alder24

10 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

Full SA spoilers. You have been warned.

In OB, Dalinar uses the Stormfather to work an Oathgate and hurts the Stormfather in the process. Why is it so bad? Is it because he already exists as the Highstorm and this was splitting his essence? Is that why no Bondsmiths have Blades, because their spren are already in the Physical Realm?

A spren manifesting physically (like a Shardblade) is severely restricted and bound in its new form. The Stormfather is vastly more than a regular Honorspren. He's omnipresent on Roshar, he's Honor's Avatar, he controls Highstorms, provides Stormlight, he's bound to Roshar on a level that far surpasses regular spren. If he were to be manifested fully physically some things might break. Nobody really knows what would happen but it could be bad. 

Moreover, this puts a strain on his bond with Dalinar because things like this shouldn't be possible. It's against their Oaths. An act like this harms him and risks him becoming a deadeye, which would have been catastrophical.

8 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

Why is a Shardblade’s magic cutting nature limited to edges? Could someone who knew that a Shardblade “cuts” by turning the material into Investiture make a sledgehammer or other object with a large surface area to remove enemy fortifications or clear the snow from your driveway really fast?

No. Sharp edges cut, flat surfaces smash and it's not something you can change because that's the nature of those objects. We've seen Shardhammers being used several times and none did any damage to the soul (but apparently per WoB I can't find, a one that would get inside the body would damage the soul). Even if you know why Shardblades cut, I doubt you would be able to change it - a sword knows what it itself is and knows that sharp things cut, while blunt don't.

14 hours ago, Walter The Moral said:

Do we think that the speed of light in a speed bubble is the same for someone inside a bubble as it is for someone outside?

Yes, one of the fundamental tenets of Einstein's special theory of relativity is that the speed of light in a vacuum is not relative, it's absolute. This means that no matter where you are, how fast you're moving, or how much time dilation affects you, you will always measure the speed of light to be 300,000 km/s. Always. And because of that we have time dilation - if the speed of light cannot change, time and distance must change to account for discrepancies.  

However, that's for speed of light in a vacuum. In a medium, like air or water, the speed of light is slower due to interactions between light and that medium and thus is relative and dependent on the frame of reference of the observer. If you move fast or experience time dilation relative to the air through which light is traveling, you will see that light moving at different speeds. So an observer in a time bubble should get a different value for the speed of light in the air outside of the time bubble from the observer outside of the bubble. The consequences of this elude me, but it seems Wayne did experienced them at the end of TLM with his supercharged time bubble, TLM ch 71:

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Something funny even happened to his eyesight, everything going all strange until he took another vial of Harmony’s metals and burned steel to see that way instead.

But the absolute speed of light in a vacuum is still the same in and out of the time bubble. 

26 minutes ago, Xabben said:

After reading the first four books in just 4 months, I have finally reached Wind and Truth. I was really excited to begin this journey but, after reading the prologue of WaT, something felt really wrong. What the h*** was that? That was definitely NOT the Stormfather, right? His behavior was totally off. Is this something that was intended? Or a legitimate error? I have found many post about this topic, but all of them are from the first previews, and therefore full of speculations...

Oh yes, the Stormfaker theory. It feels nostalgic now. Keep reading, you'll find out eventually.

The hilt is part of Nightblood in the same way his blade is, It's all him and the hilt is not blocked by aluminum. His hilt is not a blade so it doesn't cut anything or consume anything, because that's what hilts are. Nightblood is so invested that he manifests in all three realms simultaneously, when he's physically in the Physical Realm he manifests as a black smoke in the Cognitive Realm. Visions created by Honor and Odium are kind of in between the Cognitive and the Spiritual Realm and because Nightblood is so invested, he was pulled into Odium's vision as well. That's why Taravangian could have seen it and used it. 

