PS: In case you can't tell, I'm not serious. I'm not crazy- at least that's what my unicorn says.

1) Odium wants to trash the other Shards leaving himself as the most powerful being in the Cosmere.

2) Many of us (at least would like to) think that Hoid et al. are trying to reunite the shards.

3-ish) It is not inconceivable that at least one of the present Shards is content with being a Shard and would rather maintain things as they are.

4-ish) It is also not inconceivable that some Shard-savvy human wouldn't mind taking a shard for themself thereby obtaining supreme cosmic (Cosmeric) powers (*note: this is a lame Aladdin reference.  Obviously, the power of one Shard would not be "supreme").

In any case, back to Harmony.  I would presume that the Ruin aspect of Harmony would be a cheerleader of sorts for Odium (at least in the short-term) because Ruin want to trash the other Shards.  This is supported by Ruin's apparent desire in Mistborn to kill and destroy everyone and everything.

The Preservation side of Harmony seems like it would be keen on maintaining (preserving) the status quo.  In Mistborn, the only apparent reason Preservation acted against Ruin was because Ruin was going to trash the place if preservation didn't act to stop him.  Preservation wanted to maintain Scadriel and the life thereon.  I did not see any indication that Preservation was interested in making anything better than it was.

We also know from Mistborn that, working together, Preservation and Ruin were able to create life on Scadriel.  So, it is conceivable that Harmony could work towards, or at least be in favor of, goal 2.  But, to temper any action or goal, we have the words of Harmony from AoL saying that he has to be careful playing favorites lest he upset the balance (his internal balance between Ruin and Preservation?).

So would Harmony, presumably seeking harmony, be able to only act as a mediating influence in Cosmeric events (a neutral party like Switzerland)?  Or, do you think that Harmony could actively work towards an alternative goal? 

EDIT: In the OP, the underlined portion was not in parenthesis and originally read "between Ruin and Preservation".

• The recipient of The Letter is someone he's written about in an unpublished work, which "some of you (may) have read".  I'm not sure what he's talking about.  [edit: nevermind, there was a closed thread on this already]
• The various Expanses of Shadesmar correspond to Shardworlds.
• "Spren would say they have a soul" (in response to a question about if it's possible to create a soulstamp of a spren)
• "Spren are created by the perceptions of men." (a bit more pontification about spren and souls. He talked about how we are created by our parents, then said this)

Anyway, someone asked if we'd met the recipient of the letter from WoK, and he said (I'm paraphrasing) "Some of you might have. It's a character from one of my unpublished novels," and then he said something to the effect of "Oops, now I've given it away."

I think this shows two things. First, the recipient can't be Hoid (I can't remember if he's been absolutely established as the letter writer yet. I only come by these forums irregularly.) If that was the case, Brandon wouldn't have said that only some people have met him.

Second, it seems likely the book he's talking about is Dragonsteel. For those who have read it, do any likely characters spring to mind?

I did not bat an eye at the prospect of carried objects being able to be transported via worldhopping, but horses are something else entirely.  To my way of thinking, this opens up a whole new aspect to worldhopping.  What might be the scope of what you can bring with you when you worldhop?  Can you take something living with you into Shadesmar?  What other means of worldhopping might there be other than traveling through Shadesmar?  What do you guys think?

"Ponder on that for a time, you old reptile, and tell me if your insistence on nonintervention holds firm."

This first one, to me says two things, one I have mentioned before here.

-The words 'old reptile' to me would seem to indicate a dragon. Coupled with the fact that the name of one of the series will be Dragonsteel, I would be guessing the letter is written to a dragon.

-The other thing of note is the non-intervention. This - once again - to me  says a few things, one of which is that the being who the letter is addressed to, the dragon has the ability to intervene in a war between Shards to an effect. Which kind of implies if he isn't on par in power to a Shard, he may be a lot closer than most beings in the Cosmere that we have seen so far.

-The non-intervention statement reminds me of Harmony a lot, not intervening with the troubles of people. But this dragon is not intervening with the troubles of Shards.

"Though, as you are now essentially immortal, I would guess that wellness on your part is something of a given."

This one is also rather interesting, emphasis mine. The dragon was not always immortal (and so dragons being immortal is not a given. Which is interesting, because it means this creature has found some way of procuring immortality. (Whether this is from Shard-based magic or something else)

Could it be holding multiple shards, the same way that Sazed is?

Anyway, that is some of my thoughts over the last few days reading the Way of Kings.

Enjoy.

This is partially based on the idea here:  and thanks to Observer for that idea. My idea is a bit broader, however, which is why I think it belongs here rather than in the Mistborn forum. I'm sure some of it (or maybe all of it) has been posted before; if so, please inform me and I'll delete the thread.

- - -
 

The Theory of Cognitive Immortality

The Cognitive realm is described in The Emperor's Soul thusly: 'The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself'.

It has been confirmed by Brandon that Kelsier is hanging around on the Cognitive Realm rather than moving on to the afterlife. My Theory is that individuals who make a significant change to the cognitive aspect of people on their world gain a sort of 'tether' in the Cognitive Realm that allows them to resist moving on to the afterlife. In this regard, Kelsier is quite unique. On Scadrial, his founding of a religion centred around himself (Survivorism) and focusing on a set of beliefs and idea he held in high regard, and the subsequent veneration of him as the 'face' (if you will) of these ideals by the adherents of the religion who uphold them, led to him creating a strong Cognitive imprint upon Scadrial. This is what allows him to stay on the Cognitive Realm before moving on to the afterlife.

