StanLemon

This is how I always interpreted it

Hasn't Brandon said that TLR knew all the secrets of Allomancy and Feruchemy? Even if not, I don't think it is unreasonable that as the god king of The Final Empire he had the knowledge and ability to manufacture Nicrosil and simply had the knowledge of it suppressed from the common people.

I'm very much of the opinion that someone needs to be "broken" but I use quotations because I think the necessary stress is very subjective to the person and how well they handle the trauma or stress.

I was unaware that you were a proponent of that sorry. However, I must disagree on him lying to himself. I don't see that when I read his pov.

I disagree on the on the Lightweaver thing quite a bit. He doesn't lie to himself and he is aware of his faults. Additionally while he may not say the truth right away he is ultimately an honest and earnest person. I think the fact that Maya is a Cultivation is perfect for him as he seems to be more of an Edgedancer to me. Lift's Oaths have to do with remembering people and that seems like what he does with Maya. He didn't give her a name because he believed she already had one and thought it would be wrong to rename her. As far as killing Sadeas to show that he is having issues, the consequences of that and how he feels about are brought up in Oathbringer and it is very clear that disappointing Salina had a much stronger presence on his mind than snapping and killing Sadeas. As I've said, I think the problems he goes through during the events of that book and how caring he is for her have allowed him to start to Connect with her. Her dead nature might be interfering with his ability to bond with her and he could already be able to bond with a spren true, but I still have my doubts about that. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle.

I did not say it needed to be long lasting or even extreme. It was others who inferred that I meant the same kind of things that happened to Dalinar, Shallan, and Kaladin as they are our major viewpoints. I only used Snapping as an example to show that trauma is seemingly necessary for cracks to form. Lastly, Vin is the only person we know for sure Snapped at birth and she can hardly be considered a standard example as she was a necessary component in Preservation's plan.

Perhaps I should elaborate on "broken" and what I mean by trauma. Let us compare him to the other Radiants who's histories we know about and how their lives affected them versus how his life affected him. They don't need to go through the absolute hell that say Kaladin, Dalinar, and Shallan went through true but all the Radiants who's history we know about have some form of mental "issues" of some kind. I'm hesitant to use that word but it does convey what I mean. Kaladin has deep depression, Shallan has her whole bag of problems. Dalinar has his deep self loathing he got from killing his wife. But even the ones we know less about have something in their past. The guy Nale kills between parts likely had guilt over accidentally killing someone for instance. I suspect Lift has some type of self loathing as well considering her not wanting to change (though whatever influences Cultivation might have had leave that up in the air for me I admit). Now I suspect Adolin is getting there due to the bit of an inferiority complex he's developed over the course of Oathbringer, and I think that in part along with how well he has cared for Maya is why he was able to summon her in under ten heartbeats. For how hard Adolin's life is, let us look at that. Yes he lost his mother at a young age but people are often able to handle the death of loved ones better than other and Adolin strikes me as someone who handles it and other stresses quite well. So while he may have grieved for these things I don't think it was enough to cause cracks to form in his soul. EDIT: I guess the way I see it as I compare Adolin to Kelsier as he's described before he went to the Pits. While they both very much had hardships in life it wasn't something that affected them in enough of a way to "break" them.

I think Adolin hasn't been sufficiently "broken" first either. One thing we know is that most if not all Radiants have had to go through a sufficient trauma of some kind in order to let them properly Bond with their Spren. Much the same way as Allomancers need to Snap. Until that happens, I don't think he will be able to create the Bonds necessary to revive Maya.

I'm assuming whatever The Evil is, it's what is messing with the Shades.

I would suggest Warbreaker after Stormlight. It gives context to a number of characters in Stormlight and a nice self contained story. After that though I would suggest Mistborn.

Welcome to the forum. I like your idea on the 5th Heightening and it mixes well with my own thoughts on Breath and Heightenings. Breath is often described as being 'strong' in younger healthier people and that had me thinking that they, as discrete packages of Investiture that don't seem to dissipate when used as evidence by them still existing after they are used to give 'life' to Awakened objects, enhance the Ideal image of who holds them. It seems to me that Breath very slowly burns through it's Investiture and thus why it can last as long as it does in that form even when used. Because of that, I believe that when someone holds more Breath a small trickle of the Investiture is funneled into the holder's Spiritweb and then to their Cognitive and Physical aspects and when you have a lot of Breaths you gain enough trickles that it empowers their whole being to give them the various Heightenings. Edit: Not the most eloquently I've presented an idea on here.

How do you like to imagine other Shards would affect the magic systems on other worlds.

