Returned

That's kind of my point, though. The rules of the competition in the Purelake specifically allowed Szeth's strategy. It was in the "law" of the contest, and one of the proctors even said that someone figures that out every time the challenge takes place. In that sense it's the opposite of a loophole, and the rinsing is something the rules are designed to allow and even encourage. And because understanding rules very precisely is something that Skybreakers are supposed to do they and their spren are pleased when someone demonstrates that they can notice that. I agree that a highspren might be receptive to the right argument, but I don't think that they'll be generally receptive to an argument that elides the law (however they want to define it) just because doing so would adhere to an agreement-- that's honorspren territory, and Syl at least thinks highspren won't operate that way. But as I said, I think you're right to note the very specific phrasing of Szeth's oath, especially because it differs from what we've seen of how Skybreakers operate. We shouldn't assume that Szeth's behaviors as a Skybreaker will be just like what we've seen of other members of that order, or even that highspren are a (let alone the) reason Skybreakers act as we've observed. I've been thinking of highspren as spren of law, but what if they're not? They could as easily be spren of justice, or something like that, and the rigid focus on law that Skybreakers have is something that is distinctly about that order of Knight Radiant. That would in some ways fit better with the nature of spren, and could allow for the flexibility you describe in a very natural, even necessary, way.

There's something similar in Renarin's use of Regrowth too. When he heals Adolin at the paddock, Adolin has a vision of himself perfected. That's pretty similar to the vision of Moash-- it's Moash, perfected.

I think that one of the most significant reasons to think that Dalinar has not achieved his 5th oath is the observation of the Fused, especially Raboniel. They are pretty certain that Jasnah has achieved the fourth ideal (which is why they need her out of the tower at Urithiru), and think that Kaladin may be close. If they were so concerned about Radiants with 4+ oaths, and were able to discern that Jasnah had reached it (despite not having much apparent surveillance of her), they would have been very concerned about Dalinar as well. But they never mention him at all in those deliberations, despite having tons of witnesses to his "I am Unity" moment. That said, he's clearly close to the fourth ideal in Oathbringer before that moment, as he nearly manifests Shardplate while interacting with Venli in the Nohadon vision. He's not the only Radiant to get close, with the prismatic outlines of light around their bodies, but close is all it is.

That's an interesting observation, and I guess we don't really know how rigid highspren are about oaths. I'm skeptical that highspren are all that open to being flexible with the law, since that's kind of their essence. That's one of the differences Syl notes between them and honorspren: And Nale draws a sharp contrast between morality and law: At the same time, in RoW we've seen that honorspren have come to define honor differently even amongst themselves, and almost certainly differently than they had done in the past. So maybe we're seeing something similar with highspren. Possibly in tandem with Nale himself changing so much over the millenia. We haven't seen many Skybreakers in action so we don't have a lot of comparisons available. The best one I can think of is in Lift's first interlude chapter, where a Skybreaker kills a hostage because he said he would and thought it would be wrong to not follow through. He's sharply scolded by Nale because they didn't have legal permission to kill the hostage in Azir. We have a few possible explanations that I can think of offhand: That Skybreaker had sworn his second oath to follow the law, in contrast to Szeth's oath That Skybreaker had not yet sworn the second oath That Skybreaker had sworn his third oath to follow Nale, and so regardless of his specific second oath had to follow Azir's laws exactly because that's what Nale did But I think you're right to note that the oath doesn't seem to bind Szeth in the way we might generically expect it to bind a Skybreaker, and that highsprens' judgement seems like a really important factor in what a Skybreaker is allowed to do according to their oaths.

