Honorless

It wouldn't be detectable in first person either, especially if we break from the idea of a fundamental, indivisible "I" / "soul" / "self" instead of a conglomeration of various biological process and memories and experiences. How would Kelsier the Cognitive Shadow know if Kelsier the human being's memories and experiences were just copied over to him? As far as he can tell, all his inherited memories are his. Furthermore, if there is no such thing as soul in the religious sense, who's to say that the memories and experiences themselves don't make Kelsier... Kelsier? In that case, he's still just Kelsier, in a different plane of reality. If we look at what we know, we can point and say, the Spiritweb continues to exist through the process of death and both the Kelsiers (or just Kelsier) have the same Spiritweb. But the Spiritweb is also kinda like the Physical body, it has many parts and can be fiddled with and changed, so can it be called the "self"? Because then suddenly self could grow to encompass a lot more than just who a person is, to however their Spiritweb could be altered to change them. A Spiritweb is just Investiture with recorded data. And really the same goes for the mind, if you lost all of your memories and lived a new life, accumulated different experiences and ways of thinking than your previous self, are you both the same person? How about Shallan, Veil and Radiant? We should also take a look at the person from whom we get the solid breakdown of the idea of Cognitive Shadows being an imprint. Vasher is a Returned. And the Returned do not return with their memories. Lightsong and Stennimar were very different people. Vasher might feel like who he is and the person who died were different individuals. Plus there's probably also a bit of self loathing there for taking Breaths to live, the Manywar, Nightblood, that might drive him to think of himself as lesser or just a copy of dead person. Also, look at the number of names and identities he has taken on throughout his life: Kalad, Talaxin, Strifelover, Peacegiver, Vasher, Zahel. I think he would view the idea of the "self" very differently from Kelsier. Kelsier, I think, would just be like "I think, therefore I am, and I think I'm still the same me" and that's fine too. I would say it's very much a philosophical and subjective question to ask whether or not a Cognitive Shadow is the same person or not. Maybe the body dies, the mind goes to the beyond or stays behind if it's heavily Invested and the Spiritweb lingers so long as it still has Connections. Or maybe the Physical body dies, the mind fizzles out or is copied into Investiture and the Spiritweb lingers on with this copy. Brandon is not going to answer this definitively.

There's also the moment where Vasher edits a little girl's memory, there's a bunch of topics that try to analyse that: Part of people's minds are in the Cognitive, it seems, that plus their Spiritwebs are made of Investiture. Their "spark of life" is Investiture. Breath is a plug in. A very easily editable plug-in. I think Breath is just a particularly adaptable and editable piece of Investiture, you just need a lot of it to do anything and people generally only have one so they need to collect more. I mean, if it can power stuff and it can store data, you can input data into it and program it, and it can interact with the literal base programming of reality, it can probably do anything?

Yes! Though with Paalm, additional factors could've been at play, like her being a Kandra in general might've made her more susceptible. Plus, she was using Trell's godmetal. It's possible that the Set was using Trellium as well.

I would say that the total Hemalurgic charge probably counts for more than the raw number of spikes You can click that to create a quote box

Given the Intent of Shard whose Investiture Breath is, I think it's just particularly adaptable and thus well-suited to being given away to another. Interesting idea with the Command possibly changing the Intent of the Investiture. Brandon has confirmed Nightblood contains Ruin's Investiture. Maybe Endowment's Investiture can even be converted to other Shards' Investiture more easily, as its Intent is to give.

In the Arcanum (the WoB site), the top right corner of every WoB has two buttons, one to copy the link of that WoB, another to copy the text of the WoB, click on either one of them and you can then just paste the link or the WoB anywhere. I just put it in a quote box (it's the quotation mark symbol right over posts. Near it is the eye symbol for a spoiler box)

It probably wouldn't help against hearing them or even getting puppeteered by them, but it might help keep a piece of your mind your own, like with Marsh and Eshonai

I wonder if stabbing them with aluminium might work. From RoW, I don't think many of them can heal their Spiritweb very well, this will likely untether them from their body and when they come back, they'll come back less sane

The Fused inhabiting a Parshendi body seems to change the body so it's possible, I guess. That's a really good question.

Hmm... maybe they wouldn't be Awakened with a single Breath like other Lifeless, as they'd be a bit more Invested due to Hemalurgy. The Mistwraiths' lack of intelligence comes from some kind of Cognitive blockage, it's possible that the same goes for Koloss, so they might not be as good at understanding complex commands as human Lifeless, but that shouldn't be too big a problem as long as their Awakening Command is good enough, the Five Scholars' Ichor-alcohol + single Breath Command should be good though.

