alder24

She said she would most likely be the last absolute monarch of Althekar and she thinks it would be a good thing to learn from the Azish and Taylen forms of government. I'm pretty sure that she won't suddenly establish modern democracy on Roshar just from what she said in RoW alone. RoW ch 50:

Personally, I don’t think I would be physically attracted to a Singer (all this carapace, forms and spikes are not for me), but Singers have a very human-like appearance - they look just like humans with patterns on the skin and sometimes have some shell. They aren’t that different so I can fully understand that someone might be attracted physically to them. But physical attraction is not everything, there is a person inside this body with their own personality, feelings and thoughts and all of this is almost exactly the same as what humans have. So while I might not fall in love with a Singer's body, I definitely might fall in love with a person, who happens to be a Singer. But I understand you, I draw the line at Sleepless - I can’t stand the thought that they are made out of thousands of spider-like creatures. That’s just a nightmare. Some people have kinks, some have aversions, having both is fine and there is a wider range of them in Cosmere. But just because I wouldn’t date a Sleepless, it doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to seeing Sleepless date in Cosmere - Masaka or Nikli are quite likeable, cute even and I totally fine with seeing them consensually date a non-Sleepless who loves them for who they are, despite that Sleepless literally can have butterflies inside of their stomach. But what’s wrong with Thaylens?? You know they can always cut their eyebrows short like Mraize does it? Rust, I've never thought about it that way!

You should edit the title of your topic, it contains massive spoilers for WaT and titles are visible from the main page of the Shard, thus they can spoil the book for others. That's death. Dalinar's soul passed into the Beyond (the afterlife, different from the Spiritual Realm), which is beyond the reach of any Shard. This is Brandon's way to definitely say that the character is truly dead so when you see that the book specifically said "Dalinar vanished into the Beyond" it means he's dead for good. Whether or not the Beyond exists is a different question Brandon won't ever answer. The one who "claimed him" is the God Beyond (again, just like with the Beyond, Brandon won't ever confirm if he exists, but the God Beyond is not Adonalsium) and that's more metaphorical than literally. Dalinar believed in the God Beyond since OB and in his belief that's where he went. If the book didn't specifically say that Dalinar vanished into the Beyond, then I would agree we would have an open door to speculations about what happened to him and who claimed him. However, because the book was clear that he went into the Beyond, it means he's gone gone and nobody could claim him.

Yes, Shards are not infinite, the Shardic power is near-infinite, but basically infinite for all intents and purposes, however that's not what limits Shards - it's the Vessel that is the limitation. The Vessel, while they have an enormously expanded mind, is not infinite thus they can't tap the infinite power of their Shard. They can only access a finite power, which is a fraction of what the Shard has to offer. I assume that holding more Shards expands your mind more than holding just one Shard, thus you can tap more power, but never all of it.

If you consider Vin before Ascension, then my bet is on Hoid, because Hoid simply can't be killed with conventional means due to his Dawnshard powers. He can heal basically everything Vin could throw at him and while he can't hurt her (because he held a Dawnshard), he can outlast her and wait for her to die of old age while throwing insults and making weird faces. But if you consider Vin as the Vessel of Preservation, then neither can win - both are immortal, both can't hurt the other (Preservation's power is unable to hurt, except for a very special occasions like when Vin throw it to kill Ati to protect those she loved, which killed her in the process) - there would be no winners in this fight.

Why would you assume she was a mortal before the Shattering? She could be a dragon thus immortal (I want to point out that before WaT Brandon said in WoBs that there was only one dragon Vessel, but in WaT it was revealed that Valor's Vessel was also a dragon, which leaves a possibility that Edgli was a dragon as well - now I can't find that WoB, instead I keep finding WoBs where he said there was at least one dragon so that's probably my mistake), or she was a Sho Del like Uli Da and we don't know anything about their lifespan (I haven't read Dragonsteel). It is also likely that she had found a way to slow down her aging before Ascension and there are methods commonly used by Worldhoppers that don't require invested arts. Moreover, out of 17 people involved in the Shattering, there were 4 Dawnshards - there is almost a 20% chance that she was a Dawnshard before the Shattering and thus she was immortal, just like Hoid was (it also makes a perfect sense why she was denied powers if she was a Dawnshard). I've got the impression that Hoid predates the Shattering by hundreds, if not thousands of years and it's possible some of the 16 were also as old as he was (this WoB suggests that in the non-canon Dragonsteel, Hoid and others became Dawnshards more or less together). This is what I believed happened. We only know that Brandon suggested humans on Nalthis were created just like they were on Scadrial and that Nalthis is a relatively young planet that doesn't have any fossil record. But to have fossils you need to have life and if Endowment just found a lifeless planet and settled on it creating life (you could say she Awakened it to life), there would be no fossils created in just 10000 years. All checks out in my mind.