There is one detail I tracked down that is curious, and suggests that broken-bond-dead spren are not necessarily deadeyes. This is a conversation between Shallan and Pattern: There are a couple of things to note here. The most important is that it reinforces that the Radiant bond exists before a person is a Knight, which in turn suggests that during the Recreance there were bonded spren who could have been damaged by the breaking of oaths but who could not manifest as Blades, and so would not have left Shardblades behind. But we also have an interesting description. Before being "born", Pattern existed but wasn't "Pattern". This fits with Syl's description of how new honorspren are made, in that they are specific manifestations of power/patterns/Investiture that already existed but are given a new form when the new spren is "created". But before this "birth", spren don't exist in the way we think of them, specifically there isn't a body or mind (or even an organization of components or identity) associated with them. So Pattern's description of dead spren being like Cryptics unborn doesn't quite fit with what we've seen of deadeyes, or what Pattern knew of them at that time. So maybe there are other states for dead spren, particularly those who were not manifested physically/were not able to manifest physically at the time of the Recreance. I'm not totally convinced that this excerpt is reliable enough to take completely at face value. Most specifically I believe that this was before the major reveal that Shardblades were all dead spren (my memory may not be exactly right on this), and so the details may not be expressed in ways we would expect given that later knowledge. And Pattern's description does fit with what we know of deadeyes in most respects, especially when he describes efforts to restore the dead spren. But it's a bit more information that might bear consideration. Regardless, the estimates of unknown Shardblades given above are probably a bit high: there is no reason to think that oaths are evenly distributed among people pursuing Radiant bonds, especially since the oaths are difficult to swear acceptably and become increasingly harder (we should have far fewer 5th ideal-sworn people than 2nd, for example). Malchin is an example of this, as he was essentially unable to progress. The points raised about squires are good, but we just don't know enough about how how it worked during the height of the Knights' organizations, and knowledge of which people might be ready to progress seems very difficult to determine. There is a gemstone from Oathbringer which records a Knight who doesn't think they'll be able to swear the Fourth Ideal, even though everyone around them assumes that they will do so soon. Even then, the most likely explanation for the majority of "missing" blades is just that they're lost. Many in seas, rivers or lakes, and a lot of them buried since just a handful of weeks would be enough to cover over a Blade in crem from Highstorms.

I think we can say that the bonded owner does not need to be touching the Blade. When Dalinar brings Oathbringer to Ialai in Oathbringer, he still hears the screams even though he is the only one touching it and Oathbringer is not bonded to anyone at that time. (That was a weird sentence to type, with all those Oathbringers!).

Of course the punctuation of the line might make this irrelevant, as the description is of the gods with a colon afterwards, suggesting that what follows is a list of those gods. Those were simply the things the Singers revered. I think that there is still more to Roshar than we've been shown. In the stele, spren seem easy enough, as there is a line somewhere about humans providing more for them than the Singers could (I believe it was more intensity of emotion, which was more attractive to the spren). So the spren associated more with humans than with Singers. Stone and wind being Cultivation and Honor could fit, especially with the reasoning provided by @Treamayne. Spren associated with those gods might also fit, like the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher, but the association is less clear. Besides which those are already spren, so that would redundant. If I recall correctly the Singers existed on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation ever arrived there. If so then there may be other powers at play than just the Shards we're so familiar with in the Cosmere. We also know that the Shin revere stone to the extent that they won't even walk on any that has been cut and worked, which has always been a detail that has lacked context. And there is an epigraph in WoR that says I believe that the conventional interpretation of this is that the Ancient of Stones is Taln, also called Stonesinew (the timing and context are right for that to be the case), but we've also had a WoB saying that Taln never broke. Either Taravangian is wrong about Taln breaking and ushering in the Desolation (which is certainly possible), or that interpretation is off. And if the Ancient of Stones is someone or something we haven't seen yet it could be a reference matching the stone mentioned in the Eila Stele.

