Nitpicking

Iluvatar is omnipotent. Note that even Gandalf didn't wan to take possession of the Ring, though.

Hemalurgy could probably spike the Cognitive Shadow that is a Fused out of a body directly. Hemalurgy is very flexible. That said: we know very little about how Identity works. Can you spike out Identity completely and leave a fully sapient person a "generic mind" with no attributes?

Hey. That whole chapter about removing pest beetles from an orchard ... it's almost as if it's about ... Cultivation or something.

I like refer back to the Intent of the Shard who gives each Nalthian their Breath (extra Investiture). She's the goddess of gifting, not taking. I have to think a taking magic like Raysium or hemalurgy would be less effective with Breath for that reason--they're directly opposed to the Intent that created the Breath.

As I mentioned in a thread of the same name, the powers tell Taravangian that the spren are protected "By Adonalsium's power." I interpret this as meaning The Wind (and maybe The Stone), who are Adonalsium spren.

It is implied that no one including Sauron himself could truly resist the power of the Ring. Yeah, a crackpot LOTR theory. Why do you think a one-time Maia as powerful as Sauron was so physically helpless by the time of the War of the Ring? Because the Ring had drained away almost all of his abilities, except those dedicated to getting back the Ring--not for any purpose, because the Ring had enthralled Sauron as much as any of its other victims.

I read Dragonsteel Prime (actually, listened to the audiobook) and I'm glad I did. My reaction was: Read "really published" Cosmere works first, probably. Be ready for some extra-clunky prose. This was never beta read and never edited, and never even actually got a second draft as far as I know. It's rough in spots. Not terrible, but not polished at all. Brandon wasn't very good at humor in those days. He's better now. Like I said in the topic I started here, it's more interesting than entertaining. I liked it better than either Aether of Night or Way of Kings Prime, but that can easily be just me. I put it below Prose White Sand. Then again, I put Rhythm of War and White Sand Graphic below White Sand Prose.

I mean, this is the Cosmere. If you can get to Sel, why not just use that Investiture more directly to be strong, say by getting someone to hypnotize you into thinking you're incredibly muscular and fit, and then just holding lots of Investiture (which makes your body gradually change to match your self-image)? I notice that Brandon has magic systems for lots of things--flying, telekinesis, healing, dimension gates, communications, transmutation--but not for "being strong" except for the Metallic Arts, to the best of my recollection. All three Metallic Arts do let you become stronger. Enough breaths can make you immortal and let you control everything around you with a thought, give you enhanced senses ... but not strength. Stormlight is said not to "greatly" increase strength.

It would be very hard for a Returned to be Aetherbound. They're strongly associated with Endowment's Investiture, and we are repeatedly told that Investiture from different sources is hard to mix. Not impossible, but hard. Also, maybe it's my philosophical background, but Endowment (gifting) is the exact opposite of an aether's Luhel bond (trading value for value).

It turns out that Adonalsium was a sapient dog.

Ironeyes? One of the Faceless Immortals?

Good news! You get one after the universe reaches heat death, according to at least some current models.

I think Odium|Rayse are correct, for that matter. Absorbing Ruin would make them into something else, as we saw with both Harmony and Retribution. I think it would be Vengeance, for what that's worth (basically, nothing). Vengeance can be thought of as "destroying that which you hate."

Virtuosity and Ruin or Virtuosity and Odium would be terrifying.

We don't know. Feruchemical chromium gives Fortune, so enhancing that could make someone super lucky, but why would that mean "ringer'?

That was my point, that Cultivation/Preservation would be a lot like Ruin/Preservation.

So, you're saying that the way to free Starling would be to swing Nightblood at the manacles? [evil smile] Might be a question for Brandon, actually. Could Nightblood cut dragonsteel? Could a regular Shardblade? Could a Mistborn burn a piece of dragonsteel, and what would happen? Yeah, yeah, RAFO.

Sigzil is a walking (flying) paradox. He broke his Windrunner oaths to protect someone who could not protect herself, Vienta, thus affirming them. Which rather goes to Adolin's point, that he still feels obligated to do everything he promised as a Windrunner, even if he broke words of the Ideal.

Well, in another topic here I argued that it was a Splinter of Adonalsium, namely the Wind, who was the "piece of a god" Ishar needed to reforge the Oathpact. I don't know why she couldn't also be the source of the Oathless. I agree, a Splinter of Honor makes more sense, though.

Pre-Sazed. Fuzz's plan.

Preservation did things about that impressive, IMO.

Tattoos are not permanent. They change over time, and can be removed (at its most drastic, by cutting away the skin, or tattooing over it.) Just to be confusing: a Forger could soulstamp the person to change their past, so they were never tattooed. Or that they were. If you hack the magic system by Forging a person to already have a tattoo of the same stamp, would that make it semi-permanent? ("Hack the Magic System" TM and copyright Brandon Sanderson.)

Hey. Who observed Deti's Death Rattle? It wasn't the Silent Gatherers, apparently. Was it on-page and I just instantly forgot it?

The manacles are semi-sapient. Presumably any attempt to remove them would be actively resisted. Not that they can't be overpowered (they were) but it isn't easy. I mean, presumably with enough Dor a Forger could just make the manacles' history change so they were always designed to deactivate after X number of days, so they just open and fall off. "Enough Dor" would be probably in the tens of thousands of Breath Equivalent Units, of course.

Clearly it's the starmarks. (That was a joke, based on our having no idea what the starmarks are or what they do.)