Swimmingly

I would class people thus: Emission, Consumption, Manipulation, Perception Emitters would be the powerhouses, shooting frickin' laser beams etc. but using a personal store to do so. Maybe they start glowing a little as they get a laser ready Consumers would be able to absorb light to use as energy; so they can eat a portion of an Emitter's attack - how much depends on how strong they are. They're basically photosynthetic badasses, given that they power themselves with light. You know when to run because their skin just started going dull and black. Manipulation would be illusion and stuff. They can take light and bend it into veils, see people from around the corner, even do "magnifying glass" style attacks - even divert an Emitter's light with effort, or starve and blind a consumer. Their weakness is that they need light to manipulate. Perceivers instinctually recognize patterns of light, and frequencies of light. They notice a Manipulator's veils much more easily, generally don't fall for illusions, and they can see with very little light, deconstructing the path of light beams. Of course, they're no stronger physically and a good Emitter can still burn off their head at twenty feet. Note you can still classify different frequencies with this, and different frequencies play to the strengths of different types - for example, a consumer in the infrared could absorb energy without looking shady in the visible spectrum, but an emitter in the radio would be more of a glorified human radio tower. A manipulator in the visible spectrum would be strongest in illusions, but one in the gamma spectrum could block similar emitters. Radio perceivers could train themselves to catch signals over long distances, whereas those in the gamma spectrum would be pretty useless. Depending on personal strength, a very strong infrared or visible light manipulator might easily kill a middling gamma emitter during the day by blasting them with a magnified attack before the pulses of gamma do much more than give them cancer in 50 years.

Hard to say. A big thing in the Cosmere is people's abilities to choose for themselves - though the Divine Breath may be whispering ideas in their heads. It's possible that a custom-made Splinter of Endowment like Nightblood can throw a spanner in the works by killing people according to its Command rather than Endowment's desires.

Allomancy, feruchemy, hemalurgy These are the three Metallic Arts, genetic, instinctive, magery toned to the individual. As Brandon has said, the Southerners have harnessed a more "mechanical" version of the metallic arts - devices with conduits to the power of Preservation and Ruin (or Harmony) built into them Thaumetallic Sciences, if you will Mechallomancy has been widely speculated upon - a mechanical, end-positive magic system. Hemalurgic Technology has been speculated to involve somehow giving machines human attributes, bloodily. Ferumechanics, however, would be end-neutral. Not passed by genes but, perhaps, allowing attributes to be distributed among different elements in a system - reminiscent of the sygaldric devices from Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles, for those of you who have read them. You could have a pair of iron weights spinning back and forth, oscillating weight at a precise frequency to make a perpetual motion device, for example, or a brass heat "battery" you could plug into a device to make a portable stove. I recognize a few problems with this theory, such as, for instance, the cognitive and spiritual attributes, but I would like to hear what everybody thinks.

Sazed is the god of all of Scadrial. He will probably steer the conflict in such a way as it ends with either a truce and the free exchange of ideas, or a mostly benevolent "roman empire" style conquest by one side or another that leaves a small outsider upper "government" class, with the power structure beneath them mostly intact.

None of your links are working for me

Please enlighten me as to what you mean by that

It always seemed a little odd to me that shapeshifting was not magical, but the ability to stay awake was in the kandra. Are things requiring Investiture the only things considered "magic" in the Cosmere? How do we know the difference? Feruchemy, for example, never uses an outside source of Investiture (except in compounding). Life sense is passive, and does not consume Invesiture - is this really "magic"? Sentience is a wondrous product of Investiture, so is this "magic"? If everything can be defined Cognitively, then is anything that causes a change to those Cognitive forms "magic" or just the instances where that change is accelerated deliberately? If Lift can metabolize food into Investiture, then does it count as magic when she eats, even if that Stormlight is never used? In the cosmere, where most anything can be traced back to the interactions of the Shards, there is very little that is not directly or indirectly connected to Cognitive Forms or Investiture of some kind.

To be fair, that's like basing the danger level of Earth on a 2 hour trek waist-deep in the Amazon. Based on the level of technology, something like a Victorian London exists somewhere.

*cough cough* But these are MAGIC storms! In all seriousness, they are. Even if they weren't, think about the weight of the water the storm carries. Water is incredibly dense. It might not seem like it, but it is. The dust could easily be carried along, with a bit of Invested help.

