Returned

Fair enough, though the assumption that atium has only one isotope seems unfounded to me; harmonium isn't natural or stable (well, it's reactive, but maybe not necessarily an unstable isotope). For atium to be inherently radioactive would introduce some consequences we haven't seen, as the OP notes, but magic papers over a lot. I imagine we'll get a more science-based model of this sort of thing in Mistborn era 3.

And Spook wasn't a Lerasium-level Allomancer, but just a regular one for his time. I imagine the kidnappers' focus on Spook's descendants is mostly because he was so prolific in producing children (more people are probably descended from him than from other known Allomancers among the Founders) and because of the mystical cachet of his being Mistborn.

We already know that the Shards are much more than just the names that have become common for them, even if that "much more" largely revolves around a theme, and even the themes are (somewhat) malleable based on the Intent of a Vessel. A formulation like "Odium = [anything]" is too reductive. Certainly Odium is more than just hatred, but I don't think that it is generically emotion either. Beings are plenty emotional, even passionate, on worlds where Odium is not. Koloss are pretty emotionally driven and love to destroy things, and they seem to be definitively of Ruin (being formed directly from its magic). Also, Ruin refers to Passion, capital P! Raoden is passionate about leading people. What remained of Leras in Secret History was pretty into preserving things, perhaps even passionately so. Harmony seems to care quite a bit about feelings (his own and those of others), even if they aren't his primary focus. I don't think that emotions are Odium's primary focus either; they just come along with the things Odium tends to do and the way it tends to do them. My impression of Odium is that its theme isn't hatred, or even passion, but rather is conflict. Emotion can certainly drive conflict, especially hatred and other feelings that are similar to it. Hatred arguably produces the most intense and inevitable/intractable conflict but it isn't the only way to cause one by far. If we talk about the Set from Mistborn, their Passions (such as they are-- the capital P may not be totally appropriate here) don't seem emotional. They are curious, ambitious, methodical, and thirst for power and control. These driving traits propel them into conflict all over the place, including internally amongst their own members. I think that Odium would find a lot to work with even among such a dry group, and wouldn't have any problems or obstacles in doing so-- they wouldn't need to be more hotheaded or anything like that. He may have already begun working with them (eight days until the 15th, when we'll know for sure!).

I do think we'll get some, but not very many. We'll see enough to showcase novel interactions of deep sea issues and Rosharan magic, but it doesn't seem like there is all that much that would happen beneath the waves. Once we've seen a Windrunner and an Edgedancer team up to move easily and quickly through the water, what is there going to be for them to do there? As for Yelig-Nar's gemstone, the ocean floor seems to me to be about as good a place as any to store it. The region in which it might be is still pretty big and will take a while to search manually. But yeah, permanent solutions for dealing with the Fused are pretty thin on the ground-- we'll see Yelig-Nar again.

Having access to (or even knowledge of) worldhopping, or being able to get something as precious and hard to transport offworld as a Seon (never mind two of them), seems to be beyond the Set given the goals they've been focusing on so far and the means they've employed. A radio is much more achievable, and is right at the level of technology Scadrial is able to develop. And the description of Suit's voice through it sounds more like a radio than a Seon. But at the same time, if the Set did have a Seon, disguising its use by making it sound like a radio sounds like the kind of thing they'd do. And the fact that Wax took the box at least suggests that it will come up again, which would be much less of a big deal if it's just a radio receiver. And Trell (or at least the thing we've been referring to as Trell) is about as powerful as Cosmere beings get and is bringing things from off world, so who knows?

Hoid gave Wax the information he needed for events to progress, which is one of his typical behaviors. There's no reason (yet) to think that he and Kelsier are working together (yet).

It's a sound warning, since future-sight tends to not be very helpful. With extreme care you can get something out of it, but most efforts to use knowledge of the future for your own benefit seem to fail. If you don't believe me, ask Rayse. The successful uses seem to come from those who are the very best at it (Preservation, at least, got what he wanted), but Rosharan humans are definitely not going to qualify for that status. Having a tiny piece of the future revealed to them is going to lack the context that makes it useful in making decisions, especially with the limited knowledge a given human is likely to have and without an unusual amount of Fortune to back you up, seems a lot more likely to harm you than to help you.

