Returned

The way it's described in the books is that pushing and pulling is relative to your center of mass (often represented by the blue lines extending from metal objects to the Allomancer's chest). Observed effects match this pretty well. Most of the time when you see a cool move, like pulling a coin into your hand, the Allomancer is just pulling the object towards themselves and then moving their body to suit. Sort of like kicking something up from the ground and then grabbing it out of the air-- it's not quite that you kicked it into your own hand, but kicked it into a position from which you could catch it. Other situations seem to involve motion, like pulling something towards yourself while your body is moving through space, creating more of an arcing motion than a straight line. It does get more complex, though it seems to take some serious Allomantic skill to do it. We see Kelsier pushing and pulling just on specific parts of metal rods to cause them to spin around or move more in "nudges" than solid pushes and pulls. We also see Wax pushing on a single bullet, then recognizing that the bullet is made of multiple pieces, and then realizing that he can push on just a specific piece. Kelsier's tricks especially suggest that there are a lot of things that a skilled Allomancer can do with careful pushes, pulls, and leverage.

If this were conveniently possible Rashek would have done it too rather than the cascade of problems he created and dealt with. I think that it could be what @Quantus suggests, that it would take a long time to tease that knowledge out of the Shard. But I personally think that it's more likely that the necessary details aren't recorded in the Shard that way. The information might be something like "the planet was pushed closer to the sun while this particular event was taking place" rather than "the planet was pushed from coordinate X,Y,Z to coordinate A,B,C on this specific date". We see some support for this in Rashek, who first pushed Scadrial too close to the sun but didn't know its original position and so couldn't just put it back, even though the first push was at most a couple of seconds earlier. So, similarly, I think that even if he stretched his mind back to what Leras was doing he might learn that a planet was created, and how that was done, but not necessarily where the created planet was placed or why that place was chosen. Certainly if Leras and Ati could figure the right details out through their divininty then Sazed could presumably figure them out as well, but perhaps not quickly enough to halt the destruction of the planet and everyone on it..

RoW was a frustrating book for me too, for a lot of reasons, and especially including the pacing of character arcs. And Lirin, who was never my favorite character, is becoming (in my eyes) more intransigent. That is not great, even though I believe that his commitment to nonviolence was originally (and may still be) a deeply felt, carefully reasoned one. While he fell short in many ways many times, he loved his sons and tried his best his entire life to teach them what he felt they needed to know and to set them up for successful futures. I'm not sure I'd agree that he's an outright abusive parent, at least not in a way that leaves "abusive parent" with much meaning. Though I will 100% agree he's far from perfect. I don't really like people dragging on Lirin this way. From his comments it's clear that he doesn't believe there is a maintainable dividing line you can draw between being a Kaladin (violence here and there, where you think it's appropriate, to support better ends) and being a Blackthorn, Sadeas, or Moash (unlimited violence whenever others are in your way or resist you for any reason). He certainly doesn't know all the details of history but he's obviously correct that millennia of violence, even by the "right" people with the "right" objectives and motivations, hasn't solved violence or evil. It's not unreasonable to resist the idea that the past's problem is that it was not violent enough. I'll paraphrase Shallan and say that he might be mistaken, and he might be misguided, but he's sincere and has the courage of his convictions. I'll listen to the case if anyone wants to make it, but I think it's outrageous to say that he got one of his kids killed; even though Lirin was unpleasant initially and should have known to "act his station" (itself a gross injustice with a weasel like Roshone), Roshone spitefully conscripted Tien when he didn't have to, and a random officer in the field chose to use him as an insubstantial human shield. After their disastrous first meeting, what could Lirin have done that would have caused Roshone to behave better towards him? I honestly believe that a lot of the posters here on 17th Shard would have preferred Lirin just kill Roshone outright at the earliest opportunity, and would never question that that was an awesome choice. Killing a "bad" person is so direct and tidy, how could there ever be something wrong with it? I'm no Lirin, but I find that position disturbing and morally dangerous, although certainly people can make reasonable arguments in that direction. We (mostly, at the 17th Shard) like Kaladin and wish there were more people like him on Roshar, but it seems clear that there are more people like Sadeas-- those who are similarly flexible in when, how, and why violence is applied, and who just bend it in ways that we independently label as "bad". Kaladin struggles with this, too, even though he generally feels that violence is sometimes unavoidable. Frankly, that it's generally immediately easier to kill than to do something else to address a problem or obstacle should give all Radiants pause, given the nature of their common oath.

