Cheese Ninja

The Oathstone is my second guess for the source of his powers, my first guess is his Shardblade. I think the Oathstone is at least slightly magical. There's a scene early on in the book where he mentions that the Parshendi just tossed it into a ditch as they were fleeing Kholinar. Szeth either had to have seen them throw it away, or has some sort of connection to the Oathstone that allows him find when it is unclaimed. It does not appear to confer absolute obedience, he can go against what the bearer of the Oathstone says. At one point near the end of the book he considers killing Taravangian even after being given orders not to harm him. If it is magical, there might be repercussions for doing that.

I should probably address the first post directly, for clarifications, corrections, and differences of opinion. There you go. Name of the chapter is "Gibletish". Actually, She followed the mist spirit to find a bead of Lerasium in his bootprint, she didn't follow his footprints to the Well. I don't think he needed Ruin to be released to reform Adonalsium. But it still might have been his goal because he foresaw the formation of Harmony, a being in much better shape to protect itself from Odium than simply Ruin or Preservation. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/library/39/Mistborn-2-Alternate-Ending-Part-Two Hoid used Shadesmar to sneak into there while no one was looking, which is a pretty awesome trick for him. He can teleport himself around a world, to some degree. I argue that we've never seen Shards at their full power, they're all Invested in something or other, and in Elantris's case even Splintered, after Odium had killed the Shardholders. Also, as has already been pointed out, Hoid had a very small cameo at the wedding in AoL. There's your other relevant quote, with Hoid being particularly vague. I really don't know how we're supposed to interpret those first few sentences("I began life..."), but my theory for the "I was named for a rock." is that he was a Shardholder at some point, and then gave it up. (rock=Shard) I agree the "old acquaintance" is probably Odium. He needs at least a decent sized chunk of Odium for his plans, and so he needs to find something that Odium has Invested, which is difficult, because that's not something Odium likes to do in the first place. And that whole conflict between them that was mentioned in the Letter is another part of it. I wonder if that black sphere that Gavilar had and passed onto Szeth contains Invested Odium?

Not a bad theory. Well now I feel like I should rethink my whole "he's not going to use himself as the base" thing. "My own skin" sounds like a not very subtle way of saying that he took it into himself. Maybe he can extract it later?

I think it's a bit of both, but quotes from Brandon say that the person becomes the Shard, he doesn't really seem to like using their names at all once they take up the Shard. The Letter states that "Ati was once a kind and generous man, and you saw what became of him. Rayse, on the other hand, was among the most loathsome, crafty, and dangerous individuals I had ever met.", so it definitely influences their thinking. Brandon also says that part of the reason Rayse Splinters Shards instead of taking them up himself is because he doesn't want to be influenced by holding them. Even after holding Ruin and Preservation for only a few hundred years, Sazed is already thinking more in line as "Harmony" than simply "I'm backing the good guy here.". I got the impression that using your Shard in any to power a magic system would limit what you could draw of it (or through it, since I'm not clear whether they use the Shard itself or simply use it as a catalyst to channel the "power of creation"). Ruin and Preservation also put themselves/were put into the people of Scadrial, the Mists, the Well, and the Pits. Since they had nearly equal amounts of the Shards invested into things other than themselves, they were pretty much equal. The bits that were in people allowed people to access the magic system. This is true of all Cosmere magic systems created post-Splintering. I really don't understand how pre-Splintering systems like Lightweaving work or whether they're outside of Realmatic Theory. Odium is powerful because Rayse doesn't invest himself into anyone or anything else, he keeps all of the Shard's power for himself. So I'm in the same boat as Reader in thinking that "broken" refers to Rayse's personality and morals than the state of the Odium shard. Of course, if he has invested himself into the Shardblades, I'm completely wrong.

I too believe that Hoid plans to reconstruct Adonalsium. I'm not sure if he's planning to use a new base or if the original is still somehow usable. For some reason I don't think he's going to use himself as the base, but there's no way to be sure. I'm also not sure which bits of Shards he has collected besides Atium and Lerasium, maybe a few thousand Breaths as well? He probably picked up those glowy spheres in Elantris (aons and seons?). We know from Compounding that it is possible to get more out of the magic system than normal if you cheat it. He justs needs to understand Realmatic Theory better than we do to do it on a much larger scale.

After reading a bit of this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/wrhb4/i_once_heard_that_if_you_wore_glasses_that_turned/ ...I feel like I under-thought the whole "seeing upside down" thing. It seems that if you wore glasses that inverted your field of vision, you'd adjust after a few days. You would no longer think of what you're seeing as "being upside down". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation Four isn't much of a sample size, but I'm pretty sure at this point that the Nightwatcher's curses affect neurons.

