Ciridae

Brandon has said that the sceptre functions as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the different magics on Sel. As far as I know we don't really know how it works, but I imagine that it is able to use one magic system to fuel another. But the sceptre is useless unless you have access to one type of Selish investiture in the first place.

Do we know where Elantris and The Emperor's Soul are compared to each other in the timeline? Hoid stole the moon sceptre, which implies he has access to one of the magic systems and wants to, for lack of a better word, translate between one and another. All magic systems on Sel are based on nationality, which I assume translates into something having to do with Identity or Connection. If he figured out how to access one of the systems he should be able to use the same method to gain access to the others. If I were Hoid I would figure out how to gain access to the system with the highest output of investiture, presumably AonDor, and instead of repeating the initiation process for each system just steal a translator, which is what I think he did. If there are no issues with the timeline, and unless he just stole the moon sceptre as a souvenir from the Rose Empire, Hoid may already be an Elantrian. If the Rose Empire is far enough away from Elantris nobody would have noticed any physical tells, and closer to Elantris I'm sure he could use lightweaving to hide them, if he even cared to do so. Off-world he wouldn't need to, as Galadon demonstrates.

Not only that but he also retrieved one of Shallan's sketches from the bottom of the ocean.

@The One Who Connects I didn't mean to imply that your theory was stretching, I like it a lot actually. I meant I was stretching it when suggesting that the amethysts in the scene could foreshadow him becoming a Willshaper. I hope I didn't come across as rude I haven't seen that WoB before but I agree that it most likely refers to Hoid. The apothecary probably wasn't a lightweaver when Kaladin met him, so fingers crossed it's foreshadowing. On the other hand like @CaptainRyan said, maybe Brandon is trolling us a little and we're supposed to obsess and freak out about the words he uses in that chapter but in the end they don't have a deeper meaning.

@Calderis That's a really good point, Syl was not as aware at that point as she was in WoR, and even then the only time she noticed anything was during the duel when she notices something strange, presumably Pattern, but never comments on it again to my knowledge. @Green Hoodie Mistborn Thank you The only other thing I can think of at the top of my head is that the amethysts in the water at the king's feast. I've seen people argue that Elhokar could be a Willshaper being unreliable and such, but I think that one is really stretching it, I don't think that actually counts. But I'm sure there are other casual mentions of stones or essences hiding in plain sight around some minor characters that could foreshadow their role in future books.

In chapter 17 of WoK Kaladin visits the apothecary to buy supplies for the bridgemen. A couple of words stood out to me that made me think the beginning of this chapter is foreshadowing that the apothecary could become another Lightweaver. Description of the shop, emphasis added: A little on the nose, but this could still be a coincidental use of the two words. A few lines down though: Garnet, the polestone associated with Shalash and the Lightweavers, and the color of Pattern's Shardblade-form glow. What an odd choice of stone to light a room with. And what is the chapter heading? A Bloody, Red Sun. Blood as in the essence that can be soulcast by using a garnet and the first essence Shallan ever Soulcasts. Then another minor name drop, maybe but hopefully not coincidental, right at the beginning of the chapter when the apothecary is being described: Again, strong choice of words that we as readers should associate with Lightweavers. Finally if we look at the whole scene, what is the apothecary doing? He's disguising himself, changing his appearance. Not only that, he does it to lie to his customers, to trick them. And the show doesn't stop with him. His whole shop is an illusion designed to trick naive and superstitious customers into buying lovepotions and wards. At first I thought the man was already a Lightweaver, but Syl would have noticed something odd about him, and Pattern said he was the only one chosen by the Crypics to study humans. So I take this chapter as foreshadowing. With the desolation well on it's way I'm sure the spren will send more of their kind to bond and I'd be willing to bet the apothecary will be another Lightweaver.

While she regressed down to before the first oath after killing her mother, she didn't kill Pattern. I'm not sure what the consensus is on the time frame between regressing and speaking the first oath, but to me they were still bonded. She did not break the bond, nor did Pattern. So while she may not have gotten access to surges due to lack of advancement in the bond, she would have received other benefits of the bond. As you say, for most of her life she's had her mnemonic abilities which to me proves that the bond to Pattern was still active to an extent, even if she couldn't use stormlight. We would have to differentiate between her ability to take Memories, which should be her resonance and caused by the surges, and her ability to reproduce her Memories, which I ascribe to the spren bond itself.

