Spoolofwhool

This was my opinion as well.

Rashek is considered to have ascended. During that time his physical body would have been vaporized, but it would've returned when the power ran out, as Leras and Ati did.

For anyone interested, here's Brandon's opinion on the matter of reviving characters.

I'm fairly certain these are the only times we're going to see resurrection. I feel like there's a WoB where he addresses that he doesn't want to give the impression that death is cheap. Next time I see a character die, I'm going to be extremely disappointed if they come back. Also, Brandon has established a hard limit on resurrection in the form of the Beyond, so it can be realistically said that no character is truly gone until we know that has happened to them. On the other hand, we know that any character who has gone to the Beyond is gone for certain.

Doesn't even need gems. Spheres would be all he needs and you can get them at good prices... ten emerald broams for only ten emerald broams... (or half a slave) I'm done.

Brandon has been nice enough to strongly imply that he meant the group of sixteen when he said force.

I was referring more in terms of impact on the characters and how I felt about the story. With Jasnah we see her perceived death has a huge impact on the characters over the course of the story, so her being revealed to be alive, while not actually a revival, will essentially be one for the characters, and have the same impact. On the other hand, Szeth wasn't confirmed to be dead by Kaladin, and was basically healed (revived sure) in barely any time at all. Therefore, his "death" will have little to no impact on the story, making his subsequent impact have little to no impact as well.

Mistborn spoilers everywhere.

If, as an author, you change your story because the fan theories are close to what you have planned, then I would lose respect for you as an author, as that shows that you care more about surprising your fans than you care about the story. I don't think it is something that should be done at all. No amount of fan theories can ever take away from the thrill of reading the ending, because no matter how much I have faith in the theory, I know that it is just that, a theory. I would still gain great pleasure in finding out that the theory is correct, but it shows that us, as readers, have been paying attention, as well as showing that the writer was able to seed the story that well.

I believe it was shown that they fed TenSoon during his imprisonment, and that it has been stated at other points that they grow some boring underground fungus to eat.

He would've had to have removed the knowledge of aluminum so that it wasn't as easy to obtain, practically impossible.

There's also another WoB that Harmony repossessed the pits where atium formed and the Well. Therefore, it feels unlikely that atium is the lost metal, especially considering how strongly it has been broadcasted in earlier books. Not impossible mind you.

You wouldn't even need to just spike powers. You could conceivably expand to spiking human attributes for slight enhancements. Mental fortitude might protect against emotional allomancy, strength to get an edge, etc. Why stop there though? Maybe there are even some animalistic traits which can be used (I think it was said you can take animal attributes. Makes sense since they have innate investiture as well.). However, I agree with Pagerunner that it would likely never become something that is majorly considered ethical. Deliberately destroying someone's soul likely be frowned upon by many. I could be wrong though; I can't remember off the top of my head what the views of the different religions are towards the soul and its purpose post-death. Also, I'll nitpick that theyou wouldn't be letting you pass after they spike out your power, the spiking would be making you pass on.

How was his agenda anything to be desired? Everything he did as a tyrant was with the intent of stopping Ruin from destroying the world. The current prophecies were corrupt so he had them eradicated to prevent anyone from repeating Alethi's mistake, which unfortunately didn't work because of Kwaan. He removed the feruchemists, assuring that his power would remain unknown. Technology would've been a threat as well so he removed. Yes, he stopped progression, but considering it was all for preventing the destruction of the world, I don't see how that demonstrates his personal views on the matter. He didn't need to get anything done; he just needed to hold the world together until he old obtain the power to fix it. This was all a stop-gap measure to ensure that their lucky escape from world destruction remained. Perhaps then he would've allowed the gears of progress to turn again, but we can't say for certain. In any case, I don't think you can pass any judgment on him on that front, since all his actions were under an insane constraint. Anyhow, hemalurgy is definitely one of the harder magics to understand. It contains little to no instinctual component unlike other magics. TLR only was able to create the Koloss, inquisitors and Kandra because Ruin told him how to. Additionally, even if TLR was as poor at progressive thinking as you are concluding, that no inquisitor was able to either is a strong indicator that it is difficult. Unlike Rashek, they actually drew from educated backgrounds, and we're likely all intelligent obligatory before being recruited.

