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I'm calling it: Adonalsium was a human who was part of the last surviving civilization in a universe that was nearing its end. Upon gaining godly powers, he was able to save the surrounding astronomical region from impending doom (heat death? some magical disaster?) but the extent of his powers was not enough to reach beyond that relatively small region, which came to be the cosmere we know today. (I wasn't being wholly serious. I just thought that would be an awesome scenario that would lead to the cosmere being the only thing in that universe.)

D'oh! I should've known. I was under the impression that OP abandoned his first combination theory mid-post, so it faded from my memory.

Actually I never even mentioned Abrasion and Progression in my theory, as I did not know those Surges at the time. But yeah I acknowledge that my Spren Essences theory is out of date. Speaking of out of date theories, I did have another theory that dealt directly with the connection between the Attributes and the Surges. I wrote it when we started learning more Surges but not about Cohesion yet. Using the pattern I came up with I predicted that the final Surge was Magnetism (which of course was wrong), but Cohesion did sort of fit the pattern as well so I edited the theory after WoR came out. I'm not too fond of it now (especially since I didn't anticipate Brandon renaming Pressure to Adhesion, Friction to Abrasion, and Growth to Progression), but maybe some of you might find it interesting.

I had a sort of similar theory way back, even before Words of Radiance came out. Check it out here. It's similar in that I also wondered how the Attributes relate to spren. Note that this was before most of the Surges and Orders were known to us (because WoK only introduced "Pressure", Gravitation, and "Soulcasting") so I focused on the Essence table, i.e. how the Essences related to the Radiant spren's appearance, and the Attributes that each spren seemed to be attracted to or were actively trying to encourage in their bonded humans. Funnily enough, I failed to link Shallan with "Creative", though I was able to link Cryptics to "Honest" so I still ended up associating the Blood Essence to her (we now know that Blood is the Essence linked to the Order of Lightweavers). I also had this weird thing where I even used the inner connections of the Knights Radiant chart (e.g. Zephyr-Lucentia, Blood-Talus, etc.) instead of just the outer connections. This was because Kaladin's role as a healer who cared for others strongly linked him to Lucentia (Loving/Healing) in my eyes even though he's obviously a leader and a protector as well. I admit that your theory looks more plausible since it's based on current information. *upvotes*

I had a thread about that a long time ago. I called it "Self-Awakening", and speculated that it weakens one's bond with Endowment's Investiture.

As a lover of spoilers who (living in the Philippines) will probably never attend a Sanderson signing, I'd say I am rationally jealous. I am very, very happy that Vivenna is alive. Can't wait to find her!

You are correct. I would've waited for @Lwarch to discover it on his own, but I guess enlightening him now is also cool.

I imagine they'd be a grumpier, less devout version of Geranid and Ashir. Scholarly couples are the best! *ships*

Well, we do know that the Surges of Roshar were inspired by the fundamental forces: As for whether the idea of a unified force inspired the idea of Adonalsium... maybe. I did theorize once that Stormlight is a sort of "Unified Surge" based on the Unified Field Theory, but that's just my speculation.

Whenever I get bored with a book, I always look for spoilers to see if there's anything awesome to look forward to. Here's a minor one for the Emperor's Soul:

Haha, that happens a lot here so don't worry. It takes a crazy amount of dedication to keep up with all the Words of Brandon ("WoBs") out there. But I say you should still be proud of the insights you gathered by yourself, even if they are already known to us. Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar before Odium did. As per the WoB @Spoolofwhool quoted above, the spren of the Knights Radiant are either of Honor and Cultivation (or a mix), but Odium also has his own spren. It makes sense that Honor and Cultivation would cooperate on a magic system, as their Vessels were lovers. But as you can see, there's still debate as to whether the Surgebinding of the Knights Radiant is the magic system of Honor (with Cultivation only contributing her spren for use in her lover's system) or a sort of hybrid magic system of both Shards. Yes, that's the kind of stuff debated on here.

Lift will figure out a way to access all the Surges, making her Roshar's first ever Awesomeborn!

I agree. @☫Kelsier☫, I understand that you did mention the wiki in your post, and you probably formed your questions while browsing the Coppermind, but your questions still do not belong in the Coppermind board because those who haven't read the Mistborn series would be spoiled. Rather, you should've posted it in the Mistborn board instead. Please be more mindful next time.

Good call on the etymology of "nahel". I bet that's exactly where Brandon got it. *upvotes* The fact that Radiant spren need ("thirst for") something from humans was (as you guys probably know) already established in WoK: Now, I know that a Nahel bond allows a human to Surgebind, but they also get something else: With the help of the Words they utter, the Knights Radiant also experience spiritual growth. Given that Radiants are "broken" to some extent (at according to Syl), I wonder if the "one quenching its thirst" isn't just the spren but the human as well, and that the human's thirst is the thirst for self-actualization (think Maslow). I guess I might as well express my one disagreement. Unlike @Tsidqiyah, I espouse the common thought that the bond brings spren closer to the physical realm, though I would phrase it as "the bond strengthens their Connection to the Physical Realm". In this, I agree with @Argent. To connect this with my idea above, I think that while spren get a stronger Connection to the Physical Realm from the bond, humans could be getting a stronger Connection to the Spiritual Realm (the realm of ideals, e.g. the idealized version of oneself) from it, leading eventually to self-actualization. Edit: Another possible origin of the word "nahel" is in Hebrew, where it apparently means "to lead a flock to a watering shed". Both definitions are related to quenching thirst, and the Hebrew word is probably cognate with the Arabic one because Hebrew and Arabic are part of the same language family (Semitic).

I'd like to clarify something. BoM spoilers, (I'm putting it in spoiler tags since this isn't the Mistborn board): Also, I don't think Harmony is the kind of person who would forbid dual worship. Having followers who are strongly Connected to him via genuine religious devotion would of course be advantageous to him because he could affect those people more, but he's probably too wise (or cunning, depending on how you see him) to openly insist on that. As I understand it, Pathism is more concerned with truth than worship. Besides, Harmony's only real competition are actual Shards; in which case, "Thou shalt not have other gods before me" would be rather difficult to enforce if a Pathian is directly corrupted by another Shard (either via Hemalurgy or some other mechanism), don't you think?

Ah, good point. Because she doesn't know who will get a fake death, there'd be a risk of her hoping that a beloved character would be revived, only for her hopes to be dashed in the end. I'm sorry I didn't think of that. The only way to fix this is... to give more spoilers! ("Spoilers: the cause of and solution to all of life's problems!" -Homer Simpson. Oh wait that's alcohol.) Specifically, here are the characters who appear to die but are alive in the end:

Alright. The Coppermind has an incomplete but very long list of dead characters, but that includes characters from Brandon's non-Cosmere books. I'll try to list some notable non-Scadrian Cosmere deaths here, but I'll leave out any name already mentioned by Quiver (a couple of those weren't really dead, by the way ), as well as any villain, and any who died natural deaths; the people below were all killed:

Hi @PennySludt! Aside from the characters mentioned by @Quiver (most of whom are main characters), there are several other less important characters who die in Brandon's books. For example, try not to feel attached to any side character in the Stormlight Archives, as a sizable chunk of them don't even survive the book they're introduced in. There are also some rather gruesome side character deaths in Elantris. Tell me if you want specific names or if you're only interested in the knowing which main characters die. Like you, I also prefer knowing who will die in a story beforehand. But then, I like spoilers in general. The more spoilers, the better. I agree that re-reads are more enjoyable in general than first reads, which is why I try to "cheat" a little and spoil myself so that I can be in semi-"re-read mode" before I even start a book. Also, I like being in the mind of the author, understanding the intention behind as many scenes as possible, rather than letting myself be blindly lead somewhere I might not even want to go. I guess I just don't like surprises.

Yeah, Joseph Lister used carbolic acid in his hospital after reading about Pasteur's work on microbes. Unfortunately, carbolic acid is caustic and toxic, and has now been replaced by safer alternatives in hospitals. Listerine, invented by another Joseph (Joseph Lawrence) only 14 years after Joseph Lister started the practice of using antiseptics, was named after Lister, and was originally used as a safer surgical antiseptic. It contains several essential oils (dissolved in alcohol) that have antiseptic properties. The Listerine mouthwash sold today began as a distilled form of the original formula. I'm not saying that Lister's oil is Listerine. It could be any oil-based antiseptic, even a completely fictional substance, that Brandon decided to name after the Father of Modern Surgery. Like, maybe Lister's oil has antiseptic essential oils like Listerine but dissolved in vegetable oil instead of alcohol. (I've also read that carbolic acid was once dissolved in vegetable oil and used as an anesthetic, but again its caustic nature became an issue.)

Oh yeah. My bad.

Gavilar was proto-Radiant, wasn't he? What if he was unconsciously healing his brother back then, the same way Stump was healing orphans in Edgedancer? Another thought: What if Dalinar was a Squire of Gavilar? That would give him access to Stormlight during his Blackthorn days, though to be honest I'm not even sure if Bondsmiths could have Squires.

Honor was still alive during the Recreance (i.e. the scene in that particular vision). As @The One Who Connects pointed out, the prolonged winter at the time was probably due to a drastic change in the highstorm cycle. We've already seen the Stormfather summon an "unscheduled" highstorm in WoR, so we know he has some level of control there. But yeah, we don't know why he would want to prolong winter, or if it was even a deliberate act on his part.

The timeline makes that impossible. Spook ruled Elendel for a century ever since he was made king post-Catacendre, while the Sovereign was already in the South twelve years post-Catacendre.

Elantrians heal quickly, and the Dor sustains them no matter how old they become, but Karata's death has shown that they can still die. In fact, Galladon's father even died of something called "heart-death" back in the pre-Reod days. The fact that some of them believe they'd still be conscious after their body is destroyed, which would be a problem whether the Elantrian is pre- or post-Reod if it was true (though I don't believe it is), could be the reason for that apparently pre-Reod ritual of placing Elantrians in the Pool as a sort of funeral rite. But while it does seem to offer a release from pain in the Physical Realm, what happens to them after transitioning into the violent Selish Cognitive Realm is not a pretty sight...

I'm curious about what the guy who asked this Q&A question thinks about the discussion so far. Hi, @bdoble97. Is there anything about our answers that you want clarification on? As you can see, while there are beings that have Splinters in them (the Returned), whether or not they can be called Vessels is apparently a totally different matter.