Lewis Nethur

Well for one, spren in general appear to be unable to manifest in Shinovar; I've speculated in the past that this has to do with it being foreign to Roshar. If this holds true for radiant-spren and Odium-spren as well then the radiants and parshendi might be unable to use their surges/powers within Shinovar's borders. Presumably the honorblades would still work. Mistborn era 2 spoilers: Note, we've seen at least one fabrial function within the borders of Shinovar, which presumably utilized a spren trapped inside a gemstone and functioned using the physics that govern the surges, so it's possible that outside spren can be brought into Shinovar without any difficulty or consequence.

I wouldn't worry about Stormlight Archive never being finished. First, it's sort of Sanderson's baby and he's been planning it for decades. Second, he has a large and trusted team of professionals backing him. And third...Sanderson gained some serious renowned by finishing the Wheel of Time epic after Robert Jordan passed away... I don't think any author wants to have to rely on someone else finishing their work, but between Tor, Jordan's wife, and Sanderson, I believe the final product (3 books) was satisfying to most fans and served as a worthy tribute to an artist who met an untimely end. I'd like to believe that through that experience Sanderson probably learned some valuable lessons about how to structure and organize his notes and bluebrints for the Cosmere in such a way that, in the event that the can't finish his workload in his own natural lifespan, his friends, family, students, and colleagues can construct and deliver an admirable testament to his remaining vision to his fans in his stead. Sixth of Dusk was a collaborative work, and its probably my favorite short story in the Cosmere. If you want to experience the whole Cosmere, you probably just need to live long enough, it's getting big enough that its fans, contributors, and publisher would be loath to see it left incomplete, no matter what the future holds.

I like your idea that the Cognitive Realm could manifest differently for Shinovar to produce non-trivial consequences. Not sure if Shin religious differences would be the main cause of the discrepancy though... Shin are physiologically different than all other humans on Roshar (I'm mainly referencing eye shape, but there might be other things too), and their environment seems totally foreign to the planet. Considering that the Shin and the plants and animals they coexist with in their valley appear to have evolved on an earth-like planet and were only later introduced to Roshar (speculation), the mountain ranges on both sides of the valley that break up storms almost scream "artificial." Definitely think there are going to be some wild things going on in their part of the Cognitive Realm.

Your statement is correct, however, I believe there's a WoB out there that, similar to how allomancy can be used to "fuel" feruchemy, feruchemy should theoretically, in some fashion, be able to be used to "fuel" allomancy. When you drain a metalmind, you're pulling Investiture into your physical form that is, by virtue of its focus metal, in the correct "shape" to be used for its corresponding allomantic power. For example a steel compounder should theoretically be able to fuel, or possibly augment, their steel pushing by drawing on their steelminds in lieu of burning/flaring their swallowed steel reserves. Pretty sure the physics/quirks of this process aren't canon yet and haven't officially appeared on-screen, so for the time being it's not a good explanation for how Wax used the Bands, but it could become a retroactive explanation in the future. Though the more elegant explanation will probably always be: "There were a lot of steel flakes in the vials he stole"

You just have to be careful to not starve to death; tapping mental speed is known to cause hunger. Compounding it without access to feruchemic bendalloy might be inadvisable...

Welcome to the Shard! You make a compelling argument, I think it's pretty clear Lightsong didn't play his hand very well if his intent was to live a long life (though, technically, it probably wasn't). That said, not everyone in a story gets to be smart and exercise good judgement all the time. The first Mistborn trilogy explores this with Vin (the main character if you haven't read it yet) as part of her character arc. She occasionally makes bad calls and suffers embarrassment and fallout for them; it's a harsh but fair system. Keep in mind also that Lightsong was probably being guided by his emerging memory of the vision of the future he had when he Returned; subconsciously, he knew he needed to get captured.

I've tried reconciling the scar with known astronomical phenomenon but alas, my specialty lies not in astrophysics... My best guess is that something is causing that region of the space to age/decay much more rapidly than the rest of the Cosmere, resulting in something similar to a loose cluster of red giants. Any astronomers on the forums today?

