Does anti-Investiture react to a different Shard’s Investiture in any significant way?
The answer is kind of a no, kind of a yes. Mostly a no. Anti-Investiture is going to have an explosive reaction. But the thing is, if it’s anti-Investiture of a specific Shard, that explosion is much grander. But you can make that explosion happen in a just antimatter-and-matter same sort of thing. But you can make the explosion bigger.
Odium has a history of breaking Shards. In order to do that, it feels like he must have something that gives him an edge over the other Shards. I’m curious if Odium (Taravangian) possesses anything further than the Shard of Adonalsium?
He does not have anything more than Odium. But he does have an edge.
Like a Dawnshard?
Not a Dawnshard. No, if he had a Dawnshard, that would be very, very bad.
The monks of Dakhor are known to follow the Order of Bone. And we have Teft leading down the new bridge crews down into the chasms, where there are skeletons of bones. And he said, “Look around you; this is why we’re also known as the Order of Bone.” Is there any sort of connection there?
Not a big one. That’s more of a reference there for people who eventually read Dragonsteel Prime, where that was a big thing I called Bridge Four. But I decided to not use that title for Bridge Four very much. It’s partially an in-joke for my team. It is not meant to be a reference to Dakhor monks.
Does each Unmade on Roshar have a specific attribute that they embody?
Yes, to an extent they do, yes.
For one of the Unmade to be classified as Odium’s Unmade, must it have been made by another Shard or Investiture first before it became Unmade?
Excellent question. RAFO. We’re gonna delve into the Unmade quite a bit in coming books, so I’m RAFOing right now.
If you were transported in the cosmere in any contemporary period of the books (with the exception of Sixth of the Dusk) with the goal of reuniting Adonalsium, how long would it take you? Days? Weeks? Years?
Centuries. If it’s even possible, which I won’t even confirm anyways.
With all of your knowledge?
Yeah, probably. Even if it were possible, if you’re going to go into Stormlight era, there are planets you’re going to have to get to with no perpendicularities. How are you gonna do that? Depends. It’s possible, but…
Are hungerspren highspren?
Hungerspren are not highspren. Good question. Highspren are their own spren; they are the highspren.
You want to know if hungerspren are the armor of the Order that applies to highspren, is that the question? That is a RAFO.
I’m a bit of a music nerd. I would love to know if Alethi music is based on any real-world music theory? And if so, which culture?
Yes, I was going basically into Middle Eastern music, because that’s one of the basic touchpoints, particularly, for their writing system and their language and things like this. But I tried playing around with different music theory and scales (and I never had a music theory class, despite playing trumpet for years), and I talked to my writing group about my ideas, and they’re like, “That doesn’t work, Brandon. Just don’t do that.” So I didn’t end up putting it into the book, I ended up tweaking it quite a bit. But that is where the roots would be.
In Mistborn, there’s kind of a buildup where Vin is going to use the eleventh metal to fight the Lord Ruler. It’s kind of a fizzle-out moment. Was there actually a way that Vin could have used the eleventh metal to defeat…?
No. I devised the eleventh metal as a counterpoint to atium (which shows the future) with the eleventh metal showing the past. I wanted a push and a pull. In my original designing of it, it was always this idea of “you get to see the past and that is the secret.” It was an information-based clue, not a power-based clue, if that makes sense. You weren't gonna get strong enough to beat the Lord Ruler; you will get smart enough to beat the Lord Ruler.
In The Way of Kings, in Kaladin’s post-Shardbearer-kill scene, he’s in Amaram’s tent. And he muses on the fact that he had killed a Shardbearer. He says, “I joined the likes of Evod Markmaker and Lanacin the Surefooted.” I imagine, like, a Zombieland style Shardbearer-killed weak [kill of the week] thing where they’re dropping pianos on him, and stuff. Would you happen to know how either of them killed their Shardbearers?
Both of those are held up as examples because they happened on the battlefield.
Now, at least one of those didn’t happen the way it’s actually recorded to have happened. They are held up kind of more in mythology because it’s very useful for the Shardbearers for non-Shardbearers to imagine the best way to kill a Shardbearer and get their Shards is to attack them on the battlefield. At least one of those was a poisoning. But that’s not how it’s mythologized.
