Lewis Nethur

It's not cannon yet, but..Hoid's origin story in Liar of Partinel, describes what, in my opinion, would most likely be the greatest single turning point in his life: Failing a bid for control of his clan and being taken in, civilized, and taught lightweaving by his master (also named Hoid). If you burned malatium while looking at Hoid, I'd speculate that you'd see a wildman of the forest who knew nothing of the Cosmere, Investiture, or any of the other scholarly pursuits he enjoys now. Compared to the wily, spacefaring, immortal wizard he's become, that would be pretty haunting to see side-by-side.

Back to OP's original questions, something to bear in mind is that most (all?) things in the Cosmere exist in some capacity in all three realms simultaneously. What you describe as "bleed through" between the realms is the phenomenon known as perpendicularities; places where all three realms "intersect" so to speak. At these intersections, weird things are possible due to the concentrated Investiture; people (or things) that normally exist primarily in the Physical Realm can transition their presence almost totally to the Cognitive Realm. We've seen characters poke their heads into the spiritual realm as well, however, the breakdown of time and space in the Spiritual Realm make it a rather silly place that isn't conducive to long writing stretches; We've only seen characters briefly look around, gain a bunch of futuresight, then leave before they could be driven completely mad. What makes Threnody special is that, while it has no stable perpendicularity, one or more of its manifestations of Investiture cause unstable (possibly short-lived/temporary) perpendicularities to pop into existence; it's implied that this has something to do with the shades, though it's also left deliberately vague. Shades actually tend to stay close to where they were created, implying that they have strong location-based Connection which would make it very difficult to leave their system under normal circumstances. The existence of many unstable perpendicularities on Threnody could mean that Worldhopping off Threnody is very easy if you know what you're doing. Since Threnodites possess relatively advanced technology (gun powder, and we see Nazh use some kind of horrifying ghost-gun weapon on Scadrial), their homeworld totally sucks, and it might be easy for them to marshal a large number of people into the Cognitive Realm in relatively short order, it's possible that the IRE are worried about Threnodite invading other planets or attempting to settle Cognitive lands they considered to be within their domain. From what we've seen of Nazh's horrifying ghost-gun thing, it's entirely possible that Threnodites have found a way to weaponize Shades, which would definitely upset the IRE.

Since being bonded to an honorblade doesn't permanently alter your identity to make you a surgebinder, and because it represents a type of passive, or static, Investiture, I'm inclined to believe there isn't an Identity component; at least, not a similar Identity component to the one used by the Bands. Recall, you have to tap and slowly drain the Bands to make them work. The Bands themselves are just a lump of metal someone dumped Investiture in, whereas honorblades appear to have literally been made by a shard out of pure Investiture. Quasi-permanent static forms of Investiture can grant a user powers through manipulation of their spirit web, but in a way that I would argue is fundamentally different from how the Bands operate. (See: forgery and hemalurgy) so there may be an Identity component to how honorblade work, but it's probably very dissimilar to that used by the Bands.

Breath and Stormlight are both Investiture, however, they have different properties and characteristics that make them not directly interchangeable. Awakening, as a magic system, draws Investiture out of the practitioner in the form of Breath(s), in order to bind an object (or in extremely advanced cases we've only seen performed by Vasher...a living being...) with a magical command. Fueling Awakening with stormlight should be like trying to fuel your car with crude oil; the substance is literally quite similar to what you need (Breath for awakening/Gasoline for a car), but still completely incompatible without refinement. That said, on a fundamental level, stormlight is very similar to Breath, meaning it should be possible to treat, refine, or otherwise manipulate it in such a way as to make it compatible with Awakening. However, once the stormlight has been processed in such a way as to make it compatible with Awakening, I would posit that it would probably be functionally identical, and literally indistinguishable, from any other ordinary Breath. When Miles burns gold allomantically to fill a goldmind, the stored health is completely indistinguishable from ordinary health stored in a goldmind. The type of fuel used doesn't change the output. However, the type of fuel used does have to exactly match the type of fuel required; in Miles' case, this is Investiture "shaped" like gold. I'm not sure I understand your last question, but perhaps I can clarify my meaning anyway; my belief is that how much surgebinding you could accomplish with a Breath would depend on how much Investiture the Breath is composed of. If, for example, one Breath were worth the stormlight held in approx. 20 emerald broams, then assuming you could convert that Breath to stormlight with 100% efficiency, you could perform 20 emerald broams worth of surgebinding. I also believe that you couldn't simply use your stored Breath to directly fuel surgebinding; similarly, a tineye with an honorblade couldn't simply burn tin and fuel their surges, they would have to find a way to convert their tin allomancy Investiture into Stormlight first.