@Unlicensed Hemalurgist I'm waiting on the next volume of White Sand before I bring up my thoughts on that because the last one ended with Khriss wanting to be trained. What we know at least as far as that for sure though is that water is used to Connect with the sand and that Kenten believes that the story about the potential of Sand Mastery being predetermined is a lie. That is supported with his sudden increase of power (though he seems to hold on to potential biases by refusing to believe Khriss has the potential to use sand which may or may not be true).

I agree with the earlier would have been better for Odium personally as well. I think about a thousand years after the Recreance would probably be ideal. That would give the Parshendi time to repopulate and call the Everstorm, Shards to be lost, countries to be divided, and before technology could be overly developed. Additionally I'm not overly surprised that Taln could handle that torture as the first few Desolations were separated by centuries at least and the Heralds have abilities beyond just their Honorblades and Surgebinding so it seems reasonable that he had a way to hold on for that long of a time. And again, it seems weird to me that the Everstorm would focus so harshly on his temple if him holding on that long was part of Odium's plan.

Yeah but Threnody is weird even by Cosmere standards because of the injury Odium inflicted on Ambition there. And the possibility of only an Avatar being on Taldain is part of why I had this idea in the first place. Though I'm starting to think that Autonomy has stopped being just a single being and more of a gestalt of all the Avatars that compose her now. While that is true, I still don't consider it the same. While Investiture responds to life, there is a difference between how the Investiture responds between Major and Minor Shardworlds. Major Shardworlds have the users of Investiture be directly infused with it on some level. On Minor Shardworlds though, it needs to be filtered by some kind of organism to use the magic system. First of the Sun has the Aviars eating the Invested worms and Ashyn has the Invested diseases (this was the part of Ashyn I wasn't sure is canon). It's that that makes me think that Taldain more resembles a Minor Shardworld because the lichen is what is Invested and as far as we know the Sand Master's aren't Invested personally but just have a Connection to the lichen somehow.

Also keep in mind the Well being Preservation's Perpendicularity means that it was a junction between all three Reams and Preservation's Investiture. Because of that it was a physical (cognitive?) place that someone would be more closely in touch with Ruin than anywhere else. My reasoning for why the Pits were safer was because Preservation blocked Ruin from it thus making it little more than a pool of power that could function as a doorway between Realms and fuel the formation of Atium.

So I'm not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere, I looked but didn't see anything specifically to this. So it seems to me that the magic system on Taldain is more like that on a Minor Shardworld than a Major Shardworld, or at least something in between. We know that Investiture on Minor Shardworlds is filtered through living organisms which is what happens on Taldain with the lichen coating the sand. Curious what you all think. Also I considered that maybe that was how Autonomy's magic systems work because she has an Avatar on First of the Sun but that seems weird to me both because it seemingly goes against the Shards Intent and doesn't account for Ashyn (assuming Ashyn is canon and that Autonomy doesn't have an Avatar there)

I just reread Oathbringer and as far as Odium knowing about Taravangian that was because Taravangian specifically sent a message to Odium (probably through one of the Fuzed). Taking that into account I think Odium is lacking a lot of information. He showed surprise about the existence of the diagram and it wasn't until he looked at it that he expanded on it. So I'm not all that surprised that he didn't know that Shallan was a Lightweaver. My personal guess is he overfocuses on certain aspects and his arrogance makes him ignore important information.

I think part of it is how skilled and efficient someone is at storing a trait and how well made the metalmind is. The Bands was just a spearhead made of multiple metals (so each metal encompassed an even smaller size than the spearhead) but held a positively ludicrous amount of each trait.

Personally I wasn't a fan of Wayne in AoL. It wasn't until SoS that I felt he got enough development to be interesting.

Wow, off the forums for a couple days and this thread got more responses than I expected. So it seems the overall idea is Era 2 Scadrial would be the most likely with Nalthis as a close second.

So let's assume you, actually just you from Earth, somehow got stuck on one of the Cosmere worlds. Which world would you rather end up on and why? For the sake of simplicity let us count Scadrial Era 1 and Era 2 as different worlds.

I doubt she ever got as good as Kelsier but she was able to kill a whole room full of soldiers with one of their belt buckles in under a minute

I have a personal hypothesis that after Kelsier was revived he brought Demoux into the fold and eventually Demoux joined the 17Shard

They are also about Remembering others, at least as far as Lift's Oaths go. Wax is very good at that, he even followed up on what happened to the guy who got a loan from his uncle when he was a kid. Personally though I would go with Skybreaker as the more likely of the two he would be a part of.