alder24

We don't know Hoid's end goal, that's a big RAFO. All we know is that Hoid wants to stop Odium by all means necessary (even sacrificing Roshar). There is something in his past that he deeply regrets doing and many think this is about the Shattering. Many people believe that Hoid wants to restore Adonalsium by recombining all Shards - that's why he's collecting all invested arts by this theory, to gain needed Connection to all Shards. There is even one WoB in which Brandon hinted that Hoid wants to "make that which once was." From his interactions with Sazed from SA letters and his involvement with Wax, it seems unlikely that Hoid is against Harmony, rather they seem to be allies right now as Sazed is one of few who sees Odium as a great threat to Cosmere.

Inquisitor's body dissolved in the Well, it didn't appear in the CR near Kelsier as it should have if it was transported into the CR. Hoid couldn't have used an inquisitor's body. His head was still attached to the rest of the body - Inquisitor was decapitated. Hoid said it was a spirit, not a body - it's probably some kind of Cognitive Shadow, or something like that. It's invested enough to resist being pulled into the Beyond after death. And Spanky can talk. Inquisitor was killed some hours before Kelsier met Hoid, on the square in the city and Hoid was apparently not present on Scadrial during that time, so he had no way of catching Inquisitor's spirit. Inquisitor isn't invested enough to resist the pull into the Beyond, he would have faded in the comparable amount of time to what Kelsier experienced before becoming a Cognitive Shadow, which is nowhere near the amount of time to travel though Scadrian subastral by rowing like Hoid does.

Hello, welcome to the Shard We don't know for sure unfortunately. Shay did it by hacking the magic system - she drew a map of the Basin in TLM, which acted like the city of Elantris and allowed her to use AonDor there, probably being tied to this Aon of the Basin (so the further away she would get from it, the weaker would her magic be). While we still don't know the details of this, we know this works. TLM ch 54: The same thing might have happened with Riina and Hoid in Tress - after all there was a giant map of the entire planet on the floor, which might have acted in the similar way as Shay's drawing from TLM. However, unlike Shay's drawing, the map in the tower wasn't glowing, so personally I don't think it was due to the map. Plus, once Rinna left the planet, Hoid was able to use AonDor to modify the curse in some way and without the map it would probably be impossible. Keep in mind, Tress happens in the far future of Cosmere, very far future as Iriali left Lumar 300 years prior to the events of the book, they'd lived there probably for many generations, but right now they are on Roshar - this implies Tress takes place hundreds of years into the future, it's hard to say what will happen on Sel in that timeframe, they might have solved the problem of the Dor being in CR for example, which causes magic on Sel to be restricted by location - but this is a heavy speculation. Additionally, we know that increasing your Connection to Elantris, can help you overcome the location limitation of AonDor. It might be possible that both Riina and Hoid were using this trick to access the full power of the Dor, without any maps and other tricks. In the end, both Riina and Hoid have lived for thousands of years, studied arcana in great details and have extensive knowledge of all things regarding AonDor - they for sure can find dozens of ways to trick AonDor and make it usable on other planets. Moonlight did fake her Connection via a Soulstamp, but Hoid was invited to become an Elantrian by Riina, which apparently is a legitimate way of doing becoming Elantrian. Moonlight probably won't be Elantrian forever, because it's all fake, but Hoid will remain a real Elantrian. Tress ch 64:

From a quick look at Dawnshard, Yalb and two others seem to have survived more or less together. There was nothing particularly "special" about his survival, but people like to tell stories, so a gossip quickly spread that they've served on a ghost ship for years - maybe that confused you? Dawnshard prologue: Shallan doesn't just draw, her ability to create a Memory is a supernatural thing. She creates something like a photo of what she sees and then she moves it from her mind into a piece of paper, perfectly replicating every single detail of the Memory, including text. But once drawn, the Memory is gone from her mind and she can't draw it again. When Shallan tried to replace her sketchbook she was drawing everything from her normal, human memory, she couldn't use her magical Memory, because she already drew those pictures. That's why everything felt off to her, it wasn't as perfect as the first drawings. Moreover, as evident from her drawing of survivors of the Wind's Pleasure, she can draw things by glimpsing into the Spiritual Realm. That's why she drew Yalb surviving the sinking of the ship with others, that's why she can draw better versions of people.

Great catch and an interesting theory, however it's highly unlikely based on several WoBs. Brandon RAFO a lot of questions about Kandra on Roshar, yet when asked if she appeared on pages in WoK, he said he doesn't know - weird thing to say if that was Yalb. In contrast, he stated that she appears in OB - Yalb was not featured in that book, he was still presumed dead. Also, Brandon was "excited" when someone asked him, if this Kandra was Felt's wife - Malli - who indeed appeared only since OB. As a tangential note, this Kandra isn't working for Harmony. Regarding survival of the sinking of the Wind's Pleasure, Yalb wasn't the only survivor, there were several of them. It seems they were simply Fortunate to survive. WoBs:

The difference is that even though the Shardic power is infinite, the mind of a Vessel isn't and can't be, so they can't access and use all of it - but they are still Connected to that and it's still part of their Shard. No, they are not, they are Splinters, autonomous fraction of Shardic power. They aren't a Shard, they are separated pieces of a Shard. At that level it simply doesn't matter if it's finite or infinite. It's like saying that the number of atoms in the observable universe is finite - 10^82 is basically infinity for all we care about. There is no physical object that can contain infinity (or near infinity). There is no gemstone you can make that would be able to fit all of the Shardic power inside of it. It's simply impossible. You would have to make a gemstone the size of a solar system, or something like that, to fit near infinite amount of investiture of a Shard in it, but at this point it would simply collapse under its own gravity, crush itself and stop being perfect, thus leaking everything out, back to SR. If it won't collapse, you get to the point when it will start behaving like Nightblood and start leaking everything out, because it's so full of investiture that it can't fit any more. There is no mortal being that can create such a ridiculously enormous object, nor is there a way for them to capture all of the Shardic power. Not to mention the effect investiture has in the physical realm - it’s like matter, it generates gravity and all that stuff. Can you, a person, fit all matter in the observable universe in a single object? No. Just like you can't rob the universe of matter, you can't rob a Shard of his power. The best you can to is to kill its Vessel and Ascend in their place - like we've seen in books. Most WoBs say that Shards have infinite power, there are few that say they don't, still they have so much power that it can be just treated as infinite - it doesn't matter at all at this point. No investiture that is put in any object, any gemstone is lost - it's still part of the system, part of the investiture cycle, part of a Shard. Yes, vines are made out of investiture. Technically, they are like god metals - physical manifestation of Aether's investiture, their body. But how much sense does it make for an Aether, who wants a lot of water, to give you more water than you give to them? It simply makes no sense. Vines won’t provide you with more water than was used to create them. Plus, from Coppermind: So that simply won't work, they don't have much value inside of them. I pointed out for clarification that by compounding Stormlight, you won't be juggling with Honor's investiture, but Preservation's - you can just compound weight instead and it will work in the sam way. A Divine Breath is not a "fuel," it's a Splinter of Endowment investing Returned spirit web and working as innate investiture as it's stuck to their soul. Breaths also are innate investiture, but more physical in nature, Brandon hasn't revealed if Breaths can be stored in F-nicrosil, but he felt conflicted if they can be stolen by a nicrosil spike, because of their physical nature - it's speculated that for the same reason it may not be possible to store Breaths in F-nicrosil (but a nicrosil spike can steal a Divine Breath). As I said, most evidence points to the conclusion that F-nicrosil stores just innate investiture, not static or kinetic - no Stormlight or Mists, just pieces of a soul. Compounding Stormlight is most likely impossible. Yes. My point was that it's still part of the system, it will eventually return to SR. Yes, it's changing forms, but it still is investiture of that particular shard and it will return to it. There is a whole investiture cycle in Cosmere, just like there is a water cycle on Earth. Matter will decay, erode, burn, energy will be used up - all will return eventually back as investiture to SR. And through all of this, it's still Connected and keyed to its Shard, it's still part of it. Even the WoB about using anti-Dor on Dor tells you that the energy released in that will eventually return as Dor.

That's impossible. Shards contain basically an infinite amount of investiture each, but because of their finite mind, they can't touch all of that. So the investiture present in the system is finite, but it comes from an infinite source - you can't drain it. Moreover, per those WoBs above, even if you trap Stormlight in a gemstone for eternity, it's still Connected to the Shard of Honor, it's still of his, it's literally his physical body, part of the Shard. You're removing nothing from the Shard, you don't drain it at all. You would need to Splinter that light off the Shard to remove that Connection - that’s much harder to do (that’s what happened to Atium, Preservation splintered a part of Ruin, separating some of his power away from him). Gemstones can't be soulcasted. I believe it was said somewhere in WoK, but the Coppermind page about Soulcasting references a wrong chapter and I can’t find that quote (or I'm blind - I am). Laws of thermodynamics stops this. Creating vines most likely requires more water then you get from eating it. Your Aether can most likely cut you off the power, just like Spren can do to their Radiants (Syl did that to Kal in WoR arena training). This is a symbiotic bond between sentient entities, Aethers have a lot to say about how their essence is being used. If they don't like it, you don't get to use it in that way. First of all, Compounding Honor's investiture via Allomancy and Feruchemy would draw the power from the Shard of Preservation, not Honor. Secondly, F-nicrosil stores innate investiture - pieces of a soul - not static or kinetic investiture like Stormlight (many WoBs and quotes from books point to this conclusion - investiture in Ars Arcanum doesn't mean just raw power, but also invested arts). In F-nicrosil you can store powers like Allomancy or Surgebinding, which come from innate investiture, a part of your soul. BoM ch 3: Additionally using Stormlight to fuel Allomancy or Feruchemy (like healing from F-gold) would be difficult to accomplish and require special ways to do - as Stormlight is right now, it's incompatible with Metallic Arts. Also, often forgotten fact, compounding takes time. You have to burn metals and this doesn't release power instantaneously, it's just like burning other metals. You have to spend a lot of time burning metals to accumulate your huge, compounded storages. You would first die from old age, before you would be able to compound a fraction of Shardic power. And the more attributes you store, the more metal you need to store it in - you would get to the point where you would require a ton of metals to store attributes you compound, as metalminds can hold relatively small amounts of investiture. Metallic Arts draw too little power to make any difference (even Surgebinding was noted to deal with not much investiture in general). Investiture goes nowhere, it's not draining anything, it's stuck in a cycle, in the system, fueling Aons and going back to the Dor. With this method and once Aons are used up or collapsed, investiture returns back to where it was - to the Cognitive Realm. Moreover investiture on Sel is tied to location because of the nature of Dor being in the Cognitive Realm, so at best you're only draining the Dor near the city of Elantris, not all of it form the entire Selish CR. But still, I don't believe this would work at all - Aons would simply collapse at some point because they would require too much investiture to draw than they can conduct through them. I also doubt Aons can draw another Aons - canon quote please, I don't remember. Investiture is energy and it comes from the Spiritual Realm, which is part of the closed system - energy is conserved. Yes but the light returns to the Spiritual Realm, as all investiture does - it's part of the closed system. Anyway, Shards are infinite, there is no physical thing that can contain infinity, at some point something will break and everything will be released back into the system, while a Shard would barely notice this dent on their infinity. This investiture is not leaving the system, it's still accessible and Connected to Shards.

What do you mean "the spike targets?" It doesn't target anything - you do with your intent. The only thing that matters is to have correct intent and all that wealth Nomad holds is gone. And if the Night Brigade can spike him once that means he's tied to the Hemalurgic table, unable to do anything - they can spike him as much as they need to drain all of his investiture - or just use Larkin/A-chromium. All Nomad can do is punch with more strength. His incredible investment would give him no more power than that, no fancy destruction will come out of his hands, no Surgebinding, just some extra strength, speed and lots of healing - that's it. The Night Brigade has to just restrain him with some Awakened ropes and all his investiture matters no more. They have Shades, they can swarm him with Shades and drain him out of investiture as he tries to heal himself from the withering, until he loses all of his investiture and is vulnerable again. In short, Nomad has some pretty handy defensive capabilities from being more invested, but except for extra strength and speed, he's devoid of any extra offensive powers. The Night Brigade can still deal with him easily, without sweating, no matter how invested he is. And I doubt he can casually get to the levels of the Well of Ascension, there is a limit of how fast he can consume investiture (the sun on Canticle would kill him if he were to consume investiture from it) and what he can do with it. Even Ascension seems to be off the table as it requires certain circumstances - at best he will Ascend like Dalinar in OB, but not like Vin/Rashek with the ability to move planets. It's also possible that holding that much power as a Dawnsliver has some unwanted side effects, as that's the reason Hoid didn't want to hold the power of the Well: The only thing he could do with it is to Awaken without Breaths, but there is nothing in TSM that suggests he knows how to do it and is capable of it. If that's off the table then he can't do anything with all that investiture except for healing and Skipping. He has no other invested ability, no Surgebinding anymore, he can't mimic other powers as that's just raw investiture - he won't become a Shard and be capable of what they are. He's just stupidly invested and that's it. I don't think Nomad will have enough time to drain all the Mists before the Night Brigade comes after him (not to mention doing this would be like placing a giant, glowing arrow above his head, screaming "I'm here"), or Harmony says "wait a minute, you can't do that" and redirects all the Mists away from him. Planets with the most investiture around are the major Shardwords inhabited by Shards, who would be deeply displeased if Nomad tried to destroy all this fancy investiture system they've set up and mess up their plans set up millennia ago. Perpendicularity alone won't be enough to give him that much investiture as only the Well held that much power, regular perpendicularities are much less invested - they can supercharge invested arts but that's it. Vin literally had to consume all of the Mists on Scadrial and that's such ridiculous amounts of investiture that he won't find it anywhere else that easily. Sure, in theory Sigzil might be able to Ascend if he draws enough investiture, but in practice I don't see any reasonable set of circumstances which would lead to this and his Dawnsliver status probably complicates things more than we know.

I think it's just about holding the Dawnshard for longer, so yes, your hypothetical scenario with a time bubble would work. WoBs talk about just holding a Dawnshard, not using it - Rysn can't use it, yet she already is affected by it in some way.

Cohesion is enough on its own to do that. It allows you to shape solids like there were clay and solidify them in that position - and we've seen Venli using it in that way. RoW ch 83: Venli has access to only Cohesion, not Tension. Cohesion allows the manipulation of bonds between atoms (Axi), making things easier to shape. RoW Ars Arcanum: Cohesion allows you to alter shapes by making things like clay, Tension allows you to make things more rigid. The Stoneward from Dalinar's vision was only using Cohesion as after you mold the object to its new shape, it solidifies. In another WoB Peter thinks that the Stormfather statement from that scene is false (he claimed it's a power Dalinar will be able to use, that's Tension), so this is further proof that it was only Cohesion used there.

I know that feeling Welcome to the Shard. Yes, the Coppermind and the Time Machine is a good tool, but it notes that the pages before WoR are bad there, so I don't know how much information is there. I support what Treamayne said, you can start a topic like famed Amira's one (it can be this one, you can rename this topic) and ask questions about things that confuse you - we will answer as best as we can avoiding spoilers for other books. You can go chapter by chapter like Amira did, and present to us your thoughts, or just ask for clarification of what you're missing. We're here to help

You're on the right track, the glyphs are the key. But we don't know many glyphs so it's futile to try to decode their names.

It may be, but for a little bit different reason. Spikes might anchor a soul to the body more firmly (I'm thinking of Kelsier now), so if you got cut perfectly in half, your soul might be more anchored to the side with a spike in it, rather than without. Spikes aren't sd cards, they are different investiture, different identity hotwired into your soul. It's this wiring that might hold it firmly to that part of the body. So instead of a spike attracting a soul after the body is cut, the spike would prevent it from leaving that part of the body - no jumping between halves.

You forgot the Night Brigade is using Hemalurgy, your art? If Nomad can remove his Torment, they can probably take away what allows him to feed investiture in the first place, if not they can just take a nicrosil spike and remove all of that investiture Nomad holds. It's such a simple solution I'm surprised you didn't think about it. TSM ch 28: Not to mention they can just use A-chromium or a larkin to suck up all of that tasty investiture. Just being invested isn't a problem for the Night Brigade. Yup, they can obliterate entire planets, Nomad can only run away from them. Raw investiture won't make him invincible, at best he could heal a lot of damage before running out of power. Sig is not like Hoid, Hoid was holding a Dawnshard way longer and that affected him more than Sig. That's why Hoid is almost invincible. Investiture alone won't make Sig like that. TSM ch 34: