CryoZenith

I feel like if Tanavast's real name was Tan Avast, then Hoid would refer to him as Tan Avast, not as Tanavast, since he knew him pre ascension.

Kiss Chiri Chiri, marry Teft, kill Moash, Return Moash, kill Moash again Sylphrena, Wyrdle, Design

I am going to assume #2 is metaphorical and guess Szeth.

Some of those questions were directly answered in the following WoB. Hope this helps! As for your last question, the Nightwatcher doesn't care. You don't have to be from Roshar, you don't have to be Connected to Roshar, you don't have to be Connected to Cultivation, you don't need anything genetically speaking. The Nightwatcher can grant boons to anyone who asks for boons.

I don't know if being affected by Odium's intent is in and of itself a cause of insanity over time. After all, Leshwy for example seems to care a huge deal about Passion, both in herself as well as others, and she's one of the sanest Fused we've seen so far.

Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking about. Compatibility (whether it should be written with lowercase or uppercase "c" is an interesting question in itself; also should we be using the word compatibility instead of the word Connection anyway) differing between two Vessels wouldn't fit the "everything else being equal-ness" in my hypothetical. The question is whether some shardic Intents are more memetically virulent than others inherently, independently of Vessel personality. And yes, the prior position is that the answer is no; any alternative answer bears a burden of proof. You know what would be really cool? This is more fanfictioning than theorycrafting, I'm not saying Brando Sando would ever do this, but imagine there was a planet where the Vessel was elected for temporary and short terms. So, say, for example, every 4 years someone else would take up Invention, and the previous Vessel (now Sliver) would give up their spot willingly. The benefits of having a system like this is that you could ensure that your local god always has the interests of humanity in mind, and not only that he has the interests of humanity in mind, but that his interpretation of those interests is still largely a human-mindspace interpretation. The obvious downside of this kind of system is that the previous Vessel could always be like "screw your democracy, I'm keeping my throne" but... them's the breaks :D.

Speaking of the honor system, I wonder if the reason why, on average, Heavenly Ones are more mentally sane than the other types of Fused is because their code of combat leads to them dying less, and thus needing to reincarnate less often. Which would imply that this is quite an old tradition, and they've fought like this in past Desolations too.

I don't know if I would *exactly* call her sane. Now yes, you could argue that this is a case of inhuman terminal goals rather than insanity (in the same way that the Paperclip Maximizing AI is arguably perfectly sane, since sanity is more about how instrumentally rational your methods are than which goals you have per se) but in practice you arrive at the same place. Honestly, from what we've seen so far, the most "sane" god has been Harmony, and he has the very unfair advantage of being young.

Ah hell no. Movie stars have to keep constantly in shape, and sometimes even change their bodies to fit the role. My relationship with physical fitness is that I want to be as sedentary as I can get away with without actually being majorly unhealthy, and I'm unwilling to put time and effort into it (especially time) beyond that. TPBM has lost pets in the past. (lost in the sense that they literally got lost and couldn't be found, or ran away, not in the sense that they died)

Nale

He might be a bit too popular to qualify, but I see people talk about him rarely enough that I think he does. So take this as a "character that is underrated" rather than "character that is completely ignored". Axies the Collector.

So, we know that the relationship between a Shard and its Vessel is a contest of willpower against the Shard that, over time, is very hard to resist (Brando's exact words). Which means that how long it takes for a Vessel's Intent to be overpowered, and to what extent it is, depends on at least three things: how much time has passed, how much willpower the Vessel has as a person, and how much he is willing to fight back. (since you can have high mental endurance but choose to not exercise it) My question is whether there is also a fourth factor, innate to the particular Shard we are talking about, everything else being equal. So, for example, let's say we have two people, one the Vessel of Invention, the other the Vessel of Whimsy. They have both held the power for the same amount of time, they are both equally strong-willed, and they both equally want to resist their respective Shard's intent. Would those two Vessels be equally "overpowered", or is there something concretely relevant about which Shards we choose for this question that directly changes the answer? I don't feel strongly either way, tbh. What are your thoughts?

I think the specific way this works is that breaking oaths doesn't directly damage a Shard, but indirectly hurts them by making them easier to damage. A resistance stat debuff rather than a damage-over-time, if you will. Relevant WoB:

My email address is actually still a Farseer reference. I freakin' loved it. Found it back when I was still a child. My favorite character would have to be Verity for sure.

Mraize.

This. Very much this. As Sanderson put it, "Shardbearers don't hold territory." It's quite a theme throughout WoK. It's like trying to conquer medieval France using modern tanks, except you only have 10 tanks. You will win every individual battle, sure, but cities will be recaptured at a faster rate than you are capturing them.

It could also be neither. There's the third option, which is that what Harmony cares about isn't maximizing freedom of choice; what Harmony cares about is that *he personally* doesn't take away others' freedom of choice more than necessary. Like, he probably cares about freedom of choice in a vacuum (everything else being equal, more freedom of choice equals more good) but it's not really his Intent, y'know what I mean.

"Does anyone have a map layout of the city for me to memorize? Preferably as detailed as possible."

I actually prefer non-fiction to fiction (especially philosophy and political theory) but when it comes to fiction specifically, fantasy is my favorite genre.

How many thousands of dollars could you sell your house for? I only know of two people who match that description, and one of them is a fish.

Granted. Next to your house, a new coffee shop opens, and its name is Fadran. It is entirely unrelated to Channelknight Fadran. I wish to own an Aviar.

.Oh yeah, I know it's not a super accurate example, I was just giving the gist of it. My suggestion would actually, funnily enough, be the exact same as the one in the OP. Use Connection. Independent development would look in the SR as two people both connected to the same work of art, and you could legislate that the one with the stronger Connection is the one who owns the IP.

Hm. I'm not actually sure that's a correct interpretation of the 6th Heightening. (I'm not saying I strongly or even moderately disagree with you necessarily; here I actually don't know for sure where to lean) But, from the coppermind wiki: You could be right that "understand" here refers to understanding fundamental properties of how endowment type investiture works. But there is an alternate reading, which is that the Sixth Heightening does exactly what it says on the tin: it gives instinctive understanding of Commands *specifically*. That it doesn't make you instinctively understand Breaths better, but rather it makes you instinctively understand how to issue Commands better. It's like if someone was very naturally talented at programming in C++: this would make them better at understanding and creating computer programs, but it wouldn't, by itself, make that person automatically understand things about how computers are built or how computers work mechanically speaking. And since transferring Breath between things with a tuning fork would be an example of an activity you could do with Breath which doesn't involve any Commands... yeah.

There is one big issue with using Identity for this: it wouldn't work in the case of independent development. If two people, separately from each other, invent the same thing (like for example how Newton and Leibniz both came about calculus) they can both key it to their Identity and both have a legitimate claim of being original, if not a legitimate claim of being the first to get there. And thinking back on the speech Hoid gave in SA about timing as (arguably) the thing which people value the most, this is a nuance that is highly relevant.

I don't know for sure what the answers to your first and third question are, but the answer to your second question is most likely no. There is something special about radiant spren which allows them to be bondable. Sapience on its own is necessary for bonding but not sufficient.