StanLemon

Valor is more generally described a courage in the face of danger. Though most often associated with battles as there is great danger in battles. I think Valor is going to be more of a perseverance in the face of adversary kind of Shard

Wax as a Skybreaker is very appropriate to me as well. In my mind he's pretty close to what a Skybreaker should be.

Not to completely derail things but I noticed this line while looking for quotes. Foreshadowing for Pure Tones maybe?

All true, but it would be a pointless deception. The only character who from Jasnah's pov could have questioned why a gem didn't break would be Taravangian, who at the time she didn't consider particularly bright. A much simpler deception that still would have made sense is to Soulcast the stone and say that it was fortunate the stress didn't break her gemstone

Which as we've seen with Soulcasters puts strain on the gems. Soulcasters use gems much larger than broams. Pretty much every time they reference gems they are talking about gemstones larger than spheres. Otherwise they mention them as spheres, chips, broams, etc These are quotes from the book, these aren't a couple of chips she's using. Clearly there is stress put on the gems

Soulcasting has regularly been shown to be far more Stormlight intensive than most other uses of Surgebinding. Even by 4th Ideal (at least) she still needs to drain multiple gems (not described as spheres) to Soulcast. Frankly, I find it unlikely that she would need to intentionally break the gem if she didn't need to as the primary witnesses were people that to the best of her knowledge shouldn't know the limits of how much can be Soulcast before a gem breaks. Remember, in Vorin nations Soulcasting was shrouded in unnecessarily religious pomp and Taravangian was someone she considered kind but dim.

Which I'm assuming is from the distribution Stormlight they are pulling from, not just a lot from one source thus putting a lot of strain on it. As far as I can remember, every other instance of Jasnah Soulcasting a lot of mass has been described as draining several stones. I could be wrong, but the only other possibility I can think of is that she simultaneously Soulcast the gem to break while turning the stone to smoke

It's probably simple. Gems break any time they are used to power is utilized through them. Soulcasters don't have the spren in the gems themselves and the gems only provide Stormlight and essence type for the device yet they still break. She probably powered her Soulcasting utilizing just the one gem and it broke, other times she has done large scale Soulcasting it's been described as draining multiple gems but she just used one for that massive boulder

Yes, but few are described like Stormlight. Easily accessible and abundant fuel

I'm not so sure the First Generation are a good take on how long a Kandra can live. By Alloy of Law Tensoon is about a thousand and isn't described like them.

Besides the stated reason that is. I was thinking about mechanical use of the Metallic Arts. One of the biggest hurdles that Scadrians will have to face is that they will be bottlenecked by the need of Harmonium which as a godmetal is likely a limited resource. How limited or renewable it is we don't know yet but it will still a limiting factor. Stormlight on the other hand is readily abundant and very renewable. We also have WoB that imply it can be a universal Investiture fuel source as it can be used by Returned to survive and can be hacked to power Awakening. From RoW we know metals can influence how magical effects in Fabrials are expressed. This got me wondering if they are working on a way to use Stormlight as fuel rather than depleting Harmonium. Maybe using a Harmonium cage or something to replicate Harmonium's ability withou using up the Harmonium itself. Not particularly holding strong to this idea but I thought it might make for some food for thought.

The most impressive feats we've seen Hoid do are his vision he gave Kaladin, his absolute unconcerned reaction to Shardblade being pointed at him, and the one time he actually got to fight he utterly curbstomped Kelsier. If his chains get taken off I'm absolutely sure he'd be able to compete with and stomp Heralds or Fullborn but until then I think he has too many limits on him. And knowing Brandon's writing preferences I suspect they aren't self imposed and extend beyond his inability to hurt things

Like I said, theoretically he's stupidly powerful. But he doesn't do nearly as much as he can do. Might just be him trying to keep a low profile, or there might be more limitations that we are aware of

I don't honestly think Odium was ever the god of mankind. At least not more so than a cult status considering it was said he had to trick people into using the Surges and Dawnshard to destroy Ashyn

Well to be fair we don't actually know quite how powerful he is. Theoretically he's stupidly powerful. In practice, we don't know his limiting factors beyond not being able to harm anything

This I believe was mostly because of his lack of knowledge. He had no way of knowing just how powerful TLR could actually be. Ignorance is a flaw that he has actively worked to correct as of Secret History. He's now learned enough to actively be able to replicate TLR's power (aka the most powerful character we've seen that isn't a Shard or named Nightblood) and we honestly don't really know how much he did learn while wielding Preservation. Kelsier's specialty is turning impossible problems into manageable pieces after all.

Kelsier has a tendency to manipulate his enemies into doing what he wants. He probably finds the Set more useful than dangerous at the moment.

I think the simplest way answer to why the Ghostbloods would be trying to get Stormlight offworld is that it's the easiest accessible universal power source available. Medallions at the end of the day are limited to the specific powers that they provide, but from what we've seen it looks like Stormlight can be used to power just about anything.

One of my favorite abilities they have is that they can make near perfect tissue grafts to help a person recover from injury.

1. Character - the characters are the lifeblood of the stories. They revolve around them and the story is presented through their arcs. Brandon does a fantastic job of building the world and stories through even those that don't have viewpoints. Then on top of that he has his characters have understandable motives and flaws and is often very realistic in how he portrays things and even the characters who are more quirky he gives reason for them and they aren't always quirky just to be quirky and often have self reflection. 2. Worldbuilding/Magic - these two are pretty intertwined. He creates settings that can feel real even if they are as fantastic as Roshar and he thinks through the logical consequences of the world and how magic would influence said world.

Amount of action is more a matter of preference rather than a matter of quality. The Era 2 books are presented primarily as mysteries so it makes sense that the action is lower.

Also, in Ch 5 of The Final Empire, though easy to forget, there is mention of colored plants So while it seems like there wouldn't be a lot of vibrant plants, they might have some that produce a nice dye. Like Dyer's Woad for example, a yellow flower that produces a strong blue dye.

Here is the relevant epigraph from Well of Ascension explaining it Chapter 42

Welcome to the Shard! Yup, those are all aspects of Intent for the Metallic Arts. But there are also other aspects as well. Like when Wax in BoM prologue realizes a bullet is in three parts and the blue line splits or how Zinc and Brass use Intent to determine which emotions are affected for example. I find the subtlety of Intent in the Metallic Arts to be very interesting myself.

It's a common theme in religions for gods to be the embodiment of something, though I see what you mean. Out of curiosity though, it's said any mass of Investiture if left alone long enough becomes conscious so if that happens to the Dor, would you consider that a god?