alder24

I don't think Heralds or Fused have a physical form on Braize. Fused of course don't have it because they have no Singers there, Heralds probably don't need it anyway. Moreover, the Physical Realm of Braize is a barren wasteland with almost no atmosphere, their bodies would be dying in a loop because of it. They are probably in their cognitive form and because of this they most likely can't create a Raysium dagger nor anti-light on Braize. It would have to be brought from Roshar, but Fused already tested it and they know it's impossible for them to get to Braize in the Physical Realm. So Heralds are safe from anti-light.

Allomancy is a gift that grants you strength to preserve yourself, that's why it's end-positive. The Shard of Preservation isn't about preserving itself, just like the Shard of Ruin isn't about destroying itself, they can fuel any kinds of interactions so the fact that Allomancy draws from Preservation, which might seem like it weakens it, doesn't matter to the Shard - and it doesn't weaken it, the power once drawn will return to the Shard after being used. As for Feruchemy being of Harmony, that's not the case. Invested Arts are born from interactions between the world and Shards present on it. Feruchemy is a merger of both Ruin and Preservation and it represents the balance between those two. I don't think we know why Feruchemy is end-neutra;, but if I were to guess I would say it's because Preservation's magic is end-positive and Ruin's one is end-negative, which sums up to end-neutral. An Invested Art born from mixing two Shards doesn't always end up end-neutral. For example all magics on Sel are end-positive, despite them all coming from both Devotion and Dominion. Surgebinding also is end-positive, despite being of both Cultivation and Honor. But again, we don't know why Feruchemy is end-neutral or even if there are any rules dictating how a mixed magic will be fueled.

A tip for you. You don't have to worry about spoiling RoW, it's long after its release and it doesn't fall under spoiler policy (unlike WaT). It's possible, an Alomancer can even burn it without Lerasium because it's a pure god metal. Burning Tanavastium-Lerasium alloy might grant you powers of Surgebinding. However, we don't know this for sure, w e know that alloying Lerasium with other god metals can grant you other invested arts (like Sand Mastery from Bavadinium-Lerasium alloy). It's unliving god metal, it should be able to hold a charge unlike living Shardblades. Should work, it's a pure god metal, it would work just like Atium or Lerasium do. The main difference between this chip and Shardblades is that Shardblades are alive, they do not count as metals anymore because there is a living spren "attached" to that Shardblade. This makes them impossible to burn and too full to be used as a Hemalurgic spike oe a metalmind. The chip from Ishar's Honorblade is not alive, it's pure Tanavastium and it should behave just like Atium or Lerasium.

Returned and Heralds are kind of the same thing, but their purpose is different. While they are both Cognitive Shadows (people who died but were reborn), Heralds are a very specific kind of them, created by Honor and boosted by his power and Honorblades to fight in Desolations and seal Voidbringers on Braize. Returned don't do that. They are Nalthians who died, but were revived by the Shard of Endowment, who gifted them a Divine Breath, making them Returned. They were returned by Endowment with some goal in mind, thus they experience prophetic dreams (like Lightsong who dreamed about incoming new Manywar and the death of the God-King, as he was sent to prevent that from happening). Returned, unlike Heralds or Fused, are a weak type of Cognitive Shadows and therefore require investiture to feed their Divine Breath with, otherwise it would consume itself, killing them - Heralds are much more invested and they don't need to feed on investiture just to be alive. Also, because Returned are so weak compared to Heralds or Fused, they can die if you just kill their body - they won't resurrect. Vasher/Zahel has lived for more than 300 years. He's a scholar and an Awakener and one of the creators of Nightblood. Early on, he visited Roshar and got inspired by Shardblades, which prompted him to create his own version of it - Nightblood was the effect of it, not exactly the thing he had in mind (which is an understatement). After the events of the Warbreaker and its unreleased sequel, he left Nalthis and arrived at Roshar, mainly because on Roshar he can sustain himself with Stormlight without the need of consuming Breaths each week (Breaths are investiture which is a part of Nalthians soul, taking it away from them makes them Drabs and being a Drab makes one prone to illness, depression and some other unpleasant things - Vasher doesn't like doing this to people just so he can live). He also brought Nightblood with him, but they had some kind of argument and they separated. Zahel became an ardent swordmaster and taught Adolin how to fight, in WoR he was also teaching Renarin and Kaladin. While he was hiding as ardent, Azure/Vivenna was hunting him for some unknown crime he'd committed, heavily related to Nightblood as well (we met her in OB, Highmarshal Azure of the Wall Guard in Kholinar). From the WaT Prologue we've learned that Vasher was the very first person who discovered anti-light for Gavilor, so he knows in and outs of investiture and is capable of creating anti-light, which is of huge significance to the future of SA and Cosmere. His relevance in WaT is more of a set up for the future books. He will begin training with Lift, so we can expect that in the 6th book Lift will be a trained Surgebinder and a fighter and maybe she will stop being so clumsy. If you got that from his appearance in WaT, you got all that's important.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong place to post this topic. The Cosmere Q&A section is a place for asking simple questions with answers that already exist in books or WoB, not for speculations, theorycrafting or fight scenarios. Also, spoilers from WaT are not allowed in this place, you should have posted this in the Spoiler Zone, in the Cosmere Spoilers allowed section. You can see what each subforum is for in the description at the top of it: You should edit your post and hide the WaT spoilers in the spoiler box, with a proper warning placed before it. You can find out how to do this here Sharder FAQ, where you can find many other practical tips. WaT spoilers:

