alder24

The mask IS the Vessel. It's his own body created out of his own investiture and his Spirit Web is attached to it. You can't make a fake mask for an already existing Vessel, the Vessel has to create its own body - the mask - for you to be able to stab it with Nightblood. That's why Nightblood can kill it, it's not because Nightblood severs any Connection, it's because he's stabbing directly into the soul of the Vessel, which is present almost fully there and he's consuming it all. If you were to try to create a mask of some sort, like take a bunch of investiture and connect it to the Shard or the Vessel, it wouldn't become the Vessel's body and wouldn't have their soul. At best it would become something like a spren, fully independent from Vessel's control, or something like a Hemalurgically controlled entity - it would allow the Shard to take control over it, but harming it won't harm the Shard or the Vessel. It would always be separate with its own Spirit Web, just like a spren is separate from their Radiant despite sharing a very strong bond - killing that spren doesn't kill their Radiant, just harms them as their Connection is ripped out of their soul. The Vessel needs to create their own body out of their own will for you to be able to stab it with Nightblood. You can't do what you propose, unless you find a Vesselless Shard, give a bunch of investiture sapience and connect it so strongly that it Ascends as the Shard's new Vessel (it would be even more problematic that what Kelsier did) and then stab it with Nightblood at the moment of Ascension, killing the newly formed Vessel before it disappears. But this is pointless as you're making a Vessel for a Shard with no Vessel, just to kill it for no reason. As for severing the Connection between the mask and the Shard, it depends on what you mean. If you're thinking about the body created by the Vessel and want to break the Connection between the body and the Vessel, nothing would really happen to the Vessel, but if you're thinking about the mask as the Vessel themselves and you try to break the Connection between them and their Shard, it might be almost impossible as the Vessel and the Shard are intertwined and combined at such level, that breaking them apart forcefully might result in Splintering and the death of the Vessel. You should avoid double posting, as that's against the forum's policy, use the edit option instead. It can be found in the three dot menu in the upper right corner of your post.

There were no Shards before the Shattering as the Shattering created them, they are Shards of Adonalsium and there are only 16 of them. Adonalsium is a god who created Cosmere on its own, almost all investiture in Cosmere came from Adonalsium, so for all we know there were no beings like him otherwise it would have been plainly obvious. The quote refers to dragons, who till this day are worshipped as gods. However, there are other entities that could be treated like gods, those are either some kind of god-spren similar to those created on Roshar, Avatars who we know from WoBs Adonalsium created, Aethers who are self-proclaimed co-equals of Adonalsium and some kind of Cognitive Shadows who are often worshipped as gods (just look at Heralds, Fused, Returned or Kelsier).

No, because the mask is not the Shard nor even an Avatar (Avatars are something else), it's the Vessel manifesting a body to interact with other realms. Nightblood killed the Vessel of Odium, Rayse, but did almost no harm to the Shard itself. The Shard holds almost an infinite amount of investiture and Nightblood, even if he's one of the most invested objects in Cosmere, simply can't compete. The Vessel is a mind that holds and controls the power and the Vessel and the Shard are kind of one, but the Vessel isn't much invested on its own. I doubt you would be able to create a Voodoo doll of the Vessel as you would try to work against both the power of the Shard and the mind of the Vessel, at best you would be able to create a spren of some sort that's connected to, maybe even bonded with the Vessel, but killing it with Nightblood wouldn't hurt the Vessel at all - they would always be separate. Even an Avatar is separate enough from the Shard that if you were to stick Nightblood into one, it would kill the Avatar (or rather the mind behind it, as the power would probably still be vastly more than Nightblood can consume and a new Avatar could later Ascend to that power), but leave the Vessel of the Shard intact. Nightblood straight up consumed the Vessel of Odium and there was almost nothing left of Rayse afterwards. The mask was just a body Rayse manifested.

I'm not OG at all. I made the account just to get Aether of Night (which I still haven't read), but I became active only after TLM release and I'm only posting in the Cosmere section.

Allomancy is of Preservation because it's a gift allowing you to preserve yourself, Hemalurgy is of Ruin because you have to kill and destroy to gain powers with a loss and Feruchemy is a balance system of those two because you have to become weak to save your strength for later.

Because WoBs state Shardblades are basically the same alloy, no matter how spren are invested and that Shardplates are made out of the same material as Shardblades (in my first post) - Shardblades are god metal, thus Shardplates have to be the same god metal as well, otherwise they wouldn't be the same material. Not "Investiture in solid metallic form," which I understand as something like steel, not a god metal. I believe there are enough WoBs on this matter to say we know for certain that Shardplate and Shardblade alloys are the same. They do predate the Shattering, but Roshar was already strongly associated with Cultivation and presumably Honor as well. Over all those thousands of years those other investitures would slowly fade and got replaced by Honor and Cultivation's investitures as they were the ones investing in Roshar, not other Shards. Radiant platespren are almost as strongly associated with Honor and Cultivation as True Spren, iirc they even call those Lesser spren cousins. Even if there is a tiny bit of Autonomy or Endowment in them, we can safely ignore that and the god metal they are forming is the same as the True Spren.

