Xanpheon

It's unlikely. Radiant orders and the surges are the result of the Rosharan system's manifestation of Investiture, and the orders specifically are the result of Honor's influence on the method of accessing said MoI. After the result of unbound surges and the urging of Odium/Honor burnt Ashyn, Honor imposed very strict limits on what Surgebinders could do within the limits of the Radiant Orders/the Herald's capabilities. Just because the bounds Honor set on Surgebinders have started to loosen in the wake of his death, doesn't mean that they're going to change who grants those powers.

As for what happens when an Evil is overfed, they're made of raw anti-investiture. They annihilate any Investiture they come into contact with. "Overfeeding" likely means they can't be outright destroyed (without shardic intervention, anyway) by feeding them Investiture, but I imagine overfeeding an Entity basically just means weakening it by making it annihilate enough Investiture to become Lethargic.

I want to clarify I'm not saying that it lets them store Light for an indeterminate amount of time, just that the fact that they canonically have objects that are designed to hold Investiture inside them as part of being the native fauna of Roshar would suggest that they are less "leaky" than humans are, as they have a vessel for it. The fact that Leshwi and the other Heavenly ones ran out of Voidlight proves that even if Voidlight is "stickier" than Stormlight they can't hold it forever without a connection to Odium, but it does suggest that there's something either about the power or about their physiology that holds it better. Holding for longer - i.e. having a store that *can* last through the Weeping - is probably all they need to do. It does raise a separate, interesting question, though. What would it take for an individual to be a "perfect" vessel? The closest we have in mortals seems to be a 5th-ideal Radiant, as Fused are... weird, given their status as Cognitive shadows. But even 5th ideal Radiants almost certainly aren't perfect, as Stormlight *wants* to escape. Further, is swearing the ideals functionally speaking getting closer to being a Savant with your chosen Radiant Order? Your Nahel bond makes you better at holding Investiture the more you bond, and each ideal sworn gives a massive surge of constant power for a short while that could act as a sudden inoculatory dose to get you a step closer to Savantism, letting you hold Investiture longer more safely? All of those questions probably deserve their own topic, now that I think about it.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure this is true. The Dor is kind of an odd-one-out in terms of how the magic systems it powers are very location dependent. Most other systems of magic we see are not location dependent in the same way, just planet dependent. A good example of this is Taldain, with Star Marks and Sand Mastery. Nominally, each power is limited to one side of the planet - but at the end of White Sand 3, Baon receives a test and becomes a Sand Master. As Patji is a splinter of Autonomy, and the shard affects the availability and initiation into a magic system and less the body of the system, it's more likely that it's a case of biology rather than intent.

If Shallan was aware of the cultural meaning of the mask - sure, I'd agree with you. But while I don't think she should have done that, she was investigating the leader of an organization that had repeatedly tried to kill her and had risked harming everyone around them. If you don't know that the mask is such a core part of the culture, it's not equivalent to stripping someone naked after you killed them. Navani was doing that, sure. But now, with the help of the Sibling, she is working out ways to make their technology work that doesn't involve abusing the spren. During Wind and Truth we literally see almost domestic Spren, given names, ways out of the gem, and that almost seem excited to enter. They certainly enjoy and grow from the attention they receive. Had she not attempted to do that - I would agree. But nature spren are not really sentient in the same way that highspren are, and the way Fabrial tech is progressing indicates attempts to move back towards the fabrials of old like Soulcasters or Oathgates - with consenting spren driving their mechanism. That isn't slavery. Domestication? Perhaps, and if you think that's on the same scale then that's fair enough, but they are at least pushing to move back towards fully consensual fabrial technology. Partly responsible? Yes. She missed the obvious path of hammering home that Taravangian has betrayed them time and time again, and is arguing from a position of obvious coercion. And were her actions in the past reprehensible? Sure. No arguments there. Jasnah is easily the Stormlight character who has had the most deconstruction of the first five books, because where she was at the start doesn't really have a sensible character arc to improve from. She needed to be brought down so she could improve again. The narrative absolutely condemns them for their actions. The Sibling nearly dies rather than grant Navani a bond because of her actions, and it drives her to improve. Consequences. Dalinar's past drives the Coalition apart and leaves him a broken man who tries - and fails - to defeat the evil that would redeem him, instead unleashing that evil on the rest of the Cosmere. Shallan is left a person splintered and tortured by her decisions before learning how to properly cope with her actions and how to atone. Jasnah is left broken, alone, and distraught at the end of WaT - and most importantly, they lost. For all their actions, all the advantages that the Alethi conquest in the past had granted, they lost - and it was near entirely because of their past mistakes, the past mistakes of nearly everyone in a position of power. Azir? Collapsed because their constituent states were sick of the Empire, and had to fight an incredibly hard battle with no backup and reinforcements, drafting civilians to defend their home, because the constituent states would rather join an enemy who they had enslaved for hundreds of years in a subservient position rather than risk continuing. The Coalition attempts? Splintered, both because the "ravaging humans" were the outsiders the whole time, and Dalinar's past actions, and the Alethi predisposition to declare themselves king of all. The entire reason that the Singers summoned the Everstorm? The Alethi hunger for battle and "sport", stoked by Nergaoul and the Thrill, using the assassination of their king as an excuse. The narrative absolutely condemns them for their past actions and makes them face the consequences.

