Returned

Agreed, it's very cryptic. The dialogue surrounding her talking about how it would "do [her] well to have a part of [him]" suggests to me that she's referring to Dalinar's capacity to be grown and nurtured, and then actually being cultivated by her. I don't think we know enough to say that it's a really concrete parallel, but I think of it like Kelsier being described as having a lot of Ruin in him. That had Shard-level implications, and was important for how he and Shards interacted (Preservation, at least). With what little information we have I imagine that the "part" of Dalinar Cultivation is claiming is the capacity for change and development, which would prevent him from being only Odium's champion, forever. He would still be able to grow into something different, or at least more complex. I don't have strong feelings one way or another if this would work with another Shard, though certainly Cultivation cultivated Taravangian much like she did Dalinar. My above reasoning would suggest that she does indeed have some portion of Taravangian, and especially in the period immediately after taking up a Shard a Vessel still has more of their own identity and motivation than much later, when they're much more strongly influenced by the Shard. If she's going to intercede with the new Odium I would suspect that that's the angle she'll take. The Stormfather described the old Odium as unchanging, and also described Cultivation as able to attack and harm Odium (though not necessarily interested in doing so). Change might be her method of action as much as a spear or sword is for a soldier. But at the same time Cultivation has held her Shard for a very long period and may be less able to resist or bend its nature than we might think. Preservation couldn't harm someone for any purpose, even to enable far larger scale preservation than the thing he would harm. It's very possible that Cultivation is totally committed to causing things to grow and develop, not necessarily to grow and develop towards an outcome she desires (by which I mean she may prefer to promote growth even if that doesn't serve her purposes while inhibiting growth would). It strikes me as being as likely as anything else that her motivations centered around causing Odium to change and develop just because she can't abide stagnation, though her skill at seeing the future argues against random, arbitrary action. And her manifestation as Cultivation, rather than something like Growth, also strongly suggests purposeful development rather than development for its own sake. Mysteries abound.

I don't know if Cultivation could do that. Maybe, of course, but it seems contrary to her Shard's focus and is also relatively hard to do/requires specific knowledge to do. I agree that the new Odium is likely to be a problem but not necessarily one that she could really head off. Shards seem not to color inside the lines, so this might be more or less always true. I'd believe that Cultivation's plans are more expansive than we know, but I doubt that she has any meaningful control over Taravangian or Odium. With a Shard attached to him Taravangian's intelligence and emotionality are probably much less important than they were when he was just a man. I can only offer guesses about what would happen if Cultivation could do this, but I suspect it would change some of the nature of the Shard/Vessel combination rather than forcing the Shard to become unharnessed. Kelsier's experience in Secret History does offer some tantalizing suggestions in the direction of your idea, though...

I started with Stormlight as my first Cosmere book and I was fine. Honestly, there is so much content woven through all of the different books that I don't think there is a reading order that will be totally satisfying until all (or nearly all) of the books are written. It takes a lot of effort to appreciate all of the connections that are there, and there are definitely many that we don't understand yet because the key information to do so just hasn't been published. I'm glad you're liking Way of Kings as your first Cosmere book. I loved it, and moving from it to Mistborn pulled me into everything permanently.

I agree insofar as I also find reading about characters in the grips of depression to be often dull, slow, and frustrating. On the other hand I think that describing him as taking every opportunity to "cry and be emo" to be pretty reductive and dismissive. It's sort of like saying that Tien took every opportunity to bleed out and die after getting stabbed with a spear, or a character with cancer taking every opportunity to be sick, or a character that isn't attractive taking every opportunity to repulse you-- it's not a circumstance that Kaladin can control, and in later sections of SA Kaladin really struggles against his depression and traumas (separately and together). He doesn't enjoy it any more than you (or I) do, and probably a lot less. I'd describe the issue we share here (maybe not accurately for what you're saying) to be with the way that Kaladin's story is being written more than Kaladin being a bad character (though I'm not suggesting that that's your whole complaint). He still does all the cool stuff people like, but a lot of his on-screen time has also been repetitive, slow-moving, and unpleasant. I don't dislike him, even if I'm less excited in places about his story as presented. I like Spiderman, but wouldn't enjoy a movie in which all he does is fill out his tax return forms. I have the same complaint about Shallan (especially in Oathbringer), though I really like her as a character as well. For my preferences there are just too many pages where nothing new develops for the characters or the plot in books that are long and complex enough to not need any filler. Whether or not they are important for longer term character and plot development, I don't love those sections. On re-reads of the books there are quite a few Kaladin and Shallan parts that I skim, or skip over entirely. All that said, like you stated there's no accounting for taste and if you're not liking Kaladin I can certainly appreciate that. If the focus on his depression means that on balance his story segments aren't enjoyable for you, that's legitimate.

