Athanat0s

I feel like Brandon's answer is a bit semantic... it's arguable that there are only 8 allomantic metals, since all the pushing metals are alloys of the pulling metals or since godmetal alloys are possible, could there be thousands of allomantic metals. There may only be 10 surges, but if Honor created an eleventh Honorblade, would it grant the same abilities as the other Honorblades? Or would we have additional surges? It could also be that the other powers are covered by voidbinding...

I've been mulling some of these over for years and with Rhythm of War, I think that there's enough information to make a coherent theory. I'll add citations later... There are 16 surges. We know that Radiant Surgebinding is based off of the Surgebinding granted through the Honorblades. We know that Honor added safeguards to surgebinding so that Roshar wouldn't be destroyed like Ashyn The Lord Ruler hid 16 allomantic metals by telling the world that there were only 10 Looking at the overlap that we see between the other investiture systems that we've explored, there are some glaringly obvious gaps in Surgebinding No emotional surges, even though we see emotion spren... No temporal surges, except for Renarin who has an "enlightened" spren and has lost access to the surge of illumination No direct action surges. We have lashings, but those are changing the direction in which things fall... we don't have surges for pulling and pushing stuff. We now know that the spren that make up Shardplate are related to the sapient spren that form the shard blades. I believe that Honor created the Honorblades by mutating natural spren like windspren and creationspren by giving them splinters of Honor (and Cultivation) and then continued creating the sapient spren to hide the method of creating the Honorblades.

My belief is that their Shardic intent is what defines the magic... on Sel, your magic is tied to the place that you are Connected to (Dominium) and you need to truly Devote yourself to studying the magic system in order to use it... ChayShan and Dakhor are both more martial in nature but require similar devotion to their crafts. Awakening lends itself to being better for the wealthier, but that's because the fundamental function of the system is Endowing your power on another... With the Knights Radiant, their powers increase as they Honor their oaths and grow (Cultivation) as people, each of the ideals is about healing yourself or about being a better version of yourself. Allomancy doesn't fit this as neatly, but we do have WoB https://wob.coppermind.net/events/270/#e7708 saying that Allomancy from burning Lerasium was a side-effect, so the Allomancy that we see might not be the whole picture.

I'm rereading Warbreaker at the moment... I think Vo was returned as a response to Odium shattering Honor... I think Endowment only sends a few Returned with greater purpose (like the 5 scholars to jump start the practice of awakening) and the rest (aside from their personal mission) are mainly there so that the people know how what to expect from Returned.

I've been toying with the theory that maybe the recurrence of the number 10 on Roshar is a hint at some deception, like it was in classical era Scadrial (Lord Ruler keeping most allomantic metals secret)

Considering how Ruin and Preservation interact with people, i.e. the power of Preservation immediately fills cracks in the spiritweb, stopping Preservation from inserting thoughts, maybe burning Lerasium repairs any damage to a spiritweb, and the patch material is what gives allomancy, I'd be willing to wager that the only requirement for burning Lerasium would be that your spiritweb can't be in perfect condition, and the more damaged the spiritweb, the more powerful the resulting allomancer. As for a Lerasium spike, I can't imagine what it would steal (if it could steal something in the first place), but I'm going to say that receiving a charged Lerasium spike wouldn't leave holes in your spiritweb like a regular hemalurgical spike would.

Damnit...i just went through Final Empire and Secret History... Preservation admitted that it was him who gave Kelsier the "Survive" command when Kel snapped

Does anyone else see the similarity between Dalinar's "unite them" and Kelsier's "survive"? I haven't looked very hard yet, but is it possible that they're the same voice?

Doesn't sound like any of the unmade... As splinters of Odium they should be more spren-like, they could be from one of the mad Heralds, but we haven't seen Heralds do anything interesting yet. Maybe thunderclasts are created from greatshell spren that have been corrupted by Sja Anat using the greatshells as templates

I don't think it could be a thunderclast...unless Talenelat broke way earlier than we thought most void spren should be contained on Braize. Maybe it's a new type of greatshell...a stormfiend