The main reason, as I see it, that it may be impossible to store stormlight using feruchemical nicrosil is that it's unclear how Connected the stormlight is to the surgebinder upon being inhaled. For example, you can't touch someone and store their Investiture using nicrosil, you can only store your Investiture. Does stormlight "belong" to a surgebinder upon being breathed in, or is it just being channeled (funneled?) through them? There are some subtleties to the systems that can potentially make converting Investiture between magic systems fairly complicated. Now, if you could find a way to store "blank" Investiture into a metalmind along with "blank" Connection (like the translation medallions used by the southern scadrians) it might be possible to fuel any local magic system from the metalmind. This is speculative however, as it may literally just be impossible to create/store blank Investiture, and Connection might not be enough to convert blank Investiture (assuming it exists) into the form required by a local magic system.

I think our mission is clear, we need to start spiking those dang aviar.

Do we have hard confirmation that hemalurgy uses exactly the same foci as the other metallic arts? Also...I would argue that Sel and Scadrial have many foci. Tin and aluminum and different Aons can't exactly be used interchangeably, similar to Honor spren and Cryptics.

Well, Harmony's power is a form of Investiture, and Stormlight, as near as I can tell, is also a form of Investiture. In order to fuel one magic system with Investiture from another magic system, you simply have to "squeeze" it into the right shape to fit the correct focus. (It's super easy with compounding, since allomancy and feruchemy literally use the same foci.) My scenarios are quite speculative, any number of new revelations could render them impossible, but to clarify, yes, you absolutely can convert one "type" of Investiture to another "type." How difficult it would be is not being commented on right now because Sanderson isn't ready to canonize it. (I speculate that this is because the rules and limitations of all of the magic systems haven't been fully decided.)

Well, if nothing else, a nicrosil ferring with access to surgebinding might be able to poke their head outside during a highstorm and absorb, then subsequently store, a massive amount of investiture that they could then draw upon at will for fueling their surges. This would still technically be using stormlight to fuel the surges, but it would be mega convenient. Alternatively, a windrunner-mistborn might be able to burn a hemalurgic spike that had been charged with another windrunner's surges to use harmony's Investiture to fuel their own surgebinding. But...even if this worked, we have confirmation from WoB that burning hemalurgic spikes causes permanent changes to one's spirit web, so it would probably be a bad idea unless you really, really, knew what you were doing... The extreme and super unlikely version = nicrosil-compounding-surgebinder. They breath in stormlight, then store it in a metal mind that they then burn and compound, allowing them to convert Harmony's Investiture into raw Stormlight that they can then draw upon to fuel their surges. Hoid and Kelsier are probably the only characters in the Cosmere who could reasonably accomplish such a feat though, and only if they got their hands on a high spren or an honor blade. (I sort of doubt this will happen, but...who knows?)

Well, as previous posters have pointed out, between hemalurgy and feruchemy, removing his Connection to Scadrial (either permanently or temporarily) should be a fairly trivial process.

True. Conventional wisdom is that he either needs a new physical body that he can somehow possess using hemalurgy, or, and more likely in my opinion, he needs to re-establish his connection to the Physical Realm so he can transition between realms using a Perpindicularity like other worldhoppers. Presumably he's already done one of these things.

Some things to keep in mind: Pre-industrial society birth-rates are crazy high compared to what we're generally used to, so following a desolation we could expect typical couples, who essentially have access to as much farmland as they want, to bear a dozen kids or more. It's unlikely for there to be any serious wars in the 2 generations following a desolation due to the recent global alliance among mankind. (there are some real-world statistics on the likelihood of wars breaking out between formerly allied nations as a function of time that are more precise, but this is a decent rule of thumb I think) Roshar is so heavily Invested that sickness and disease are relatively uncommon and people live unusually long (there are several WoB on this, just too lazy to track them down at the moment.) Meaning re-population is much easier than IRL, where pre-industrial societies generally face extremely high infant mortality rates due to disease. Farmland doesn't get exhausted on Roshar in the same manner as on Earth because of the nutrient-rich crem that is spread over the land something like twice a week. Between Soulcasting and essentially-inexhaustible-farmland, practically everything is a renewable resource on Roshar. In regards to OP's question, in previous desolations, we've been given the impression that a significant portion of the human combatants were armed with little more than simple spears/hammers, leather armor, and basic battlefield training before being pitted against giant stone godzillas. Think of it this way: If you had a few months to organize everyone in your neighborhood to fight a single Rock-Godzilla, using only bronze-age tools and concepts (IE: no modern engineering, physics, or military theory) what percentage of your neighborhood do you think would survive the fight? I would think 10% would be pretty generous...

