hwiles

I...think this one is painfully correct, yes. I would expect rewriting memories to be most successful and feasible in beings with fractured and damaged identities and spiritwebs. This is sort of a sensitive subject, I'd rather not say more if that makes enough sense on its own. Good observation in my opinion.

I suspect that the cosmere shall and must end in the establishment of a mechanism of lasting peace and security between worlds. Whether this is by the eradication of several shards, or by the unification of all of them, or by something inbetween remains to be seen however. I'm hopeful though that the hostilities between major shardic worlds will largely begin to taper off once strong transparent understanding of the underlying mechanics of the major future magic systems is widely available (fabrial science, scadrian medallions and excisors, elantrian symbolic programming, ect). Will there be war? Sure. Sociopathic mistborn who believe themselves to be God and wish to recreate the order of Inquisition to aggregate magical arcana for themselves? Maybe. Shall we learn from all of them and better understand and guide ourselves? Definitely. I'm excited for the future of storytelling.

What I just heard is that: it would be a surprising, interesting, and impactful twist requiring very little on screen clarification regarding mechanics for aluminum hemalurgy to be almost as narrow, esoteric, and specialized in scope/usage as aluminum Allomancy and Feruchemy...aaaannnnndddd...the symmetry of such a trinity does have some divine appeal to it when I think about it further... Like I said, just playing devil's advocate; if we see a sandmaster get his hand poked while handling a piece of cheap wire in the space age and suddenly become crippled or insane I shall gladly fall back in line with the options up top.

Playing devil's advocate here...buuuut...the hemalurgic chart was specifically outlined for Inquisitors, not human beings in general and is labeled appropriately as such. While it seems like (thus far) spikes of a given metal behave uniformly between human beings in most cases, exceptions already exist in world on page (Koloss/Kandra/those crazy dog monsters/ect.)... How shocked would we be if aluminum hemalurgy only "removed all powers" when performed on a hemalurgic construct or machine and did something else, or almost nothing at all, under the majority of other circumstances circumstances (like aluminum Allomancy) for normal people, animals, and creatures? My thought is that Isaac may have been simply trying to reveal a silver bullet (forgive the wordplay sorry lol) against inquisitors, not trying to foretell a future super weapon. IE: If inquisitors come back in era 4, they will...bear an extreme and easily exploitable vulnerability, buuuut...swat teams of allomancers shall not share such a weakness.

It will end with ambiguity, open loops, plot holes, and arcs that yet might be. If it doesn't, the fans who make the whole operation float will lose interest before Sanderson dies, retires, or formally names a successor who shall take over for him. The cosmere shall conclude, either delightfully as one of, if not the best, anthologies of all time, or in catastrophic failure as one of, if the not worst, most squandered projects of all time, by 2050 at the latest. The insurers (actuarial science majors) will guarantee that that prophecy comes true unless 100% of them are guaranteed to survive to 100 years old or older, and I challenge anyone to challenge that...

Hoid...turns up in every cosmere novel. He's a master of disguise and intrigue and gets around like crazy. The members of the 17th shard seem to believe that he has had his spiritual Fortune hacked to the point that he is essentially a fully loaded deus ex machina just walking around waiting to happen. Imagine being drunk on Felix Felicis potions 24/7 and also so Invested that one can no longer be harmed in the traditional sense of the word...that's Hoid.

Hahaha, I'll have to give the audio books a listen sometime. Let's see...they are both aloof to the point of casual cruelty to bystanders on occasion. They both use comedy and self deprecation as a defense mechanism. They both have deep social and emotional trauma relating to personal injury experiences on opposite sides of the spectrum (Wayne on the survivor's guilt side and Lopen on the permanent disability side). They're both ridiculously tough despite wearing the persona of a goofball like a glove. And it is famously difficult to gauge how self-aware either of them is at any given moment despite implications that they might be wise in a borderline divine sense of the word at times. Lol.

I'm actually inclined to agree with this. The founding of the oathpact represents the first time that humanity successfully defied and denied, the will of a full an intact Shard. Sure, it proved that no mortal or group of mortals can stand up to a Shard who is being a bully without grave and horrible consequences (this...honestly should already be self evident though...) but it also proved that they can choose to do it anyway. That's all the way up there with 'destruction of an entire major civilization' on the cosmic impact scale though. From now on, everyone who doesn't like something that a Shard does has a legitimate avenue of retaliation, and that's...very different...than how things worked when the cosmere was young.

Open question: what would an Inquisitor who was fully under Ruin's control see when burning electrum? Many shadows, or one? If their actions are predetermined by their God, and they do not resist (as only Marsh seems to resist), do they have enough free-will to be capable of having more than one electrum shadow?

