Weltall

We know Tanavast was around for some time after the Oathpact because one of his visions tells Dalinar that he didn't teach the Spren how to bond humans and didn't anticipate it. That means the Heralds had to have been around for long enough that the Spren saw how their powers worked and tried to replicate it themselves and Tanavast had to be around long enough to see it so he could 'record' that part of his vision. Actually, if we take that as our basis he may not have died until after the Day of Recreance since he appears to be talking about it in the vision where Dalinar saw it happen. It's possible this is one of the prescient visions and Tanavast was guessing at its import (like the final vision in WoK showing what might happen to the world if Odium wins) but he seemed to be specific enough in his wording that it's something he actually saw. In any case, he was definitely around long enough to see a Desolation or two at least.

Yeah, they're pretty heavily Invested objects so to make a significant impact on one you'd probably need a Duralumin or Nicrosil boost. Brandon has said that all Feruchemy has some lower boundaries to what you can store but they vary. I think he specifically said you could use it to make yourself 'very light' but I don't think you could become truly weightless even if you stripped naked. That said, while looking for the WoB I did find another one where he basically confirmed that you could probably fly using the proposed method but that it would be really difficult. Considering that Pull was on loan specifically to deal with Wax, not only could they predict that specific combination but I imagine that a plated steel chestplate would be an expense the Set would be willing to bear.

I just realized we have a WoB that Scadrial has an entire separate continent so yeah, the southern peoples are definiitely a long ways away, no matter how much Sazed shifted the geology around while also fixing the planet's orbit.

Yeah, Brandon has confirmed that Hoid hasn't seen every year since the Shattering but he's still older than any normal human could be even after that. In fact, in a recent blog post he essentially called Hoid 'functionally immortal' and there's a WoB that he's the second-oldest person in the Cosmere so he's really old but due to his combination of magic systems we don't have any idea what he really looks like and can't use his appearance as a judge of... pretty much anything.

His last words after talking about the men of red and gold were 'worship Trell and wait' and it's what prompts Marasi to do some further research at the end of SoS. What that's going to lead to is anyone's guess since what we know from Sazed's description of the religion doesn't seem to match what Miles believed or otherwise provide much help. Though that in turn might be useful if you think that another Shard (like Autonomy) appropriated an existing but not widely followed belief as part of whatever was necessary to create the new spikes. The discrepancy on its own could be evidence of outside meddling.

The Southern Roughs is just the region immediately south of the Elendel Basin, so a few hundred miles south(east) of Elendel proper. I'm pretty sure the southern peoples are a lot farther away than that And I can't think why the Parshendi couldn't worldhop if they were to learn a method of doing it. We know it's not something that requires one specific sDNA pattern because characters from multiple worlds have beeh seen doing it. No reason to think that just because Parshendi don't attract spren in the same way that humans on Roshar do, that it means they can't worldhop or that they need a special form to do it. Though worldhopping while in one of their Voidbringer forms would probably be a bad thing...

There was a WoB from the signing in SF that confirms that Odium would be willing to cooperate with another Shard if he got to take the lead (and implied without stating that this has happened or will happen) so it's entirely possible that we're seeing the influence of both Odium and Autonomy in one way or another. Like maybe Odium giving some pointers about how to mess with other worlds' magic systems and letting Autonomy do the dirty work.

As far as getting any value out of the earring goes, it really depends on how degraded the Hemalurgic 'charge' can get. Despite not wearing it all the time, Vin's earring held enough of a charge to stay useful for Ruin's purposes (boosting her ability with Bronze and communication) but that was made to be a spike from the start and it wasn't that old by the end of the series. If Pathian earrings are made from melted down Steel Inquisitor spikes, it's possible they've lost enough of their charge through both that process and being 300+ years old to grant any useful ability other than providing a conduit for communicating with Harmony. Edit: Upon further reading of the descriptions, it does seem quite possible that's Vin's original earring he receives in the end. If so, depending on how low that minimum Hemalurgic charge is, it's possible Wax now has access to Bronze. Still don't think the regular Pathian earrings necessarily have enough charge to grant any powers, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Not sure about the 'readin the Way of Kings' idea and I'm not sure if Shallan read it but I don't think it really makes much difference. The whole point of the Oaths is that if you're going to become a Radiant, you basically figure out the words you have to say on your own (and understand the intent behind them) rather than just reciting the magic phrase. Kaladin presumably couldn't have gotten his end of book 'level up' if someone had told him the Windrunners' third Ideal at the start of the book and just said it; he had to get to the point where he understood and accepted it. The strong impression I get is that the exact words themselves aren't important either but the idea behind them. If the Spren accepts that you've got the idea, you pass. Like how the Stormfather tells Dalinar that he'll accept 'those words', which said to me that even if it wasn't the exact same set of words that the last Bondsmith might have sworn, it was the same oath in spirit. TLDR: I don't think that just knowing what the First Ideal is and believing in it gives you any leg up on becoming a Radiant. On the Surgebinding=Desolations thing, I thought the most common theory (and maybe there's WoB on this) is that the Desolations come when the first Herald breaks under the torture they endure, which is why so much time passed between the last one and the upcoming one since Taln is the only one subject to the torture and he's, well, Taln. This makes Nale's belief kind of weird since you'd think a Herald would know what's up with the cycle. But then again, we're told they're all going a bit nuts so...

