Lord Ruler Sylphrena

I think its because we are learning the magic system along with the characters for the first two. Each development was fascinating and fun. I don't believe that the writing quality ever got worse but you can only raise the bar so many times and pull out so many reveals before it gets stale or at the very least familiar and expected. Kaladin swearing the 3rd ideal was probably my favorite moment in all of fiction but when he swore his fifth I just thought "cool". SA is still my favorite Brandon series but I love checking out everything he has written as each new series gives me the same wonderful feeling of discovering a new world and magic system as TWoK and WoR.

Depends on what you consider being Merciful. Mercy killing is a thing.

I think each method produces a slightly different type of Cognitive shadow. The way they describe becoming a Herald it seems the only you lose is your body a you receive a new one made of investiture. Given this fact it seems that Herald's keep their soul/spirtual realm aspect. Honestly who knows though.

Spren can vanish from the physical realm due to not being perceived. I imagine paying attention to deadeyes or giving them Biochroma (Anything that makes them more alive) can turn them into Unoathed Spren even if they are currently dead shardblades/plate.

Notum crossed over but not as a blade I don't think I believe you need to have been a deadeye to join the Unoathed (As a weapon).

I think you understand it pretty well already. All that Hemalurgy needs is intent. Battar probably found crystals that grant a similar effect to Steelsight and gave them to Moash.

Adolin and Maya were able to bring in 9 suits of plate and blades. This means there are 10 full sets of Unoathed shard equipment. Not including the non Unoathed plate and blades how many more Unoathed shards do you think can be utilized? With the disappearance of stormlight the Unoathed will be extra imporant to helping Azir. They could also be highly desirable for Worldhoppers now that Spren can travel off world. Given the fact that most dead eyes come from the Recreance how many of them could be used to equip people to fight Retribution.

We know that Invention has been going around making stuff and something called the Grand Apparatus gives me strong Invention vibes. Your right that it could be Adonalsium who made it. I think given the fact that we will see it later in the timeline makes it more likely that Invention made it.

I don't think Braize is the grand apparatus as Honor finds the Rosharan system pretty quick and I don't think Invention would have a chance to create it. I totally had the same thought though and there was a lot of weird stuff going on this book that the other shards may have been involved in Fourth Moon etc.

Starting at the well is very clever and following this logic I would start at the shattering and pick Endowment as my shard. Due to the further back you go the easier it becomes to get power I'll give myself the restriction of Mistborn era 1 as my start date. Assuming I start with everything I know about Cosmere mechanics I'll start on Scadrial and bring a couple friends with me. We would spike a number of Mistings and Feruchemists and make so each of us can compound one element(I don't want to be under a shards influence so sharing the spikes will reduce the weakness). We could then share our powers to reduce the need for extra spikes. Then I would go to Nalthis and spike a Divine Breath for immortality. Finally I would go to Roshar before the events of the first book of SA and steal as many Honorblades as possible from the Shin. Finally I use transportation to find find a planet with no active shard and spend the rest of my days as a benevolent god king collecting any other powers I desire over the centuries.

I don't think Spook got the feruchemy by bonding Kelsier as Kelsier is not a Feruchemist. I also don't think that Spook made the bands as they are said to be created by Kelsier and are a Southern Scadrian Artifact. Also you refer to Spook bonding Kelsier and refer to Kelsier as a Spren. Kelsier is a Cognitive shadow these are things are very different and you cannot bond a Cognitive shadow the same way you can a Spren. I do agree that Kelsier was put into a mistwraith. When it comes to the making of the bands I don't think they require a fullborn as that it would take around 32 spikes to grant every power which is more then a person can handle. They were probably made by all the Southern Scadrains donating their powers and forming a super metal mind that they could use for emergencies. Also Kelsier has lost his allomancy so they could not use his powers to help fill the bands.

I think you can be specific and avoid stealing identity and connection if you know what bind point to use. Also you could steal your own identity/connection and use Regrowth or F-Gold to not die. You could the replace your connection/identity with the person who's power you want to use.

For the first part the answerer is essentially yes, I truly have no idea how it would work but a lot of interesting things can be done with connection and identity. I know forging spikes is very difficult particularly making it think it is much older then it is. Using a Pathian earing is a very smart suggestion that would make it much easier to forge with the addition of messing with the spikes connection and identity along with using a ton of investiture. I'm now wondering if just forging yourself into a compounder would be easier as unless you were alive during Era 1 its going to be a very hard to say that you got a spike before you were even born. You would probably have to do a couple forgeries as a set up to make this thing work but with a good forger and purified Dor it should work. This turned out to be a much more complicated then I thought but then again compounding is way too strong to obtain easily. Something that I'm just realizing now but could definitely work is stealing someone's Allomancy/Feruchemy and identity while blanking your own identity this should theoretically bypass identity contamination and allow you to compound with no forgeries needed. I've now seen that there is another thread were someone else figured this out. It really invalidates all other ways to bypass identity contamination as it just makes sense. I still find it interesting to see if there are alternative methods.

I'm not sure that's how it works. I think extra efficiency comes knowing how to do more with less and having better control over your Ribbons. It is possible that you get more efficient but I think the high level Sand Masters would would have been able to handle the effects KaDo better if they had meaningfully higher efficiency.

Oathgates and Spaceships will definitely be critical to interplanetary travel. I think improved versions of Ships like the Fourth Bridge or the stuff the Malwish might become just as important and could be a big export to planets that don't have efficient planetary travel. Aon Dor teleportation is definitely interesting to think about but might be situational due to the geographically bound nature of the magic.

I wonder what the potential of pure tones is. I know the Iridescent tones in Warbreaker gives you visions of the future and lets you come back as a returned. If there was a way you could connect strongly to the pure tones of Honor or Odium I wonder if it might let you borrow some their foresight/powers. Probably not though.

Don't give up! I've managed to convert my entire family into Sanderfans. It does take them a couple months to get through a Stormlight book though.

Emperor's Soul is underrated. I think there should probably be a separate poll for short stories as they don't have enough material to compete with main series book but a very enjoyable in their own right. I might consider making a poll like that at some point.

Yeah the existence of the Bands of Mourning does partially invalidate this theory. I'm wondering wondering if maybe you could hack this system reinforcing your Feruchemical Nicrosil with spikes that give you F-Aluminuim and F-Duralumin and get a similar effect to the one I desired. One thing that you could use is Soulforging a spike to circumvent the limits Harmony put on Hemalurgy. I know that you can no longer compound with Hemalurgy but Marsh's spikes still work so if you could Soulforge a spike to make it think it was put into you before Sazed Ascended there shouldn't be anything stopping you. You would probably need some purified Dor but I think its a easier method to compound then the one I initially thought one.

I think losing those breaths would feel like a massive hangover but as long as they don't give them all up in one go they should be fine (Their one divine breath is still worth 5000 so its not that much of shock). The plan for the Scholars is to make sure the majority of the Heralds are fighting lifeless while they take down their most dangerous members (Taln, Ishar). If Heralds are cautious they can definitely win with the superior power of the Surges. The hordes of lifeless probably wont kill any heralds but their only purpose in this fight is to make sure the Scholars don't fight with a numbers disadvantage. Having high level awakening gives you a lot of opportunities and having lifeless as human shields means I don't think the Scholars need to have a perfect plan, they just need to fight a bit smarter then Heralds. There are ton of pathways which can cause this to go either way and I really hope we see a fight like this in era 3.

Feruchemy easily. It leaves you opportunities for compounding if your clever and I think Nicrosil Feruchemy and Duralumin Feruchemy are really underrated powers. I'm thinking a Duralumin compounder could be almost as strong as a Bondsmith and a Nicrosil Compounder could store gain access to a bunch of powers.

I'm not including some fights as while they might be good I'm not sure they are anyone's favorite. Epic could mean grand in scale but I also think it could mean very good combat. I should have probably broken this down per book as there are a ton of great fights but I'll do that later. I'll also look up how to make it a choose 3 poll so you can pick one from each book (close to each).

The Heralds didn't spend all of that time training for a lot of it they were being tortured. Also the Scholars all fought in the Manywar. They were generals and kings just as much as they were Scholars. I think most of the Heralds are probably better but the gap isn't that far. You also have to factor in the enhanced physical stats and awareness divine breath gives. Your totally right about Bondsmithing though that's just a insane power.

I feel the main threat to the Scholars is not actually Taln but Jezrien and Nale. Anyone who tries to engage the Scholars up close will be teamed on by lifeless or overdose on breath but Jezrien and Nale could fly above and snipe the Scholars if they get expose themselves. Nighblood and arrows could make up the difference on this front but it would be tough. There are also probably a lot of very clever commands that we have not seen that could deal with Surges. A immobilize command on Jezrien and Nale's clothes could really mess up their flying. Soulcasting will destroy the lifeless with ease though. Also for this fight I don't thinking the lifeless having a aluminum coating is fair. If Scholars have the prep time to get even more powerful lifeless and equip them with awakened blades I think the heralds just get wiped. Scholars could conquer the whole Cosmere with a army like that.

Fair enough but do you think they could handle the Scholar's armies of lifeless? I know that heralds have been taken down by thunderclasts and Kalad's Phantoms are basically mini versions of them. I do still think Heralds take it 70% of the time but they could simple be overwhelmed. I'm not sure the Scholar's have a counter to Bondsmithing and Taln is insanely good. Still the Scholars are also super human I think they could beat Taln if they all teamed up on him/used the Trick Vasher did on Arsteel and Denth.