When it comes to Hoid guessing is usually the best we can do. That said, here are my guesses: Hoid isn't a casual tourist, going where he feels like going for his own reasons. He's got his oath to be where he's needed, which drags him all over the Cosmere via sometimes dangerous and challenging routes. He may not have the time or freedom of action to do much extracurricular activity, even if he'd prefer to. The Shards all know Hoid and have varying opinions of him. But they may not be enthusiastic about Hoid collecting their powers, and even less so about his interference with Shard-level affairs. It might be very dangerous to go around collecting powers. Hoid has some very specific and far-reaching goals (which we don't know the details of). Grabbing a power at the wrong time might upset things he doesn't want upset, or interfere with others' plans which he doesn't understand yet. Hoid is wily, clever, and knowledgeable, but he also has some really serious limitations on what he can do. Some conflicts might be unwise for him to undertake. For example, running into Rashek as the Lord Ruler might have been a seriously bad idea for Hoid. Some powers have serious effects which Hoid can't deal with easily (or doesn't know how to). The obvious one here is bonding a spren-- doing so makes it very, very difficult to leave Roshar. Even if he could have attracted a spren and spared the time to be on Roshar post-Radiants but pre-Recreance, being stuck on Roshar may have been an impossible price. Hoid has lots of powers at his disposal. It might be nice to have more, but he's usually not lacking for options to do what he needs to do. Even if it's helpful, does he need to have Rosharan-Cryptic Lightweaving, given that he has access to other forms of Lightweaving already? Hoid knows a huge amount about the state of the Cosmere, his abilities, and the obstacles he's facing. In the absence of detail we could use to make our own judgements, I'd generally defer to Hoid in determining the choices he's made to be the correct ones.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but Spook's enhanced senses were only present when he was burning tin (which was all the time). No tin means no enhanced senses, and no Allomantic ability (via the spike) means no tin. I'd think that the person in question would still feel the numbness/lack of sensory ability (like @Dunkum said) since that was present without the Allomancy. But that's the opposite of enhanced senses. Whatever changes happen to a savant's body, we don't have any indication that they mirror the effects of using Investiture which caused those changes in the first place. So no, you don't keep any enhanced senses since those are 100% from Allomancy, and without the spike you have no Allomancy. You probably would keep any changes being a savant imposed on your body since those exist whether you're burning metal or not, but I don't recall any clear examples of this with Allomancy. If the question is, would you still be a savant if you again got access to tin Allomancy later (through any means) I would expect yes. Savantism cannot be transferred via spike, so the effect must remain with the person who developed it or disappear. The effects don't disappear when the Allomancer stops burning metal, so seem separate from active Allomancy. But we haven't seen anything like that, so we don't really know.

The Origin is an in-world description of a semi-regular, significant event in the lives of the people of Roshar. They name a region they have never seen and cannot reach, but logically must exist, based on what little they can observe of it. They see that the Highstorms weaken as they cross Roshar and are at their strongest when they first arrive. So they theorize that the Origin is a place (imprecisely defined in size and location) that must be out there and where the storms are born (or reinforced). If Rosharans want to talk about such a place they have to name it, and "origin" is as good a term as any other for that. I think that it's a mistake to ascribe greater importance to it than that. I'm not sure the distinction between "new storm" and "one storm irregularly refueled" is a meaningful one. If we are looking for a natural description it could just as easily be a region in which weather conditions reliably converge to produce a huge storm, not unlike hurricanes which occur in regular regions on predictable cycles on Earth. It's always the same weather, contained in the same system (Earth), and causes specific results on a predictable (if not totally so) timetable. If the Earth's population were limited to a certain region of land along the South Pacific, those people might refer to the area of the sea where El Niño forms as the origin of that storm which comes at irregular intervals over a two to seven year cycle. No magical importance needed-- there doesn't have to be more going on with the name. Not any more than for things called the North Pole or the Equator. Though, for what it's worth, I think that having a constant spren as the storm itself (the Stormfather) and a huge being which walks with it (whether that's the Stormfather or not) strongly suggests to me that it is one storm which constantly exists. But if the storm cycle causes those spren to pop into a specific region of the physical realm where conditions prompt that then I don't think anything would be meaningfully different. We know that the specific weather patterns on Roshar create storms of similar intensity with the same features at irregular intervals (on a very predictable overall cycle; their calendar is based on a two-year cycle that reliably includes the Weeping), and that those storms weaken to almost nothing by the time they reach Shinovar. But once the Highstorms were personified by common belief (in the form of a super-spren) and infused with Shardic power as a Splinter we're moving beyond needing strictly natural explanations for anything.

