alder24

The answer is quite simple, he's a storyteller, there is no better fitted spren for him than a Cryptic. They complement each other very well. And it makes telling stories so much easier - too easy. RoW ch 80: That's very likely. I can see this being a reason why he chose a Cryptic rather than some other spren. However he most likely just sensed an opportunity and took it. OB ch 68: Being a Lightweaver will be hard for Hoid, because he doesn't want to admit those truths to himself: Because he has to bond with a willing spren. Inkspren don't bond at all, Ivory is the only one exception, the rest don't want to get involved and die. Many Orders would not fit him, he's not a Windrunner, or a Skybreaker. He's a former Danwshard, it left a residue on his soul, he has access to many invested arts, that's many different investitures in his soul - all of this is something that might drive a spren away from him. So he needs someone that would want to bond him, someone desperate enough who wouldn't care about all of this, and from an order that fits Hoid the most - that's Cryptic in my opinion, Cryptic that is on a verge of being caught by Odium's forces, desperate enough to bond Hoid to escape his fate. OB epilogue:

They would not be benefited at all. They can't use Stormlight, Stormlight doesn't "fill" metals. Metals are a Scadrian thing, Stormlight is Rosharan. Unless a Feruchemist is also a Surgebinder and has a means of unkeying Stormlight - which is hard as nobody ever did that - they can't use Stormlight in combination with their Metallic arts. Lots of WoBs for you:

All visions were made by Honor, all were created when he was preparing for his death, assigning the Stormfather to be his successor. Honor was already dying at this point. Some were made by using his future sight ability, with most he reached into the past. It's not the Stormfather that was talking, it was all Honor. I don't see this as any contradiction, he cuts himself when mentioning Dawnshards, he keeps repeating "unite them," but mostly because those visions were made out of his fear, by using his future sight, knowing what's coming for Roshar. This might have given him a moment of clarity. IF not we don't even know when exactly he created those visions. He might have made them shortly before he started to rave and lost his mind. Honor might have looked into the future and seen Radiants destroying Roshar with their powers or Dawnshards and that’s where his raving came from. SH spoilers: I disagree. Shards die differently. Firstly the Stormfather literally BECAME Honor's corpse - he's Honor's Cognitive Shadow. This statement can have a vastly different meaning than what you think. Secondly Shards don't really have bodies, their pure energy in SR - this statement has no sense if the SF is talking about that kind of corpse. The WoB is clear that Honor's death was a long process, we know from another one that Honor went out fighting and that Cultivation was close to witness this fight and maybe even was participating in it. There was no need for a second confrontation, the first one would be enough for Odium. He killed him and that was the only thing that mattered to him - he even said that he thought he could leave Honor's Splinters alone at that time. OB ch 57: No. He has the power, but not any ability - he's not a Shard, he's not a Vessel, he can't use that power. While he was given some capacity by Honor to do stuff on his behalf, like creating a new generation of Honorspren, that's far beyond what Honor can do. The Stormfather has Connection, has some power, but that's it. But Dalinar can. He already Ascended to "Unity" at the end of OB, he did something there that both Odium and the Stormfather view differently than others. WoR I-1: I disagree. It doesn't have to be any place. Honor is Splintered, the Shard is shattered to pieces. That's enough. As I said above, Odium thought he could leave Splinters alone, but now he saw his mistake. Reviving a dead Splinter Shard is something unprecedented, something that has not happened anywhere as for now, he doesn't have to immediately worry about it, especially that he is still on Roshar and would be able to counteract anything that would go wrong. The power simply is in the SR, the Stormfather is reaching for it when renewing Stormlight. I think that's an accurate representation of what is happening. But we don't know much about how this process is happening in detail. It seems it's more about killing the mind and fracturing the power, which sends ripples through all three realms. That still means if someone were to Ascend to Honor, he would have to reunite all Splintered pieces of it, which might not be as easy as having Connection to all of them. It would take some power to do so - probably.