It wouldn't take very many Inquisitor spikes to make thousands of tiny metal stud earrings. (Probably between .5 and 1.5 grams each earring.) The "Mistborn breeding program" sets things up rather nicely for the next trilogy. Odium's_Shard may feel it is too early for everything to be figured out, but I'm sure some twists will be worked into the next Wax and Wayne books. I'm curious about how the main character's Nicrosil burst is going to be applied. On a Tineye investigator at a murder scene? On a Coinshot in a firefight? On enemies unprepared for the burst? And of course, I really want to see what happens from Nicrosil Investiture Compounding, which may not happen at all. I'm also curious about whether the main character is going to be male or female, I don't think I've seen that mentioned yet, the 2nd trilogy might be too far off to have decided a minor point like that. I'm not sure whether Sazed's need for balance would have required him supporting Miles in some way. It seems to go against his personality from the original trilogy, and that shouldn't have been particularly warped since he has two complementary Shards. I don't actually like any of our available options for who might have given Miles the visions he was talking about.

I haven't seen any quotes about the main protagonist in the 2nd trilogy being a Twinborn either. I made a bunch of comments about it being cool if he/she either turned out to be one, or was turned into one either by a spike or Sazed's intervention. It might still be useless, but I don't think it would be. The main quote of BS's that I can think of is "anything relating to Investiture is a big RAFO". A full Mistborn serial killer would be an extremely dangerous enemy, with or without clever planning and/or strong allies.

Yeah, but in the one instance we saw of it being transferred and the numerous instances that we know it was transferred the Breath was used for healing immediately. "Everything" isn't all that much in this case. If Susebron hadn't needed to be healed we would have a much better idea as to whether another Returned could hold onto extra Divine Breaths.

They would force them to give it up either by torture or convincing them that transferring their Divine Breath is the right thing to do. Same way Awakeners get forced to transfer normal breaths that we saw in the very beginning of the book. There's no indication in the novel that Yesteel knows how to make swords like Nightblood, but it's implied in the annotations that if the war wasn't prevented, Idris would have allied with Yesteel's kingdom and destroyed Hallandren using Lifeless and swords like Nightblood. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/435/Warbreaker-Chapter-Fifty-FIve I think there might even be an implication that the children of Returned are Returned themselves.

If you consider that a Divine Breath allows a Returned to reach the 5th Heightening, that implies that they are worth at least 2000 normal breaths: http://coppermind.17thshard.com/wiki/Breath#Heightenings And in the Warbreaker annotations it seems that Vasher makes sure that he holds onto his Divine Breath anytime he Awakens something (last paragraph): http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/438/Warbreaker-Chapter-Fifty-Eight Of course, it would kill a Returned if they lose their Divine Breath, and I think that regardless of whether it is transferred or not, it still needs the one breath a week to ensure its continued existence. So if a Returned acquired 24 other Divine Breaths, he's still need 25 normal Breaths a week to keep himself alive and keep the Divine Breaths from going poof. But he'd also be at the 10th Heightening, since those 25 Divine Breaths would be at minimum equal to 50,000 normal Breaths. If Yesteel uses this tactic (and it actually works), it might partially explain how he'd be able to make more swords like Nightblood in the sequel.

I think at least one or two Heralds are with the Parshendi. I don't think it's a coincidence that the knife Kaladin finds on their corpses in the Chasm Duty chapter has a picture of what he thinks is either Jezerezeh or Nalan.

Thank you, I'd forgotten that and passed over that line looking for the Shadesmar quote.

Here's the quote in question, how they know about people visiting Shadesmar. True, he doesn't mention sending messages to find out if any ardents have eaten there, just talks about reading to find out. Also, I didn't take note this before, but here is a male who reads, and probably not just Glyphs, those don't seem very good for communicating accounts of travels to Shadesmar. As to why they wouldn't be able to go themselves, I don't think they have a Soulcaster. Those two are out in the boonies away from the rest of the world, and that hardly warrants them being supplied with a precious Soulcaster.

I was going to go with "nothing happens" outside of normal metal burning. But since I don't really see any reason compounding should give you a net increase besides simply "you're cheating the system", I'll say that if the person is already an Awakener then they can Compound the breaths, although possibly only if they were the one that invested the metal with the breath in the first place. Hmm, then it gets into whether it matters if the metal was awakened or simply invested with breaths. Remember, Awakening Nightblood involved Ninth Heightening (20000 breaths) and the usage of 1000 breaths. If you don't care about sentience you could use less Breaths, but still need the Ninth Heightening. I'm not sure it says anywhere whether you can invest stone and steel at lower levels with "My life to yours, my Breath become yours." in the same way Vivenna hid her breath inside a scarf, without any commands.

