Wandering Investor

I said 'easiest', not 'easy'. The other methods usually require genetics, or gaining access to a magic systems through methods unknown. As for the expensive part, that's why you hide the breaths in clothe first, looks like you're a drab. As for the priest, I've actually theorized that they might take issue with it. While not impossible, it is never mentioned that there are people with more than 2000 breaths in the city, and I'm sure some of the more affluent merchant families could do it if they really wanted to. Either they just weren't mentioned, its a taboo, or there are legal reasons why.

Not necessarily. The shards may have equal power, but not equal abilities. Future sight being an excellent example, as shards have different skills in this area, ranging from large designs that are planned thousands of years in the future to shards that can make a guess or two an event a thousand years in the future. Big difference. Its also possible that some shards have entirely unique abilities that other shards can't replicate. Some definitions of Odium including not just feeling hatred, but inspiring hatred in others. So Odium might have a unique ability to inspire hatred in others, or perhaps another entirely unknown ability that other shards could copy if they know about it.

Great question, but I don't think we have enough information to make conclusively say. My theory is that the magic is actually tied to the "subastral" instead of the planet. That's a term used by Hoid at one point, and I think it refers to the area of space that the planet occupies. The cognitive realm seems divided up into different areas, with each area having very different traits. If you destroyed the planet you'd likely see the cognitive space shrink, but I don't know if the space would disappear or not. I would guess not, but have nothing to really base that one. With the planet destroyed, I think some of Ruin's investiture would still remain within the subastral, enough to keep Hemalurgy in its current form. But if it is possible for Ruin to fully reclaim all of his power, I think that's when we would see either the disappearance of alteration of hemalurgy. As for Ruin describing the planet as an old man, that's just him trying to explain away his actions to Vin. He just wanted to break the place.

Odium is definitely scarred, not sure if maimed counts though. As for how he wins, that's the big question. Some theorize that he is simply more skilled at shardic combat. Others have theorized that there is a reason he goes after worlds with two shards, other than as an excuse. Perhaps he may have some ability to infect others with hared and make them fight each other instead of him.

Also, the reason Odium is doing what he is doing wouldn't have applied to Adon. Odium is killing because he wants to be the most powerful one around, not necessarily just cause (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was there too).

DO NOT EAT THE COOKIE. But if you already ate it, you probably found a random metal spike in it. Can I have that?

That's easy, you just get a Shard.... Oh wait, did I say easy? The most reliable and easiest method is the 5th heightening, but it takes some 2000 breaths, not cheap. Alternatively, you could die and become a Return. But not reliable in the slightest, and you need a reliable source of investiture or you die. If you're connected to the area around Elantris and are also very devoted to something, there is a possibility of becoming an Elantrian. Although living as an Elantrian is apparently exhausting, so even though you can live forever you might not want to. If you can gain the feruchemic and allomantic ability to use atium, and get your hands on some atium, you can live for a very very long time, although not technically immortal. There's also the method that Hoid uses, although we no basically nothing about it, so not realistic to get a hold of it. You could also be born as a dragon or one of the sleepless. That's just the version of immortality where you live a long time. There's a variety of ways to heal from fatal wounds.

In general, you can read them in any order. Most of the worlds are self contained and don't affect each other too much, Roshar/Stormlight being the first with notable outside influences. I'd recommend Mistborn Era 1 as a good starting place, then Elantris and Warbreaker, and then back to Mistborn Era 2.

Only partially the same. The Nightblood method would end up with the investiture either trapped in the sword, or sent back to the spiritual realm. A hemalurgy method on the other hand would have the investiture that was ripped off still there for re-purposing.

Possibly. Although the soul dagger is more akin to hemalurgy than to nightblood.

There have been some theories that the strata mentioned in several different cities is due to either the method used to create them, or they're related to The Sibling, who could be the spren of the Earth(aka Roshar). Thus the great spren would be stone, life, and storms, which basically defines Roshar. I doubt the planet itself could be a fabrial. This far all fabrials have a gem core, and usually metal to connect things, with the exception of the tower which is connected by gems. I have wondered if maybe the dawncities are connected by massive underground lines of gem or other material, although I still think that unlikely.

While I don't really have any evidence backing it up, while reading I imagined that once the lifeless' body started working again, the new soul(breath) started up the brain, and the memories contained within. This would create a new cognitive aspect with memories from the original owner, but connected to a new spiritual aspect.

Even if the future of the Cosmere is set in stone, which I don't think is is(but that's hard to prove one way or another), the ability to view the future is not perfect. The seer can tell what the most likely future is short term, but their information is imperfect, and that future can still be incorrect.

The key here is that the future in the cosmere is not set in stone. Seeing the future translates to seeing possibilities of the future. Because atium only looks a short time ahead, it is almost always right, but it can't always correct for changes that take place after the shadow was created. As for steel runners, yes atium would likely alert the seer to the attack before it happened. But that wouldn't change the result, the seer would just be aware of their death right before it happened. The steel runner could cross a room, stab the seer, and go back to the starting position before the seer could move an inch, let alone to a blocking position.