Even if there is a suggestion in RoW to the effect of "Odium + Cultivation = Freedom" (I don't recall it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there) we've got WoBs that flatly state that there isn't necessarily just one single outcome to a combination of a pair of Shards. For example, Preservation + Ruin = Harmony the way Sazed happened to combine them, but could just as easily have produced Discord instead.

Though it's worth noting that the Alethi scholars never did manage to produce those or get on the trail of doing so, while the Vedens did. Possibly, maybe even likely, related to Szeth's concerns, but much more boasting than anything related to their progress if so.

Well, nobody might be a bit strong-- the Heralds know, the Sleepless probably know, Taravangian probably knows, the Ghostbloods might know, Gavilar might know, and the Shin might know, and who knows who else? Szeth is a pretty good candidate for being someone who knows, or at least has an idea. He knew an awful lot about Radiant abilities when he fought Kaladin in WoR, for example. We just don't know very much about how much the Shin understand about mystical matter, nor what special knowledge they might generate in the course of training with the Honorblades. But I agree there's not any direct evidence that Szeth knew any of this. For the record, I've always assumed that the "soon Alethkar will have new Shardblades" just referred to future Alethi conquests and the Shards they'd claim in the process. Alethkar was pretty occupied during the unification wars, but after they unified would be more able to turn the combined might of the ten Princedoms outward. I bet we'll find out! Though my guess is, not much. The half-Shards, as described in the shields, make things harder and/or more durable. We haven't seen a ton of issues relating to weapons breaking or not being hard enough. Kaladin's spearheads and hafts are the only examples I can think of offhand. Maybe as the half-Shards become more common and less expensive/difficult to produce we'll see more. Things like half-Shard hammers might be very helpful against Fused, thunderclasts, and the like.

I want to see it all! Especially technology I fail to imagine for myself. That's what first drew me to Sanderson's writings in the first place: interesting, reasonable extensions of already-cool magic powers. Some specifics include: artificial gravity, imitation or real; stasis that allows people to "travel" far into the future, with all of the social and political consequences that would produce; large-scale, just-in-time manufacturing of all sorts of things (especially crops and products of slow natural processes); complex sets of equipment that allow for human labor in extreme environments like outer space and the deep sea; self-contained living environments sustained by the Metallic Arts rather than conventional machinery (again, things like space colonies or deep sea habitats); ultra-high-speed transportation of people and goods via F-steel; ultra-fast computer processing through both F-zinc and F-Bendalloy, and attendant developments (like brute-force breaking cryptography). And so, so many more!

I think that we have to be careful in whom we're describing when we say "the Alethi", as there are a lot of different groups that might be described that way but that don't necessarily interact. Alethkar as a nation wasn't too far past its unification wars, which were successful. With all of the Shards of Alethkar, plus its wealth and combined conventional military might, they would be much better equipped to invade other nations and claim their Shards. This was already a major worry of Vedenar, Thaylenah, the Makabaki kingdoms, and others. Gavilar knew a great deal by the time of his death, so he might well have known about possible new Radiant (or Radiant-style) bonds, discovering the cache of Shardblades posters here at 17th Shard are so fond of theorizing about, or any number of other things (we really don't have a grasp how how knowledgeable Gavilar truly was; it always seems he knew more than we'd thought). He was also tied up with the Sons of Honor, whose goals included events which the spren themselves feared enough that they started seeking out new Radiants on their own. Veden researchers were pursuing what ultimately produced the so-called half-Shard shields, and we know from a variety of comments that Alethi researchers were engaged in similar research (if not in quite the right direction). It wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine that big breakthroughs were coming soon, especially since we know that the Veden efforts really did produce the half-Shard shields not so long after Szeth's worries. The Sons of Honor, with or without access to much of Gavilar's secret knowledge, were actively seeking to bring about another Desolation. This would be connected to Nale's efforts to prevent new Radiant bonds from forming, and so might plausibly prompt new Bonds to form apart from whatever Gavilar's plans were. And finally, we really don't know how much information Szeth had about the state of the world. I think that it's a safe bet that the Shin know far more than they've demonstrated so far, and the training Szeth had with the Honorblades would have included Truthwatcher powers. We don't really know exactly how those work (for "regular" Truthwatchers or those like Renarin), but he might have gained a large amount of information about Roshar's present and future that would not have been available any other way.