I've always thought that, to maximize Autonomy's own autonomy, she'd have to disrupt other Shards' abilities to coerce or influence her in any way or their capacity to counteract decisions she'd made. Even if she wants (or is driven to) promote autonomy all around it seems like her own would be paramount if there were ever a conflict between hers and someone else's. She could also just be an anti-schemer in general. If a Shard has a plan that involves people doing what it wants, Autonomy might be characteristically driven to "free" those people from the Shard's desire for them to do what it wants rather than what they want. (Obvious connections to Mistborn era 2, with a shelf life of up to 11 days until Lost Metal's release!) It's really hard to figure out Intent mismatches between Shards and Vessels. It seems like there are inflections that Shards might permit and some that they'll resist, and it's not clear where the dividing line is. I think that Rayse was a good match for Odium (per WoB), but that when he's onscreen in Rhythm I think he's struggling against Odium in an effort to accomplish some specific things that the Shard doesn't care about.

Maybe. I mean, all normal matter is radioactive to some degree, and several metals used in the Metallic Arts are acutely dangerous to people. We don't have great examples of long-term exposure except for the Kandra, whose organic fluidity might make radioactive damage unimportant, and Marsh, who might have other methods of coping. Being acutely radioactive doesn't necessarily make something soft or easy to destroy; uranium is about as hard as titanium. It's an interesting idea to think that it has dangerous spiritual influences though. Maybe it degrades your spiritweb in a slower, more low-key way than being spiked Hemalurgically does.

Sure he was. We don't get the same struggle for Kaladin without Vyre harrying him, and we don't get what happened to Teft either. But in Rhythm he's less of a character than he is an antagonist to characters. A rival, an obstacle to struggle against and defeat, and a display of information that matters/will matter, but not much more than that. The same way that Amaram was in Oathbringer: he mattered, but mostly in the narrative role he occupied and maybe was not so unique in filling that role. Moash's theme is rejecting ideals of Radiance, embracing Odium's philosophies (or at least, those of the old Odium), and severing bonds (first his own to Kaladin, then humanity, then Jezrien, then Teft). His being blinded is, to my best guess, more about showing how Radiant powers interact with Odium's influence than it is about Moash himself. The real significance strikes me more as forcing him to confront the things Odium numbed him to, perhaps destroying Vyre and devastating Moash (or what remains of him). I think that he is a relic of the old Odium, and making him blind undercuts a lot of the dangers he represented. But we have six books to go, certainly with twists and surprises in store, and chock full of magic. Moash's eyes could be healed, he could go on to have an important extension to his narrative arc, he could just be an example to demonstrate things about the setting and story that need display, or all of the above. But Sanderson seems to be cycling new antagonists into events rather than keeping underlings and mid-bosses around indefinitely. There is no more Torol Sadeas, no more Ialai Sadeas, no more Amaram, no more Lezian, and even no more Rayse. They've all been supplanted by bigger and more consequential antagonists once their purposes are finished. Is Moash so much more important than all of those that his story will meaningfully continue among the new crop? My guess is no, but a guess is all it is.

My guess is no. One of the major modes of operation for fabrials is that they take advantage of the closeness of the cognitive and physical realms on Roshar. You can draw flamespren (a cognitive representation of fire) with a physical fire, but you can also produce heat with a flamespren and some appropriate metal and Stormlight. A hemalurgic spike doesn't have the same cognitive piece as a gem-imprisoned spren. It has a spiritual component but not (as far as I know) a cognitive representation of anything and so the way a fabrial works may not be able to interact with it. That's not to say that no technology can work with a hemalurgic spike-- what we see of Ettmetal and the Allomantic grenades in Mistborn strongly suggest that some sort of Hemalurgy-based machine is at least plausible, if not a fabrial.

