cometaryorbit

Probably Sazed would have to do something to allow a Feruchemist to draw on the Mists, and then that person would have to Feruchemically store it in a metalmind. I don't know if Nicrosil would work though -- it seems to store the Innate Investiture of powers. (Though who knows, we haven't seen a Twinborn with that power yet, maybe if you have a source of 'external' Kinetic Investiture like Allomancy you could store that too? If so, then a nicrosilmind could probably store mist.) I'm not sure how much use it would actually be, though. The mists are kind of "raw" Investiture, but putting them in a metal would probably constrain them to a single effect/power based on the structure of that metal, on the "key to power" principle the Metallic Arts use. It might be a way to recharge nicrosil metalminds without actually de-powering yourself... but once the Southern unsealed metalmind technology becomes understood, you could probably just do that by giving an unsealed nicrosilmind to a Nicroburst Misting and having them Compound. If Nicrosil didn't work, it might require a godmetal or godmetal alloy of some sort, which might not be usable by modern Ferrings.

And, even if this is correct, the spren itself might not actually split in the same sense as a Radiantspren forming two Shardblades simultaneously. In the quantum analogy, an electron doesn't become multiple electrons, there's just a certain probability of finding it in any of multiple locations - but if the wavefunction isn't collapsed it's kind-of in a blurred state of all those probabilities being true/not true. (In the Copenhagen interpretation anyway). The same might apply here, the spren being "wavefunction blurred" overlap of being in this half and being in that half, but not actually becoming two spren each in a separate ruby piece.

Maybe, not sure we can infer that... Koloss can eat almost anything, there's a comment that it appears that filling their bellies is more important than actual nutritional value. So they wouldn't need stockpiled grain or other human-edible foods. TLR might have had nearly all his human population farming and fought with almost entirely koloss forces. Possible... but we have only a few sentences of a whole book, and Tindwyl is only mentioning the things relevant to the current mystery. I actually don't think the fact that things were different before the Ascension was secret or considered dangerous by TLR. Vin thinks: (Mistborn: The Final Empire, Chapter 6) This seems to imply that the pre-Ascension world being ash-free is 'common knowledge'.

Somewhat managed herding of animals that remain wild is... not completely impossible, Native Americans appear to have done something of the sort with bison, using fire to expand their habitat (good grazing land) and to corral them into ambushes/off cliffs etc. But chasmfiends are not at all well suited for it, they aren't likely to run away from anything and their habitat doesn't seem nearly as flammable as Earth grasslands. And they're not herd animals. They have those things, but there is no understanding of the principles behind them - rotspren being visible has allowed them to figure out what things prevent infection, which is really good for medicine, but it's a trial and error thing. They don't understand the principles so they can't do the kind of extrapolation from them that would be needed to figure out things like synthetic gemstones (or explosives, or artificial fertilizers ...) I don't think the current Rosharans understand how the Urithiru fabrial-technology works. Navani's floating platform from WOR is kind of similar to the Urithiru elevators, but it doesn't appear to be based on the same principles. The food production via Soulcasters is the rote use of ancient relics -- they have no understanding of the principles. Anyway these are magical principles that won't help with things like chemistry (and I'm pretty sure you can't Soulcast Polestones). That's the thing about Roshar, it has a lot of very powerful things (Shardblades, Shardplate, Soulcaster fabrials) and advanced knowledge (antiseptics etc) in an otherwise very technologically limited society. Military technology is middle medieval at best (crossbows are rare, no gunpowder, "plate and mail" is the best sub-Shardplate armor technology rather than Renaissance full plate) but with vastly better logistics and communication due to Soulcasters and spanreeds. But there isn't the level of deeper understanding of principles that would allow extrapolation. The artifabrians are having the beginning of a scientific revolution though. But this still seems limited to the 'magic tech' of fabrials and may not be expanding into botany, zoology, physics, chemistry etc.

