Wandering Investor

Where is this mentioned?

2000-4000 was a guess for the number available on the market, not the number in circulation. A lot of those breaths are probably passed down through the family, so there are going to be a lot more than what is available on the market. Also, there's no need to purchase all the breaths at once. You can pick up some here and there. As the number available goes down, they become more valuable and people are more likely to sell them, keeping the number stable-ish. Plus, if Lemex is worth anything as a spy, he can likely purchase them in small batches without making too much of a disturbance. So the breaths locked behind families and people buying them over time could explain the number of citizens with large breath counts making Vivennia not stand out, while still keeping breaths too expensive to truly buy in mass, considering Lemex had to have support from a throne to buy 600. But that's all speculation based on the comments that the upper heightenings are not explored, and to a lesser extent that immortals(2000+) aren't really mentioned. Since Warbreaker was an early Sanderson book, I can actually just explain the lack of immortals as either being there and just not mentioned, or maybe early attempts at world building with less than SA levels of detail. But its mentioned several times that the upper heightenings are almost never reached. Think about it, if you get 2000 breaths, you can just keep going on, and keep stockpiling breaths over a long period of time. If that were the case, the market would be especially ruled by immortal merchant families, and those merchants would eventually reach the upper heightenings, and while uncommon probably would not be considered rare. Yet it is mentioned several times that the upper heightenings are very rare. So there has to be something stopping people from reaching/passing the 2000 checkpoint. Might be political instead of economic of course.

Your logic is based on how Feruchemy anti aging works which is different from the heightenings. Aging in the cosmere is both spiritual and physical since it is all connected. The spiritual aspect determines the age, the physical aspect the aging. The Lord Ruler reversed his aging, but didn't stop the aging process itself, or change his spiritual aspect. Because of that, he required greater and greater amounts of youth to maintain his youth, and upon stopping, his body fast forwarded to the proper age recorded in his spirit and experienced the equivalent amount of aging. Breath users don't require larger and larger amount of power, because they do not appear to be reversing the aging process, but instead stop the aging, whether its the spiritual or physical aspect. Fast forward a thousand years, accounting for food and water, and the body of a 5th Heightening will still be the same, unlike the Lord Ruler who's body will have continued aging. Following that logic, a breath user could give away their breath and they would likely just start aging from where they left off, because for awhile they stopped the aging process and still experienced time, instead of reversing/covering it up like TLR.

No WoB's that I know of on that topic. So, the big thing to consider here is that we do not know how many nations are present on Nalthis, nor the population of those countries. So even though there are only a few nations mentioned during the events of Warbreaker, we can't be sure how many others there are. Even the population of Hallendren isn't well established. So its hard to say what the total count could potentially be. Based on market conditions, we can make a slightly better guess. It is mentioned that the wealthy purchase around 50 breaths to achieve the first heightening, lengthening their lives by a decade in the process and being healthier in general. And we see a number of people with the first heightening. But we rarely see people of the greater heightenings (note: A human with 2000 breaths may create a smaller bubble than the returned, who's breath is the equivalent of 2000, in which case they'll be less noticeable). Assuming that people of the 5th heightening are very rare, and not because they're never mentioned, I'd say the breath market in Hallendren is 2000-4000 breaths. That would enable the average person capable of buying a breath or two, the wealthier individuals to be able to buy 50-200, but to get any higher than that would be extremely expensive as you'd be buying a significant portion of the available stock, explaining the lack of people with higher heightenings. This would also make sense since breaths can't be stored in a neutral way. They're sold by the desperate, and then bought buy the wealthy, and would be difficult to store between, as someone would have to be trusted to hold the breaths in the mean time. Keep in mind, those are rough guesses, without any solid numbers from the books, so even rougher guesses.

Most of the suggested orders are good. I'd say.. Mistborn Era 1: The big singles: Elantris Warbreaker The Stormlight Archive Mistborn SH Mistborn Era 2 By this point your friend should be properly assimilated and will continue on their own. They can then follow up with everything else, cosmere or otherwise, order doesn't matter after that point.

The 5th Heightening appears to stop DNA degradation, which is what leads to aging. The body isn't frozen in time however, bodily functions continue to act as normal. So the Koloss would keep growing. The additional health benefits of the 5th Heightening would likely allow the Koloss to more easily repair itself, so it would be able to get bigger before experiencing problems, but eventually it would still run into the problem of being unable to pump blood through the body, or perhaps being crushed by its own mass.

If you read the three chapters available it makes a lot more sense.

Twice the fleet, twice the danger, so I'm guessing Krell.

Which universe is this shared with?

I always assumed that Autonomy's Aspects/Avatars/whatever were aligned with overarching goals, but the idea of them being able to oppose one another is a fascinating one, and would explain why Brandon likes her/him.

https://brandonsanderson.com/library/ and scroll down to the annotations section.

So that others know what we're talking about.. So Autonomy may have been involved and even assisted in Dom and Dev's deaths, but it is unknown to what degree. Throw in that we know Odium has allies, unknown who exactly, Autonomy is a strong candidate for the one interfering with Harmony, and Hoid's grudge against Rayse and Bavadin, and we have a possibility that Autonomy is working with Odium. OB Spoiler:

Its a bit more complicated than that. Ruin and Preservation's powers are directly opposite of one another, that's why coming in contact without a unifying will (Sazed) is painful and potentially deadly. No skill involved in that scenario. Than there is when Ruin killed Leras. Even thought the powers of Ruin and Preservation were equal at the time, Ati's greater mental capacity allowed him to slowly strangle what was left of Leras. More skill involed in that scenario than power. And then there's Odium. Take this quote for instance... Odium also went 1v1 against Ambition and won, then took on both Domination and Devotion and killed both of them, and then took on Honor and Cultivation and killed Honor. Its not just power, but also skill. Keep in mind, there are a lot of unknowns in these fights. How much available power did the shards have? All the shards started at the same available power level, but then a lot of them invested some of that power, so it wasn't available for immediate use. Odium specifically avoided investing his power so that'd he would have as much as possible available to him. Also, did Odium have help? We don't know exactly how Odium fought/killed the other shards, and we do not know if he fought alone. There are some theories that Autonomy is assisting Odium, but no solid evidence. The answer to your question is that it depends on several variables, how strong the shards are, the skill levels of the vessels, and potentially unique aspects of the shards intent/power, and maybe other unknowns.

