Spoolofwhool

My thoughts are that the Unmade are somewhat known in Vorinism, but like dark gods who are watching over the Voidbringers. Overall, what they are, what they can doing, or much details aren't that well-known.

I think the Graphic Novel only says eight ranks, which makes sense.

Another point. Mistings have more safeguards in place than mistborns when it comes to burning alloys. They won't get sick from burning poor composition alloys because they wouldn't be able to burn. Therefore, to make this work you would have to skew the composition of the metalmind very close to allomantic steel, which would probably "corrupt" most of the reserves.

Stormlight existed before Cultivation and Honor invested, if I recall a WoB correctly, just in a different form. I feel like it is more a property of Roshar, and Honor and Cultivation just added investiture to it.

I'll be honest, I don't consider what happened to Szeth to be a revival. Jasnah, yeah, but she isn't major; she's tertiary.

Allomancy was the original intention. Probably nothing I imagine. I am interested in the chemical result as well though. It would revert to a gas once the pressure is gone right?

What happensize when you burn hydrogen though?

There could've been a more explicit warning I guess.

That's why I search using keywords instead of tags.

There's a more recent one which basically flat-out says anyone with breath can awaken.

Possibly, but I doubt it. Sounds to be more in-line with his previous WoB of someone needing to get the ability to awaken, then he might have changed his plans for it and how it works. Also, I'm fairly certain Vasher isn't turning stormlight into Breath, just absorbing the Investiture directly. Finally, Nalthis.

Also, I doubt Preservation's betrayal occurred immediately after they made Scadrial. They made it, then Leras wanted humans, then he betrayed Ati.

They have blood. OreSeur was bleeding after he was hit with coins in WoA. Also, hemalurgy requires blood to function. I presume they can control the location of blood within them which is why we don't see it spill out much.

Why are you assuming a person personal beliefs are incompatible with realmatic understanding and knowledge of shards? Or are you saying the 17thShard forces you to abandon them?

Possibly. However, we have been given a WoB as to why Rayne is shattering shards. Before becoming a vessel, he was an extremely selfish person. Combined with a shard which causes him to hate others, he began to loath any competition. Therefore, he began to destroy anything which could match his power, which are currently the other shards.

I think there's a paraphrased WoB floating around somewhere that does say that the Heralds used to be able to draw power without needing to breath in stormlight. Could be wrong though and have just read too many theories instead. My theory is that while the Oathpact was not created with combating Odium and his forces in mind, there was still a need for leaders and fighters. My theory is that the Oathpact gave the Heralds power so that they could lead and protect the Rosharans in their new world, so offensive power was needed. Also, blades are fairly unambiguous as weapons, unlike metal sticks.

I've always taken surgebinding to be end-neutral because you have to gather the stormlight then use it, like awakening. No matters. Good write-up. Makes sense. Playdoh was fun to play with when I was a kid, not to eat though. Not everyone can eat rocks like a horneater. I've known spren are the important aspect of the manifestations of Roshar for awhile, but mentioning gemstones just made be think of something. Conjoined fabrials, like spanreeds, operate by taking a gem then splitting it in two. Does this mean you're splitting a spren in two, or are there two spren that are linked? Weird thought. Storming weird. Brandon has referred to voidbinding as a different system so I feel like it's definitely separate.

I believe shards can directly attack spiritual components as well, like Nightblood, sprenblades and honorblades, therefore forcing someone to the Beyond. The essay on Sel makes it sound like that was what happened to Skai and Aona.

Good question. The way I see it, the cognitive would desire to be the opposing gender. In that case, the question is what the ideal of the soul would be. I feel like the ideal of the soul would be tied to the gender they are born as, so they wouldn't be able to change their gender unless they somehow change their soul. I'm not too sure though. Would be a good question for Brandon I think.

The Well of Ascension was in a cave. That was a different pool.

I'm of two minds on this. The first is that if Odium is freed this arc, then it would be a fairly rapid moving story, which I don't mind, to reach it. I think this because looking at what is probably planned for the fight against Odium is: bringing about the True Desolation and showing off all of the voidbringer forces, then defeating them and convincing Odium he can lose, then appointing a champion to fight his champion. A lot of stuff, and we only have three books (huge books mind you). So it does feel like it should continue through the ten books. At the same time though, looking at what is left to be done, I feel like dragging it on until book 10 would be a bit too long. The books are big, and the story looks to be progressing fairly well. In addition, the time skip in-between 1-5 and 6-10 makes it feel a lot like a shift in gears is planned, like they beat Odium, then are picking up the pieces when something else occurs that shakes Roshar. Also, the story does have a rushed feeling, like a race is in progress. Humanity is pushing to survive a world-ending event, and the only people with firsthand knowledge on the matter and who were the prime line of defense are mad. I feel like it can be run fairly well. Personally, I would be more interested in Odium's leaving/defeat being the climax for 5, then 6-10 is building up the pieces and discovering what other secrets left behind. However, I agree that a book 10 ending for the whole Odium arc makes more sense. In any case, I'm still of the opinion that if the gas giants are important to the ending climax, Brandon would've seeded them already, which by all accounts he has not. Therefore, I will be surprised (pleasantly) if they end up being relevant to the greater SA storyline.

