TheOneKEA

Well, that's embarrassing - I obviously meant to say heartbeats and said seconds instead :-/ This raises even more questions though - how does a Shardblade get involuntarily summoned if a wielder's heart stops or their brain activity ceases as a result of dying? Is it entirely Spiritual?

I've just started a reread of The Way of Kings, and I immediately noticed that in the first chapter, after Gavilar dies from his wound there is a delay before the king's Shardblade materializes. This suggests to me that the ten second interval between the request to summon a Blade and the actual summoning also occurs when it is involuntarily summoned after the wielder's death. This leads to a number of follow-on questions: - Does the involuntary summoning of a Blade start after the last heartbeat (death of the Physical body), the last coherent thought in the dying wielder's mind (death of the Cognitive mind) or after the wielder's Spirit goes somewhere? - What happens if a wielder's heart stops long enough for the Blade to appear and then the wielder's is resusciated? - What happens if a wielder's Cognitive activity ceases (e.g. oxygen deprivation) long enough for the Blade to appear and then the wielder wakes up?

How about a different effect: duralumin savants can enhance the effects of a Investiture applied to them in any of the three Realms. For example, what would happen if a duralumin savant flared their metal at the same time that their emotions were being Rioted or Soothed? What would happen if they flared while they were inside a time bubble?

I have a different theory: Soulbearer Ferrings can store Investiture that has been applied to them in any of the three Realms by another magic user, and in doing so, the effects of that Investiture are eliminated immediately. Stuck to a wall with a Lashing from a Windrunner? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and the Lashing dissipates. Receive a bunch of Breaths? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and you lose whatever Heightening you gained. Find yourself being affected by emotional Allomancy? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and your emotions return to normal. Given how little we know, it's certainly a possibility...

We know from the Reddit AMA on April 15th that planets in the Cosmere have souls. We also have WoB that Shards had some influence in the worlds that they traveled to, but that they did not have free rein to go wherever they wished. Does this mean that the Shardworlds in the Cosmere have cognitive aspects that are complex enough to be sentient and aware, and that the Shardworlds influenced the Shards to come to them after the Shattering? I find this to be quite interesting, because I have a persistent headcanon now of Sel's mind waking up and coalescing the Splinters of Devotion and Dominion into a new Shard called Unity; I'm also curious if Scadrial's mind has tried to talk to Harmony...

WoB has already confirmed that Hoid is a Feruchemist, or at the very least practices Feruchemy (which, knowing Brandon, is probably not the same thing in Hoid's case). What we don't know yet is whether or not Hoid is a full Feruchemist, or only a Ferring.

Keep in mind that Brandon has alluded to the possibility that a Duralumin Misting could use their power to cleanse themselves both of physical poisons and unwanted Investitures if they knew what to do. I have a headcanon visualization of a duralumin savant cutting his finger, touching a charged Hemalurgic spike and then burning his metal to either deplete the charge or destroy the spike. Someone else on the forum sketched a scenario where a duralumin Misting welded a steel wire to a bridge, stabbed the wire into their head and burned duralumin to destroy the entire bridge...

Whoops, I should've searched more carefully. That thread is quite fascinating!

That's certainly a possibility, but it looks so much like the inside cover symbols that I initially assumed that Brandon asked Whelan to put it there.

I was thinking about the sorts of mechanistic, nuts-and-bolts science-type questions that I'd like to ask Brandon someday, and one that I came up with was this: "How disruptive would the introduction of coherent light technology (such as lasers or LEDs) be to the culture, society and magic system of Nalthis?" I'm interested because I'd love to know what would happen if you aimed a laser at a wall and then drew forth the color in that wall to perform Awakening while the laser was shining on it. Since Brandon is already going to explore the interaction of magic and technology on Scadrial, I'd love to know how this type of interaction would occur on Nalthis.

I was admiring the high-resolution background image on the 17th Shard Tumblr when I noticed that the flag held by the foreground character had a symbol on it that I hadn't observed before. I looked at it more closely and it looks like one of the symbols on the inside cover image, the one that shows the Ten Orders of the Knights Radiant, but I didn't see an exact match. I went and checked the other inside cover image and I didn't see an exact match for the symbol there either, so it doesn't appear to be either a symbol of the Knights or a symbol of the other group. Has anyone been able to figure out what that symbol may represent?

I just experienced a minor brainwave regarding lerasium's potential role in Hemalurgy and I'd like to know if the theory is at all plausible. Theory: A Hemalurgic spike made entirely of lerasium heals all of the physical, cognitive and spiritual damage caused by the use of any other Hemalurgic spike on a still-living donor, returning the person to the state they were in before they were spiked. A Hemalurgic spike made of Lerasium and another Hemalurgic metal only heals the damage caused by the theft of the trait stolen by a spike made of that same Hemalurgic metal. If either spike is removed, the effect is lost and the donor returns to their damaged state. This occurred to me when I was thinking about atium's use in Hemalurgy, and how it can be used to steal any trait at all from a donor. Because of everything we know and have speculated on regarding the balance between Preservation and Ruin, it occurred to me that lerasium might have a complementary and opposite effect of undoing the theft of Hemalurgically stealable traits. It makes me wonder, for example, if Marsh could be returned to normal by replacing his keystone spike with a lerasium spike and then removing all of the other ones...