Mistborn spoilers, So perhaps there's a point at which additions of investiture like spren bonds can only minimally boost intelligence, so sentient creatures like santhidyn get closer to sapience while humans get minor boosts (inquisitors don't get as large a boost as kandra because they are already sapient). I'd like to revise my point in Shallan's boost in intelligence. It's not that she can remember something incredibly well, its that she can replicate a memory with exceptional skill. This woukd still fall under visual-spacial intelligence. She may just be talented, but I think if Pattern ever left she would notice her skills decreasing. Kaladin also always thought his skill with the spear was pure talent and practice, and while he was talented, like Shallan is a talented artist, I believe the spren bond boosted their ability. After thinking a lot about this, the underlying principle of this may be why chunks of investiture, if left alone, become sentient or sapient. The amount of investiture the spren are composed of probably correlates with the level of intelligence they possess. Minor spren like painspren seem to be something like Cognitive Realm animals and seem to be sentient. Larger spren like radiant spren are fully sapient. After that, the spren grow more powerful but not necessarily more intelligent. The stormfather doesn't seem vastly more intelligent than a regular radiantspren. The point I made above about the upper limit being standard human sentience seems to apply to splinters too.

I was always a little bothered by how Shallan was saved by the santhid, it felt too much like the getting saved by a dolphin trope to me. It was credited to the unusually high intelligence of the santhid, but there was no real explanation for why it was so much smarter than most other fauna. Other greatshells seem to share this trait, chasmfiends prove to be far more intelligent than Shallan or Kaladin expected. I don't know what the consensus is on how the Tai-Na work, but the greatshell's spren saved Rysn and could 'give' her a Larkin. Minor OB sample chapter spoiler: They all have the bond with spren in common, I propose that they are the reason for the increased intelligence. We see something similar with the Listeners. In dullform they are basically helpless. It's not hard to see how a spren bond makes them more intelligent, and this is one of the few instances where we know for certain that it's the spren that causes the increase in intelligence. It's a little bit tricky for radiants, but I found something that could fit with the pattern. I recently read about the theory of multiple intelligences (link). It's a theory, not proven fact, but I thought it fit nicely with what we see in the books. Kaladin seems to gain bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. He has increased proprioception and timing, and we see the lack of it when he's without Syl. While all radiants gain increased physical enhancements through stormlight, Kaldin's abilities with the spear are not limited to times when he has access to kinetic investiture. Shallan gains mnemonic abilities, her visual-spacial intelligence is boosted. We don't know much about Jasnah but if her good sense of orientation is her perk she may fall under this category as well. IIRC other ancient lightweavers had notable musical abilities (falling under mnemonic abilities) so they may have gained musical-rhythmic intelligence. Lift seems to gain either interpersonal or verbal-linguistic abilities judging from her interaction with the street urchin. I realize that most of these perks are the result of the mixing of powers and resonance, but I think a resonance could be classified as a boost in intelligence, depending on how you define it. The biggest issue I see is that there is no evident mixing of powers in the other examples. Sorry for the wall of text, let me know what you think.

IIRC the binocular view is a result of tapping a bunch of sight at once. About pewter compounding, what keeps a double pewter twinborn from burning a piece of pewter that's a metalmind as well as regular pewter at the same time? Mistborn can burn several metals at once, I assume a pewter compounder could burn both types of pewter at the same time as well.

Is there or has there ever been a whole shard whose pure investiture gained sentience after their vessel died? As in, vessel dies, shard is not taken up by a new vessel or splintered, investiture gains sentience. Edit: I guess that's begging for a RAFO maybe it should be phrased in a way that asks if it was possible for a shard to gain sentience without a vessel.

I've been meaning to make a similar thread since I saw the link I agree, this could mean so many cool things. Do the grown lanceryn still have the ability to suck stormlight? Was their "extinction" somehow related or was it just about the gemhearts? I love Rysn already but this made me even more excited about her story. I'm not so sure she'll be a radiant after all.

@kari-no-sugata, those are good points, I agree. About figuring out in advance, if they are too broken but don't live by the ideals then they wouldn't attract a spren in the first place. If they were not cracked enough, I don't know...I believe they would attract the spren, but if the spren found no way to bond it might hover around and wait for a while and see if something causes that person to crack. I've seen speculation that this is happening to Elhokar, but I don't know if I buy it. @Calderis, I only wanted to provide an alternative to the discussion for possible cracking scenarios. I'm not saying that I believe it applies to Jasnah, but I do stand by my belief that birth-breaking could happen to anyone and it would probably make them eligible to bond a spren. Sorry for getting off topic.

If snapping on Scadrial is the same as breaking on Roshar in terms of how open the person is afterwards for investiture to get in, then anyone has the potential to become a Radiant without having any tragedy in their life. HoA spoilers: Someone may have lived a perfectly happy and sheltered life and still be broken enough. I don't believe this is the reason why any of our main Radiants are broken, but it may explain why some of the minor Radiants come to their powers. That said, I agree that there are a lot of things in life that can hurt someone enough to result in cracking. It probably also varies from person to person.

