alder24

We have no idea. Probably. Keep in mind Warbreaker Annotations were made looong before OB. I simply think that Brandon meant type 4 swords that would be close to Nightblood in functionality, still far worse than Vivenna's blade, but not exactly like Nightblood. Closer to Vivenna's blade but more destructive? I think Brandon probably had it planned for Endowment to be involved in Nightblood's creation back then but didn't want to reveal any details about it before writing the sequel. The former. Ruin saying Passion with big P was important, Odium might have been influencing Kelsier in some subconscious way etc. Shards are omnipresent, they are all around Cosmere and you can Connect to them even if they are on the other side of Cosmere. Ruin's power is very open in Cosmere - anyone can use Hemalurgy anywhere, Ruin affects entire Cosmere as the whole, why is it impossible for someone with really aligned intents to tap into that power? No, because the intent isn't there. It's not just about emotions, or not even normal Awakening. You don't Command stuff "to hate." Nightblood is one of the kind because they've found a way to invoke another Shard's power and that was combined with Awakening type 4 entity - a sentient being with personality. Everything was just right for it to succeed. We know from Warbreaker Annotations that Nightblood corrupts investiture he consumes, corruption means another Shard is needed to mix and interact with that investiture, which means there is another Shard involved in Nightblood - Ruin is the most obvious choice because of his Command and the black smoke. It doesn't have to be clean/pure Ruin's investiture he turns everything into - I didn't mean that. And you can change investiture into another investiture - you can turn Stormlight into Breaths, so why not everything into Ruin's investiture (like using the Navani's method and changing the tone of investiture)? However it works it turns everything into something more aligned with Ruin, it doesn't have to be 100% Ruin's investiture, it can be, but corruption is happening inside of Nightblood - and for that to work another Shard's investiture needs to be involved. The mechanism can be as simple as resonating with Ruin's pure tone, or drawing a bit from Ruin when corruption is happening etc. Because Nightblood is corrupting what he consumes per WoB. That's why. He had nothing to corrupt before. Nightblood's intent is overwhelmingly about destruction, that might just tap into Ruin and corrupt investiture he consumes, he might overwrite tones of investiture he consumes into Ruin's tone, he might mix investiture with Ruin's investiture etc. Something like this is happening, corruption is happening inside of Nightblood. The first one literally said "he couldn’t use that Returned Breath for Awakening things," there is this quote as well, ch 3: It's not just about ending dead, it's that even if they were to try to Awaken with a Divine Breath it can't Awaken. That's it. Divine Breaths turns into kinetic investiture which doesn't stick around. I see Treamayne has already provided more WoBs. No. It was like Awakening Lifeless, which is a two step process but one Awakening. One step is to actually create Lifeless, then you give them commands to execute. I believe Nightblood was made in a similar way - one first Command was actually meant to give sentience and life to an object (because "destroy evil" doesn't really mean be alive, think and feel or anything like that), and then they put into an already Awakened Nightblood the specific Command to "destroy evil" - this could be made in one Command phrase, but there was likely more to the Command than just "destroy evil," something that would command an object to be sentient in the first place - just like the Command to make Lifeless, ch 21: Because when you think about it there is nothing in "Destroy evil" that would tell Nightblood to be sentient, to think and to feel. Nothing. So there has to be something else to tell a sword to be alive.

The switch was already present in BoM and they also were able to work for a long time - that's how they power sliders. They simply didn't have any time to charge them for so long during the events of BoM. BoM ch 17 Aluminum or duralumin actually does a lot. Aluminum creates an area where nobody can use powers, while duralumin (and nicrosil) supercharge everyone in the area. Those powers are very useful when combined with grenades. Yup, but it also would supercharge everyone near you. For example let's say that in the first fight of TLM, when Marsai was fighting Set's Hemalurgist, she would have had this nicrosil/duralumin cube and used it when the Hemalurgist was tapping pewter - it would instantly make him tap all of his attribute at once, granting him practically strength for a split second. If he isn't prepared for something like this, he can't utilize this, he would just lose all of his stored attributes at once, which would be an effective, but highly dangerous tactic to get rid of someone's metalminds storage. That's TSM spoilers, not TLM TSM spoilers:

Yes, but where the cadmium and bendalloy bubbles overlap, they would cancel each other out making this region run at normal speed. This would still be useful, especially if you're a savant, then you'll be able to anchor bubbles to yourself and they will move around with you. This strategy would be very useful when dealing with projectiles (they would be basically useless) or when dealing with melee combat. And steelrunners too, but they can technically still outspeed your bubble.

Not at all. Read it again. Shashara and Vasher created Nightblood, gave him a name different from Nightblood, they used him in the Battle of Twilight Falls after which Vasher killed Shashara with the sword, then he called him Nightblood because of the smoke he leaked. The fact that the WoB specifies that Nightblood leaks only the Breaths he leeches off people means that he didn't leak smoke directly after his creation, only after he was used for the first time - the Battle of Twilight Falls which terrified Vasher. Then he would not exist anymore. Those aren't consumed, those are his soul. They made him him, without those he would die. Just like Lifeless have Breaths that replace their soul, Nightblood's original 1000 Breaths make him, give him sentience and personality. Those 1000 Breaths are Awakened, they enforce his Command on him when he's drawn. They can't be replaced, they can't leak - they can't be consumed because then Nigthblood would simply stop being alive. But they could be corrupted immediately when he was Awakened. They are still tied to the core of his being, they are still his soul and don't leak, but they are corrupted with Ruin now. It's hard to say - but he can't leak them. We don't know. For once he was created to be sentient, but Vivenna's blade is sentient as well but doesn't leak anything. The intent, visualization and most importantly the Command is probably what made him this way. Not only was he Commanded to destroy but also to destroy evil - a concept that a steel sword has no idea about. Vivenna wanted to avoid creating another thing like Nightblood, she definitely used a different method and Command to Awaken her sword - something that probably Yesteel discovered: Warbreaker ch 51: Yes, technically; and I'm not wiggling around that, because technically, location in the Cosmere and who belongs to what gets really weird, right? Because Ruin's Investiture is everywhere--but I'm not talking that way. I'm talking the way you actually mean it. to rule out the whole 'Ruin is technically everywhere' argument. And that for me rules out that he's just eaten some of Ruin's investiture. It doesn't matter if Ruin's investiture was involved in his creation, that wasn't the question (and the answer is most likely no), and the next WoB I gave specifically asks if corruption as described is happening in Nightblood, to which Brandon said it's a good question. For me this means every investiture Nightblood consumes (most likely excluding his original Breaths because they aren't consumed) he corrupts into Ruin's investiture. And because he corrupts only what he consumes he would start holding Ruin's investiture when he was used for the first time - the Battle of the Twilight Falls. I have no idea. Maybe Shashara was Returned to create such a weapon and she dreamt of this moment? Those dreams aren't crystal clear, they can give you some clues but they can also be misleading. In that case Endowment wouldn't be directly involved in Nightblood's creation. Or maybe she did something more, gave him a little push to make him as he is - she isn't concerned about Rayse getting out of Roshar and confidently said "he would be dealt with" and I think Nightblood was somewhat involved in her plan of dealing with freed Rayse. Or maybe Endowment pushed "definition" of what it means to destroy evil on Nightblood, which made him act like he acts. We have to wait for the sequel to know, there is no information about it at all. It does. You can't Awaken with Divine Breath because it can't be transferred - to Awaken you need to transfer Breaths. You can't Awaken with Divine Breath because it is turned into kinetic investiture - Awakened objects have Breaths in the form of static/innate investiture (most likely - a Seeker can't detect that which rules out kinetic investiture). And this WoB: Precisely because of Endowment's involvement, creating another Nightblood would be most likely impossible. If it would be as "easy" as giving a sword tons of Divine Breaths it would be replicable. But, Yumi spoilers: It was an Awakening process, he was Awakened and Brandon literally said "a different process." Just like you can Awaken Lifeless in many different ways - there is one that makes you spend only a single Breath, and there are those that need dozens or tens of Breaths - you can Awaken Nightblood in a different way as well. The first step is to use a different Command. I suspect that Awakening objects like Nightblood is a two step process - the first step involves bringing him into sentience and giving him 1000 Breaths by using some kind of Command similar to Awakening Lifeless, the second gives him the Command to "destroy evil." Or this different process might simply be not giving a piece of steel Commands about abstract ideas like evil and destruction. Odium is about conflict (RoW Sja-Anat interlude) he doesn't even want to destroy Roshar, Cultivation is about cultivating (which isn't destruction), Autonomy is weirdly about control but also independence (she's a Kelsier's fangirl after all) - just because they cause destruction doesn't mean they embody destruction and entropy like Ruin does. Both Ruin and Cultivation are about change, but Ruin is about destructive change, while Cultivation is about change that causes growth, which are two different things. Still this doesn't matter here, the intent of "destroy evil" matters and that most likely was the closest to Ruin. It wasn't the sole reason why Nightblood was made this way, but it's a very important one.

