HSuperLee

Now I'm just imagining Ruin whispering in Rashek's ears, attempting to drive him even more insane, and then he suddenly has a "squirrel" moment of, "Wait is that a new Atium bead! Where did that come from!?" Even funnier, he probably would read and reread House Venture's accounts over and over again trying to figure out how the Atium got transported, and where the missing supply was. Really, it's just funny imagining Ruin getting frustrated while doing paper work.

Now I'm wondering if Kelseir's cognitive shadow, if provided enough investiture, could learn to form a bond with someone and form a shardblade.

I guess it depends on how a self-aware animal would interpret the intents. For example, if Preservation was still around, the chull might just continue living it's normal life, albiet in an immortal super form, as it might see preservation as synonymous with survival.

Fair point, I forgot about the honorblades. I would still say an important part of a shardblade is being able to strike across realms. Maybe you could accomplish it with spiritual feruchemy + harmonium, but I don't know if that would be durable enough to make a sword.

I would guess the most likely way to make a Scadrian shardblade would have to involve some additional magic system. There just doesn't seem to be any way to bestow sentience with the metallic arts, and sentients seems to be an important component to shardblades. Yes, there's the argument that investiture has an inherent bias for obtaining sentience when there's a lot of it, but we also don't have a good way to measure how much investiture is a lot of investiture. For all we know, even the Bands of Mourning don't have anywhere near the amount of investiture that's in a shardblade.

Huh. Well alright then. I guess as weird as it is, if that's what Sanderson says, that's how it is. I'm going to do the old reliable thing and blame it on Connection.

I've seen this theory in other places across the Shard, but it seems a little weird to me. If a Shard's awareness is limited to the solar systems they've invested themselves in (I'm also not sure of the potentially magical connotations of that word right now,) how would Rashek have become aware that there was other life in the Cosmere when he interfaced with a portion of Preservation? I guess maybe he could have been gaining information from Leras's cognitive shadow, but if that's the case, I'd have expected he wouldn't have messed the world up as much as he did.

I'm personally not prepared to converse on that level of math, but it seems to me you would still hit some trouble when it comes to Leras trapping part of Ruins power so that they were equal. Certainly unless you're subtracting infinite power from an infinite source you can't actually remove enough to make a difference. Is that correct?

If I had to guess, the Terris probably had Feruchemy due to having a large amount of Connection to both Preservation and Ruin, maybe as a result of worshiping/remembering them directly. If that is the case, then certainly the level of Connection in a population could have changes over the millennia that Rashek ruled for, and then the 300 years after Harmony. Actually, I guess after Harmony, Feruchemical ability would just be linked to how much Connection you have to Harmony. But that's all just random guesses.

And yet, they clearly have Ferrings now. It's possible that even if he made sure all the Terris people were in the north, they still had latent Feruchemy in the south.

I find it interesting that in less than 3 years since Bands of Mourning came out, fans have create numerous theories on how the Bands could be recreated. It makes me think that it's inevitable that Scandrians will eventually be able to mass produce them. Essentially, I imagine that eventually Scandrians will be seen as the Kryptonians of the Cosmere, with every person having immense power.

And that's better than super powers without stabbing?

I forgot about that part. I'd say that based on what we've seen of the Southern Scadrians, it seems like they can produce a very large amount of any of the medallions, but my better judgement says that they were a party of explorers and were likely in possession of much more technology and tools than the average person. So I guess I'm not willing to make a guess on how easily the medallions can be mass produced.

If you really wanted to mass produce the metallic arts, all you'd need is one volunteer willing to be spiked and someone with the progression surge. Once you've made the volunteer a full born, they can start creating unkeyed full-born medallions, which could then possibly be used by more people to make more medallions, then more, and more.

Huh. I have to be honest, I am also very confused now. It seems like breath would have to be constantly using up investiture in order to be constantly adding age to keep someone young. We know that over time the Lord Ruler's Atium consumption had to increase as he had more and more age "debt" built up in his spirit, so you'd think the same would be true with breath. I don't know, I guess Sanderson has probably considered all this and it all will make sense eventually. But until then, I'll be here trying to figure out Cosmere immortality. Edit: I'm actually really glad about the name I gave this thread now. It turns out it's really fitting.