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

Cosmere

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I think Rashek is perhaps the most similar case we have to Yumi. He's immensely powerful, and had his soul expanded greatly both by natural infusion of investiture and by time. Likewise both of their lifespans are artificially extended by an outside force, either Atium or the Father Machine. After losing those mechanisms they both die. Rashek was far more invested than Yumi was, and likewise had the ability to persist. However he didn't have the ability to make himself a new body from scratch, just having that investiture isn't enough. Even the human fused that Ishar makes require other human bodies to return. Simply having Identity and investiture isn't enough to survive on when the latent Connections that made the survival possible are severed.

Cosmere:

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

Likewise even Yumi acknowledges as she is breaking the Father Machine's hold that she can't survive without it. But then she does, for reasons. If she had just persisted as a Cognitive Shadow I would have been more okay with it, but it still would have felt cheap.

I don't think Yumi needed Nikaro to survive at all, she already was a hyper invested CS, she could do it on her own. The problem is, she thought she had to die and because of that perception she started to fade. Nikaro made her realize that she can stay and live her life as she wants. At least that's my interpretation.

6 hours ago, NameIess said:

However, I do think that the whole 'oh, the planet's fine, despite the fact that they went from unlimited free Hion to no free Hion, they probably lost an entire harvest to the sunlight/heated ground, and everyone got skin cancer from the sun.' aspect of the ending was the weakest part of it. I mean, maybe the Hion gradually faded, since the spirits currently manifested might not have immediately been freed, but it's still an all-out disaster that would've resulted in a lot of suffering and death. In universe I suspect Hoid was just glazing over the really hard times, but out of universe it does cheapen an otherwise masterful ending.

The spirits like TV dramas and decided to still manifest Hion, so it's still there. But true, the ending kind of ignores the consequences of the end of the Shroud. 

12 hours ago, The White Drake said:

I would say, if anything, you are undervaluing the Phantoms. Yes, they are insanely hard to make (I did the math once and figured that the 1,000 whole army required an amount of Breaths equal to the 10th heightening at least, all entirely consumed), but they can march all day, every day, in fact they can SPRINT all day, every day. On a campaign level that makes them ridiculously fast. They can run circles around any opposing army. They can get clean through contested areas by just outrunning all pursuit, and if challenged, can just circle around until the enemy is to exhausted to keep intercepting. In effect they can strike at-will, at anything they like, even across huge distances. A small strike force of Phantoms could utterly wreck enemy supply lines and raid their territory 24/7. Without Invested to respond, nothing can catch them and they're indestructible in battle.

You do make a great point about their mobility, but as you clearly said they're ridiculously, stupidly expensive. You won't be able to muster 1000 Phantoms, 100 at best. Losing just a few Phantoms will cost you a fortune and you won't be able to replace them. It also takes a lot of time to create them, because preparing bones and stone/metal bodies is a very time consuming process. Still, they are nearly indestructible and have superior mobility, but you don't need to break them to stop them, you just need to stop them. Tress has shown us how to deal with those types of units - immobilize them. Use ropes, chains, wires or mud - anything that binds, ties or sticks will slow them down or stop them fully. So they do have a weakness, and when there are only a few Phantoms and tens of thousands or enemy troops, they can quickly prepare a trap and remove them entirely from the battlefield - if they're smart enough to figure this out. 

And while they can always sprint, that doesn't change the fact that they can only be at one place at the time. Take an army of 20000 strong and divide them into units of 500 men each, then send them everywhere and use your cavalry to distract Phantoms. While the Phantoms are on a wild goose chase, your entire countryside is on fire, your crops are burning, villages are destroyed, towns are deserted and castles are falling. Your invincible army can't protect anything even though they eventually will catch up to all enemy units, by that time the damage has been done. That or your Phantoms were so distracted that most of the enemy troops escaped them (Phantoms still have to find them to kill them). This looks even worse if there are several large armies that can attack your country from many directions at once. Even sprinting, it would take Phantoms days or weeks to travel the distance from one enemy army to the other, in that time your entire nation is wide open and defenseless. If one army engages in delay tactics and tries to trap Phantoms and bind them, then you will lose the war. 

Phantoms are awesome, I really do love them, but they do have weaknesses and those can be exploited by someone smart. If your entire army is just a few Phantoms then you are playing a very, very risky game.

