cometaryorbit

It's possible. But eye colors in RL are often (usually?) hard to distinguish unless you're very close and often are dependent on lighting conditions. If the Rosharan genome (or at least that of the Vorin countries where eye color matters socially) lacks the palest end of the range (eg usual Northern European blue eyes*), which tend to be the most distinct, it seems very plausible to me that most could be near-indistinguishable. *The darkeyed 'violet' color might actually be a dark blue e.g. Elizabeth Taylor in our world.

There's somehing very weird about Rosharan eye colors. - Heterochromia is too common (there's a WOB that says it's common for people with one lighteyed and one darkeyed parent, which is not at all how it works on Earth). -There are both darkeyed and lighteyed versions of some colors (green, violet) -Some of the colors don't really match Earth ones (tan, violet, red) - there are rare violet eyes on Earth, but these are not particularly pale. -Rosharan eye colors seem too easy to notice when you're not really close to the person, and there don't seem to be ambiguous colors or those which appear to vary based on lighting conditions, which aren't terribly rare on Earth, especially in the hazel/green/amber etc. range. I actually think all the Rosharan lighteye colors are of magical origin and don't match anything we have on Earth. All Earth eye colors would be considered darkeyed, I think (although I don't think they have 'normal' blue eyes, at least in the Vorin nations where social status is defined by eye color - the Shin or other eastern peoples might).

It depends on the mass of the black hole - a really huge one has a less steep gravity well, so you can get very deep into it without the tidal forces tearing you apart. The more massive the object, the less dense it needs to be to become a black hole.

The wall vaporizes when Nightblood hits it. I think Nightblood would have to actually come into physical contact to destroy projectiles; while Nightblood gives you increased speed, it wouldn't be enough to block a sustained shower of crossbow bolts from many different enemies. The number of Breaths needed would mean that Nightblood-type weapons would be rare even if their creation method was universally known; the opponent could easily have dozens or hundreds of soldiers and Lifeless directing a rain of arrows/bolts onto each Nightblood-wielder. To me that description sounds like the enemy soldiers were charging to melee range, at which point, yeah, they'd get chopped up. But I can't really see what Nightblood or its wielder could do if they stood 100 yards away and fired bows/crossbows. Oh, I don't doubt that he is that dangerous (or, not since I saw the chapter 55 annotation - I used to think Vasher was obsessed/monomaniacal on the topic). But I'd really like to know how - none of the powers we've seen so far seem to work beyond the radius of Nightblood's "aura of nausea/fatal attraction" which seems pretty small.

There's a difference, but I don't know if it needs to be fundamental or a difference of degree rather than kind. IMO, the huge difference in relative power could be enough for Divine Breath to qualify. Splinter is likely an in-world term (there's an old WOB that Sliver is) so the definition could be somewhat fuzzy... as it does seem to be in the case of Divine Breaths, since the WOB definition of Splinter is power that has attained sentience, and Divine Breaths don't seem to be mentally separate from the Returned-human personality. Also, all Investiture coming from a Shard is part of that Shard, and if the Shard is still alive/unSplintered, still the same thing on the Spiritual Realm. On Scadrial, Atium is a piece of Ruin; Atium is not considered a Splinter, but I don't know how fundamental the distinction between a chunk of Atium and a "dead" Shardblade is. I agree. IMO, modern fabrials are a human 'technology' based on use of Roshar's pre-Shardic "natural magic" that leads to spren bonds seen in Rosharan non-human life. I agree that the Forms of Power seem to be voidspren intruding into the Parshendi pre-Shardic natural magic. The Everstorm song specifically, however, seems pretty dramatic for that kind of thing. Some modern fabrials have a short range (Navani's emotion bracelet and drying fabrial), but the other effects we see from natural bonding on Roshar are self-only (chasmfiend lightening, skyeel flight, Ryshadium general superiority to normal horses); the Parshendi forms-not-of-power (dullform, warform, nimbleform, etc.) seem to stick to altering the body and mind, not 'external magical' abilities. I think the red lightning and Everstorm are actually drawing on Odium's Investiture, not just on the individual voidspren.