Namad HAD a Dawnshard. It's hard to say. Powers of Heralds give a huge advantage, but Nomad gets them as well just by being highly invested - investiture grants general enhancements to the body like strength, speed and stuff like that. Kaladin at the end of WaT has just become a Herald, he already was a very skilled warrior, but he has no practice in his newly gained powers. He has quite a lot of practice in being a Radiant and Nomad has no longer any access to that. Nomad at the end of TSM is a Dawnsliver, can use any investiture to heal and boost his body, has decades or even centuries of experience in improvised fighting and running away from the Night Brigade and is also a scholar with a deep understanding of investiture. However, Nomad has problems with actually fighting as his Torment prevents him from harming others (but he's found a way to overcome that temporarily). So although Nomad is not as good natural fighter as Kaladin is, isn't as powerful as Kaladin is from being a Radiant and a Herald, he probably has way more experience with his powers than Kaladin has at the end of WaT and his ability to consume any investiture allows him to get at least some of Heraldic abilities (if not more as he can get more invested than Kaladin) to level the fighting plain. I honestly don't know who would win, they both have a lot of different advantages (and disadvantages) so I think everything is possible. It would be a fun fight. Give Kaladin a few decades of training and fighting and he would certainly win.

Honestly, I don't see the point of this poll because we've seen this fight and Nale has beaten Kaladin in a spectacular way. Yes, Kaladin is a Herald now, but he has no experience in being a Herald. so Nale still would win. Nale has millenia of experience in combat, he's made mistakes and learned from them in a way no mortal can do and that gives him an unfair advantage against a freshly made Herald such as Kaladin. Give Kaladin a thousand years of fighting and only then he would have a real chance against Nale in a fair fight.

Then everyone would know that Adonalsium is alive and they would have killed him again. There were 17 people present during the Shattering, 16 of them Ascended and became Shards as planned, only Hoid refused to Ascend. They know who got what Shard, they would know that one Shard was taken by someone from the outside of their group. Moreover, The Sibling and the Stormfather were able to recognize that a new Vessel has Ascended from the change in tone of Odium's Shard, but where didn't know who that is as it was unfamiliar to them - Adonalsium was familiar to everybody, both the new Vessels and the spren on Roshar, they would be able to instantly recognize that he took up a Shard just by listening to its pure tone. And lastly, Adonalsium was said time and time again to be dead, by Hoid, Khriss and other Shards/Vessels.

The term Fullborn was never used in books. I found it 6 times in BoM.

