Ari

That's well and good, but what about the orders of KR that don't use gemstones for their abilities? (Kaladin, for instance, can fly directly off the Stormlight from a highstorm) And there doesn't seem to be any role in which gemstone you draw Stormlight from selecting which ability you use, unlike Commands or Metals. They really don't act like other focii at all. If anything, the best argument you could make so far is that the nature of the Spren bond is the focus, as it determines which two surges you have access to- but that's a little different from how things work in other magic systems as well, as you still can choose between the two available surges without any special requirements or change in the nature of the KR's Spren or their bond. So nothing really works as expected just yet. All in all, I wonder if "Roshar is weird" is simply where we need to start until we have some more information about how magic works there. I mean, we barely know much more than the basics how Initiation and Stormlight work, and what powers fabrials, at this stage.

I'd assume it was his name in an earlier draft before Brandon settled on Vasher unless you have other evidence. We don't even know if his pre-return name is relevant anyways.

Moogle's right to be urging caution about taking those particular WoBs too far. Yes, Splinter Bonds behave differently on Roshar. No, that doesn't necessarily mean that bringing a Seon to Roshar would make you into a Knight of Devotion with similar powers to a Knight Radiant. (it *could* mean something along those lines, but don't assume it will happen before collecting some evidence) On clarification of the term focus, (it's specifically how you select which investiture ability to use if you have access to more than one) I have no idea how it applies to Roshar any more, and I think gems play a role more similar to that of Colour in awakening- they're a required catalyst for some Radiant abilities, and a good holder for Stormlight and captured Spren. This would seem to make them some sort of combination of battery and catalyst for Honour's (and maybe Cultivation's) power.

Heh, depends on exactly how having a Divine Breath works! It might be that you'd still die without regularly consuming investiture.

I wouldn't assume it means anything else unless you have some good evidence in-text or from WoB that suggests Vancer is somehow relevant. It being a previous draft of Vasher's name seems the simplest answer, especially when you look at how Brandon has renamed characters and shifted names around from his previous drafts to his released version.

As 2015 was all original fiction, I would actually start expecting that it is going to be the upper bound of what we'll get from Brandon when he's not working on trunk novels. (ie. in years he's not working on White Sand, Aether, or Dragonsteel) That way you won't be disappointed if his pace lowers at all, and might be pleasantly surprised if either his schedule squeezes in an extra book due to timing, or if he speeds up later.

Elantris 2 has moved forward in the order- did its release date manage to move further away as well? I think he's just managing expectations tbh.

I actually wonder if it's a case of the later ideals generating a bunch of investiture in the bond between the Radiant and Spren (as Honour is all about oaths and the Spren are generally a Splinter of Honour) that gets channeled into a glyph that expresses the oath, shaped like the relevant Honourblade. It could be a case of surplus stormlight somehow, although becoming more efficient at using stormlight doesn't exactly multiply what you have, it just makes you use it more slowly. *shrug*

Haha probably. I think it's worth remembering though that we're not sure that the 17th Shard's mission requires them all to be worldhoppers just yet, even though every one we've seen so far is. We could miss in-universe Sharders if we only look for worldhoppers. I really hope Brandon throws some in-reference to Chaos in Frost's character if he is heavily involved with the in-universe 17th Shard.

I hadn't thought of that angle, which seems valid. It might also be that there are currently a limited number of eligible Spren to bond for Bondsmiths. It's reasonable speculation based on the fact that the Stormfather is an eligible Spren for a Bondsmith that to grow their numbers further, humans would need to engage in a new form of worship. Thus it could be seen as seditious because it would require interfering in people's beliefs on a mass scale. Keep in mind that plural agreement isn't an exact science, and you can refer to something in the singular when talking about it in general. (ie. "a cat is a temperamental thing," where technically I am making a statement about all cats but using a singular verb) This has become especially true in the USA where plural disagreement is becoming very common. edit: Just to be clear, I find both the other theories so far proposed to be interesting, and think all our answers so far have holes in them that we'd need to RAFO to fill.

In my view, not really. Devotion and Dominion are in conflict. Significiant conflict. But their intents are also in agreement on a number of things- like the importance of unity, that servitude to others is a positive thing, and would probably be in less conflict (but also offer a less broad range of perspective and abilities) if merged than Harmony is. I would consider Devotion to potentially be closest to the direct opposite of Odium, if anything, and Dominion to be the closest opposite to Autonomy. I would agree with Yata here. I would describe the relationship between Dominion and Devotion as complementary, the same way I would describe the relationship between Ruin and Cultivation, or perhaps Preservation and Endowment. They have both significant point of conflict and significant points of agreement in their intents. It's POSSIBLE that the shards can be arranged into quadrants where you group opposing and complementary shards together and they follow some sort of larger theme for each quadrant. (In which case, I would expect Honour, Odium, and Devotion to be in the same group, for instance) I'd want to know at least 13 of them before claiming that myself so we can be certain we have Shards from each potential grouping. I wouldn't expect there to be any overlap between the function of metals in the metallic arts and Shard intents, however.

Totally. (additional spoilers regarding the sample chapters)

Remember, Arthur C Clarke's quote refers to technology not understood by the user or the person who witnesses its use. It is a functional definition, not a technical definition. There is no functional difference between nanotechnology that recognises when you're "tapping your ironmind" that modulates a higgs field to "reduce your weight", and feruchemy which achieves the same thing through investiture, unless of course something causes the nanotechnology to malfunction, or something can affect the investiture that doesn't affect the nanotechnology. I have a story I'm writing where I play on this a lot, where there are AIs present and nanotechnology used that interacts with magic, and also magic present that has nothing to do with the nanotechnology. The people of course call all of it magic because they can't tell the difference, which is rather interesting to the AIs. Right. And if we discover a similar new force in our own universe in the future, I imagine we'll probably still call it science. When I read fantasy I generally view the word "magical" something like the application of the word "electrical." It's something that functions using an extra magical force, as opposed to the conventional ones we know.