I don't think that's a function of Awakening as such, except in that it was Awakening that created Nightblood in the first place (but the power to destroy stuff into smoke isn't itself part of that magic system). I think that's a broader-Cosmere consequence of Investing a weapon (or maybe any 'inanimate' physical object) that heavily. Nightblood is a super-Shardblade of sorts, destroying on all three realms rather than the more 'surgical' Spiritual-cut of Rosharan Shardblades; if you could charge up a Rosharan Shardblade to 100x its normal Investiture, it might well do the same thing. A ridiculously super-charged Nicrosilmind blade might do the same too, maybe - depending on whether the Investiture is stored in an inert form or not.

That would just make them somewhat stronger and faster - it would be useful in war, but not the sort of horror Vasher seems to be thinking of.

This is also mentioned in the ch 55 annotation. I still want to know why multiple Nightbloods would be so decisive in war though. Nightblood's terrifying on a personal scale, but he's rather obvious - it seems like it would be easy to target the wielders from a distance with crossbows, and Nightblood doesn't seem to give any resistance to that.

Well, I think the primary factors are quantity of metal (more metal makes a better anchor), Investiture (Invested objects are harder to Push/Pull), and (for lack of a better word) 'independence' or separation from other objects. I do think the 'independence' factor is somewhat Cognitive, which maybe is unsatisfying on a physics level, but I think it's necessary for a complete model of Iron/Steel Allomancy - Kelsier points out when he's training Vin that an object can't be Pushed or Pulled if even part of it is inside someone's body. So somehow the metal atoms in the part outside the body 'inherit' the Investiture-interference of the part inside the body. To me, that very strongly implies that Iron/Steel Allomancy works on a whole-object basis not as a particle-to-particle force like electromagnetism. But that requires some definition of what a 'whole object' is. IMO the coin-against-wall vs coin-in-air situation is the same principle. When the coin touches the wall it stops being an 'independent' object and 'inherits' the mass of the wall and maybe the entire tectonic plate/planet it's anchored to. Similarly, when another Allomancer gets involved, the coin 'inherits' the mass of the other Allomancer.

I agree that the potential for Allomancers to burn Ruin's god metal was inherent from when Preservation and Ruin made/invested in Scadrial. But without Preservation's actions when he imprisoned Ruin, there wouldn't be any atium to burn. Atium doesn't seem to exist "naturally" though (and again doesn't as of Alloy of Law, with Sazed holding both shards). Preservation did more than just create Seers - he also split off a piece of Ruin's Investiture and set it up to "condense" as atium. If Preservation could affect Ruin's Investiture to that degree, though, that opens the possibility for other Shards to do something similar. I don't think anything like that actually has happened in the Rosharan system (I kind of doubt Cultivation wants Odium trapped in Greater Roshar, for that matter - she'd probably rather have him farther away), but I don't think that sort of manipulation is inherently impossible.

In terms of 'superseded by later material' WOBs: Mistborn: Secret History shows that Vin didn't stick around in the Cognitive Realm long enough to talk to anyone except Kelsier. Also superseded by SH: Post by Brandon confirming this:

Splintering of Honor / death of Tanavast is after Last Desolation - apparently by thousands of years, as it's post-Recreance. First Returned on Nalthis is ~500 yrs (IIRC) before Warbreaker, so c. 800 years before Stormlight Arc 1. Probably shortly before the Hierocracy on Roshar. The Evil taking over Homeland is within a century-ish of 'Shadows for Silence' - Silence's grandmother was one of those who fled it. It's probably the last event on your list. Nazh (who is from Threnody) in Secret History doesn't seem to know about what's happened on Threnody (if it even has happened by that point) - he says becoming a cognitive shadow is "an important rite" and is kind of offended Kelsier just stumbled into it, but at the time of 'Shadows for Silence' it's a contagious infection. Is Liar of Partinel still going to be a canonical thing? Oathpact and Last Desolation way precede Mistborn Era 1 (and Rashek using the Well & becoming TLR). Stormlight Arc 1 is roughly contemporary to Mistborn Era 2, which is a bit over 300 years after Mistborn Era 1. The Last Desolation was 4,500 Roshar years (~5,000 Scadrial / Earth years) before Stormlight Arc 1 / Mistborn Era 2, so something like 4,700 years before Mistborn Era 1. The Oathpact was probably a couple thousand years before that. The Returned existed somewhat before Mistborn Era 1 - they were around at the time of the Manywar, which was 300 years before Warbreaker.