This ability to be tethered to the Cognitive Realm is rarer than you would think; in fact, it is astonishly rare; while there are a great deal of famous and well known individuals, it is rare for an individual to significantly alter the way people view themselves and the world, to a significant enough degree and among a significant enough number of people, to gain such a tether. I also theorise that said tether doesn't prevent you from moving on to the afterlife, it simply allows you to choose not to. This would make it extremely rare for anyone to stay tethered to the Cognitive Realm; not only do few people develop such a tether, most who do move on. It's only because of Kelsier's specific personality (him being a meddling, nosy little git) that he's still around.

Now, I'm going to go into some Cosmere theorising here. I think it's been confirmed by Brandon that people make a pit stop in the Cognitive Realm before heading to the afterlife; at least, it's implied by one of the epigraphs from tWoK, which involves someone describing Shadesmar.

So, perhaps this 'imprint' isn't an absolute; everyone makes one, each of a different size. The size of your imprint determines how long you can stay in the Cognitive Realm before you are swept on to the afterlife. For most people, this is only a brief time. For certain individuals who dramatically influence people, it is longer.

There are two ways this could go. One is that the size of the imprint you made gives you an absolute limit on the amount of time you can stay; Kelsier made a massive imprint, so he can stick around for centuries. Most people don't even make a big enough imprint to stick around for more than a few seconds.

The other is that your imprint sticks around, almost always shrinking as the effect you had on people's thoughts is slowly reduced. Once your imprint disappears, you are compelled to move on. Kelsier's imprint, through Survivorism, is still going strong; his beliefs and ideals still affect how people on Scadrial see the world, so he can stick around. This raises the question of how most people don't spend too long in the Cognitive Realm when you would expect even the average person to have some mileage to their imprint.

There are four ways I can see this being answered. The first is that most people really don't affect the way others think significantly; combine this with them dying (which, may make people think of them and their ideals less) and they don't make an impact. This doesn't seem right to me. The second is that there is a certain minimum imprint needed; but that is kind of similar to the first idea two paragraphs back. The third is that msot people, bewildered by what is happening, just move on. While possible, I don't think it that likely; I'd expect a lot of people die still determined to live on. Still, I think it is partially an explaination; a lot of people making big Cognitive impacts, such as religious founders, great scientists or whatever, probably aren't the kind of people who want to stick around a keep meddling.

Finally, the fourth way,m which I like the most. Namely, that such changes in people's cognitive aspect have to be deliberate; you have had to gone about deliberately attempting to change the way people think. This means that most of the ways humans affect the thoughts of others are gone. Kelsier was rare in that he, for good or ill, was deliberately trying to change the way thousands, perhaps millions, of people thought about themselves and each other. It was that that gave him such a strong Cognitive imprint, which allowed him to stick around.

As an aside, this is probably related to how the Returned function. I hypothesize that the nature of Endowment on Nalthis makes, for unknown reasons, making such a Cognitive impact easier; or perhaps only a small Cognitive imprint is needed and can then, using the current 'Breath' as an attractor (hence why drabs cannot become Returned), be filled with the divine Breath of Endowment that makes them reach the Fifth Heightening. However, this Breath may only be attracted to certain individuals who fulfil an additional, as yet unknown criteria, which balances out the ease of Returning and offers an explaination for why some return and others do not (I need to re-read Warbreaker before I hypothesise further).

- - -

Obviously, this theory still has some kinks to work out. Any thoughts?

Anyway what do we think Hoid's relationship with the Seventeenth Shard is it seems like they're against each other. He's meddling and they would like him stop. Who do we think is in the right Hoid or the Seventeenth Shard? And what could their ultimate goal be. 

This is what I think. I reckon someone from Yolen is at the head of Seventeenth Shard and was once friends with Hoid. Perhaps they began working together a long time ago after the events of the Shattering maybe even before then. And something changed maybe the shattering or maybe something we don't know about. Well Hoid saw that it was absolutely necessary to stop whatever was going on in the universe, perhaps the ascension of Odium was a prime catalyst for this. So Hoid and the Seventeenth Shard who are still working together tentatively go to Sel to stop that crap going down but fail. This encourages the Seventeenth Shard group to stop interfering as things went pretty terribly and this causes the major split between the two. 

I'm not sure on who is right but I would lean towards both of them being of fairly honourable intentions who just have a disagreement over method. 

Anyway the selection of Galladon and Demoux is interesting to say the least because neither of them seem particularly powerful to me so maybe they're only the scouts for the group as you don't send your strongest people ahead normally. So this to me shows that they aren't that interested in getting to Hoid. Of course this is all pretty much guess work. But it shows that the Seventeenth Shard have other things going.

I know we don't have much evidence either way but I just thought it would be interesting to hear other's opinions on this. Who's good who's bad or otherwise why were they chosen and such.

Oh and this raises another question do we know if Yolen is still habitable? Because I was thinking the new base of operations could possibly be Sel due to it being apparently one of the most advanced planets in the Cosmere at the moment.