By disdain for change, are you referring to the freeze on technological development in the Final Empire? If so, that was entirely political in order to maintain control, having nothing to do with Rashek's ability to engineer anything, or indicating anything about Rashek's personal opinion on change. Considering he was able to figure out how to engineer bacteria and alter the human DNA, albeit with the power of Preservation, I wouldn't say he wasn't competent. Also, it is stated that he constructed the political, societal, economical, judicial and bureaucratic branches of the Final Empire drawing from a number of different pre-existing systems, indicating that he was fairly receptive to change, instead of just maintaining the Terris standard he had grown up with.

This one? Doesn't seem to be the case, since it doesn't specify bondsmith, orb, or going to bind something.

The power lasted for a moment. He probably also didn't have the power to actual create everything required, nor conceptualize everything. We're talking about creating systems which were completely unlike anything else which was currently existing, unlike what he actually did, which was performs modifications on all existing systems. The power was not unlimited as you seem to think, nor did it grant him any measure of omniscience. It expanded his mind yes, and that allowed him to learn how to fine-tune the use of the power in those moments, but there is no way he could've developed systems capable of space travel in that time. The Well was breaking down over time. It was never designed to be a permanent solution. Ruin was slowly winning over time, effecting changes such as the Deepness and changing the Terris prophecices. Given time, he would've still destroyed the world, which probably would've dissolved his prison, leaving him free to kill Leras then move on to another world. This is why the periodic Hero of Ages existed, to use the power of the Well to push back his influence and maintain the prison.

You'll have to provide it because I have no recollection of seeing one.

I mean, he could've used the power of the Well to worldhop at that instance. I don't think actually creating spaceships or plans for spaceships would've been possible, too many things he would've had to figure out. Let's not forget he never actually solved any of the problems he made, just made them less significant with every change. In any case, even if he had been able to do so, it probably still would've taken centuries to reach the technological level required to create and maintain those crafts.

Okay, so the basis for the fact that identityless feruchemists can tap any key metalmind they would be able to create and tap on their own is based off of what VenDell says in BoM. Specifically: While VenDell doesn't confirm Marasi's question, the fact that he doesn't deny its possibility despite experimenting with it strongly implies to me that they managed to make it happen. Otherwise, I can't see how there would be promising results. With this, my opinion is that the lock-and-key model of identity and metalminds is fairly incorrect. Instead, I think I have a better model describing it which I came up with today. Imagine the feruchemist and the metalmind are each the open end of a hose leading to somewhere. The hoses are the exact same size and can fit perfectly end-to-end. However, identity is like a collar around the end of the hose with an irregular edge. When the identity of the feruchemist and the hose match, the collars fit together perfectly, and the hoses can seal together and the investiture can be withdrawn. However, when the collars don't fit together, then there's no perfect seal, so no investiture can be drawn. When either end doesn't have identity however, then there's no collar on that segment of hose. In this case, the hose can just bypass the collar and directly fit against the end of the other hose and investiture can be withdrawn. tl;dr Identity prevents the use of another metalmind because of interference between the different identities. When one of the parties doesn't have identity attached, then there's not interference so the metalmind can be tapped.

This doesn't sound too ground-breaking. Hasn't this been around already by virtue of the knowledge they have a greater amount of innate investiture which is why they last longer after death? My opinion is that when investiture is in a vessel, it changes the vessel to hold it more effectively. This is the basis for both savantism and ascension, with the latter being an extreme example of the former. In both cases, the investitures changes the body so it is more receptive to the investiture, which has the benefit of improving the effects the investiture has on the body. In the case of ascension the amount of investiture essentially cannot be contained at all by the physical vessel, so it removes it while maintaining the cognitive and spiritual aspects.

This is an interesting thought. I don't think this is the case though. In any case, I disagree with your initial premise that Taravangian had full deific knowledge. I don't think he was anywhere close to there, instead had the knowledge comparable to that someone with eidetic memory would have after a lifetime of studying. In any case, I don't think the future works the same way as the Cognitive and can be constrained like how you describe. In any case, I don't believe he saw the future in any regard, and what he did would be no different essentially than what a storm warden does to predict a highstorm with math, and I don't think know writing down the dates traps the coming of the highstorms. For your two scenarios, with the first little would've happened since I took Taravangian on another high-intelligence day to crack the code on the Diagram and for the second nothing would've happened since Taravangian wouldn't have remembered anything.

Not that I'm aware of.

@jofwu I'll answer your question on why it is thought an identityless Feruchemist can tap a keyed metalmind. It has to do with the discussion they had with VenDell at the start of BoM and ends with my opinion that the key and lock analogy is kind of incorrect.

This question has been asked of Brandon. The response as far as I'm aware is: "I don't want to canonize it." (Paraphrased)