12 hours ago, The White Drake said:

Nor do you need koloss horses, or phantom horses. Both of them already have more than the weight of a cavalry charge behind them.

It's not about weight, it's about speed and psychological impact. Horses are much faster and a 20 ft Koloss on a Koloss-horse is way more terrifying than a 12 ft Koloss alone. I do agree that Koloss or Phantoms alone can replace cavalry, but putting them on hoses will make them even better. 

2 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

If Investiture has Intent, what happens to it once the polarity has been switched? Would anti-Honor want to break oaths? 

What do you guys think?

The tone and Intent are two different and separate things. Inverting the tone of investiture doesn't invert its Intent. Anti-Honor light, anti-Stormlight, still has Honor's Intent. The tone is like a song of a Shard. Intent is way more than a word that defines it, and there already are Shards with polar opposite intents, like Preservation and Ruin. But anti-Preservation's investiture is not Ruin's and its Intent still remains that of Preservation. It's their investiture, their song just out of phase - that's why pure Rhythms and their inversions sound exactly the same. Consider a soundwave, flipping a wave's peaks and valleys doesn't change the frequency or volume of the sound, so it's indistinguishable from the non-inverted soundwave. 

WaT ch 97 epigraphs:

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Anti-Light is not inherently the opposite of standard Light, nor is it negative, or imaginary, or a philosophical opposite. It is a different phase of the same entity. I see it more like the same melody, played at a different time.

However, it's possible to remove Intent entirely from anti-investiture, that's what happened with Ambition's investiture.  IoE ch 54:

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“That is not some creature from your mythology,” Starling said. “It’s what we call a negative-Investiture entity, a . . . type 3? Type 2? Shards, Ed knows. Anyway, a long time ago—when the Shards were newly born—one named Odium attacked and killed his sibling. A god was destroyed, torn apart, its Intent removed and its pieces made into some kind of terrible negative energy. They roam the emberdark, seeking souls to consume.”

1 hour ago, PanLin said:

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The only known method of creating anti-Light requires dampening the natural vibration of its corresponding Light, isolating it from its Shard's pure tone, and then re-writing it with a different tone. one that has been inverted with Intent.

A tone inverted with Intent, not inverted Intent. This means you have to want to invert the tone of investiture to create anti-light, you need to have that Intent, not that you invert Intent as well as the tone.  

On 6/16/2026 at 3:31 PM, Frustration said:

I remembered that there is one other high level foot soldier that we have seen in the cosmere, Kalad's phantoms.

 

Being made of stone they're probably the most durable of them all, while also having superior strength and speed to a human, but likely less than Koloss or Direforms.

 

I'd still probably go with direforms for a foot soldier, but I think phantoms may win a 1v1, depending on what weapon the other was using, and how much the bone needs to deform before the phantom stops working.

I would argue that Phantoms are tougher and stronger even than a Direform, or at least have a potential to be stronger if you pump more Breaths into them. Kalad's Phantoms are a two-stage Awakened entity; first you Awaken bones into Lifeless, then you Awaken stone with Breaths to act as a sinew (WoB). Put more Breaths into the second stage, you might get a stronger Phantom. Still, they are made out of stone, which on their own is very strong and depending on the type of stone used, you might make them even tougher. Colors, who said Phantoms have to be made out of stone, cast them out of steel and none could compete against them. And even if a bone were to break due to blunt damage, it's still encased in a stone and stuck in the same place, so it can still function as intended. It is very hard to harm them. Both Direforms and Koloss are flesh and bones, they bleed and die. 

That's why I believe Phantoms can outclass both Direforms and Koloss and will certainly win against both of them in a 1v1 duel, even the original Vasher's Phantom would win.  