The metalmind rounds would also only be useful in a handful of situations, most specifically when the target is aware Wax is there and will shoot at him from a specific angle in a somewhat predictable window of time. We see a fair number of Allomancers deflecting bullets, but Wax himself doesn't rely on that ability. He does have his steelpush bubble, but that's something that seems mostly unique to him and his skill (savantism?) with the ability, not something that most people would be able to replicate even if they wanted to. Maybe having one stored in the secret, Allomancer-accessible only chamber of his gun would be useful, but it still seems over-engineered compared to a ceramic bullet (or something else Ranette could cook up). And Wax has found better uses for his Feruchemical weight than expending it in this way anyhow, though I suppose if he really wanted to he could work harder during his off-hours to produce these bullets in a reasonable amount of time.

Welcome! Some of these have clearer answers than others, and some are still mysteries. The only planet that we know was created by Shards is Scadrial. More are possible, but we don't know how they came to be or how their populations came to live there. The original planet in the Cosmere (or at least the first we know of) is/was called Yolen. We don't know much about it, including if there were dogs there. Presumably there were, but Hoid's comment is about Rosharans calling axehounds "hounds", so the dog reference could be as recent as Ashyn (where the Rosharan humans came from immediately before Roshar). Something bad happened on Threnody when... certain events took place (I'm not sure how open to spoilers you are, or what would be a spoiler for you, or even if spoilers are allowed in this subforum). We don't have a huge amount of detail about it, though gold having a divine, Shardic property is probably a good guess. I think it's unlikely that the Spiritual Realm is overlapping the physical there (as opposed to the Cognitive, with Shades being Cognitive Shadows), but I don't think we have definitive information on it. If we do, I'm sure someone will post it here soon enough. EDIT: Dunkum corrected that it is silver, not gold, that repels Shades. We don't know a ton about the precise differences, but inhabiting Singer bodies is something that is more about the Singers themselves than the Fused-- Singers have gemhearts, and take spren (and, apparently, spren-like things) into them to undergo dramatic changes. We have no reason to think that Heralds even could do something similar, let alone would want to. There does appear to be a substantial difference in the nature of Heralds and Fused. Maybe, though I would doubt it. It also depends on what you mean by "off-world". Heralds and Fused alike can go to Braize, but we haven't seen any capable of leaving the Rosharan system overall. Anyways, the reason I doubt it is that the Fused are heavily permeated with Odium's essence, and highly Invested individuals in a given locale often have a difficult time moving around the Cosmere. Some can do it, though, like Vasher and Vivenna, plus Ghostbloods and 17th Shard members, so I wouldn't rule it out completely. There are also ways to travel that neither we nor characters in the books know about, so the future might look very different. Lore, almost certainly. Investiture... maybe. In examples we've seen Investiture seems to come from Shards in some way becoming connected to the worlds where they settle, which makes it difficult for them to leave themselves (avatars are a different story). This may be what happened to Odium in becoming trapped in the Rosharan system. Though we have seen Seons travelling between systems, so who knows? And magic from one place should work similarly in another (per a WoB), so maybe the magic would remain even if a Shard did somehow extricate itself from a planet/system. I think they'd get along. Lopen does his own thing, and Wax has lots of experience dealing with a Lopen-like character from Wayne. Lopen and Wayne would get along famously, I think. Maybe. We don't know a whole lot yet about what's going on at the Cosmere level, and have only begun to get a peek at the groups operating that way.

Maybe. I mean, it's all magic anyways, but it's as possible that the Splintering can't be reversed as that it can. The Investiture still exists either way.