That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought of before. I've always viewed Moash's connection to eye color as being first the seed of his motivations (I'm a victim oppressed by this social/cultural system), then the lever of his proactive efforts (Elhokar is the worst example of the system, but Graves and Dalinar are better, with my help we can all move beyond this stupid hierarchy), then totally forgotten as he commits to an equally arbitrary hierarchical system (look at how much better the arbitrary rulers of the Singers are than the arbitrary human leaders are/have been, as long as you squint at some parts), and finally annihilates him as he chooses to be completely subsumed by that last system (he is at the top of that hierarchy, sort of, as Vyre, but trades away most of who he is and most of his freedom to evaluate the fairness of social organization to get there). I feel that Moash's involvement in eye color politicking and scheming was mainly a fig leaf over his actions' motivation as satisfying his immediate emotional urges, and seeing him move beyond eye color without changing much else emphasizes how hollow his commitment to that fig leaf always was. In my reading his fall is due primarily to defining the right thing to do as what felt satisfying for him to do without introspection. Again, the anti-Radiant: fetishizing his own feelings (Passions, perhaps?) no matter the specific rationale or consequences to others is what positions him as a servant of Odium, in contrast to Radiants making firm commitments to ideals and then trying to live up to those commitments regardless of their feelings (transient or deeply held). No matter the setting or conflicts going on, Moash (as we've seen him) is always going to make the same kinds of choices for the same reasons; on Roshar it was eye color at first, on Scadrial it might have been subservience to Ruin or Trellism. Moash pretends to be ideologically motivated, but that's just a pose behind which he hides that he's primarily self-centered, violent, and destructive. We'll see what happens in the next book, but my feeling is that Moash/Vyre is going the same route as Amaram. A big villain, importantly placed in events, but whose story is done now that he's served his narrative purposes and so is removed.

Asking about identifying references like this while also requesting no spoilers is a difficult set of preferences to satisfy at once. It is very likely that a habit of that sort of thing will end up with you getting information you would consider a spoiler. (You can do whatever you want, of course, I'm just pointing out that given how many of the Cosmere books you've read and how interconnected they are you generally are much more likely to have some things things spoiled than you are to get satisfying information which does not do so). Even being told that the answer to a question would be a spoiler for a given book gives information that some would consider a spoiler for that book. It doesn't matter too much-- there will always be quite a few details that you'll only catch after reading one or another of the different books. I recommend reading a series segment at a time (so, for example, Mistborn era 1 in sequence but not necessarily Mistborn era 2 immediately after), ordered by how intrigued you are by that segment. Following series that are directly connected in time and with the same characters is (in my opinion) the best way to notice details which form connections to other books.

To some degree you are, but a lot of those sorts of things are supposed to be thought-provoking as the series progresses. It may never be 100% clear what those references mean (though these are not the most obscure we see), and even if they are definitively revealed I wouldn't count on all of them being definitively known until the end of book five at the earliest. Given how interconnected the Cosmere books are, and how focused fans are on figuring things out through questions for Brandon, it's difficult to approach this sort of question while also avoiding spoilers.

It would be very valuable to be the first group to be able to do that, given how portable and accessible it is. There are also implications for Kelsier himself: figuring out how to get Stormlight off of Roshar might be very helpful in helping get Kelsier unstuck from where he is. And beyond that I wouldn't feel too secure in thinking that we know everything about Kelsier's goals or mindset right now. A lot has happened to him, and his current state of existence might have prompted a lot of changes in him.

I think that the short answer is that that sort of thing is in the Bondsmith portfolio of powers, so it's the kind of thing they work with and could perhaps do. Whether or not they could overwhelm a Shard's direct action is a bit murkier. There isn't a lot of evidence I'm aware of, but the one piece I recall offhand suggests to me that there is more to it than just any Bondsmith, chained or not (I'm not even all that clear on what, precisely, being chained or unchained prohibits or allows). Odium does make a comment in Oathbringer that hints at this: The reference to Honor's name and power makes me think that there is something distinct about the Stormfather, which is a Sliver of Honor, which has relevance to Odium's being trapped on Roshar. Bondsmiths made by bonding the Nightwatcher or the Sibling would still be Bondsmiths, but would not have the same connection to the Shard which (somehow) imposed the bonds which confine Odium.

Hm... we do have a comment from Moash (I think it was him... he was in the scene, at least) saying that the Shardblade he and Kaladin's group practice with is heavier than he expected. Cardboard is still heavier than weightless, but that seems like an odd observation for a practiced spearman soldier to make if that's as heavy as it got. I think a big factor would be that anyone using a Shardblade would be a trained swordsman, which involves working lots of muscles most people don't use much in modern life. The dowel probably weighs something like two pounds or so (I'm estimating), a longsword might weigh between three and four pounds, and a shortsword around two pounds. The leverage of a six foot implement would definitely make a difference, though! I don't recall offhand, do we ever see anyone in the books using a Shardblade one-handed, without wearing Plate? Also, the sword looks good! How long did it take you to make?