But when it comes to the army, I'm still a firm believer of quantity over quality and analyzing all units from a logistical standpoint. Direforms put the most strain on logistics as you need to feed them, heal them, supply them, provide Voidlight and all other things that come with being a fairly normal living being. Koloss and Phantoms have none of those issues, with Phantoms being literal dead bones, the only supplies they need are Breaths, bones and stone/metal when you Awaken them. Their weapons can break, so at minimum you need to supply them with new ones, but they can always pick up weapons of their fallen enemies or use stone fists. Koloss are very similar, they can live off the dirt and ash, they just need small iron spikes and iron swords, that's it. Napoleon said "amateurs discuss tactics, the professionals discuss logistics" - an army that requires next to no logistics can be vastly superior than then one that needs a complicated supply chain. In that regard Koloss and Phantoms win by a lot. 

However, Phantoms are extremely expensive to make. You need to invest at least 50 Breaths in each soldier, which makes them too costly to deploy effectively as an army. A small force of Phantoms would be nearly indestructible against conventional means, but they can be only at one place at the time. 300,000 Koloss can be everywhere at once and constantly grow in numbers - good luck stopping that. That's why, when it comes to the army, Koloss still are the best choice.

But why make an army out of only Koloss or only Direforms or only Phantoms? Use all of them at once. Differentiate their weapons (pikes, shields, slingshots, warbows), make Koloss-horses or Phantom-horses and create cavalry, give them armor, use artillery to fulfill your need for art. A small number of Phantoms can act as an elite core heavy infantry or heavy shock cavalry (you can Awaken Phantom-horses), Koloss can fill the ranks of a typical infantry at the center of your army and cavalry at the flanks. Put Direform's intelligence into use and make them into officers to command units composed out of Koloss or Phantoms. Make quick response units out of Direforms or use them as a reserve force. Direforms and Phantoms can be also used as skirmishers and ranged units (not Koloss, their bloodlust would make them bad at this). Employ Direform Awakeners as artillery engineers. Direforms would also be good scouts compared to others. 

If that's not allowed, become a monster and choose Koloss for your army.

You're looking at the two dimensional projection of the three dimensional space - the Z axis is completely missing from this map and you can't accurately estimate distances between stars. While Roshar and Scadrial might look fairly close on the XY axes, on the Z axis they might be separated by dozens or hundreds of light years and the opposite might be true when considering their distance to the Drominad system. And while we know this image represents a real sky visible from some location in Cosmere, we don't know where it is and how far away from other stars is that place.  

44 minutes ago, Xabben said:

Okay, that makes sense. However, there are other parts of that night that are still a little bit strange. The parshendi (with the exception of Venli, which wanted to cause a war) only wanted to kill Gavilar to prevent him from causing a new Desolation. However, they gave oddly specific instructions to Szeth, indicating that he had to "kill, destroy, but leave witnesses. Wounded, but alive". I don't really understand why they would do such a thing, as they would only make Alethi angrier without a real reason...

That was probably Venli and Ulim's manipulation. They wanted a war, they wanted to enrage Alethi, so most likely Venli convinced the Five to give such specific orders. Ulim went as far as revealing himself to Klade as a voice, thus making others believe a spren, or other divine entities, are on their side. It helped them that it was also Listeners tradition for assassins to wear white and be visible to give a warning. Anyone knew this would mean a war, so showing off Szeth's powers could act as a deterrent or distraction and slow down Alethi in pursuing fleeing Listeners. 

WoK prologue:

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White clothing for a killer was a tradition among the Parshendi. Although Szeth had not asked, his masters had explained why.
White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning.
For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming.

OB prologue:

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Klade’s slave was an assassin. Klade claimed that a voice—speaking to the rhythms—had led him to the man, who had confessed his skills when pressed. Venli had apparently been with Klade, though Eshonai hadn’t seen her sister since earlier in the day.
After a frantic debate, the Five had agreed this was a sign of what they were to do. Long ago, the listeners had summoned the courage to adopt dullform in order to escape their gods. They’d sought freedom at any cost.
Today, the cost of maintaining that freedom would be high.