@king of nowhere As I see it, giving up the power is only "a way of avoiding responsibility" if you subscribe to the belief that Harmony has a moral imperative to use the power for the benefit of Scadrians at large. This argument has some real merit, particularly if you consider the fact that Harmony can, in some capacity, literally see and pick between complex alternative futures and has, as far as we know, a good track record of moral behavior. The water gets murky however when you consider that Sazed makes mistakes, can't (at least for the time being ) be held accountable by his subjects, and his ability to predict the future is not perfect. The argument we've built in this thread is somewhat similar to that discussed by Hoid and Frost in The Letter (for any not familiar with The Letter, it is composed of a set of epigraphs in WoR). Critique of the arguments set in spoiler tag because there could be some minor spoilers for those who haven't read Stormlight Archive. While there's certainly no right answer, I think it's interesting that, as I see it, more people on this thread seem to instinctively favor Hoid's argument. In the context of the Cosmere I'm personally inclined to lean towards Frost's way of thinking while simultaneously recognizing that it wouldn't make for a good story if too many characters in the Cosmere supported it.

Obviously we can't say for sure yet where Kelsier has been, but...we're talking about the Survivor of Death, who, apparently, has access to the powers of a fullborn, strong Connection to Ruin and vast knowledge of Hemalurgy, a magic system that has been identified both in-book and by WoB to be likely to have consequences to the Cosmere at large in the future. When you can steal/store/compound the powers, abilities, and attributes of other cosmere inhabitants, it would almost seem weird to not compulsively explore other worlds. The last time we saw Kelsier, he was still mostly sane...but even at his best, he was a bit of a psychopath who literally enjoyed murdering people. I'd like to think he isn't hunting and harvesting other world-hoppers, but I honestly don't think we can rule it out yet.

@Felt Title updated to be friendlier to new readers casually browsing the forums. I can't remember offhand what the current spoiler policy is for era 1. If you feel like the title still violates the spirit of the rules I can take another crack at it, thanks!

Agreed. One of the Ones Above fakes his death by pretending to choke and suffocate. The simplest way this could be done convincingly is by a feruchemist storing breath. Since the Ones Above are a people we've reportedly seen before, this makes Scadrians the best bet for the time being. As an additional note, the machine The Ones Above use to track the birds sounds a lot like a mechanized form of bronze allomancy...

To your second point, I believe Sanderson also confirmed that spren, much like people, typically possess strong Connection to the planet where they were "born." This Connection makes it just difficult enough for spren to leave their homeworld to account for the fact that spren sightings outside of the Rosharan system will be rare if they ever even happen on screen. Bonded Radiant spren with strong Connection to things other than their planet should have an easier time traversing worlds.

Considering that allomancer Jak was almost turned into a koloss, and weve seen koloss blooded mistings, I wouldn't be shocked to see misting and feruchemist Koloss in The Lost Metal. It's been hinted at for quite some time.

My only real remaining qualm with Sazed is that, on occasion, he unapologetically leads people by the nose to do his bidding without any claim to divinity. He groomed and emotionally abused Wax from a young age all the way to the end of BoM...was it for an overwhelmingly greater good? Yes. But I still think it's an abuse of power. Sazed, by almost happenstance, obtained tremendous magical powers and abilities to sculpt the cosmere around himself. In my opinion, winning the Investiture lottery doesn't grant a man the right of dominion over his peers. If Sazed wanted to truly exemplify harmony and trust in free will, he would splinter his power and step down as God. Trellists believe that metalborn should rule over regular humans because they possess more of Harmonys Investiture. I think this is a morally repugnant mechanism for leading a civilization, but it's not that different from how Sazed leads all of Scadrial. Sazed's pretty words and good intentions don't give him a right to Godhood.

@The One Who Connects , thanks, I recall hearing that Sanderson was changing the way Savantism works, but I haven't read through the actual explanations or speculations regarding what that's actually going to entail. Wasn't sure if the existence of feruchemical savants had somehow been confirmed without my knowledge. I agree with number 2) being the most likely, I probably shouldn't have listed those three possibilities as if they were equally plausible. We actually have an example of the metalic arts being tremendously affected by the user's perception: In Wax's scene where he faces down another coinshot twinborn in the Village, he sees only one allomantic line connecting him to the bullet he's pushing on specifically because he was thinking of the bullet as a single piece of metal...In a moment of inspiration, he recalls knowledge from his past that bullets are actually assembled from 3 separate metal components, the bullet, the casing, and the firing pin. After this revelation, the line immediately splits into 3 separate lines that he can push or release individually. Further, creating a Hemalurgic spike requires that the user be intending to make a hemalurgic spike (IE: it can't be done accidentally), and feruchemic gold is affected by the user's perception to some degree. Option 3) is possible in my mind, but I feel like it's more likely they would simply be able to control their feruchemy more precisely and efficiently, as this would be more consistent with how double-allomancy has been shown to function in inquisitors, Vin, and Zane.

