AnthonyC4

Well yeah, but that's mostly just the consequence of my pet theory that Godmetals connect you to the corresponding Shard. Since Feruchemy is the mixture of Ruin and Preservation, then it stands to reason that burning harmonium makes you a Feruchemist. I'd be shocked if that turned out wrong.

In the 2019 State of Sanderson, he posted his list of 35 core Cosmere books, and stated he had finished eleven in the space of the past fifteen years. At that pace, the rest of the Cosmere sequence would be finished in 30 years. In the past six and a half years, he has finished 3 core cosmere books, we'll call it 3 and a half for the Era 1 Book 1 first draft. That's a rate of about 8 core books per 15 years. That alone adds another 10 years to the time frame for release. He'd be in his mid eighties by that point, and almost certainly not writing as fast as he used to be. He said he "woke up" and realized how little time he has to finish things, but I feel like he's fallen back asleep.

Sanderson mentioned wanting to do Era 3 and the Elantris sequels all together since apparently they need to be done for full context, which was exciting. However, we're nearing midway through 2026 and he's only finished his first draft of Era 3 Book 1, which hasn't even gone through it's first revision yet. To keep on track with his initial release schedule of releasing Book 1 in December of 2028, he needs to basically write four more finished and revised books in the span of a two and a half years. And from early 2025 to mid 2026, a year and a half thereabouts, he has only finished his first draft of just one book. Even before the whole Apple TV thing was confirmed, I felt uneasy about how Sanderson could feasibly finish the Cosmere as it was, even just focusing on the major books and series, what with him basically shelving the White Sand prose version after sitting on it for a few months back in early 2025. Is it just me, or does anybody else feel the same?

Well yeah. Everybody having access to allomantic and feruchemic powers would lessen the importance of Mistborn. But they certainly wouldn't be banal, just an exception. Not warrior of legend, but a more down to earth Commander/Captain/Person of Moderate Influence.

I don't feel this runs counter to anything. The return of Mistborn doesn't erase that technological progress. In fact, it appears that Awakened metalminds are how they go about creating computers and likely a form of general artificial intelligence. That will still remain an entirely viable source of advancement. This also isn't accounting for the use case of using both Mistborn and medallions as a sort of double amplifier, kinda like another duralumin boost. I don't expect it to be something like every soldier being a Mistborn, but I can see them being a specialized class of generalists.

I mean Marsh is almost basically a Fullborn as is. Surely you could get away with 16 for a stronger soul. Maybe a Returned. Oh is it? I didn't know if that was confirmed or not. Neat. I think Mistborn will still have a use, it removes a reliance on supplies of medallions, which might be hard to source, or maintain sufficient stores of, especially in a protracted war with Roshar.

In my various friend groups, I find myself the only one thinking that there will be more Mistborn in future eras. People keep saying that Mistborn would be too powerful for other magic systems and would upset the balance. So I'd like to take this time to pull up some ideas on how exactly new Mistborn might be made in the future. For the sake of discussion, Lerasium is a boring answer, even if we've already had multiple Mistborns born this way. 1) Hemalurgy Sure, Sazed made Scadrian souls weaker to Hemalurgy, but who said anything about a Scadrian Mistborn? It would be cool to see a native of another planet become a Mistborn through the piecemeal collection of Misting spikes. 2) Connection shenanigans So my little pet theory is that Godmetals forge a connection between you and the Shard the godmetal is of. So if you ingest Lerasium, you become a Mistborn because a connection forms between you and Preservation. You'd become a Feruchemist if you burned Harmonium, and you might potentially be able to get other magic systems this way, like burning the Dor's godmetal to become an Elantrian (provided you had the correct connection to the land). But that doesn't mean ingesting godmetals is the only way to form that connection. A bondsmith could possibly turn someone into a Mistborn if they figured out how to connect someone to Preservation in the same way lerasium does. 3) Discord If Discord wants to stir things up on Scadrial, the easiest way to do that is to start poofing people into Mistborns like he did with Spook. 4) Bands of Mourning mass production If it could be made once before, it could happen repeatedly. It also fits right on in with Kelsier's objectives. Of these options, I feel the Hemalurgy and Connection shenanigans are most interesting, and Bands of Mourning the most likely option.

There is an part I noted, in one of the Honor flashbacks, where he refers to himself as "heir to Honor" and makes references to a "predecessor".

That follows from what I've seen yeah. But the step that I'm not sure about is why "Evil" became "Investiture". We know Awakening is somewhat programmatic, so the wording is very important. Evil must have some defined meaning within the context of Awakening, and somehow Evil correlates to Investiture. And my question is why?