I was thinking about the small rock that Gavilar gave to Szeth when he was assassinated in the prologue of WoK. The text said that the stone glowed with a light that was black. I immediately thought of ultraviolet Stormlight, and realized than so far Brandon has not revealed whether or not Stormlight exists on the far edges of the visible spectrum. If this rock does contain infused ultraviolet Stormlight, several questions can be asked: - What sort of magics can be performed with ultraviolet Stormlight? Could Kaladin use it to Surgebind? - Why hasn't the rock become dun? Does ultraviolet Stormlight last longer because it isn't fully visible? - Will we see more ultraviolet Stormlight or is this the only time it will be shown to us?

Someone asked Brandon once if Miles' statement was similar in any way to the death cries of the Rosharans in Taravangian's care, and Brandon RAFOed it on the spot. This, combined with your statement about Lightsong, makes me wonder if there are other connections between the Shardworlds that haven't been explored yet.

I was retreading a thread in the events forum about Brandon's statements regarding kandra and their activities in human bodies on Scadrial, and it made me wonder about the following questions: - In the third Mistborn trilogy, will we see kandra world hopping to other Shardworlds? - What would happen if a kandra went to Nalthis and someone gave them a Breath? - What would happen if a kandra went to Roshar and picked up a shardblade? - What would happen if a kandra went to Sel at all?

In this post Brandon said that Hemalurgy is an oddity in the Cosmere. He has also said that Hemalurgy is an example of end-negative Investiture. This makes me wonder the following: Is Hemalurgy an oddity because it is end-negative, or is it an oddit because it is the only end-negative Investiture in the Cosmere? If it's not the latter, where else could we see end-negative Investiture, and have we already seen it and not recognized it? EDIT: I just remembered that we have seen the Dakhor magic on Sel, and it looks end-negative because it involves lots of killing for a smaller return that the sum of the inputs, so it might be the only other end-negative Investiture that we've seen so far.

I have some thoughts on tin too. I'm curious if tin only enhances the five senses described so far, or if it can enhance other bodily senses. For example, can a Tineye sense the exact temperature of something when burning?

Parts of your theory sound exactly like my theory about Sazed's successful convergence of his two Shards into one, so I think this theory is very plausible.

This is a very unique and interesting theory. I like it but given how little we know about Hoid's plans I'm not certain it is the most plausible theory.

I think the answer to the OP's question might be found in studying the name of a gold Misting. The Ars Arcanum refers to gold Mistings as Augurs. A quick hop over to Wikipedia states that the term Augur was given to priests that would study the movement of birds and determine the will of the gods based on the movement of the birds. Specifically, the article states that the purpose of an Augur is to "not predict what course of action should be taken, but through his augury he finds signs on whether or not a course already decided upon meets with divine sanction and should proceed." This is consistent with the Ars Arcanum, which states that burning gold allows the Allomancer to see "what they might have been had they made different choices in the past." With this in mind, I have a counter-theory on what burning gold does: I believe that gold allows you to see all of the individual facets of your identity at once and to experience all of those facets of your identity at once. Most importantly, it shows you the facets of your identity that were created by making a cognitive decision to add that facet of your identity to your overall self. I believe the reason why Vin and Miles only saw two versions of themselves was because they had only made one cognitively driven choice that substantially affected their identity as a human being: Vin chose to embrace the identity of the noblewoman and Miles chose to embrace the identity of the terrorist. In my opinion, if someone like Wayne were granted gold Allomancy and burned gold or if an Oracle Misting burned electrum and then looked at Wayne, they would see dozens of shadows - dozens of identities that Wayne has embraced and created and added to his overall identity. The big question, though, that makes this whole theory a bit threadbare is Why? What advantage does an Allomancer get from being able to see all of the facets of their identity at once? The only answer that I can come up with involves Nicrobursting - it may be that if an Augur is nicrobursted while burning gold, he can basically "make the choice over again" and change one part of his identity into something else...

Brandon has already said that Harmony knows how to grant Allomantic powers to the kandra. It suggests to me that he, at a minimum, knows everything there is to know about the Three Metallic Arts and their use on Scadrial. I wouldn't be surprised if he has figured out that Scadrial itself has a soul; I would be interested to see a character monologue where he talks about that revelation.

I really like this theory and I think it is very plausible. One additional point to add has to do with my own theory regarding Harmony's power - I personally believe that Sazed's informed choice to use the two Shards together, as if they were a single unified Shard, was what ultimately brought about the merging/combining of the two. It stands to reason, then, that if an entity with a cognitive aspect were to successfully take all of the Shards but choose not to wield them as a unified entity, the Shards would remain separate and their Intents would destroy the holder.

That lends a lot of weight to my theory - by successfully bringing the two Shards under his own cognitive control, they merged into a larger Shard and are now difficult to separate.

Argh. There goes my theory :-( It still makes me wonder if there is any way to fix an injured Seon and allow it to function again.