Thanks Wayne It is equally valid for them to have French accents, as it's an arbitrary choice no matter what you pick. But it would be an odd choice and introduce a lot of extra effort to have everyone speaking American English with an arbitrarily chosen French accent (or accents), when those accents aren't common there, for a movie that will likely be produced by U.S. companies for a primarily (or at least initially) U.S. audience. Not as an artistic choice, but as a business and production choice. It would be much, much easier, both to do and to justify, to simply have all of the names use French-style pronunciations and not bother with accents at all. Ah yes, but French with which accents? I don't care what language the movie is in, as long as they get the plotting, pacing, and effects right, so I'm on board for a default French language production if that's the way the production goes. And it's not like the people on Scadrial plausibly speak French, or English with French accents, anyways. The Romanized, English spellings of their proper nouns just have pronunciations that seem similar to French.

Other posters have made good points so far regarding enemies. But Radiants also had lots of areas of focus that weren't related to battle, even though the fighting (rightly) gets a lot of emphasis. We don't have a ton of in-text descriptions of Radiants doing those things during that time period, but it's reasonable to think that they did a lot of healing, supporting villages and towns with Soulcasting, providing advice on various matters, and researching (among other things). When you control the remaining wealth, infrastructure, and accumulated knowledge of most of Roshar after an almost inconceivably devastating event like Aharietiam, and also have a monopoly on magical powers as well as a "divine" mandate to serve humankind, there will always be plenty to do. I'm sure we'll get more specifics in future books too, since the consequences of Aharietiam and the Recreance were so profound and far-reaching for all of Roshar.

I am very interested to see how the problem of Investiture being bound to planets or systems is addressed by characters. It seems like an issue with huge implications, but which Sanderson doesn't treat as an especially difficult obstacle (more in the sense of "once you know the trick, it isn't hard"). I keep thinking that Autonomy and Endowment should be giving us clues, but I'm at a loss as to what they might be (if they even operate by the same rules as the others, which they may not). I really like the idea of mechanically projecting the necessary conditions to allow the movement. But I feel like we're at least one Stormlight book away from any more information.

I presume there's an approximately 0% chance that the movie would not be produced for a mass audience primarily of people in the U.S., and so "Kel-see-ur", as the more likely American English pronunciation, is almost certainly locked in. My own preference is pretty neutral, though I probably lean towards "Kel-see-ur" due to the audiobooks as well. I appreciate that there are differences between what makes a good book vs. a good movie, and so I'm not as committed to perfect accuracy with regard to the book as I was when I was younger (especially for details like pronunciation). And, unrelatedly, while I love Mistborn I never, ever liked the anatopisms of details like modern-ish Western suits or French-tinged names, pronunciations, and accents on another planet in a universe that does not include Earth and the cultures that generated those things. It's not better or worse than people all wearing togas or robes or having obvious knock-off names like "Mai-Kell" or whatever, but they were always too specific a thing and too present in my real life to feel like a good element of an original fantasy setting. Consequently I would have zero problem with changes to things like that, including the pronunciation of the name of a major character.