Kind of? Maybe? I wouldn't say connection manifests as location, but the more Shards invests in a system, the more of his investiture is bounding them to the system. I don't think they need to be connected to the system to be there - if you look at back at the first 2 WoBs (the second one through the link) you've will see that each Shard has investiture scattered everywhere in Cosmere (the aftermath of the Shattering of Adonalsium), they don't need to invest in place to visit a place, some bits of their power are already there. It's not enough to bound them to the system, but enough to realize its there and do something with it. Even Shards that are already bound to one system can use that to manifest an Avatar in another distant system. So because Odium's investiture is everywhere in Cosmere, he was able to just move around and use his full power to Splinter Shards without investing in the system (probably because he was using his power directly against another Shard's power). But as Brandon said in WoB, he left the matter of Shardic movement ambiguous on purpose, so the in-world philosophers have something to discuss. Maybe one day we will get the answer. Roshar, Braize and Ashyn are one system. Honor being invested in Roshar means he's invested in the whole solar system, not just in one planet. He doesn't need anything special to go to Braize, he's already there. However from Honor's vision to Dalinar it seems that it was Odium who "came" for Honor (unless that was about Odium coming to Roshar for the very first time), and by the time when he started to record those visions, he was already mortally wounded - the battle was over. Honor's death was also a prolonged process. WoK ch 75: That's Odium's power. That was the storm Odium had split and moved to Roshar to create the Everstorm. RoW ch 86: HoA and SH spoilers: HoA spoilers:

Interesting line of theorizing, I like how you gave another meaning to restoring the Oathpact as just like you've pointed out, restoring the Oathpact doesn't make sense in the current situation. But here is a problem I have with it. Shards don't have "a body," their body is their power - investiture - which is located mainly in the SR and in the SR space and location have no meaning. Shards just are. Their power is omnipresent, but their mind is not, it's not infinite, it's limited and while it can focus on many places at once, it still can't be everywhere at once and a Shard has to divide their attention even if their power is everywhere. So when you're seeing Odium at the end of OB, or in visions he pulls people into, that's not Odium's body, that's not Odium's whole power, that's just Odium's mind (the Vessel) partially manifesting a form others can see, while he's also doing stuff in several other places at the same time. That kind of manifestation exposes Shard's mind, which we've seen Taravangian exploiting. Honor's remnants are in the SR, the Splintered pieces of investiture, some are attached to the Stormfather and that's separate from his nature of Honor's Cognitive Shadow. He holds the power of Honor, not all of it, but a significant amount of it. Because of that Dalinar is in position to represent Honor. So while Honor might have been Splintered on Braize, as his attention and mind was focused there trying to counteract whatever Odium was doing, his investiture isn't just there, it is still in SR and going to Braize to gather that makes no sense in that context. From the example of Sel, we know that this time Odium didn't try to pull Honor's investiture into the CR (as that would create a massive deadly storm in the CR), nor to the PR as that would be even more dangerous, so Honor's Splintered investiture stayed in the SR. That means it doesn't matter where you are, Connection and reaching into the SR is what matters. Dalinar already has that Connection through his bond with the Stormfather, he can reach into the SR too (perpendicularity), he doesn't need to go anywhere. OB ch 57:

Investiture will work as a replacement for water, we've seen Prasanva in TLM using pure Dor after all. Luhel Bond is how Aethers bond, it turns physical matter into investiture/Aethers, but it can be sourced with some external investiture, just like in other invested arts pure unkeyed investiture can hack the system. Nightblood seems different, he specifically feeds on souls and any investiture he can find, not on matter (but he turns matter he strikes into investiture). Moreover the bond with Nightblood gets stronger after he feeds on you once, that's unlike anything like we've seen with the Luhel Bond so far. I don't think that's a Luhel bond at all, but there are similarities. This quote states that it's not always water, generally it's a physical matter, so some other forms of the Luhel bond that takes something else instead of water might appear. Lift comes to my mind, she trades calories into Lifelight, but WoBs say she metabolizes food into investiture instead of sugar, so who knows if that really is a Luhel Bond - not with Wyndle however. Tress ch 31:

I doubt it was Mraize. If he had Nightblood, he would keep him for his collection of artifacts. Here are some more quotes and a few WoBs, OB ch 108: OB ch 110: OB ch 114: RoW ch 15: From this I think it's Vasher. She even said to Adolin that she is looking for Vasher, Vasher wasn't surprised to hear that Vivenna is looking for him, nor worried because of her chosen destination. He said he gave up Nightblood, so it's very likely that he brought it to Roshar himself. Those last WoBs support this idea - Vasher and Nightblood's relationship deteriorated after they arrived on Roshar and after that they got separated, per Vasher's words, he let him go. I don’t think she 100% knew where Vasher was, even if she knew, she simply had no opportunity to go after him. Keep in mind, in OB they’ve just moved to the Tower from the Shattered Plains and riots in Kholinar started before the Everstorm. Moveover Vasher just arrived at the Plains in the middle of WoR, he was absent before, traveling somewhere. Even if Vivenna knew where Vasher is, this info would be outdated, leading her to Kholinar, just to get stuck in a riot, then in a siege, unable to leave. For Vivenna Vasher is not a main target, Nightblood is. She arrived at Kholinar looking for him, got trapped in a siege, escaped with Kaladin to CR and from there she chose to go back through Cultivation's perpendicularity. She went to the Lasting Integrity, as that's the last place Nightblood was spotted, probably in Nale's hands, or maybe even Vasher's. From Dalinar's visit to Nightwatcher, we strongly suspect that Nightblood was once given to her. That's a few years back, the timeline of Nightblood appearance in the Lasting Integrity and his presence in the Valley might correlate, those locations are relatively close to each other as well. So that’s where Nightblood was, that’s where Azure went. Good news are that we can expect more of them in KoWT:

I think it's possible, but why would you do that? It would be always an inferior version of your hand. That's impossible. Your body doesn't do that, Lifeless doesn't do that. The more damaged the flesh is, the weaker and harder it is for Lifeless to act, the more Breaths you need to sustain that Lifeless. But you won't have flesh like Kandra has, the human body is not the same, Lifeless won't allow for skin pockets or blades under your fingers or something. Well, if you were to use a cut off body part of a Kandra/Mistwraith, then maybe you could do that, then maybe you would be able to do that with a proper Command. But it might be really hard to combine a Lifeless Kandra hand with your body. That's more possible.

We don't know yet. What we do know is that they are more alive than metalminds, they have an identity of their own. I think that you don't tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, because it's a little alive and has its own identity, it connects itself to you and through that connection it grants you powers stored in nicrosil. SA spoilers:

Yes. Yes, because there would be no Preservation or Ruin anymore. There are some pairs of Shards that are just hard to combine and would push against their Vessel like what Sazed is experiencing, but others would be easier to combine. Ultimately we have only Sazed as an example of merged Shards and this is just my understanding of what's going on. But the fact that before the Shattering there were no Shards, there was just Adonalsium and all investiture was of Adonalsium points into this conclusion that Sazed should be fully united one Shard, with one power. No Ruin and Preservation should exist if he were able to properly merge those Shards. They are particularly difficult to merge, they are the most polarized Shards there are right now, so it's not truly his fault that he can't fully combine them. He was faced with an impossible task and managed to do something that was never done before. But in my opinion he is only halfway there.

Kind of. Trellium pushes investiture away, but investiture is in all three realms at the same time, so this doesn't really matter, as it is happening in every realm. One Axon is made out of both Ruin and Preservation's investiture, Trellium makes them split apart, splitting the Axon in two. Matter and investiture are both transformed into energy, that's the explosion, some trace amounts of investiture manifest as solid Lerasium or Atium. Harmony is a new Shard, but at the same time is made out of two Shards. Both sentences are correct and not contradictory, even if it is hard to understand. You can say he's two Shards or that he's one Shard, both ways of looking at this are correct. I get what you're saying and I do agree partially - Harmony is not merged properly. He should be one power, one intent, one investiture, but he's two held by one. But Harmony can be treated as one Shard with two powers, he has his own intent focused on balancing Ruin and Preservation. Harmonium is a new god metal, it's not an alloy of Atium and Lerasium. It seems contradictory, but it isn't - this is the problem with Harmony.

Time dilation causes no issues here as the question was about those events happening at the same time, which doesn't change with time dilation. If imprisonment of BAM did cause chasm on Sel, then this would happen immediately after (through Connection or SR thus time doesn't matter to it). Time dilation only changes time passage for Sel in comparison to Roshar. This would mean that on Roshar 2500 years passed, on Sel only 1000 for example, but those events would still happen at the same time from both perspectives. Here is more about time dilation from WoBs: The fighting was still going on near the Feverstone Keep, from this we know that the imprisonment of BAM was directly before the Recreance, because Singers with broken minds and no forms can't fight. No Fused were present during the False Desolation. This is how it had to go: Singers fought, Radiant sent a team to capture BAM. BAM was imprisoned, all Singers turned into Slaveform, fighting immediately stopped. The False Desolation is over. At the same time Radiants realized what a terrible thing they'd done, they'd basically destroyed an entire species capable of thinking, they'd dealt a brutal wound to Roshar, which by Sibling's words "touched all who belonged to Roshar. Spren too." Radiants or their spren would have felt that. Just how they'd feared, just like Honor said, they realized that they are on the way to destroy Roshar with their Surgebinding. They independently decided to abandon their Oaths to prevent a total destruction of Roshar, just like what had happened on Ashyn, those fighting near the Feverstone Keep were the first one to abandon their Ideals. Over the next few days all Radiant orders, except for Skybreakers, broke their Oaths. The Recreance is over just days after the imprisonment of BAM. Recreance started at the same day as the imprisonment of BAM, otherwise soldiers at the Feverstone Keep would have known that the fighting stopped. It lasted just a few days. From the perspective of this theory, those events happened at the same time. WoK ch 52: RoW ch 49: You said it yourself, Brandon would try to dodge the question, if it was onto something. He didn't dodge anything, he straight up answered "These two are not at the same time." That's definitive. Time dilation can't provide any explanation as with or without it, they would still have to happen at the same time for this to work. I don't see any way in which those events didn't happen at the same time, yet one caused the other, unless BAM had a giant laser which shot its beam at Sel when she was captured, traveled for years and hit Arelon causing the creation of the chasm. Only then you have a few year gap in between those events and only then time dilation would matter as we now are talking on how long was the gap between firing the laser and the laser hitting Sel, which differs from those perspectives. But let's be real, no lasers were involved.

