Wandering Investor

It is a property of the expanse that Roshar occupies. There were spren in Roshar's cognitive realm before people were there. People's thoughts and intents affect other worlds with a similar strength, but Roshar's unique mechanics feed on that cognitive perception like no other. Edit: Rshara beat me to it. Also, as she pointed out, most systems do not have Investiture so readily available, which at least some of the local spren seem to feed on. Its unknown if the spren could exist without the highstorms, at least in their current forms.

I'd actually argue a third option, which is that the intent is based entirely around how the vessel views the intents of the shards that makes up Harmony. That is, Ruin and Preservation have Intents, but Harmony does not. The "shadow" Intent of Harmony, or any other multishard vesssel, is based on how the vessel views the underlying intents together. Sazed follows the idea of some of both have to occur, leading to Harmony. Others might think both must occur always, leading to a paradoxical breakdown and Discord. But either way, there is no true Intent for the multishard, just a single vessel trying to follow the Intents of several shards at once.

The red stars are interesting, I believe they are called the rift or the tear. As far as I know, Brandon has RAFOed every question on them, some speculate Yolen is hidden within the rift constellation, and also that the red might indicate a spreading corruption, possibly fain life. There have been theories in the past on an entity that exist outside of Adonalisium, possibly the force that opposed Adonalisium. The first time I read about the god beyond, some theories proposed that it was another non-shardic entity moving into adon's space. But Brandon has stated that everything is made of investiture, and all investiture is related to the shards. So if you take that directly, nothing exist outside the shards.

"Light crystallized beside her, forming an ancient parshman with a face marbled gold and white, and a regal scepter he carried like a cane. Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive (p. 1088). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. " Odium appears to Venli as an elderly parsh, and to Dalinar as an elderly man. Probably. We know Cultivation is female at least.

Hemalurgy is negative because of the loss of power/lack of efficiency in a closed system, not necessarily the loss of investiture. Using a spike on someone will take the full power, but put that spike into someone else and they will not have the full power, they'll have a weaker one. There's an actual loss in power occurring, you get less than what you put in. In Returned, there is a consumption of investiture from an external source, the breath, which then does work, similar to Allomancy but with a smaller pool of external power. There's no way to compare whether the consumption of the breath is less efficient than other uses of breath. You'd have to determine that one week of life is less efficient that the original amount of power that was applied, and I'm not sure that's possible. It might also be important to note that it is possible the original idea of end-negative no longer applies. This requires a bit of stretching and reading between the lines, but earlier WoB's seem to indicate the investiture could be lost permanently. Like, what nightblood consumed was gone forever, or power lost in hemalurgic spikes was gone forever. Later WoB's indicate that the consumed power finds its way back to the original shardic source eventually. This would change the idea of end-negative from loss of power to loss of efficiency.

Ohh good one @The One Who Connects option 4: it reveals her race. Makes me wonder how important race is to the shards, are the abilities, mind, will warping different? As for inter-species relationships, it could be a thing. I mean, based on the sparse non-canon writings from Yolen, the species don't seem to connect well enough for it to happen, but maybe. Plus, they're gods, and long ago left their physical bodies behind, so I don't think it matters. Also, I'm not sure Tanavast was confirmed human (correct me if I'm wrong). Rayse appears to be human from Dalinars point of view, and parsh from Venli's pov. So Honor could likely display himself as whatever race he wanted. Depends on his thinking, causing if appearing as a different race is misleading then his intent might not allow it, but if he thinks of his race as 'god' then the most effective way to communicate would be to appear as the same race as whoever he's communicating with, similar to Rayse.

Nicrosil can be used to store investiture, including the different allomantic powers. You can then compound that for extreme levels of allomancy. That's why when Wax taps the Bands of Mourning, he gains all of the powers, allomancy and feruchemy. He at least uses ironpulling in that scene, on a massive airship.

I'd say that by the way it was used, Slammer most likely refers to Cultivation playing as jailer to Odium. But there is some flexibility there. As for hiding Cultivation's real name, there are three reasons. 1, Brandon doesn't want to, he likes to keep some info back, and Vessel names are common RAFOs. Two, Brandon wants us to think of her as Cultivation, that her entire thought-process/purpose is driven by the intent of Cultivation. 3, her name has significance on Roshar. Edgli's flowers for instance are named after Endowment's vessel. The fact that the dye made from them sticks so well is odd, but throw in the name and we have a very good indicator of magic. The same might apply on Roshar, something could be named after Cultivation, but the connection may not be obvious at first, but if we knew the name we could immediately pick it out.

Once you've pulled metal out of a person, which you'd have to be compounding to do in the first place, I don't think it would count as organic matter anymore, so awakening it would probably still be difficult. That's an interesting question, because it raises the question of what is considered alive in the cosmere. Connection might allow the iron to be considered alive for awhile. Even if you did pull the iron out, which I imagine would cause at least some damage to the host, it would just be iron dust. Wielding it as a weapon after that might be a tad bit difficult. But if you're compounding, anythings possible. Dust fired at super speeds might still be able to do some damage.

That's an interesting one. It could indicate the scouring occured in order to obscure the location of the dawnshards. They wouldn't have wanted to do it, but may have considered it necessary. We could make better sense of it if we knew who did the scouring though.

I'd say that Returned consuming a breath is end neutral. One breath is always worth one weak. Hemalurgy is noted for losing power over time, you can't get as much as you put in. Since breath doesn't seem to lose a charge over time, I wouldn't classify it as end negative, since the gain is roughly the same. There are some instances of sick or elderly people having weaker breaths, and certain indiciduals have stronger breaths, but the difference doesn't seem enough to be classified as losing power. And as others noted, positive, neutral, and negative appear to have been designed with Scadrial in mind, and may not translate over to others perfectly.

