been so distorted from what it's 'supposed' to be that it comes with major changes to the Physical body as well. And in the latter case, something has been spiked into them. The powers that we normally see transfered through hemalurgy don't have the same disruptive effect on the appearance because they aren't changing your spiritweb that much. Anyhow, we already know that it's using allomantic powers heavily that changes you and Inquisitors generally live longer so they can afford to spend a bit of time flaring steel and getting used to seeing that way before being sent out, so I'm not sure that we need to posit some new mechanism by which the same spike could do slightly different things based on bind point when what we have fits very well.

Just to put the question of using Stormlight to fuel allomancy to rest, Brandon has confirmed that it is possible: Note this, not 'it can't be done' but 'it would take some work'. Allomancy would be a harder system to power using another form of Investiture because of how the metal acts as a nozzle to shape the power coming from Preservation, but because it doesn't matter where your metal comes from it's more or less a moot point. This does not kill you immediately. See: Szeth in the original version of WoR's ending and the girl Nale kills in Edgedancer. The latter is dead but Wyndle says that if Lift had gotten there sooner and been stronger, she could have been revived. Actually, according to Brandon it's Breath that's the easiest system to use because it keys itself to your Identity. It's harder to get than Stormlight (insofar as that there's only so much out there at any given time and you have to be given it willingly) but once you have it, it's much easier to do things with. But if you're just looking for raw Investiture to perform magic hacks, then yeah, Roshar is one of the best places to be. Or Taldain, if you could get there.

One more Nalthian worldhopper is Mi'chele, who has a cameo (and is a real-life cameo as well) in Alloy of Law. Yep, here's a WoB on the subject. We strongly suspect this is Aslydin since we know she's Terris and a worldhopper but IIRC Brandon hasn't confirmed it.

Broseph, would you mind not double-posting please? It clutters up the board. Fullborn (a non-canon term but we don't have a more elegant one) can naturally hack two of Scadrial's magic systems to produce staggeringly powerful effects. For example, compounding the effects of steel to move faster than the human eye can follow, a Surgebinder isn't going to be able to get close without the fullborn allowing it. Or compounding gold to heal from ludicrous amounts of damage; We see a gold compounder survive dynamite exploding in his hand repeatedly and even shooting himself in the face with a shotgun, just to show off. Compounded zinc lets you think so fast that you can mentally run through every possible option for resolving a situation in less time than it takes someone else to finish saying a word and compounded pewter makes you the Incredible Hulk. And bear in mind that every single one of these abilities is independent, while Surgebinders rely on Stormlight for almost everything. And then there's atium, which in allomancy lets you see what other people are going to do in the near future and speeds up your mind and body to be able to react appropriately. On its own, it's pretty much an 'I win' button because you will always know where the Surgebinder is going to be and what they're going to do, and be able to react in time to avoid them and land a killing blow yourself. Atium is technically beatable but generally this requires either knowing how it works and thus how to counter it, outlasting it or having some form of future-sight of your own which will throw it off. The only thing we've seen in SA that comes close is Renarin's future-sight and it's not nearly as controllable as atium. So yeah, there's very good reasons why someone who has the full slate of allomantic and feruchemical powers is pretty much an unstoppable god. As I mentioned, getting close enough to hit a fullborn with a Shardblade is inherently problematic and a sufficiently charged metalmind (which a fullborn is going to have several of) can block Shardblades. Brandon hasn't canonized whether a Bloodmaker (someone with only F-Gold) could heal a Shardblade wound as it's happening but he's indicated that they should be able to heal from non-fatal ones just fine. Now factor in someone who's actively healing using F-Gold all the time, so any damage you do is being healed over as it's being inflicted. You're conflating ease of access to the magic and what you can do with it. In the former sense, neither magic is 'easy'. You need the sDNA component for Scadrian magic and you need a spren to actively choose you and go through the whole sequence of Ideals before fully coming into your power as a Surgebinder. Brandon has even said that the Nahel Bond is one of the hardest systems to access and that you can't cheat your way into it with various hacks we've seen like hemalurgy or Forgery. Also, there's a way to temporarily give anyone the power of a fullborn and while we don't know if it can be replicated, there's a more economical way of giving anyone a small selection of allomantic and/or feruchemical powers. This is no doubt going to be revolutionary in future books. Also, the Metallic Arts are much easier to use 'basically anywhere'. All you need is the right metals and they can come from anywhere in the Cosmere. By contrast, Stormlight is only found on Roshar and it evaporates away quickly so it's not nearly as easy to keep up your power source. And actually getting offworld is difficult because the spren is tied to Roshar's Cognitive region.