Possible but that might be too weak. Harmonium is attuned to the rhythm of Harmony (most likely, but Rhythm is not a pure tone), but it's a solid matter, it's much harder to influence. Raysium was unfazed by the anti-tone of Odium. Trellium is what pushes axi of Harmonium apart, it's splits them like during a nuclear fission - there is no annihilation here, there is no anti-investiture, it's because axi (atoms) of Harmonium are split in half due to the force Trellium exerts on it, which releases tremendous amount of energy. The same mechanism as in nuclear fission that powers our nuclear reactors or bombs. Singing tones might be too weak to generate force sufficient enough to split axi of physical, solid Harmonium. Harmonium is NOT made out of Atium and Lerasium, it's not an alloy, Harmonium meshes Ruin and Preservation's investiture together "in harmony," but those don't fit well together, which creates a chemically unstable element. Harmonium is still its own, new god metal, it's a single element. Just like Harmony IS a full Shard, which at the same time is two Shards combined. I do agree with Treamayne, Sazed didn't combine both Shards well, he keeps them separate, but working together, which creates all his problems. However Harmony is still a full Shard. If Sazed were to drop Harmony, he would drop only one Shard, not Ruin and Preservation. He is Harmony and Ruin and Preservation make him up. There is no Atium or Lerasium in Harmonium, Harmonium is one element, it's not an alloy, it's not a compound, it's one Axion. Nothing destroys each other, water is just reacting with axi of Harmonium, like water reacts with cesium. It’s a purely chemical reaction, there is no anti-investiture here, no annihilation, Ruin’s investiture isn’t anti-investiture to Preservation’s investiture. It is. Just like metals in our universe have different properties, can be reactive, corrosive or radioactive, the same applies to Cosmere, god metals can take many forms, But as by the WoB above, the reactive nature of Harmonium is because of two polar opposite investitures not meshing well together. The physical properties of Harmonium reflect its spiritual nature. What I think is happening is that during Harmonium-Trellium reaction Trellium pushes on both investitures of Ruin and Preservation and separates them apart, forcing them into a pure, singular state, which manifests as pure god metal of one Shard. This goes back to Sazed interpretation of Harmony - both Shards work together, but are still separate. If he were to fully combine them, I think there would be only one investiture present, no meshing or separation, just one investiture. Just like it's possible to split Honor into two smaller Shards, but Honor is not made out of two smaller Shards, Honor is just Honor, one Shard, one force, the smallest division that currently exists. Harmony is not like that, he's two Shards merged in one Shard, but they are still separate. Going back to your first post: Nope. Because Harmony is keeping both Shards separate in him, he can chose to send only half of him out in the word as Mists. But as you've noticed, there are two kind of Mists now, Ruin's Mists and Preservation's Mists - this wasn't happening before, sure there was Ruin's Mists at the Well, but not on the scale of Preservation's Mists. Harmony is sending them both because he has to in order to keep both Shards balanced. He probably could have combine them together as Harmony's mists, but chose not to. Yes, Mists react to the tones of their Shards. We've seen Mists swirl around Allomancers just like in Era 1 (Allomantic pulses are related to pure tone of Preservation), but they are not repulsed by Hemalurgists anymore. Well, they used to not be repulsed, in TLM they were pushed back by Wax's spike in ch 69. This was probably because of Discord. I think that's possible but this might be very hard to do with solid investiture, as I've talked about at the beginning. It won't be as easy as just singing the pure tones to separate them. You might be forced to start with singing a harmonized version and then breaking the harmony into pure tones of Ruin and Preservation - that might work on gaseous form of investiture, but I doubt it would work as easily on solids. Agreed. As long as Sazed is holding two separate Shards in one Shard, he will struggle. He needs to be one Shard, he needs to merge them more than they are right now. Ruin and Preservation need to be gone.