Disclaimer, I'm very new to the forum, and don't know how to do any of the formatting like spoilers or quotes, if I do anything wrong, I'll try to fix it as soon as I am able. On to the theory! So thanks to joining the forum recently, I finally got an answer to a long time question about breath and feruchemy: That got me thinking, the fact the question was RAFOed would indicate that the answer isn't what we'd first think. Basically, if a fifth heightened (or whatever the term would be) tried to fill a atium mind, they wouldn't have infinite age to fill it with. Yet, they're functionally immortal. So, what if, rather than breath extending a life by somehow giving the holder more "age" it instead either gives their body the ability to repair the cellular damage that comes from aging (ex. restoring telomere length) or allows the body to copy cells more perfectly, finally reaching a point at fifth heightening where the cells simply don't make mistakes during replication (I say simply). Then I realized how weird this is when you compare it to other forms of investiture, where healing is based on a person's spirit. I believe there's a WoB that states that the Lord Ruler's spirit was aware of how old he was supposed to be, which is why he reverted to it when his atiumminds were removed. Yet, breath seems to ignore the condition of the spirit, and instead restores the body to its "ideal condition." If this theory is correct, it has some weird implications. In the case of a fifth heightened trying to fill atium, they would be forcibly aging themselves faster than the breath could restore their cells, and thus would still age. But conversely, if one managed to either compound atium or get their hands on unkeyed atium, they could reduce their age, and then the breathe would maintain their cells in that condition. In this way, breath could almost be a "cure" for the dependence a compounder has after they've compounded for a while. I don't know how else this theory could impact investiture, or if someone else already thought of it, but I'd like to know what y'all think.

I feel like I've specifically looked for a WoB based on that question and never found it. Ah well. Thanks.

I know that the fifth heightening is described as giving agelessness and immunity to disease, but the only real examples we have are the Returned, who consume a breath a week. Does someone who reaches fifth heightening without a Divine breath have that requirement as well? And if not, could someone of the fifth heightening endlessly fill an unkeyed atiummind?

The way I'm interpreting the WoB about Shards and infinite power is not that Shards have access to an infinite energy source, but more that any investiture they expend eventually returns to them and can be reused. In the case of Ruin and Preservation, if we think about Ruin's power like a boomerang, he threw it, and Preservation caught it in a cage. Now, it's a weird supernatural boomerang, so it's still moving around inside the cage, either being Atium, or pure energy in the Pits, but it can't return to Ruin. So, the goal was to find the Atium, and unlock the cage so he had access to the investiture again. Or, that's how I interpreted it, at least.

Outside of the Cosmere, I've also read Reckoners. My least favorite character who we're not supposed to like is probably Ioden. My least favorite character who we're supposed to like is Lift, though my opinion of her is improving after Arcanum. My favorite allomatic metal is electrum, though if I was a misting I'd either want to be a coinshot or a pewterarm.

So, the reason I haven't read Oathbringer is because I'm waiting for the paperback. As for the theories I like, I really like the interplay between the magic systems and thinking about how to hack one with another. Earlier I came up with an idea for someone not from Sel becoming an Elantrin, and possibly even accessing the Door from other planets. As for my favorite books and characters, I don't have one of either, I enjoy each book too much to really compare them, and there are few characters I haven't liked. Boring, yes. A cop out, maybe. But still the truth.

Hello peoples. My name is Leland, most people call me Lee, and I am new here. Since I'm supposed to introduce myself, I guess I'll start with how I learned about the Cosmere. So, it all started summer of 2017. I was working as a research assistant for a college. During the long amounts of time it would take to do laundry due to low quality machines, I would watch YouTube videos. One such video was by Shadiversity about the Sanderson Laws of Magic. That sent me on a TV Tropes binge of reading about the Laws of Magic to reading about the magic in Mistborn and so on. I finally started the actual series that November, and got the next two book that Christmas. I read through them all by New Years. From there, I went on to the AoL era books, then to Elantris, Warbreaker, first two Stormlight Archives, and finished up in early March with Arcanum Unbound. Along the way through that journey I've looked at these forums many times and thought about all the cool information and theories on them. At this point, I've got some ideas to share, and now I'm here. So, hi everyone.