King's Twit

The only thing I can think of is that there is a WoB that Hoid was pleasantly surprised when he first saw the Ryshadium, which has been interpretted by many as a clue that they are a fairly unique creature and more than just an exceptionally intelligent breed of horse, but the WoB could also just mean that Hoid was surprised to see Ryshadium on Roshar. I guess we'll have to RAFO.

Don't they say in SH that Kelsier (once he'd used the "magic McGuffin") could not hold Preservation as well as Vin or Sazed because he was a cognitive shadow, and so did not exist in all three realms. I thought that was mentioned at some point, but I may be wrong.

Before reading Bands, I thought that 'Suit' and 'Set' might have been hints that the Set was emulating another group who's title was a term for a grouping, the Crew from FE.

He had already been cutting the boy with knives to torture him, if I recall, but that doesn't mean that the process couldn't have ended with a Spiking. I don't believe that was Forch's intent, but it is a possibility.

I'm late to this thread, but another quick thing would be that Vasher is almost certainly not old enough to have traveled to Roshar when Shardblades were still living spren. The period when the Knights Radiant were active was thousands of years before when Stormlight takes place, and the first Returned, Vo, only Returned something like 600 years before Warbreaker (The book, not Vasher).

I may be interpretting things wrong, but I'm pretty sure everyone on a given Shardworld has a Connection to the Shards that inhabit it, especially Scadrial since the humans were created with the power of Ruin and Preservation. There are varying levels of Connection, though. Lerasium is one way to drastically increase the strength of your Connection to Preservation, but not necessarily to the point of being as Connected to the power of the Shard as a sliver would be. We don't yet know what the threshold of required Connection strength is to be able to become a Shard's Vessel. Lerasium may give you enough Connection to Preservation to become Preservation's vessel. Sazed became the Vessel of both Preservation and Ruin without any (recent) Lerasium in his sDNA to strengthen his Connections.

The languages of the time, maybe, but that was (at least) thousands of years ago. Many new languages would have developed since then, languages often evolve into drastically different forms over time, and the humans of at least one world were created by Shards, and so came after the time of the "first" humans. Connection magic seems to mostly be region-specific, so I'm not sure if being Connected to someone's ancestors would give you much of a Connection at all to them. Isn't it possible that "sounding like a native" is just part of him being a pretty good actor. He plays all of these roles (beggar, storyteller) and has pretty high exposure to natives in these roles. You don't need Wayne's ridiculous skill with accent imitation to hide your own or imitate another well enough to not draw attention.

I made that post before Bands came out, and after reading that and Secret History I am now (unfortunately) fairly sure that Kelsier is not Trell. That being said, your Marsh quote is interesting, and the only counter that I can think of is a "Darth Vader killed Anakin" sort of thing where Marsh no longer considers the being that Kelsier has become to be his brother, and remembers Kelsier as he was when he was alive. I still believe that Kelsier could be Rust, the Vessel for the extra piece of Ruin's power, and is helping Odium or Autonomy or whoever Trell is in their battle with Harmony.

If the person in the memory from the coppermind coin is Kelsier, then he has arms covered in scars and a large spike through his eye. The scars you could cover with some long sleeves, but surely someone would have remarked on seeing a person with a spike head sticking out of their face, unless he hid it behind some kind of mask or eyepatch, or learned some form of Illusion-making like Lightweaving. Since Kelsier ends the novella saying that he wants to become more Cosmere-aware, its possible that he's gained access to some other world's magic system or some other method of altering his appearance in the Physical Realm, but then there would be no way to recognize Kel, unless he just made himself look like he did before being spiked. So either he looks like the Soveriegn, in which case he almost certainly hasn't been seen clearly by any POV characters from other novels, or he's somehow altering his appearance, in which case he will likely only be identifiable by his dialogue (either something distinctive to Kelsier or to Scadrial) or his actions (Using a Metallic Art) I would lose my rust if some unknown character in Stormlight 3 says "There's always another secret".

So, there's been a lot of discussion about some of the things said by Hoid in this novella, which has more candid dialogue with Hoid (or as candid as Hoid gets) than I think we've ever gotten before. One line that I haven't seen discussed, unless I've missed the thread, is this one: This could be nothing; the cliche "A shadow of his past self" thing, but I see this as a significant line. The next lines of dialogue are about how needlessly cryptic Hoid was in this quote, further emphasizing the line itself the idea that there is some deeper meaning to this line that escapes Kelsier. Based on some of the dialogue about Hoid in this book, I no longer believe that Hoid was the 'Vessel of Adonalsium', so to speak, which was my first thought at the meaning of this line. What else could this mean? Could he be referring to being a relic of another time, the time before the Shattering? Or possibly he is the 'smoke' that is left after the death of the original Hoid, the only thing left in the Cosmere of our Hoid's old master? Or something else entirely. I created this thread mostly so I could outsource some of the speculation about what this dialogue could mean, if anyone is willing.