I've been searching for a WoB to back me up, and can't, so I apologise for the strength of the statement. I must have conflated the pretty heavy inference from the way that many creatures on Roshar cannot survive without Stormlight - but also seem to retain that stormlight much, much longer than Humans seem to be able to - with a quote somewhere else in my mind, so I apologise. But to explain the reasoning of why I think that: We don't really see Venli or Rlain in a situation where they would need to hold Stormlight longer than other Radiants. The primary places we see Rlain using Stormlight are in the Tower, where he's got a functionally limitless supply of the stuff anyway, so making a statement about how long he can hold it is kind of moot. As for Venli, the primary places we get direct comments about her holding Stormlight are when she's experimenting for the first time in the Tower, and thus cannot risk holding it for long lest someone catch her. Unless I misremember, when she uses her powers in the Shattered plains, she's breathing in Stormlight to use it immediately. The Fused have a "passive" use of their power fueled both by holding Voidlight and seemingly their nature as cognitive shadows. This mirrors the "passive" use of Stormlight that Chasmfiends, Skyeels... lots of creatures that are native to Roshar seem to have through bonding with Spren. But those passive abilities require investiture - so it makes sense that their bodies work similarly to fabrials, in that they welcome Spren into their gemhearts, the same gemhearts that in fabrials store Stormlight and Spren to fuel their abilities. They also don't collapse and die in the leadup to Highstorms when most gems have gone dun and humans holding stormlight would definitely have run out. So it wasn't explicitly stated, but the inference to me has always been that native Rosharan fauna is much better at holding onto Stormlight because they have gemhearts and they rely on the investiture from the Highstorms to continue living and fuelling their bond with the spren.

That's a fair point RWT to the Gravitation, I wasn't aware of the WoB regarding that - I couldn't find it anywhere on Arcanum, but I was likely just searching wrong. It does open up some weird conservation-of-momentum tricks if you're "gravity-less" by removing the friction against a surface you can normally rely on, but that's a fair point. As for the "speed" comment, I meant speed (or more accurately put, rate) of acceleration. I know that there's a limit to the speed someone can fall, but my question is more relating to... Ok, the specific example I want to give here is something like this: In this hypothetical situation, the Radiant/Allomancer is wanting to deliver one massive impact push. The force, and thus rate of acceleration they can apply to themselves, is proportionate to the number of lashings they have applied to themselves. In principle, could the radiant: Apply multiple lashings to themselves, horizontally, in the direction of their target - accelerating them very strongly in that direction, increasing their momentum significantly. While accelerating, launch a powerful push on a coin in front of them. This should, going by the equivalent/opposite effect, act almost like a Newton's Cradle - combining the acceleratory force of the multiple times gravity with the sudden massive force of the push. Because of the way the conservation of momentum works here (as opposed to pushing harder against a much larger mass allowing for a relative greater force to be applied via skimming, you're combining the directional force of the multiple times gravity and the push), it should apply more force and thus accelerate the coin much faster than otherwise, right?