I'm not sure the distinction would be meaningful, though of course it could be. If you use a hammer to build something, we'd say that you built the thing using the hammer, not that the hammer did it. We don't know if Dai-Gonarthis is a more mindless spren, like the Thrill, or an intelligent spren like Sja-anat. But in either case it could be operating at Odium's behest or according to his designs. Even if Dai-Gonarthis is acting on its own, Odium might well think of it as his servant anyways, as Ruin thought of all people as his servants. There is a lot about Moash's position that seems unique so far (in terms of the history of Desolations), like his high position among the Fused (which we know a human has never held before). I do think that you're right, OP, that Dai-Gonarthis is riding Moash though. His transformation seems extreme, though we also know that Odium asked Dalinar directly to give him (Odium) his (Dalinar's) pain. That could also have involved Dai-Gonarthis though, or not.

Welcome! I think that the formation of spren is based around ideas and how people think about things, but the specifics are unclear. For example, we know that there are flamespren, but we haven't seen anything like a candlespren or bonfirespren (or similar). So I don't think that there would be jazzspren, since jazz is a kind of music and spren representing music already exist. But if enough people thought of jazz as sufficiently distinct from music in some way, we might see jazzspren form. It's hard to say for certain though, since the only "new" spren we've heard about are spren born of Odium. That suggests that there is an element of fresh Investiture invovled in new types of spren, but it's only a suggestion. There is definitely more governing the nature of spren than has been explicitly revealed to us so far. Physical objects don't have spren, though they are represented by beads in the Cognitive Realm. So a fabrial might have a bead in Shadesmar but not a spren. We have an example of this in Syl's description of the souls of spears Kaladin has used: they're not spren, but they still have "minds" and traits like gender. That's how I interpret Hesina's comment that "everything has a spren", but we also should accept the possibility that she's just passing on a bit of folklore or superstition and doesn't have much real insight into the topic. She's a clever and intelligent woman but her areas of expertise wouldn't make her an expert on spren (as far as we know). Spren also seem to be fairly general in what they represent, so while we might see something like a captivityspren for being stuck in one place we don't necessarily also see prisonspren, jailspren, trappedspren, or things like that-- we just see the spren for the general case. So while I wouldn't automatically rule out something like a democracyspren (for example), I think we'd be more likely to see a governmentspren or leadershipspren or something. By the same token, we'd probably see an airship attracting gravityspren, windspren, or luckspren (luckspren due to Chasmfiends being lighter than they ought to be through association with them), or something like that, rather than creating and attracting a new type of spren. I don't know if spren could generate their own spren or not. From what we've seen spren and people in the Physical Realm seem to have similar ways of thinking about things (maybe not surprising, since the spren themselves are strongly influenced by how people think of the ideas they are associated with). We do have some hints that the spren themselves can change how they think of things, like the honorspren in Lasting Integrity, but it doesn't seem like an honorspren's ideas about honor create honorspren of honorspren. Instead the change is more in how the honorspren behave. It's not yet clear how this interacts with what people in the Physical Realm think.

