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How would you gather and transport all those created materials when flying away from the storm, towards desired locations, when some of those things fall in the middle of the enemy territory? This would be a logistical nightmare, which would pull precious very rare resources (Radiants) away from duties that are vastly more important (idk, fighting in the end of the world for example). They don't need anything like that, they don't have any raw material supply issues or shortages, their Soulcasters are doing a good enough job providing what's needed. Creating more than is needed is just a waste of time. You don't need any material to create a city, just soulcast an entire building out of air (shown in the book), but truthfully they don't need any new city. What's good of all that new material when it would be just endlessly taking space because there is no need to process them? Why would you need raw material when you can just soulcast an entire object or its components instead? Just create wax molds of wanted elements and Soulcast them into specific material, then assemble it into a clock for example. That's cutting the workload. And if you think flooding the market with unlimited resources will do any good to society then you're mistaken. People will just lose their jobs and source of their income. Lastly, Highstorms are still dangerous, even to Radiants. There is a lot of debris being thrown up and it just takes one stone to knock a knight unconscious and potentially kill them. The winds are ridiculously fast and unpredictable, throwing people around like rags. Even Kaladin struggled with navigating inside Highstorms, narrowly avoiding collisions with fast moving debris on multiple occasions. And you want to create new projects in the middle of the storm. That's just a very bad idea. However, I'm interested in how a massive Soulcasting of the air would affect a Highstorm. You need a huge volume of air to create a solid matter, which creates a vacuum so how a massive vacuum in the middle of the storm would affect it? A storm is a low pressure system, so would lowering the pressure even more make the storm more intense? On the other hand you're robbing the storm out of its energy as you are literally deleting fast moving air, so would this cause the storm to cease? No idea, but it's an interesting situation. Fortunately, there aren’t enough Radiants to affect a Highstorm, but theoretical questions are still fun.

Here is the official Jezrien's endpapers image, with his blade more visible: I should have said it earlier, but of course you won't get vaporized, it will cut your soul instead. A Shardblade doesn't cut living matter physically. The vaporization effect works only on non-living objects like rocks, not on people or souls. A Shardblade will cut a soul just like a sword cuts a paper - with its very edge. Don't touch the tip of the edge and you will be fine. That's how you clap. Not a lot of space, but considering that Shardbearers don't put a lot of force behind their swings, you can basically stop the blade with just two fingers (clapping just gives you more chances to catch the blade in time). Add to this that your soul already is made out of investiture, so there is nothing to vaporize - it would just be cut by blade's sharp tip. This effect plays no role in the last clap. If I were to guess, I would say something in the middle of those two options. From the second WoB it's clear the shield does run along the blade as very thin blades can even be fully covered by this effect. However, my drive for pleasant shapes wants me to make it into a gentler curve so don't take it as the real answer. Still, this vaporization shield works only on dead things, not on living flesh and it should affect only what touched the very tip of the cutting edge of the blade. If you were to strike at a slight angle and the tip of your blade would miss the target but an angled side 1 mm away from the tip would hit it, nothing would happen as that would count as hitting it with the flat side. I fully expect a Shardblade to work like a normal blade and cut only what's on its very tip, which would cause the magical vaporization happening around it, after it hits the tip. However, I wouldn't put too much importance into this vaporization effect. It's clear from those two WoBs that Brandon hadn't considered how this effect works in detail before. What matters is that a Shardblade is a magical sword, it cuts stone and creates a space for itself by vaporizing matter as it cuts. How this shield looks, when it activates and stuff like this isn't really important and should play no role in our perception of Shardblades. The closer and more detailed you look at a fantastic magic system, the less sense it makes and the more impossible it gets. And some point you have to suspend disbelief and accept it’s a fantastical world with magic.

The vaporization (turning matter into investiture) happens only on the cutting edge of the blade, not on its sides. The vaporization area effect is happening also only on the cutting edge of the blade - it's not present around the entire width of the blade, only the edge is vaporizing a little bit more than the thickness of the blade itself, to allow it to pass through the material. You need to touch the cutting edge to cut and vaporize stuff. This means you can safely touch a Shardblade by its flat side as there is nothing there that would cut you - just like you can safely touch a sword by its side. And this allowed both Kaladin and Dalinar to catch the blade by wedging it in between their clasped hands (although Dalinar's feat is much more impressive as he caught Jez's Honorblade, which is very thin, thus less space for error). Adhesion, even when applied on their hands shouldn't work on the Shardblade because it's invested. Here are the "cheese WoBs:"

An Allomantic railgun is an overly complicated weapon compared to other, cheaper and simpler devices that can be created - A-steel plus A-dualumin. This gives you a shot vastly more powerful than any A-steel could ever deliver. That's not a railgun, that's just a gun.