Of course, I meant by this that sand won't stay in your body and won't require constant healing to keep your body alive in the same way suffocation requires it. It would be just one moment of healing and the sand would be gone from your body, with every wound sealed off. Good point and it seems like a probable outcome.

I don't think the text says she was denied creating Nalthis, she was denied powers in the past like the ones she's giving now to people. She's most likely talking about pre-Shattering times and she considers that whoever denied her powers of gods, made a mistake. Adonalsium perhaps? He specifically prevented spren on Roshar from accessing Surges so it's possible he was reluctant to grant powers to people and he denied to give them to Edgli. That is also a possible explanation and that would explain the timeline. Although the Divine Breath was first given fairly recently, we don't know if Breaths were similarly not present before in Nalthian history. I wouldn't say that Nalthis was created recently, it would have been too big of an event to pass unnoticed throughout Cosmere and nobody has ever mentioned that a new world just popped into the existence not so long ago. One important factor is that Edgli is most likely a non-human Vessel (probably Sho Del) and she has problems understanding humanity, which might explain why there is such a gap between creation of Nalthis/Nalthians and the First Returned. However this is not something unheard of as a similar gap existed on Scadrial - while the Mists were creating Mistings every 1000 years, Allomancy itself was discovered only by Rashek during his Ascension and since then it became a common knowledge. On Roshar Honor was totally surprised when spren started to bond with people and grant them Surges. We know that despite the near omniscience of a Shard, it takes a conscious effort to discover some piece of knowledge and while the power of Endowment was aware how to create Returned, Edgli herself might have just recently discovered that this possibility exists.

As long as an Aetherbound touches any part of the air created from his Aether, he would be able to control all of that Aether air - just like TwinSoul can control all of the Roseite Aether as long as he touches it in just one place. This could manifest as a continuous gust of wind being emitted from the hand of an Aetherbound or something like that. However I doubt that the Zephyr Aether will turn into dust - it's gas, not solid, it would most likely just stay as a normal air.

Yes and we've actually seen those spren in Elantris and Yumi - Seons, Skaze and Spirits. Spren are Splinters - an autonomous part of the Shard that was Splintered and separated from the Shard, becoming self-aware. Splinters can be created by accident during the death of the Shard (Splintering) and Seons and Skaze were created like that, or the Shard can deliberately self-Splinter part of themselves to create Splinters - like Spren were made. If there is free investiture that investiture can become self-aware on its own and would become a Splinter, even without the involvement of any Shard. So there are multiple ways of creating Splinters and Harmony can create their own Splinters if he want to, but right now, there are no Splinters on Scadrial.

Tress was able to control the growth of the Verdant Aether with simple Command and visualization so I bet you can do the same with all Aethers. You could probably say to it to make a gust of wind that would raise you into the air or something like that. You could become an Airbender. or you can always use a nozzle. I don't think so, it creates breathable air. As far as we know Aethers create one specific essence and you can't make the Verdant Aethers to create potatoes. Aethers are comparable to god metals - they are the body of Prime Aethers, investiture manifested in the Physical Realm, so I find it very unlikely that you could change the material they are made out of. A wall

Interesting idea but it's quite different from suffocation. Healing can't provide oxygen to cells, it can only heal the damage done by the lack of it. But healing can and does remove bullets from wounds as it heals - it generally pushes them outside of the body, they don't stay inside. Sand would be like bullets so healing would just push it outside and it wouldn't be draining your storages. Only when you're being constantly blasted by new sand can this strategy be effective, or if you use something like aluminum dust which the body can't push out and can't heal around.

From all we know the answer is no. We only know for sure that a Nicrosilmind stores innate investiture, not static or kinetic investiture. What's even more complicated, it seems like a Radiant who's also an Allomancer/Feruchemist might have troubles using his own Stormlight to fuel his Metallic Arts because "Stormlight is still keyed," which probably means it's keyed to Honor and you can't use that to fuel another Shard's invested art. You would need to purify it and unkeyed it fully first. A Metalborn who wants to power Surgebinding with Preservation's investiture would have to find a way to purify and unkey investiture first, turn it into something like pure Dor, which requires additional steps and isn't as easy as just "tapping his metalmind and flying." Bendalloy stores nutrients, calories and fluids - you're storing very specific things that your body needs and you're getting back those specific things.

I'm just gonna nitpick here a little - he won't do this because that's not possible. In this case the soul jumps to the largest piece of body and if there are multiple pieces of the exact same size, it would jump and attach to one of them at random.