Intriguing idea! I don't think we can rule it out based on anything we've seen, especially given what we've learned of spren allowing some bi-directionality of cause and effect. We know that it's (generally) hard for "manifested" Investiture to travel, but this seems due to a Shard Investing itself into a plant via some unknown mechanism and then being "rooted" there. So it's hard for Stormlight to leave Roshar because it's Honor's "manifested" Investiture on that planet, which exists because Honor became attached to Roshar. By the same token it's hard for spren to leave because they're made up of similar Investiture and so are similarly bound, and since Radiants are bonded to spren they should have some trouble leaving too. In that sense it seems to me that the tones of a planet/system are a result of a Shard Investing that planet/system and not the binding itself (by which I mean you couldn't just perform Honor's rhythm with drums on Scadrial and force Honor to become attached there)-- if Honor's Invested there, the tone is there. So my gut reaction is to be skeptical that you could run things in the reverse direction by forcing Honor's power to be sufficiently Invested just by playing a rhythm and creating a localized connection that way. But we've also seen that exact thing with spren: you can draw a flamespren with a fire, the "normal" way. But if you have a flamespren plus some Investiture (and the right materials) you can cause that flamespren to manifest heat. So maybe this is exactly the way to get Radiants off Roshar! If so I presume it would take a lot of Investiture and would probably work similarly for all Shards, and so may not require the specific trappings of Roshar like gemstones. I'd bet on godmetals being involved as well

A-zinc / F-zinc / Lightweaver, with A-brass / F-zinc / Lightweaver being nearly as good. It's the ultimate spy combination: look and sound however you need to, with other illusions to support your immediate, unpredictable circumstances, plus getting others to feel the way you need them to and being able to process information at super-speed. The Twinborn combination is the most effective since you can compound the mental speed while also avoiding the drawbacks of storing the attribute in the first place. And, of course, tons of other exciting combinations exist. Like Bondsmith + anything, really...

I wouldn't mind having a real-life Jasnah and Shallan on the scene. Or Kaladin, or Dalinar. Also, I'd like to be a Lightweaver, as long as we're wishing for things...

The same reasoning could just as easily apply to the Lord Ruler too-- things worked out the way they did because of how he himself did things, and some of the elements of his plans (I'm thinking mostly of the deceptions around atium) might not have worked out without his iron grip. I'm not trying to convince you to change your view on Kelsier, just to expand a bit on why I think many feel differently. You and I draw a line between Kelsier and the Lord Ruler, and others draw a line that leaves Kelsier and the Lord Ruler on the same side. Though I definitely think that @Kolten is correct that Sanderson's description of Kelsier as a scary psychopath is a dominating factor, especially when combined with what we've seen of the Ghostbloods. For my part, I think that Kelsier is creeping towards the Lord Ruler's side of the line now. Not yet there, but my opinion is changing as we get more information (even though it's obviously not incredibly specific or reliable so far).

For sure! I've enjoyed the discussion also. As I mentioned, it's Thaidakar that really colors my opinion of Kelsier because with what little we know so far it's hard to see him as a great guy and easy to see him as villainous. Since they're the same person the tension between those has to be resolved somehow, and I'm not generally receptive to the idea that "good" actions provide cover for "bad" ones. Within the books themselves I feel Kelsier is much more a noble character than an evil one: he has good goals, for good reasons, in opposition to substantial and evil adversaries, and works hard to accomplish those goals at incredible personal cost. A lot of what he does is motivated by hatred and revenge, which I feel is bad, but he labors to bend it towards a good purpose and is successful. But at the same time his plans worked out only because of factors he couldn't foresee. Had Vin not managed to defeat the Lord Ruler, all of Kelsier's work would have just led to incredible violence as the skaa massacred nobles in Luthadel and then the Lord Ruler massacred the skaa. Plenty of people believe that ends justify means (Kelsier almost certainly does), but I'm not one of them. I feel that it's possible for a bad person doing bad things to produce good outcomes, and it's possible (essentially guaranteed, in fact) for people to be more complex than "good" or "bad". That's largely why I don't find "things worked out well" to be a strong argument for flatly defining Kelsier as "good". He kills a lot of people, and causes a lot of broadly innocent people to be killed, on purpose (such as Jastes' infant sister, for example, in violence prompted by instigating the house war-- the internecine violence was the whole point of that part of the plan), and others through mistakes he certainly didn't intend (like getting Yeden fired up through deceptive, vague mysticism, who then led the army to certain defeat to no purpose, plus a subsequent skaa mass execution). I can't get on board with a good outcome being a credible argument that a person working towards that outcome must be good and all their actions good. I suspect that had the Lord Ruler prevailed your opinion of Kelsier would be the same as it is now-- that his failure wouldn't retroactively make his attempt to free the skaa "bad". The success of a person's designs just isn't how I define their moral character. By that token the Lord Ruler would be a good person, because he did thwart Ruin and save all life on Scadrial, and a thousand years of incredible violence and oppression were just some eggs he broke to make the omelet.