I think that it's an interesting spot, because a Truthless is not supposed to have any agency and so they don't have any moral properties outside of obedience (or so the Shin seem to think, at any rate). If that's true then the moral properties of his actions would belong to the people holding the oathstone. It's not clear to me that the mass murder with superpowers is an example of what we could typically expect here, but they're so rare (and it's implied that existence of a Truthless is bad news anyways) that it's hard to say. I mean, if they didn't want him to fight they wouldn't have sent him with an Honorblade... So I think that he was being a "good" Truthless in regard to his dedication to obeying anyone that held his oathstone, but it's strongly suggested that Truthless are thought to be fundamentally bad people. Warriors and killers seem to be thought of similarly in Shinovar. Szeth lived up to his role, but that role was being the worst person possible-- he was a "good" (dutiful) Shin according to standards we don't know for reasons we don't understand. The question is then "does it matter that he wasn't really Truthless?". It's hard to evaluate a Truthless subsuming their moral capacities when we have no idea why it might be done and what we should expect from it. I certainly wouldn't endorse dozens of unprovoked assassinations, which destabilized the world, for no particular reason. But since he wasn't actually Truthless he doesn't get the excuse of having no agency, even though in Shinovar it was everyone but him that made the mistake of labeling him a Truthless in the first place. So, "honorable" in that he did everything he could to fulfill his obligations to his best ability, but probably "wrong" in a moral sense both because the conditions under which he slaughtered weren't the ones that made it "ok", and because Truthless are in some way inherently "bad". And we don't have enough information to evaluate whether or not following the Truthless rules has much behind it even when they are correctly applied. I'd lean towards saying his time as a presumed Truthless was not good, but I think that arguments can be made in the absence of sufficient information.

That's true, but his answers suggest to me that he's got at least a solid idea for it. So I guess I'll hedge and say it's likely to be really important or really unimportant

That's an interesting idea. Since ettmetal is Harmonium, I'd assumed the buzzing would if anything be like other Pure Tones, like those of Cultivation, Honor, Odium, and Preservation, rather than the distinctive pulses of Allomancy. I don't recall anything about the frequency being written yet other than characters observe that the buzzing is happening. I bet we'll find out in November! I'm no engineer, but I'd use it for validation and error prevention in Allomantic machinery. Like, a device won't operate if the ettmetal will produce a steelpush when the machine is supposed to do something else, especially if the steelpush would be dangerous. A sixteen-state gate might be useful in some applications, but I'd be more concerned about using Allomancy to do the work. It's just so much easier and more accessible to use an electronic circuit. Especially since ettmetal is so unstable.

Unity (capital "U") is definitely something, but I don't believe that it is at a level above the Shards (so, not Adonalsium), nor that it's a fundamental element of the Cosmere like Connection or Identity. The idea that it's a Dawnshard is intriguing though. I think that it's a possible "form" of Honor's Shard, in the same way that Sazed became Harmony when he could have become Discord upon taking up Ruin and Preservation. Honor is already all about binding things, hence his enthusiasm for oaths. Unity is another angle on the same idea: not on binding things together via promises, but on things being bound together into one thing. We know from WoB that the Shards of Adonalsium that exist are not the only ones that could have existed, and that there could have been fewer or more Shards than 16, and that we could have had 16 totally different Shards than exist in the Cosmere. My suspicion is that Honor being Splintered would make it easier for someone to shift to another manifestation of the Shard itself if it were reconstituted, and when Dalinar briefly ascended he channeled that Shard's power in that way-- as Unity, not Honor. So I agree with you 100% that Unity is probably a Shard, but not a "new" one; rather, it would be a replacement for Honor. You're definitely on to something that the capital "U" is significant, but I think that the significance isn't clear yet. Passion is often capitalized when Odium says the word, and once when Ruin said it, but that's not a Shard (maybe a Dawnshard?). And across all of the Cosmere we are starting to get flooded with words that are officially capitalized. It's confusing! Also, welcome!

I recall that one too, but that could also be in line with an "ordinary" coppermind. The event I referenced above is the only time I recall us seeing that incredible memory in effect, and what differentiates it from Sazed's (at least that we see clearly) is the immediacy and depth of detail he recalls. The immediate recall could easily be compounded zinc, but the detail is less obvious and I'd bet it's due to copper compounding in some way. I'd be disappointed if copper compounding was as limited as perfectly recording a memory without removing it from the Feruchemist's mind, but your idea has a bit more meat to it which is exciting. It's unlikely that the Lord Ruler would be bothering to dump every moment of every day into a coppermind and also doing the rote work to also have the information in his mind, and only modestly less unlikely that he's constantly tapping his copperminds like an all-encompassing external storage device. Even then, the sheer volume of information he'd have to sift through would be an irritation, more so with each passing day. That it's consistently been a RAFO suggests that copper compounding has a substantial effect which will be meaningful in a plot at some point.

