StarrFall

"Extend my Spirit" The hope is that the Sword's consciousness (and possibly even any investiture it might capture, a la Nightblood) would become interwoven with my own and that it would be inextricably bound to me (excepting via Hemalurgical removal or death, of course). If the sword were to parasitically consume Investiture like Nightblood, then the basic hope is that anyone who took up the sword would be transformed into my puppet while they are holding the blade. It would be extra awesome if any Investiture I can access (Breath only most likely, given spirit webs being keyed to types of Investiture and the fact that I would be from Nalthis if I were in the business of awakening metal objects) that might be consumed by this sword when held by others could be utilized by, or even better yet passed on to, me in some way. It would be the least the sword could do considering the cost of Breath to Awaken it (5th Heightening, here I come!). Any Investiture I can't use directly could still be held by the sword, potentially enhancing its' ability to do what it does over time. I'd have a sword that essentially collected enough Investiture for me to become pseudo-immortal and to power some serious awakening activities, and which would grow stronger in and of itself as we grew older. If the sword does NOT consume Investiture a la Nightblood and I can handle it directly, then I'd hope that it would anticipate my motions and lend some serious strength and speed when deployed at the very least.

+1

There has been quite a bit of "varying Investitures in the same room", but no real "Investiture v Investiture". You get to see a hint of a crossover when Hoid gives Kelsier a beat-down in Secret History . I suppose the presence of the Ire would count too. Nightblood being on Roshar is a definite crossover as well. These are NOT great demonstrations of 2 different Investitures going head to head, though. Also, In terms of potential future battles between the more 'persistent' characters in the Cosmere, let's not forget that Marsh will be in the game for quite a while too and is a Hemalurgically-built pseudo-TLR where abilities are concerned, and so he could be a force to be reckoned with. My money on the first release showing really solid interaction between magic systems is Stormlight 4. Guessing Vasher or Vivenna will use some Awakening at some point, or that 17th Shard members will start making more appearances and flexing their invested muscles.

That is an excellent point, I may do that.

Well stated. Also, Vasher falls into the same boat as Khriss and is potentially more knowledgeable.

True, for the most part. I did personally did get value out of having read Secret History prior to Oathbringer and there is the appearance of the 17th Shard in Oathbringer (or maybe WoR) to consider. Secret History nicely introduces the Cognitive Realm and Oathbringer deals heavily in that, and discussing the 17th Shard would essentially require that they have read almost everything released up until their reveal in SA, as the dependencies are all over the place there.

One of the folks this list is for did the same thing, and it was the motivator for this list/post . I made sure it was situated prior to Oathbringer for that reason, though no reason they can't read it before ever dipping into SA.

The part I omitted was an explanation that they could really move any of those that don't have dependencies around as they see fit, and further that my intention was to stack these so that I don't accidentally reveal something I shouldn't when they want to come and talk to me after finishing a title (ex: revealing the origin of the "sky people" in 6th of the Dusk to someone who hasn't read the origin story of the sky people from 6th of the Dusk). I have read everything and can't remember what happens when, so am always hesitant to talk about crossover stuff they just read about for fear of spoilering the unread crossover story. Agreed on White Sand; it is lackluster comparatively and the "crossover awareness value" is almost nil. Also, were I to keep SA together then it should probably be moved to the end of the list since Oathbringer has the most crossover to date, ya?