Let's start comparing anything to the Planck time and on that scale nothing happens at the same time. Sure, theoretically Recreanse came after BAM imprisonment, practically those are so close together that in the context of this question, those events can be treated as one. If you were onto something Brandon would either RAFO the question, or answer "they are close." Those events aren't related and it's hard for them to be related in any way. They happened on two different planets, BAM is Odium's Splinter (what she was before doesn't matter anymore as Unmaking essentially killed all of it), she is unable to leave Roshar, or reach to another planet because of her very nature she is trapped on Roshar. Imprisonment of BAM didn't break the land on Roshar, so it's even less likely that it would somehow break the ground on Sel. BAM created a scar in Rosharan SR, not PR, on Sel SR doesn't matter for AonDor.

As far as I'm aware, it was never discussed in WoBs, but I don't see any problem. Atium alloys are not exactly the same as pure Atium, they don't have to carry the Atium characteristics - they are alloys, mixing metals changes them. Malatium itself shows nowhere near the amount of information like Atium-electrum shows. It just shows a stationary shadow of a person's past. Your brain is fully capable of comprehending that information on its own, no mental enhancements are needed. However I think there are some mind-expanding properties, normally not visible, but when used in the most extreme possible way, they kick in allowing you to process extra information. Kelsier experienced this, flaring Malatium in the moment of his death, which allowed him to reach further into SR. SH ch 1-1: Kelsier saw the entire vision of Rashek Ascending, with effects it had on the world around him - that's a lot, maybe some extra mental effects of Malatium allowed him to process that vision. Ultimately we don't know, but I think normally Malatium doesn't need anything like that, because it's showing a stationary shadow of a person, nothing more.

The Recreance happened directly after the imprisonment of BAM, they both happened at the same time. The WoB quite definitely eliminates this possibility.

Not near the Well, Ruin's perpendicularity is in the Pits because of Atium. Once Atium geodes were destroyed, Ruin's perpendicularity was destroyed as well. If Ruin's Shardpool was spotted near the Well, it's very likely that Atium is there as well, as it's the reason why his perpendicularity exists in the first place. Oh, so you just mean that he saw it because he persisted long enough to spot it? Others were lasting in CR long enough to spot it as that was one of the first things Kelsier saw, even before Leras showed up. But this doesn't really matter IF some Terrispeople were able to visit CR directly. I have looked back and my first response and now I see the mistake I've made - I've stated Kwaan went to CR to study trees after glancing over previous posts, mistakenly taking it as a fact. Now as I dig more into it, I see it was never said anywhere that Kwaan went to CR. And I now see that's a year old topic so this probably also accumulated to my confusion as I had no recollection of this place - but that's fine, it's 100% my mistake. I apologize. There is very little about it, some things might suggest that some Terrismen went into the CR - they had Realmatic awareness, they studied cognition of trees, they had the same origins as Worldsingers, which might have influenced them (or not). Not a lot, I admit, but that's more likely in my opinion than mostly mindless Preservation doing everything and even giving Kwaan perfect memorization skills in order to sent Rashek - who was NOT chosen by Preservation to take up the power of the Well, Alendi was, 16 years before the Well was filled, just like Vin was and that was after Kwaan was born, thus after he had those skills. Kwaan started to doubt Alendi long before he wrote this text in steel, two years at least. So maybe Preservation did influence Kwaan to send Rashek after Alendi, but that was something made in the very last moment, when Leras realized that Alendi will give up the power, not use it - just like what happened with Sazed and Vin. The first time Sazed noticed a missing piece of text ripped by Preservation was in WoA ch 45, some few weeks before Vin's Ascension. Kwaan didn't see any Mistspirit unlike Sazed (100% he would wrote about it) so the most Preservation could have done is some slight nudges here and there and emotional Allomancy - it's unlikely he could have given him perfect memorisation skills for that occasion (he was mindless, that's first reason, second that's direct intervention, Ruin's power would oppose that making it impossible to achieve), nor visions, as his doubts didn't came from any vision. He most likely chose steel because of his Realmatic knowledge and possibly he might have discovered this during his 2 year long research, or maybe, just maybe, some Terrismen did indeed travel to CR and saw glowing metal for themselves, but they didn't realize its importance at that time.