I feel like eating a piece of bread that was wiggling around would cause me irreparable emotional trauma...Would probably be a great way to get away with choking someone though, or playing a nasty prank; IE: "Scream when bitten"

I'm not sure I agree that Vasher gets a boost from a sheathed Nightblood. Obviously we just don't know for sure, but it seems to me that Nightblood probably only boosts people when he is, as I believe it is described on the wiki and in the annotations, "wielding his user." IE: I would speculate that Nightblood only strengthens people when he is filling them with bloodlust and screaming in their heads to "destroy evil." This happens when he "possesses" people he considers evil, or when someone draws him. Can't know for sure, and I'll be happy either way, just wanted to toss that out there for the crowd.

A couple clarifying remarks: Per WoB, Vasher doesn't know how to use stormlight to fuel awakening and hasn't actually been confirmed to be able to draw in stormlight (he might just be swallowing infused gems to fuel his Divine Breath or poking his head outside briefly once every couple highstorms). For all we know, simply be irradiated with stormlight might satisfy his Investiture vampirism. It's theoretically possible to use stormlight to fuel awakening, but this would require finding a way to either convert stormlight into Breath, or trick the underlying physics of awakening into thinking stormlight was Breath. In either case, the awakened object wouldn't leak stormlight. Just like when Miles compounded gold, he didn't still see gold shadows; the feruchemical health he produced and stored was identical to what he could have stored normally, albeit in much greater quantities. WoB has it that any magic system can fuel any other, at least in theory. In practice, something bizarre, such as fueling Surgebinding with Forgery, might be so prohibitively difficult, location dependent, and/or complicated as to be completely impractical. That said, combining powers to create new powers should totally be possible. It's speculated that only radiants of Jasnah's order will be able to soulcast at a distance (IE: she may be able to combine her powers to soulcast with a touch and her ability to "teleport" across distances to allow her to soulcast across distances. Again, this is speculative, we won't know for sure until we see Shallan explore soulcasting more. Combining magic systems in order to create powers that are so new and unique in function that their underlying physics and mechanisms appear, at least at a glance, to be fundamentally different from the individual systems is also possible: See medallions in Mistborn era 2, and, again, this is speculative, but possibly the old magic and voidbinding.

Yep, it's confirmed that Nightblood can increase the wielders strength without being drawn, however, it seems like he doesn't always. Not sure we know enough yet to say when and how this power works or what it's bounds are.

There are some definite similarities in how mechanical the magics are while still being incredibly broad in application. However, I will say that I think you may be over romanticizing the idea of Sanderson taking inspiration from Jordan a bit. There are actually a lot of magic systems that work in this manner, since, in general, it makes writing about the system much much easier; a less good example being the Harry Potter system or the system in saga of recluse. When a character does something totally new and unheard of in one of these systems, it's very easy to explain: they used logic, intuition, or natural magical understanding to expand their magical arsenal beyond its previous limits. If, on the other hand, Kaladin threw a lightning bolt at a parshendi, there would be some serious explaining required. Jordan's system was revolutionary and awesome for its time, but I don't think its underlying physics were as central to the overall plot as aondor is in Elantris. Ultimately, I feel like Jordan structured his system to fit a neceasarily broad and all encompassing 12,000 page epic, and sanderson structured his to be organic for characters to explore in an intuitive manner paralleling humanity's discovery of computing in real life. Your comparison and the parallels you note are most certainly still valid, I just wouldn't go so far as saying one helped inspire the other at this point. Btw, if it's not offensive to ask, what is your native language, because you do a great English.

Well...or secret option 5: he acts in a harmonious manner...which is the main tenet of his religions. IE: he does what he can to preserve humanity and provide them with stability and happiness, while simultaneously trying to avoid doing things that would limit their ability to change and grow. He views the creation of the basin as a mistake because it's slowed down the evolution of society, while acknowledging that he did it because he wanted humanity to have a chance to catch their breath and recover from the Lord rulers oppression. Evidence that he is already being strongly influenced to obey his intent. Plus, he was compatible with both ruin and preservation to begin with; I feel like it would be weird to be warped by an intent you were well matched with. The original ruin supposedly wasn't matched to the shard very well, which was why he became so corrupted. Sazed may be able to avoid this problem completely.

Thanks! So part of my understanding comes from how Elantrians built devices utilizing their magic in a somewhat mechanical or scientific nature, combined with how teleportation aons can be drawn in elantris to send people to distant places. I'll try to produce a more rigorous argument later, as I'm mobile at the moment.