I think a simpler explanation would be that in order to dominate others, you have to have the ambition to think yourself above them. That said, my personal plans for ruling the cosmere would include fixing and ascending to Ambition, and then consuming Domination and Devotion to become the triple shard Authority. So maybe Ambition followed my way of thinking.

Feruchemy is probably my first. Breath up to the 5th heightening would be awesome for the immortality heath, other heightening benefits and occasional awakening. Radiancy and Allomancy make for good warriors. Plus the radiants' ability to transfer to the cognitive realm is pretty useful.

In allomancy, the metals function as gateways to Preservation. Think of those child games with the shapes and holes. The triangle shape goes through the triangle hole and so on. That's how allomancy works, the specific composition of the metal acts both as the door to preservation, and the instruction how what the power does. When that metal is inside the body, the allomancer can sense preservation's power on the other side of the "door" so to speak. Then they pull the power through the door, which also consumes the door. So the metal isn't special, it doesn't have any power. It just forms a doorway, and is then consumed as the power flows through it. The shape of the door also determines what the power will do. That's why allomancer metal has to be so specific, change the shape of the door too much and it either won't work, or the form the power takes after coming through will be wrong, with bad results. So metal isn't raw investiture, unlike stormlight. The godmetals are exceptions, in those instances the metal is the power, and it forms no gateway to preservation. As for the metal in people, I assume you're talking about Mistborn: Secret History? The investiture inside of people's souls is what is shining, not any metal. As for why metal glows, that's still unclear. It could be that the metal is still acting as gateways to the spiritiual realm, and the light shines through them. Or it might be a function of the zone Scadrial occupies in the cosmere. Or maybe since Ruin and Preservation created Scadrial, when their power took the forms of metal it was concentrated. You'd have to bring in some metal from another world to test that last one. Nazh had metal that didn't glow, but it was physically in the cognitive, it may glow when brought into the physical realm.

You can think of the pattern as fabric, and people as the threads. Except the pattern isn't even like most fabrics, some strings are more important than others. Imagine you hit an important string, one that tugged a whole bunch of other strings. If that string was removed, every other string it pulled would shift, potentially with catastrophic results. So its not just the amount of balefire, but what is hit by the balefire. Imagine if you destroyed the equivalent of a fraction of Natrin's Burrow inside of Caemlyn? That results would be immensely more powerful.That's why its so terrifying, because even a little can have huge effects. Cadsune has little respect for political power, but she does respect actual power, and balefire falls under that. As for Natrin's Burrow and Rand, Rand did just kill a large civilian population in a preemptive strike, less a fight than a mass execution. Throw in that the people in world believe that balefire is a permanent end. Normal death results in you eventually being respun into the pattern, but they think balefire destroys your thread so it can't be respun. From their perspective, Rand didn't just kill a fortress full of people, he destroyed their souls as well, and caused the pattern to scream in agony all in one go. Can you imagine an earlier Rand even conceiving of such a drastic plan, let alone being able to carry it out? This was Rand going off the deep end, as he is losing respect for life and beginning to hate everything.

The souls of the ancient dawnsigners are more akin to spren than humans. Additionally, the souls of the ancient dawnsingers are so fused with Odium's power that they could be considered little parts of him, while the radiant spren are pieces of honor and cultivation. So they could be referring to Syl. Or they may equate a Radiant(spren/human) with Fused(voidbringer/dawnsinger) and consider both gods.

It could be an echo from the spiritual realm. Nal explains to Szeth that the voices he hears are echos from the spiritual realm, and this would match the voices Dalinar heard after the Rift. So it could be Dalinar connecting to a the ideal of Evi that exist in the spiritual realm.

That, or the water is continually recycled through the tank, so there is a finite amount, but it will never be used up. Siphoning off Ruin's power into atium wouldn't work if there was an infinite tank behind him. Or maybe a bit of both, the powers of the shards are confusing.

I would suspect WoK/SA, as well as most of the cosmere books, to be a bit much for little kids. Complexity aside, there is violence, death, despair, and occasional bits of mature romance. I would say teenager at least, but depends on the kids I guess.

To my knowledge, Brandon has never confirmed or denied the existence of galaxies/planets/etc outside of the star cluster his books take place in. Also, various WoBs indicate everything in the cosmere is related to Adonalsium. There's alot of wiggle room there, but for those reasons as well as narrative ones, I suspect Adon is the end all be all, and everything falls within his scope.

Probably optimistic work and party. Escaping a dying world can do wonders for morale.

Keep in mind how Scadrial was just before the end, earthquakes, mountains of ash, no food, and eternal mist. After that, waking up to a world where everything grows green, and with the leadership provided by Spook and party, it would have been very easy to forge a new life.

I was clarifying the wind vs air point, but you're right its not the only thing they're attracted to. They're also attracted to the oaths a Windrunner takes, or maybe the mindset of the oaths. Hence the focus on Hobber, and Kaladin drawing them.