If you want to discuss TSM spoilers this topic should be moved into the TSM section. There is no need to put everything into a spoiler box in the general Cosmere subforum, only content which is in the spoiler period now - TSM - should be put there, or readings of unpublished works (like SA5 prologue or SotD2 etc). After reading it, you can just delete the TSM reference (which doesn't bring anything into the conversation) or put it alone in the spoiler box and the rest can be put outside of the spoiler box. Vivenna didn't have 3500 Breaths, she had around 600 Breaths - the 3rd Heightening. Vasher had around 1000 and also put most/all of it into his clothes. I don't think he is just leaking because of the 1000 Breaths, he is leaking because those are corrupted Breaths and now he is oversaturated with investiture. I don't think those 1000 Breaths are leaking, but all the other investiture he consumed invested him more (he has to keep it somewhere) and that additional, consumed and corrupted investiture is leaking as black smoke. His original 1000 Breaths don't leak - they act as an artificial Divine Breath and that doesn't leak. Only what he consumed is leaking and is confirmed. The Coppermind source for "he started leaking when Awakened" was this WoB, which doesn't say that: Nightblood is different, because unlike other Awakened objects, he can consume investiture and store it in the sword. Yumi spoilers: Unlikely in my opinion. The WoB you mentioned specifically said her involvement wasn't that big, and this seems very huge: Impossible, you can't transfer a Divine Breath, you can't Awaken with it like with normal Breaths. I don't think that's what's happening with Nightblood and Ruin's involvement. The key thing to remember is that Nightblood leaks CORRUPTED investiture, and corruption is simply mixing different Shard's investiture which changes things. Nightblood's Command is "to destroy" and who is the embodiment of destruction and entropy in Cosmere? Ruin. Shashara's Awakening accidentally invoked Ruin's power, making Nightblood "destroy" evil and corrupting investiture into Ruin's investiture - it's black, like Ruin's Mists and Ruin's form and color. I think this is the direction the WoB points towards. By Commanding Nightblood to destroy he gain ability to tap into Ruin or something like that - Ruin doesn't even have to be aware of this, his essence is omnipresent, but his mind isn't infinite and can't comprehend all of that. And Vasher was only in the PR of Nalthis and Roshar and in a few other places in CR. He wasn't in the Physical Realm on Scadrial. However, unlike Vasher, Nightblood was in more than two places in the Physical Realm. So maybe Scadrial? The newspapers in Era 2 mentioned some talking tools stuff. Still I don't think that he consumed Ruin's investiture and that's what specifically made him contain Ruin's investiture (he probably did consumed some Ruin's investiture but it's not about this, as Brandon said in the WoB Ruin's investiture is everywhere but Brandon said he's not talking that way) - he corrupts investiture, it wouldn't matter what he consumes when he corrupts all. Edit: Sorry @listerfeend I've missed you: Well giving Breaths with the Command "my Breath to yours" is Awakening, but the Command is simply inactive. The only "activity" it has is that it allows you to overwrite Breaths' identity to the one of the person you are giving them to. Objects are still invested but Breaths are just inactive. I think there is no difference and even the "my Breath yo yours" feeds on your body's color. There is simply no difference. Warbreaker ch 49: What do you mean "a few Breaths?" Couple hundred is a few? That's quite a lot. Warbreaker ch 5: ch 46: I don't think so. Awakening doesn't change the soul of the Awakened objects. It's more like it grows it? Or replace it for a moment? It makes it big enough to follow Commands written in those Breaths. But we don't know the mechanism of Awakening yet so it's hard to say. Not every investiture glows - Mists don't glow. Breaths simply don't glow and that's why Awakened objects don't glow too. Moreover I think it's also because Breaths are innate investiture and thus stick to the soul, that they don't glow - they aren't static or kinetic (but not every static/kinetic investiture glows, Scadrial once more show us this). But still Breaths "leak" and this is manifested as BioChromatic Aura, deepening the colors around Awakener.

