JoModius

Now, I could be wrong about this (I don't have my book with me right now) but I seem to remember a conversation between Adolin and Shallan in Oathbringer where Adolin makes a pun using the word invested. He was comparing their relationship and her radiant abilities if I remember correctly. If that's the case then investment wouldn't be a term only known on Nalthis.

The Warbreaker annotations actually seem to say that it isn't anything Vasher did himself. Babies and dogs just naturally like Returned because they can sense the Divine Breath inside of them Warbreaker Annotation - Chapter Forty-Nine I was also of the mind that Vasher did not use any of his breaths on the little girl directly. As mentioned, he showed her what command to use on herself. This is probably quite similar to the 'suppress your divine breath' trick.

There is also a distinction between Radiant spren, created by Honor/Cultivation, voidbringer spren, created by Odium, and regular spren, created by Adonalsium. Now, I don't know if the regular spren are confirmed to be splinters of Adonalsium. but my recollection is that the physical and cognitive realms are very close on Roshar, potentially due to the high level of investment from Adonalsium in that area, and as a result the cognitive aspects that regular objects have can bleed through into the physical realm as spren.

They've never brought up a second shard pool but there is a lot of Sel we've never seen, including that third mysterious empire. We also don't know how much D&D had intermingled prior to being killed by Odium. They were said to be lovers and worked very closely, perhaps they worked closely enough that their essence pooled in the same spot in the physical realm.

That's also a good point. I guess then that aside from their god metals we could say that shards don't normally personally inhabit the physical realm (at least in a physical body) though it is possible as we've seen from Preservation and Ruin (He also imitated the mist spirit). I would accept that this might be necessary to physically affect somebody. Though, with that being said. it just occurs to me now: How does Ruin affect the text in the physical world? He doesn't have a corporeal self when it occurs as far as we know. (Though we don't actually see it occur so we can't be sure on that).

Very interesting thread! It actually raised one question in my mind that has never occurred to me before: Did/Does Adonalsium have a perpendicularity? I am not sure if he would have had one in the first place as creating one in the first place involves investing yourself in a localized position and as was mentioned previously Adonalsium spread out his investiture without heavily investing in any one location, at least not enough to create a legit magic system. Now, of course the one notable exception to this may be Yolen, of which we know little and less. There are magic systems present on Yolen (Yolish Lightweaving) which could mean that Adonalsium invested more heavily here and so if there is any place for an Uncle Andy Perpendicuarity, I believe it would be here. However, I do not know if it can be confirmed that this magic system can even be solidly attributed to Adonalsium or if it could come from one of the other 'dead gods' that existed there. At this point one might bring up that now that Adonalsium is shattered his perpendicularity (if it existed) may not exist anymore but I think we have precedent for this not being true. We have WoB that splintering can be likened to a small-scale shattering and we have seen that shardpools remain from two deceased shards. - Honor has been splintered but his perpendicularity still exists (Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it is in the highstorm) - More shakily, D&D are both deceased (though not splintered) but a shardpool still exists above Elantris. The last candidate worth noting is Patji's eye. We know this is a perpendicularity not attributed to any shard so it is our strongest proof for an Adonalsium perpendicularity. I have a hard time believing that this could be THE Adonalsium perpendicularity though which leads me to wonder if Adonalsium was so powerful that he/she had more than one perpendicularity, something no other shard has been capable of to my understanding. Anyway, that's the end of my pondering. Let me know if I've forgotten any glaring inconsistencies!

How would you account for Preservation stabbing Elend in the Well of Ascension (albeit with Kelsier's intervention per SH). Surely Preservation, even in his degraded state, existed largely still in the Spiritual realm, being a shard and all.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I just wanted to pipe in that although I also believe Cultivation is still kicking around on Roshar, her shardpool still being there shouldn't be used as evidence as we have WoB that it is possible for a shard to willingly leave a planet while leaving their shardpool behind (and that in fact this has happened already). Edit: Sorry, here is the WoB. I misremembered, he did not say that it did happen but that there are circumstances in which it could happen.