We don't know. Keep in mind, we don't even know what pure Atium does Feruchemically, because the Atium we know from Era 1 was an alloy of pure Atium and electrum. Brandon did confirm that Hoid used Lerasium to gain Allomancy and that he couldn't alloy it with another god metal to gain different powers, because of certain reasons, which means he didn't use it to become a Feruchemist.

Infinitely invested? That’s not possible, there are strong limitations on how much investiture your body can hold. Exceed those and your body will be vaporized and you will Ascend. That’s what Vin did using the power of the Well in WoA and when she Ascended to Preservation consuming Mists in HoA.

Both Shardblades and Shardplates are made out of Tanavastium-Koravellium alloy, not pure Honor’s god metal, but this isn’t important here at all (@Treamayne where did you get that Shardplates are not god metals like Shardblades are and that Lesser Spren are not Splinters?). What’s more important is that both True Spren and Lesser Spren are Splinters of Honor and Cultivation, yet True Spren are sapient and vastly more invested than an individual Lesser Spren making up a section of a Shardplate. As a whole a Shardblade is only slightly more invested than an entire Shardplate, but an individual section of a Shardplate is way less invested than a Shardblade, because a Shardplate is made out of dozens of Lesser Spren and a Shardblade is just one single True Spren. And that’s the primary reason why a Shardplate breaks, but a Shardblade doesn't. To break a god metal manifested from a spren, you would need something significantly more invested than that spren. A Shardblade is one of the most invested objects in Cosmere and all Shardblades are invested at the similar level, so they won’t break each other. There is only one thing in Cosmere that’s way more invested than a Shardblade - Nightblood. That’s why only Nightblood can chip off a Shardblade. And that’s why a Shardblade can break pieces of a Shardplate as each piece can’t compete with the investiture level of a Shardblade. A single Windspren isn’t nearly as invested as a Honorspren. I also think that hitting a physical form of a Lesser Spren will disrupt their Connection to the Physical Realm. It was shown and explained in OB and RoW that cutting a Spren with a Shardblade, disrupts their form, dissolves it, but it doesn’t kill a Spren - they will take some time and reform later. I think Spren might have the same vulnerability even as a Shardplate. Hitting them enough time will physically disrupt their form, weaken their Connection, forcing them to break and reform some time later. True Spren have a much stronger Connection to the Physical Realm, so they don’t break like this. However, this is purely my speculations, not something we know for sure, so take it with a grain of salt. Both Shardblades and Shardplate, dead or alive, are Spren manifested in the Physical Ream, their investiture becoming god metals. They don't draw power from the Spiritual Realm, they are their soul manifested physically.

Yes, metals will eventually reform physically in the same way Atium does, however there is a lot, a lot of metal in the planet's crust so they won't run out of it even if they were trying to.

The gun probably has a small water tank in it with a valve that opens when the trigger is pulled. Water then floods the barrel, where zephyr spores are loaded below the bullet and they explode. Inside the bullet there is a roseite sphere with a bit of water inside, that breaks and ignites spores that are in the bullet. The timer was explained in ch 37. Basically there is a separate smaller glass sphere with water that breaks when the gun is fired and that water is then consumed by a vine, which starts to grow at a very predictable rate. This vine has a silver tip, which then pierces the bigger roseite sphere and this causes the charge of spores inside the bullet to ignite. The timer in a flare gun works in the same way as in the cannon ball described in the book. Tress ch 37: Ch 41:

I think this might be possible. Brandon describes Breaths as kind of stuck in the Physical Realm, despite being innate investiture and part of one's soul. Raysium deals with this kind of investiture (and Spren and Cognitive Shadows) so I think it could steal someone's Breaths. However, I doubt they would be attuned to your Identity. It's the act of giving Breaths that changes their Identity, stealing them won't do it. So you might be able to steal them, but won't be able to use them.