The Band of Mourning grants all Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities and yes, that is powerful on Scadrial. However, they are still just a normal, physical metals in which someone stored a lot of investiture. That's it. Shardblades on the other hand are not made out of physical material, they are pure investiture condensed into its physical form - a god metal. Because Shardblade are a god metal and BoM are not, they are vastly more invested as they literally are pure investiture turned physical. BoM are still just normal metalminds with a bunch of investiture stored in them. They are not comparable. Moreover, Shardblade have sapience attached to them. This is because they are living spren manifesting as a physical matter and their mind, their sapience, spirit web and identity makes them more invested than a normal god metal would be. Although the Band also have some living force and identity of their own attached to them, they are not alive, they are not sentient. They are a little machine with enough mind to give Metallic Arts to those who hold them, but that's not sapience or even sentience. In my opinion that is a little more similar to type 3 Awakened objects. I don't think so. Spren were created by Adonalsium himself and they were made sentient. The intelligent spren were made by Honor and Cultivation directly and that's why they are sapient. Shards were directly involved in making Splinters on Roshar and that's why they are sentient. However, it is possible for investiture to gain sentience and sapience on their own, the more invested something is the faster it happens, yet we're still talking about this happening over thousands of years. The Bands were not only created deliberately not to be sentient, but also are not that much invested and they haven't existed for long enough to become sentient on their own. Nightblood is the most invested object in Cosmere. He's an unholy amalgamation of spren and invested physical objects. His body is made from a normal physical steel, which was stuffed with a bunch of Breaths and Awakened into sentience. Then he started to consume so much investiture, that he became supersaturated with it. to the point when he can't hold any more investiture (and that's why it leaks from him). The Bands of Mourning are not even close to this point. They hold a lot of investiture, but not even close to being overfilled with it like Nightblood is. Nightblood is so invested that he can now be considered as a god metal, he's not just a simple steel anymore. Here's a WoB comparing many different objects in terms of their investiture. The Bands are similarly invested to a full metalmind, Shardblades are way more invested than that, Nightblood is ruling over them both. WaT spoilers:

The more invested someone is, the more resilient they are to emotional Allomancy. Taln, as a Herald who never abandoned the Oathpact and never even allowed Fused to Return, would be one of the most invested individuals in Cosmere, so he can just ignore any emotional Allomancy, even if Rashek hit him with all he has. Atium would be extremely helpful, the ability to see the future is a huge advantage in any fight. However, Heralds do have increased Fortune and they might use it similarly to Atium, as Ishar was said to be moving as he can see the future. Their Fortune might interfere with A-Atium and cause it to split shadows, as if they were burning Atium themselves. RoW ch 111:

It will definitely affect the ecosystem in massive ways. However, Retribution mentioned that he will still provide investiture for life on Roshar, so they still should persist and their transformations and life cycle should not be disrupted that much. The Everstorm might now be the source of minerals in the absence of crem from Highstorm, however we don't know this and I would expect this to be a major problem. If there is no crem anymore and no substitute for it, the plant life on Roshar will start dying soon. The constant rain also won't help them, flooding is already occurring around the Purelake, other regions also should experience it as there is no soil for rain to seep into and cracks in rocks would be sealed by crem. It's just a bare rock, water can only flow on it and cause massive floods everywhere. Retribution however did notice that the ecosystem needs his direct intervention to prevent its total collapse, so I think that he will or did use his powers to aid it in some way, but we should still expect an ecological disaster to follow the birth of the True Everstorm and the death of Highstorm.

Well, the Sibling already have a physical manifestation of their body - the tower of Urithiru itself - so that's why Navani can't summon them. The Stormfather likely exists more in the Physical Realm than any other spren and that's also why he can't be summoned as a Shardblade that easily (but in his case, it's still possible - Dalinar almost did it in OB). I don't believe Syl is there yet, she's changing, but she's not like other godspren for now.

Ugh, that's a tough fight, I'm both Taln and Rashek's fanboy so it's even tougher to decide. If this was any other Herald, I might lean in Rashek's favor (at least it would be a more equal fight), but Taln by Brandon's words is the best fighter Cosmere has ever seen. At his prime, Rashek stands no chance. At his lowest, without his Honorblade, Rashek would probably give him troubles, might even have a real chance of killing him, but Taln should still reign supreme. With his Honorblade and his Surgebinding, Rashek won't be that big of a challenge anymore. Taln is just an unstoppable killing machine. Even if he was killed, he can just return and beat the crap out of Rashek again and again. And Rashek without A-Atium definitely can't beat him. Unfortunately for you, in those kind of fights Roshar has always an unfair advantage. Their Surgebinding, Shards, healing and access to Stormlight is just more powerful than what Scadrial has to offer. And while I do tend to take Scadrial's side and try to find a way for them to win, at the end of the day it's obvious that the power level between them is incomparable. I know your pain. Rashek is probably the only Scadrian who can win most of the fights with Rosharans, but making him face the best of the best - Taln himself - is just bullying him.