Lets look at what we know: Wayne is a misting. There's a chance he's a descendant of Spook or some other member of Kelsier's crew that ended up founding a noble house. The other possibility is that his power comes from a pre-catacendre noble-line that ended up mixing with the general population. The speed bubbles Wayne makes are significantly smaller than Marasi's; it is unclear if this is because bendalloy bubbles are naturally much smaller than cadmium bubbles, or because his genes granting allomancy are much more diluted than Marasi's. From what we know of how the sDNA governing allomancy is passed on between generations, the non-allomancer offspring of a misting have a lower chance of passing allomancy onto their children than their allomancer siblings. Meaning that one of Wayne's ancestors within the last few generations was almost certainly an allomancer, probably one of his parents or grandparents. There's no mention of Wayne's father being twinborn when he's discussed, which would have been a weird omission given the context. Wayne grew up in the Roughs Wayne killed a man in Far Dorest at age 16 and appears to have been living more-or-less on his own Far Dorest appears to be at least 75 miles from the nearest canal stop (in the city of Isaeuc's Bend) Far Dorest appears to be over 100 miles form the nearest train station (in the city of True Madil) Wayne's gang of relatively unorganized petty criminals probably didn't travel far, as doing so would require significant resources given the lack of infrastructure. Wayne probably didn't travel to Far Dorest on his own initiative/resources and his gang probably didn't take him there, so he was probably either born there or a parent/guardian brought him there and died, abandoned him, or for some reason quit supporting him prior to the murder. Wayne's father was a feruchemist, meaning he was of Terris descent. Mixing of allomantic and feruchemical bloodlines is rare and discouraged in Terris society, so it would be unusual if both of Wayne's parents were of Terris descent, as this would mean that one or both of them already carried the genetic code for both allomancy and feruchemy. Terris born in the Village don't seem to have last names so it's entirely possible Wayne's dad doesn't have a last name. Last names on Scadrial seem to follow the common convention of being passed down from father to child. Under this convention, if the child is illegitimate or the father has no last name, the child may instead be given the mother's last name. Claude Aradel, previous Constable General of Elendel and non-misting, has a last name. He is a descendant of Goradel, a character who appeared in FE. His last name appears to have evolved from the common feudal convention of attaching a modifying phrase to the end of a person's name to reference their parentage. IE: Aradel looks like a shortened evolution of the phrase: "Son/Daughter of Goradel, or more likely, "O'Goradel." O'Gora- and A'ra- are, linguistically, relatively similar. Few people could read or write following the Catacendre so this evolution seems plausible. This means that most non-Terris in northern Scadrial who know who their parents are probably have last names. From all this, I would propose the following: Wayne probably knows his parent's names. One or more parents or guardians shared knowledge of Feruchemy and Allomancy with Wayne at some point. At least one of Wayne's parents probably had a last name that, by typical Scadrian social convention, he would be entitled to use. So why hasn't it been used on-screen? Several reasons come to mind: Sanderson literally just forgot to ever use it or couldn't find a place where one character would want/need to refer to Wayne by his last name Wayne thinks the name sounds stupid Wayne doesn't use the name because he doesn't feel a strong familial attachment to it Wayne thinks the idea of last names is silly and needless TLDR; Considering how much we know about Wayne, it's super weird we don't know his full name...

That would certainly be interesting. I'm thinking about a tin ferring storing the sight from one eye or the hearing from one ear or a gold ferring constantly storing health from a specific organ or system while loading up on medicine to help counteract the reduced function (probably less plausible). My bet would be that selective tapping (great phrase by the way ) would: Require being a feruchemical savant (do we actually know if savantism is possible in feruchemy?) Require having a very detailed understanding of feruchemy (knowledge and perception can influence magic system rules in the Cosmere after all; see: Awakening) Only be achievable for a ferring/feruchemist who has received a hemalurgic spike carrying a power they already have