While I do get the complaint and criticism - it's certainly a valid worry - something I feel you may be overlooking is the nature of "intent" as far as it works in (for example) Allomancy. Yes, intent affects how you can direct the Investiture that is being used if you think about it hard enough. But for example, with Allomancy it doesn't actually let you - for example - use metals in ways that they can't normally be used. Wayne's Bendalloy bubble at the end of TLM was an example of Intent affecting the Magic system, but only within the bounds of how Bendalloy works. Intent is a part of every magic system, but in many examples it is merely there to grant awareness of what you are trying to do rather than necessarily consciously direct the magic to do "anything". All of the metallic arts, for example, interact with Intent (primarily) insomuch as you need to be aware of what the metal does and the existence of the power repository to use them. Vin with the metals outside of her "luck" to riot people's emotions, for example - she needed to be told what the other metals could do to properly use them. The medallions are another great example - the BoM needed the awareness of what they were before they could be used - i.e. having the "intent" to use them. So, yes, to an extent Intent allows you to bend the rules, but it doesn't let you break them under normal circumstances. It takes some truly incredible power, along with often things in addition to the intent, to let you break the rules.

I think something that might be slightly dysfunctional could be Valour and Odium. Not necessarily in the sense of "They wouldn't work together", but in the sense that blind hatred can give something similar to hatred. The result (possibly Zealotry?) would likely be near impossible to control. Invention and Preservation are also two that are quite inherently opposed. Invention is progress, and Preservation wants stasis.

So, we actually know why the Singers can hold Light for longer than humans can. It has to do with them being the native inhabitants of Roshar, and thus having Gemhearts. Considering that, it's fairly clear that you wouldn't be able to hold the Voidlight for long enough for it to really matter without having a Gemheart of your own. Now, whether you can use the investiture from the metal to Soulcast food into enough metal to get more investiture out than you put in is an entirely different question.

The other issue, in addition to what Treamayne mentioned, is the risk of Savantism. From what we can tell, admittedly, Savantism doesn't affect Radiant Soulcasters anywhere near as much as it does Fabrial Soulcasters, but I'd be very leery of trying something like this and risking my body spontaneously collapsing into a pile of blood.

We know that the effects of Feruchemical Iron allows for the enhancing of the relative strength that Allomantic Iron/Steel can produce (see what Wax manages to do... basically any time he decides to stop holding back). But here's the question this raises, at least to me: Given that the Surge of Gravitation can clearly add to speed someone is accelerated with multiple lashings: RoW: Could we achieve similar results to increasing the mass of the Allomancer with F-Iron by using the Surge of Gravitation? And further to this, how would being able to adjust the way that force acts on the body with the Surge of Gravitation interact with the fact that you need to use the body as a counterweight to the actions you attempt to take with the Pushes/Pulls? Would a half-lashing upwards render you completely incapable of exerting force to do anything that didn't push you away? Could you use a lashing running perpendicular to a metal post and a carefully modulated Pull to orbit said metal post? Or taken in the opposite direction, could you use a carefully modulated pull and changing the direction of your lashings to slingshot an object you were pulling on around you like a massive hammer throw?

Even then, the chance that you find someone who embodies each possible intent well enough to function as a Vessel - at the same time managing to pull all of them in while balancing their intents against each other and not exploding - is so vanishingly low that I doubt it's actually possible. You've got to bear in mind, not only do have to deal with the contradictory nature of opposed shards - Ruin and Preservation, for example - but you also have to deal with the fact that the various intents of the Shards can involve hating the idea of fusing with others (Odium, for example, and likely Autonomy). I suspect that not only is reforming something shattered, it may be impossible at this point. Splintered Shards are still the same intent, nominally. The various shards are very explicitly not, anymore.

