Valtak

Ha, I love it. I'm still very new here, just learning all of these quirks.

Also, I agree with your theory that it has to do with the spren. The focus is what shapes what the power becomes. If the focus is even slightly off, you can get different (sometimes disastrous) effects. On Sel, a single line on your focus is the difference between an elantrian and someone suffering from the Shaod. On Scadrial, having your allomantic alloy off by a few percent is the difference between allomantic power and sickness or death. Now, what does this have to do with Roshar? Well, Brandon has said that the surgebinding granted to the knights radiant is the result of spren imitating what Honor did to make the Honorblades and grant the heralds their powers. He has also said that the powers the Radiants have are not exactly the same as the ones the heralds of their orders have. Slight differences exist. This is totally in line with your theory - the spren are imitating the focus that they see Honor having created in the honorblades, but it isn't a perfect imitation. It's damnation close, so the powers are super similar, but not a perfect copy. In Selish terms, it would be like a new elantrian copying an Aon he saw a veteran elantrian draw, and making a miniscule error that weakened the power of his magic. So, this rationale has me totally believing your theory. *Edit* is there some strange thing on this forum that replaces "damnation" with "damnation"? I keep editing to fix it and it won't take. *Edit 2* Ha! Apparently there is.

So, using your analogies, using allomancy to fuel feruchemy would be like lining up two fun factories nozzle to nozzle (one representing allomancy, one representing feruchemy), with the same blue attachment on each one, putting a big ole blob of Play-Doh (preservation investiture) in one (the allomancy one), and squeezing it directly through into the other one (the feruchemy one). Since they both have the same nozzle (for example, gold) the investiture can be stored directly in the feruchemical store. The Play-Doh fits the key perfectly to go into the second fun factory while coming out of the first fun factory. That's why you can compound to dump incredible stores of health into a gold metalmind, even though seeing past selves has nothing to do with healing. You just keyed the power the right way. You are "cheating" because the feruchemy fun factory isn't supposed to be able to get supplied with extra play doh. You have one can, and only one can, and you are supposed to push it in through the nozzle bit by bit, until you need it, and then you can squeeze it all out at once using the red handle. With compounding, you can grab as many cans of play doh as you want and force it on in there with your handy second fun factory.

That was an incredibly well thought out and informative answer, @Spoolofwhool. Thank you very much. If you don't mind, I have another question that the answer to can clear up a lot of my misunderstandings of how these systems may play together. If a transgendered person, say a woman (who has always felt trapped in her body, inside is totally a man) becomes a KR, would the stormlight alter her body to become male? I know this could be a touchy question depending on people's stance on real world things, but for the sake of the answer let's assume that transgender people (as described) exist (and agree not to crucify me for my pronoun choices in the preceding sentence).

Thanks for those WoB! They answered the question I was trying to get at. I need to get better at searching theoryland, it seems.

Yeah, I had the location thought as well, but I didn't want to make the post too ling. I thought I had seen a WoB that said it would be possible to hack the magic system to get things like Aondar to work off of Sel - I will try to find it when I am free (though that won't be for many hours now). This seems to suggest that you could get forgery to work as well. Maybe you could get it to work during a highstorm, as from what I always believed is that sellish magic is caused by the terrible fury that is trapped in the cognitive realm pushing out into the physical one, but being molded by the symbols (think of how we can create cool things with circuitry by forcing electricity to follow certain paths). I thought I read somewhere that the cognitive realm during a highstorm has the same kind of fury. That possible sticking point aside, I hadnt thought of the cognitive vs spiritual aspect. Thanks for bringing that up! Shari's soulstamp reawakening the emperor makes me think it is a spiritual effect (Brandon named it the emperor's soul, after all. Soul makes me think spiritual aspect more than cognitive). However, the more base mechanics of soulstamping tables and walls do smack a lot of soulcasting, which is purely cognitive. Hopefully we get another short story of Shai sometime soon to see more of forgery - I would love to know more about it. I find it by far the most interesting magic system I have seen in the Cosmere so far.

We know that stormlight healing has to do with how one sees oneself. Lopen regrows his arm because he still sees himself as having two arms, Kal keeps his slave brand because it is part of his identity. Now, say Shai finds her way to Roshar. Some spren notices her, decides to form a Nahel bond (elsecaller or lightweaver or something). Would her having access to stormlight drastically increase her soulstamp's powers? If she crafted a soulstamp to believe that she had always been a 6'5" musclebound monster that makes Rock look like Lopen, would the stormlight "heal" her to make this a reality, since she now truly believes that is her identity? (I understand that crafting such a stamp may be impossible given the minutia of how soulstamp's work, but we don't know for certain. For the sake of argument, let's assume it is a possible stamp) Even more interesting, if she somehow learns enough about a radiant to craft an accurate soulstamp of them, could she somehow force bodily change onto them by altering their sense of self? Stamp them, and let their access to stormlight do the change?

@The One Who Connects You bring up many good points. However, I think a potential flaw in the reasoning is assuming that all Listeners would decide as one. You are absolutely correct that, to some, the idea of submitting themselves to a compulsion (even if it is completely voluntary) would be terrifying, and out of the question. If anyone would have trust issues, it would be ex-voidbringers. However, I can imagine another camp of Listeners who simply do not trust themselves to not repeat the atrocities that happened. Listeners who are wracked with guilt, and are willingly submitting themselves to a compulsion to safeguard against the horrors being repeated. We have a false view that it must have been a large portion of the population which took an oath (again, if such a thing even happened) because parshmen far outnumber free listeners. However, there have been thousands of years since such an act occured (or not). If the humans have been using them as laborers for even a quarter of that time, their numbers would flourish. Humans think them almost akin livestock, and likely breed them the same way. You can never have too many parshmen! By the time modern day rolls around, their would be far more parshmen than free listeners. Anyway, I admit this is only one possibility among many. It could be that all Listeners reverted to the mateform/dullform life voluntarily, and then humans just captured some dullform from the scattered tribes, figured out how to force a transformation into slaveform, and the rest is history. Either way, I look forward to learning more about the history of the Listeners in coming books.

