Lewis Nethur

Definitely men's food. Men are permitted to ingest sweet wines, and I think they're allowed sweet desserts in moderation. Women on the other hand appear to have a hard ban on spicy food. If there was an actual cultural upheaval over the issue though it would probably be banned by both and only permitted for ardents and children...

More like, the spren modeled the Nahel Bond after the Heralds' bonds to Honor and the Honorblades. Even that's not 100% accurate, but I think it's a slightly better metaphor.

Okay, I'll take your word for it, my bad. Original post edited to avoid further misinformation. That's what I get for being too lazy to look it up before posting I guess.

I imagine layered aluminum/ceramic/ballistic-fiber vests are probably in store for era 3.

My headcannon has been that all of the feruchemists were probably the descendants of Tindwyl's offspring. Her participation in the breeding programs was the glorious crowning achievement of decades of subterfuge by the Synod, and every member of the Synod was killed off, probably along with any of her children who were full-feruchemists. However, her children who weren't feruchemists, of which there ought to have been several and probably closer to 10, would have had no idea who their mother was, shown no signs of being able to produce feruchemist offspring, and been completely undetectable by Ruin or anyone else. The fact that feruchemy survived the Catacendre was probably a surprise to everyone in Scadrial, because as far as all of them knew, every feruchemist had been killed off. Even the Terris didn't know about Tindwyl's children IIRC. Forget trying to keep the bloodlines pure, the Terris probably gave up on that when they realized all of their feruchemists were dead and no living Terris person had any knowledge of, or reason to believe they had, a feruchemist in their last few family generations.

A couple quick points that I didn't see mentioned above: Mistborn can definitely still occur naturally, they're just super rare, like 1 in several 10's of millions (like Steven Hawking level intelligence quotients actually); I believe the last few state-of-the-sandersons indicate that the plot of book 1 of era 3 will be a mistborn-serial-killer mystery novel. Harmony didn't change the people snapped by the mists prior to the catacendre; it's indicated in the annotations that he intervened somehow to allow them to manifest powers that they wouldn't normally have been able to achieve rather than manipulating their spiritwebs like Sazed did with Spook. This means that those people were no more likely to be able to pass on allomantic powers genetically than they would have been prior to being forcibly snapped by the mists, which is to say, they were very unlikely to pass on powers. With some linear algebra and a basic understanding of the statistics of genetics I think you could make a reliably endless supply of mistborns (or mistings or feruchemists) if you had a starting pool of about 100-500 adult magic users that were allowed to inter-breed naturally. The size of the pool is necessary to prevent inbreeding and excessive birth-defects. With breeding programs, you could probably get away with an even smaller pool but that would require some severe human rights violations...

You know...it might seem kind of crude, but if someone could come up with an estimate of the horizontal width (diameter) of the palace, we could just apply typical medieval castle proportions to it to get a pretty reasonable ballpark estimate and use medieval cathedral proportions, the best of which were quite impressive, as an upper-bound. I think "a couple hundred feet," is actually a really solid guess, but if we have sharders who are legitimately interested in establishing firm estimates for artwork or other projects, then I think it's technically possible that we can come up with something more concrete.

Technically...yes, point conceded, Harmony would disagree with me and contend that Rashek had a closet love for high society...Really though, Sazed was looking at the issue in retrospect and through rose-colored glasses in my opinion. In 1,000ish years of "envying" khlenni architecture Rashek deliberately suppressed technology, including engineering and architecture, to a level well below that of the level prior to his ascension. They were basically on the doorstep of the age of steam prior to his ascension; 1,000ish years later, they were 300 years off from it. Rashek didn't like the temperature of his planet, so he moved it closer to the sun. He didn't like how hot his new planet was at the equator, so he moved everyone to the north and south pole. He didn't like that slaves were smart, so he made them stupid. He didn't like that smart people bred too quickly, so he gave them fertility problems. In my opinion, Rashek was a jerk who solved problems through brute force in a manner befitting a psychopath. I admit there is room for argument on this subject, but I disagree that Harmony is a good source for objective evidence or enlightening insights for the purpose of this discourse. He's a little too Invested in the subject...lol. Really though, I find your point valid, I simply disagree. The whole topic is too subjective to be worthy of delving deep.

Lol...That was a very stupid mixup on my part, thanks...

This isn't as impossible to infer as you might think. Kredik Shaw was built by Alendi Rashek during his ascension while his mind was expanded to Godlike levels, however, it is clearly demonstrated that he always preferred to use brute-force to find solutions to his problems. The idea that he may have used any degree of modern engineering or structural dynamics considerations in the design of his castle are silly considering how he approached his other tasks. I posit that he built it using solid homogeneous materials. I also believe it is stated that the highest peaks were thin metal spikes. An architect could probably give us a much more rigorous analysis, but off the top of my head, I'd ballpark the highest peak at around 200-500 feet; more than that and it would probably collapse under its own poorly distributed weight, and less than that would've been pretty weak-sauce for even an incompetent God. Even at the top range, I feel like the maintenance and upkeep would be staggering over 1000 years...

I believe it was 1/16 people became mistings, not 16 percent(EDIT: Apparently this is wrong, my bad). Brandon explained that those people wouldn't have been able to manifest powers normally, due to not having enough Connection to Preservation and/or possibly innate Investiture. It's actually a little over my head, but the main take away was that the people snapped by the mists before the catacendre we're not normal mistings, they were, for the most part, super weak mistings that wouldnt normally have ever manifested any powers and were therefore still unlikely to be able to pass their powers on genetically. It's indicated that many, if not most, modern mistings are direct descendants of Spook, as all other mistborn appear to have been killed off, along with the vast majority of natural mistings. Pretty sure Ruin killed all of the feruchemists in Northern Scadrial as well... One could argue that Sazed is actually responsible for strengthening the available mistings rather than causing them to be weaker.

Hoid warned Dalinar that he would gladly see Roshar destroyed if he had to. I fully believe Hoid is aware of the threat a Roshar united under Odium would be. It's the most Investiture rich planet we've seen so far with a magic system more suited for warfare than any save for the metallic arts, and any Parsh can access it as Odium chooses. If Odium purges away the humans and shatters Cultivation his armies could probably burn most of the cosmere before anyone knew what had happened...

Scadrians are, tech-wise, on track to potentially unlock the secrets to cheap aluminum in the next wax and wayne book. If you read carefully, they make references to aluminum becoming gradually much more common. It's likely the set already figured the basics of it out in my opinion.

That said, he appears to hold a serious grudge against Rayse and Bavadin and shows, in my opinion, legitimate disdain for Sadeas and Kelsier. If Hoid can't hate, he can get arbitrarily close. He's a bit of a hateful jerk sometimes.

Investing an Invested object is harder than investing a normal object, so at the very least there would be rapidly diminishing returns for multiple charges, as each time the spike was filled it would become more resistant to being filled further. I suspect it would be far easier and more efficient to just use two normal coinshot spikes than 1 super charged spike, as youd have to kill a lot of allomancers to make one. Technically, I think it would work though.

The act of thinking actually requires a non-trivial amount of energy and results in the steady growth and reordering of neurons. Accelerating that process should make someone hungry. Consequently, storing mental speed should make someone grow hungry slightly slower.

Yeah I think you basically got it. Investiture is all powerful, but the way it's accessed is subject to misunderstanding, abuse, and exploitation. Therein lies the underlying theme of the Cosmere: "what would happen if men wielded the powers of God?" I think Sanderson has some essays on the topic somewhere on his website if you're interested in the finer philosophical structure of the Cosmere beyond the more simplified: "Investiture is mana which is used to fuel numerous different magic systems." That said, for the purpose of introducing someone to the Cosmere, I'm of the opinion that a simplified approach is best. As they say, less is more.

When a metalmind is burned, the result is essentially a new allomantic metal that grants the power coded to the metalmind. If a chunk of metal was awakened, my belief is that it would technically be encoded with a Command, not "Breath." The Breath is basically just the fuel for the command, like a feruchemist's attributes are a fuel for their magic. I'd speculate then that, while burning an Awakened object, you would be imbued with that object's command. This would probably be very uncomfortable and be similar to being possessed by Ruin, though it could grant odd and interesting powers. Burning a nugget of steel that was successfully Commanded to solve differential equations could presumably instill in the user a permanent or semi-permanent desire and inclination to be good at math.

