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This is purely hypothetical, but if Dalinar was to become the Vessel for multiple Shards, would he have had more difficulty with Preservation separately if Harmony was involved? Because that's the only of the Shards I can't see him holding onto particularly well.
Hmm. I can say yes on that. I think that's a good theory... you phrased [that] very well.
Hypothetically could Nightblood Splinter a Shard?
Uh, Splintering a Shard takes more power than Nightblood has.
For [Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell], did that take place in the cosmere?
It does. It's on a planet called Threnody. There is no Shard on that planet, however. So you can see the magic is very different in that the magic is something you interact with, not something you perform. Because there isn't a Shard there. But yeah, it is in the cosmere.
Who would win: Dalinar with his Shards, or Szeth in Stormlight?
Young Dalinar with his Shards, Dalinar in his prime versus Szeth? I think, long run, Szeth wins. The reason for this being, Stormlight is just an unfair advantage. You take away the Honorblade from Szeth and Dalinar does win. Szeth is good. But Szeth doesn't have experience with Plate nearly as much. He has been trained almost exclusively on Honorblades and Surges. His fighting styles are all built around them. He is an expert at using Surges, but if he doesn't have those, he's got nothing. Dalinar is good at a lot of different fighting styles, has been in war a ton, and even if he didn't have Plate and you put the two of them without powers against each other, Dalinar's probably going to win. But if Szeth has an Honorblade... being able to heal and being able to fly, these are two almost insurmountable advantages in a one-on-one combat.
Is there only one perpendicularity on a planet per Shard Invested there, or can say Scadrial have more than two (natural) at a time? (Old School Scadrial when there were two separate shards)
RAFO
When Venli attempts to swear her Ideal and it gets denied, she hears "a femalen voice, so very far away—but thrumming with the pure rhythm of Roshar". Is the fact that it says "the pure rhythm of Roshar" instead of "a pure rhythm of Roshar" significant?
Ah, no.
Was that rhythm set to the tone/tones of the Shard or Shards, and if so, which?
RAFO. I want you to be theorizing on that one LewsTherin.
As of Secret History, is Khriss working with the Seventeenth Shard at that time?
Khriss works with anybody who is interested in the information that she has. She is a--
Freelancer?
No, not a freelancer, really, she is a-- She'd get along with Edward Snowden, right? She is-- For the good of the cosmere, in her opinion, she is providing this information. She thinks that it'll be useful for everyone. So if the Seventeenth Shard comes to her and says "We want to know this" and she knows it, she will tell them. If Hoid comes to her and says "I want to know this", she would tell him. So Khriss will work with anyone who she thinks their motives are for the good of the cosmere in general.
Not strictly a mercenary?
No, not a mercenary, she's kind of a freedom of information type person.
Are Nightwatcher and The Old Magic related?
The Nightwatcher is related to The Old Magic and is related to a Shard.
Which Shard?
RAFO.
So Ruin and Preservation combine. When Odium slays the Shardbearers [Vessels], why doesn’t he absorb the enemy Shards?
Because that would actually change the way he views the world. The Shard would actually start to influence him, and could actually ruin who he views himself as being. So instead of combining them all, his goal is to destroy them all and be the only one left at his power level.
So by his nature, he can't combine?
I mean he could, but it would change his nature. So he won't.
You can read Aether of Night. I gave that to 17th Shard to give away to people. You can read the e-book of that.
White Sand and Aether of Night are readable books. They both have big problems. Aether of Night has the problem that it feels like two different books. There's like, a romantic comedy happening at the same time as a dire war and invasion by dark forces, and the two books don't really work well together. It's like a Shakespearean mistaken identity romantic comedy going on opposite that.