That is right, but we also have a WoB which establishes that some of that enhancement occurred before the bond with Syl due to temporal leakage from the spiritual realm:

I was being a bit too poetic with that phrasing, and it was unclear. I'll be more direct and concrete, in that Kelsier hates nobles, collectively and individually. Up until just before his death he has no compunction about killing any of them at any time by any mechanism, just because of their ethnic/social group (the lines between those are interestingly blurred in the first three books). There are some pretty obvious reasons that Kel might become calloused, since the Lord Ruler's entire system of oppression was tied up in the nobility's status and role in society, and the specific targets he chooses are generally emphasized as pretty bad people. But he'd have killed Elend as casually and carelessly as Charrs Entrone if he'd thought it convenient or useful. He wanted to kill Bilg, a skaa soldier, for a similar reason even though he himself had Rioted Bilg into the position where Kelsier nearly killed him (though he did relent, which is to his credit). Implying that Kelsier's ruthlessness is bad, but justifying it by pointing out that the world he's in is ruthless (and presumably bad) may make Kelsier's ruthlessness "good" in your eyes, and obviously your opinion is your own and that's fine. But others might well see the bad, and decline to call it a virtue just because others around him are also bad, even if they're worse and he's opposed to them. I like the parallel that @StormingTexan brings up with the Lord Ruler. He's also pretty hate-filled, ruthless, and fine with murder, and also working for what we might call a greater good. But I, personally, had a hard time with Vin and Elend warming up to him in Hero of Ages. He seems to have done some pretty bad stuff because of his hatred pretty early on, well before Ruin had all that much time to work on him, and even if he improved (which is perhaps questionable, but seems defensible) I'm not inclined to just ignore the badness when evaluating him. Though to be clear, Kelsier was a way better person than Rashek. As I stated above, I like Kelsier and agree that he has very noble traits and works very hard to help people. This is stated to be a contrast to his pre-Pits of Hathsin days, when he was a worse person. But we see him sacrificing a lot for a people that he truly cares about and doing many good things for good reasons. My negative feelings about him are mostly the hatred he struggles to rein in, and his time as Thaidakar. We may learn more about the latter that will change my view, especially since we know so little about him in this role for now, but being head of the Ghostbloods doesn't seem like a merit. Others may disagree, and that's fine.

Meh. I'll echo that Investiture alone probably isn't going to be enough to do it. Shardmetal can easily be dulled (in a living blade) so that it can't cut at all. Vivenna's sword is also highly Invested, but doesn't work quite like a Shardblade or Nightblood. Degree of Investiture seems like one property among many that an object can have-- Lerasium and Atium don't seem to have any special cutting powers, nor did the Bands of Mourning. But I'd wager that, to cut like a Shardblade, you'd probably need a good deal of Investiture to do it. A necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

I agree that Kelsier has some very admirable traits, but he also has some pretty despicable ones (even in the books, he enjoys killing nobles just because of their lineage, for example, even if it's not really necessary to further a goal). A skaa child being murdered? Awful, and demanding unbounded retribution. A noble child being murdered? Awesome. The fact that he doesn't hate absolutely everyone is good, but maybe not enough to brand him a great person no matter what. One of the problems with a forum filled with Sanderson nerds is that there's a lot of information in play outside of a specific few books (I assume you're referring to the first three Mistborn novels when you say "the books"). There's a lot more information about Kelsier than just what's written in the first three Mistborn books, and those details may or may not alter your views of him. They certainly play a large role in peoples' views of him here. I like him, but I acknowledge that he's not the greatest person. I think he's earned the more negative view people have of him.