Doesn't it? I recall a WoB that Lerasium mistborn are 'close' to being slivers, and a sliver seems to be Connected to the power of the Shard. Maybe the diluted forms of allomancers in Era 1 Scadrial, like Kelsier, were no longer Connected enough to Preservation, or else Kelsier was just so Connected to Ruin that his Connection to Preservation was drowned out.

Or, Kelsier is the mistborn serial killer that Brandon said was going to be in the next Era, and Hoid joins with some scadriens to take him down. I really want Kelsier to be a villain; I think he'd be such an interesting antagonist. We'd get to see what it's like to be on the other side of one of Kelsier's crazy schemes, trying to account for everything he might do and then still being surprised when he does something that should have never worked.

Some people theorized that this is what Harmonium is, but I'm pretty sure that that was debunked by WoB. Brandon always talks about how difficult it is for one Shard's Investiture to influence or affect another's, so I'm not sure that you could get two different godmetals to alloy, or at least not easily.

Personally, I'm in the camp of the Nightwatcher being Cultivation's "godspren", her version of the stormfather, who seemed to be very powerful. I do not think any of the boons or curses we've seen are outside of the abilities of a Shard. I think that any Shard could make someone as intelligent as Taravangian, but it requires Investiture to do so, similar to how it took extra investiture from Preservation to make Scadrial's humans sentient. On a global population scale, this is a significant amount of Investiture, which is likely why no Shards that we know of have made their humans super-intelligent, but I think just boosting one person's intelligence would not be a notable loss of power, even for the Nightwatcher. Alternatively, Taravangian's intelligence might work in a similar way to how feruchemy works, where his lost intelligence from his "stupid" days is added to his base-level intelligence from other days to make his "smart" days. This would require almost no Investment from the Nightwatcher. Supposedly, Lift's boon is that she exists more in the Cognitive realm than other people. I'm not sure what effort this would entail, I guess mostly a shifting of "presence" from almost all physical realm to only mostly physical realm. I just read the interlude with the two ardents and the flamespren, and in it one of them wonders what would happen if you ate food in Shadesmar. I wonder if this is connected to Lift's ability to metabolize food into Stormlight? Maybe eating in Shadesmar produces energy like in the Physical realm, but the only form of energy in the Cognitive realm is Investiture, which manifests in the Physical realm on Roshar as Stormlight. Or something like that, I'm just guessing. Edit: I never brought up Hemalurgy in my post, but I don't really know how Hemalurgy works. If I am right about Nightwatcher being a Splinter of Cultivation, then you might be able to steal boons and curses, but some of them don't really seem like something you could steal. They might be on the Spirit Web somewhere, which would mean that you could probably steal them, but is everything about a person in their Spirit Web? Could I steal "blue eyes" from someone? Or "ability to play trumpet"? I'm not sure, so I think I'm going to leave Hemalurgy alone for now.

Szeth did die, he was magically resurrected and healed with Nale's fabrial. But if it happened to Szeth, it could have happened to Ym too. He was a great little cameo character and I too would love to see more of him.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that he could use the brass to store the sun's heat before it damaged his body. I figured that he could go a few days without food, but since he has to spend that time running, he would likely need bendalloy to store calories and water, and probably gold to heal his muscles. I underestimated the toll of the trip itself because I was focused on dealing with the heat. EDIT: Also, steelrunning doesn't seem to have an upper limit for speed. We've seen plenty of FTE travel from Bleeder, and that was without the ability to even compound it.

Hoid only speaks poorly of Rayse and Bavadin, he seemed to have been friends, or at least on good terms, with several of the other original Shardholders, so I'm not sure that they would have been an opposing force to him and Adonalsium. One thing that might support your theory is the Stormlight interlude with the cobbler, I can't recall his name, who has his faith in the One who became Many to get to experience, and so understand, much more of the Cosmere. This could be a hint that Adonalsium did shatter itself intentionally, or allowed the shattering to happen.

depending on how feruchemical brass works, that with compounded steel might be all he needs. Steelrunning is orders of magnitude faster than Vin's horseshoe trick. Maybe a good store of bendalloy energy as well so that he doesn't need to carry food supplies, but depending on how fast he can go with the steel that may not even be a problem.

Since our Hoid personally knew most or all of the Sixteen before they took up their Shards, and the author of the second letter seems to place responsibility for the Shattering on our Hoid and himself, it makes sense that the WoB which refer to Hoid being around before the Shattering and present when it happened are referring to the current Hoid, rather than his old master. But your point is still an interesting possibility that shouldn't be discounted. Way to think outside the box!