White Sand just has the problem that it's about thirty percent too long, overwritten for what the plot actually is. We fixed that when making it a graphic novel, but some people like the prose version instead, so you can get that and read it. White Sand is canon to the Cosmere with the tweaks made to the graphic novel. I don't ever intend to rewrite White Sand, though I do intend to someday have other things happening on that world. So that one is canon. Aether of Night is not, even though there's a Shardpool and a Shard in it. The events that are happening in that book are not canon. Aethers are - you've seen them pop up here and there. But the actual events of the story aren't.
Are [Jaddeth] & [Domi] the Shards Dominion & Devotion?
Domi is more Devotion and Jaddeth is more Dominion. But there is some mixing. The shard holders were Aona and Skai.
You killed Rayse this book. Could you talk about why you decided to kill him off, and have Taravangian be Odium instead. Was that always part of the plan?
I always work in a way where I have different options and opportunities. Was it always the thing that I was absolutely going to do? No, I keep myself open on some of these things.
The reason Rayse needed to go: he had been essentially defeated at the end of Oathbringer, when Dalinar does not go over to him. All of his rage, and everything he's trying to do cannot make that happen. He's defeated, at least in a philosophical sense. Now you can bring a defeated enemy back to be a threat again. You can find a new way to make them a threat, but I knew - in this book - Kaladin was not going to fall to him either. But once you've had two books in a row with the characters machinations not - things stymied by the heroes. I needed a different villain at that point.
And I also think that [al]though a lot of deep into the cosmere people are interested in the original Shards and getting their stories, for the average reader Taravangian is a much more identifiable villain. And I've been building him from book one to be not just really scary, but a philosophical opposite to Dalinar. These are all the reasons this book needed to go the way it did.
It has benefits and costs. The cost is Odium stops being the evil you don't know. The evil you don't know is a very powerful force in fantasy literature. The evil you do know does different things. And I lose that evil you don't know though you still have a bit of it, because the power of Odium - the Shard itself - I wouldn't say has volition completely, but it's still there and its a thing. It is constrained by Taravangian and directed by Taravangian, but it's the rage of a deity separated from its morals should be a scary thing. In the hands of someone who is essentially a fallible mortal, should be an even more scary thing. Rayse had gotten to the point where I no longer felt - if I was going to write the books the way I did. This basically became inevitable when I swapped and made Dalinar's book book three. [host reactions: OHhh sure!] I knew something big needed to shift, but fortunately I had several options. There is a version of The Stormlight Archive, where this doesn't happen. I think it's a worse version, but until something is written no matter how much something is in the outline, it's not canon even to me. I like to be willing to reassess what I'm doing.
Talking the other direction, the foreshadowing I put in the books the more I foreshadow, the more I do, the more that locks in what I need to do going forward, because I don't want to undermine that foreshadowing.
There's a longwinded perhaps a little wishy washy answer to you. I can tell you why I made the decision, but I can't - the outlines are these things that are really organic, because I'm always working on them, and will often have lots of division points, these are different places it can go - because of the way I write characters.
I'm sure this will cause contention. But I did not decide in the original outline, who Shallan would end up with, or who anyone would end up with. I write character relationships as I feel they are appropriate on the page, and I revise the outline to match from that how things are feeling and how it's going. I know there are some shippers out there who are like 'that means there was a version of the ship I wanted, and you didn't do it. It was the nefarious beta readers who forced you not to! [Chaos denies] It was ?Calin's fault!' [hosts laugh]. I'm sure you've heard that before. I don't want to fuel that because these decisions are made not necessarily based on beta reader feedback. These decisions are made based on me giving life to the characters, and feeling where I feel they would legitimately they would go. And rebuilding my outline to match.
While I outline a lot more than my contemporaries, I am not a slave to the outline. I will change major things such as moving Dalinar's flashback sequences to book three which had ramifications all down the line. Or deciding I need to do more with Eshonai and Venli earlier in the series, which had other ramifications to their viewpoints later on because I feel it makes the best story.
You have said before that all the planets had their names before the arrival of the Shards. Is Roshar the planet's name before the Shards arrived?
Yes.