To do that you need raw, unkeyed investiture, something like pure Dor. Or Breaths can be used very easily to power Surgebinding. Not really. While a full Feruchemist might be able to figure out how to turn their attributes in metalminds into raw unkeyed investiture (because they can manipulate identity and Connections), it would be very hard to do. It's not as easy as storing your identity, because even without identity you still can't tap a steelmind and get heat from it. By tapping an unkeyed steelmind, you're getting speed and speed only. You need to convert it into raw investiture first, which is something we have no idea how to do. The same goes for Allomancers - they're drawing in investiture that is shaped to a specific action and they can't change that. Firstly we don't know if F-nicrosil stores kinetic investiture at all. From all we know it stores innate investiture - parts of the soul that give invested abilities. You can store Allomancy, Feruchemy, or even Surgebinding in F-nicrosil, but not raw investiture or any lights as far as we are aware. Investiture drawn by a Mistborn is kinetic and shaped to do one specific thing only - storing identity won't change that. A Radiant can't do that because he's not a Metalborn. He would have to at least use unsealed metalminds - Malwish medallions - to gain those powers. But those don't work exactly in the same way as normal Feruchemical powers and do have restrictions. This is the opposite problem to the one presented in the WoB below. Investiture used by Metalborns has a very rigid structure and it always does one thing only. It knows what it does and you can't just make it do something else. Identity is not the answer, it's not responsible for telling investiture what to do (but it still is a needed step, because you need to unkeyed it from both yourself and Harmony). You need to somehow get rid of that structure and turn it into raw investiture that has no structure and does nothing. Or you can use Warlight/Towerlight.

Although we don't know what F-nicrosil does, I believe this is possible. However, we know that Rashek used the power of the Well of Ascension to directly grant himself powerful Allomancy, which does explain why he was so strong. I don't think so. Allomancy suffers from the decay and weakening of genes, in Feruchemy this is also happening, but it's not so profound like in Allomancy. Feruchemy is end-neutral - what you store is what you tap - but there is a minimal loss of attribute that's happening when storing/tapping. I think with compounding nicrosil you might be able to minimize this loss, maybe reduce the loss associated with diminishing returns at best. But you're already tapping almost the same amount of attribute which you stored and you can't get more than that.

Firstly, we don't know if Cultivation's plan was to give Honor to Odium so this outcome might be something she did not intend to happen. Secondly, Dalinar at first didn't plan to give up Honor, he wanted to blast Odium into oblivion (which would destroy Roshar). The book explained well why Dalinar had to give Honor to Odium. I've explained this to you as well before. The Shards didn't bother with Odium when he killed Aona, Skai and Uli Da before he got stuck on Roshar, they didn't care about any of this, some were even glad that those Shards were killed. For all of them Odium alone was not enough of a threat to take any actions against him, not to mention to unite with other Shards. Dalinar's move made him the most dangerous power in Cosmere, twice as powerful as any other Shard (except for Harmony), which means none of them can fight him alone. If previously they thought they could deal with Odium on their own (Endowment certainly thought so, the 1st OB letter), now they all knew they can't rival Retribution, thus they were forced to unite with other Shards and take immediate actions against Retribution. This not only means that Retribution can't attack other Shards, but he also can't spent centuries on Roshar training his army, which was Taravangian's whole plan - even if he were to be released he wouldn't have left Roshar and go on a killing spree, he wanted to patiently stay there, pretend that he's still imprisoned, raise his army and after centuries he would have attacked Cosmere. Other Shards would have ignored him this whole time. That's why Dalinar's only option was to give up Honor to Odium. It united all Shards, forced them to action and denied Taravangian all secrecy and preparations. This was the same move Adolin and May used against Gawx in the Tower game. One strong opponent will force all weaker ones to unite against him. If Gawx didn't start so strongly and feigned weakness, Adolin and May wouldn't have united against him and he could have won. Again, I've told you this before so I don't know where the problem is. You don't like the ending, I get it. It's completely understandable and fine, I respect your opinion. I'm not trying to convince you to like it, but you keep repeating the same things which are just wrong and the book was very clear about it. The book didn't just say that Dalinar's move was brilliant, it explained why it was a good thing and what are the real consequences of this action. It was all in the book, but it looks like you've missed this.

Form a WoB, I attached it to my previous post in spoiler boxes.

I believe that it's just a spiritual remnant of Nohadon that is Connected to Dalinar because of how important the Way of Kings and Nohadon's life was to him. Nohadon is dead, both Tanavast and Rayse confirmed it. When somebody dies, there is a kind of corpse left behind in the Spiritual Realm and in the Spiritual Realm investiture can take the shape and mind of that leftover Spirit Web and create visions like Dalinar saw. I don't believe that Nohadon was someone else like Adonalsium, the 4th Shard or any theory like this, I think he's dead and what Dalinar experience is just an effect of his strong Connection to Nohadon and Spiritual Realm shenanigans. Dalinar faded into the Beyond, which is the ultimate confirmation that a character is dead in Cosmere and not even Shards can reach into the Beyond. The book was clear about this. That someone else the powers referred to was most likely the God Beyond (who we don't know and will never know if he exists at all) in whom Dalinar believed in recent books. WaT ch 145: But there are many theories about who that was - Adonalsium, the 4th Shard or some other entities. I'm not convinced by them. In my opinion the book clearly stated he faded into the Beyond and that's it.

