lDanielHolm

This doesn't make any sense. Why on earth would the release of the Heralds cause a Desolation? At best, the Heralds being bound may prevent a Desolation, but if that is the case, the circumstances surrounding their bondage is complicated indeed, since the Desolations, y'know... happened. One of the themes behind the Stormlight Archive is "magic returning." It seems to me that a theory relying on that return being... well... bad... is pretty much doomed.

... that sounds way too much like a weeping angel. That, or a grue. Oh, and shouldn't that be Zeno-spren?

That's what I was saying, yes. You restore the body to its "default" state. I meant 'damage' as a catch-all term for anything detrimental affecting the body, changing it from said default state.

As the others have already mentioned, he had to Compound both atium and gold to pull off his immortality-trick. But there's another limit to gold -- it heals, and healing in the Cosmere is very specific: it can only restore your body to its "default" state. In other words, it cannot make you more healthy than you already were--it can just remove any inflicted damage.

There's little point to a Duralumin Misting. The only possible way to even discover if you are one is if you get an Invested Hemalurgic spike of another metal and burn it and Duralumin together. It's possible you wouldn't lose Duralumin, but Duralumin on its own is pointless.

Not a new suit -- a full suit. There would only be one total suit. No one brought up creating a new suit aside from you.

I've assumed it's simply been so long since the city was occupied that it passed into myth. We know at least Kholinar survives from the time of Nodadon, so that would probably contribute too; the other great cities that Kabsal has patterns for are probably as old as Kholinar, and if they survived but Urithiru did not, it would reinforce the idea that Urithiru didn't really exist in the first place.

Another problem with the idea of calculating Nohadon's travels is that we don't have either point. We don't know where Abamabar was. We only know that they were "hundreds of miles" apart, at least by foot. Heh! Maybe the Shattered Plains was Abamabar. Concerning Urithiru's location... The main problem I have is that Urithiru is where the Orders of the Knights Radiant were centered, only not in Alethela, despite the Orders themselves living in that kingdom. While that problem could be gotten around with Oathgates and what-not, I've always just thought Urithiru was located somewhere just west of Alethela's western border. I was looking at the map of the Silver Kingdoms epoch from Brandon's site, and I noticed that the Horneater Peaks bordered western Alethela... so my current pet theory is that Urithiru (or the ruins of it) is located in the Peaks, and that that is indirectly related to Rock being able to see Syl.

Human hair growth--and especially beard growth--varies a bit too much to use this as a guide, I think.

I think Nepene meant something else (but like the black sphere) which is indirect evidence of the Voidbringers.

Well... it's interesting, but unless Brandon has ideas for it, I don't see it happening.

No, it's perfectly symmetrical--even in English. Pronunciation is what matters, and a digraph (a sound which cannot be expressed by a single letter) is still a distinct sound. "Th", specifically, actually was a single letter--thorn (þ). It was simply abandoned when we began printing books instead of writing them by hand, as French printing presses didn't have it, and it was easier to use 'y' instead, as the original letter in some typefaces could be mistaken for it. (This is why you'll see signs with 'Ye olde shoppe'--the 'y' is not because they are personifying the shop, it's simply to stand-in for þ.) Eventually þ was replaced by 'th', but the digraph can still easily be considered a single letter. The Rosharan alphabet--as Elwynn so rightly points out--treats most digraphs as single letters, so even if you insist on literal symmetrical spelling, it works.

To be honest, I think it is kind of both. A Drab is less Invested than someone from Roshar or Scadrial, but a Nalthian with his Breath intact is more Invested.

Ruin and Preservation.

Thanks, though I don't see how it contradicts what I said...? I don't think there's anything special about being king or highprince regarding Blade and Plate, if that's what you're referring to. Once someone else is wearing the Plate and wielding the Blade, I don't see how the original owner can make them give it back. Dalinar alludes to the possibility of stealing Plate -- he thinks that the Parshendi can attempt to grow an entire Plate set out of the gauntlet he was forced to abandon, so it is not bound to you. As for the Blade, I think that if you hold it, you are the possessor of it, regardless of whether the original owner is still alive (and still wants it). I doubt Dalinar can just will his Blade to return, for instance. That's not quite what I meant, though. Since you can lease the king's Shardblade and Plate, once you are wearing them, you could conceivably just decide to run off with them.

