Trusk'our

Bonding a Deadeye is what happens when a Shardbearer Bonds to their blade. So, technically yes, but no Surgebinding is gained. As for a Spren Bonding multiple people, I'm fairly certain that the closest thing to this is Squires, as actually Bonding a Spren has to do with Identity and not just Connection, so two people plugging in a Connection to that Spren artificially probably wouldn't result in two Knights. Mistborn spoilers.

Define "best": Best for combat? Best as in which ones I'd want? Best full potential? Bondsmith powers have the best potential by far, as they can directly manipulate Connection and by extention the Spiritweb. Windrunners and Skybreakers can fly, which makes them some of the best choices for personal wants (who wouldn't want that?). Combat wise, it depends mostly on how you use your powers, but Dustbringers, Skybreakers, and Elsecallers probably have higher potential for destruction overall.

If, hypothetically, a Returned went on a killing spree and stole the Divine Breaths of all the other Returned in the Court of Gods, what benefits would there be over just accumulating regular Breath? Would their visions be clearer? Would physical augmentation be stronger? Could they change their appearance more?

I think most of it, yes, such as the Heightenings. It's debatable whether or not the visions would work, but changing your appearance and getting physical strength and speed would likely come with the Breath as well, since the Royal Locks are due to fragments of Divine Breath being present in the Hallandren royal line and they allow for physical change in appearance and Heightenings;

I don't think it's evil inherently, though due to its nature evil people will be more likely to use it and abuse it for personal gain, usually to the direct detriment of others' wellbeing. Wax, Wayne, Marsh, and (most of) the Kandra use Hemalurgy in good ways, Spook and Kelsier may have, but the Steel Inquisition and the Set have definitely not. My end opinion is that Hemalurgy can be used for good, especially once safer methods are developed (such as regeneration lost Spiritweb fragments for donors or possibly finding ways to counteract or directly reduce the damage done to the recipient of the spikes), but realistically it's more often than not going to be used for evil. I do think that if a person wanted to donate their power for a cause using Hemalurgy that it would be noble (depending on the cause, of course) and it would not be a bad idea overall.

Marsh is definetly one who has a greater chance of doing this since he has the ability to be a Worldhopper, but he's also a Hemalurgist with at least 22 spikes, and Radiant Spren aren't going to like that at all; MeLaan is also a Hemalurgist, though Kandra can form Spren Bonds and she is a Worldhopper now, so I'd say it's probably more likely that she'd become one than Marsh due to her proximity to Roshar on some of her Worldhopping endeavors and her lower number of Hemalurgic spikes.

A Divine Breath is different from a regular Bio-Chromatic Breath because it is an actual part of the Spiritweb. As such, does this mean that a Hemalurgist could non-lethally spike a portion of the Breath away with practice, then give the Returned a large dose of healing via F-gold (granted through a Hemalurgic spike and Compounding to gain the health) or Regrowth to regenerate the lost portion of the Breath? Perhaps this would be a slightly convoluted, somewhat inefficient way to produce a lot of mini-Divine Breaths. Actually, since the donor is the same for all the Investiture, you could probably stack charges, say spike 25% of the Breath at once, regenerate it, then spike out another 25% for 50% of a Divine Breath (not including Hemalurgic decay, of course). There definitely may be some complications for the use of other types of Investiture grafting onto the Returned's Spiritweb instead of Endowment's, but it's still Innate Investiture you're taking in the end.

You mean if you already Burned one? It would add to your total power, making you a stronger Mistborn;

Well, we do know that it's not outside the realm of possibility that a Seeker who was also an Awakener could Command their creations to function to utilize Bronzesense, or at least be able to interpret instructions based on special senses from the Awakener, so maybe a Kandra with the Blessing of Potency could make clothes fight for them be stronger than the norm, though even if possible I'm certain it would require an extra injection of Investiture- more Breaths during the Awakening process- to make it work. So I'd give a soft yes as to the possibility of this. Yup! That way you could have a more mobile force of super strength heavily armored infantrymen. True. Vasher did state that in most cases you spend more Breath than necessary to Awaken something as its usually not human shaped, but Kalad's Phantoms are in direct contrast to this, as they needed an extra injection of Breath to truly function. What if it was really, really humanlike though? Assuming that the strength boost didn't require a significantly large amount of Investiture (which, as we established just before it's likely that it actually does, unfortunately), then if you were to make a suit that mimicked human anatomy, then it should be easier to Awaken, thus making it cheaper Breath wise. Yeah, it would have to be in order to be Awakened properly. The "muscles" and such of the suit would all be woven together into the same object so as to function as a whole. Hmm, if it proved too expensive to perform the 25 Breath cost, perhaps it would be better to take your previous suggestion and add thicker, stronger ropes, forgoing some of the "humanity" of the suit to make something bigger, bulkier, and stronger. Something more like a Koloss-sized mech suit made primarily of coiled rope for maximum protection and power? You'd have to drop your expectation for numbers on such a tactic, but you could have one or two really powerful Awakened juggernauts for your army.