If I were to guess, this is because of the thing Brandon calls proximity to soul. Putting metal inside of your body will get it very close to your soul, close enough to alkow you to burn it. While I don't discount the possibility that a Bondsmith would be able to connect a Mistborn with a piece of metal to allow him to burn it outside of the body (Ishar did something similar in RoW), this would require a Bondsmith to work. That's not how F-zinc work, that's not how thinking and consciousness affects things in Cosmere. Just because your thought process is faster with F-zinc, it doesn't mean you can mold things to your perception alone. Those things are affected by thinking of thousands of people that lived through centuries and one person thoughts won't change that, no matter the amount of F-zinc they use. Not to mention that those thoughts of others would still affect the object, you can't separate it from them. Another thing to consider is that you're asking for something that goes against the Spiritual Ideal of a human being - no human is born with a metal inside of their body, not to mention outside of it. This is something that won't work because of Spiritual Ideal, just like you self-perception can't make you grow wings, no matter how hard you believe you have them. Thinking affects strongly pure investiture, but physical dead objects not so much. This wouldn't work for several reasons. Firstly, metal is just metal. There is nothing special in Scadrian metals, they aren't saturated with Preservation's investiture, they are almost no different from metals from any other part of Cosmere. Secondly, connecting to metals won't grant you powers as it's not metals that gives you powers, it's your Spirit Web that does it. There is Spiritual DNA in which powers like Allomancy and Feruchemy are encoded, this is what Hemalurgy steals. Without ways to modify your Spiritual DNA, you can't get those powers - Lerasium does this, Hemalurgy does this too.

This is not true. To burn metal you need to get it into your soul. It doesn't become your soul, no matter of your perception. Touching metal outside of your body is not enough to burn it as it's still outside your your soul. Also, when you burn metals you don't turn it into investiture, you're opening a path to the Spiritual Realm from which your draw investiture in - metal is just a keyhole that gives shape to the incoming investiture. Only god metals like Atium are the fuel itself as they are pure investiture in physical form. F-zinc wouldn't allow you to change your self-perception like you proposed. It's not about how much you think of it, not about your brainpower, it's about believing in your new image that isn't too far off your spiritual ideal. F-zinc makes you think fast, but it's more or less allows you to make logical connections and reasoning faster. No matter how hard you are thinking and even believing in it, you can't grow wings and you can't make a metal outside of your body be considered a part of your spirit web.

F-iron stores mass, not weight and it can never store 100% of it. Lashings change gravitational acceleration and all things fall at the same rate if you ignore air resistance, no matter their mass. But air resistance can't be ignored so manipulating mass via F-iron will also affect your terminal velocity and speed (due to conservation of momentum). Even if you store most of your mass and apply 100 Lashings on yourself, you will move very slowly because you will hit your terminal velocity almost immediately. You should avoid double posting, it's against the forum's policy. You can always edit your previous post.

This is wrong. All Surges use investiture as a fuel. Kaladin's Lashings consume his Stormlight, Shallan's Lightweaving also needs Stormlight and Shallan often binds it to a sphere that will feed it. Soulcasting consumes lots of Stormlight and all other Surges need a Radiant to have Stormlight with them otherwise Surges simply stop functioning. The frost appearing is mostly due to condensation and phase transition of investiture. There is only a very trace amount of investiture present in the environment, too little for even a Radiant to detect it and use it. Matter is energy and in Cosmere it's also investiture. No matter if you describe gravity as a force or as a curvature of spacetime, you need energy to create this effect. Brandon also confirmed that laws of conservation of energy are working in Cosmere. Lashings were shown time and time again in books to feed on Stormlight, which is energy. Consequences of those things are quite simple - if you apply a Lashing on yourself and then change your mass, you will either change the rate of Stormlight consumption, or change the strength of your Lashing. Those are two only options, but we don't know which one is correct. Keep in mind that Lashings just change the direction in which you fall. Terminal velocity will play a massive role here and it depends on both the mass and cross-section area. If you drop your mass to almost 0, then your terminal velocity will be very low, so you'll be as fast as a slug, no matter how many Lashings you apply. But using conservation of momentum to your advantage will work, just like in Wax's case.