I think this exact situation depicts perfectly why Feruchemical electrum storing Determination is a poetically perfect counterpart to allomantic electrum revealing one's shadows into the future! Ahem. Expanding a bit: What would an electrum shadow with infinite Determination look like in an electrum compounder? I opine that it would look like a person who cannot be deterred from their set path and performs every action necessary to stay on that path possible. I would expect them operate with a single crystal-clear electrum shadow that follows a single path in accordance with their (magically mega-enhanced) ((personal)) Intent that only splits if something external that has not happened yet is going to make following or staying compliant with that Intent impossible OR introduces futuresight feedback loops (like a Seer or Inquisitor showing up looking for a fight). A person with weak Determination might always operate with many conflicting electrum shadows though...

Strongly agree, a person should only have a single electrum shadow while burning if they commit and steel themselves to following and copying its actions exactly. This...actually opens up crazy possibilities, because one can make changes to their behavior at the last second in response to very specific electrum shadow actions if they were disciplined enough. Like, one should theoretically be able to communicate backwards in time using sign language inside a bendalloy bubble if I'm understanding how these systems work.

@Quantus nailed it fastest once again, so I'll just expand a little. As was noted: no, the soul is passed and gone, so revival is not 'technically' possible. However...what is still (maybe) possible, albeit probably difficult, should include: 1) Awakening the stone with Breath into a Lifeless that, deep down, still possesses surprisingly abundant remnants of the former person's knowledge, skills, abilities, and perhaps even memories/allegiances if they are awakened with very gentle commands selected to maximize freewill as far as possible. 2) The awakened stone should be able to be Forged to think, believe, or possess knowledge, skills, abilities, and memories to some extent. It's reasonable to speculate that restoring features that were lost in death would be easier to Forge back in and should last longer or be more stable due to the presence of fossilized spiritual Connections left in the inherent makeup of the stone body. 3) the Awakened stone creature should be able to be taught and improved iteratively if it is well maintained. It could be communicated and interacted with, shutdown, reawakened, and experimented on with new custom developed commands repeatedly. Using commands that facilitate and encourage restoration of lost functions and reinforce its former identity as an ideal state of self for it to strive towards in its service to its Awakener might conceivably work. Lifeless =! Non-sensient

Well, his Skips seem to be pseudo-random in nature and weighted towards Investiture-rich planets so...he could definitely end up on a world we've seen before for a cameo if he keeps nomading long enough! I'm gonna break the rules of immersion for a second here though (Sorry!!) and just assert that, in accordance with the principles of good storytelling, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Sanderson will write a book that shows Nomad Ascend; there's just no way to make it fit into the overarching narrative given that he's Connected to virtually everyone everywhere now and actively worldhopping. It would be like if the United States elected a random homeless man for President instead of any specific candidate; is it possible? Yes, totally. Would it ever be accepted even if it happened and was legit? Absolutely zero chance. I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually see Nomad pass through future novels, if only briefly, with literal millions of BEUs though. He seems to be biologically immortal, able to access basically any Investiture system and speak any language, and, as long as he has at least 20K in BEUs in his pocket, able to avoid any immediate threat. Honestly, I was disappointed by how focused his book was on fighting; the man deserves peace, even if he is nigh unstoppable.

The important point here is that tin feruchemy functions normally during these otherwise exotic applications, IE: if one stores two sensory capabilities at 100% focus such as sight and smell into two separate tinminds, such that are totally blind and unable to smell, while burning duralumin and tin for 0.5 seconds, they should end up with 0.5 seconds worth of extreme hyper sight and smell stored feruchemically, which could be drawn back out slowly to extend the duration. Essentially, it's equivalent to just storing the senses granted by normal tin Allomancy (just faster). An even more exotic interaction might be possible for a twinborn with f:tin + a:iron/steel. Iron sight is technically a form of sensory awareness which is independent from the sight granted by human eyes (this is what allows inquisitors to perceive the world and why even a blind coinshot would be dangerous in a fight.) Basically, a tin feruchemist who had a tinmind loaded with steel-sight should be able to perceive steel-lines with variable intensity (they could see in total darkness even better than an Inquisitor and that's insane!) All while being virtually undetectable by seekers, even without a smoker present to shield them. Theoretically, they could just walk around and be able to see through walls with no one being able to tell that they were doing it, which is kind of funny. Could definitely lead to shenanigans and trouble though.

I understand and agree with your points, but I feel like you're still failing to appreciate that you're comparing Nomad to Endowment's personally selected and LITERALLY 'groomed-from-birth' Godking who can telekinetically awaken objects to kill souls and command the dead with his thoughts and 4th order Radiants...4th order radiants are very rare, essentially unkillable during storms and, as far as we know, not able to travel outside Roshar because of how it would dissociate their spren. That puts Nomad in at least the top 0.0001% of most powerful beings in the Cosmere by my figuring. And maybe better...