Welcome to the Shard friend! So, as to your question, that's not quite how it works. Feruchemical Nicrosil seems to function by Storing the ability to use Investiture in certain ways. For example, if a Pewterarm/Soulbearer Twinborn were to Store their power to Burn pewter for its Allomantic affect, it's likely that they'd be able to Tap it later to enhance that Allomantic power just as you could use Feruchemy to enhance any other attribute. Feruchemical Nicrosil is also necessary in the creation of Unsealed Metalminds such as the Southern Scadriens have access to.

Woops. Hmm, maybe you could still make an Awakened suit for around 25 Breaths, as Vasher Awakened his cloak with only that amount, and it was only vaguely shaped like a person. Actually, I was thinking more along the line of the suit augmenting speed, strength, and stamina, like when Vasher Awakened his pants and shirt. I was mostly trying to use the full set of clothing as an example for the number of Breaths used in the creation of the suit.

I made a post about a day ago in the Warbreaker forum that talked about ways to collect Breath, and the topic of war and Breath came up. Anyway, I was thinking; didn't Vasher Awaken two sets of clothing to help him fight when he only had the first Heightening in Warbreaker? Maybe if you were to make a leather bodysuit that mimicked human musculature and possibly the human skeletal structure you could Awaken it for even cheaper than 25 Breaths. If you add heavy armor and sledgehammers on top of that, you basically have bootleg Shardlate that's relatively cheap to make, and may possibly be recoverable even if the weilder dies, provided that the general was the one to Awaken it for the (you may be able to give a Command to let other Lieutenants do it as well, assuming you die in the conflict).

Hmm. Makes sense to me

Definitely makes sense to me. In fact, if you were a charismatic enough general, you could convince your army to all give up their Breaths to a few of the higher-ranking individuals, who could then train with Awakening and use them to help win fights- Vasher has memories of Awakened ropes hurling boulders, after all, which just shows a bit of the combat potential for Awakeners. Since only higher-ranking members are supposed to hold the Breath, this would only add incentive to perform well and get promoted. If you survive the war, you're promised your Breath back, plus maybe one or two more from fallen comrades or "looted" Breaths, assuming the army you're in has little to no moral objection to such things. Yeah, I remember taking a double turn on that part as well, but I think it was actually just some of the priests who had the first Heightening working with or as the guards. But I could be wrong; it's been a while since I read the book and I don't have it on me right now to double check. But even without this specific example, I really like the idea. Perhaps having a small group of trusted individuals learn to Awaken and perform more intense tasks with it would be worth the high investment of collecting all the necessary Breath. For example, an Awakener could use a rope to power the crank for a piece of heavy machinery to cut wood, harvest crops, fold laundry fast, or any other sort of menial labor. Thanks!

Why not just give the WoB now to help solidify your point?

Exactly! Whaaaaat, I thought she liked all food.

I noticed that there's no middle ground in the pole. In any case, Moash clearly did terrible, awful things, even going so far as murdering others. Does he deserve redemption? Not really, no. But, then again, I don't think anybody technically does, fictional or not. Redemption isn't about justice, it's about mercy, and if you're willing to offer mercy to people like Dalinar, I don't see how someone could claim to be impartial and not give to others, even if you hate them (which sounds awfully similar to the Knights Radiant and their core tenets). Now, I will also add that if Moash decided to continue harming others even after given mercy and didn't want to change as Dalinar did, then he needs to be removed from a position where he can continue that harm, whether it be a fight to the death or (perhaps more realistically) put in prison.