DISCLAIMER: This is technically still speculation: Sanderson doesn't state it outright, but my understanding of the subtext was that the Scepter is an Elantrian construct. It allows for the translation of magical symbols on Sel, which I took to mean that it would be useful for allowing an Elantrian to use their magic outside of their home region. IE: because the Dor can only escape to the physical realm in certain shapes, frequencies, and pulses, which are determined on a regional basis, an Elantrian's Aons can't function too far from Elantris. But theoretically, the scepter would allow an Elantrian to draw their magical equation in aons, and have it function in a region that uses soul-stamps by translating their aons into the correct regional symbolic language. The process may also work in reverse. By studying the underlying mechanism of the Scepter's technology, which appears to manipulate how the Dor interacts with and enters the physical realm to initiate Selish Investiture in a fundamental way, Hoid should be able to develop an understanding of the exact physics of the Dor, and thereby figure out if and how he could become an Elantrian.

The inquisitors required so much down time and sleep because of the strain that their spikes put on their bodies (Kaar and Marsh also revealed that they were in constant agony). I hadn't considered that they probably used this downtime, at least in part, to store health. Good thought! An interesting side-effect of tapping zinc is that it's said to induce hunger. My theory is that this is because tapping mental speed inadvertently causes the growth and development of new connections between the neurons in the brain, something that requires a significant amount of chemical energy. Would probably be great for weight-loss, but you'd have to be careful to not starve to death on accident.

Precisely. Just like how if you tap Sazed's copperminds backwards you received a message from the God Beyond telling you to start fires.

First, were the Bands of mourning or Vivi's 300-breath scarf described as unnaturally heavy? I get that Nightblood is more heavily Invested, but I'm thinking there's a physical explanation for Nightblood being "overly heavy" rather than a magical one: Based on the dimensions estimated from in book descriptions, Nightblood would've weighed about 5 pounds prior to being awakened. This is pretty dang heavy for a sword, but it was being made for a Returned, so the weight wasn't really a problem. Nightblood has an all-metal sheath, which, near as I can tell, is super weird for a sword as big as he is. If you're used to handling blades with leather or wooden sheaths, Nightblood would take you by surprise when you hefted it. By my best guess, Nightblood's sheath should weigh somewhere between the total weight of its blade, ~3.3 pounds, and its total weight, ~5 pounds. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, whatever. Nightblood is big; bigger than is practical in most situations in fact. This makes him impractically heavy. A person picking up Nightblood, especially if they were familiar with swords, would be taken by surprise because they probably wouldn't expect it to be impractically heavy. Note, the lower gravity on Roshar, should make Nightblood much more usable by normal sized people, but still pretty significant. We'll have a better feel for how heavy Nightblood really is once we get some Szeth POV's. TLDR; According to in-book descriptions of his size Nightblood weighs about as much as a bowling ball. If Nightblood's Investiture contributes to his weight it's probably by a relatively small amount, otherwise, even a master swordsman would have difficulty wielding Nightblood effectively if they were under 7-feet tall, because it would be so unbalanced for their size. If you need convincing, see how long you can hold a bowling ball with your arms extended.

Awakening requires physical touch and vocal commands...Unless you have enough breath, in which case, objects can be awakened at a distance and with thought. My point is that we've seen action at a distance effects in awakening already. Nightblood himself causes madness and nausea at a distance at baseline. With enough Breath, Nightblood may be able to kill via proximity. Nightblood might be able to stop or disintegrate arrows in flight, but he could still potentially devastate a battlefield without this power: His wielder could have an awakened cloak that catches arrows... Every Breath Nightblood consumes fuels his ability to vacuum up Breath from his wielder more powerfully; at some point it's possible that he'd be able to start vacuuming up the Breath of nearby people who aren't his wielder, consuming souls in a rapidly expanding radius of death. After all, Nightblood doesn't ask permission before consuming his user, just ask the confused guy with the grey hand in Hallandren. Alternatively, it would also be consistent with what we know about Awakening that feeding Nightblood enough Breath could to allow him to simply extend the reach and power of his aura. He might not be able to feast on distant soldiers' souls, but he might be able to cause them to kill themselves and each other from, again, a rapidly expanding radius of death, which is almost as good. If people can't get within a few hundred yards of you without going mad, they'll have a hard time hurting you. Obviously it's all very speculative at this point, but just remember, Vasher killed his wife to keep knowledge of Nightblood secret. He participated in a world war with her, committed crimes against humanity at her side, and loved her while wading through an endless bog of fire and blood, but the thought of the knowledge of Nightblood's creation getting out was where he drew the line.

Vasher unsheathes Nightblood and holds the hilt against her cheek to establish the bond. It's left unsaid whether Nightblood was eating Vasher's Breath, or Vivi's, as she probably wouldn't notice losing a few breaths given that she was experiencing feelings of violent nausea. It's possible that to bond Nightblood to Szeth, Nale did something similar (drew in some stormlight, then drew Nightblood and touched Szeth with the hilt), possibly while Szeth was still unconscious, since, upon first meeting Nightblood, Szeth doesn't note feeling any bloodlust or nausea.