It's in the name Mal-ATIUM

What do you mean? I don't understand what you're asking about. It's gone in Era 2 because it was made artificially, it didn't exist naturally and it was an alloy of pure Atium and gold. The legend of the 11th metal was fabricated by Ruin, people like Gemmel and Shezler were either spiked or insane and thus influenced by Ruin. Ruim led Kelsier to the discovery of Malatium.

A Fabrial with Awakened wiring. You don't need the entire thing to be Awakened, the Awakened part would act like a mind and react in a proper way to specific situations. Tress spoilers: In my opinion it's Commands and investiture granting non-living objects sapience and bringing them closer to life that makes Awakening Awakening. You can do that without Breaths and doing this with proper Commands and visualization etc and it still would count as Awakening. Just pushing Stormlight into a thing isn't enough, you would need to do what is done in Awakening to make it work. The Coppermind description is based on this WoB, Yumi spoilers: Not every Awakening makes decisions. Most don't, Warbreaker spoilers: That's precisely it. Type 3 entities are just like that, they simply react, no decision is being made. Personally I would classify Awakened objects as a specific type of Fabrials. In general Fabrials are/will be just " all magic-based, mechanical devices": Urithiru is one giant Fabrial, it's a sapient spren but it's still a fabrial performing tasks automatically. So yes, you can do it. If you find a way to combine multiple fabrials at once, like Alertfabrials with Painrial, you can activate a Painrial when someone is close to it. I think you can do that without Awakening, but you can Awaken using Stormlight, but this is hard:

That should totally work. Good point on gemstones. Yes, I think they would act more or less like bones, at least those natural ones. They used to be alive, Awakening them should be cheap. But it's not wood or gemstones that you want to Awaken, it's the wiring plus the gemstone that you need to Awaken and Awakening metal requires the 9th Heightening - 20000 Breaths. That's a lot to make something that will only switch on and off, and it would cost hundreds or thousands of Breaths. A very expensive mechanism. It would be far cheaper to make a wiring out of wood, then soulcast it into metal and then Awaken it - just like with soulcasted bodies, the cost would drop dramatically and it's possible the 9th Heightening wouldn't be needed anymore, because this metal was alive unlike natural metal. However it's not the material that would be problematic to Awaken, it's the spren inhabiting the gemstone that would probably interfere with Awakening. Awakening Fabrials that are physical manifestations of spren, like Soulcasters, is out of question for the same reason Awakening Shardblades is practically impossible - they would be already considered as Awakened. Awakening a modern Fabrial with spren inside of it would be hard, because investiture resist investiture and spren would resist being Awakened with the Fabrail. Awakening an empty Fabrial would be fairly easy, but then there is no spren in it, no functionality to provide so the Awakening might simply not work at all even after trapping a spren inside (depending on Commands), if a spren could even be trapped inside an Awakened gemstone (because investiture resist investiture). The easiest thing to do would be to Awaken the wiring alone, and because Fabrial is turned on/off by moving wires closer or further away from spren, this kind of Awakening would work and provide needed functionality without making it hard to Awaken or hard to make a Fabrial work at all. But yes, overall Awakening Fabrials should be possible and provide more functionality to them.