To be fair, the implication there is that Forging yourself to be a significantly different person significantly changes your spritweb and thus bars you from accessing your pre-Forgery metalminds. (You could, presumably, make new ones while Forged that you couldn't access while unForged, assuming you didn't succeed in Forging away your Feruchemy) That doesn't mean that someone with a very similar spritweb might not be able to access your metalminds to some degree. We have WoB that traumatic events introduce cracks in the spiritweb that magic can get into, so in terms of Cosmere metaphysics, the answer would seem to be yes, that siginificant life events do change your spiritweb to some extent. We don't know if those changes extend beyond cracking the spiritweb, however- it could be that your spiritweb is set by parts of your personality that largely don't change, outside of things like brain damage, which should presumably change your spiritweb dramatically the same way it changes your personality. It could be that your spritweb is something that grows as you get older, as new fundamental events happen in your life that define your identity as a whole and make it more nuanced, but that investiture is keyed to your spiritweb when you use it, so it can still "fit inside" the centre of your current spiritweb, with the inside events from when you're younger still acting as a valid key for metalminds created when you were younger. We'd need more realmatics to understand really, but that would be my guess as to how it works. Spoilers for Bands of Mourning sample chapters are in this reply: (specifically, related to Chapter Three)

That's confusing. Especially given in terms of the timeline it's more like Era 1.99.

Where'd you get that idea? Only place we've heard it iirc is in the term "Tears of Edgli".

We know from Era 1 of Mistborn already that Silver is also allomantically inert, (It just doesn't have any properties in the magic system itself, unlike aluminium) and we have WoBs already that establish that this carries over to general investiture, hence silver's effect on Threnody. I don't see why we'd have unreliable narration about Silver in Shadows for Silence when it's already on record that it has similar properties (although they may not work exactly the same) as Aluminium. It's probably that given they already know they have silver to defend against shades, nobody's gone experimenting with Aluminium just yet. Cool to know. In which case we should be looking more to oaths or spren bonds as the "focus" on Roshar, and we probably need some additional terminology to describe what colour on Nalthis and gemstones on Roshar do. (colour seems to behave almost like a catalyst in chemical reactions, wheras Gemstones are more like an investiture battery, so it's entirely possible they even have different roles)

If you read carefully, I was agreeing with the point you make in your first sentence in my first paragraph. I had simply not realised that Yata was specifically talking about Szeth being in mortal danger because he dropped the Honourblade, rather than what I had read his post to mean, which was more generic mortal danger. After he clarified that, we were in agreement. Yata is writing English as a second language, so often he may need to clarify things before we're all on the same page about what's being discussed. The new ending could absolutely have met that objective of "not seeing the body"- see my last paragraph about how the problems with the new ending go away if Kaladin simply loses sight of Szeth in the Highstorm before deciding to fetch the Honourblade.

Arguably, being a Voidbringer means you're no longer a Listener. Rlain certainly seems to think so. +1 for successful trolling.

You're still going just a little too far there IIRC. Aslydin is confirmed to be a member of the 17th Shard. It's not confirmed for sure that she's a worldhopper, although it's certainly heavily implied by the fact that Demoux is, and that we've yet to see 17th Shard members on their home planets in sequels.

If the theory that has been driven by implication from WoBs that the Dor is in the Cognitive Realm is correct, that wouldn't help at all. I can think of two USEFUL hacks. One is to convert local investiture into a power source for the Dor. Another is to use either stored Selish investiture or converted local investiture to construct a Spritual Realm "bridge" to the cognitive realm of Sel, and pump the investiture through that bridge to a similar "outpost" amplifier to Elantris. Flying spaceship city, anyone?

Hoid is like a reverse Santa, travelling magically at high speed to keep secrets and steal powerful magical relics from every world, lol.

It depends exactly how the rules work on that. So far to date this rule has only functioned with Shard holders who have previously had a two-way connection in which the person not currently holding a shard implicitly trusts the one currently holding a shard. (ie. Spook-Kelsier and Elend-Vin) In which case, Era 2 Sazed wouldn't be able to utilise this rule to talk to people as he never previously had a two-way relationship with any of them before Ascending. It may be as general as Moogle is implying, it may be more specific- it's hard to tell with precisely two so similar data points! On the OP's second question... that's an ongoing Thing We're Trying To Sort Out about the Stormlight Archive- I think the prevailing consensus in Cosmere Theories has been that until we understand more what Honour was talking about with regards to champions, we should assume it's something that specifically applies to Odium's current situation. (Which may or may not mean that the reason he's bound to Braize has something to do with why a Champion would be useful in fighting him off) A lot of the best theories have speculated that Honour has bound Odium in some way that not only traps him in the Rosharan solar system, but also obliges him to follow certain rules that would normally seem aligned more with Honour's intent than Odium's. Basically we'll need to Read And Find Out a bit more on this subject.

Brandon defines investiture as magic, so yeah, it's definitely magic. You're running into a difference of thought between "soft fantasy" or "mystical fantasy" as a subgenre (where magic is unexplained or unexplainable) and "hard fantasy" as a subgenre. (where magic follows rules that make it well-defined, perhaps even to the point where in-universe it would be understood scientifically) I'm gonna Arthur C. Clarke this debate and say that any sufficiently-defined magic is indistinguishable from science fiction.

Hemalurgy itself can be metals-only while still having interesting implications for material focii in general. You could certainly argue that gems allowing the bonding of deadspren is a similarly innovative use of focus to Hemalurgy.