FYI, double-posting is frowned upon so when you're the last person to reply in a topic you can just edit your last post to include more responses, rather than making a whole new one. Yes, that's what I'm suggesting is possible, though it's not something that's been confirmed. But Jaddeth is indeed called a minor god. Sarene finds an old copy of a poem called Wyrn the King, which is very different from the version known in the present day and she comments that Derethi priests have been rewriting the histories. In this old version, Jaddeth was a 'relatively unimportant god' who cared for rocks underground. Clearly, Jaddeth was not always the One True God of a religion, or at all important. Shu-Dereth made Jaddeth important but he wasn't originally part of the religion, which began in JinDo. The Dor itself is both Shards mashed together but individual cultures (and by extension since they're kind of linked on Sel, expressions of the Dor's power) may be closer to one Shard than the other. Brandon has said that Wyrn is a 'follower of Dominion' and we know the Skaze are Splinters of Dominion. We also know that Jaddeth is 'more Dominion' and Domi 'more Devotion' but with some mixing involved. And AonDor is named after Devotion's Vessel and its power is centered near Devotion's Perpendicularity so...

It's definitely containing an Unmade. Look at the descriptions Szeth and Eshonai both give for how the spheres (and they're different spheres, hence Gavilar having more than one) appear to be drawing in light, then look at the description of the King's Drop after Dalinar traps Nergaoul inside it. They're identical.

We don't know exactly what the Intent of Dominion represents so we can't assume we know how the Skaze should be acting. For example, since we know that Fjorden is their center of operations and it's very big on hierarchy, it might be the Skaze work the same way and their creation also gave them an internal pecking order that they follow. 'Jaddeth' may be a larger Splinter but he doesn't necessarily have to exist as an actual entity. We know that he was originally a minor god that became the One True God(tm) after Shu-Dereth came to Fjorden, so he could have simply been a convenient hook for the Skaze to hang a story on. They want to dominate, they need a focus and this obscure god will do just fine. Nothing new about the voice, but since we know that AonDor is primarily 'of Devotion' it remains a safe bet that the Perpendicularity is hers and the voice is either Aona in some form, or as RShara says it's just the Intent that Raoden's brain is somehow filtering into words.

Given that Hoid didn't obtain allomancy until very recently (in Big Picture terms) and harmonium is even newer, no. He clearly uses some other method when he wants to skip years, which may or may not be the same one that various worldhoppers have used to greatly extend their lifespans. Consider Khriss and Baon, who are theoretically the oldest characters other than Frost, Hoid and the Vessels (in that order) that we know of. However they're prolonging their lives, it doesn't require the Metallic Arts. Of course in Hoid's case, he's effectively immortal anyways so time dilation is more of a convenience thing for him than a necessity. Also, bear in mind that while time is traveling at a slower rate for someone inside a cadmium bubble, it's still passing. You can 'time capsule' yourself with it but you're still going to come out older than when you started so it's not exactly immortality in a strict sense.

Nightblood is six or seven hundred years old tops, Odium has been trapped in the Rosharan System for thousands of years. The timeline doesn't work out, even before going into the various possible objections to the idea itself.

Among the many things that Hoid has stolen, now we can add RShara's spellcheck to the list alongside such artifacts as the Moon Sceptre, a lerasium bead and Jasnah's patience.

Don't worry about not knowing, we've all been in that situation with many things and will be... forever, I suspect.. xD Anyhow, the name for the site was actually suggested by Brandon himself. It originally had another name but the administrators asked Brandon if they could be his official fansite and when he agreed, he suggested the name would be a better choice, but he didn't say why at the time. This was before The Way of Kings came out and we learned what Brandon was thinking about. The name is a reference to the in-universe Seventeenth Shard, a worldhopping group which we know a little about, but we don't know their exact goals or why they have that name. You can find a collection of Words of Brandon on the in-universe organization here.