Oh, definitely... I just think it's easier to compare power than precision. Rashek's development of precision in the short time frame he held the Well's power is definitely very impressive, though. One of the HOA epigraphs says something to that effect - how he very quickly went from fumbling a planet into the wrong orbit to custom-designing bacteria and tweaking plants to survive in the new environment...

Well, Preservation found a way to allow humans to "use up" Ruin's Investiture - by causing it to condense as Atium and then tweaking his own magic system so that Atium Mistings became a thing. So I agree that Cultivation couldn't create an entire magic system that was "of Odium", but less dramatic manipulation seems to be possible.

I will have to re-read that scene (and Kelsier and Vin's pushing contest) and see exactly how it would or wouldn't fit. I'm not talking about the mass of the coin changing, though. If it actually is analogous to the "time-bubbles mess up the movement of a carriage but a train is OK" thing we see in BOM, it might be enough that the coin is 'held in place'.

Yeah - I just mentioned moving the planet because that requires so much more energy than the other stuff. Probably pretty comparable, actually. The forces Sauron was able to control were probably somewhat larger, though exact numbers aren't given. At the Battle of the Morannon Aragorn and co. had somewhat less than 6000 men, and they were outnumbered "more than ten times", so say at least 60,000 soldiers for Sauron. OTOH, it seems like only the orcs & trolls & monsters were really controlled: Given that some of the human soldiers on Sauron's side were able to surrender or fight to the last, they probably weren't controlled in the same way. Also, he actually has to pay constant attention; when he realizes the Ring is about to be destroyed: If they become "bereft of will" just because Sauron is distracted, this doesn't seem as good as control of Koloss.

Oh, no, that's not what I'm trying to say here. What I mean is that I think "anchor quality", while it's not a concept/quantity that exists in our-universe physics, is a fundamental of the physics of Allomancy in the way mass is to gravity or charge is to electromagnetism. Hmm - but does it? Is it actually the normal force that makes the difference, or the change in the coin's environment (now placed against a massive solid object)? I think this is one of those things like how a time bubble cares if you are on a large fast-moving object (train) or not. The fact that the coin's in physical contact with a massive object makes a difference in itself to its quality as an anchor, before normal force and such are considered.

Well, not in our physics... but I think the observed behavior of Iron/Steel Allomancy in the books makes the most sense if you treat anchor quality as being fundamental and force as being derived from that. Anchor quality isn't just whether it will move or not, though. From what we've seen in the books, it seems to depend on quantity/mass of metal, surroundings (both 'bracing' and whether there is material in between the actual metal and the Allomancer), and distance between the anchor and the Allomancer.

Yeah, they are pretty similar - the Morgul knife has the same "contagious ghostliness" effect seen in Threnody's Shades. Well, the Two Trees are an unrepeatable work by a major Vala, so probably something like a Shardpool, at least in the sense that Yavanna Invested a ton of herself into them I don't think the Silmarils are really equivalent to a god metal, though, since it's the light within that's really special. The material, while unbreakable and the work of a peerless craftsman, was made by Feanor, not condensed from godly essence. What makes the Silmarils so important is that they contain the only Unsullied Light left within Arda, not their unbreakability (super-hard materials don't seem to have been terribly unusual in the early Ages of Arda - Orthanc, the wall of Minas Tirith, the palantiri...) Well, hmm... I think Ungoliant would try to eat Nightblood's Breaths and Nightblood would register Ungoliant as evil and therefore try to make her kill herself. At that particular point, Ungoliant would probably win that one (she was able to capture Morgoth until the Balrogs came to help him out).