Interesting question. So it looks like we're looking at both the ability to change yourself and forgery. I'm going to break down my understanding of each. Changing yourself physically/spiritually (ex. gold feruchemy, stormlight): This works because your soul has an ideal it wants to be, a perfect self. When you trigger the ability to change, your soul starts using investiture to change yourself so that you are that ideal. However, during this process, the ideal is filtered through your cognitive self, which then limits how much change occurs. So even if your ideal spiritual self is a three-armed octupus man with ram horns, your cognitive will still think of yourself as a boring human, and you won't become your soul's ideal. Forgery: Forgery is process which is controlled by two absolute parameters, outside of lesser ones such as the forgers ability. The first of these parameters is how well the forgery takes to the object. This is done by convincing the cognitive of an alternate, plausible way of being. If the cognitive mind accepts the soulstamp, then essentially you've changed the filter. What happens next is what I presume to be the same as a stormlight healing, where a change is induced and the cognitive filters the investiture, reconstructing the body and creating a false soul over top of the existing one. As long as the false cognitive exists, the false soul is maintained. However, the true soul is always striving to reach its ideal, so it will reject the forgery. {conjecture}. The second absolute parameter is investiture. As the WoB @Khyrindor provided states, the appears to be a limit to how much investiture can be drawn per forgery. Therefore, there is a limit on the complexity of the fake soul, therefore limiting connections to objects and other significant shifts from the normal soul such as the ability to perform manifestations of investiture. Answering the question: First of all, the short answer is: what is described is impossible. On Roshar, forgery wouldn't work so Shai wouldn't be able to do anything. Secondly, long answer, assuming a work-around is made, such as being able to draw from another source of investiture in order to drive the forgery: It's possible, but still very hard. The first point I'll cover is the redundancy you've made. If you can make the forgery work, both investiture-wise and making the stamp work, then there's is no need for the stormlight healing to induce a change, as the forgery would've done that. If however you're trying to ask whether you could then use the stormlight healing to permanently affect the change, I would say no. The reason being is that there wouldn't be an opportunity to. Either you have that forgery cognitive which could filter the stormlight healing to create your brute, but then at the same time the forgery would've already affected the change, or the forgery breaks and the filter no longer exists for that to happen. Second point, whether you could change a KR, I'm assuming either to another order or remove their power altogether. The latter would be easier I think, but both would be complicated because of the close bond with the spren. To remove, I would imagine that you would just have to craft them to be in a state where the spren would no longer be able to bond them, or accept them as a KR, and would break the bond on its own, stripping them of their powers. I imagine this would cause them to remain without powers even after the forgery wears off until a spren rebonds them. Changing the orders would actually be the same way, except you would be changing them to a state where a spren of the desired order would want to bond them, then you would have to wait for the spren to do so. You would then have to keep the forgery maintained. However, this would be both difficult and crippling I would imagine, because as @Dunkum points out, investiture interferes with investiture. Even if you did use stormlight to power the forgery, chances are that the process would change it slightly, creating interference. Likewise, stamping a stormlight filled radiant in general would be difficult. I also don't think you would be able to power the forgery using the target's investiture, you would need to be connected to your own source. Anyhow, that's my two twenty cents. tl;dr: Basic premise doesn't work because distance, more advanced could but interference and other things make it more difficult.

Mistborn Secret History spoilers

There areally a number of others which has Brandon stating Shadesmar as a term for the entire Cognitive Realm so I'm going to keep using it that way.

Steel/iron pushing/pulling is a gradient scale on invested metals. The most invested they are, the weaker the steel lines, and therefore the weaker the ability to push it. Eventually, the object is so invested that it stops creating metal lines. Example of this is when Wax tried to view the bands of mourning. I don't think we've actually had an opportunity to see someone's viewpoint on pushing on a normal metalmind, but since the strength of metal lines is a function of how well you can push on something, Imy fairly certain you would see a weaker line for invested objects. First nitpick. Shadesmar is a term for the entire Cognitive Realm, not just the Rosharan region, which is what I presume you're using it for. I don't think metals on Scadrial are more invested than normal. It think it had to do with the nature of the planet and its influence over its cognitive realm combined with the fact that metals are a significant factor.