We haven't seen Lerasium since the end of Well of Ascension, not sure if there's a WoB on whether more Lerasium exists/could exist other than the original beads. We do have confirmation (see here among other WoBs) that Hoid does possess Lerasium but we don't know if he's actually used it to become a Mistborn or not and Brandon has been careful to not say one way or the other... though Words of Radiance and a WoB strongly imply that he has at least the ability to use Brass or Zinc Allomantically, from a flashback scene with Shallan. Incidentally, this is why I've been curious whether anything has been said about how much you can (or if you can) divide a Lerasium bead and still get a useful level of Allomantic power out of it. If Hoid wanted Allomancy but also needs the bead for some other purpose, whether he could split the difference would be worth knowing.

I feel like we got a pretty good indication this is the case from the WoR Letter, for all of the Shards but most explicitly for Odium, where the writer calls it/Rayse 'God’s hatred separated from the virtues that gave it context'. So it's not just that Odium is separated from one other aspect but separated from all these other aspects of Adonalsium.

To be fair, we don't know for certain that Dalinar's memories of his wife were the curse. It's possible he asked for something like 'to have the pain of losing my wife taken from me' or something like that, though it being the curse does seem more likely. Though maybe that was the boon and the bane was 'giving you exactly what you wished for'. Whether the unusually large number of surgebinders in Dalinar's family is the boon probably has more to do with the precise dimensions of the Old Magic's power. I don't think Cultivation has any pull with the Stormfather but if enough of the other types of Radiant!Spren are connected enough to her, it could be possible the Nightwatcher was able to stack the deck in the Kholin family's favor. Maybe. The whole need for a 'broken' soul to form a Nahel Bond could make it either more plausible (if you think the Spren might set out to break someone's deliberately to encourage bonding) or less (if you don't). I don't think the Nightwatcher can just break a soul sufficiently on her own but maybe her power could encourage Spren to seek out particular individuals if they otherwise meet the necessary criteria.

Sanderson has called the Stormfather the cognitive shadow of Honor so I'm pretty certain that Tanavast is dead and not coming back and the visions Dalinar gets don't have any deeper meaning as far as Tanavast's survial is concerned.. Honor the Shard on the other hand could be reassembled. I'm not sure if one of the main characters taking up the mantle wouldn't be a bit on the nose since that happened in Mistborn (am I imagining things or did Brandon say something about that not being where he's going with Dalinar?) but I'm pretty certain that Honor will be reborn somehow. Clearly, it's going to be the Lopen who takes up the Shard.

It took me something like six months from when I wrote in (just a general 'love your books, can't wait to read the next one' sort of thing) to getting a response from Brandon but I did get one eventually. Now I'll have to write another one and hope they're still giving out drafts of White Sand and Aether, so I can see the original concept. Given all the projects going on right now I'm sure I won't hear back for quite a while. Anyhow, really looking forward to the comics next year, along with the Sanderson Avalanche of Bands of Mourning, Calamity and... isn't Stormlight 3 still planned for 2016?

Not having finished SoS yet, I hope nothing was revealed there that's going to make this post look silly. I was wondering if we have any WoB on whether a Lerasium bead the size of the one seen in Well of Ascension could be divided up and still produce a useful result when burned and if so how much could be shaved off and still be useful (ie, if you're willing to settle for weaker Allomancy, how many Mistborn could you create with one bead). Because Hoid has a bead and we know he has some Allomancy but if he wants Lerasium for any other purpose, I wonder whether he could have split the thing up. On that topic, I wonder about Lerasium alloys and honestly, what the point is. If you can make yourself or someone else a Mistborn, why settle for less? But to get to the topic of actually alloying both god metals and a third, could that be a way to allow a non-Mistborn to burn an Atium alloy? Because I think it was implied that only a Mistborn can burn those. As for alloying Atium in the first place, we know it can be done somehow because Malatium is an alloy of Atium and Gold, even if we have no clue yet how the 'Eleventh Metal' came to exist. And I think there's a WoB to the effect that all of the sixteen normal metals can be alloyed with Atium.

Oh, didn't know that. I'm having a bit of trouble finding it, do you happen to know where he said it?