That wouldn't work with unintentional storing, but it may be possible to tap metalminds just like Vin was burning metals subconsciously. Of course that would require to have metalminds with an attribute stored in it and that wouldn't work for someone who's fresh in Feruchemy unless they have access to unkeyed metalminds. Basically your body has an intent of its own - survive - and under a lot of stress it will be enough to reach and heal via goldmind for example, in the same way Vin was burning pewter. That doesn't really work in this particular situation, but in general you can tap in life threatening situations. Slight SA spoiler WoB: True, but it doesn't have to be a pure Allomantic metal, it can be slightly off and still provide power, less than in its pure form. I suspect that Vin didn't burn pure alloys. Regarding cadmium and chromium (and aluminum too), the amount of those would be even smaller, 2 of them are useless on their own and would be unnoticeable, cadmium wasn't the best choice for body's survival thus I wouldn't expect those Mistings to burn it subconsciously. Sure they are in the ground, but it was mainly due to dishes and cutlery that Vin ingested trace metals, not from food alone. TFE ch 7:

Yes, just because prologues focus on Gavilar's assassination isn't enough evidence for me, especially considering KoWT prologue. Dalinar has no conflict related to Gavilar anymore, the only one he had was resolved at the end of WoR and that was just guilt of being drunk that night. As you pointed out, choosing Gavilar as Odium's champion brings nothing that could help Taravangian. If Dalinar was struggling with living up to his brother's name, or with having guilt for stealing his brother's wife, not being able to protect his brother's son or anything like that, then that's a foreshadowing, a conflict to be resolved - but this is all absent.

No, I disagree. That's not what Savantism does. You don't carry extra static/kinetic investiture in your soul or anything like that. Your soul is changed and molded by the power. A gold compounder might be able to naturally heal better, or not - just like Spook was numbed without Tin, a gold compounder savant might have decreased healing because their soul and body are so molded by the power that they can't function without it. The core idea of Savanthood is that it is bad for you, there are serious consequences of being a Savant and it's not all good and nice. Miles can't heal multiple bullet wounds without a hidden metalmind. Savanthood would make him heal more efficiently, but it won't heal him on his own. Wayne can heal 3-4 GSW with a nearly-full goldmind, which has to be filled for 2 weeks (per AoL ch 5/6), Miles can simply heal much more with the same and that's his advantage as a Savant and that's why he was able to survive so long during his execution.

The same is with Soulcasting. Brandon answer it in the first WoB I've posted:

The only WoBs about forged metalminds are these one: I think you can Forge a metal into another metal and use that as a metalmind because you don't burn it, you don't destroy the metal when you store in it. If you want to Forge an already filled metalmind, then it will be hard because its already too invested and then the attribute stored before Forgery would be unavailable to you, because the metal is no longer the type it should have been, per this WoB, but still inside the metalmind. You won't created a metalmind that can store 2 attributes at once. If you want just simple melt them together, like the Bands are. For Hemalurgic spikes it's more complicated. If you have an already charged spike then you would need a lot of power to change it and its charge to a different one, but it's possible. You can probably take an empty spike, forge it and then charge it with the correct thing and it would probably remain forged - if the forgery were to collapse, then the charge would stay in the spike, but it wouldn't fit the metal, thus becoming useless. However, it's possible to steal someone's forged soul, if they forged themselves to be a Mistborn for example, you can steal that fake soul and it would work, but making yourself into a Mistborn is really hard and requires a lot of investiture. Still you can soulstamp people to make them into strongmen and then steal their strength to make really efficient Koloss for example. No, that's too costly to make it work. Investiture resist investiture, changing a charge of a metalmind would be really hard.

