alder24

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:

I don't think that will work, Hemalurgy steals only pieces of a soul and the spirit web of a spren is still there, technically alive (as spren can't be killed, you can't kill an idea). What you're describing is more or less Deadeye, which still can't be burned. You need to remove the entire spirit web of a spren with their cognitive aspect and that's way harder as it's tied to their physical form. Just grab Nightblood and hit a Honorblade a few times - it's easier. Perception won't matter in this case because Shardblade is alive, the investiture making up this god metal is alive, has its own spirit web and cognitive aspect. Perception won't remove it. If you were to kill all of that, you will be left with just a piece of raw investiture. TSM spoilers in case:

If you're not an Allomancer, then pure Lerasium will make you one - that's confirmed because it's not you burning it, it's your body that does it. If you're an Allomancer then Lerasium can have a different effect - we know this from many other WoBs: That's what the WoB suggests, but judging from Wax's case this limit must have been pretty insignificant as if even Lerasium dust can make you into a full Mistborn then it doesn't matter. My point was that pure Lerasium on its own won't make you a Misting even if there is a little amount of it, because it's not "programmed" to do it. It doesn't know how to do it. That's why you have to alloy it with base metals to key it to the specific power. This wasn't about initial investiture levels - Mists didn't target people who could become full Mistborn as they were not a part of 16. Mists target mainly those too weak for any power to manifest in them and Mists invest them with additional power to bring their ability to the surface. To make someone into a Mistborn Mists would require them to invest people much more. The difference in Lerasium and Mists is that Mists were programed to do that autonomously by Preservation, Lerasium is just a mindless piece of metal that can't do anything on its own, that's why you need to alloy it to tell it what power you want to get, otherwise it will just give you everything. Highly disagree, she would become a Mistborn of the same strength as Wax (except for steal). It's like in Hemalurgy, it adds to what you already have. The amount added doesn't depend on your soul, but on the amount of Lerasium used. Lerasium consumed by Vin wouldn't give her more strength just because she already was an Allomancer and her soul was invested, she would get the same effect as someone with low potential. Lerasium directly rewrites the spirit web, but unless you alloy it with base metals, it won't make you into a Misting, because pure Lerasium can only create Mistborn.

No, aluminum just blanks your identity. The problem is that your spirit web remains in your body, not in the cut off ear. Physical injuries don't cut your spirit, and your spirit will always stay in the larger part of your body.

Yes, I agree with it too. That was just the best case scenario, which might happen if the conditions are just right, if the cultural integration is deep enough and enough time has passed - we're talking centuries of time, a very long time frame in which people will slowly develop a new identity.

In the case of Turkey yes, for sure there is no prevalent self-identity of being Roman. But it also depends, Byzantines stubbornly called themselves Romans till the very end, even though 1000 years had passed since Rome had fallen and they were vastly different than Romans of the Western Roman Empire. Then many of those "natives" also considered themselves true Romans under Ottoman rule, who viewed themselves as their successors through the conquest for some time. But nations evolve, people change, priorities shift, new identities are developed and the tie to ancient Rome eventually gets diminished in importance. On the other hand we also have Greeks who never stopped considering themselves as Greeks even though they lived for 2000 years under rule of foreign powers (although Greece and its culture was of great influence over the Eastern Roman Empire). If Arelon were to conquer others, then I see no reason why they would try to call themselves someone else's title. This is because their own culture and history is strong enough that they can take pride in it and their tie to Arelon (and most important Elantris) is a key to their identity - just look at the first Aonic people who quickly overcome their fear and moved into the abandoned city of Elantris itself, as the glory of being rulers of it was too vast to be sitting under its walls. Over time they will probably include other conquered nations as Aonic, just like at the beginning Romans were considered to be only the citizens of the city of Rome, despite their vast conquests, then they included every Italic people as true Romans, later that was extended even further. Would that change Aons? No. As I said earlier, I believe Aons are strictly about geography, not people and their perception - it didn't matter that there was nobody living in Arelon before Aonic people migrated there, Aons already existed as they are tied to the land itself - Aons were discovered, not created. Perception has no big impact on Aons because Elantrians didn't know about the Chasm, yet it changed Aons immediately. Because on Sel investiture is trapped in the CR, the self-perception and identity are less important than proximity and location. Even if Fjordell was conquered and successfully integrated by Arelon, to the point that they will identify themselves as true Aonic people, a person from the total opposite of the new Arelon empire would never be taken by Shaod, because they are simply too far away from Elantris and its investiture, lacking any ties to the land of Arelon itself - they may have ties to people and Arelon as a country, but not to the land. In this case their tie to the local land would be stronger than to the distant land on the other side of the massive empire. A better example, if for some reason Teod were to fully conquer the Rose Empire up north, then they will have all the reasons to call themselves as their true successors and true citizens of the Empire (Rosans? ) and change their identity to theirs. That would be politically beneficial to them, improve their status and prestige - just like Ottomans calling themselves Romans after conquering Constantinople. Also they would "feel" closer to the Rose Empire, because traveling and trade between them would blossom, news would be exchanged faster and matters of the northern parts of the empire would be of importance to those in Teod. This change of identity and self-perception might be enough to cut their ties to Arelon and their Aonic descend, preventing them from being taken by Shaod at all. Their geographic proximity didn't change, but their Connection to the land did and they are already close enough to those two lands for their perception to matter a bit. In the case of Shaod and other invested arts, perception still matters (as evident by the first Aonic people who were taken by Shaod only decades after migrating to Arelon, not immediately), but the location seems to be far more important factor (because Aonic people had to live in Arelon for this to work at all and people from Teod are taken only when they are in Arelon) and I think in some cases perception alone can't break through the fact that you're nowhere near the proper geographical location you need to be to be an Elantrian. But Aons are based on geography only - if you want to change them then cut forests, reroute rivers, dry lakes and flatten hills - that will change Aons, not imaginary borders on maps.

It's about geography and that's not some made up lines on a political map. Political borders are separate from a geographical region in which the country of Arelon rose, Aons care only about geography. Aons wouldn't be changed. Only people of Aonic descent can become Elantrians, however it's probably the matter of what they consider to be their homeland. The first Aonic people, who migrated to Arelon and to already standing Elantris, were not taken by the Shaod until several decades later so this implies it's not about genes, it's about self-identification as "Arelonians." If Arelon were to be conquered they would still consider Arelon's region their home, no matter if such country exists or not. If for example Fjordell where to banish everyone and colonize Arelon with their own people, it will probably take decades or centuries before they would be taken by Shaod as well, depending on how they view themselves. Can't help it, I have to point out maybe that's because the term Byzantium was only used more than 100 years after the Eastern Roman Empire fell as a refusal of their status of the Roman Empire successor because HRE claimed to be that and the term Byzantium originated from Germany? Byzantines considered themselves Romans and many Ottoman Turks called themselves Romans as well, as successors of the Eastern Roman Empire and were recognized as such by the Arabic world and even some Europeans.