Thanks for the answers. @Spoolofwhool Regarding to the Shadesmar point, Which is confusing, because I also found this ...But then I found this Ignore the extra spoiler tags. I don't know how to get rid of them. GODKING KURKISTAN IS THE BEST. Either way, I'm going to assume that Brandon intends Shadesmar to be a local word for the cognitive realm around Roshar, but he isn't very clear and he is misinterpreted sometimes.

So, I know from WoB that how invested a metal is has a direct effect on how difficult it is to push or pull with allomancy. Regular metal presents no problems, Nightblood would be damnation near impossible. This leads me to believe the same is true of a heavily invested feruchemical storage metal, or a hemalurgic spike. What I don't know however, is if heavily invested metals have weak "blue lines" when burning steel. The only point I recall seeing feruchemical stores under steel (or in this case, iron) vision is when Vin was attempting to divest the Lord Ruler of his bracers. In that case, the lines were very dim, but also piercing his body (which is implied to be the reason for the dim lines). I can't recall ever having a PoV attempt to view a hemalurgic spike with steel vision. So, my question is: do heavily invested metals have a weak signature (blue lines) under steel vision? Do we have a WoB on this? Does the community have any evidence one way or another? Secondary question regarding steel and iron: we learn in SH that metals glow in the cognitive realm around Scadrial, similar to souls. I assume this is not the case in Shadesmar, since we haven't heard of it or noticed it in our PoV visits. This leads me to believe that metals have innate investiture on Scadrial. Does this mean that a worldhopping mistborn would have an easier time pushing on, for example, the Rosharan counterparts of common metals on Scadrial?

Thank you for finding that! Since he doesn't address Parshmen in the question, the logical conclusion is that they are gendered and give live birth themselves.

I can believe that if he had children after the Ascension, they would have a good chance to have powerful allomantic powers. Dilution of the bloodline from the time the Lerasium was ingested by the original nobility has weakened the power, so it stands to reason that the Lord Ruler (who has full allomantic strength (and maybe then some)) would have powerful children, with them being second gen allomancers. However, I don't think he had any children post-ascension. If he did, he SURELY didn't allow them to breed. He has devoted incredible effort to weed out the feruchemical genes. He possesses the feruchemical genes. He would not allow his children to reproduce, maybe going so far as sterilizing them if he couldn't bring himself to have them killed outright. He does NOT want another full feruchemist/allomancer to challenge him.

@The One Who Connects: Yeah, there are still some things that we would need to learn before I can fully support the theory. I would imagine that you need to believe that the thing you swear to do is honorable. Personal belief and how you see yourself seems to be a big theme in different magic systems. As to Szeth fundamentally betraying his people, I already assumed that. We know from Nale that the Shin see the Herald's as their gods (or at least worship them). In my idea, Ishar (or another herald, I suppose) rules Shinovar. When Szeth betrayed his people (my personal pet theory is that he began the process of forming a Nahel bond himself, which if Nale's reaction to such things is any indication, the heralds are very against), he was punished by their leader and made Truthless. In this thought, being made Truthless is the highest punishment handed down by Ishar (or again, whoever leads). @The One Who Connects @Ari: The way I now see it (a little differently than when I first wrote this post, but that is why I came to these forums in the first place - to get more information to modify my views), oathbinding (if it exists) is more of a voluntary process than I originally envisioned it. The oathbinding doesn't force you to do anything, it just makes you more likely to hold to an oath that you already see as honorable. My imaginings for the Parshmen are as follows: After the previous desolation, the Listeners ejected their voidspren and were horrified by what they did. You can see vestiges of that horror remaining in modern day Parshendi - they absolutely DO NOT want to get voidspren again. They swore to never bind a spren again, and this oath was reinforced by an oathbinding. Parshmen can rebond spren (so I understand), they just choose not to. I find it hard to believe that after 4,500 years, the parshmen are still feeling the "sins of their fathers" strong enough to choose to stay in absolute slavery. I imagine they didn't think they would end up a slave race when they first swore not to bond a spren. The theory, as it stands now, is that there is an oathbinding helping to ensure that choice. @The One Who Connects @Ari: Yeah, the Ishar causing the Recreance theory and Ishar betraying the others theory are dead. I was under the impression that the heralds were leading their orders until the Recreance, which is not true. I am throwing my support behind the theory you led me to, Ari. It has led me to see some awesome parallels I hadn't noticed before. I will think about them further and make a post sometime later.

I don't think there is any information on this. Having her be another Skaa-born mistborn seems unlikely though. They are supposedly extremely rare, to the point where just having Kelsier and Vin was super shocking.

It is a term I made up to describe what I imagine the bondsmith's power to be. There is no official source on it. Sorry, I should have specified that sooner. Basically, what I expect is that the bondsmiths is using his tension/adhesion surges in a unique way to perform a binding directly to someone's spiritual or cognitive aspect. Not to the level of altering sDNA, but reinforcing a promise that they make. Perhaps it makes them more likely to keep an oath. I call it oathbinding because it seems like an apt name for it.