When Harmony Ascends, he admits he doesn't have a good view of the Spiritual Realm. Does he develop a better one over time? And are there other Shards that already have a very good view of that?
Yes. But it is still something that is hard to grok, so to speak. In canon-- in science fiction-- hard to understand. But he has a much better understanding, and the other Shards, some of them have a very good understanding. The thing is, the difference between the Spiritual Realm and the Beyond is not something that is immediately obvious.
So, the Spiritual Realm is not the Beyond?
No, Spiritual Realm is not the Beyond. There are three Realms of existence. The Beyond, some would say... There are philosophers would would say, the Spiritual Realm and the Beyond are one, that the soul gets sucked into and joins the Investiture. That's the idea of the One. But, most people would say the Beyond is not...
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.
I feel like knowing both basic and advanced studies of Realmatic Theory are key to understanding not just how the magic works, but how the very nature of the cosmere works. We already have some of the fundamentals, including:
- The three realms- Shard aspects, knowing that they were made with intent, but the form they building blocks of much of the cosmere- Connection to a Shard is necessary to access its Investiture- I have a bit of an analogy where Identity and Connection work similar to an access badge to a building
Is there a more advanced concept of Realmatic Theory we don't have yet that you'd be willing to share?
Yeah, I could buy that.
Is there a more advanced concept of Realmatic Theory we don't have yet that you'd be willing to share?
No. Too hard to say, something like that, what we don't know. So no, I will RAFO that. I apologize. I will put them in the book when they are developed, and I can explain them in the way that I feel is appropriate.
Did Odium intentionally cause direct harm to the inhabitants of Sel or was his sole focus taking down Devotion and Dominion? (Context: I'd like to know if Odium cares/has any interest in mortals or if he only has designs/plans for Shards)
It was all side effect. He is focused on Shards... But he does have secondary interest in mortals.
So if a person's holding a Shard, someone like the original sixteen people. Some of the Shards got [Splintered], does that automatically kill the people? Or can some of those people still be walking around?
It does not automatically, because you can give up pieces of investiture and things like this. It did kill them, that was part of the point. But there are ways to conceive of this happening that it wouldn't. Technically what Endowment is doing is giving up pieces, intentionally Splintering to form these other pieces and things, so yeah.
Has ever a Shard been forced - besides Odium in Roshar - to leave their planet after it was destroyed.
Yes.
Yes - besides Odium?
Besides Odium? Yes. Has a Shard been forced to leave their planet after the planet was destroyed? Yes.
Do the scholars in Silverlight understand the Realmatic difference between a Shattering of a Shard and the unique hypercompression of Devotion and Dominion's Investiture in the Selish Cognitive Realm?
They do. Do they fully understand? No. But do they understand better than anyone else in the Cosmere who is not a Shard? Yes.
Hey u/mistborn I have a couple questions about Magic: the gathering.
What colors/kind of deck do you play in magic?
What colors are the known shards?
What colors are the various orders of the knights Radiant?
And finally, have you ever thought of doing the story for Wizards Of The Coast on one of their mtg blocks?
Any combo-style deck I can draft--or esper if I'm constructed.
Ruin: Black. Odium: Red. Honor: White. Preservation: White. Cultivation: Green. Devotion: Green/red. Dominion: Black/White. Autonomy: It's complicated.
(Also, question 3 is way too large for me to commit to right now. And for 4, if the right opportunity came along and they were interested, I could see myself doing this.)
What about Endowment and Ambition?
Ambition is mono-black, and endowment is probably mono-green. Some of the blue shards are ones we haven't seen as much from yet.
So what's up with the regeneration issue? With Shards? Because they only have so much power they can access at a certain time, but yet they still have more energy. So how does that work? Is it just they have so much power they can use at any given time?
What are you talking about? Like which shards?
Ruin and Preservation. Since we know the most about them.