Interesting idea. But I think that it has two major obstacles to overcome: there is always some temporal leakage from the spiritual realm, if unpredictable, and Rayse would have had every bit as much access to it as Taravangian-as-Odium ever would, plus millennia more experience working with it. All the rest strikes me as a just-so story. If we assume the conclusion then it makes sense to read some of the evidence you present as you suggest, but without that assumption it's a lot more shaky (at best) to lean on those interpretations. Second, knowledge of the future is flat out not very useful to most entities in the Cosmere, outside of the few seconds burning Atium grants. It worked for Preservation, but totally failed Ruin. It didn't seem to do much for Honor or Rayse-Odium, but possibly was useful for Cultivation. It wasn't enough to save Ambition, Dominion, or Devotion. It was a mixed bag for Renarin and Kaladin, but perfect and decisive for Lightsong. Finally, we have some decent (if circumstantial) evidence that the Diagram really is related to Taravangian's intelligence/empathy cycles. As described, it was exactly one day of shattering brilliance, just like his other daily cycles are. On days when he is more intelligent Taravangian is (seemingly) more able to correctly interpret the Diagram, including sections that are encoded or compressed. The Diagram extrapolates and guesses, based on current understanding when it was written, rather than defining events clearly, and expresses a lot of uncertainty ("can we make use of a Truthless?" instead of "we can make use of a Truthless"). We can always assume that any such discrepancies are due to perfect future knowledge slotting into an ever-more-baroque scheme, but again this simply assumes the conclusion in order to justify reading potential evidence in ways that support that conclusion. I, personally, will classify this theory as extremely unlikely. But I'm also going to keep a sharp eye out for possible temporal leakage around Taravangian-Odium too. Cool theory, thanks for posting it!

Better than having your theory ignored! Plus, if your theory is true it would have really big implications for a lot of things. So the standard of proof is higher, and resistance will be higher too. Congratulations on an idea provocative enough to generate engagement! I agree with you that there is something off about what we've heard regarding Helaran being on that battlefield. It doesn't make a ton of sense to think that Helaran was on the battlefield to assassinate a nascent Radiant for two reasons that I can think of: Nale seems to generally kill such people himself, and Blades and Plate are famous and recognizable. The former, at least, might be a later development (possibly due to this event?). But it strains credulity that no one on the battlefield would recognize that a full Shardbearer is there that isn't one sworn to anybody involved in the conflict and has no support team (armorers and the like). Amaram later states that he doesn't know the history of his Blade, and while I wouldn't expect him to question it too much (he did become a Shardbearer due to this, after all), it should be a huge deal that a "new" Blade suddenly appears in Alethkar. The official explanation, that it belonged to a Veden assassin who tried to kill Amaram, is good enough for most Rosharans but shouldn't be satisfying to more knowledgeable people. Blades are generally known and carefully accounted for, though obviously there are exceptions. However, I find the evidence for your specific idea too lacking to be decisive. It neither rules out the Skybreakers nor suggests any particular other group. Helaran might have been a Skybreaker squire or even a Skybreaker who had sworn 2-4 oaths. For all we know his presence on the battlefield might have been part of his Crusade oath, or a mission (official Skybreaker business or a test, like Szeth's experience at the Purelake) to kill a criminal (Amaram). And as @offer suggested, Helaran could have simply mis-identified the person he was there to kill, if he was targeting anyone in particular at all. Striking down enemy soldiers on a battlefield probably wouldn't be illegal in Alethkar, so collateral damage shouldn't be an issue. As others have pointed out, there wouldn't be any reason for other Skybreakers present to reveal themselves there. I don't think we'd see him doing any Surgebinding, or anything else that would reveal magical abilities, because Nale and the Skybreakers are working pretty hard to keep people from knowing about Surgebinding and spren bonds at all. A squire might not have enough ability to use Stormlight to survive a knife into the brain, but one of the third or fourth oath probably would (Shallan survived a crossbow bolt), but Helaran seems to have definitely died, so that's unlikely. Further, he seems to have been wearing dead plate (it's stated that Kaladin scratched the armor's gold paint, which suggests it's not living), and we know that dead plate interferes with Surgebinding. The Blade itself could have been a living Blade, since we don't really know what happens to such a Blade when it's manifested and the bonded Radiant dies; indeed, what we saw of the Recreance suggests that this is exactly where the dead Blades came from. In any event Helaran obviously had experience using Plate and Blade, as he was a skillful fighter instead of an awkward one. The things that the Sons of Honor were trying to do are directly opposed to what Nale has spent centuries or millennia trying to prevent-- the start of a new Desolation. Knowing Kelek doens't seem like it would override that, though we also saw Nale meeting with Kelek and Gavilar, so who knows? There isn't a shortage of secret groups and conspiracies on Roshar, so it's definitely possible that Helaran was working with any other group besides the Skybreakers, including groups we haven't heard about yet. And we know that lies and mysteries abound, especially surrounding the Davar family. I am sympathetic that Mraize isn't the most trustworthy source, and so his claim that Helaran was a Skybreaker isn't fundamentally reliable. But there it is literally the only evidence we have of what Helaran was up to and with whom he might have been working. If we want to talk about evidence it's unreasonable to just assert that the letter is false in this specific regard. It's at least as likely, if not more so, that Helaran really was a Skybreaker but we are in the dark about his motivations or assignments, and/or that he or the Skybreakers were manipulated by Taravangian, Mraize, or any of countless others.