I think that the lack of additional Investiture from the stamp would be the major hurdle here. It's hard to stamp something heavily Invested in the first place: But let's discount that. We'll also assume that the issue of Forgery working away from Sel has been fixed, and/or that a bonded Radiant is able to leave Roshar. It would "work", in the sense that the stamp would take hold and change the Radiant, but the extra Investiture that comes from swearing more oaths wouldn't be there and so the practical effects of the higher oaths wouldn't be there either. @cometaryorbit also makes a great point that the oaths involve more than just the Radiant. You'd have to do something with the spren as well. Here are a few WoBs on the topic, in no particular order:

At a guess (again, since this is all guesswork) I'd think they could not replicate these sorts of things well, if at all, just from eating and imitating. Physical structure is obviously important to how physical things happen, but there are lots of "in the moment" things which govern brain activity and responses as well which you wouldn't be able to perceive from eating a dead organism. Some might be worth developing, if they could figure out how through trial and error, even if kandra had to change their physical configurations significantly to allow them (like developing brains to which they then offload their cognitive functions in the first place). The idea of a "brain" is also kind of fluid. A large, swollen bundle of nerve tissue at the top of a spinal cord which is the major processing area for an organism isn't the only option. Kandra have to be able to work with nerve cells (since we know they can selectively turn off the ability to feel pain), so they might be able to produce ganglia in key spots to process immediate information really quickly, with physical modifications to match. That'd be an interesting development in later Mistborn books-- kandra that can act with almost Feruchemical speed with faster-than-human-thought reactions to things.

I've guessed that Nightblood was involved in something drastic on Nalthis, an atrocity or at least a massacre, at some point after Vivenna began carrying him. I doubt that Zahel or Vivenna was directly involved, but I can see Vivenna wanting to deal with that in some way (like trying to change Nightblood's nature somehow, or imprisoning him, or similar) while Zahel wants to remove Nightblood from the area to prevent further abuse or risk to Nightblood. So he takes Nightblood and hops away from Nalthis, ending up on Roshar where he already has knowledge and connections. He hands Nightblood off to Cultivation, who can appreciate how dangerous he is, for safekeeping. He then disappears into the Alethi nation to frustrate Vivenna's search and draw her away from Cultivation, which works. Something which I think has been underplayed in Oathbringer is that Vivenna has her own Awakened sword. That she has created one, especially without Nightblood's incredibly dangerous drawbacks, is a huge deal and we don't know much about what it portends. Vasher and Vivenna being in conflict, with that sword in the mix in the same place Nightblood is causing so much mayhem has to be significant.

I've wondered for a long time how those symbols were designed. This is a really intriguing idea! It seems like a subset of all of the bind points that are available, but any guidance at this point is exciting. Spook's and Kelsier's Hemalurgy book is going to be a lot more interesting than I'd thought... I wish Lost Metal were here. I've never wanted Cadmium more.

I'm going to guess that they could not. Were they able to do so, they would almost certainly all be doing it. And so, since they don't, it follows that they can't. It's definitely possible that there is a way to do it and that the kandra just don't know how. They know a lot about bodies, and have certainly consumed and impersonated people with all different brain structures and levels of intelligence but this doesn't seem to affect the forms they use or prefer. The kandra themselves don't have obvious brain matter in the way that humans do, so maybe they just haven't explored that avenue. Adding more functional brain tissue does seem like it would be vastly more complicated than just packing in some extra muscle fibers here and there.