I generally think of annotations as being canonical, at least for interpretations of what's written in the actual book. I don't think I've come across a situation in which an annotation about an event is taken back later. The way I'd imagined Kelsier behaving on the night he snapped was sort of a fugue state driven by the stress of Mare's death and benevolent deception. More that than a calculated decision in keeping with his ordinary behavior, at least. Kelsier would have known a fair amount about Allomancy, having worked extensively with Mistings, and a bit of pewter could have taken him a long way in fighting ordinary soldiers even as a novice. Especially those whose main job was beating down weakened prisoners. Toss in even some poorly controlled iron, steel, and atium and he'd be killing machine enough. The ten mile thing is the most suspect part of the annotation to me. Ten square miles is a huge area to cover in one night, and even if the exact locations of every soldier and nobleman were known to Kelsier in advance I don't think the timing works out. Even if he'd had good control of iron and steel and knew about the spikeways, which he probably did not. And now that I think about it such a large-scale slaughter would be pretty hard to keep quiet, even around the Pits. So I guess in my reading of the annotation I'm mentally adding in a clause: "slaughtering every soldier or nobleman [that he could find] within ten miles of the Pits." And then thinking that high-profile massacres were not the characteristic, preferred approach for Kelsier, the master thief, until Gemmel taught him Allomancy for violence.

Maybe you're thinking of a Sliver? The Nightwatcher is (as far as we know) a Splinter, like all spren are. But the Stormfather is a Sliver because he's merged with Tanavast's cognitive shadow. We're getting more and more inundated with special, proper terms that aren't as distinct from each other as they could be (I don't like having to distinguish between Shards, the pieces of Adonalsium, and Shards, the swords and armor so important to Roshar).

It's maybe not that shocking. It's not really a technical title in the first place-- just having been to the Pits and not died doesn't qualify someone for that impressive, mysterious status any more than it would for a soldier who worked there. Like, a prisoner who was at the Pits on their first day when Kelsier snapped technically survived them, but so what? Kelsier beat the Pits. He was imprisoned there to die, but didn't, and got out via his own ability and also slaughtered a lot of people along the way. No one else was known to (Zane would also qualify, and be similarly impressive, but that was secret from most people). Some random person who was there, but wandered out when no guards showed up for a few days? It's the difference between a big-name celebrity headlining a movie and an extra who was on screen for half a second. Both were in the movie, sure, but one is a lot more substantial than the other. Some other elements might have otherwise worked against the dilution of the legend with other people. Skaa legally couldn't travel, so the only place they could go and survive would be the underground. Many of them probably lacked the connections and savvy to make good on that, and so might have starved, or at least pretended not to be from the Pits. And that's assuming they were able to get somewhere with food and water in the first place. Miles of ashen wasteland, people with little to no experience travelling or surviving in the wilderness, and being undernourished and subject to frequent beatings... not a great setup for lots of escapees. And it seems likely that Venture soldiers, or even imperial soldiers, would have searched for escaped prisoners, not unlike the search for rebels after Yeden's catastrophic raid.

It would probably make good research material for figuring out how to get Invested objects off of Roshar. It doesn't have a spren and doesn't require infusions of Stormlight to have the properties it does. But since they're pieces of Honor himself my guess is that they're as bound to Roshar as he was and the spren are, until some workaround is figured out. And that definitely seems like a use the Ghostbloods would prefer to using the Honorblade for its combat properties. Good idea!

In fairness, ratcheting up Tresting's fear wouldn't take a lot of finesse, especially in a moment that Kelsier would almost certainly recognize would set him off balance. That's a fair point. My thinking was that, given roll calls and tracking of leased skaa generally the punishment would be more like executions than more beatings. But both of those happened anyways, and for pretty much any reason at all. It wouldn't be like the executions in the Luthadel square after Yeden's mistake, which Kelsier felt particularly responsible for. And it's suggested later by the elder skaa man that Kelsier's intention was ultimately to force the skaa off of the plantation and into the rebellion, so maybe I was too hasty.