I suppose the question becomes, "How much of a Listener Form is determined by Identity, how much by Intent, and how much by Connection?" Bear in mind, in a very similar way to how you need to know what is in an unsealed metalmind to be able to use it - Intent - the Listeners were not able to bond a spren to achieve a specific form unless they rediscovered it through the songs (like Nimble and Warform), or if they were told about it (Stormform, Regals). Now, part of this is simply knowing what type of spren to capture, yes, but I think that simply modifying the cognitive aspect of a spren is not enough to affect the Intent of the form. We also know that the appearance of Listeners, while they do change significantly between forms, have similar markers across all their versions. Rlain, for example, had the same patterns across being in Dullform and in Warform. So I doubt that changing the spren would affect the form of the body in a way that would actually make a difference to their appearance. As for a Hemalurgic spike... I mean, we know that they aren't a perfect seal. The soul decays. But what kind of cognitive aspect do they have? They aren't like the Spren are, which are primarily Cognitive with a small presence in the Physical. They're nearly entirely physical and spiritual, and they contain enough investiture to make them harder to act on with Allomancy than non-invested metals. I think you'd need to give them some form of "soul" via awakening, as you suggest, for that to work - and that would be it's own challenge.

Just a small correction: Mercy was not splintered. Odium, thus far, has "destroyed" Dominion, Devotion, and Ambition. Dominion and Devotion form the Dor, and Ambition's splintering caused the Knell at Threnody (and likely also the Evil?). We have confirmation that Mercy is still alive (RoW Chapter 25 Epigraph): But the concern is why Mercy worries Harmony, as he states. While we know Mercy is alive, it's very likely that the "Wound" in the Spiritual realm caused by Ambition's death had some very nasty effect on them.

I doubt that, somehow. It's not Investiture actively doing something that causes Savantism and all the problems it can cause. It's your Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual aspects being adapted to the constant flood of Investiture. Those changes still exist when you turn off the flow of investiture - see Spook commenting about the world seeming dull and hard to sense when he wasn't burning tin anymore after becoming a Savant. Nicrosil feruchemy just stores the investiture, and capacity to use the investiture - but those changes to your physiology are still *there* in the absence of you being able to burn metals for investiture.

So, going from this WoB: Specifically, here, we have the definition of a Splinter given as "fully cut off from the direct control and self-identity of the Shard". At the end of WaT, we see that Retribution would have been able to absorb all the sentient splinters that remained of Honor's Investiture in the form of the Spren (though, interestingly, this doesn't seem to apply to the Honorblades - though it's possible they would have been hit too). However, he didn't seem to be preparing to absorb the fragments of Honor that split off as Dalinar abandoned it and Odium was about to absorb it. We also know that it's possible for even lesser sources of power to prevent Shards from reabsorbing their Splinters (see the Oathpact Reforged). Is it, perhaps, possible for a Splinter to fully resist absorption by it's parent Shard, should it come to that? Obviously I'm drawing off a small pool of evidence here, but considering the statement of it having free will and is fully cut off from the direct control of the shard, I'm not sure about the overall chances of the Splinter.

Considering the whole male/female "activity" distinction was designed by the Vorin church as part of a way to solidify their control over Vorin society, I don't know if - when Roshar advances technologically enough to make typing a likely activity - there even would be such a distinction. Bear in mind not only does Jasnah lead the majority of what is left of Vorin culture in Urithiru (from what we know) and in Azimir there's already been blurring of the lines between men and women in terms of what are acceptable activities - and even before then, Dalinar attempting to drive cultural change by learning how to read. But, probably feminine, if the concepts still exist. In principle it's just writing but with an extra step.

The thing to bear in mind is that every Shard, not just the composite shards like Retribution and Harmony, are two separate "things" occupying one entity. You have the original mortal, the Vessel, mind and soul expanded to unimaginable extents by the power they now hold - and the power, the Shard itself. While Shards are not necessarily conscious in the same way that mortals are or even Vessels are, they do have their own volition, desires, and needs - mostly tied to their Intent. The shard of Odium (with some impact from Honour, potentially, but primarily Odium) is what drove Taravangian to evaporate Hoid in the immediate aftermath of his Ascension as Retribution. Hoid explicitly calls out that "The power" would identify him as the only threat to it on that planet - not the Vessel, but the power itself. Considering this, it's not unreasonable to assert that because the Shard and the Vessel are two nominally aligned forces, in times of great stress and fear - especially when the Vessel is someone like Rayse - for them to express themselves as a collective. Especially when there may have been two separate reasons for wanting to kill Tanavast/Honour.

Here's my issue with this theory, no matter how interesting it would be: Roshar is already an anomaly in the Cosmere, even more so than Scadrial. Home to not one, not two, but at least three shards (depending what happens with the 4th moon and the information we've heard about Valour so far). It's also home to a Dawnshard already, Change. The Sleepless were shocked, completely, by the fact that two Dawnshards existed on the same planet at the same time, in Exist and Change held by Hoid and Rysn. A weapon being used to try and kill a Shard would almost certainly be remembered, and investigated, by the Sleepless. I doubt Taln would be able to hide it from their investigation. The point I'm trying to make is that the chance of there being 3 separate Dawnshards on a single world seems so vanishingly small as to be incredibly unlikely.

I actually kind of suspect it might have been Kaladin. Obviously I don't have the full context surrounding the WoB, but... Kaladin's story is kind of complete. Syl seems to be ascending to fill the void left by the eradication of the Stormfather, Kaladin isn't over his depression but nonetheless freed the Heralds from their madness, Bridge Four is... well, I mean, it's a complete organization that doesn't "need" him anymore. He's a hero, yes, but he'd done his saving. While I really like the decision that Kaladin made, I think his Fifth Ideal could have been something else. There were other ideals he could have sworn, going by how he had acted up until that point. But I could see a world where he didn't end up a Herald, but instead fought for Dalinar at the very end, protecting Syl in another way as she ascended beyond him. But having said that - I like how things ended up, and probably the most likely is Szeth.

How so? Willshapers use Cohesion and Transportation. A Perpendicularity is a mass of Investiture so dense it punches holes through all three realms, but that specifically requires manipulations of Connection that so far only Bondsmiths have demonstrated capability to use. Do you mean an Elsegate into the Cognitive realm? In which case - I can see the vision, but you also have to bear in mind there's already a Perpendicularity under their feet in the Shattered Plains - The Well of Control was the reason that Odium was trying so hard to reconquer that region in the leadup to the Contest of Champions, and also why Sigzil's gambit with the Listener population mattered so much - and now it's refilled with Warlight-liquid. And with Retribution in hiding, he's unlikely to be able to really stop people using that pool to access different regions. I do personally think the more likely solution is still splitting up towerlight as it relies much less on a hostile entity, but either way.

So here's the question, though: Metalminds function as batteries, storage of potential energy, essentially. A Chromium misting could drain a Ferruchemist's metalmind if they were actively tapping them, as that is kinetic investiture - the act of transforming that energy from potential into active use. But the question is, does that mean that a metalmind being stored in - i.e., turning energy from active use into potential - is a form of kinetic investiture? I don't think Vin ever saw pulses from Sazed while he was storing in his metalminds, which she should have been able to do if so, but it's still transforming and moving energy around. If Aluminium specifically affects just kinetic investiture, then I think we need to know whether storing counts as kinetic or not. I can't find a reference to that on Arcanum yet, though.

Fairly explicitly, yes. F-Gold is somewhat typical in how it exerts the healing. Provided those conditions are not part of the person's "ideal self", it would help treat and/or even remove the effects from the user. For example, for addiction (Stormlight Archive spoilers): Diseases and cancer though, 100%. Since Wayne explicitly heals from any diseases he suffers from as a result of storing his "Health" almost as soon as he stops storing it, it's a reasonable inference that it can strengthen your resilience to them and also considering we have confirmation that it can actually transition someone who identifies as a different gender than they were born with if their self-image is different from their physical body, cancer isn't particularly out there.