Maybe? It's a valid idea, and there are discrepancies that this would resolve, though I don't think full, direct control is necessary to explain what we saw of Paalm. We've seen many people directed by Ruin without his obviously having control of their minds and actions, like Zane, Rashek, and especially Spook and Quellion. Verbal direction tied in with manipulative approaches was enough for them, so there is clearly an effective middle ground between full, direct control and meaningful influence. And if someone is following the advice of someone you trust (as with Spook and Quellion) I don't know how much internal control they really need at key moments. So puppetry is probably not necessary to guide someone through a complex plan. And in relation to more specific issues, we have a few obstacles: We don't know a lot of specific details about how spikes affect cognition in kandra, so it's possible that one response or another is atypical but plausible. Paalm's Trellium spike(s) were probably not the spikes she started with, and we don't really know the effects of wholesale spike replacement on a kandra's mind, personality, or identity. Bleeder was a very experienced impersonator who was driven by a powerful, personal obsession, and also had a great deal of practice with spike-switching and her half-Blessing. These may have made it easier for her to stick to a purpose and keep her behavior in bounds from moment to moment, especially with some whispered encouragements from Trell. That's all a contrast to ReLuur, who was being asked to relate specific, new information on a little-known topic in one, specific setting after being the victim of a sudden, violent trauma to which he was not accustomed. We also don't know how recent his attack was before the other Kandra recovered him. We don't actually know how spikes made from one metal or another affect Shardic influence in Hemalurgy. The question in the OP about how much influence Ruin would have had over someone with an Atium spike versus another is a great one, but one which we can only answer purely by guessing (for now). In summary I don't think that we really know how well ReLuur could have done in functioning on his own, we don't know that the effects he suffered from having only one spike are necessary or representative effects for all kandra, we have essentially no evidence that a one-spike kandra would be incapable of what Paalm accomplished, and the things she accomplished were the types of things she was best at and regularly did for most of her long existence. So puppetry is definitely possible and consistent with much of what we've seen, but requires a few large assumptions along the way, while more "normal" approaches to guiding Paalm aren't obviously unworkable. It's an intriguing theory but, for now, not Occam's Razor-compliant. I'm really excited for Lost Metal! _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A couple of other specifics that didn't fit into the summary: This one, at least, is addressed in BoM, on page 73: "The earrings you mention are crafted from old Inquisitor spikes, and have barely any potency to them. One might have been good enough for Lord Waxillium's little stunt six months ago, but they would hardly be enough to restore a kandra." A spike like Wax's earring is not sufficient as a Blessing. That's not too unusual a way to describe someone whose life is largely defined by mental issues, and it's immediately followed up by Harmony indicating that the state would persist even were the spike removed (and therefore any possible control precluded): "Would you have had her live on, a slave in her mind? Corrupted by that cursed spike that would forever leave her scarred, even if replaced?" (BoM, page 394).

Well, the Set and its lackeys are pretty human despite in many cases having several spikes per person, so number of spikes alone doesn't seem like that much of a limitation in that dimension. It seems like the extreme effects you're trying to avoid are more a function of specific attributes in specific spikes placed in specific spots on the recipient's body, and so if you know what you're doing (which you'd have to to be able to influence these things) you can seek or avoid the changes you want. So I guess the most direct answer is "know a lot about Hemalurgy", and some of the key things to know are about spike placement (which we don't really know the rules of at all).

Interesting question! I don't think that Vwafendal would work with the Set. Their goals are to generate and harvest Allomantic power to grant to the most well-connected. Vwafendal is focused very strongly on the Terris people and their legacy of Feruchemy, which is not something she would probably want just anyone to be able to steal and have-- they belong to the Terris people. I do think that Vwafendel will be a big factor in Lost Metal though. With the Southern medallion technology in evidence she will see a way to increase the Terris' power and influence specifically through the power their heritage grants, and a way that the Terris community can control completely. The technology may even be helpful in their goal of expanding Feruchemical power in her people. I think that those are very likely to bring them into direct conflict with the Set, which will want that power and control for itself alone. I have to assume that there will be dissent among the other Terris people though, especially those looking for a quick route to wealth and influence.