4. Luesh may have been lying, and operating a real Soulcaster is as easy as Kabsal said it was. Or, more likely, a real Soulcaster works by transporting its user to Shadesmar, in a similar way to how we see Shallan Soulcast. From the outside, all you see is a person tapping a stone, but that's only because all the action occurs on a different plane. I hadn't considered it before, but now that I've typed this, I kinda like it. It explains how the ardents doing spren/cooking research in the interlude know about Shadesmar and even bring up the question of whether it is possible to eat while visiting Shadesmar. If all that was involved was tapping a stone, I doubt there'd be much need to train ardents in their usage by converting things into metal as practice. (Iron which is then scrapped and then traded to the Shin.) The reason given for the practice is so that they don't screw up when making food and make something poisonous. I think that it was a real, working Soulcaster before it was broken. (Probably by a shardblade, there's no other usage of the word "shear" in WoK outside of things being cut with shardblades.) If I remember correctly it cut through one of the stone settings and two chains, and the soulcaster was found in the interior breast pocket of her father's coat, but it doesn't say that he was wearing it.

I like the simplicity of Nahel spren being intentional splinters like the Divine Breath of Returned in Warbreaker, and then the everyday spren we see throughout the book being post-Honor's death Splinters.

Double post/bump with new information: At the 25:20 point of this Google+ Sydney Hangout He's asked what ability of one of his character would he most like to have. His answer: flying, either by steelpushing, Mistborn, or gravity surges. I knew I was on to something there.

I feel like we never got a very good feel for Szeth's stormlight efficency vs. Kaladin's but I still think you're right. Kaladin does hold it for a very long time (15-20 minutes?) when he climbs up the chasm to tie the breastplate to the bridge, and that's even while expending on the rocks to climb and using up the rest when he jumps down at the end. On the other hand, Szeth always is operating with a glut of infused spheres, and says a human can only hold Stormlight for a few minutes. Which obviously means Kaladin is a Voidbringer... Hmm, I was joking, but there's a certain odd appeal to that now that I've typed it down.

I feel like Brandon really likes it when his characters can fly or just simply be superstrong. Mistborn could keep themselves in the air pretty well with metal pushes and pulls, plus they have pewter for super strength. Wax could keep himself in the air pretty easily with pushes, gunshots, and weight manipulation. Talented Awakeners could use tasseled sleeves and pantlegs to approximate super strength, especially in jumps. Windrunners can manipulate gravity's effect on themselves and other objects, plus the have the Stormlight enhanced strength. Elantrians can't fly, but they can teleport. So yeah, besides Elantrians, they are all like superheroes who are sharply limited by the amount of resources they have at hand. The whole "limitations are more interesting in a magic system than the powers" thing. http://brandonsanderson.com/article/100/Sandersons-Second-Law Hmm, googled the Sanderson's Laws, and here's a blog post of his that explicitly mentions Superman from April of 2011.

Anyone with enough Breaths (~2000) to reach the 5th Heightening is immortal, I've seen it mentioned in other threads that Elantrians might be immortal as long as they know how to heal themselves. There is a Brandon quote that implies that we've seen an incognito Herald or two in addition to Taln, Shalash, Jezrien, and Kalak.

Two things I'm not sure about, are we sure Hoid was present at the Shattering and that it didn't happen far before the events of any of the books? Those early drafts of Liar of Partinel seem to indicate that Hoid's world has been a Crapsack World as far back as living memory goes. Couldn't he and the other people who claimed the Shards have come along some time afterwards? And can we be sure that there was there a consciousness behind Adonalsium? It may have behaved by different rules than the Shards. If there was a consciousness, did it dissipate into nothingness, go off somewhere else, or end up divided amongst the Shards? The Shards don't seem to have any intelligence on their own or be capable of action without someone directing them. Edit: Also, whenever people mention the hardness of diamonds, I feel like they should also remember that diamonds have planes of cleavage and can be broken with strong impacts without too much trouble.

On that topic, has anyone though about the possibility of an especially stupid or fearless character in the books who would use their Shardblade to cut their hair or nails? I think the Mysterious Death/Disappearance that Brandon was talking about is Gaz. At least, that's the impression I got when I read the interviews/Q&As. Mostly from this one: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/446239-q-a-with-brandon-sanderson-way-of-kings But yeah, I'm totally on board with the man Kaladin killed being Nan Helaran...

The assorted evidence is way too strong for me to think it could be anyone other than Shalash. Her face is used on either side of the chapter title, she goes around destroying artwork of a particular Herald (or Kadasix, as they're called there). There's the epigraph with "daughter of winds and kings gouges out her eyes." (paraphrased) Shalash's statue was missing in Szeth's prologue, I'd assume it was recently destroyed. She talks about acquiring a Shardblade as it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Ikamusume from the comedic anime/manga Shinryaku! Ikamusume (Invasion Squidgirl) has a bracelet that works like an Ironmind from Mistborn (without the tapping), and 10 hair tentacles that act like freely controlled Awakened objects from Warbreaker. She is essentially a Iron Ferring with Awakened hair.