Ruin and Preservation were a specific instance, because almost all their energy was thrown into resisting each other. Keep that in mind. Even after Preservation was only a shadow, basically all of it was "Let's keep Ruin from destroying the world." So they were polar opposites. Set in balance. But slightly unbalanced in a couple of ways, that eventually, that slight imbalance... They are a special case, because of that.
So then why are they hesitant to directly fuel Allomancy?
Why are they hesitant to? What do you mean by directly fuel Allomancy?
You mention in the Hero of Ages Q&A that they can directly fuel Allomancy, like Vin does with Elend, but it requires expending their energy in a way they are hesitant to do.
Because it imbalances them more. Does that make sense? Like, if you are putting your energy here, rather than fighting the other force, you give them an edge somewhere else by trying to gain an edge here. And you have to make sure that's really worth it. Imagine a chess game. Is it worth sacrificing my pawn here to expose myself over here?
I noticed some interesting things during my re read of Oathbringer after Rhythm of War and I am not sure if they are mistakes or not.
First thing is voices in Dalinar's head. In previous books he could hear Honor's voice (assuming this is indeed Honor) only in visions.
Because obviously Honor is dead and cannot talk to Dalinar for real. In Oathbringer Dalinar suddenly starts to hear this voice even outside of the visions and it's not the Stormfather.
Second thing is warm light that comes from a place beyond. Dalinar always says this light comes from a distant place, but in the final scene of Oathbringer (Dalinar rejects Odium) he can feel this light inside of himself.
So the question is: is this a mistake or was it done intentionally?
And the last thing I notice - Dalinar exhibits aspects of all three shards and he's been literally touched by all of them. Is it important?
The first one is intentional. Read into that what you will. Though I don't know if you're completely interpreting it right.
This second one is also intentional, and you are reading it correctly.
And yes, Dalinar exhibiting aspects of all three aspects of all three shards is important.
Shards can talk to dead people. Are the Tranquiline Halls where everyone in the cosmere goes when they die? Or does each world have its own heaven.
There is an afterlife that is not heaven that the Shards don't know about, or can't look into. Each world has its own heaven depending on its religions. The real afterlife is different across the cosmere, and the Tranquiline Halls are different.
I've got a list of various Cosmere bits of metal and I was wondering if you would rank them from like one to ten or just easy to difficult on how hard it would be to steelpush on them. So with one being just a regular coin, ten being like when the Lord Ruler was moving bits of glass on the floor, so like metal inside a person's body.
It depends on how strong the Investiture in them is.
Is that gonna be the answer for all of these?
Probably!
How about a spike charged with Hemalurgy?
A spike charged with Hemalurgy... that depends on...
Not in a person.
Depends on how strong, yeah, a spike is moderately, (in the realm of these kinds of things) moderately easy to push on because a spike does not rip off very much Investiture. Only enough to short circuit the soul, and less it over time. I would put that at the bottom, with the top being very hard, to be one of the easier things.
How about a metalmind that is full?
That is full? That is going to be middle of the realm of the, yeah. Generally easier than, for instance, a Shardblade which is going to be very hard.
A Shardblade is [inaudible] actually metal? [metal]-ish?
Ish. Is Lerasium a metal? Yeah.
So that'd be the same for Shardplate too?
Shardplate and Blade are very hard. Blade is probably gonna be a little harder.
A Half-shard?
A Half-shard shield? That's gonna be moderate.
Nightblood? I imagine that being hard.
Hard, of all the things you've listed, that is going to be the hardest. Far beyond even a Sharblade.
Far beyond metal inside a person?
Uh, yes. Depending on how invested the person is.
If somebody was invested as much as Nightblood?
Yes, for instance the God King, right. At the end with all those Breaths. Pushing something inside of him, getting through all of that? Gonna be real hard. Average person on Scadrial? You've seen how hard that is. A drab? Much easier.
That was my next one, or no, sorry not a drab. A lifeless?
A Lifeless, yeah. Even... yeah. Lifeless are kind of weird because they've had their soul leave but then they've had a replacement stuck in in the form of Breath which leaves them in a very weird position compared to a drab which has had part of their Investiture ripped away but a majority remains, so, anyways. I'm going to give you one more. Pick your favorite.