I would be so disappointed if there weren't any

Kaladin sounds very much like a lighteyed name, so that may be part of the reason, but I can't remember if Gaz already knew Kaladin's name when he started calling him lordling.

Has anybody noticed this passage from the soulcaster interlude? Doesn't this sound like she is drawing a spren capable of granting the surge of transformation to help her? We still don't really know how soulcasters and other surge fabrials work. I think it's unlikely a minor spren could grant a full surge, just as I find it unlikely that a nahel spren would be trapped in a surgebinding fabrial. What I think is that a surgebinding fabrial draws a nahel spren that briefly grants surgebinding through the fabrial instead of a radiant. What seems to contradict this theory is that Kaza is able to see spren in their CR form, like the 'beasts' that are the anticipationspren. So why doesnt she mention seeing any Inkspren or Cryptics? The only answer I can come up with is that the spren grant the surges on a spiritual level and don't actually have to be present in the CR. But that doesn't seem to fit with what we've seen of other spren. So I really don't know, I just thought I'd put this idea out there and maybe someone else has a better idea of what to make of the passage above.

Keep in mind that we are seeing this scene from Hoid's point of view. What he may call a bandolier may not actually be used for carrying ammo, but it's the closest word he has to describe accurately what Jasnah is wearing.

Really makes you wonder what savantism of the other surges looks like. What about fire Soulcasters? How would your body slowly turn into fire? And oil? What about Soulcasters that are able to create three essences? Will the body be transformed into a hybrid of the three essences? Or is it only possible to become a savant of one essence? The first quote in the OP looks like the eyes might be the result of crystal soulcasting, while the skin looks to be stone.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a WoB or something in the annotations that said that the black lake was moved underground, as in covered up, by Rashek or something similar which caused Atium geodes to form in the first place? I agree that that means the geodes themselves form the perpendicularity, it's still a lot of investiture concentrated in a relatively small area. About the limited access that traveling merchants would have had to the perpendicularity, the kandra homeland was connected to the Pits if I remember correctly. No way the kandra would entrust Atium to foreign merchants, but I could see them allowing traffic to and from the perpendicularity if it didn't reveal too much sensitive kandra info and they got something out of it. I can't think of anything a kandra might want from a worldhopping merchant other than information. I don't remember seeing anything about kandra being cosmere aware in Era 1 but Rashek was to a certain extent. Maybe there's some connection. I don't know, it seems very un-kandra to risk exposure like that for some info that they may or may not care about. But I can't imagine the merchants pulling off getting to and from the perpendicularity without the help of the kandra. On a side note, how many Atium slaves do you think ended up accidentally worldhopping? It might not be as easy to do as with an actual shardpool, but I like to imagine some of those poor guys got away.

@Extesian If I remember correctly

An axehound pup, 2000 breaths and a transportation or gravitation fabrial (if something like that exists). @hoidhunter I love the Tai-Na island idea

That's really interesting and I don't think I've seen anyone discuss this before. Maybe it's kind of an easteregg, but with Shallan seeing weird stuff in faraway places that may or may not be but probably is happening who knows? When she first lightweaves she thinks she imagined the deck being green as well. And the visions of Ash and the sailors (at least I think those were the two she saw) definitely sound supernatural. Who would the greatshellrider be? That sounds like a very dangerous sport.

Hmm. If the investiture doesn't need the crack to go through before filtering through a metal, what is the point of snapping? The way I understood it was that you're technically an Allomancer from birth, but until you snap you have no way to access preservation's investiture. So the crack itself is what lets the investiture in to power allomancy. Your points about lerasium and the medallions are solid. But I still feel like I need to point out that the only person we've seen to burn lerasium had actually snapped, remember Elend was beaten for that express purpose. So he did technically have the cracks, but was only lacking the sDNA for allomancy. For all we know, someone missing the cracks may not even be able to burn lerasium, or they might be able to burn it, but wouldn't be able to use allomancy until they had snapped. About the medallions, I may be misremembering, but as far as I remember we have only seen the use of feruchemy through them, which should not need cracks as the investiture comes from the feruchemist or person using the medallion. The two times we see someone use the bands they are being used by allomancers who already have cracks themselves. So we don't know if you could use a medallion that grants allomancy without having cracks first. If there is a WoB on the matter, that would be really helpful. I do think you are right however, and I trust your judgement, but that means that I am fundamentally misunderstanding the way that allomancy works.

@ZenBossanova My main issue with the fainlife-is-turning-stars-red theory is that in the Liar chapters we see I don't know how applicable the comparison of skullmoss to a shard really is. A shard is basically just energy attached to a consciousness, most of it in the Spiritual Realm where I doubt a star could hurt it. Maybe the fainlife has a powerful spiritual aspect as well, that could survive its physical aspect being incinerated, but I see no reason to believe that is the case.