It is a tradition for the King of Alethkar to lend his Plate and Blade to anyone who pays a fee. It probably does transfer "ownership", though in that case, I wonder why we haven't heard of anyone trying to steal them. (I totally would.)

No, this is precisely what I mean. The fact that the Radiants were able to do more with their Shardblades and Plate does not necessarily mean the Blades and Plate themselves have changed. You cannot call that a separate kind of Blade. It just doesn't work. Szeth's Blade must be the third kind of Shardblade we've seen in TWoK.

Yeah, I think you are just overthinking it. Rashek was a Lerasium Mistborn, with a thousand years to polish his skills. Elend could get control over 25,000 koloss at once with a Duralumin-fueled Riot (or was it a Soothing?). I imagine Rashek was that much stronger, especially since he was probably a Savant. Even without Duralumin, I don't see Rashek having trouble affecting the thousands that came to view his executions.

You mean the flashback sequence is about Shallan. (It was either Dalinar or Shallan, and he chose the latter.) The book won't just be about her, though. While we may not get the juice of a Szeth-flashback sequence, I'm sure we will still get points-of-view from him.

Like I said... they are very powerful. But the difference between "so powerful you cannot imagine the scope" and "omnipotent" or "all-powerful" is the same as the difference between Graham's Number and infinity. Would I disagree? No, but here, you're not claiming omnipotence.

That doesn't work. If the Blades left at Feverstone Keep "became" the current Blades we know of (which is the only thing that makes sense), then they are the same type of Blade. The Radiants may have been able to use them more efficiently, but that doesn't make them a different kind of Blade.

I'm sorry, but I cannot emphasize enough of a "What are you talking about?" here. Intent does not shape their power, only how they will use it. Vin takes up Preservation and uses it to destroy Ati because she has not been influenced enough by the Intent of Preservation to be prevented from doing so. She even theorizes that this was Leras' plan all along. They are not all-powerful. Extremely powerful, yes. Omnipotent? Emphatically not! If they were all-powerful, there could be no conflict involving a Shard. They are very much like Norse mythology, or even Greek mythology, which is also very similar. The Norse deities were powerful, but they were not omnipotent--very specifically not omnipotent. Shards are likely more powerful than they were, but they are still similar in their limitations. One of Brandon's tenets in writing (at least as I understand it) is that limitations is what makes things interesting.

The Cosmere deities have far more in common with the divinities from, say, Norse mythology, than they do with the Christian ideal of an all-powerful, all-knowing God--they have flaws, they are mortal, and so on and so forth. I see no reason why each Intent needs to be somehow "divine". If someone held Adonalsium prior to the Shattering, they may have been closer to the Christian ideal, but to be honest, I rather doubt it. I don't think we can use Brandon's personal beliefs as evidence--he goes very much out of his way not to let it overshadow his stories, for which I respect him a great deal. We've seen Devotion, Dominion, Endowment, Honor, Cultivation, Ruin, Preservation, and Odium so far. That's eight out of sixteen--just half, really. While there is a pattern, I think it is too vague to really rule out anything as a Shard's Intent. I think we're focusing a bit too much on the second part of the hint (that it wants to survive). It wants to hide as well. Panic, maybe?

Unless we meet a new full Feruchemist at some point. (We know that the villain in the first book of the modern trilogy is a Mistborn, so they at least come back in some form; I don't see why Feruchemists couldn't return too.) Also, there's always Hemalurgy.

Compounding can likely result in Savants in much the same way regular Allomantic metals do: when Compounding, after all, you are simply burning Invested metalminds, and thereby using Allomancy to greatly increase the Invested attribute. You'd have to burn them nonstop, though, and considering that you get a vast amount of the attribute you stored, you probably wouldn't want to become a Savant in it. At some point, you'd run out of metalminds to fill with the increased attribute. Miles was probably still a Gold Compounding Savant, though; he was constantly tapping health. (While that in and of itself likely wouldn't result in becoming a Savant, he would have to build up his stores at some point by burning goldminds. I don't think we're told how often he replenishes his goldminds, though.)