It's probably not impossible mechanically (we've seen an enlightened Radiant spren already) but I have a hard time seeing Syl choosing to do this. It would be as close to a deal with the devil as anyone on Roshar could think of, and Odium has been at war with Syl and everyone she's aligned with for millennia. And Kaladin has been resisting Odium and what he stands for directly. There would have to be a fantastic benefit available for her to even think of doing such a thing, and it's not clear that better understanding of emotion is even on offer. Glys doesn't seem to have much better understanding of human emotion, from the brief times we see him on screen (though that's little enough that we don't have much to go on there). And the main way for Radiant-capable spren to expand their capacity in the Physical Realm has so far been stronger bonds through oaths; it's not clear that you can get around that. Try to imagine Syl having a better understanding of emotions when she was all but mindless back when Kaladin was in the slave carts... what would that even be like? Would she have the mental ability to understand his emotions? All that said, we know very little about enlightenment. It doesn't seem to make spren all that different moment to moment (except for Glys, whose powers are very different from previous Truthwatcher sprens'). It doesn't seem to be quite a direct line to Odium, and we've never seen him influence a spren that way. Virtually all of the spren associated with him are spren borne directly from his nature, not just spren of Honor and/or Cultivation who have been influenced by him. A concern some spren have is that, if Odium wins the war, they might be destroyed and replaced (or just supplanted) by his voidspren. Whatever Sja-anat is doing seems relatively rare, and possibly fairly new. Odium himself has been on Roshar for thousands of years, and his influence has already permeated a lot-- if he could just influence spren so strongly, why hasn't he already? Or, alternatively, has he been doing that? Anyways, I think you're on to something. What we've seen of Renarin and Glys, and Mraize and his enlightened spren, is going to be replicated by others. There will be lots of political, practical, and desperate reasons for people and spren to seek out new options, and I bet that quite a few will opt for enlightenment for their own reasons. But I don't think Syl will be one of them. One of the themes surrounding the Radiants is that there aren't good shortcuts.

Maybe? I mean, Koloss are made from spikes but don't look extra human or how I would expect them to look based on the extra strength they inherit. A physical transformation to resemble a person whose Identity and Connection are stolen seems a bit straightforward and dramatic to me (you're still mostly yourself, after all). But some shifts in that direction seem plausible, especially if they're less dramatic, like imitating certain mannerisms or bearing, or more modest changes of features. I'm less convinced that something like a full-on Lightweaving-style imitation is what we'd see, though.

Conflicting efforts by powerful forces end up causing all souls and sapient spren to eventually be consumed into the Highstorms and Everstorm, thinning the barrier between the Physical and Cognitive realms within the storms and thickening it everywhere else. This causes all but random and unpredictable changes of identity as bodies of any type on Roshar (from cremling all the way up to human, Singer, and Aimian) are inhabited by unattached souls of the deceased. Roshar becomes an even worse version of ancient Braize, where conflicts between individuals and groups are continued endlessly and asynchronously for all time, with all individuals too tied to the system to ever leave it as they become ever more committed to seeing their grievances through upon each reincarnation. The purposes and intents of Honor, Odium, and Cultivation are all fulfilled, if perversely, through this situation, and life in the Rosharan system becomes implicitly and explicitly centered on forming, nurturing, and prosecuting conflict to the exclusion of any context outside of the cycle itself. Also, KanPaar is there.

There are a lot of suppositions in the scenario, which makes it hard to suggest an answer with any degree of confidence-- we don't really know if some of the steps would work, or exactly how they might work in relation to different powers and Cosmere mechanics. Out of curiosity, why is the subject of this an Allomancer? However, I will offer a suggestion that, if the sequence of events you describe works as you describe it, the outcome should be that the Breaths end up stored in the Hemalurgist but inaccessible; it would be similar to putting the Breaths into an object. The power still exists because nothing has consumed or destroyed it, but the circumstances which allowed it to be used are no longer in force. But the only reason the Hemalurgist was able to interact with the power in the first place is the stolen Identity, so it was never "theirs" in the way that keyed Investiture seems to have worked so far. Lose the key, lose access to what's behind the lock. Whether or not the passive powers of holding holding the Breaths would still be active (the Heightening) is harder, and I don't have a good guess as to what would happen. This is all fundamentally opposed to how Endowment has worked (that we've seen, at least) that it seems like we'd be looking at full-on, red-eyed corruption of Investiture.

Whoops! I meant Leras-- that's no nitpick! I was referring to when Elend and Vin were at the Well, as presented in Secret History. Even with a knife at his belt and Kelsier's instruction, he just couldn't harm a person. Anyways, I'm really interested in thinking of Harmony less as Harmony than as... Work. I wonder if that would be a better and more harmonious blending of the two Shards, though their nature may prevent them from ever being stable together when it's just the two of them. It does seem against Preservation's nature, however useful it might be to harness Ruin in that way.