Not sure how much clearer it can be. It means it's wrong. Both Rashek and Vin, while holding the full power of the Well, and later Vin when she was Ascending, were powerful enough to push on a Shardblade, per this WoB: This is contradictory to the WoB you've posted, because we've seen people holding and using the power of the Well, thus your WoB is simply incorrect. Another WoB said "Duralumin and a really strong [Steel]Push could probably do it," which means that now it's only a matter of discussing how strong it needs to be. And there is this WoB: "the right Allomancer," which can narrow it down to something like Elend/Rashek's levels of power with duralumin of course, because they are at the very top of the Allomantic strength spectrum. I simply disagree with this WoB because there are many other WoBs claiming something different. I agree a normal Mistborn won't be able to push on a Shardblade unless he swallows a truckload of steel, a Coinshot has no chances of doing that alone. But Rashek with the power of the Well can, Raskek without it would be able to do it, he can use F-nicrosil to strengthen his steel pushes (if it works like most metalminds), he can use duralumin and a lot of steel. It's not practical or useful, but possible. This question was asked a lot of times, each time Brandon gave a slightly different answer. The general answer is that it's really hard, but possible in the right circumstances, and because there are more WoBs which specify what kind of power is needed, I think there is enough to say that your WoB is mistaken about not seeing anybody with that kind of power. Edit: And we've already seen Vin pulling on a god metal twice in Era 1. Yes, it was an Atium alloy, not alive, not as invested as a Shardblade, but it's still a god metal, it should have been hard. Yet it was possible. This might suggest that pushing on a Shardblade isn't that hard as you think. TFE ch 30:

Yyyy possibly, but that isn't much. It would have to be metals that aren't bound in molecules or proteins, it has to be something that they've eaten or drunk and there isn't much of it for storing, you won't get a lot of attribute from that, especially gold. It's impossible for Miles to survive even a single gunshot wound just by using traces of gold in his body - that requires several days of storing health. And Miles' execution was carried out probably several days to weeks after his capture, long enough to wash out any traces of gold from his body if he used to drink from golden chalices - he didn't. Moreover gold is chemically inert, it doesn't react with any other substances, so gold in his metalminds wouldn't be broken down and introduced into his bloodstream (by I'm not good at chemistry, don't trust me on that one). I think at best you might be able to do something like Sazed at the end of TFE - store muscle mass to be so thin to escape shackles, maybe tap it to kick through a door, but I don't think he would be able to bend metal bars with just attribute stored in traces metals. That's simply too little metal for that.

They were speaking the same language as anybody else in the Final Empire was speaking. The Terris language was dead, but the Keepers had it memorized in their Copperminds, Sazed used this to translate texts of Alendi's journal and Kwaan's metal plate. It was more like Latin, nobody is speaking it but there are people who learnt it. Kandra/mistwraiths are a different species and don't count as humans, they can be controlled if they have only 2 spikes because of that. However this isn't as strong a control as with Koloss or Inquisitors. It takes longer to establish full control and during that time Kandra can resist - that's what happened during HoA when almost all Kandra reacted and pulled out their spike when Ruin tried to take control over them. HoA Annotations: Mentally ill people are more susceptible to Ruin's influence even without spikes - that was the case with Vin's mother who spiked Vin's sister all because of Ruin's influence and she didn't have any spike. Ruin can't speak to people who don't have spikes or are mentally sane. HoA ch 51: Wax was wearing his earring in the AoL climax, AoL ch 15: Ch 17: I think Preservation can hear any living Scadrian without any spike. That's why he was able to "speak" to Elend in HoA for example. Now I wonder if Harmony lied here to Wax or he purposefully restricts himself and doesn't listen to people with no earrings, to respect their privacy or something like that.