If Hoid were to leave the Rosharan system, would that kill his spren? And would he still be able to use his Radiant powers?
As currently understood by the mechanics of the cosmere, he would just not be able to leave without breaking the bond to that spren. Breaking that bond wouldn’t necessarily kill the spren, but he would not be able to leave with the spren. You have seen him off-world post-Stormlight Five. So I’ll leave that to you. But he is trying to figure out how that would not necessarily have to be that way.
Ostensibly, all of the magic that we’ve seen in the cosmere ultimately originated from Adonalsium. Ostensibly.
Ostensibly.
Does Adonalsium have a counterpart with equal or comparable power? And if so, have we seen that counterpart’s influence in the cosmere?
This is a matter of personal philosophy. The aethers are said (by themselves) to co-date Adonalsium and to not be derived from Adonalsium’s power. So there is at least one that is theorized to be that way, but it’s going to depend on who you trust and who you talk to.
You said that there’s gonna be a time jump between [Stormlight] Book Five and Book Six, the two arcs. And also going into Era Three of Mistborn. Era Three and Era Four, are they gonna go way past what’s going on in the second arc?
So, Era One of Stormlight. Break for ten years-ish in-world. (I have to write Book Six to know exactly how long it’s going to be, but somewhere around that.) Wax and Wayne happens during that break, chronologically. And Era Three of Mistborn; I would say seventy years, might be closer to fifty. But either way, it’s going to be post-Stormlight [Ten]. We’re getting a little disjointed in our timelines, just as the writing balances out, but I think it’s gonna work out. I don’t think they should be giving too many spoilers to each other. I do have to kind of talk around things now and then.
A couple years ago, someone asked the question of the creature that was pulling on Shallan as she first entered Shadesmar. Is that Ba-Ado-Mishram? Is she trapped in Shadesmar under the beads?
Ooh, RAFO. Good question.
Are all of the Unmade native to Roshar?
Yes, they are. Eh… yes, I’m gonna say the Unmade all count as being native to Roshar, yeah.
If someone was to burn atium while playing a video game, how much would they be able to see?
I’m gonna say that it’s gonna be somewhat confusing to them, but atium enhances your ability to react to what is being inputted, as well. Like, you see all these things, but you also gain supernatural ability to react. So they would see kind of a big blur on the screen, but they would be able to interpret that, and they would be fine.
You would be the ultimate Smash player.
Would they be able to see their own character’s movements?
What their own character would be doing in the future? So, usually, when I’m doing the atium shadows, it doesn’t include you. So it’s not going to include your own character’s movements.
If it were a game where the entire screen moves with you as you move around? Or would that also not show up?
No, you’d get a big blur. You’d get a huge blur of stuff on the screen, but your brain would be able to interpret it, and you’d be, like, 360 no scoping right and left.
The Sleepless. They’re not from Roshar. Do they have a single origin point in the cosmere? And if so, have we seen it?
They do have a single origin point in the cosmere. You have not seen it.
Will Wax ever meet a full Mistborn that we don’t already know about?
RAFO.
Hoid is collecting Investiture abilities like Pokemon cards. I was wonder if he could… and maybe not necessarily him, but if somebody could collect all forms of Investiture and be able to use all of them.
He certainly would like to try. What will happen? He’s not even sure. But he would like to try. Is it possible? It is theoretically possible. We’ll see if he is able to accomplish it.
Will we ever see the Origin of Storms be explored?
RAFO. It’s a RAFO with an “I intend to.” But whether I get to it or not is a question.
I do intend to. We will see. Ask me this question again in a couple years.
Would it be possible for the Fourth Bridge to do the exploring if Windrunners and maybe Dalinar used Adhesion and Dalinar’s Bondsmith powers to hold the ship together to brave the highstorms?
That’s real dangerous. Way smarter to just use Windrunner pressure manipulation to go up over the highstorms. But yes, that would be a better way to use the Fourth Bridge to accomplish that.
It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.
The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.
How do Ferrings know how much of an attribute is in their metalminds?