I was thinking about it, and the "destroy" part seems to be well translated, even if absorption isn't my go-to when I think of destroying things. But how does "Evil" turn into "Investiture"? This leads me to consider that one of the following might be true: Investiture is evil This would tie into a possible explanation as to why people thought the Shattering was necessary, as demonstrated by the following WoB: It would also seem to line up with the general "consequences matter" morality Brandon seems to champion in Stormlight, though it might be a bit of a stretch to take that to assume evil is a tangible real measurable thing. But this is the explanation that makes the translation the clearest and most direct. Adonalsium is evil Now this might seem similar to the previous point, but different in the sense that now evil is no longer a tangible physical thing that can be ascribed to investiture at large. Now, we assume that Adonalsium itself, whatever form it took, be it man, god, or force, was in large part an evil entity. And since all Investiture is Adonalsium, and Adonalsium is evil, then by extension all investiture is evil. But instead of the direct ascribement of evil to Investiture, it is only evil by association to Adonalsium. The fact that Endowment was involved in the creation of Nightblood, who would have had the context necessary to make such an assertion, makes this seem more plausible. Something else is evil Some important things to note here, because I'm struggling to come up with alternative explanations. The first, is the Nightblood's abilities are not dependent upon the person wielding it. That means there is a set in stone definition as to what Nightblood considers to be "evil". The narrative poses it as though Nightblood has some sort of influence as to what can be considered evil, but his consistent use seems to stand in contrast to this. The second thing to note, is that there ARE some notable instances where someone considered "not evil" is around Nightblood. Vivenna is the prime example of this, as she grows nauseous when in close proximity to Nightblood, whereas others are driven to murderous desire. I'm not quite sure what distinction the command is making between Vivenna and others, who all seem like otherwise normal people. Thoughts?

This is a spitball idea, but if the Atium in Era 1 was not pure Atium, and was instead Atium-Electrum, and yet pure Atium is what happened when Elend burned it with Duralumin, then I hypothesize that burning Duralumin + a god metal alloy recovers the original effect of the god metal. So if you had a Duralumin + Lerasium alloy (which I like to imagine being called duralasium) would turn its user into a duralumin misting if burned normally, but would instead turn into a mistborn if burned alongside duralumin.

So I was thinking about it, and I thought to myself "Perpendicularities only seem to come about whenever massive amounts of investiture are handled, i.e. like a Shard". And I realized that if matter, energy, and investiture are the same substance, then significant amounts of matter or energy should also be able to create perpendicularities as well. And that to me sounded like a black hole. If black holes ARE perpendicularities, then that means that the space age has a way of easily transferring between the physical and cognitive realms without relying on a Shardworld. They can be treated as wormholes, which definitely sounds like an intentional design feature. After all, all currently known perpendicularities are on the surfaces of planets, so having some just being out and about in the vastness of space, while also not being as unreliable as temporary perpendicularities, would give a lot of degrees of freedom to traversal in the space age. Additionally, as a result of the above, I don't really think black holes exist in the cosmere, in the traditional sense. I think perpendicularities form long before escape velocity tends to the speed of light, at which point the mass of the perpendicularity is spread out in multiple realms, reducing the overall gravitational effect in any particular realm.

I thought souls/Spiritwebs exist in the Spiritual Realm, where Time and Space don't matter? If the Planet has Connections to you such that investiture believes it is an extension of your body, I would imagine that would bring it "closer" to your soul. I didn't even think about being able to remotely draw Aons. Man, sometimes I wonder if we will ever see all the possible combinations of magics that the Cosmere can offer.

If I remember correctly, metals are keys, but can probably be more accurately described as Commands, that let you Connect to Preservation for an effect. You don't Connect to the metal itself. Maybe you could, though I'm not sure it would affect anything. As for the aluminum, you could in theory just have allomantic aluminum on hand in a vial, drink it, then burn it that way. I'm not sure if aluminum takes time to destroy metal reserves or not.

So, there are lots of different magic systems in the Cosmere. And they operate upon the same fundamental rules. As a result, there can be some interesting peculiarities that happen when certain arcana are brought together. I would like to speculate as to what interesting coincidences can be brought about as a result of each magic system. Allomancy + Feruchemy So we already know that you can use Allomancy to enchance the power you get from Feruchemy. This is pretty common knowledge. But I've seen a WoB that says you can do the same but in reverse, that is enhancing Allomancy using Feruchemy. Perhaps by storing some amount of a property into a metalmind, then ingesting and burning it. AonDor + Lightweaving I've seen some people speculate that the Aons for AonDor have some sort of harmonic rhythm to them, and Lightweaving has interesting applications for that. I saw this one on reddit some time ago, but forgot the potential applications. Feruchemy + Awakening We know that Era 3 will likely heavily feature Awakened metalminds, and supposedly this has some incredible technological benefit. I'm not entirely sure what this might entail though. Allomancy + Bondsmith This is more to do with Connections than anything, but remember in Rhythm of War, where Ishar Connected the Radiants to the ground, causing the Stormlight to bleed out of their bodies into the planet? What if that happened with an Allomancer? If the planet is now considered a part of their body, could they not just burn all the metal reserves of the entire planet? If such a person burned aluminum, would that destroy all allomantic metals on the planet? Forgery + Surge of Transformation I have to imagine there's an interesting quirk if you combine these two abilities. Voidbinding + Surgebinding Again, there's almost certainly some sort of interesting cross-over between these two. On a slightly different note, I am very interested in Elantris 2 and 3, because Selish magic is a bit too unexplained for my liking, and I want to see the full scope of the Dor and its potential applications on other magic systems.