RoW ch 77:

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I don’t care why Nale thought we should attack the king, Ulim said. It has given me a seed of an idea. It’s not his plan, but your plan we’re following. We came here to make your people see how dangerous the humans are. But they are foolish, and you are wise. You can see how much of a threat they are. You need to show them.
“Yes,” Venli said. That was her plan.
Ulim slipped into her gemheart.
The humans are planning to betray you, Ulim said. A Herald confirmed it. We must strike at them first.
“And in so doing, make our people desperate,” Venli said. “When the humans retaliate, it will threaten our destruction. Yes … Then I could persuade the listeners they need forms of power. They must accept our help, or be annihilated.”

19 minutes ago, Xabben said:

I think it is implied somewhere that Szeth was abandoned as soon as they left Kholinar. Therefore, who kill these 100 horsemen? Surely not a small group of (mostly diplomats) parshendi... I suppose that it is a very minor detail, but it still bugs me.

Yes, but that was after he killed those riders and it was far enough from Kholinar that he could stand next to the road for quite some time before someone took notice of him. No more soldiers were sent after them and no patrol crossed his path. 

What's more, Parshendi had several Shardblades, it's very likely that were a few Shardbeares with them and it would make a lot of sense to send them with a diplomatic mission just in case. Even without Szeth, Shardbearers would have dealt with cavalry with ease, as no Alethi Shardbearer was sent in pursuit.  

19 hours ago, Treamayne said:

The thing to keep in mind is that, based on current data, what Iron is really manipulating is the Higgs Field.

Which doesn't make a lot of sense because the Higgs Field accounts for less than 1% of the actual mass of an atom (mass of each individual elementary particle like quarks and electrons), the rest comes from the binding energy that holds atoms together. Let's just stick to saying that F-iron manipulates mass (not weight) and the magic lets the density remain unchanged. 

On 6/12/2026 at 7:24 PM, Sythrin said:

Do you think in the future its possible to alter alter density and make somebody not only heavier but also tougher and stronger?

The Focused Ones are achieving the same effect but with Tension. When relaxed they are fat and large, but they can compress themselves down to the size of a normal Singer with Tension, infusing their body with Voidlight and making it incredibly tough. They may not be manipulating density directly, but they kind of manipulate the volume of their body, F-iron manipulates mass directly, so I think it's not a stretch to say that there might be a way in Cosmere to manipulate density directly, without changing mass and volume (but it's unlikely we see it as just mass manipulation creates a lot of problems). But F-iron can't do it, as it doesn't affect density. 

On 6/12/2026 at 7:24 PM, Sythrin said:

Or maybe create swords that wield like normal blades for the wielder but heavier for the attacked one.

No, it's either heavier for both or not at all. 

14 hours ago, Xabben said:

One of the most unbelievable parts of the entire Stormlight Archive, for me, is the escape of the Parshendi from Kholinar's palace after killing king Gavilar. Even if the group of parshendi left a couple of hours before the assassination, the parshendi needed to navigate through a completely unknown territory for weeks before reaching the shattered plains. Moreover, we know by chapter 81 of RoW that they did not transform into war form until they reached their homeland, which means that they travelled using other, much slower forms such as the work form. Is it really believable that humans, with access to much faster travelling methods such as horses, wouldn't have found these parshendi just outside the capital city?

PD: Recall that the assassination was planned the same day that happened, which means that they didn't have much time to prepare for the escape.

Parshendi escaped the palace and the city at the same time Szeth was on the rampage. Only after Gavilar was killed did Parshendi leaders reveal themselves as the perpetrators, but due to overall chaos it still took Alethi hours before they realized that the rest of the Parshendi had fled the city. They sent 100 horsemen after them, but they all were killed by Szeth who was still with Parshendi. Alethi never stood a chance in capturing them.

As for the navigation problem, Eshonai was probably more or less aware how to return home simply just by remembering the way to Kholinar, but let's not forget that Venli had Ulim with her. He could have guided them home from hideout to hideout and thus even if Alethi were to send more people after them, they would have slim chances of finding them. However, it is doubtful that Alethi sent anyone after the initial pursuers were lost, it was just too costly and risky and they probably didn't have any sizable force on standby that could have been sent after Parshendi. They were already gearing up for the war so why would they try to capture Parshendi if they were going to find them on a battlefield anyway?  