Good point, but Hoid's Shard was offered to someone else - there would be no 17th Shard. But it's true that in a different set of circumstances, there could be a different number of Shards after the Shattering. It seems 16 might be unrelated to Adonalsium before the Shattering.

We don't have a direct WoB on this, but I would say it's probably possible - at least for a short while, not permanently of course. You might be able to rewrite Deadeye's past to make them not bonded when Recreance happened, thus surviving it. It's gonna require a lot of investiture because spren are super invested, but Forgery in general is quite good at overcoming resistance of invested souls - it is possible to change a personality of a spren with Forgery, so rewriting their past should be equally possible. It's even possible to Forge a Windrunner into a Lightweaver or some other Order. In terms of knowledge this would be hard to pull off - a Forger needs to know the past of their subject to create a believable Essence Mark. With Deadeye it would be very hard to know who they were before, with whom they were bonded and all those details of their past because they have been "dead" for 2,500 years, with barely anyone living now who knows them at all (as they all died as well). You would be basically writing the Essence Mark blindly, which probably is the reason why it wouldn't work. But in theory it should be possible.

There is Connection - the act of spiking forges Connection to Ruin. Every Spike Connects you to Ruin, draws from his power. Ruin is everywhere in Cosmere, not just on Scadrial. Ruin represents Cosmere law of entropy and because Ruin doesn't care where entropy increases, as long as it does, Hemalurgy can be done anywhere. Hemalurgy is a manifestation of this law of entropy on the cosmic scale. Hemalurgy is more similar to things like Lightweaving or Midnight Essence. They are everywhere, but Hemalurgy is of Ruin because you have to follow Ruin's intent and it formed due to interactions of Ruin, Preservation and Scadrial. Awakening is exactly the same - Breaths are given to you with no strings attached, it can be performed anywhere in Cosmere with the right Intent and even without Breaths. Yet, it's still of Endowment. Some magic systems are less restricted because of the nature of their Shard. Yumi spoilers:

Hello, welcome to the Shard. Check out Sharder FAQ for some useful tips That's a very good question. Unfortunately the answer is no. Breaths and Shardplates are essentially made out of the same thing - Investiture. Investiture is a magical energy that can be manifested in many different ways and is even making up the souls of people. Breaths and Stormlight are gaseous Investiture, Shardblades and Shardplates are Investiture in the solid form (it's called a god metal), even spren are made out of pure investiture (that's why they turn into god metals, they are very highly invested). Because of that the system would already consider a Shardplate to be Awakened. That's why it would be impossible to Awaken it. The basic rule in Cosmere is that investiture resists investiture - the more something is invested, the more it will resist being invested by something else. People like Radiants or Awakeners are more invested than average people and some magics will have trouble affecting them (like Soulcasting for example). This is also the reason why a Shardplate or a Shardblade stops Shardblade cuts - because they are highly invested and that stops it. This means that something that is highly invested can resist or even stop a Shardblade cut - you can Awaken something with lots of Breaths and it would be able to stop a Shardblade. Here are some WoBs for you about this (Words of Brandon):

Pewter doesn't give you a lot of health. In fact it gives you only a tiny boost - it took months for both Vin and Elend to recover from their deadly wounds. Even with duralumin it won't give you a crazy amount of attribute, if it gives you anything at all - do you gain health from pewter if you don't need any or is it like Stormlight and heals you only when needed? And if you already have access to A-pewter and A-duralumin via Hemalurgy, then why create new spikes this way when you're sure are ok with killing people? Not likely. You lose only because you're using it to compress attributes. It's a fixed amount of energy needed so nothing to save here. If you consider the cost of gold, which he had great trouble getting, probably not.

I'm pretty sure every time Shallan summoned her Shardblade in WoR that was Testament. Only in OB did she summon Pattern after saying that she killed her mom and dad (3rd and 2nd Truth with Pattern).

Lashing glows and attracts Secretspren. It would consume a massive amount of Stormlight to move such a heavy box. It's as impractical as it possibly can be and it would get them all killed before their mission even started. Yes, Lightweaving would hide the glow. Yes, they didn't know about Secretspren. But they knew all spanreeds in the city didn't work, which are fabrials - they didn't know if the Shardplate would work at all or be unusable within the city walls. There were too many unknowns to risk bringing such a heavy tool with them, that might not even work at all. And they were supposed to look like refugees - a luggage that big would attract the attention of guards, they would try to open it in search of food and quickly discover it's not a luggage. It's impossible to sneak that box into the city without anyone noticing it. It would be deadly if the city was occupied.