I know in my heart that Trell/Rust is Kelsier, it's just a gut feeling that won't go away until its either proven true or Bavadin finally makes an appearance to crush it. I think that (on top of other pieces of evidence that I won't get into here) it just fits too well into the "trust" theme that was central to the original trilogy and, to a lesser extent, the Wax and Wayne Era as well (Wax trusted Miles to protect the roughs, Wax trusted Harmony during the Bleeder hunt). I think that 'trust being broken' is a central idea to this quadrilogy, and that would fit well with the extra piece of Ruin's power being given by Harmony to Kelsier because Sazed trusted him, only to have that trust betrayed when Kelsier begins to use the power to undermine and attack Harmony. I think that if the power of Rust was severed completely from Ruin, basically turned into a minor Shard which was bestowed on Kelsier, then the power of Ruin may not recognize the condensed power of Rust (the trellium spike). The only piece of evidence we have that Harmony should be able to recognize anything of Scadrial, Ruin, or Preservation (unless there is a WoB about this) comes from Harmony himself, and from his first few moments of godhood when he created the Words of Founding. He said himself that his mind was still in the process of expanding at the time, so I do not think that we should trust the Words of Founding as an infallible source for information, especially for information about how Shards work. But that's just my two cents. Hopefully we'll find out in a few days who Trell really is, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be something saved for The Lost Metal (unless it's the end-of-the-book big reveal/cliffhanger like "I AM FREE").

What if his sword is one of his metalminds? He doesn't always have that on him, but he does always have it as Wit on Roshar, I think. The sword is described as being silver, but that is from the POV of other characters who may not know what it really is. What other metals look similar to silver? Aluminum does, and feruchemical identity seems like one of the things that may be the most versatile if you know what you are doing. Chromium looks like silver, and feruchemical luck is one of the things that is speculated (was it confirmed by WoB?) to be how Hoid uses his Feruchemy to be where he needs to be and at the right time. Atium was described to look like silver, I think. Hoid is immortal somehow, he could be using atium compounding to do so. Cadmium is somewhat silvery. If Hoid does have access to allomancy, he could be compounding allomantic cadmium to 'jump' through time as Brandon says that he does. It's theorized that this involves burning Cadmium and then immediately storing the Investiture in a metalmind, so if he was doing that regularly (or constantly) he would need a metalmind at hand. There are probably others of the metals that could be confused with silver, but those are the most interesting and likely possibilities to me. Personally I'm inclined to it being chromium, since Hoid seems to be using it all the time to always end up in the right place. edit: I meant to mention this when I made the post, but hiding metal under your clothes also isn't too hard. You couldn't have a bunch of big, bulky metalminds like a Keeper's copperminds, but you could hide plenty of thin bracelets and anklets and bracers and other things as long as you wore long sleeves and pants. Plus wan't he always wearing a military uniform? I think those are described as being stiff and starched, which would make hiding metals underneath them even easier.

Is silver allomantically inert? It's not one of the allomantic metals, but I thought that it could still be affected by allomancy, unlike aluminum.

Based on a quick google search, cadmium is apparently toxic because it acts as a catalyst for reactions that you don't want happening inside you. If it's a catalyst, then it likely is unaltered in the process, so at least with Cadmium you may still be able to burn it even while it is poisoning you, and thus prevent any further damage.

I mostly agree with you that something being described as 'silver' does not necessarily mean that it is silver, even more so with 'silvery', but it was from the Vasher POV that the sheath was described as 'silver', which I think makes it more likely to be true, as he would know what the true metal was, rather than if the description had come from Vivenna's POV, who would only know what it appears to be. I've personally been thinking that silver is a special metal in the Cosmere. I think that silver is to the Cognitive Realm as Aluminum is to the Spiritual Realm. Aluminum is inhibitory and possibly destructive in the spiritual realm, while silver is inhibitory and seemingly destructive in the cognitive realm. Nightblood's sheath seems mostly contains his ability to influence people, and silver blocks and damages cognitive shadows as we see on Threnody. However, if silver is damaging to all cognitive shadows, it would likely be damaging to splinters as well, and if spren could be hurt with silver then someone on Roshar would have figured that out by now. There isn't a whole lot of evidence for this right now, but I still think that silver would not be super special on Threnody without also being special in the rest of the Cosmere. Yes, Scadrial has plenty of metals that are special there but not elsewhere, but their focus is metals and also the metals are not the source of their magical effects, but rather the power of Preservation being channeled through you.

If it's unconsciously, then she would have to have something chromium on her at all times to function as a metalmind. Not impossible, but not likely. And I don't think she's storing it consciously either, because at least one event, her wedding, was something that she obviously cared about very deeply unless she's a great actress, so I don't think she would intentionally make it more likely to be ruined.