I've seen this topic come up a number of times, so let me put it to rest once and for all: Nightblood is about 5ft long. Getting pierced by Nightblood might be fatal and he turns into an Investiture-vacuum when wielded, so to safely burn him you would have to swallow him whole, sheath and all. Ergo, only a koloss mistborn could burn Nightblood Speculation: This would probably result in a blackhole.

Well...This is speculative...but if you were already tapping the goldmind worn on your arm/head before it was cut off, the spiritual link between your body, your severed appendage, and your goldmind should be able to be maintained, allowing the part to reattach as long as it wasn't kept separated. If a Thug ripped the arm with the goldmind off and ran down the street with it I'm less sure this would work, but it might be possible. WoB maintains that if a gold compounder who was actively burning and compounding gold had their allomancy stolen with a hemalurgic spike, their burning wouldn't be interrupted; they would heal the wound, both physical and spiritual, without experiencing even a temporary loss of allomancy. The justification is something along the lines of: an Investiture is much easier to maintain than it is to initiate.

Exactly! Because the user would be absorbing the memory into their brain as if it belonged to them, I feel like there's a lot of room for exploitation. If someone were to store two memories at once together in a coppermind, for example: how to bake bread combined with a short list of reasons they believe all of society's problems can be blamed on the koloss-blooded, the person who tapped it might be so focused on the information they're intentionally absorbing that they don't recognize that there's some weird background information being pumped into their skull. Further, what if you had two people store everything they could into two large identitiyless copperminds...could they essentially swap bodies and pull some freaky-fridayish shenanigans?

That would sort of undermine the spirit of the project, which is to prove to Lego senior management that it is worthy of investment by virtue of its public support...but I can't fault you for thinking like a sharder and trying to find a way to hack the system like Hoid. Lol. Ps. @Prism , double posting is generally considered rude. You should edit your last post rather than make a new one. It helps keep the forums neat and clean.

All you have to do is tomahawk someone while standing in a ring of silver...I mean, the simple rules are really only prohibitive for the lower class. Rich people and world hoppers could have access to enough silver to violate them with impunity. You leave one guy behind with a bunch of silver and a tomahawk and tell him to create a shade at x location after y days. Easypeasy.

Fabrials didn't exist in large numbers for most of Cosmere history as near as I can tell, but true, it is just speculation on my part that rosharans could trade cubic-foot sized gems for a substantial profit offworld..

I've always assumed the unstable perpendicularities occur when a shade is born, in which case, all a world hopper would have to do is sit and wait (maybe a few hours, maybe a few days, whatever) outside a settlement and use the inevitable eventual shade birth to hop back and forth. Otherwise, thanks!

Let's take a look at what Each planet has that's valuable and what it lacks: Ashyn: Pretty sure we don't have cannon information on this planet, correct me if I'm wrong. Braize: Inhabited by spren who probably can't leave the system and wouldn't be interested in trading if they could. First of the Sun: Doesn't officially make contact with off-worlders until approx. Mistborn era 3-4 and has a super dangerous perpendicularity Nalthis: Valuable exports: Breath for longevity, musical/artistic ability, and general awesomeness, Exotic dyes, lifeless, exotic foods, livestock Desirable Imports: heavy metals, precisely alloyed metals, slaves (or corpses honestly), exotic foods, machines, technology Roshar*: Valuable Exports: Gemstones (they're common on Roshar and rare everywhere else), heavy metals (soulcasting), slaves (It's established that slaves are super cheap on Roshar) Desirable Imports: Livestock, exotic foods, any foreign magic, technology, or literature *Roshar is kinda busy being invaded by monsters to worry about trading for most of the history of the Cosmere... Scadrial (during FE): Valuable Exports: Slaves (skaa breed quickly and are hardier and less ambitious/intelligent than normal humans), precisely alloyed metals, heavy metals, atium (pure Investiture), hemalurgy Desirable Imports: Exotic food! (foreign flora and fauna couldn't be cultivated and new ideas/technology were aggressively suppressed) Sel: Probably prohibitively difficult to leave or enter to make trade worthwhile. Taldain: Blockaded against casual traffic by Autonomy. Threnody: Valuable Exports: Exotic food, livestock?, gunpowder/technology Desirable Imports: Silver! From this I would speculate that Nalthis supplies Scadrial and Roshar with exotic foods, animals, dyes, and Breath, in exchange for metals, slaves, gemstones, and possibly knowledge of hemalurgy, and everyone trades with Threnody for gunpowder and industrial technology in exchange for silver.