A soulstamped piece of metal?
A soulstamped piece of metal is going to be on the lower, easier side. Not a lot of Investiture going on in a soulstamp.
Can honorspren, or any other type of Knight Radiant spren, be evil despite their relationship to Tanavast or Cultivation?
Yes, because I don't call the Shards good and evil. There are no good and evil Shards in my opinion, like and so, what's evil and what's not evil- you can totally have spren that are of Honor that you would consider evil. They have free will; they are much more strictly limited in that free will than we are, because of their nature as spren. It's very hard for most spren to ever break an oath or to lie. That's just like- as manifestations of laws of nature makes it very hard for that to happen, but they can be cruel.
Allomancy provides many very dramatic effects, which some have noted is not very much like Preservation. Could you walk me through how Allomancy is of Preservation, though it does dramatic, dynamic things?
One of the 'basics' of the magic in all of the worlds is that the energy of Shards can fuel all kinds of interactions, not just interactions based on their personality/role. I did this because otherwise, the Magics would all be extremely limited.
The 'role' of the Shard has to do with the WAY the magic is obtained, not what it can do. So, in Preservation's case, the magic is a gift--allowing a person to preserve their own strength, and rely upon the strength granted by the magic. While Hemalurgy has a huge cost, ending in net entropy.
Out of the named Shards, which of them, like of the [Vessels?], if one of them were hunting you down, which one would scare you the most? You [don't] have to say the name of the character, just the name of the Shard.
So we're talking about considering the Vessels as well?
Yes.
I.. *hesitantly* would probably go with Odium, looking at his track record. He has the track record to back it up.
Has an unborn child ever been Ascended?
Ascended to be a Shard? No, that has not yet happened.
Maybe not a Shard but...
Oh. Ascend to like a... No. I would say no. It hasn't ever happened. It's not implausible that the mother could Ascend and the child would... But it hasn't happened.
If Adonalsium Shattered with intent, would he always Shatter with the same Shards?
It is plausible that it could've gone a different way.
So it could've been different Shards?
Yes, that's plausible.
Is Cultivation a Shard on Roshar?
Yes, Cultivation is. Where did you get that word?
It's in the book.
Is it in the book? Okay, one of the Shards from Roshar is Cultivation.
What is the name of the Shard which is the Almighty?
Ah…RAFO!
Are there any names you wish you could use for Shards that just don't fit narratively?
I've thrown away so many of them, so it's going to be hard for me to give you any examples. Like you know, I've been working on this for 20+ years where I'm like "Is this a good word? Is this a good word? What's a good word for the idea I want to use?" Right? And so if I'm throwing one away, it's either because I don't think it works or because there's some example in other media where that word is too prevalent and too used, so. I have to pass on this question just from I can't remember any.
You write a lot of immortals in your books. How do you think about people living on large time frames like that and how that affects the way they think and act compared to ordinary people? And also, say, 10,000-year-old compared to a 2000-year-old to a 300-year-old?
This is actually something I've dedicated a lot of thought to. I think fantasy and science fiction, one of the things it does well is explore human experiences that aren't possible in contemporary or realistic fiction. And so there are a lot of people out there searching for the key to human immortality. And what would it be like? How would we deal with it? These are questions that are interesting to me, and doing a story on a 10,000-year timescale lets me play around with that. I will say that various people you've met are immortal; some are not. Some, it's more time dilation shenanigans than it is extended lifespan.