Fused have no interest in allowing their former enemy to regrow his lost leg. They are at peace now, but there would still be a lot of hostility between both sides. Listeners are on the opposite side of Roshar, way too far away to even know about Adolin's leg, not to mention help him in some way (and they can't heal). Urithiru is surrounded by a crystal dome and it's inaccessible from the PR, you can get there only on the CR side - but you can't get to the CR at all now. Urithiru is fully cut off from the outside world. And if Adolin's solitude wasn't enough of the reason, they simply have no investiture to perform healing. Stormlight is gone, Warlight is now given directly by Retribution to those who follow him, Azir is not one of them. Towerlight is stuck behind Urithiru's glass dome, Listeners with Warlight are still on the other side of the globe and Fused don't care and would be even glad that the best fighter and duelist on their enemy's side lost his leg. Adolin has no way to heal his leg and seeing how quickly he adapted to his new cripple life, it seems like, after the month has passed, the wound might already be considered as an old wound, and thus it would be unhealable without some mental gymnastics. I don't believe he will get his leg back.

As Treamayne said, distance is a primary factor, but there is also the fact that the covered metal is harder to push on - the steel lines that originate from metal behind or inside a wall are much thinner than if it was uncovered, and thus harder to push on. Wax could see only thin lines coming from wires inside the wall. The planet's core is buried under 6000 km of rock and magma, good luck sensing anything from it.

If this quote is your reason for calling Elend a Mistborn, then this also applies to Rashek - he used the power of the Well of Ascension, the "liquid Mists" - Preservation's body - to become a Mistborn. The very same thing that made Elend a Mistborn, the same thing that made Demoux and others like him into Mistings, also made Rashek into a Mistborn and a fan named Fullborn. And to be fair, Rashek's body was literally vaporised when he Ascended and then remade from scratch by the powers, so he kind of was reborn as a Mistborn.

Wax is a weak Mistborn, a very weak one. He's not as powerful as Elend, not even as Vin or Kelsier, he barely counts as a Mistborn. He has all Allomantic powers, he can burn all metals, but because he inhaled only a tiny fraction of Lerasium, he's got very little of it. So little that he couldn't figure out what was happening with him in TLM. Those additional powers would give him a little boost, but he would still rely mostly on his Crasher set of powers. And he also has no real experience with his new Mistborn powers. Kaladin is not only a 5th Ideal Radiant with an insane amount of healing abilities, a Shardplate and a Shardblade, he's a Herald now with a new Honorspear. Nale and Taln have shown us what a Herald can do and they are basically unrivaled in Cosmere. Even without his Herald powers, he can use Reverse Lashing to divert all of Wax's bullets away from him, all except for aluminum ones which can be stopped by his Shardplate and a Shardshield. A single cut with his Shardblade would kill Wax - Wax can't even heal any normal wound, not to mention a Shardblade cut. Wax stands no chance against Kaladin at his weakest, not to mention Kaladin the Herald who is a literal demigod. Chromium also doesn't drain all investiture in a single moment - the more investiture you need to get rid of, the longer it takes and the more chromium you need to burn. Because Wax is a weak Mistborn his chromium would also be weakened and Stormlight is investiture dense, so it would take a lot of time for Wax to drain all of Kaladin's Stormlight - enough of it so he would just get stabbed with a Sylblade. Even though Wax has tools to break a segment of Kal's Shardplate, he has no tools to kill Kaladin in any realistic way. Radiants are simply too OP compared to Metalborn, Heralds are just out of this world OP.

Preservation and Ruin created Scadrial together so this probably would include some kind of rule against smiting people directly. However, Preservation had broken that deal by imprisoning Ruin, so he was free to do whatever he wanted. Except he couldn't do anything at all, because at all times he was constantly opposed by the Preservation's power, which made him as impotent as Preservation was. Both of them were more or less equal in power and both of them used all of their power to oppose each other. That's the reason why Ruin couldn't kill anybody on Scadrial or destroy the planet directly - Preservation was stopping him at all times. If he tried to do something like this, this would imbalance him, expose him and give an edge to Preservation. If he were to reclaim his Atium and with it his lost power, he would have been able to just Thanos-snap Scadrial out of existence. If he were to Splinter Preservation before Kelsier Ascended, he might have been able to do it as well. In the case of Hoid, he has made agreements with Shards, which protect him from being harmed directly, but he has to not be seen and not act against them. He broke that agreement on Roshar, which allowed Retribution to smite him into vapor. On Scadrial he didn't seem to do much against Ruin, it seems he was there mostly for his own interest (becoming a Mistborn and a Feruchemist) and he didn't interact with Vin since Ruin release. I think his actions were subtle enough not to count as breaking their agreement and thus he would still be fully protected from Ruin's wrath. This makes me think what would happen if Ruin were to destroy Scadrial, would Hoid suddenly find himself floating in the middle of the vacuum of space where Scadrial used to be? HoA ch 47 epigraphs:

Should we stop calling Elend a Mistborn because he wasn't born as a Mistborn? The term Mistborn suggests those people are born from Mists - Snapped by them. This term certainly fits all who were Snapped by Mists when the Well was awakened, but other than that all other people like Vin, Kelsier, or Zane were not born from Mists - should we stop calling them Mistborns as well? No, it's just a naming convention that fits, which probably originated from those first Allomancers who were actually born from Mists (and weren't Mistborns). The term Fullborn is a mix between a Full Feruchemist and a Mistborn - for me it doesn't matter that Rashek made himself into a Fullborn and he wasn't born as such, just like it doesn't matter that Elend was made into a Mistborn by eating Lerasium. It's just a name that combines two existing names because those people are both Full Feruchemists and Mistborns at the same time and this name is in my opinion the best description of it. But from WoBs we know it's still possible for a person to be actually born with full access to both Allomancy and Feruchamy, so the term still fits even with the most literal interpretation. You can be born with the full complement of Metalborn powers.

The source, less on Shallan, more on Vedans in general:

In Cosmere we don't have atoms, we have Axi, and Axi have a third component to it next to matter and energy - investiture, which is the Spiritual component. Lerasium and Atium are investiture condensed into the physical, solid form, which exists in all three realms at once. For Atium, this investiture is tied only to Ruin, for Lerasium it's tied only to Preservation. Axi of those god metals are therefore investiture turned into matter with a very strong Spiritual component and identity, which pierces through all realms. Harmonium is the same as Lerasium and Atium - investiture turned directly into matter, a new element with one new Axon, but the Spiritual part of it is tied to and made out of Ruin and Preservation's investiture. If you take a microscope and look directly at Harmonium's Axon, you won't see Axi of Lerasium and Atium making up Harmonium, you will see one element, one Axon. That's why it's not an alloy, it's not like steel, which is made of atoms of iron and carbon, it's like iron which is just iron atoms. However, Spiritually it's two investitures mixed together, investitures that are very unhappy being together and are pushing against each other. When you separate those investitures apart, they will condense into their own separate physical forms and become Atium and Lerasium, despite those metals not being a part of Harmonium in the first place. This is because that investiture is still mainly in the Physical Realm and investiture in the Physical Realm tends to manifest as gaseous, liquid or solid investiture. The same goes with Warlight or Towerlight. They aren't made out of two lights, they are one light Spiritually made out of two kinds of investitures tied to different Shards and when you split them apart, they will become their own lights. Both Harmony and Retribution hold two Shards, those Shards are merged, their investiture seems to be merged too, but on the very fundamental level they are still distinctly separate. Honor's investiture still exists, it's a part of Retribution's investiture, but it would take an effort to separate it.

As for Lerasium, Lerasium making you into an Allomancer is a side effect of this metal. Actually, it's your body that burns it. If you want to access its main power, you absolutely need to be an Allomancer first and you need to have a proper intent (know what it does).

Rayse's vision was clouded by Renarin and because of that he couldn't see his own death, despite the power gap between them. Harmony's future vision was clouded by a direct attack of another power - maybe some dragons, Aethers or Dawnshards could do something similar to Adonalsium. Ati couldn't see his death because the idea of Preservation's Vessel sacrificing themself in a suicidal attack was alien to him and Ruin's intent and thus he didn't search for it and didn't see it coming. It's reasonable to assume that Adonalsium's future vision was bound by the same rules which exist today thus there are many explanations for why he didn't see the Shattering, or of course he let it happen for reasons unknown to us.

They are not truly dead. Maya shows it. However, I wonder if you were to somehow turn the bodies of spren killed by Ishar into their Shardblade form, would they be pure god metals that can be burned?