Questioner
When somebody takes up a Shard, do they inherently get knowledge when they get that Shard? For example, does Taravangian know about hemalurgy, now, just because he took up a Shard? Or was that just Ruin's...?
Brandon Sanderson
Excellent question. Taking up a Shard is going to impart a large amount of knowledge, more than even a Shard can process immediately, and it will take some time. And it's going to give you the ability to access a lot of other kinds of knowledge. Shards aren't omnipresent, but they kind of are; they are able to do many things at once, they are able to focus on places and be aware of that location in a lot of instances. But at the same time, they are limited in their ability to... they don't know everything. They might be able to get access to most things, but it takes conscious... like, "I need to know this. I need to find it out. It happens it's written in a book that I can just... it's on this other planet, and I absorb it and immediately know." Assuming it's not written in a way that you can't access, which certain formats make it hard to do.
So, Taravangian, if he cared to think about what hemalurgy is, it's well enough known that he could be like, "I wonder if there's a way to steal... Oh, it's this. This is how it works on this planet." That would be an almost instantaneous thing for him to be able to learn, if he wanted to. But does he hold it in his head right now? That remains to be seen.