Yes, I agree with @Duxredux. We've seen people holding power that can push on a Shardblade. I think a Mistborn with a stomach full of steel and duralumin can push on it (Wayne outran electricity), additional Hemalurgic spikes would help, or being Rashek would help even more. But just because it's possible doesn't mean it's useful. Burning the entire reserve of steel just to push on a Shardblade that can be resummoned immediately is pointless and a Mistborn will simply be killed without any steel. However there are no Mistborn anymore, so it just leaves Hemalurgist as the only people that can do it and Hemalurgy is forbidden for now. Simply speaking, there we've seen people that have the power to push on a Shardblade, an average Mistborn, possibly with the need of additional power enhancements, with ridiculous amounts of steel and duralumin would likely be able to do that, but that's simply too impractical and it really won't help in a real fight. The same goes with pushing on a Shardplate - you won't kill anybody by pushing on their Shardplate (unless they aren't Radiant and they stand on the edge of a cliff like Eshonai in WoR) so it's simply a waste of resources to even try to push on Shards.

Yes, tap F-zinc and you will become Sherlock. I would add F-duralumin, tapping connections with people would make them trust you more and be easier to become their friends, thus it would help you extract information from them. It would also allow you to understand languages if you're in a foreign land. Both things are handy and those are only the one we know of - Connection can do a looot.

Yes, it's a very popular theory, so popular that there was a topic made just a few days ago supporting this theory, discussing heavy spoilers from the KoWT Prologue - if you're interested here's the topic, and here's Prologue to Stormlight book five. Personally I think it's very unlikely. In RoW ch 114 Taravangian spotted the loophole in the contract saying: For Gavilor-Champion theory to work it would have to be Rayse who took Gavilar's soul, invested him and made him into Fused/CS, which means this was his plan all along. It wasn't. Rayse wanted Dalinar to be his first champion and then Kaladin, both of those plots failed. Rayse wasn't prepared even for Dalinar refusing him, he didn't predict Dalinar Ascending at all (he said that to Taravangian in OB). Rayse would have no reasons to make Gavilar into CS after his death (or at least keep his soul). For Gavilar to be CS it would have to be Rayse who invested him, so this isn't "a possibility Taravangian's predecessor had missed" anymore and Taravangian can't bring back a soul that went into the Beyond - nobody can do this. I don't see any foreshadowing for this theory. Except for the fact that they are brothers, this wouldn't achieve much. Both Navani and the Stormfather can tell Dalinar how terrible Gavilar really was, that he worked with the Sons of Honor to bring Desolations back, he abused people close to him, including Navani and Dalinar, potentially Jasnah as well, and so many other things that Dalinar would have no problems in finding motivation to kill him. And Dalinar was always a better fighter than Gavilar. The stakes are just too low for this to happen.

I like those changes. It just looks better and it's more compact yet the access to those specific subforums is still good and they are clearly visible from the main page. Subforums with unread threads have bolded names so it's easy to see new content being posted there. Personally I wouldn't mind combining Tress, Yumi and Sunlit into one single subforum because people mostly talk about those books in the Cosmere Discussion board anyway.

A note here. The native "Honor" part in the Surgebinding isn't the Oaths and Ideal it's just the bond between a spren and a person. The Oaths and Ideals were made by Ishar - during one of the first Desolations "wild Surgebinders" were starting to appear after spren tried to mimic Honorblades. Ishar bound them and structured them in the Orders of Knight Radiants and made Oaths and progression of Ideals a core component of every Order, to limit the destructive power of Surgebinders. WoR ch 42 epigraphs: Voidspren are fully capable of forming a Nahel Bond - we see them doing this with Singers and granting them forms of power. We've even seen Voidspren forming a Nahel Bond with humans during the OB Battle of Thaylen Field. This is a Nahel Bond, just like a Radiant bond, but it doesn't grant Singers that much power compared to a Radiant bond. Overall it's a very interesting theory. I like the connection to emotions and passions because of the prefix "Void," just like the word "Surge" refers to the powers of creation. It makes sense that Voidbinding will do something with emotions. We have little to no information about Voidbinding so it's hard to say about validity of your theory. The best we have is a strong suggestion that Renarin does Voidbinding, using Stormlight to power different abilities than those in Surgebinding is close to Voidbinding, Voidbinding usually originates from Unmades, but not always, lastly that it has been touched in the past but not fully explored. Not a lot.