Axies?

Oh wow, I think that should work, yeah. You would basically be creating a BioChromatic Breath based Cognitive Shadow, without the you dying part. It would be a simulacra or clone. Wait, would both of you have the exact same Spiritweb then? What would happen then, would the Spiritwebs merge because the Spiritual Realm wouldn't be able to differentiate between them and think they're the same thing and that would then make the two bodies share the same Spiritweb or maybe destroy one of the bodies? Stormlight RoW spoilers Also, would there still be two different minds in case the two identical Spiritwebs merge?

judging by the WoB, probably not These WoBs also seem to support the idea:

I think you're talking about this WoB: Hmm... I think that might work depending on the amount of patchwork Spiritweb maybe? Assuming F-aluminium doesn't just attack the grafted parts of your Spiritweb? Would that leave you with Hemalurgically pure blank spikes or some such? Or... just kill you by making you a pincushion Or might not work? Would aluminium really heal your Spiritweb? That's more of a F-Gold thing, which might also not work as the Hemalurgy might just overwrite your Spiritweb to include the Spiritweb patches spliced onto yours via Hemalurgy as a whole set. Edit: oh wait Allomantic aluminum, not Feruchemical aluminium. The above paragraphs still apply, I think. Would burning aluminium also burn out your Hemalurgic spikes? I think not, not unless you specifically targeted them in addition to your Allomantic reserves. Would the Aluminium consider the spikes' Investiture foreign? Maybe. Regardless, the holes in your Spiritweb will still remain, I don't know about the idea of aluminium making the grafted bits of Spiritweb truly integrating with yours. Burning aluminium might help, becoming a Savant might help even more by not letting foreign Investiture influencing you but it won't solve the problem permanently

Basically endless mining from a gold Ferring? That's been theorized before but I don't think we have any confirmations from Brandon. We do have confirmation that gold Ferrings can heal their Spiritweb though. Iirc there's contradictory WoBs about the possible side-effects of burning a Hemalurgic spike, but sDNA splicing makes sense, imo. So, there's probably a point where Hemalurgically spiking is no longer a good idea. Hemalurgic decay would probably ensure that the amount gained is always less than the amount stolen As for a compounding trick, like using Allomancy to power Feruchemy but swapping Feruchemical metalminds for Hemalurgic spikes. Wait, oops, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy, not Allomancy and Hemalurgy: Edit: Ah, wait, I found a WoB on F-Gold farming:

While it could be a completely cognitive process, I think there's actually light in the Cognitive Realm, probably from the Spiritual Realm

No, colours leeched from Awakening in general does not return after time. The process is physical: the pigment, dye, probably also crystalline microstructures that reflect light a certain way, are all actually altered by the process

Nope, Brandon horror generally doesn't do it for me. When he writes horror situations or environments or beings, he usually follows it up with demystifying those things and the demystification is usually a central theme of those works too. Unknown entities are characters, dangerous environments & situations can be studied, understood and navigated. Body horror... there's stuff in Brandon's work that could be body horror but they aren't really written that way. The best imo are some of the chasm sequences in the Way of Kings. Sixth of the Dusk's shadow in the sea / Deepwalker. Shadows for Silence... not really, the setting was horror but the story really wasn't, imo. His Non-Cosmere stuff is pretty good and closer to that horror feel. Dreamer is a pretty good one, Cytoverse's Delvers have their moments, Children of the Nameless's Bog.

Recall back to Edgedancer, when Arclo talks about a culture that believes that a person only lives for a day, then they sleep and die, and a new person awakens with their collective memory. Continuity of consciousness cannot really be discerned if there's a break in the middle. The one we follow in Secret History could very well be a second Kelsier born from the first one's death, an impression of the original. We just don't know.

Technically Hrathen

I've liked the idea of Moash / Vyre Ascending to Odium but as a more righteous form of anger for a while now

You mean epigraph? Epitaph is stuff that's written on graves I thought this one was describing the War of Reckoning on the Shattered Plains in general, with "heart" referring to gemhearts

Kelsier?

Why phrase it like that? While I suppose I could see burning metals to get powers as having a bit of Ruin, I'm pretty sure Allomancy was confirmed as pure Preservation?

Yarda