Yeah, Splinters effectively are lesser Shards. It's just a terminology thing, the Shards by definition are the big 16. I don't think there is any fundamental difference except scale. I think this is true, but the Stormfather probably isn't the best example since he is both a major Splinter (really powerful spren) and also the Cognitive Shadow of Tanavast, Honor's Vessel. So he's more directly connected to Honor than is usual. Syl is probably a better example (she does describe herself as a little piece of a god at one point). When you get into the more "blended" spren types though (things like ashspren and lightspren that are more mixes of Honor and Cultivation, not as strongly aligned to one or the other as honorspren or cultivationspren) I think it's less direct. Sure, the power still "belongs" to Honor in some Spiritual Realm beyond-space-and-time sense. But the same might apply to the major Shards in relation to Adonalsium.

Yeah, if he had successfully eliminated Feruchemy, I doubt he would have oppressed the Terris. I had figured that the Inquisitors (as a Hemalurgic 'species') were older, and what happened then was the establishment of the Canton of Inquisition as an organizational structure within the Steel Ministry. Before that they might have reported directly to TLR without involving the Ministry at all (until TLR changes it at the end of book 1, the Canton of Orthodoxy is nominally 'senior', though I doubt the Inquisitors listened very much), they might have been part of the Canton of Orthodoxy, or something else. Yes, Sazed's timeline suggests the original "violent purges" of Feruchemy among the Terris began in the 3rd century or thereabouts. Probably the 6th century stewardship program & Canton of Inquisition reorganization was a response to the continuing failure of those purges to eliminate Feruchemy. Very, very early - Tindwyl's biography of King Wednegon refers to them, and it also mentions food shortages caused by the Deepness, so this is a few years after the Ascension at most. (Which is a bit odd because elsewhere TLR's conquests seem to be implied to have taken far longer...)

Well, yes mostly, though I think Feruchemical gold Health is a bit more than just rate of healing. It follows the general Cosmere rules about healing, which means it's tied to your Cognitive/Spiritual self. That's why it can regrow limbs and such, yet Era 1 Feruchemists stayed eunuchs.

It's a pretty huge difference in degree though. Era 1 Scadrian metallurgy is maybe a couple of decades ahead of their base technology. It looks much more primitive since they don't have gunpowder, but most of their basic infrastructure is early 19th centuryish, and their metallurgy is ... maybe 1840s era or thereabouts? Synthetic gemstones on Roshar would be putting fairly high 19th century chemistry into an otherwise medieval technology. The level of understanding of chemistry needed would imply a ton of other technologies which we don't see. But you don't need gemstones that size for this purpose. From the pictures in Navani's notebook modern fabrials often have quite small gemstones. Well - not really. If the gemheart size is related to animal size, then breeding for larger gemhearts means larger overall animals, which means more food and probably means longer maturation times. You would get larger gems, but fewer of them. And you couldn't get to chasmfiend size just by selective breeding anyway, they need special spren bonds to survive at all at that size. Plus how do you control something that size? Maybe, but there are fabrial machines that include multiple gemstones (like Navani's emotion bracelet). Does the size of individual gemstones matter, or is it just the total mass / Stormlight capacity of all the gemstones available? (Individual gemstone size does matter for Soulcasting, which is why chasmfiends' emerald gemhearts are so valuable. But Soulcaster "fabrials" don't actually appear to work on the same principles as modern, artifabrian-made fabrials.)

Well, I think less an absolute improvement, more an adaptation to different fighting conditions. Your classic swashbuckling era, Golden Age of Piracy and Three Musketeers and such is 1600s-early 1700s, after guns had made plate armor obsolete, so swords became lighter and quicker. A couple of centuries earlier (late Middle Ages/Renaissance), plate armor was extremely effective protection - often fights came down to grappling, trying to stab through the helmet's eye gaps and such. Armor might be an impediment when fighting on foot, but the protection was very good vs same period weapons. The longsword of this era (late medieval/Renaissance) was more of an all-round weapon. It had more mass, and was used in a variety of special anti-armor techniques ('half-sword', 'mordhau' - using the hilt as a sort of warhammer) which look very bizarre to modern eyes. Roshar is more medieval. No gunpowder at all, and crossbows seem rather rare (they are mentioned in Kholinar and Thaylen City in OB, but never on the Shattered Plains or anywhere else in WOK/WOR, so they're either very new & haven't reached the front yet, or not used in "field" warfare much for some reason).