Permanent, clear, and easily accessible, maybe? Sazed's copperminds probably hold far less than the Lord Ruler's, and even he needs to store things like indices to be able to reference them well. The Lord Ruler's memory is quick and amazing, like recognizing Kelsier immediately and remembering details about his failed theft and Mare. Of course, he could be doing some workarounds with compounded zinc to achieve that same effect.

This is a good question. We know from Navani's research that knowledge of how to use a gemstone to bond a Blade came some time after the Recreance, and as far as we know it's the gemstone-driven bonding of a Blade that causes it to appear next to the corpse of its (former) wielder. So I don't think that Testament would definitely appear next to Shallan if she were to die because her bond to Testament is direct, not just some person holding an arbitrary Blade with an attached gemstone. She certainly didn't keep Testament with her for the requisite period to bond a dead Blade. I also think it's more likely (though I wouldn't say it's definitive, given how unreliable a narrator Shallan has been) that her Soulcasting of the goblet to blood was from her developing relationship with Pattern rather than a lingering effect of her broken bond with Testament. It's also possible that Shallan was Surgebinding without a bonded spren, which seems possible (though we know nothing about it). As for the Recreance, my impression was that the summoning of Blades and driving them into the ground was more of a dramatic, symbolic statement, and not necessarily how every Radiant rejecting their oaths would have done it. The Radiants summoned their spren as Blades, then broke their bonds as they walked away from the keep. This left the bodies of the spren manifested in the physical realm rather than the cognitive, so they wouldn't be manifesting in Shadesmar as deadeyes at that time. Between the Recreance and the discovery of attaching gemstones to Blades they would be much harder to keep track of, and harder to even keep on hand (they're so unwieldy and obvious when carried!). For example, look how long it took to find Oathbringer after Sadeas' death. Shadesmar itself is huge and mostly covered by the bead ocean, where we know many deadeyes spend a fair amount of time. We also know that spren can be hurt and even killed, so maybe some of them were destroyed by dangerous spren (like angerspren) while unable to defend themselves. So I don't know that we can say there are too few of them there. And a spren whose bond was broken while in Shadesmar might never physically manifest, given how hard it was to get to and from the realm after the Recreance. So in summary I don't think that it's all that suspicious that there are so few Blades known on Roshar, and so few observed deadeyes in Shadesmar. Of the remaining physical Blades, many may just be lost in the physical world. Many are known to still be around and are in active use. Some are probably in the hands of the Skybreakers (they may not use them themselves, but Helaran's Blade came from somewhere, and was given to him by the Skybreakers). I think that it's a good guess that at least some are in Shinovar, though I am not convinced that it's as many as you suggest or for the reasons you suggest.

It's hard to say for sure since we have so few examples. Kelsier lasted quite a while despite not even knowing about duralumin, while Vin passed on to the Spiritual Realm pretty quickly despite having burned a lot of it. Becoming a cognitive shadow for real (like a Returned or a Herald) probably involves more than just high Investiture, even though that is a very important element in the process.

Also in no particular order: Vin Vasher Kelsier Sazed Steris Wow, that's a lot more Mistborn heavy than I would have expected!

Maybe? Szeth was (and is) an extremely competent fighter and freely used the Windrunner Surges, which the Kholins didn't have experience dealing with. Even without Surgebinding Kaladin held his own against two Shardbearers in Plate in Adolin's duel, at least until his Stormlight ran out. I wouldn't say his performance was likely to have been worse if he'd had his Blade and was using his powers.