The oathpact was only for the voidbringers. It and the heralds have no direct impact on Odium's prison. Unless it turns out that having voidbringers/fuzed taking over Roshar increases Odium's power there, then it might have an indirect effect.

This is a neat theory(s)! I see two big issues with them though. The first problem is the timeline of Honor not knowing where the dawnshards are and the scouring of Aimia. I do have a possible explanation for this though. First, some Mistborn Secret History spoilery: Honor mentions he isn't very good at looking at the future, at least compared with Cultivation. Also throw in that at this point he was in the process of dying. What if he could see in the future well enough to determine the current state of events on Roshar during SA were likely to come about, but didn't necessarily know the details on how the world would arrive at that point. What if he was able to determine that Aimia was destroyed by that point and the Dawnshards were lost, but wasn't about to see how/when Aimia was destroyed and couldn't determine what happened to the dawnshards afterwards, so to him they were lost. They could be hidden away in Aimia still, even from Honor's sight. The second problem with this theory is a little harder to explain away. That problem is how the powers of Ashyn fit into all of this. This might be getting a little ahead of myself since we have so little information on Ashyn and maybe Brandon has some secrets that explain everything cleanly, but in the mean time. WoB as diseased based magic on Ashyn. WoB on surges in Ashyn So these WoB's confirm that magic on Ashyn in based on diseases that grant superpowers. We also know that surgbinding occurs on Ashyn, from that WoB that surgebinders are responsible for the cataclysm that destroyed Ashyn, and also the possibility that surgbinding might be used in their floating cities. I think it is also fair to guess that the powers granted by the diseases are the surges, considering one example of the powers is that ability to fly. It also seems unlikely to me that multiple magic systems would exist on Ashyn considering no Shards are based that, but this point is not very strong. The problem? How would a diseased based magic created super weapons that bind things(spren?), and how would those super weapons continue to function once moved from Ashyn to Roshar. The only solutions I see at the moments are, either there are two different magic systems are Ashyn, or the Ashynites have learned to utilize the diseases in a mechanical form similar to another magic system we've seen, although I have know idea how this would work with diseases (petri dish?) or if it would continue to work off-world. On the note of Sibling plus the unmade being the dawnshards, there's not much to support it, but that would still be neat. This WoB could support Odium being able to corrupt the unmade away from Honor and Cultivation. I always felt that the Sibling didn't fit in with the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher, as those two seemed like personal champions/conduits for Honor and Culti. It would make more sense for there to be other powerful, but neutral, spren instead of just the one. Odium then managed to steal away the nine, leaving the one unique one left. And the Sibling could have been falling asleep by the time of Honor's death, making the statement of the dawnshards being lost valid. The name dawnshards could mean shards of dawn, or creation. They could be spren made by Adonalsium, aka creation or dawn, before the shattering. In this way, they could still be counted as shadows of gods similar to SF or the NW. Might be a bit of a stretch, but #theorytime.

They might have been searching for Nightblood. But the way Brandon keeps stating it hard to get a spren off Roshar makes me think no one has done it yet.

Sazed specifically states that his copperminds had to be large to store all the memories. And I believe there is a moment when he states he can only store up so much with metal rings. But the specifics are never made clear, and it seems to have little/no impact on the story other than in those instances. Wax for instance is stated to be continuously storing weight and has amassed a huge amount, but little details are provided on his metal minds. He's never noted for having to swap metal minds out after they get full, or if they even get full. After for changing in the second era, that's possible. There was some debate at one point about whether Harmony altered Furechemy (I thought yes but most thought no) in terms of one power vs full powerset. Maybe he did alter the amount that can be stored. Or it just shifted narratively since there were not defined boundaries.

Something like this? http://www.coppermind.net/wiki/The_Well_of_Ascension/Epigraphs Nvm, I didn't read closely to what you were asking for.

Hoid is the first among equals.

Hoid was surprised that Frost was watching. He might just expect that Frost rarely watches, and thus the mention of "In case you have turned a blind eye to that disaster", cause he might or might not have been watching at the time. Plus the events of Dom and Dev happened thousands of years before Ruin and Preservation's showdown, so that could explain why Hoid didn't mention it at the time.

Liar of Partinel. There were 6 chapters available, but Brandon discouraged readers from seeking it out, and its no longer available anyways.

In Aether of Night the aethers come from sources located around the world. We only see three of them, the midnight pool, the light pool, and the Verdent. They then weaken if they're not bonded to a human. The aether's also show up in one other non canon story, but beyond showing that they weaken over time, nothing else is shown off about them.

Agreed, I favor the others, but Emperor's Soul is a fantastic read, and considering the size, I've probably reread it more times than any other book.

No, Shai's essence marks essentially cover up whatever they're applied to. The thing they're stamped into is still there, it just that you see/interact with whatever the essence mark was instead. Breaths actually imbue themselves directly into the awakened object. Also throw in the forgery has to be believable, while the awakening does not.

Extremely unlikely. The amount of power Endowment spends on the breaths is negligible. Like, if you gathered every breath she's ever given out, it likely wouldn't register as even a fraction of her. That last part is a guess, as we still don't know how powerful shards truly are, but picking up whatever splinters a full shard throws out will not be enough as far as we know. For a shattered shard, maybe eventually?

Holding out for that not 100%. It would seem weird if Feruchemy required larger amounts of youth and breath didn't require more breath as time passes, but I guess it depends on how Brandon wires the background mechanics.

The masters become masters upon reaching the 4th ideal. Nalan is the only one that reached the 5th, but there's no mention that I know of of the 5th being forbidden to the others, just hard.