Yes, yes, however the Oathpact is part of it too. Odium a have limited reach when Heralds are on Braize. Most of his investiture is on Braize, Unmades are dormant and even BAM went against Odium and started the False Desolation. We don't see Odium contacting people in between Desolations (little to no information tbf). He can't do nearly as much as he can when Desolations are in progress.

I find this very unlikely. Adonalsium is dead and Shattered, his investiture split into 16 Shards. New dragons would have troubles getting pure Adonalsium investiture just like that - it's basically impossible for them and it would require them to merge investiture of all Shards together. It's even more likely that if that was Adonalsium's god metal, after the Shattering it would be assigned to one of 16, just like any other investiture in Cosmere, thus it would no longer be his god metal, at least in new dragons.

The WoBs are canon unless proven wrong by books or more recent WoBs. We don't know if Mercy settled with Ambition, but this doesn't matter. We know Odium targets specific individuals and Ambition was the number 1 on his hit list. He didn't have to use the agreement breaking justification everytime, especially if Mercy was helping him fight Ambition. And after Roshar he was planning to attack Autonomy, who is settled alone. Odium wants to kill them all and he uses any advantage he gets. What I meant by "others can argue and that will give them an edge" doesn't mean that Odium would fully suffer the consequences of breaking an oath, it means that others might have an edge over him but not as great as if he were to perceive his action as breaking the oath. The fact that Odium wouldn't perceive that as breaking an Oath would most likely be more significant than the perception of others, but they can still use that against him to some degree. In the same way Devotion and Dominion could argue that they agreed to settle together but still be affected by Odium's perception that they've broken the agreement, which gave him an edge. I don't think so. I think Honor exposed himself by imprisoning Odium which might be somewhat against the agreement on allowing Odium to settle on Roshar. As per WoB, Honor didn't consider his actions of settling together as breaking the agreement, and if two agreed, then there is no problem - I don't think this was the main issue here. Again, I didn't mean a full crack, just that it would give an edge to the aggressor. Just some minor advantage but it wouldn't fully expose Odium like if he were to really break an oath. Some Connection is not enough. Voidlight was carried from Braize, we don't know if Gavilar did this personally, it seems unlikely for a king to disappear for weeks or months and we have no mention of this happening (iirc). Still that’s too little for actions like this when Odium is bound by the Oathpact to Braize and has very limited reach on Roshar. There needs to be a significant Connection which simply wasn't there. And I'm not even mentioning how would Odium gain access to the Stormfather's visions without the Stormfather being somewhat involved in that. That was anti-Voidlight. If he was with Gavilar that means he had been with him most likely for years before his assassination. In OB 49, 23 years before OB, 12 years before Evi's death, ~18 years before Gavilar's assassination, Gavilar mentioned things which seems to suggest he might have been getting visions already. That's a very, very long time for Odium to find out the secret of anti-light - he just needed to watch Gavilar making it. But this isn't even needed, Gavilar made anti-light very recently, shortly before the assassination, that's when he finally said to Amaram that he was successful. If the Stormfaker was Odium, he would have known how to make anti-light. This is too recent for Odium to miss. I don't think so. Then Odium would have just ordered Moash to kill Navani as soon as they got her. He allowed Raboniel to investigate this because he saw the use in it and wanted it. Anti-light poses no danger to Odium.