That's an assumption that Vin and Elend made, I don't recall anything actually indicating that it's true. The Kandra were (largely) very loyal and devoted to the Lord Ruler even though he wasn't directly controlling them all the time. Given how restive they were and how manipulative they became (like the efforts to discredit Tevidian and take over formal control of the Steel Ministry), it seems that the Lord Ruler was not controlling them even as they tried to serve him (like through a "better" Steel Ministry). And while Vin and Elend proposed the idea of Allomantic control as a sort of an emergency measure, we as readers know that it's just a property of hemalurgic spiking-- the Lord Ruler didn't "create a weakness" in the nonhumans he made, he made nonhumans who happened to have this property as an inherent effect of what they were. They extrapolated that Inquisitors were controllable, but everything more was just speculation on their part. Sure, but he was certain of his victory and the incipient deaths of Vin and Marsh at his hands anyways. There was just no need to control Marsh, from his perspective, so it would be nonzero risk for zero upside. The only opponent that he felt mattered at all was Ruin; if you were going to step on an ant, would you jump up in the air as high as you could and make the effort to thrust your legs down as hard as you could at just the right moment so that you would maximize the force you apply to crush it? Or would you just step on it casually and then get on with your day? Those seem plausible, too. In any case my position is that it's not necessarily an oversight on the author's part, there is more than enough space for these events to be consistent with the book. And I suppose we always have the ultimate cop-out that Ruin was influencing him in ways that would lead to his defeat.

I think that your guesses are largely correct in both cases: The Lord Ruler's mass-soothing is very unfocused, affecting thousands of people at once, which may dilute what he can do to any given individual with it. Breeze has a similar tradeoff to make when he's working with crowds compared with when he's influencing fewer people. This might be enough to protect OreSeur from being casually taken over, especially since his presence unknown to most and he appeared to be just a corpse. As for Marsh, Vin was flaring her copper to resist the Lord Ruler's soothing, and if she felt the need to do that it's not unreasonable that Marsh would have as well: I don't think we ever see anyone but Ruin directly control Inquisitors with Allomancy. Vin almost does in Hero of Ages, but is rebuffed by Ruin, so all else being equal it was almost certainly possible for the Lord Ruler to have controlled Marsh during his final battle. We don't know how much influence the copper might have in rebuffing the attempt to take control, but it's plausible, even likely, that the Lord Ruler wouldn't have made the effort anyways. The ability to directly control Inquisitors, Kandra, and Koloss was a very tightly-held secret which would have been revealed to a definite enemy if he'd done so. And why bother, especially given that risk? He was absurdly powerful, well beyond what Marsh or Vin understood at the time, and had no reason to think that the others in the room were any danger to him. Indeed, had Vin not channeled Preservation's power directly to fuel her Allomancy while also suddenly realizing the secret to his immortality, the Lord Ruler would simply have killed her and Marsh like all other opponents over a thousand years.

I've had this happen to me, and it seems (in my case, at least) to be a pretty standard case of merging details that seem similar. Once they're combined my brain reinforces the supposed connection and it becomes what I "remember". Nothing mystical or even unusual, just memory being imperfect (and sometimes really imperfect). If it were my fuzzy memory I would imagine somemthing like a blended recollection of Wax moving the lifeboat (he holds onto straps attached to the floor while using Allomancy to move it), or the description of how the airship might have been transported to the Set's facility where it was researched, to combine with his using Allomancy to keep the Set's ship from escaping.

Good find! That's a solid enough piece of evidence that the duralumin route can work, and I think it tips the balance the other way from how I'd thought about it before. Unless something changes, using duralumin is a route to becoming an Allomantic savant.

I've always liked Awakening just because of the passive effects of the Breaths you hold. Awakening itself seems like it could be hard to use effectively in many situations, but it still gives some nice options as long as you're practiced and creative.