I have a few friends whom I've convinced to dive into the Cosmere with me, and I've put together a reading list for them to help guide them through the various books in dependency order while attempting to keep momentum in a given star system where it makes sense. I want to set my friends up for maximum enjoyment and appreciation of the Cosmere at large, not just the individual stories, and since Sanderson fans are so thorough I thought the community would quickly help me address things I may have forgotten since my last read Mistborn: The Final Empire Dependencies: None Mistborn: The Well of Ascension Dependencies: The Final Empire Mistborn: The Hero of Ages Dependencies: The Well of Ascension White Sand: Volume 1 (illustrated) Dependencies: None Mistborn: The Eleventh Metal (short) Dependencies: The Hero of Ages, White Sand: Volume 1 (not strictly necessary but introduces "author" of Arcanum Unbounded) Elantris Dependencies: None The Hope of Elantris (short) Dependencies: Elantris The Emperor's Soul Dependencies: None Stormlight: The Way of Kings Dependencies: None Stormlight: Words of Radiance Dependencies: The Way of Kings Warbreaker Dependencies: None Mistborn: The Alloy of Law Dependencies: The Hero of Ages Mistborn: Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania (short) Dependencies: The Allow of Law (included therein as a series of interludes that look like newspaper clippings) Mistborn: Shadows of Self Dependencies: The Allow of Law Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning Dependencies: Shadows of Self Mistborn: Secret History Dependencies: The Bands of Mourning, White Sand: Volume 1 Sixth of the Dusk (short) Dependencies: The Bands of Mourning (not strictly necessary but recommended; could really be read at any time) Stormlight: Edgedancer (short) Dependencies: Words of Radiance Stormlight: Oathbringer Dependencies: Edgedancer, Warbreaker, Mistborn: Secret History White Sand: Volume 2 (illustrated) Dependencies: White Sand: Volume 1 White Sand: Volume 3 (illustrated) Dependencies: White Sand: Volume 2 Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (short) Dependencies: None, read at any point Notes?

@Quantus I have read everything except White Sands II, but I read Oathbringer right after it was released and have been insanely busy since (became a parent) and had been reading other stuff in the interim so I’m rusty on the details. Working through a Cosmere reread currently since I finally convinced a good friend to join the fun, & he’s on Oathbringer as of yesterday, hence my visit here to brush up . I was thinking along the lines of “Szeth taking out a fused w Nightblood and NB potentially picking up an Odium-based surge by virtue of absorbing the trapped spren”, assuming that the spren must be absorbed if the Fused cant return after being taken out by NB. Lot of holes to poke in that though: spren are cognitive constructs and not pure investiture (I don't think), Nightblood’s guiding words of “destroy evil” don’t play well with anything let alone Odium’s intent, etc. Edit: something tells me I need to brush up on fabrials as I’m now second-guessing whether a fabrial gem can hold spren as a the Fused’s gemheart can... I’m positive I’m forgetting some very cool details here.

You stating it in this way makes me wonder if Nightblood could have some of the qualities of a Fabrial Fused in the Oathbringer era... Gonna need a lot of Stormlight to test that without getting absorbed, however. Edit: Fabrials don't trap spren, they trap stormlight. C'mon, StarrFall... I doubt any abilities would be passed on to Nightblood's bearer, so I suppose Nightblood would have to find out for itself if this was the case.

Thought about this this weekend and I think I was conflating raw shardic investiture with a vessel's abilities in influencing their worlds with their shard's power. When Vin takes up Preservation and sticks it to Ruin's Vessel, there were no theatrics that I can recall; Vin simply threw Preservation up against Ruin until both Vessels were ground down and died. I think that it's not quite as black and white as that as I assume there is some skill implied by the "Vin vs Elend" WoB quote @Calderis shared above, but that is my recollection from Vin v Ruin scene. If a Vessel v Vessel battle largely boils down to "who has the biggest stick" (and the will to wield it) while a vessel's worldly influence is restricted by the Intent of the Shards they hold, then that would explain why Odium fears Harmony while, at the same time, Harmony is unable to do much to influence the goings on of Scadrial directly. @Calderis, I think you may be right about Shards restricting the vessels worldly actions. The more Shards you hold, the more "difficult" (per Sazed) it would be for the Vessel to do anything worldly with that power (though I'm guessing the inverse is true for the Shardworld's inhabitants, who would likely have access to more types of investiture/abilities). I have a TON of questions about this, particularly about how Adonalsium was shattered by regular folks in the first place and what kind of person actually could pick up and hold/reunify all of the Shards in the future, but no point breaking those out until Dragonsteel coalesces and we have a LOT more info to work with

My thinking was that, for a single shard holder, the vessel would be siloed into that shard's intent categorically and so they would never be able to operation outside of that intent. However, because Sazed holds two shards whose intents are opposed, any action aligned with one intent will, almost by definition, be opposed the other intent and I was thinking that meant that any action that leans more heavily towards one intent over the other would be balanced by some unintended consequences (for the inexperienced Sazed) that align with the opposing intent. That's why I'm curious if Sazed's hands are truly tied or if he simply doesn't want to witness the unintended consequences stemming from his connection to Ruin.