The Allomancy granted by the Lerasium beads weakened over time as more generations passed, making Mistborn more and more rare. Spook wasn't even a Lerasium-level Mistborn, so the reason no Mistborn are still around is almost certainly due to the drop in Allomantic potential over the centuries (WoB).

The way we've mostly seen it done on Nalthis is to simply buy it (even the Court of Gods does this), but what other ways might you realistically see the transition of Breath? 1. Generational passing; I imagine that there are going to be elderly people who are willing to give up their Breaths to their children or grandchildren, since they soon won't need it anymore. Additionally, there could even be family lines that collect Breath over time to stockpile a small fortune, or perhaps that grants Heightenings to a few older family leaders. As a side note, it would be interesting to see a sub-culture in T'Telir that encouraged the growth of very large families and the pooling of Breath by a certain age as a sort of rite of passage, so that the family as a whole (but especially the elders who held most of it) could prosper. Lots of interesting moral caveats attached to that one. 2. Religious/patriotic sacrifice; during a time of great need (such as wartime) you might see large groups of people being willing to donate their Breaths to a certain cause, such as with Vahr and his fellow rebels. 3. Crusading; perhaps you might see something like this in wartime, where large groups of non-combatants would be captured and forced to give up their Breath to the opposing army. Perhaps this would even be a reason to start such wars in the first place. . . 4. Straight up torture; we also technically see this in chapter 1 of Warbreaker, so clearly its possible, though I imagine that the seedier parts of T'Telir are going have some criminals who capture regular people to torture the Breath out of them. I'm sure this is a lot easier said than done, but I find it hard to imagine this not happening at least occasionally. What about other realistic ways we might see Breath being passed around?

SA spoilers:

I would say yes, but with some large caveats; 1. You need to have access to the SR and a general idea of what you want to do. As @alder24 mentioned, A-Atium can help with using Hemalurgy, so other methods of accessing the SR (such as F-chromium, Returned's dreams, or Renarin's visions) could all probably help in this area. There's also the idea that Shards other than Ruin can learn about Hemalurgy if they had the idea to look in the SR with the Intent of "I want to know how to steal something from a Spiritweb", then they could do it pretty much immediately. And this is where using the SR to know Hemalurgy could come in handy for mortals, assuming they could get that power through other means. 2. It's possible that if Hemalurgy weren't widely used anymore that the system would build up a "pressure", that would want release and would "teach" people how to use it, even if only in a rudimentary fashion (there was a WoB for this, where this is kind of similar to AonDor being first learned, but I've already spent like 45 minutes looking for it and I've decided it's not worth it).

Personally, I would say yes. But then again, I think that anyone could qualify for a Radiant Order if they had a Spren of the right type and were willing to change and grow in the necessary ways.

Actually, no, that goes to Hemalurgists, who have far bigger fissures in the Spiritweb made by their Hemalurgic spikes- big enough that things like Shards and powerful Emotional Allomancy can seep in and take control of them. Do you mean our saying of needing a broken heart and a contrite spirit in order to repent? It's pretty similar; mostly, it means that we must recognize when we've done wrong (sinned) and we must feel real sorrow for it. Then, we must turn to God and choose to repent, to change and become better as a person.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the responses, this all makes a lot more sense to me now! Clearly, it's been a while since I learned about genetics, as I had originally assumed that the Terris elite wanted to bring back a "pure" Feruchemical lineage- someone with only Terris genes- in order to restore Full Feruchemists. But it seems like that's just not necessary to restore Full Feruchemists.

In BoM, the Kandra VenDell mentioned that the Terris elite were doing their best to condense their bloodlines in the attempt to restore the power of Feruchemy, which could supposedly bring back Full Feruchemists. My question is, does this even sound possible? Can you condense the genetic code of a specific "watered-down" lineage over time to eventually restore it, effectively increasing the DNA percentage of lost bloodline in the new generation? I might be thinking about this the wrong way (if so, please correct me), but wouldn't the child of two half Terris still be only half Terris genetically? And, even if it were possible to condense the bloodlines to restore Full Feruchemists, wouldn't that cause inbreeding? Now, I know we're not talking about physical DNA, but spiritual DNA, which works by different rules, but there have to be some similarities between the two, and we only have real knowledge on physical DNA to work with. I did try to Google this question first so as to not waste any of your time, but I couldn't find an answer to my question, so I thought I'd bring it up here.