So it's a WoP, equally definitive on this matter as Peter worked with Brandon on the Atium retcon. He knows what Brandon knows about the effects of pure Atium in comparison with Atium-electrum alloy (which was HIS idea). Another WoP for you: It doesn't, Atium alloy brings you a far more inferior version of the future sight, pure Atium lets you see it all. It's not the same, not even in slightest. Pure Atium is much stronger than Atium-electrum alloy and it allows you to peer straight into the SR, while the alloy needs help from duralumin to achieve that. We've only seen one god metal alloy being burnt with duralumin and it has been confirmed that it produces the same effect as pure Atium. I don't know why you keep trying to refute the WoB/WoP that is proving you wrong in the most straightforward way possible. There is simply nothing I can write to change your mind and truthfully there is nothing I should be writing as the WoP is enough of a proof on its own. I'm ending this here, I've done my part, I've gave you WoP, people can read and decide on their own if the WoP is to be trusted.

You don't need to be a Worldhopper to travel to CR. Being in CR doesn't make you a Worldhopper, you need to travel between worlds. Kelsier didn't become a Worldhopper in SH, he never left the Scadrian sphere of influence. Knowing Realmatic Theory in an industrial world is enough to travel to CR - Kwaan was interested in cognition of trees, not Preservation. We don't know where the Pits were located before Rashek's Ascension, as he changed the geography of Scadrial and moved its crust. But there was also perpendicularity at the Well - two in fact as there was also Ruin's Shardpool there. So it's likely that Atium spawning goods were located close to the Well. And that's Terris homeland, sure it's challenging to go there, but as proven by Rashek from Alendi's journal, for a Ferichemist this is not problematic at all. Source? Metal just glows in CR and that's not because he was a Mistborn, that has nothing to do with it - I have not seen anything that would indicate it's because he was a Mistborn that he saw metal glowing. That’s true, he didn't specifically state that metal glows, he just said only metal can be trusted. Kwaan didn't use his Coppermind, he realized that what other Worldbringers repeated from their Coppermind or texts didn't match with his perfect memory. How he reached the conclusion that metal can be trusted is unknown, but having the knowledge of Realmatic Theory probably helped. But this is a possible explanation, Kwaan said he studied texts for 2 years looking for alterations, so he might have noticed that words written on metal don't change. Also because Kwaan refers to Ruin as the force, something or thing, by his time Ruin was either completely forgotten, or his role was greatly diminished in Terris religion. Preservation would probably be treated similarly.

Reod didn't happen at the same time as the Recreance and the imprisonment of BAM. Those events aren't related.

Mmmmm, it's an interesting pattern. I was thinking about RoW and Kalak is a bit of a stretch, but what about Lift? She was not killed by Mraize, then later by Raboniel and other Fused and most importantly Moash didn't kill Lift when fighting with Teft. She is a child, Moash had an interest in threatening to kill and killing her - forcing Teft to fight him - that might be the continuation of the pattern you're looking for. However, sparing Lift actually achieved that goal. It's still a bit of a stretch in your context but at least she is a real child. RoW ch 104:

I think in this case he meant it literally, as Leras gave the power, otherwise he would say something like "it came from the power of Preservation." Sure, he's a master wordsmith, but he very often makes it clearly confusing. In this case he said it's not a big deal, so I don't think any tricks are involved.

No, it's not it as well. I think the part about Ascensions was a secondary question, or maybe written on a book during a signing, but I'm not sure. No, I can't remember the context at all, I can't find proper words so the search is pointless for now. It's irritating as I want to show the WoB, not just say "trust me bro." But I've found that Feruchemy came from Preservation, something that you were talking before here:

When a spike is driven through the body of a donor, which steals their attributes and holds them in the spike from this point on. How could it be coded when you place it in a recipient and have no contact with a donor at this point? A Hemalurgic spike tears off a part of a spirit web of a donor, it steals it, it carries it with it - it is loaded with attributes when you do that, not when you place it in a recipient. The binding point in a recipient determines only how you connect this piece of stolen soul to your spirit web. If you choose the wrong one, you will get a spike that doesn't work, but it will never give you a different power than it is in the spike. You invest them in the moment of the first spiking. It simply can't work the other way around. Putting a spike in a recipient doesn't invest it.

Identity is a Spiritual property, not physical one, it's coded in your spirit web. Kandra can't touch that, can't replicate that. Eating bodies won't carry Identity to them.