@Calderis, do you know if Sazed chooses not to act within Preservation's intent more exclusively because he knows Ruin's intent will retroactively assert itself to balance out the action, or if he is actually prevented from a Preservation-heavy action from go because of his bond to Ruin as well? I always took Sazed's statement that "he felt like his hands were tied" by the opposing intents to be more about him being a good person and not wanting to see a pure Ruin reaction to his pure Preservation action, that extremes are an option to him but not one he favors and so he keeps a balance to his actions and instead works through others like Wax to assert his personality's will. I have to imagine Odium fears Sazed because there is SOME kind of synergy to be had by combining Ruin and Preservation within a single vessel, and I'd think that synergy would translate to at least some gain in ability for Sazed (unless Odium simply fears the raw Investiture Sazed holds, which seems unlikely given the original vessels all took on and broke Adonalsium without holding shards). Perhaps 2 shards whose intents don't stand in direct opposition would be a more powerful threat to Odium and provide more freedom of will for the vessel, but I can't imagine holding 2 shards would actually make Sazed more inert. Of course, now that I say that, I have to wonder how Adonalsium was broken apart by those who were not holding shards in the first place... Perhaps Adonalsium WAS forced to inaction due to competing intents... There has/had to be some inherent weakness in holding multiple shards...

I think Adonalsium could possibly still be made whole again without completely crippling the vessel holding it into inaction. Assuming the shards can be collected up again into a single vessel as BS has indicated, I think it would make sense that the variety of intents would actually offer a freedom to the vessel that Sazed could never achieve while holding two shards whose intents stand in direct opposition to each other. To put it in terms of Allomantic steel/iron: Sazed only has two points he can push/pull on to stay in the air and so he can only move up and down in the space directly between the two points (Y axis). He can bounce back and forth between the two points to a degree but each swing one direction would require a swing back in the opposite direction to balance out again. A vessel holding all of the shards/intents would have 16 different points to push/pull on, offering them the ability to move around in all dimensions (including X and Z axis).

Was just thinking about this yesterday and thought I'd come search it out; didn't have to go back far. In my mind, there are 2 probable things that would happen. First, and least likely in my mind, would be that F-Atium would simply not have any noticeable effect when you are holding 2k+ Breaths. Since age isn't really a dynamic trait any longer, filling/tapping F-Atium would have no effect. Second would be that F-Atium would just work exactly as it always does, where the amount of time you spend filling the Atium mind can be spent tapping it, and running out of F-Atium charge would return you to the age you were when you achieved 5th Heightening, ad infinitum. If you are able-bodied at the time you achieved 5th Heightening, there isn't really much benefit to doing this beyond using age as a disguise or some such. This second line of thought does make me wonder if you could hack your age on a more permanent basis by filling/tapping Atium while divesting yourself of your Breaths, and then reclaiming 2k+ Breaths while at your F-Atium adjusted age to lock that age in. Given that your spirit web never really loses track of how old you should be where Feruchemy is concerned (hence the need for more and more Atium when compounding), I doubt that would work but it wouldn't stop me from trying

I think Wax was making fun of Wayne for his poor penmanship or some such. Edit: Ninja'd

Its epic, just a TOTALLY different flavor of epic. I burned it up back in the day but its a little rough these days, lol

I was not aware this was happening until I stumbled across this post, and I could not be happier about it! Netflix has knocked it out of the park more often than not, so hopefully this is one of those that lands in the parking lot. I have to imagine that the creators have some pretty strong opinions on what not to do after MNS violated their creation... Much, much worse than the Eragon adaptation, and that is saying something cuz that movie was AWFUL. Almost on par with Krull (when viewed as an adult). Less cheese, more Bending! Thanks @Moonrise for the heads up on this!

Agreed, but whose perception? The fuel object’s or the Awakener’s?

Think I’ll take an audiobook tour myself!

There are some that are vital to organic processes. Iron is absolutely essential for blood oxygenation.

On that train of thought, could they use the ability to purge themselves of an ingested poison? Dump the poisoned consumables into a small metalmind and then just pitch it or sell it to an Allomancer, whom couldn't tap the poisoned reserves, for burning?