Recall: Investiture in the Cosmere is an alternate form of both matter and energy. In general, yes, Investiture can do anything, become anything, or be used to alter anything in any way. As you pointed out, this is actually a very unhelpful description. What makes Investiture interesting is how it acts as a "fuel" for magic systems that are subject to discrete sets of rules. You can read any Cosmere book and enjoy it without having an understanding of Investiture. This is because it's the magic systems that are the Cosmere's main draw, a magic system merely being a precise individual mechanism by which Investiture can be utilized. By way of real-world analogue, take energy for example: Few people study "energy" by itself. The subject is simply too broad to be practical or meaningful. What's generally more useful and interesting is studying energy's aspects, restrictions, or specific discrete uses, through fields like chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, electrodynamics, ect. I feel like this is where you're getting lost in giving your high-level overview. If you go into a Cosmere book and replace every use of the word Investiture with "Magical Energy" or "Mana" you won't have lost much.

You're all forgetting that first, Eragon is just a scene for scene rip off of starwars through book 3; then a ripoff of sword of shanara. Yes Eragon would win. At the end of the series he could mind control people or turn off their magic by uttering a word. The series was fun, but Eragon basically became God at the end, even without his dinosaur. They taught him about magically induced nuclear explosions and radiation shielding for crying out loud; if he was feeling merciful he'd send Kaladin home with leukemia... Cosmere is better, but Eragon was completely unstoppable; which to clarify, I consider lower quality storytelling, even if I did still enjoy it.

Odium, pure and simple. He brings the wrath and omnipotence down like an old testament God without any of the depression and remorse common to the other shards. He legitimately seems to enjoy himself, whereas most of the other gods seem pretty down on life. Cultivation second because she's managed to not devolve into a murderous psychopath while still apparently having a decent time, and that does still have value to me. Yes, I would make and destroy planets; anyone who has played SimCity and pressed the disaster button even once is lying if they claim they'd do otherwise.

I mean...everyone who listens to and collects deathrattles appears to have sided with Odium. I think Moleach is basically a recruitment tool. The deathrattles alerted people that something weird was going on, they looked into it, and a significant number of them ultimately chose to side with an evil God who didn't even arrive until years later. Moleach was basically touring Roshar shouting, "Vote Odium! He can see the future!" Which is a pretty compelling argument, even in a society that holds prophecy as a taboo.

Given that allomancy wouldn't work, it's probably safe to assume listener forms wouldn't work.

Vashers "bones in a statue" method would still probably be the most efficient way of creating super-powered lifeless, but soulcasting would allow you to start with a medium like clay, which is easy to work with, and end up with a steel statue, with fully functioning joints with bones at the core, which would be almost impossible to create otherwise. I'd like to see a lifeless allomancer, or find out if a lifeless parshendi could still change forms.

Conventional wisdom is that duralumin doesn't burn itself up; the mechanics are theoretical, relatively complex, and have at least a handful of other threads that have discussed them at length. Our currently imperfect understanding of how duralumin works implies that it accelerates the burn-rate of other metals, ie: it doesn't burn them up instantaneously. Otherwise burning duralumin and steel would almost certainly always kill the user, as it would result in a short-lived burst of infinite g-force...which is silly. The nature of the burn-rate acceleration factor is fair game for debate and speculation. I've contended in the past that it is probably linear-ish through screen-analyses of Vin's use of duralumin, however, to be perfectly fair, other sharders have pointed out that we've never seen someone swallow a large quantity of duralumin or use duralumin after swallowing a large quantity of any metal. It's totally possible the acceleration factor is quadratic or exponential. However, I believe that this would completely break the magic system and also be inconsistent with Sanderson's descriptions of how leechers and nicrobursts work. It would open up the possibility of a steel misting with feruchemic+allomantic iron hemalurgic spikes and an allomantic pewter hemalurgic spike to become a city-leveling weapon if they had a nicroburst friend. IE: They swallow all of the iron they can, nicroburst-compound it to feruchemic iron, then swallow as much steel and pewter as they can, tap iron and burn steel+pewter, and once their nicroburst touches them, they topple everything in front of them. If duralumin accelerates other metals at a nonlinear rate, then presumably, Vin could have shot coins at inquisitors hard and fast enough that they couldn't have reacted to them before being hit by just swallowing more metals. The fact that she didn't do this leads me to believe that it wouldn't have worked. Allomancers appear to have trouble breaking the sound barrier with steel-pushing, and Vin never creates a sonic boom as near as I can tell. I am led to believe then that an allomancer who swallowed 10,000 times more pewter than is normally contained in a regular vial, ie: by swallowing several handfuls of powdered metal, would be able to sustain a duralumin enhanced pewter burn for roughly 10,000 times longer than normal. I'll grant you that this is technically speculative though.