It's confusing because the word Investiture is used in a couple of different ways. It is both magic being "in" something, such as an iron metalmind filled with weight (the iron is Invested with energy), and is also the ability to use magic, such as the attribute of Investiture that can be stored in a nicrosil metalmind. At the broadest level in the Cosmere, Investiture is magical energy that exists primarily in the spiritual realm and "bleeds through" into other realms, in a variety of ways with a variety of effects. These different ways are the magic systems we know from the books. Below I'll try to use "Investiture" to refer to innate Investiture (the ability to use magic) and "magical energy" to refer to power drawn from the spiritual realm, which will hopefully help clarify things a bit. An Allomancer has a degree of innate Investiture (through a connection to the Shard Preservation), which is what allows them to use Allomancy (the magic system that Preservation grants). When they burn a metal, they are using their innate Investiture (ability to use magic at all) through the mechanism Preservation set up (mystically consuming a specific metal to access more raw magical energy from the spiritual realm) that has a specific effect based on the metal burned (this is how the magic of Allomancy operates). If a person burns a bead of Lerasium they gain a stronger connection to Preservation, which grants them more innate Investiture than they had before, which is why it can make an ordinary person into an Allomancer at all. Things are a little bit different for Feruchemists. They also have innate Investiture which allows them to use magic in the first place, just like for an Allomancer, and the specific mechanism of that magic is to transform an attribute into magical energy which is then stored in metal. When Wax stores weight in iron he's magically transforming his weight into magical energy through his Feruchemy and then storing it in iron. When he draws it out, he's taking the magical energy out of the iron and transforming it back into weight. When we're dealing with nicrosil we don't yet have a lot of detail about exactly what's going on. In November we'll know more. But, for now, what seems to be the case is that a Feruchemist filling a nicrosil metalmind is storing their innate Investiture (the attribute which allows them to use magic at all, in this case Feruchemy) as magical energy, just like Wax's weight transforming into magical energy to go into iron. When someone draws Investiture out of a nicrosil metalmind they are drawing in that same magical energy and then transforming it into the ability to use magic at all (also called "innate Investiture").

Believe it or not, I've never seen an episode of it! That's just the metaphor I've used for trying to make use of seeing the future Cosmere. Given that the in-universe description we've gotten is a shattering window that spreads out more and more the further forward you look it seems like the most practical way to get the outcomes you want and avoid the ones you don't. And mixing metaphors is always a good idea, right?