But regardless, how do I approach this? By gut and instinct, just trying different things out. No human being's experience is identical to another human being's experience, so I figure no immortal's experience will be identical to other immortals' experiences, and so I can have lots of different responses. I can base it partially on the magic system and how they were made immortal. And then that lets me play with different experiences. Like, the things the Heralds are going through, Hoid hasn't gone through. Some of the sort of degradation of what's happening with their souls is unique... not wholly unique, but individual to the experiences they're having. And I play with those differently than I play with someone who's been elevated to holding near-infinite power in one of the Shards and how their experience goes. And then you've got, just, random people who have run across things that have changed their experiences in different ways, and I will approach them in a different way. And I can't really say how exactly I'm gonna do this with everybody. It's just gonna be different for each character in each situation.
That's a very long non-answer. I've thought about it a lot; I don't have answers yet. You'll see them in the books when I write them.
Was Bavadin nonhuman?
RAFO. There is at least one Shard who wasn't human, but I'm not ready to reveal who was or wasn't just yet.
People with mixed Investiture, coming from different Shards, with heritage from different worlds. Will we see them and how would they interact with magic systems?
You have already seen them. How they're gonna... it depends on the magic system.
Can you tell us a little bit more about what these things are? The book itself gives us a lot in very little, so it'd be nice to get some perspective on how you think about these. Not necessarily fishing for more information, just... clarity on what we just learned.
By "these things" do you mean the Dawnshards? In this case, I can't say more, I'm afraid. They're plot points in future books, and I maybe already explained more than I should have.
I was mostly wondering what happened in the cave. It's... it feels like the Command to change, to remake, was somehow imprinted or passed onto a mural, and then when Rysn looked at it, it passed back onto, and perhaps into her.
Where I'm a little confused is... is the Command, the Dawnshard, "binding" to her as this thing outside of her, or is it becoming a part of her? Or are these two cases, depending on how you look at this, the same thing?
Also, curious based on how the mural was described in terms of four fours, but is the number of Shards being 16 a function of how the four Dawnshards were used to Shatter?
Mostly RAFOs, here, I'm afraid.
To those in-world, she now IS the Dawnshard. Whether that's what the community thinks is another story.
Would that make Hoid a "Dawnsliver", or is there some other fancypants terms for it?
Depends on a variety of things, Phantine. But I'd be okay with that terminology. It's basically accurate.
Does that mean that before she became the Dawnshard that the wall was?
More the mural. But yes, that would be the implication. Note that it was not an ordinary mural.
If Kelsier's [Cognitive Shadow] or a seon went to the Forests of Hell, would they be shades there?
Yes, that is the same thing. Now, you can see that there-- the people on that planet; their Investiture; the lack of Shard means that their Cognitive Shadows react differently.
[...]
In fact, the Cognitive Shadow is also the same thing as the ghost you saw in Mistborn, that was the spirit of Leras is the same thing too.
Can there be a perpendicularity of Odium in Roshar? Or can it only be in Braize? ?
I think the perpendicularity has to be in Braize, but my doubt is in the fact that Odium influences Roshar. If it is not necessary to be "physically" on the planet, shouldn't there be one of Trell also in Scadrial?
Rafo is the answer here, I'm afraid.
Would Odium be pleased if an unsheathed Nightblood was thrown/left in his perpendicularity?
No he would not.
As you've stated that the magic of First of the Sun is natural and independent of any particular Shard, what is the nature of the pool on Patji? Is it also a natural manifestation of magic, a perpendicularity, or simply a pool like any other?
It's a natural manifestation, but on a much smaller scale than you might find on other worlds.
Is the keyhole to the oathgate a spren? Shallan says it is the same material as a shard blade.
RAFO. (Sorry.)
If you had a chance to go back for Elantris and the early Mistborn books and stuff like that, would you potentially consider adding more crossover characters, because you did put Hoid in all of those, but would you potentially put other smaller things from other planets, like other worldhoppers, in it?
So, the cheeky answer to this is, I've read The Monkey's Paw, and I've read enough science fiction stories to know that if someone says "Do you want to change this thing about your past?" that you say "No." Because depending on the writer you are either going to end up in a horror story, or you are going to have to learn some lesson about how important you are, or your family is, and then it will all be a dream, so no, I wouldn't.