Tin savantism throws your senses into overdrive, but not necessarily your reaction speed. For example, in Spook's fight he was reacting to attacks extremely well, but his reactions are based on his knowledge of where the attacks are and fighting talent, not enhanced speed. He wouldn't have any better chance of splitting an atium shadow than Vin would have. Maybe even less since he can't burn pewter.

Depends on how fast the steelrunner was moving. A steelrunner moving fast enough would be able to attack before the seer was even aware of the attack. So yes, steelrunners can counter seers. And most everything else too. If the steelrunner was moving slightly slower, then yes, they'd probably produce multiple shadows after adjusting to the movements of the seer, although probably not many shadows, just not enough time before the attack would land. A slightly more interesting might be a zinc feruchemist. They can speed up thoughts, in additional to stronger mental capabilities. They would be able to observe the seer moving to counter their blow, and would be able to adjust their attack, splitting the shadow. And since they're not moving as fast as the steelrunner, there is more time for the seer and zinc feruchemist to counter each other again.

World hopping involves physically traveling to the cognitive realm. The cognitive realm is shaped by thoughts, and there's no one to think in the vastness of space between planets. As such, they space between planets in the cognitive is very very small. You can walk from one planet to another over a few weeks in the cognitive. So anyone with the know-how and access to a perpendicularity (typically in the form of a shardpool, but not always) can enter or exit to or from the cognitive realm can travel around the cosmere. Mistborn Secret History and Mistborn 1 spoiler: Travel through the perpendicularitys seems based on intent, not power. So a lot of different people are capable of it, although perhaps not as good as Hoid.

Hemallurgy will work anywhere, and the origin of the metal does not matter as long as it has the right percentages. But to get hemallurgy to work requires both very specific knowledge, and the intent to use hemallurgy. That's why you don't see it being used all over the place, people don't know about it and/or how to use it.

It would likely do nothing. Depends on the attribute you're not storing. Too much strength and you balloon, too much youth and you're a baby(fascinating implications), too much health and... I don't think anything would happen actually, considering that Miles was always tapping health, while already being healthy, and experienced no noticeable side effects.

In theory, with enough investiture, you can do anything. In practice, it wouldn't work. Investiture resist investiture. So something as concentrated as a shard blade would be almost impossible to affect.

If you could construct the proper visualization in your head for how jump to a different realm, then the awakened object would do it. But you would have to know how to worldhop already. Awakening is more of a watch the object follow your instructions to the t, or fail along the way scenario. Not watch the object figure out how to accomplish the command. Although the sentient awakened objects might be an exception. The ability to use the shardpool is irrelevant to breaths and awakening, so no guarantee that there is worldhopping via breaths.

Is this a separate question from the "destroy yourself" thing? If the awakened object is tied down or otherwise held in place, it will still try to fulfill its command. Awakened objects can be pretty strong, so it might just tear itself out of whatever's holding it down. Or it will just sit there, straining against its bonds, nothing too exciting.

The command must be accompanied by a mental visual of what is desired, so the awakener will decide how the object will try and destroy itself. Barring Nightblood and the Returned, I'm not recalling any commands that did not perform physical actions. So unless you have a couple thousand breaths to spare, imploding or exploding is unlikely. A more likely method is that the object would attempt to tear itself into pieces, or jumping might work too.

Compounding massive amounts of an attribute and then storing for later use is the typical way compounding is used. Compounding creates massive amounts of the attribute in question, far more than would be needed in the moment. This is why the Lord Ruler for instance would go to his hut every three days. He would spend some time in meditation, storing youth, burning the atium with the youth, producing large amounts of youth, store that in his atium(or else he'd become a child or even younger), and then repeating till he has a nice store. He's then continuously tapping his atiumminds till his next recharge. Miles had a large number of gold minds on him at all times. I don't recall if we ever saw him actually compound, but we did see him tapping them. All the time. He actually mentions that tapping his gold minds is addictive, he can't stop. That's why when he is injured, the books don't mention him actively starting to tap his minds to heal, because he never stopped tapping in the first place. Also, burning duralumin while compounding would actually make the effect weaker. Compounding works by storing, burning for x10, storing that, burning for x10, storing that, burning for times x10 again(effectively x1000 by this point). Duralumin would just burn the entire metal for x10, and potentially leave you without a metal mind to store the attribute in.

I think in one of the vision's he noted they used wood as their primary building material. But keep in mind that Alethkar receives the Highstorm at its most potent, so they are less inclined to use wood as a building material. The people in the vision may have had access to more wood, or they just lived farther west and didn't need stone buildings. As for where the shards of Honor are, I have a few ideas. The first is that large portions of the power were assigned task, and continue to do those task regardless of whether Honor is still around. Portions of Honor are invested in the Highstorm, parts are scattered through the various spren, and Odium is still bound by the powers of Cultivation and Honor, so I would imagine large parts of Honor are still chained to Odium. Mistborn Secret History Spoiler: Another idea is that the pieces are just lying around in the spiritual realm. Unlike on Sel or wherever Ambition died, there is still a living shard opposed to Odium hanging around, aka Cultivation. So after killing Honor, Odium might not have had a chance to do anything with the pieces.