Proletariat

I do wonder if it would be possible for a kandra to use tin medallions to fill up on the more unusual animal senses, like the ability of eels and platypuses to sense electric fields or the sonar skills of the whales. I'm sure there'd be a bizarre market in tin medallions with super senses from animals.

And these Skybreakers are not Hoid, and Design is not their highspren. If we accept the hint that they are Skybreakers, then the simplest presumption is that they've substituted their dead, missing, left behind, yet to be bonded or whatever spren with hemalurgic spikes to give them allomantic abilities. I'm aware that you have a very strong opinion that Rosharan innovation means that getting spren off world on a population wide scale is imminent, but there is no suggestion in-text or by Brandon that this has seriously happened as of the Lost Metal. Insisting otherwise will make this a very circular discussion.

No one but Hoid has gotten off Roshar with their abilities intact as spren are still locked. WoB is pretty clear you generally can't get spren off world yet.

I'm a kandra (5) with strength blessings, and mistborn (192) & feruchemy (192) abilities plus a primer cube charged with a pulse. I have a painrial fabrial (10) embedded under my skin to target opponents with as well as a soulcaster (20), and lift's boon (12) to power my abilities directly and see into the cognitive realm. I spend the rest of my points on shardplate (24), the ninth heightening (400) and a midnight aether (24) and I guess spend the rest on a spare 7 heightenings (100). I set up dual time bubbles of a pulse and then within a speed bubble while tapping speed and burning pewter. I vomit out a midnight aether in the shape of a zombie velociraptor, soulcast to create a nuclear bomb with traces of aluminium in it and awaken to button to go off one second after the bubble goes, attach it to the midnight zombie raptor and tell it to run toward the enemy, and then I run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible using combinations of a-pewter, strength blessing, stored speed, and whatever buff I get from shardplate and heightenings while using speed bubbles intermittently so that I can get max distance from epicentre of blast, have max endurance and healing to deal with whatever I get hit with, and avoid getting attacked until enemies are hit by the nuke.

MeLaan suggests they need help, and there's a lot of them. There's also a group of spren-less Skybreakers on Scadrial who now seem to be allomancers (by way of hemalurgy?). Travel via shardpools has also become increasingly difficult of late. So something happens, but it's unclear what it is that has happened.

I mean, there's a limited number of ways that humans can extend their lives beyond a century or so in the cosmere and still be human. The three that we've seen on screen are getting a shitload of Breath, becoming an atium compounder, become an Elantrian, or otherwise become a cognitive shadow or shard. It's honestly just as hard to artificially become an atium compounder or Elantrian as it is to become some kind of spirit, so I suspect that a bunch of worldhoppers have been through customs on Nalthis to get themselves a life extension.

If Harmony falls into Discord it's vaguely possible that it becomes a self-solving cycle. Ettmetal will become easier to split if it becomes more imbalanced, and thereby easier to produce more 'nukes' and atium. As there's more atium and more death, then more ruin is distributed in the physical world and less preservation which eventually leads back to Harmony. It's pretty ugly as a way forward, though.

I mean, if it's spiritual, then it seems like it'd have to be a direct link to the Shards since those are the only beings that inhabit that space, right? So the relationship that Kandra, Heralds, Returned etc. have with their Shard feels like it would kind of fit the description.

It could be a way to extract water from them - a bit like the slatrification process - by destabilising the Luhel bond?

I'd suggest neck bracers, and light chain mail would be useful for countering shardblade users since so long as you're not decapitated you have a chance to heal from pretty much any wound with gold. Duralumin is another one I'd also emphasise further in that if you accrue enough in your metalmind then you can not only communicate with others, but it's suggested you get the potential to persuade or even compel others if you have enough stored.

I think that would altogether depend on how much investiture she chucked into the Soulstamp. My impression is that the powers of the Elantrians and the Forgers are both functionally limited only by the volume of investiture they can access, and how good they are at crafting stories or doing equations. As far as OP and what happened with Hoid and the Sorceress ... the fact that the Ire predate the downfall of Elantris, and potentially even Odium's splintering of Devotion and Dominion means that the rules might be different for them and how Elantrians are chosen now and into the future as the Dor slowly gains more sentience. We've seen how a shift in how the same shards are held in Scadrial changed the nature of hemalurgy for e.g so it's worth being cautious in applying what happened in this book to the Elantrians we've seen on Sel.

Did anyone else catch this line in TOTES? It essentially confirms Hoid not only was the founder of the Worldsingers on Roshar, but is part of the Terris order of Worldbringers. We know that Hoid doesn't rely on copperminds due to his trick with breath, but is this a hint that he may have his own access to feruchemy? And given the present tense reference to Worldbringers perhaps they were a world hopping order and there were a not insignificant number of full feruchemists around the cosmere whose ancestors weren't impacted by the transformation of the rest of their peers into mistwraiths? Is this where the scholars of Silverlight come from? It also puts an extra layer of possibility on the feruchemist in stormlight archive who was killed by the ghostbloods, and was able to use atium to disguise himself as an old dude during the assassination of Gavilar. The dude had an Aviar and predated Sazed's agents on the planet, clearly wasn't aligned with Kelsier, and is implied to have used a form of feruchemy otherwise gone for 300 years. What faction is he aligned with? Is that faction the Worldbringers?

I mean, we know that silver does nothing to surges, or the Dor, and can also be moved around with steelpushes with no resistance so it's something a bit more complex than its relationship with investiture which sets it apart from the sixteen standard metals. Imo it definitely has to be something specific to the cognitive relationship given what it can do with anomalies, shades, and potentially spren and it doesn't physically damage spores but it does cut their link to the aether and render them inert.

I think it just reinforces the point that the sixteen metals are a key for controlling the expression of investiture, whether it's burnt in allomancy, used to control (non-sentient) pieces of investiture like spren and aethers, or is invested via hemalurgy, feruchemy or breath. I suspect you could also use the metals to control the white sand or 'bone aether' on Taldain in a way that's similar to these mindless aethers.

The impression that I've gotten is that Autonomy incorporates existing systems of Investiture into her bag of tricks, like turning Patji into an avatar or investing on Scadrial to add a new element to hemalurgy. I'm guessing that her army is a bunch of awakened constructs like Riina has but made more aware.