It is entirely possible. Certainly way back at the Battle of Twilight Falls he was so horrific that Vasher killed Shashara to prevent the knowledge spreading. I think that might be more to do with the way his Investiture-Vampirism twists Awakening against itself, though, and that his power is potentially pretty much limitless. I don't think his actual effectiveness even at the power-level he currently has is sufficient to be a wide-scale threat, as he doesn't really have any long-range effects (the 'make people crazy' aura he has when 'unheld' seems pretty short-range) and doesn't give his wielder any great mobility powers. I wouldn't be surprised if Nightblood's decisiveness in the Battle of Twilight Falls had more to do with the other side panicking when they faced him rather than the wielder really being able to defeat an army by themselves (Nightblood doesn't seem to grant any defense against arrows or such).

Yeah. Harmony has admittedly 2x basic Shard power, but he was able to reshape a planet's surface in, what, a couple of days? The Valar did stuff on this scale, but it seems to have taken much longer. Much more telling, Rashek moved a planet's orbit pretty dramatically with a fraction of one Shard's power. Melkor used up nearly all his power to corrupt and infuse the matter of Arda - which seems very analogous to a Shard Investing in a planet - but he was reduced to a shrunken remnant in the process. So I think that the Shards individually are more powerful than the greatest Valar. The greatest feats we see from the Maiar are Osse's raising of Numenor, Melian's magical protection of a small nation, Sauron's mind-control of vast armies even without the Ring, and Sauron's volcano-control and shrouding Gondor and Mordor (and maybe at least part of Rohan?) in black clouds. Sauron's defeat also leads to massive upheaval in Mordor, so he might have altered the geography there more than is overtly stated. The Stormfather controls highstorms capable of crossing most of a supercontinent; I'd argue that he (and by extension probably the Nightwatcher, who seems to be an equivalent sort of being) is very roughly comparable to the greatest Maiar. However, the Maiar seem to be enormously variable in power. The Balrogs and Istari are probably only on the level of great Rosharan monsters eg thunderclasts, powerful Surgebinders, and skilled Elantrians.

I don't think Nightblood actually has mixed Investiture. That WOB doesn't actually say that Nightblood has any mixed Investiture, just that 'corrupted' Investiture is a question of definition and that 'corrupted' spren (presumably Odiumspren) are that way because of the mixing of Shards' powers. IMO Nightblood is 'corrupted' because he's an Investiture-eater made with Endowment's magic system - he's somewhat of a twisting of Awakening's nature. Well, I'd argue that the fact that he's now more Invested than 1000 Breaths is itself evidence, given that we know he consumes Investiture - at least it very much seems the simplest model. Vasher might very well have noticed a change; that doesn't mean he would have consciously thought about it during his POVs, or mentioned it in the book. Nightblood's creation was a long time ago - if he noticed his power increasing 300 years ago, he'd have no particular reason to think about it during the events of the book.

True... but there does seem to be an inconsistency between Roshar's experience and Sel's. Furthermore, while the Desolations were extremely devastating to Rosharan humanity, it appears that Odium's Splintering of Honor wasn't, as that was well after the Last Desolation and yet Aharietiam is still considered the 'Last'. There isn't any mention of a post-Recreance global cataclysm, either.

I agree; Gravitation "flight" is more widely usable than Mistborn "flight" in that you don't need metal objects to Push/Pull off of, but it's probably not as delicately controllable.

I think that has to do with Sunmaker's "reforms". He overthrew the Hierocracy, which claimed prophecies and visions as support for what they were doing, so he said prophecies and visions were bad/false/not of Honor. But we know Honor did send visions to at least a few people (Dalinar, Gavilar...) Odium already had a free hand on Sel, though, and humanity survived there. Is Odium's goal actually related to harming normal (below Shard or Herald-level power) humans?