sonwarrior01

Posting a bit late to the party, but I've had this theory I've wanted feedback on. "Corrupted" from my understanding refers to something that still resembles what it once was. Thus, Glys would still be like a normal Truthwatcher spren but noticeably different. Now if the Truthwatcher resonance was seeing things happening in the present in a way similar to Renarin's visions, then a corrupted Illumination surge (like a voidbinding working) would produce a corrupted Resonance that would allow/force future sight.

Do we know if Shallan's eyes will ever turn garnet colored? Or reddish? Since Kaladin's eyes changed it seems the eye color is some sort of DNA change based on the nahel bond. Thus Shallan's eyes should change even though they are originally a "light" color because Kaladin's eye color change is dependent upon a current bond. But we don't see Shallan's changing.

Do we know how much breath Hoid has? He obviously has some, but it's unclear from the text how much. He could be muting the effects of his breath on the environment as other people do, but that doesn't leave us with much knowledge.

That is very intriguing. Where was the Nohadon comment and the epigraph? I 100% believe you (and it's what I expected to find) but I want to see what else I can gain from the context. Thanks for pointing this out!

I agree. I guess what I'm trying to suss out is why I as a reader have such a strong bias toward the spren and knights radiant being anti-Odium. It seems like a betrayal for their to be radiants who don't wholeheartedly support Dalinar and crew because that's the way it was in the past. Was the seemingly unified front against Odium and the void-bringers a result of viewing the direct result of a desolation and seeing that it was horrible or is it is the result of the official history ignoring dissident radiants? I think it's also weird that representations of the fundamental forces of nature can change their minds. I realize that a whole bunch of spren were killed and everything alive fears death, but wouldn't they also fear oppression? I feel Timbre choosing Venli is evidence that some spren believe Odium should still be opposed. I'm just curious as to why others don't.

I think it's also interesting that the spren this time round are more interested in preserving spren life than human life. It's been repeatedly said that honorspren didn't want to have anything to do with this wave of radiants and Spark and the light spren definitely don't want to put themselves at undue risk. I'm guessing that the perception of the former Radiants has been heavily influenced by the Vorin church and thus is human-centric.

I think the main reason I have trouble with the disunity among orders of radiants is the seeming unity of the previous radiants. We know that there was a lot of contention and disunity behind the scenes, but it seemed they were all basically in agreement on their goal. Save Humanity. In this era we see that of the orders we've seen, only the Skybreakers don't have this goal. But there goal is to serve the group they see as in "the right". I would not be surprised that if when the radiants were originally founded there was a very similar schism and disunity to what we see now. I'm guessing that the order of Bondsmiths has a more unifying factor on all the orders than what we initially suspect. TL;DR I think the bondsmiths originally united a disunified group of orders to overcome the differing views on the oaths.

@Varenus Sorry for the late reply. School and work exist. Alas. Although I agree with you completely about how resonance hasn't been canonically defined, based off of what we do know it seems that it is an almost mathematical way the resonances work throughout the cosmere. There is a WOB somewhere that resonance works in a way similar to how a feruchemical ability and an allomatic ability would combine to create some weird effects. This makes me think (without a whole lot in the way of evidence) that resonance works kind of like how two waves colliding would create a very specific waveform as a result. So if future sight is a surge that is the end of the story. However, if future sight is just the product of how void-illusion interacts with any kind of progression then it is probable for this to happen as long as the Nightform had access to both of these surges. I like this idea because the depiction of voidbind we have seems to indicate that they have access to more than one surge as well, which would allow for resonances. I have no quibble with your other objects. They are excellent points. This is a very good point. It would make sense for an outside observer to only confidently talk about how the physical sides of these surges would work. Your point about it talking about Lightweaving instead of the illusion surge is also good. I was assuming that Renarin was a "good" Vorin because of how uncomfortable he is with how "feminine" his strengths are. But didn't Kaladin use his surges not to save his own life but the lives of the fellow bridgemen? I was assuming that Dalinar used Tension here because the effect was permanent. We have yet to see a use of the Adhesion surge that didn't need to be renewed at some point. Also, I want to say that he used tension in a way unique to the Bondsmiths because he could only use the Tension surge when he "heard" the stone asking to be united. To be bonded together as it once was. If that was what it took for him to use the surge then it combines with what the Stormfather said about Tension be available to him in a different way than for the Stonewards.

I think you're right. It makes sense that Connection would be his resonance because adhesion makes things stick together and tension pulls things together (aside from the fact that the Stormfather tells him that he has the power of Connection). So would this mean that the how each surge can be used is determined by the resonance? That seems like a chicken and egg problem. Unless it's one of those things where the context of how you have the power inherently describes how you can use the power. For instance, Shallan can use Lightweaving the way she can because the way transformation and illumination intermingle allows for the taking of memories.

Thanks people! I really like the creativity. I really like this. It makes sense that the surges' resonances would come from not how the spiritual/cognitive and maybe even the physical aspects would interrelate. @Varenus I do think those pages give good evidence for that Renarin has access to some sort of Voidbinding surge and I really like how your hypothesis on voidbinding being the surges in different realms. But I don't think his ability to see the future would be spiritual illumination. The Ars Arcannum says the following about illumination It seems like the illumination surge is centered around the manipulation of waves and also already requires a spiritual component. As such it seems to me that having the future vision not be spiritual illumination because all illumination information we have to this point involves the desire of the surge/voidbinder. Renarin, as a good Vorrin, would not want this to be happening. My theory (without much justification) is that the future sight is a corrupted resonance between the voidbinding and surgebinding. I think this fits because while the other resonances we see can be intentionally used (like Shallan's memory) they tend to be instinctive or beyond control (like Kaladin's strength of squires and whatever Lift is doing with the languages). I think the uncorrupted version would function similarly, but it would show the Truthwatcher facets of the truth from the present and/or past. Although this is basically the premise I had when I made this topic (and I agree with what you've written), I realized that the one example we have of the surges reacting differently to different orders both have to deal with a physical component of that surge. So when the Stormfather describes what is going on he says, When we see Dalinar use this surge, he uses it to "heal" inorganic things in the physical realm. This implies that even when the surge is used in the same realm they react differently to different order. So perhaps the Windrunners could use spiritual adhesion to prevent their charges from wandering off? Perhaps more seriously it is what allowed for Bridge 4 to be so cohesive, though we never saw a draining of stormlight when Kaladin does his whole bind-people-together-for-their-protection thing.

I'm confused by how adhesion was used in the book and how it could be used in further books. On the one hand, Bondsmiths and Windrunners probably have different versions of adhesion since it appears the surges help accentuate the "theme" of the specific order's oaths. For instance, I don't think Kaladin would have access to spiritual adhesion because you don't need to understand someone in order to protect them. However, it seems that the Windrunners are more "combat oriented" than most other orders. In that case, it would make sense that adhesion would have a use in protecting others, sort of how Kaladin used those windspren to protect those people in the highstorm. But that might have been proto-shardwielding. But the Stormfather said Dalinar's surges weren't of most use in combat. In other words, what in the world would a Windrunner using his or her adhesion surge to the fullest extent actually look like?

My theory is that Sanderson gave us the fourth oath in TWoK. Kaladin will have to learn to "let go" of those he cannot save. Although I don't think it will take the form of callouses like Lirin was saying. Maybe something along the lines of, "I will let go of former allies to protect those I have now." I feel this would work well with the idea of Honor spren being very intent on what their current duty is.

Honestly even after reading all the comments about how Shallan probably didn't draw the creepy drawings, I really hope she did because then she would have TERRIFYING illusions to throw at enemies.

One of my quirks is that I always want to know more. As such, I want to know EVERY oath (or oath path for those lightweavers) for all the orders. So I am wondering if we will have a POV from every order. Is the following list accurate? Will we get a Willshaper and a Dustbringer? Does Talenel count as a Stoneward? Does Rysn fit in here somewhere? If this has been talked about in length already, could someone post the link? Windrunners = Kaladin Skybreakers = Szeth Bondsmiths = Dalinar Lightweavers = Shallan Edgedancers = Lift Elsecallers = Jasnah Truthwatchers = Renarin Willshapers = Eshonai ? Stonewards = Talenel? Dustbringers = Shalash ?

I find it interesting that while in the persona of Brightness Radiant Shallan has no problem referring to her blade as Pattern. In all other cases seen so far she has refused to acknowledge that Pattern and the blade are one in the same. This is probably due to the calculating nature of Brightness Radiant (and principally the reason that she created it). However, it shows that she knows the two are the same. I think this will become important as a way to either break Shallan apart so that she can no longer mentally function or as a way to unify the whole and have a healthier relationship with Pattern.

On the other hand, by intruding with her religions she infringes upon the autonomy of the other shards. If I recall correctly, the shards are not limited in their intent to only care about people. In other words, shouldn't Autonomy care about the autonomy of the other shards?

In the same way, could Autonomy want to grant Autonomy? She would not want anyone in her system because that would jeopardize the independence of her people. She would want to force religions into other systems so that their inhabitants could have a choice to be autonomous from their governing shards. Rather than just being Autonomous, she would want to create as many ways to be autonomous for anyone who wants to be.

That's a cool idea. I like how it explains why Shardplate consumes Stormlight and why it is a silvery color at its base. One thought I have is that the larkin seem to be rare. If they are so rare, how could all the Radiants get their own Shardplate? Now we don't know much about the larkin, and I think Brandon said there was a purging of Aimia, so my problem could be a future plot point.

It seemed to me that that girl was used to foreshadow the Edgedancer's unique talent. Something along the idea of knowing how to communicate with others. That would help with the listening bit. No proof for this except that Lift didn't know how she knew what to say.

I'm in the camp that thinks the shardplate is minor spren. However, many have brought up the fact that our incipient Knights Radiant do not hear screaming when they touch Shard Plate. Do we know if the screaming comes from the Knight's spren or the broken spren? If the scream comes from the Knight's spren, then I can conceive that the screaming is just a horrified reaction on being in contact with the broken spren. However, since I don't recall any evidence to suggest that the Nahel Bond allows the bondees to experience sensations of the other, I believe that the scream comes from the broken spren being in the presence of someone experiencing another Nahel Bond. To me, it makes sense then that either the minor spren can't react to presence of a Nahel Bond or the process by which they become bonded to the Knight is innately different than for other spren. My current off-the-wall hypothesis is that the spren that is active in the bond "recruits" the lesser spren and directs their actions. As we've seen in Dalinar's flashbacks, the Knights at the recreance gave up their oaths while in Shard Plate. So the minor spren could be trapped in that specific form because the main spren cannot direct the minor spren back out of that form. I think this provides a theory (reasonability aside) of how the shardplate can be made from minor spren, not elicit screaming, and remain trapped in that form at the ending of the recreance.

I've been playing with the idea that the fourth oath could be something like, "I will protect those who need it most, even at the cost of who I love." I say "those who need it most" because it allows wiggle room on protecting a king or an entire village at the expense of losing one's wife or family. Something along those lines. I also like that wording because it follows a certain "from the viewpoint of the spren" pattern we've been seeing from WoK and WoR

So, I'm fairly new to the boards and this has probably been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere, but is it possible that each of the sprens who grant surgebinding has a "cousin" spren who will act as the shardplate? Since we have only really seen two surgebinders in depth, I'm probably committing the hasty generalization fallacy, but Syl is "cousins" with windspren and Shallan attracts creationspren. I think that creationspren might count as cousins to the cryptics because although Pattern dislikes them he is always attracted to the creation of lies and patterns, which is just a higher level of creation. Also, there is unfortunately often no love lost among families. To tie this together, I think that each spren that grants surgebinding has a "cousin" who is non-sentient. After a specific number of oaths, the surgebinder will be able to bond these cousin spren as his or her shardplate. Like I said, I'm new. So please point me to the relevent WoB.

I figured there was a WoB somewhere that addressed this. Thanks everyone for your input.

I’m fairly new to the forums, so please show me the link to where this has been brought up before but buried over time. Anyway, after extensive searching through theoryland and the coppermind I’ve come to the conclusion that atium gives the wrong powers. Atium, as we know, is the physical body of Ruin, who is the polar opposite of Preservation and thus wants to destroy everything. Furthermore, we know from WoB (and possibly Secret Histories, I can’t remember where I got my info) that Ruin cannot see very far into the future. It is not his defining attribute. I find it very odd then, that allomantic atium use allows the user to see into the future while the feruchemical use effectively allows the user to be preserved throughout generations. It seems to me that the physical body of this shard should enable destruction, not preservation and future sight. In contrast, Lerasium grants the user untold destructive potential. The very opposite of Preservation’s nature. The only theory I can come up with is that there is a switch in nature from the cognitive realm to the physical realm, but it doesn’t make that much sense to me.

Hello All, I've been an avid reader all of my life and Sanderson is one of my favorite authors when it comes to worldbuilding and general story telling. I think I've read (and reread) all of the Cosmere stuff except for maybe a couple of short stories here and there. I love all this behind-the-scenes stuff and act as my own personal inquisitor when finding out WHAT'S GOING ON (who then forcibly passes along the information to my mother and sister). Anyway, that's the important stuff for here. Also, I feel it would be appropriate to mention that I really enjoy peppermint. Please feel free to spike any food coming my way with it.