They have a natural sense for it when they’re touching it. It’s not like they have a number pop into their head, but it is a similar feeling to you knowing how much energy you have left, how tired you are. They can feel in their metalmind.
Having read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, that world has got a lot of problems, and I have to ask. When you get to the end of it, what hope is there for those poor people?
You know, despite everything that’s going on, they still manage to survive. That’s pretty impressive. I would say that there is a way out for them, a way toward more stability. Because the danger is a spiral of lowering population numbers because of things that are happening. When you’re dying and becoming undead, there’s certain curves, a multiplicative curve that is very dangerous to population numbers that happens whenever you are dealing with some sort of undead thing like that. But there are ways out.
They depend on silver, which is a limited resource.
It is. But do know that, in the cosmere (it’s like when you’re burning metals), there are injection points of new metals into things that are possible to figure out.
But yes, they’re in danger. They’re definitely the Simpsons meme. That is Threnody as a whole. And maybe someday, I’ll be able to write a book there, and we’ll dig into some of these issues.
If a Full Twinborn (regardless of natural or holding the Bands of Mourning) had access to unlimited Investiture, could they become the sun by infinitely increasing their gravity and heat?
Infinite Investiture, you’re theorizing?
Dalinar’s next to him.
Dalinar’s not gonna be able to provide enough. But in a thought experiment, sort of outside bounds of time and space… you are providing infinite Investiture, you are providing an infinite amount of healing, and you are having them create heat and weight? The problem is, you’re gonna need a whole lot of mass to turn into the sun. I mean, there is a way you can do this, but you’re gonna have to provide… Either the Investiture’s gonna have to become mass, or you’re gonna have to have them do it in the proximity of a whole bunch of mass to have to start causing that sort of fusion reaction where the different layers collapsing in toward the center, dense layers, that sort of thing. In the realm of complete hypothesis, then yes. But, of course, you an do that here with infinite energy and infinite mass, if you needed to, using mechanical means.
I guess the weird part of that question is: the person could retain consciousness through infinite healing, and that is the weird part and that is possible. Yeah.
Other than the Lord Ruler and people that are using the Bands of Mourning, will we ever see a Full Twinborn again?
Yeah, I think that you will.
If Teft, Dalinar, and Zahel were to play a game of Mario Kart, how would they place?
Zahel cheats. And Zahel wins. Teft lets Dalinar win because a good sergeant knows when an officer needs an ego boost. So that’s our ranking.
Can Lift eat metal and somehow produce Stormlight?
RAFO, good question.
Memory is tied to some level or portion of Spiritual Identity, or else Feruchemists would not be able to store it. So, Hoid lost memories at the end of Rhythm of War in his exchange with Odium. Would that mean part of his soul was stolen and then absorbed into Odium, and if so, what is stopping Odium from doing that with all of his enemies?
Basically, what Odium split off is stuff that Hoid is storing in excess Investiture. (Basically, it was Breaths, in Hoid’s case.) And this sort of thing, where this extra memory… One of the reasons that Hoid is able to function better than, perhaps, some other very long-lived individuals is: he has found out how to keep some of this Identity in, shall we say, SD cards made of Investiture. Imagine that sort of thing. So what Odium was stealing from Hoid was straight out of an SD card. Which means that it’s not nearly as deeply ripping into someone’s soul, and it is also not nearly as noticeable.
But the other thing is: Hoid is directly in violation of certain agreements that have been made, which therefore exposes him to… He is lacking protections. As you’ll notice in the end of Book Three, where he’s like, “I need to be careful, because I am in violation.”
And so, there’s a couple things going on here. Number one, much more easy to access those memories. Number two, Hoid’s in direct violation and under no protections of any sorts of agreements and things like this.
We’ve seen several groups throughout the cosmere that have the express purpose of collecting Investiture from the various systems. I have a fear that there is a group that is going to (either now or sometime in the future) go around collecting Investiture specifically through Hemalurgy.
Which is theoretically possible and horrifying to consider.
So my question along those lines was: what happens when you use a Hemalurgic spike on an Aviar?
You are a very mean person. Basically, an Aviar’s got a mini-bond, so it’s gonna work in a similar way to what would happen if you were trying to do it to a Knight Radiant, which I’ve talked about in the past. Which means it is a less effective way to try to steal something with Hemalurgy, because once you’ve got two individuals involved in it… The Aviar, obviously, isn’t exactly the same. But it’s going to work, but it may not last, I guess is the answer I would give you on that.
If that Aviar is already bonded to a person, how does that spiking affect the person they are bonded to?
That bond will last, but how long? Who knows. Basically, you’re gonna fool the system into thinking you’re the Aviar if you have done that. So the system is going to assume that’s what you are. They’re gonna see you as the bird if you put the spike into yourself. But, because there are multiple individuals, things like this, and you’ve got the whole thing with the Aviar and their symbiosis, and things like that. It is not gonna work nearly as well as stealing something from, say, a Feruchemist or an Allomancer.
Could you use AonDor to manipulate Connection? If so, would a real AonDor smarty be able to do something similar to a Bondsmith?
The short answer to your question is: yes. Let me give some explanation.
Even when you are seeings some things happening in Elantris itself, you are seeing them manipulate Connection. It is mostly reinforcing Connection, but it is, in a way, manipulation. Rewriting Connection, rewriting Identity are both things that they can do. So with enough power, with enough smartiness, what a Bondsmith can do can be done.
In fact, we have seen short-range Elsecalling done by… Obviously Elsecalling’s not Bondsmithing, but you know that a Bondsmith powered a big Elsecalling [to migrate from Ashyn], one of the big things you’ve seen a Bondsmith do is get people between planets. And you have seen people use AonDor to Elsecall. You’ve seen them Lightweave, you’ve seen them do a lot of these things. They also could do some of this same stuff.
Basically, rule of thumb is: almost anything in the cosmere that is possible can be replicated with AonDor with the right program. But you may need an injection of Investiture in certain ways.
My favorite god, Sazed/Harmony, in my recent reread I got a bit angry at him because he didn’t let kandra be able to reproduce, but he let the koloss be able to do it. And I’m wondering if there’s a way he could have allowed that, but he chose not to? And also if there’s a way that it could happen in the future, so that two of my favorite people could have a baby?
There are a couple things that he was facing, and let me walk you through his philosophy on this, which you are allowed to disagree with. I want, for every character I write, there to be things they do that you disagree with, because otherwise I’m writing all characters to be the same person, if that makes sense.
The kandra have immortality and are able to perpetuate their culture by being immortal for as long as the individuals live. The koloss don’t have that, meaning that if he didn’t make koloss able to breed true, the entire people vanish in one generation and all culture associated with them. And so because of that, he took the extra effort to change the koloss to allow for this sort of thing. But he did it in such a way that they would not have to have hemalurgic spikes, because the idea of making new hemalurgic spikes is extremely distasteful to Harmony. Reusing old ones is a thing he was willing to allow, but new ones he didn’t.
Could he have changed the kandra to be similar? Well, the answer is kind of a fairly... yes, but they would no longer have been the kandra, they would have been rolled back to being what they were before the Lord Ruler. And so they basically would stop being what they are that makes them unique as a culture. And he decided not to do that.
You can disagree with that, and I think there are some pretty valid arguments against the choice he made, but that is the choice he made.
Is there a way going forward? Yes, this is theoretically possible.
Can we get any pronouns for Aona and Skai?
Aona is definitely a she/her. I’m gonna go she/her with both of them, so you can talk about them accurately. That’s how I picture them currently in my head. I have not written those books yet, so it’s subject to change, but I have she/her for both of them.
In the future eras, Breaths seem like a very easily transmitted form of Investiture. Will that become an inter-galactic currency?
Breath is handy in couple of ways, because it is easy to transfer, and you can take it off-world without an issue. But there’s a problem in that: yes, it’s a renewable resource, but the renewable resource comes from human beings. As long as Breath doesn’t get lost and is consistently given up, then what we’re gonna see is there will be pools of it. But it’s always going to be a fairly rare resource. Which really hampers its ability to become an intergalactic commodity on the level that people would like it to.
Stormlight is a much better (in most people’s viewpoint and opinion) of what they’re trying to do with Breath. But they can’t get it off the planet yet; they haven’t figured out how to make that happen. But that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people are really interested in Roshar, is because of that.
Now, there is one that’s really portable, but very difficult to get, and that is… I’ll leave that to you. There's another one. Go ahead and theorize. Do it fast, because there might be a note to it in Lost Metal, so you’ll get your answers soon. But let’s just say it’s fraught with danger to obtain.
Could you show me the equator line on the Scadrial map?
It runs very close to Elendel. *Points to it on the map*
And the Prime Meridian runs through Elendel.
Does Adolin Kholin have two different colored eyebrows?
I have never pictured him with two different colored eyebrows, but Isaac gets to canonize this, because he oversees the concept art. So really, you should pull Isaac aside and say, “Hey, is there some blonde in one of the eyebrows or not? Because I’ve seen them both.” I have not imagined him with different colored eyebrows.
We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like Lopen and Rysn. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?
Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.
And if they were storing Identity instead?
Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.
Sometimes, Vin and Kelsier seem to notice people burning metal when there was a coppercloud around. So I was wondering if copperclouds can change depending on how much the smoker or mistborn wants it?
It’s gonna depend on a lot of factors. How strong is the coppercloud? How strong is the person piercing it? How Invested is the individual? And these sorts of things. There are deliberate points where Vin pierces a coppercloud that I intend to be moments that you’re supposed to pay attention to in the story. And this is done intentionally; this is not, like, a binary on/off.
The Stormlight Archive deals with mental health significantly. Are you telling a story of overcoming mental health and its difficulties, or are you telling a story of ongoing...
I am telling a story about characters that I want to be as real to my lived experience as possible. So the story of The Stormlight Archive, what is it about? It is not about mental health. It is about people, but a disproportionate number of them do struggle with kind of dynamic mental health issues.
Mental health is one of these things where there’s always individual answers. If we talk about my wife Emily, there is no cure for depression. Even medication is about managing depression. For her, the right answer is cognitive behavioral therapy and learning what it is to live with depression, and then countering that proactively in her mind, at least for her. That is the answer that she has found that works very well for her. Other people might be able to… I have had a family member who had depressive episodes that lasted a number of years. And they, through therapy, were able to get to where they no longer would be considered having depression, because for them it was a different sort of thing. And these are two explorations of what we would lump as the same sort of mental health issue. But is it even? Everyone is so individual, right?
For the vast majority of people struggling with mental health issues, it is more like Emily than it is like this family member that it was about overcoming it. I consider it to the individual, that the story I’m telling about. I will use the example of the difference between (for physical handicaps) Rysn and Lopen. For Lopen, the story is: there’s going to be a cure, and I have been cured. For Rysn, there is no cure, and it’s about, instead, living with the disability. Overcoming the disability, yes, but it always being part of who she is. And those are two life experiences that we can find people in this room who have probably... Some are continuing to live with a handicap, and others have found that there is some way to just completely get over. And that’s an individual thing.
And I’m not trying to say in The Stormlight Archive, “This is the right path.” Except for the right path being: getting help is okay. Working on it’s okay. And society should maybe do a better job about understanding it.
I have a question about the singers. If one of them were to reach the Third Heightening, would they then be able to sing the pure Tones of Scadrial?
Yes. They definitely could. They might be able to before they reached that Heightening, as well.
We have some idea that Autonomy is fiddling around in Roshar and in Scadrial.
And other places.
Considering her involvement with the Ghostbloods: has she directly interacted with Kelsier/Thaidakar?
RAFO.
Whether she has or not, what is her opinion of Kelsier?
You’re asking, directly Autonomy, not one of her Avatars? Directly, Autonomy likes Kelsier and respects Kelsier. Autonomy is a fan, shall we say.
At the end of Rhythm of War, we see Shard-induced time dilation; you bring a lot of Investiture into a place, and it slows down time.
It can also speed it up.
How much Investiture would it take to dilate an area so that one area moves forward about fifteen years into the future while everything else remains? Like, they have ten minutes, everyone else goes fifteen years?
There’s a couple variables here. Number one is the length of the area, and how fast that fifteen years passes. If we want us to jump forward fifteen years, in how much time? Fifteen years compared to one year? Fifteen years compared to one minute? Fifteen years compared to one second? These are all different things. And, of course, the more you’re compressing and the larger the area, the more Investiture you’re requiring.
Could two unchained Bondsmiths in the course of a duel do it?
Fifteen years? Fifteen years is gonna be a stretch for what they can get a hold of, but it depends. Unchained Bondsmith, unchained to (for instance) a deity that there is no longer a Vessel controlling that power in the way that it needs to have the limits on it is going to be able to access more than one where there was some Vessel there saying “no.” So there’s one factor in it. A Bondsmith can access a lot of power, as evidenced by the migration. The migration from Ashyn to Roshar happened with a Bondsmith powering some Elsecalling. And that allowed for some pretty crazy things. Getting an entire population moved through a portal across that much space is a lot of work and a lot of energy.
So what you’re asking, I think that’s stretching. Depends, again, on how long. Fifteen to one, not so hard. Fifteen years in a second is really hard and probably beyond what they have capacity to do.
I see what you’re doing there. You saw me talk around it.
When I asked about the Set and cards, would the names of some of the Set members (like Suit) be a codename? Or would it be a hierarchy name?
It’s a hierarchy name.
What would happen if a Pure Tone or anti-Tone interacted with Shard metal?
Different things can happen, but generally, if it’s the right Shard metal, you’re going to get a resonance or a destructive resonance to that Tone.
In Book One, Taravangian was talking to Szeth, when Szeth confronts him at the end. He talks about the Lifebrother; but we haven’t heard any other references since then.
You have not. That’s a RAFO.
When a Shard Splinters, does it have any effect on the cosmere that we aren’t seeing yet?
No.
What would be the effect if all the Shards Splintered?
It does have, but see, there is Splintering, and there’s Splintering. Traumatic Splintering is a different event than a Shard Splintering themselves, or things like this. There’s a whole continuum going on there.
All the Shards being Splintered would, of course, have an effect. But it could have all kinds of different effects based on how, and why, and what’s going on, and what happened to the different pieces of Investiture. You can have a full Splintering, where the Shard is just completely blasted into pieces. Or you can have a Shard taking off pieces of their soul and Splintering it out and sending it off to be self-aware, and things like that. These are two different things.
Also, there’s a whole bunch of nuance in that question. But the answer is: it will inevitably have an effect, and there are effects that have happened in the cosmere that you don’t recognize yet as being the effects of Splintering, and things like that.
Is Tarah, Kaladin’s flame, still currently in Urithiru? Because there’s a chapter where it kind of seems like she’s there.
I will answer that in Book Five, so I’m gonna RAFO you. That is at least my plan; one of the interludes should be from her viewpoint. That is my plan right now.
Did Hoid join the Worldsingers just to learn about Roshar’s stories? Or is there something more going on there?
Hoid never joined the Worldsingers. (Can one join a group that one created, is the question there.)
I have a sort of delicate question. If a bendalloy Ferring filled an unsealed mind and then gave it to someone else who tapped it, which one would go to the bathroom?
I don’t think this is working the way you think it’s working. The Ferring who is creating it is going to be the one who goes to the bathroom.
Would Kelsier be able to Return to the Physical Realm in the same way that Vasher did?
No. Mmmm… which time? Let me parse this question. Could a Shard with a great deal of Investiture take his Cognitive Shadow and staple it to a body, or indeed recreate (which is usually what happens) an entirely new body for him? Yes, that could happen. It would need, really, the will of a Shard and the desire to do so, but that could happen.
He couldn’t do it himself, though; because you could also have been asking: “return to the Physical Realm,” pop through; ‘cause Vasher popped through a perpendicualrity to get onto Roshar, which is another way he returned to the Physical Realm. I didn’t think that’s what you were asking, but sometimes, once in a while, you’re asking multiple things at once to be tricksy.
With all the bad things that we’ve seen the Ghostbloods do so far (like imprisoning Lift) is Kelsier no longer a good or mostly-good person?
Kelsier would say he’s a good person.
I would say: Kelsier’s a complicated individual whose moral compass does not align to my same moral compass. But he never was. He would say that he hasn’t changed; I would say that he has changed slightly over the centuries.