You cannot use this idea to duplicate your Feruchemical powers as a Bloodmaker. Once you spike out your F-gold it's over, you can't heal, you can't tap your goldminds, you can't restore your spiritweb - unless you place that spike into yourself and use it to heal. However, this would be extremely inefficient due to the Hemalurgic decay and would require a loooot more attribute to heal after spiking. It's not practical at all as even Miles would need a ton of attribute to heal such damage, a regular Bloodmaker would need to store for months or maybe even years to generate enough health to regain their power. The efficiency issue in Feruchemy isn't as profound as in Allomancy, so you would gain basically nothing, except for a giant scar on your spirit web and wasted years. You CAN'T tap more attribute than you stored, there is a clear upper limit in Feruchemy, which you can't hack and you're already very close to it with your natural Feruchemy. You would still need a ton of healing to regenerate stolen attributes. A Bloodmaker won't be able to do this repeatedly, you need to be a gold compounder. Why wasting years to create one spike, when you can't just find some dying person and spike them instead?

It's probably Connection's doing, because of Shallan's increased touch with SR. This WoB is about this: Beads wanting to help is weird, but on the other hand they all have voices and desires - the Wind's Pleasure ship wanted to help once it was convinced by Shallan and changed into smoke. This kind of communication might be enabled by Soulcasting. But this voice, which seemed to point her towards Adolin, was odd. It might be the bead who wanted to help, it might be something, or someone else. As for the bead itself, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the bead of a room from her home or something like that. A room that knows her, that has a Connection to here - maybe even the room in which she killed her mother? That bead was quite suspicious so it might have some meaning. We actually did see suspicious Creationspren following her in an earlier chapter. It was said Creationspren don't change their shape in CR, but there were a few of them around Shallan who did that. I bet they are Testament's platespren. Ch 5:

Thirsty? It's Syl we're talking about, messing with people is in her nature.

A luggage? Weighing 1300 kg?? Not a chance. They would need like 20 people to move that thing - and that's just for one plate.

Immediately when put on. But I don't think a plate would reshape itself to a kid-sized version - that's way too small. It's still a deadplate.

They were fighting in a Highstorm, Stormlight wasn't really the issue here. That's true. Sane Szeth might be able to defeat Kaladin. However, Szeth is not there yet. He's still mentally unstable, he still hates himself, he still hears voices of those he killed. As Szeth is right now, I doubt he would be able to win against Kaladin.

Some of this, yes, but Kaladin was just naturally better with his skills than Szeth was, despites Szeth's years of experience. The skies had always belonged to Kal, winds were his, Szeth was a trespasser there. Szeth won't win with Kaladin up in the air.

I have to disagree. Even before Szeth gave up, Kaladin was winning. He was scoring hits on Szeth, surprising him constantly - Kal clearly had the upper hand in that fight. Szeth is obviously dangerous even without Nightblood, but against Kaladin Szeth will lose again.

Sooo, how would they sneak into the city with two giant boxes, each filled with glowing Shardplate? Those boxes would be the first things guards would have checked and seized. Flying into the city was not an option. Who would carry those boxes, weighing around 1300 kg each (!!!) into the city? Lashing was out of the question because it alerted Screamers. They didn't even know who held the city - Voidbringers or Kholins. It was entirely likely that they would have to liberate the city - how would they sneak massive, glowing Shardplates into the conquered city? Stealth was their top priority. Shardplates wouldn't help them at all, they would just complicate everything. Elhokar's party would have been caught before even crossing the gates if they were to bring their Shardplates with them.

Well, that WoB said we can assume the Shattering happened on Yolen, therefore that's a place where a god died, therefore the compass is pointing towards Yolen. The rest is a fair point, but as I said before, it doesn't work for me. I meant there is investiture there and some small amounts of it are being emitted from it, which might be what this compass is detecting - the investiture is the source of the current, while what it's emitting is detected, which isn't the current. Yes, I did and sorry about that. I kind of started aimlessly rumbling about how a physical black hole could work in CR and came to the conclusion that it would probably be deadly to everyone everywhere, but it felt very not related so I left only that part for reasons I don't understand anymore. There is no pre-Shattering investiture anymore - it all get assigned to one of the Shard. There is no investiture tuned to Adonalsium. You can't detect anything like this. I agree, that's a very likely possibility. The source of the current is most likely investiture, but the Current doesn't have to be investiture. I think you seem to miss what the compass was said to be doing. It was said the compass is pointing towards some place, which is the source of the Current, while you think it's detecting investiture which is the source of the Current (the very thing it detects is making the current or is the current).The quote only said it points towards a place, nothing about how it was achieved. The way the compass works is unrelated to the source of the Current - which means whatever it detects, it doesn't have to move the Current. So yes, it can use Connection to point towards Grand Knell (place) and Connection doesn't make the Current, but that place is making the Current. Just to that place is enough. Connection to a place exists, as said in BoM. Connection to a place is what makes Selish invested arts work. Because they've been alive for 7000 years, met a lot of people and saw how useful it is? I do agree that the location of Adonalsium's death is a possible candidate, but I think it's far too early to say anything decisive about it and disregard all other options. We basically know only this one short sentence about it, four pieces of information in total - it points towards something, that thing makes a current, a god died there and it has a name. We know nothing else than that. This could be anything, anywhere. There are too many unknowns and too many mechanisms this compass can work by and it's hard to say anything decisive now. I don't even think we should be rejecting that this place is on Roshar so easily - recently we learned there are a whole lot of more gods on Roshar, it's possible some of them died and created an ocean or air current on Roshar. Looking at this from another angle, I speculated earlier that the compass is pointing towards northwest - this might be towards the Origin, but on the CS map, the Expanse of Densities is in that direction - that's Sel. Threnody is on the very opposite side of the Cosmere star map, so maybe it's not pointing towards the place of Ambition's death, but towards Sel, where two gods died? Or maybe not, because a god died there, not gods. Simply speaking, that's just another possibility to consider.

Connection for example? It uses Connection to points towards it? Even if it detects investiture directly, it doesn't mean there is a considerable amount of investiture being blasted from that point - just traces of it, independent from the Current. Investiture could just act like a giant lighthouse. Is the Dor a black hole? No, so why would Ambition's investiture create a black hole? It certainly can, but it doesn't have to. There is just investiture free-floating in this black, interstellar fluid and investiture is energy. The fluid is put in motion by the very presence of that investiture and that fuels the entire current. Just look at how Dor behaves to see how raw investiture can fuel such a current. Because Ambition was Splintered off-world, not on any planet. All other Shards were Splintered in their Shardworlds. And every Splintering had far reaching ramifications, but Splintering of Ambition was something different, more tragic and violent - so different that it twisted an entire planet, before Ambition was even Splintered. On the other hand Adonalsium is dead, all of his investiture was reassigned to 16 Shards. If this compass was detecting just investiture, then it would be blinded by the very investiture present on Roshar, unable to point towards Grand Knell. A spren standing next to it would draw the needle towards them. That doesn't make any sense to me. If there is a device pointing toward Yolen, it's not hidden anymore. Everyone knows where it is. Even if you somehow can't get to it, you still know where it is. And none of them have a whole naming convention based on death songs. Welcome to Roshar. They call birds chicken, wines that aren't real wines are called wines etc. And it's very simple - the Grand Knell is off-Rosher, Worldhoppers brought that name and the knowledge of it to Roshar and it stuck. Such a big deal that it's the first time ever we hear about it? Feels like it's a much bigger deal outside of Roshar.

Veristitalian Ethid is from Azir and she's researching history. I can't really think of anyone else who fits current criteria.

Who said it's blasting investiture towards Roshar? Who said investiture is reaching anywhere? Not WaT. We know Grand Knell produces a current of some sort, but we don't know what current it is, or anything more than that. From TLM epilogue 6 we can see that the interstellar space in CR looks like a dark liquid - liquids flow, they can have currents, currents are useful for boats. A very simple explanation, isn't it? They can create an Avatar with that investiture, it's a considerable amount of it. Ambition wasn't Splintered in the Threnodite system, she escaped and was Splintered somewhere else - maybe between stars, where her investiture won't belong to any world? In Threnody something similar to pushing investiture into CR happened there - so yes, there might be a considerable amount of investiture trapped in interstellar spaces of Cognitive Realm. Considering that investiture is just energy in a different form, it should be detectable from a far if it's powerful enough. Ambition's investiture driving currents across Shadesmar sounds logical to me - which fits with WoBs saying that Splintering of Ambition had a far reaching consequences across Cosmere. And truthfully, the meaning of the word "knell" is a dead giveaway (pun intended) - "the sound of a bell, especially when rung solemnly for a death or funeral." It fits with other Ambition related names.

I doubt it, she called humans betrayers and monsters. Leave Sureblood alone The appearance of Mishram seems to cause Shallan to collapse and make her vision covered by blackness (she did collapse earlier too, but I find this too convenient to be unrelated this time). The way Mishram speaks doesn't sound like Gavliar's Stormfather at all. She hates humans, it's very, very unlikely she would want to have something to do with Gavilar. Not to mention the Stormfather was terrified by the idea of Gavliar giving up on Braize - Mishram would be more than happy to see this. It looks like Shallan and Mishram are developing a Connection due to Shallan's unusual double bond allowing her to reach SR and Shallan's very recent interest in BAM. Gavilar had none of this. Gavilar didn't even know much about Mishram before the Stormfather told him about her in the prologue. Mishram would be most likely incapable of reaching towards Gavilar and she most definitely wouldn't want to do that. Mishram cannot be the Stormfaker. Edit: He was present during it. RoW ch 94 epigraphs: