DrakeMarshall

Yes... Well at a time frame like that there are some inconsistencies. Perhaps steelrunning works by actually impacting time, not necessarily just physical speed...? I just hope steel compounding is a rare ability.

Fair enough. Some things in the cosmere hinge on details anyways.

Granted. You get a significant fortune, but somebody accuses you of stealing it. For some reason, nobody believes that a magical spren gave it to you. I wish for a hemalurgic cookie.

Hasn't it been stated that each order has access to exactly two surges though? Still, it stands to reason that there will be some kind of standoff with a "wall against voidbringers of all kinds"

Granted. You now have a nokia brick phone that can go three weeks on one charge. As an extra boon, its screen also never cracks. You can never get a new phone. I wish to have a fully functional ability to compound luck.

Lol yes. That actually is a pretty good explanation for how iron feruchemy works though.

I think the "more fleshed out" versions of spren only occur with the intervention of a shard. In the case of honorspren, honor is the obvious one. Not sure about cryptics, possibly a mix of honor and cultivation though I would bet it was more cultivation than honor. Maybe if ruin traveled to roshar, a more developed version of deathspren would appear?

Is it confirmed that regular shardblades cut in the spiritual realm? Seems like a case could be made that they slice through the cognitive realm...

Well your not wrong. Hence the windrunners:

So basically you want to ask odium if you can borrow all his spren to cause your own desolation?

Wait we know that the death rattle is from odium? Interesting... That does make me wonder what Taravangian is up to gathering information from this. I still think his apparent foresight bears the touch of odium.

Well, maybe spren in shinovar are like spren on Scadrial. Still sort of present, but not manifested in the physical realm like they are on most of roshar.

Ah, but you forget that in undertaking this process you would create the case of "good man goes bad" So from that perspective, this process is actually "break-even". Just kill the evil person and call it a day, if you want to make more good people than bad people in the world. This is certainly an interesting situation, but I couldn't call it remotely moral.

Yeah but think of the resources to create such a creature... You could probably make hundreds of a slightly weaker variant. Just have a person train in fighting for a while. Then have them give you their breath. Then kill them with a hemalurgic spike. Then make them a lifeless with their own breath. Then spike them with the spike you killed them with. You can do that and only use up a single person. Or if you are willing to pour in a little more resources but still make a probably huge army, do the same thing but coat them in an aluminum alloy before awakening, and stick a few extra hemalurgic spikes in to give access to compounding. You might be able to create a sentient (but still perfectly obedient) lifeless that is immune to allomancy and capable of gold compounding, and only by killing two or three people. And if you wanted to make it even more scary, you could arm them with empty hemalurgic spikes, so whenever they kill somebody important they can stick themselves and become more powerful themselves.

Interesting thought on why shards don't just make all leaders intelligent... Perhaps there is a very good reason for this. Note that while Taravangian apparently has some power to become very, very intelligent... He also seems rather evil. Some of the things he does in the name of saving the world seem like they might be aimed at actually destroying it. Sounds a bit like what ruin did with the terris prophecies I guess. Maybe his intelligence is in part just odium giving him directions and future predictions, not actual genius. I doubt that the nightwatcher is evil or of odium. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more peculiar features of Taravangian's genius on top of simple mental speed are a result of odium's meddling.

What Sazed has done in uniting multiple shards sort of implies that adolnasium was a consciousness directing all sixteen shards as one being. It is interesting that Sazed intuitively realizes that these powers were not meant to remain separate when he becomes harmony. In some sense, the shards of adolnasium are a bit like splinters of a shard...

That would be because k is It is certainly true that there is an upper bound to how much you can accelerate on a given surface, as seen in ice (although I have to say the moonwalking example isn't really the same situation as that). However, first of all, this doesn't vary from turning to forwards acceleration. Both would require friction to the same degree. Second of all, I think you will find that this upper bound on a regular surface is significant. This may prove to be a difficulty if you tap a massive amount of speed, but I don't think you can assert that bleeder's speed would touch upon this frictional upper bound. Note also that friction in this case does not actually limit speed in any way, merely acceleration.

Also we can consider the fact that the kandra are an engineered species. The kandra death spiral might just be a built in feature of their biology, not a clever trick with an autoimmune collapse.

And by evil, you mean "someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing"? By the way, exactly how many people got spiked to make all these cookies?

You'll keep your soul indeed... In fact you get an extra bit of soul tacked on to it.

This may be true. Would that mean that a less imbalanced type IV entity would be just as powerful but not require such a price? It just seems that a shardblade, while obviously a huge and powerful blade, is actually somewhat passive. It is a sword that exists more in the cognitive realm in the physical, but being able to cognitively slice things up might not take new energy. On the other hand, some of nightblood's powers, like utterly annihilating things and possessing people, seem like they might take energy themselves.

Hm... Maybe. Wait, does that mean there might be a handful of shardblades on Roshar that are little pieces of the stormfather that died?

Wow. I am impressed. This did a surprisingly good job of covering the story, especially without any dialogue.

I predict that hoid will play a sort-of important role in stormlight (he has played a more active role in it than he has in any other series). Not sure if he will become a major character in this series however. I am convinced that there will be a series with him as the main character though.

Note my post in overpowered magic combos that references lifeless with hemalurgic spikes. Thing is, there are lots of instances in the cosmere of investiture being used but not directly controlled by a human. Note nonsentient awakened objects, aforementioned lifeless, aons, and fabrials. Basically, the other three major worlds in the cosmere have something like what you are talking about. But as of yet, not Scadrial. I suppose it is quite possible that such a thing would work on Scadrial, though it wouldn't technically be a "fabrial" I would guess, it would probably be fueled on metallic investiture instead of stormlight. I can't imagine what that would look like, however, since Scadrial's magic systems are all closely linked to their user. For example, in feruchemy only the person who stored in a metal mind can access it.