When Ruin was imprisoned, Preservation Splintered a part of his power (investiture) and trapped it in the Physical Realm in the Atium cycle. Because investiture in the Physical Realm manifests as solid, liquid or gaseous investiture, this investiture manifested as Atium as it started to seep into the Physical Realm. This is natural for every single Shard in Cosmere, Preservation also has investiture manifesting in the Physical Realm, more as a gas and liquid than solids, but it's the same thing, the same rules govern this phenomena. HoA ch 78 epigraphs: However, Atium and geodes were not Ruin's perpendicularity. A Perpendicularity is a massive collection of any investiture that will pierce realms together. It doesn't have to be liquid investiture like in the Shardpool, it just has to be a lot of investiture in one place to make a perpendicularity. In the case of Ruin, there were two perpendicularities present, one was a liquid Shardpool before Rashek's Ascension. The Shardpool was found and described by Alendi during his journey to the Well of Ascension. TFE ch 33 epigraphs: Rashek moved this Shardpool underground, under the Pits of Hathsin. That's where the Ruin's perpendicularity was during the events of the Mistborn Era 1. However, there were also several smaller perpendicularities manifesting below the Pits and that's because there was so much investiture in the Pits that it was enough to pierce Realms on its own and manifest multiple perpendicularities, not just one Shardpool. After Kelsier destroyed the Pits, this investiture disappeared from the Physical Realm and with it all perpendicularities collapsed, including the Shardpool. All of those perpendicularities existed below the Pits because of the Atium gathering there. WoBs: This doesn't matter. Shardic investiture permeates everything on Scadrial and it naturally leaks into the Physical Realm, where it manifests as either solid, liquid or gaseous investiture. This is a natural law of Cosmere, independent from Shardic intent. Preservation created Mists out of his investiture and he set up the Well of Ascension, thus that's why his investiture manifested like this. He also Splintered Ruin's investiture and made it manifest as Atium. Physical investitures of both Shards were more or less equal to each other, but one was concentrated as Atium, the other mostly as Mists. Without Preservation's involvement, there would be far less Ruin's physical investiture on Scadrial, because that investiture was forcefully taken away from Ruin and trapped in the Physical Realm. However, Ruin did manifest gaseous investiture of his own - it was the black smoke Vin and Elend found around the Well when they entered it. Due to the long time concentrated presence of Ruin's mind in the Well, his investiture leaked into the Physical Realm and naturally manifested as a black mist. HoA ch 14 epigraphs:

What makes you think that there is any change in pressure or temperature in the Unsea? On Earth, this happens because of gravity - the higher you are, the less air is above you, thus pressure drops. We have no indication that the same thing applies to the Cognitive Realm. Shadesmar is weird and unintuitive, physics as we know it simply doesn't work there - it's the perception that is a dominant factor shaping Shadesmar. I see no reason to assume that the Unsea works like a typical physical atmosphere. And Starling does believe that she can be falling in it indefinitely without dying or getting crushed by the imploding wreckage, so I don't think we can compare the Unsea to a normal gas. IotE ch 54:

We don't know but we do know you can somehow use Scadrian god metals to grant Feruchemy.

Aluminum armor would also interfere with their Surgebinding, potentially preventing them from using it (because aluminum has an area effect). Fused and Regals especially can't wear too much aluminum at all as they depend on it too much. Surebinding is way more beneficial than aluminum armor.

Bondsmith's squires gain no power nor Surgebinding out of their status. Adolin can't be a squire if he has powers. WoB: I'm not entirely convinced what he does is Bondsmithing, but it is certainly strange. I am more inclined to believe that he's just good at naturally forming strong Connections, just like your second idea proposes.

No, he's not wrong. When does the separation between soul, mind and the body happen? Not when the heart stops beating, which is what happened to Taravangian - he was stabbed in the heart by Szeth, but his brain was still alive and that's a more important factor. Taravangian's body was dying, but wasn't dead yet. Just like what happened with Lift and Gawx. WoR ch 88: WoR ch 113:

No, he's not considered a Cognitive Shadow.

I think they are "unharmed" because they are ridiculously invested and losing a fraction of their anti-investiture means nothing to them. IotE confirms that this is an explosive reaction, just like the one we've seen in RoW, when Raboniel exploded the room. Anti-investiture mixing with investiture turns them both into energy, so the Evil is losing anti-investiture with every being it kills. Nightblood has no control over investiture he consumes, this is all driven by his intent and this makes him corrupt investiture, which can be most likely described as mixing investitures, not switching polarity. IotE ch 26:

Nightblood was created around 400 years before WoK so that's way after Ambition's death. It was also Shashara who Awakened Nightblood, not Vasher. Nightblood would do almost nothing against the Evil because they are made out of negative investiture and they can annihilate dragons and live through this. Nightblood is super invested, but I doubt he's more invested than dragons who need a separate realm to fade into the Beyond after death. In fact, from WoBs we know that Nightblood is more invested than an Unmade, but not as much as the Stormfather. Nightblood is made out of normal investiture (although corrupted) so if he were to touch one of those entities, he would be destroyed just like those three dragons were. Anti-investiture and investiture reacts explosively, Nightblood can't consume anti-investiture without self-destructive consequences. Moreover, from SA letters we can speculate that Endowment wouldn't really care about the Evil in the Shadesmar. She seems to stick to the non-intervention policy that Vessels promised to uphold after the Shattering, so the Evil wandering around Cosmere is none of her concern. They keep their distance from populated areas and busy roads in Cosmere, so Nalthis would be clear of them.