But even in Brandon's universe, Brandon's values and beliefs don't hold true. This is a major selling point for his books for me, personally. Thus, we see despicable characters capable of good things (and vice versa), convincing atheists, etc. And, possibly, morally justifiable Hemalurgy...if that's what the story calls for. Kelsiers actions are just as morally justifiable as hemalurgy, for many of the same reasons. Even if it's "evil", it might can still be used in interesting and creative ways - just by people you would not want living in the same city as you.

It is a real Riot just how easily these threads can digress, isn't it? You think they're dead, and someone Pulls them back up - they just Surge back into existence, Awakened from the dead. And the worst part? They degenerate into Lifeless puns so fast it's not even funny!

The latter option, then. Oh well

This theory is a "why not?" kind of theory. I am personally inclined to believe that it's false. It relies on a character pretending to be something that we don't know about to hide the fact that he is something else we don't know much about, in his own internal dialogue. He swears by a herald, recounts "scoffing" at preserved legends of Surgebinders, etc. If indeed, he is deeply delusional, he has invented his own backstory to justify it. He does not display any Surgebinding anywhere (if I'm wrong...wow). However, that being said... The evidence so far is that the Heralds have found themselves wandering immortally along the scale between "insane" and "evil", with stops at "For the Greater Good" style crusades and "Nihilistic Destruction of Art" among others. A Herald who destroys knowledge of Surgebinders by insinuating himself into societies, creating stories he tells himself and others until everybody believes them including himself, then acting to destroy them and flinging himself on a gradual self-destructive spiral of pain and guilt until the mental trauma scours the memories from his mind and he either recalls everything or simply survives to do it again is not utterly inconceivable, though a bit far-fetched. And, therefor, probably something Brandon would think of and make seem totally logical in the process. TL;DR : Your kittens theory fuzzy kittens makes ZE FUZZY KITTENS!!! little so many soft kittens sense. So little sense, in fact, it seems possible. (immeasurably cute kittens spill from wicker baskets, mewling and pawing gently, nuzzling your hands and staggering before falling softly and cutely onto their little bellies). Wow. The summation could use some kittens Edit: Added kittens

Wow. This thread waxes disturbing

Maybe the Voidbringers are the spren themselves, who can bond with a Parsen host, change them irrevocably, and move on. Or perhaps the Voidforms give the power to animate the essence they are connected to. Or perhaps I'm entirely wrong on all counts here.

That's actually...not a terrible idea...I think

Could you then make a Cultivation kandra by binding a spren to a mistwraith, in theory?

Surgebinders are bound to a spren or specific type of spren, giving them special abilities Sentient beings attract spren with acts of emotion and creation Parshmen use spren to temporarily change themselves Voidbringers are bound to spren (presumably), changing themselves / giving them special abilities We are led to believe that the Parshen are Voidbringers My tenuous conclusion: Voidbringers are Parshen in any of 10 Forms. These forms, instead of granting abilities like the Surges, change the Voidbringer's Cognitive and Physical aspects entirely to represent one of the 10 deaths - these correspond to the 10 elements. For example, thunderclasts correspond to essence number 9 - rock, stone, midnight essences are smoke, etc. From here on, I have no evidence at all, but I believe going into a Voidform is permanent, and opens one up to corruption from Odium. Perhaps it is possible, then, to be a Voidbringer, but also resist Odium's call for a time. Edit: Credit to @Argent for coming up with this independantly and before me. I thought I was having an original thought

For example, by having them consistently opposed to a character from that order? Because that would make the dynamics a lot more interesting

I don't think the whiskey is strictly necessary. Maybe applesauce. Imagine it: Misting Baby Formula from Li'l Allomancers Inc.

I hypothesize that Sazed simply made the trauma of birth enough to Snap someone. WoB, I believe, is that he made snapping easier. What is a traumatic moment in a person's life? Birth! While this theory is entirely unsupported, I think it would be a good way to remove the "terrible mental trauma from the system

I wouldn't mind a Southerner viewpoint character sometime

Je suis un homme, merci beaucoup 我是他

Who refused to go along with his plans for world domination, and in fact actively rebelled, forcing him to dispose of her, but naming his new city in her memory? That would be a dramatically appropriate plot. The lover bit can be in fact be replaced with any close relationship and still work. Alternately, Luthad was Rashek's last name or something mundane like that, and Brandon is stringing us along with a red herring-on-a-stick.

I resist the notion that Shards don't have to make sense. Though this is a universe where infinite free energy could be potentially generated, there are godlike beings, stone can become food through application of extradimentional bribery, etc. so you may have a point.