The visions are the essence of Honor, not Cultivation. She can't give him the visions that would make him experience everything from Tanavast's point of view and understand Honor, which was the whole point of this trip to the SR. And because the only person who could have shown him those visions directly - the Stormfather - was unwilling to cooperate, he had to go there on his own. WaT ch 16:

Nightblood consumes exponentially larger amounts of investiture the longer he is being used. We've seen a comparable situation in RoW ch 111, when Nightblood was used in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity during their confrontation with Ishar - he was feeding on Stormlight from the perpendicularity, until Szeth stuck him into it and it drew more investiture than the perpendicularity could provide, collapsing it (or it ate the Connection). Similar situation happened at the end of Oathbringer, when Nightblood consumed some Fused, serevel people and all Stormlight that Szeth and Lift had, but then Dalinar opened his perpendicularity and it looked like Nightblood fell into a food coma back then. If the Tower can't provide enough light, then at first it would be safe to use Nightblood, but at a certain point he might start to consume more than the Tower can provide, which would end up in him consuming the soul of his wielder. But we don't know how much light can the Sibling provide at once in one specific part of the Tower. They might be able to provide enough investiture for Nightblood to fall into a food coma, thus it would be safe to use Nightblood in Urithiru. Nightblood already is nearly full and it looks like the Sibling can provide a lot of light in the Tower so I suspect they won't have much problems with satisfying Nightblood's hunger. The Sibling will never get hurt as long as Nightblood won't strike crystal veins and gemstones in the Tower, which are the Sibling's manifested body - he needs to contact the soul to start consuming it. Nightblood got full by consuming the Vessel of Odium and that was less investiture than an Unmade have, who is less invested than the Sibling, who is comparable to the Stormfather - even if you struck Nightblood directly into the heart of the Sibling, it wouldn't consume them all (but it would probably kill them, leaving behind some remnants).

I provided you with WoB explaining this. Retribution was Connected to all Voidlight and all Stormlight in existence as they were of his essence. When he absorbed them all into himself, he had the needed intent to realize where all of that light is though those Connections. He was instantly aware of every bit of light on Roshar and he knew where it all was.

If Stormlight can escape to the Spiritual Realm through an aluminum box, it means that a Shard can access it from the Spiritual Realm as well. There is a pathway between those two points that is still opened and it works in both ways and Connection is not broken. Retribution specifically drew in all the light in existence back to himself, his intent was clear and due to his near omnipresence and omniscience (it takes conscious effort for the Shard to gain knowledge), he would be instantly aware of every bits of light he can access through the Spiritual Realm - and that includes the covered in aluminum.

He can do it, but it's not as easy as just dropping guns into their hands. Autonomy was feeding the Set with advanced technology, was pushing them to develop rocketry and Telsin as her Avatar was capable of seeing it, but she could not understand how rockets were working. To properly develop new technology, even with Shardic help, you need experimentation, repetitions and time to learn both the basics and advance details of your creation. Shard can't just dump all of that into your mind as you simply won't be able to understand it. The same applies to Honor and Odium during Desolations. Sure, with their future sight abilities and expanded mind they knew about how technology could progress in the future, but Desolations were wars fought to the very last man standing, wars of attrition on an unimaginable scale, wars which sole intent was to break the people. People were fighting for survival, they had no time to experiment with new technology, when every Desolation was killing a vast majority of their population, which includes intelligent people (during Nohadon's Desolation 9/10 Alethi were killed and Yelig-Nar specifically targeted his scribes - the intelligent people). There was no way for them to play with tech when every time Heralds Returned, they found people thrown back to the stone age. The arms race that Odium and Honor started eventually led to the destruction of knowledge, not increase of it. While Retribution can grant people knowledge and technology, it also needs to give them time to adapt to it, understand it and develop it on their own. Without this it would be like giving a caveman a gun - sure he can learn to use it, but he will never be able to recreate it. However, there is another aspect to this problem that makes Shards reluctant to grant technology to their people - ironically it stifles innovation. On planets like Scadrial and Taldain where Shards lead the technological progression of their people at some times, when Shards retreated people were left in a technological stagnation with little to no progress being made. They struggle to invent, solve problems and create new technology because they didn't need to as all they knew was the cozy feeling of their Shard handling them new fancy tech and solving problems for them. So while giving tech by Shards can achieve a quick technological development in the short term, in the long term it ends up in total stagnation and it's generally a bad idea - something that Taravangian admitted in WaT. TLM ch 67: SoS ch 7: WaT I-2:

It won't.