The heat death or the universe might be a state which Preservation would like, but reaching it would require that everything which can change does change constantly and radically along the way, which Preservation would probably not love. It sounds like an overinterpretation of the names of these particular Shards with these particular Vessels. We know from different sources that Shards aren't perfectly encapsulated by their common or self-selected names, that individual Shards can have different emphases and focus depending on who takes them up, and that they are all suffused with divine power that is more or less limitless. Certainly over time a Shard will influence its Vessel in ways that make it harder to use its power in certain ways, but the raw power to do so is there. As examples of that: I do think that your interpretation of Ruin having "change" as a facet of its portfolio is a good observation. Entropy always increases, but making use of energy that is released in the process is mechanically how things happen. In that context it could make sense to think of Preservation as regulating change and allowing useful work to take place, keeping things from progressing to their lowest-energy states immediately.

I think that many look at his usual practice of helping stories' protagonists (and not villains, that we've seen) as aligning him with the "good" guys.

We have a glimpse into this from Rhythm of War via Sja-Anat in Interlude I-2: So it seems like space is compressed as necessary to maintain a shared physical position for an entity that exists in both realms simultaneously, at least in the realm where physical space is less strictly maintained. That might work equally well in rounding the world, one way or another: you're still just as "in" Roshar in the Cognitive Realm as you would be anywhere else. Anyways, we don't know if anyone has ever tried anything like that or experimented with something related, so we can't say for certain. I would have to imagine, though, that the Heralds would have had access to this knowledge and the means to make it work if they chose. That none of them have is suggestive.

I can see that. There are plenty of oddities in the Cosmere that have turned out to be meaningful. I still think you're being too hasty about the mistwraith -> Kandra transition, since we only have the example of human -> mistwraith -> Kandra to judge by. I'm not convinced that they lose all their instincts either, since mistwraiths and Kandra do such different things (absorb whatever, however, vs. exactly imitate a specific body), and they start reasoning and thinking differently as Kandra. But who knows?

My overarching suggestion is just that there isn't necessarily "memory", in the way we use the term for Singers or Kandra deprived of their spikes, that exists to be lost when a natural-born mistwraith is spiked and becomes a Kandra for the first time. I don't see a reason to think that this process bears much relation to anything that happened to the Singers. Conversely, it's not obvious that Singers' memories are torn away like happens with Kandra that lose their spikes. I'm not suggesting that the only effect of what happened to the Parshmen was the mental fuzzing/slowing, only that that seems like the relevant piece regarding memories. We have narration of a Parshman remembering some details from his servitude (the rules of a card game) but not enough to play. From what we know of the Parshsmen it seems likely that he was unable to pay enough attention to commit details to memory in the first place, as opposed to remembering everything he saw and did and then having those memories externally damaged. I'm mostly extrapolating from the fog Singers describe after their restoration and Rlain's description of Dullform, but I could see an ability to focus attention being an operation of will that Parshmen lacked. That's the distinction I'm trying to draw. Parshmen are able to form and retain memories before and after their damage and restoration. Being restored didn't grant them new memories or damage old ones as far as we know. Mistwraiths, on the other hand, don't seem to have "memories" nor sapience prior to being Blessed, while both can be damaged after Blessings are removed. If the two groups are different, we can expect see different things with them. But I think I may be missing the point you are making. Are you saying that a mistwraith being spiked and becoming a Kandra suffers spiritual/realmatic damage in the process, and that that damage tears their memories away?

It'd be far from Rashek's worst atrocity, though I guess that's a subjective assessment. I would presume that eventually the torment wound down as the mistwraiths' sapience fell further and further away from them, their memories vanished, and they became the effectively mindless beasts that gave rise to the true-breeding, never-human mistwraith kind. About as merciful as the Reod was over time. I'm not sure it would have taken Rashek long to prepare the Blessings though. He had comprehensive knowledge of the Kandra (which he designed) and so probably the Blessings as well, held Preservation's power for possibly a relevant amount of time afterwards, and was Fullborn immediately afterwards. Still not an awesome experience for the packmen, I'm sure, but Rashek knew what he wanted and what to do.