Dalinar in his younger years (OB interludes) says Plate over Blade, since a Plate user can survive being hit by a Blade, but can wield huge heavy hammers and such that are just as much an one-hit kill as a Shardblade. The accessibility argument does seem to favor the Blade though.

I think the spren is trapped first... But it may not be a matter of actually dividing the spren itself. There are analogies between how spren work and quantum phenomena (flamespren being "fixed" by the act of measuring them). I think what's going on with pairing fabrials is meant to be analogous to quantum entanglement, "spooky action at a distance". If that's correct, then the spren may be kind of in a "Schrodinger's Cat" both-and-neither state, kind of attached to both halves of the gem, but not 100% in either one.

I think the Fused only having 9 Surges isn't Odium's choice really, it's imposed by the 9-centric Braize "numerology" thing. Being Invested there means his magic system has to be 9-based. And Envoyform is presumably using Connection (the generic cosmere mechanic) but not Adhesion (the Surge). Envoyform is a Form of Power, not a Fused "order". The Forms of Power abilities don't seem to be quite the same as Surges - shooting lightning bolts (Stormform) doesn't really seem to be a Surge.

Actually, this is known: HOA epigraphs Ch 11 TenSoon (3rd generation) tells KanPaar (2nd generation) that they were both there when the service Contracts were written using the First Contract as the basis. The First Contract itself was written by the First Generation:

The origin of Inquisitors baffles me. One of Sazed's epigraphs in HOA says that TLR developed all three kinds of Hemalurgic constructs by holding the power. But another epigraph says that all the "original Inquisitors" had a healing spike created by killing a Feruchemist. But there was only one living Feruchemist, Kwaan, at that point - the others had all just been turned to Mistwraiths! (HOA CH 36) This wording rules out TLR creating pre-charged spikes with the power of the Well (without actually killing anyone) also. Probably TLR developed Inquisitors as a concept with the expanded mind he had at the Well, but none were actually created for a couple of centuries, until the era when there were enough Feruchemists for the Keepers to be formed (third century after TLR's Ascension, if I'm reading Sazed's comments correctly).

Well, there's a year between the end of Well and the beginning of Hero. I think by the time the book starts she's moved into full "let's do something about it" mode. And it is mentioned. Also... She's not the type of person to dwell on things. She is a primarily active rather than contemplative kind of person, in contrast to Elend and Sazed. Another potential factor is HEAVILY spoilery for the end of the book:

Yeah the gold vs atium thing seems a bit odd, wounds don't re-appear when you stop tapping gold. But the difference is that being healed is a "stable" state (your physical form is aligned with your spiritual) while being unnaturally young is not. If TLR had found a way to change his spiritual age things would have been different.

They really weren't pre-industrial, though. Scadrial started out as early industrial ('early steam age, about to hit the railroad era': first couple decades of the 19th century, before railroads took over from canals) then some, but not all, technologies of that level were suppressed. By the time Allomancy showed up, while they didn't have modern atomic theory, they had more than enough metallurgy to have a basis to work from. Roshar doesn't have the level of materials science or chemistry to provide that kind of basis with synthetic gemstones. It'd be even worse since gemstones are primarily biological products on Roshar. I doubt a fabrial industrial revolution needs anything really epic like synthetic gemstones or herding chasmfiends, though. Increased production of gemheart-producing livestock (much more practically sized, less aggressive animals than chasmfiends) should be enough. (Oathbringer mentions "gumfrems, a kind of chull-like beast" raised for their gemhearts.) Fabrial gems don't seem to necessarily have to be very big - the Navani's notebook page with the emotion bracelet shows the gems as much smaller than the wearer's fingernails. Chasmfiend gemhearts are huge, one unusually large one in WOK is described as the size of a man's head, though most seem to be able to be held in one hand. https://coppermind.net/wiki/File:Navani2.jpg

I think the "fuzziness" on the Unmade/Radiant orders correlation may be that the Unmade really correspond more directly to the nine orders of Fused, which correspond more directly to the nine non-Bondsmith orders of Radiants?