I think that Prof's decision to go after David first was probably because he was potentially the bigger threat. If Prof knows his weakness and knows that Tia knows, there's a chance that whatever it is it's something David could figure out on his own. In that case, David is a bigger long-term risk because he's pretty good at figuring out Epic weaknesses, he's more dangerous in a fight and he's likely to have fewer hesitations about putting a bullet through Prof's head. If Prof doesn't know his weakness but knows that Tia knows it, he might still have seen David as more dangerous depending on when he realized that Tia knows what it is (ie, if it's something he thinks David could also have observed), for a similar reason. And if he has no idea that Tia knows his weakness then going after David first just makes sense from a 'who's potentially more dangerous to me?' perspective. So I don't have too much trouble with Prof not going after Tia first regardless of what he knew or didn't know. Though I am surprised that David doesn't spare much time in the epilogue worrying about Tia's safety since she's got to be next on the list. Though with Tia monitoring events, she would have had some advance warning and I'm sure she had a few 'get the hell out of here' contingency plans.

I'd assumed the flute was something from before the Shattering on general principle but I never noticed the mention in Mistborn. If they're the same that would be just one more neat connection. Hmmm, maybe that's why (Shadows of Self 'spoiler') On the issue of when he could have gotten it if we assume they're the same flute, couldn't he have done it in Hero of Ages? That way he'd have it before his visit to Roshar regardless of how the timing might work out in Well of Ascension (don't have my books handy, can't check right now). I do remember seeing a WoB somewhere where he confirmed that Hoid wants his flute back and that Sadeas had it. So it's probably going to show up again one way or another.

Another possibility is that the Ones Above set the planet up to develop technology at an accelerated rate by 'accidentally' leaving some behind not to exploit a loophole to better themselves directly (as Sixth thinks) but to exploit that same loophole so that in time they can more directly interact with the people to help prepare them for something else that could be coming their way. Both have about as much evidence for and against.

I'd consider the effort required to get ~2000 Breaths (and possibly any moral qualms you might have about that process) to be an attached string, though I'll grant that it's not as severe as the others we've seen. It's clearly not easy to do since we don't know of anyone at that level by the time Warbreaker takes place (not to say there aren't any of course) aside from certain Returned who don't get the exact same benefits even if they have that many Breaths.

Since we know Elantrians can just plain die of heartbreak (Galladon's father) I personally suspect that Elantrians aren't necessarily immortal but they're much longer-lived. As long as they have sufficiently long lifespans to outlive anyone who might remember their ascension plus a few generations, it's unlikely that anyone outside would be able to realize that they're not literally immortals. One point that could go either way, Cosmere spoiler Do I have proof? No, but it kind of feels right that they could be long-lived but not live forever. All the other forms of immortality in the Cosmere that we know about are either not true immortality or seem to come with considerable strings attached. But if anyone has a WoB on the topic, feel free to correct me. And on the original topic, Raoden and Sarene clearly aren't worried about any possible complications, though the fact that he's going to outlive her and their child(ren) unless they win the Shaod lottery could be a source of dramatic tension in the sequel.

I'd love to ask about Dominion's meaning but I'm pretty much certain that since he's planning to write another Elantris book it would just get RAFO'd. Personally I'm fond of the idea that Dominion is more in the 'territory' sense given Sel's regional Identity-based magic systems and how we have a WoB that all Selish magic is drawing on the same source. We'll probably have to wait for that sequel to get confirmation either way. Anyhow, thematically with known Shards I'd definitely pair off Autonomy and Dominion (under either meaning) but I could see Cultivation working in the second position as well. It's kind of hard to nail anything down though, given how little we know about any of those. With that I'd also say Honor/Endowment because the former is full of imagery concerning binding things (whether it's oaths, the Nahel Bond or Surgebinding) while the latter is one party giving to another.

Yeah, my immediate thought was 'someone traveled to Scadrial via shardpool at just the right time to spook a local'. I hadn't made the Parshendi connection but that would fit the description, assuming it's not someone/something we haven't seen before. As for the nature of the pool, yeah, it sounds similar to Devotion's in description and IIRC, we have a Word of Brandon that both Ruin and Preservation's original shardpools no longer exist so it could be that Harmony now has just one and located it in a mountain for old time's sake. And since the topic is the newspaper, one that caught my eye, paraphrased: Baker decorates cupcakes with Atium flakes. Assuming that's true, that takes the idea of pot brownies to a whole new level. Eat this and you can see the future. No, really. One wonders how much that costs since the entire world should still be coasting on whatever Atium was left after the Final Ascension, not counting the bag Marsh is using to extend his lifespan. Of course, proving you're actually using Atium flakes would be tricky since you'd need a super-rare misting with that ability to verify it and that's not exactly easy to test for unless you have a god helping you out. Either way, great marketing ploy.

I hadn't read any of the book before the signing because I wanted to buy it at the store but yeah, I now get the impression that it's a reference to something in Shadows of Self, er, itself. Still reading it, about a third of the way in but I can already see how the phrase could apply in a few ways.

I think it's more along the lines of 'My brand is a symbol to me of how lighteyes suck and I can't trust them, therefore I will subconsciously prevent it from healing until I can get over my unresolved issues' rather than anything so specific as Kaladin accepting what the brand means to an outside observer.