But really the answer is no, I wouldn't change. I like the fact that the cosmere has a very light touch on those early books. I like it in part because I feel like people who are just getting into my fiction, I don't want them to feel like they have to follow everything to enjoy one book. And yeah, I'm adding little bits more into Stormlight, but that's inevitable because so much will take place in Shadesmar, which by it's nature is far more cosmere-aware, and so we're going to have to do more things the further Stormlight gets and the further Mistborn gets, because it will become inevitable. And that's fine, I'm embracing that. The further we go in the cosmere, the more you're going to have to be on board for the idea of the crossovers working. But I don't want the initial books that you get into to have to be like that. I was very intentional with my light touch on those early cosmere books and I wouldn't go back and add more. Even Way of Kings, right? Has what has Hoid and Felt in it, and that's just about it.
Felt's in Words of Radiance.
Oh, is he in Words of Radiance? He's not even in Way of Kings.
*talking over each other*
Yeah, you saw Galladon, you saw the seventeenth shard. So there's like one scene in the whole book, maybe two, depending, but Hoid isn't even very Hoid-like in that first one. It's the second one where he mentions Adonalsium and stuff—
*correct the previous statement*
Is it the first one? It's the first one. It's that party at the thing with Dalinar. So there's two scenes in Way of Kings, and that's very intentional. By the time we get to the second stage Stormlight books, and the fourth stage Mistborn books, you'll just have to be on-board. But by then you're entrenched. If you're reading Stormlight seven, then the Stormlight series is already longer than everything else, so you might as well just've read everything else.
Since the dead spren are said to have been more or less "reabsorbed" into the cosmere, why did they leave behind physical shards at all?
We'll find out more about dead spren as the books move forward.
If the force opposing Adonalsium is an entity like him/it (?), have we seen any magic that is related to this entity?
No. All the magic you see come from the shards of Adonalsium.
In order to use magic from one world on another world, do they need a bit of [the first world's] Shard with you?
It helps a lot. But there are other ways to do it. What's going on in the Cosmere is people have 3 sets of DNA. They have Physical DNA, Spiritual DNA, and Cognitive DNA. Their Spiritual DNA is what encodes the magic system into them, their Investiture. So if you can find a way to rewrite your Spiritual DNA, you can do all kinds of funky things. That's what Hemalurgy does. It rips off a piece of someone else's soul, staples it to yours. So if you went with a Hemalurgic spike to the right place, ripped off a piece of someone's soul and stapled it to yourself, you could create short circuits that will let you do all kinds of goofy stuff.
If somebody were to generate enough of an anti-Light like anti-Stormlight or anti-Voidlight, could they create an anti-Shard, or if not, could they create an anti-Light nuke?
There you go, RAFO.
If a Shard were to wield Nightblood more directly, like Odium's champion and Odium channeling his power through Nightblood, would we see a lot of world ending stuff from that?
That-- What you just described would work no differently from a Knight Radiant wielding Nightblood
Okay. And that would be scary powerful?
No. No, they'd feed off the Investiture and eventually would either run out or be drawing it so quickly that it would dissolve the person's soul.
So souls are made of Investiture?
Yes, in the cosmere, souls are. So you'd have a little while, but eventually the person would just die and get eaten.
my question was Aona/Skai Shards shattering the event we saw the aftermath of in Elantris? Or a further final apocalypse?
The events in Elantris happened many years before The Way of Kings. That’s all I’ve said for now.
But I thought the monks of Dakhor and the ChayShin(?) were all AonDor related? The energy familiars are related to Skai?
What the Dakhor did accessed the Dor, but it was not AonDor—they weren’t using Aons, but different symbols.
Do Ralkalest and Soulstone have any connection to the two shards?
RAFO
It sounds like [Brandon] identified a new shard, Ingenuity, in an interview in Bulgaria. Can you verify this?
That is news to me! Maybe [Isaac] can ask him.
I asked [Brandon]. He said readers can interpret his words how they want.