Also, Leras was not really coherent enough to be actively planning at this point - he had forgotten his original plan, and wasn't really sure what to do. (As RShara says, Secret History gives a much clearer view of this than WoA/HoA by itself.)

Perhaps Reciprocity? I think that's more the benevolent side of Honor you're pointing out, the aspect that would be opposed to slavery and oppression. (But not, I think, to defined upper/lower classes as long as they were based on defined mutual obligations, say of obedience/protection in a feudal sense, vs sheer power or ownership.)

"The Shaod is an effect of Elantris" I always took to mean, originally becoming an AonDor user worked a different way & was much more widespread (maybe just a matter of learning how) but they were much weaker. When Elantris was built the Elantrians started glowing and their Aons became more powerful, but from then on many fewer people became Elantrians. That WOB doesn't even necessarily prove that, it might just be that many people can't do those arts because they never learned how. Probably it requires something special, but I'm not sure we can take that as definite.

Devotion and Odium would be a really weird combination. They might kind of cancel out to form a Shard that can't really do anything, or they might combine to form a Shard genuinely representing all emotion the way Odium claims to. Probably depends on the person taking them up... might require a very unusual kind of person, or an Ire-style Connection hack, to be able to take up both. Ambition and Honor I think would probably create a Shard with a concept of something like 'Zeal', devoted to spreading its concept of Honor to everyone. I don't think Honor has anything to do with equality. Feudal government is a very Honor-y thing, the whole structure of society based on reciprocal oaths of lord and vassal. (Slavery on the other hand would probably be disfavored by Honor, since Honor is about voluntary oaths.) The Shard of Honor is about Oaths and Bonds, not necessarily so concerned with what you swear to do so long as the oath is kept. It isn't necessarily entirely good. Honor + Odium yeah, I think would be something like Vengeance or divine Wrath/Judgment.

Yeah, Allomancy can be used 'instinctively' too - Vin burns traces of pewter from drinking cups without understanding what she's doing - and it's probably similar. She didn't know the power itself, but she intended to endure/survive/etc, and that was probably enough intent for a relatively 'instinctive' magic like Allomancy to work. (The Ars Arcanum in the era 2 Mistborn books talks about how Allomancy is more instinctive than things like AonDor.) Surgebinding might be the same way, or it might be intent from the spren as TheFoxQR says, or a bit of both.

Kind of, I guess, but I think that's somewhat different. I mean, if Adolin worldhopped to Nalthis with his Edgedancer (cultivationspren) Shardblade, I don't think that would count as Cultivation Investing in Nalthis. And are the Unmade Splinters of Odium - made of Odium's Investiture - or are they other spren corrupted ("unmade"?) by Odium in ancient times? It must have existed in the past in some form, since it is known in Vorinism - Kadash tells Adolin in WOK "Voidbinding is a dark and evil thing, and the soul of it was to try to divine the future" (WOK, CH 18, Highprince of War).

Actually, I believe the Cognitive goes Beyond, the Spiritual lingers in the Spiritual Realm and slowly 'dissolves' or whatever. Well, souls are probably made of Investiture anyway (Nightblood can eat them, per WoB), probably in addition to Connection (and maybe Fortune and Identity, the other two Spiritual attributes in Feruchemy?). The "fake" aspect of it is questionable - a Cognitve Shadow not being the "real" person is an in-world debated theory among cosmere scholars. (Kelsier's POV in Secret History shows continuity from life to being a cognitive shadow.)