WoR Prologue:

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Hours later, it was discovered that the assassination—and the surrender of three of the Parshendi leaders—had covered the flight of the larger portion of their number. They escaped the city quickly, and the cavalry Dalinar sent after them were destroyed. A hundred horses, each nearly priceless, lost along with their riders.

23 hours ago, Frustration said:

So on another thread I was talking about direforms being perhaps the single greatest foot soldiers in the Cosmere, when @Trusk'our brought up Koloss. So I have a two questions to pose to the community.

1. Which one would you choose as a foot soldier in your army?
2. Who would win in a fight?

Direform are intelligent, naturally armored and quite strong, comparably so to Koloss. Koloss are massive, intimidating and swing huge lumps of iron. While the Direform numbers are limited by available spren, you can create as many Koloss as you want, but they have a tendency to start killing each other, which isn't ideal.

Still, quantity is a quality of its own so in my army I would rather have Koloss simply because I can outnumber any enemy by a vast margin and overwhelm them. Koloss are also easy to control with Allomancy, so they will follow me commands just as I want them to and won't betray me. They are also super easy to replace, just reuse spikes from the fallen ones, and they don't need any supplies so any logistical restraints are just out of the window. Additionally, an army of Koloss is just terrifying, which would devastate the morale of my enemy and could force them to surrender without any fight.

But in a 1 on 1 fight, Direform would most likely win, simply because they are smart and intelligent unlike Koloss. Their armor probably wouldn't help that much if they were to get hit by Koloss' giant club of iron (blunt internal damage), but Eland had no powers and still killed one of them, Direform would have a much easier job.

The blade is still visible in Shadesmar when it’s summoned in the Physical Realm, it appears as a shimmering, glowing object. Although on Scadrial every metal glows in the Cognitive Realm, pure investiture turned physical would probably be recognizable for a Radiant and especially for a spren from Roshar. 

Having Shardblade permanently summoned and hiding it in an aluminum sheath is a great solution. I would also cover its hilt with aluminum or some normal metal to hide its glow. If you know someone trusty and you don’t mind leaving your Shardblade with them, they can also hide it in a big pile of metal/scrap.

But truthfully, you could dismiss your blade and have your Deadeye sink into the depths of the Scardrian subastral, which is made out of opaque mists. Most of deadeyes on Roshar wander through the bottom of the sea of beads and it’s almost impossible to detect them. If your deadeye is somewhat aware and you can communicate with them (like Maya), you can tell them to stay hidden at the bottom of the Shadesmar sea and they won’t be seen and won’t betray your position, yet you can still summon them to the Physical Realm anytime you need a blade. 

If anyone wants to retrieve your Shardblade, they need to find you and not your deadeye. They need to either kill you, spike your Connection to the blade out, or destroy the gem in the blade when it’s summoned (only a Bondsmith would be able to steal that Connection by touching your deadeye). A giant, glowing sword would be very eye-catching on Scadrial so you’d do better if you don’t brandish your Shardblade in the Physical realm if you want to stay hidden.

On 6/4/2026 at 2:37 PM, tommahk said:

My biggest concern was a spren being on the Scadrian portion of the CR. I'm not quite sure where this would take place in the timeline, but it would before WaT. 

That's a problem because before WaT it was incredibly hard for a spren or a Radiant to leave Roshar, almost impossible. Kelsier suffers from the same problem, he can’t leave Scardial. 

15 hours ago, Xabben said:

So, given A and B, wouldn't the most logical solution be to bring some non-radiant person with the Windrunners, leave him/her near Urithiru, and then make him/her go to physically check if everything is okay by foot?

And where would you leave that non-Radiant person? On a vertical mountain cliff? Urithiru is placed within mountain peaks, you can't just walk up to it. The only path you can enter on foot is the one Fused took when attacking Urithiru, through a cave stretching from the foot of a mountain up to the basement of Urithiru. But that path was blocked during the invasion. 

1 hour ago, Through the Living Shadow said:

I disagree

I think there’s a separate conversion for Investiture <-> Energy and Investiture <-> Matter

Like

there would be three equations in total

and you would consider them separately

Momentum is there because of relativity n stuff—physics acts weird for observers of something when it goes fast

at least that’s how I understand it

It would be probably easier to do three separate equations, but at the same time also harder as they all need to work together. That's why I don't think there would be three equations, because energy, matter and investiture are the same thing and the Einstein's equation tells you how much total energy is there in the object/particle - mass is energy, so is momentum and energy curves spacetime (and that's why it's in the equation - at least that's how I understand it). That's why I believe there should be just one equation in Cosmere that tells you the same with the inclusion of Investiture cause it's also energy that needs to be considered.   

1 hour ago, Through the Living Shadow said:

Other tangent question, hedging onto WaT territory

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Lift is now able to just pack up and leave Roshar, right? Was she able to do that before the Oathpact was remade, and after Cultivation left?

WaT:

1 hour ago, Moirne said:

This is just a musing in response to the assertion on the most recent Shardcast (and the previous episode on Threnody) that Threnodites in the Homeland did not form Shades upon death. Do we know that for sure?

All points towards this conclusion. The Shades were first discovered in the Forests of Hell by the first expeditioners who landed there. The AU Threnodite system essay says that people only sometimes turn into Shades, not always:

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Or perhaps they fear the spirits of the dead. People on Threnody are afflicted with a particular ailment that—upon death—sometimes turns them into what we call a Cognitive Shadow.

1 hour ago, Moirne said:

My initial impression years back was that Hell has been collecting Shades for quite some time, even prior to the forescouts arriving.  My assumption was that the Shades generated when homeworlders died appeared in Hell, because … well, it’s Hell, right?  Could this explain why the prey animals were already gone when the first settlers arrived in Hell, because their own civilization’s ghosts had already been active there for quite some time?

This made even more sense to me when reading about Braize - that a large collection of investiture, or a special type of it, can draw spirits/souls.  Might something like that be present in Hell?  And then on Canticle, where investiture is moving around based on the alignment of planet and sun, the Shades either form and get vaporized or form and have nowhere to go other than the Chorus tanks if they happen to die outside of the sunlight?

My opinion is that the original inhabitants of this continent died off shortly after the clash of Shards and turned into Shades, remaining there ever since. It's possible that you are right, as on Canticle Shades are often drawn into the Chorus rather than remaining where they died. But this is something that is visible, a mist appears and moves away. However, this isn't always the case and Shades sometimes do rise from corpses. If things like this were happening on the Homeland too, it would have been noticed and Shades would have been known before landing in the Forests of Hell. TSM ch 22:

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“We think that maybe,” Zeal said, “people who die without being given to the sun are drawn to join the Chorus. They say that shades will rise from those who die and don’t become sunhearts, but we rarely experience that—instead, sometimes after a death, we see mist gather and move to the Reliquary.”

It's still a valid theory as we only have scares information about Threnody, however we don't really have anything that would supoort your claim either. 

10 hours ago, Through The Living Grub said:

The number of Breaths for a Heightening can vary based on the strength of the Breaths. Does the health of the holder affect the amount of investiture? Or something else? Is there an average amount of Invesisture per Breath and the variability is negligible?

Age is the most important factor. Breaths of younger people are stronger and more vibrant than those of adults, old age weakens them even more and Breaths from dying people are the weakest. Still, the difference is pretty small so it's not that big of a deal. 

23 minutes ago, Xabben said:

Maybe I'm a little bit biased by Rock, which is a true cinnamon roll, but I don't see Horneaters making business with what they consider to be a sacred place. But, again, I suppose that there are selfish and greedy people between them too... I would love to learn more about the Horneater culture.

It's even better. Apparently Horneaters will treat you like a god. We will know more about Horneaters and their perpendicularity once Brandon writes Horneater novella.

22 hours ago, Sythrin said:

Coppermind states that as long as a part of somebody is inside the body. The whole effect is affecting them. So what if something big like a Chasmfiend is touching it if you create a giant krakenlike creature with Midnight aether.

Would it be affected normaly and flail its appendages at highper speed outside the bubble?

It looks like that if something is large enough, it wouldn't be affected by the time bubble even if a part of it is passing through it.

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Sprens seem to have plenty of food to sell to travelers. However, how do they get that food? Do they buy it from other human travelers? Do they manifest it? Does manifested food actually nourish?

They buy food from merchants, the most popular food is canned one which is brought to Roshar by traders from other worlds. Canned food doesn't spoil that fast so it can be stored for a long time, perfect for Shadesmar. There are thousands of people travelling between worlds, there is a whole trade network, which deals with distributing food around Shadesmar.

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Many sprens seem to know modern Rosharian languages. How is this possible if humans from roshar haven't been to shadesmar for thousands of years?

They have been. There is a perpendicularity in Horneaters Peaks and a massive trade hub there. People from Roshar can use it to cross into Shadesmar, and while most people don't know about it, it still happens. I would also assume that as languages evolve on Roshar, due to the fact that spren are influenced by perception of people, they naturally pick up those changes. However, we have seen many spren who struggle to communicate in human languages (for example capitan Ico), so its clear that they need to learn too. 

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Is "manifesting" a different thing from what Shallan and Jasnah do when they rearrange beads to form objects?

Yes, what Shallan and Jasnah do is force beads around to take the shape of an object, manifesting an object creates it physically in Shadesmar. 

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- The only stable entrance to shadesmar is cultivation's perpendicularity. However, it seems to be heavily guarded by Horneaters. How do worldhoppers enter/exit Roshar then? Wouldn't they be stopped by Horneaters?

They don't stop people from crossing between realms, Hoid, Zahel or Azure had no problems with passing through Cultivation's perpendicularity.

Edit:

20 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Because spren exist off of human thought, they don't have languages of their own

Actually, they do have their own languages. Cryptics are probably most famous as their language use clicking sounds, Lightspren use vibrations through metal to communicate and there are several other spren languages. 

1 hour ago, Through The Living Grub said:

Kandra are not normally able to use metallic arts, but Bleeder was able to somehow in era 2. The spike may be special, but it can happen.

Kelsier spent a while sitting in a perpendicularly, so he may have enough innate Investiture to match his body to his current one.

Those are a bit different situations because Bleeder used spikes to steal Allomantic and Feruchemic powers and grant them to her own body and Spirit Web. Kelsier already has them in his Spirit Web. The problem is that the body he uses isn't his, it's Mistwraith's body which has its own Spirit Web and most importantly its own identity, which conflicts with Kelsier spirit's identity. I wouldn't be surprised that even if he were to try to place a spike with a stolen power into this body, it would grant this power to the Mistwraith, but not to Kelsier's Spirit Web, which would also prevent him from using it for the same reasons. It's definitely possible for him to regain his powers, but it would require hacking the magic system in some way. It would probably be easier to find a way to fully reconnect his Spirit Web to the Physical Realm and manifest his own new body out of pure investiture, SA spoilers:

Obviously, Sazed could have done it for him with ease, but he decided not to do it (can't blame him, Kelsier has already dethroned two gods and usurped the power of the third one for a short time, you can never be too careful when it comes to dealing with Kelsier). 

20 hours ago, Tonio811 said:

Where did Kelsier get his new body in Era 2?

Kelsier's Connection to the Physical Realm was severed, so it's a little problematic for him to return to PR. He can't just step through a perpendicularity, he needs to reestablish his Connection to the Physical Realm. Thankfully, his bones are still around and he is Connected to them so he can use this. We don't know exactly how he got his body back, but the most likely theory supported by WoBs is that he fed his bones to a Mistwraith and then he used Hemalurgy to staple his soul into it with a spike. Then he just used Mistwraith's shapeshifting ability to create his body from the bones Mistwraith ate, just like Kandra do it. So technically speaking he kind of possessed Mistwraith's body rather than got his own body back, which explains why he can't use Allomancy as even though it's part of his Spirit Web, the body he uses is not his.  

SA 4 Spoilers: