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So this is theory is just completely out there and a wild guess without much evidence to go on. Basically I theorize that "What If Obrodai is the planet where Dark One takes place?". We don't know much about Dark One other than that it's cosmere and the main character is destined to destroy the world. Based on the evidence from the second letter Obrodai is a shardworld or at least has a splinter of a shard/shardic presence. Due to its correlation with a shard that makes it a candidate for future books and stories and I really don't have anymore evidence than that. It's mostly just intuition honestly, not really a true theory. Well let me know what you think, and if you have any counter arguments or other ideas to add.

Okay, let me say I believe that chances of this happening is slim to none. But it’s pretty cool. What if Urithiru isn’t just a tower, but a giant barrel of some sort of “shardgun” that can fire into the Cosmere to other planets. I cant even jokingly back this up, but it’s so cool. Also: I’m almost positive Urithiru has a basement or sub levels.

My theory is that Odium is really what everyone else has always said he was, the shard of hatred (more or less), but Odium is able to absorb other emotions from people and give them back much like the pain spren in Navani's painrial do. All the emotions that Dalinar saw in the fiery inferno version of Odium, other than hatred, Odium collected from others and were not innate to the shard. Odium claims that he is not just hatred, but Passion. When Dalinar sees Odium's fiery inferno form he senses a lot different emotions, not just hatred. Later Odium tries to talk Dalinar into giving Odium his pain. Towards the end of OB Moash remarks to one of the Fused that he doesn't feel anything and the Fused tells him that Odium has taken his passion and will return it to Moash later. Navani's painrial's have pain spren in them. These spren are able to take the pain away from the wearer. The pain seems to be stored in the painrial because Navani is able reverse the flow of pain when she defends Queen Fen by disabling the would-be assassins in OB chapter 118. The assassins are only in pain temporarily, as if the fabrial only had so much stored up. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Painrial How can Odium do this and other shards haven't done it? It seems to have something to do with him being "The Void" an emptiness that allows him consumes the emotions of others. How does that relate to hatred of others for what they do or inspiring hatred in others? Perhaps there is an innate emptiness in hate, I don't know.

So it's a trope in anime that their massive swords break at least once. Tetsusaiga breaks in Inuyasha, Guts' sword breaks in Berserk in the battle of Doldry. So what if a Shardblade broke either in half or was shattered worse than the plains? How could this happen? My best guess would either be Nightblood, Odium or a Fused. Would an Honorblade break differently from a Shardblade? What if Syl was broken in blade form? Or Maya, what would happen to them?

If I am late to this party, I apologize. I read WoK and WoR last year on a very superficial level. This month, I reread both before OB while taking copious notes on all three. And so I was among the genuinely shocked by the we-are-the-monsters reveal. We are the Voidbringers. But not all Roshar humans are Voidbringers, right? I mean, Kaladin and Dalinar have taken enormous steps in bridging the divide between humans and Parshendi. From the historical version of WoR: From the second viewing of Dalinar's first vision with Honor in WoK: And then from Oathbringer, we find an enormous rift between the Dustbringer spren (ashspren) and Honor and his Radiants: So Dustbringers = Voidbringers? And once Honor realizes that the Dustbringer-Voidbringers will bring about the True Desolation of the entire planet, he advocates the killing of ashspren? But that sprenicide might be the main impetus for the True Desolation in the first place, right? And so Odium wants us to turn against one another and squabble and bicker and make the Dustbringers angry. Humans will turn against one another and destroy themselves with the Voidbringer weapon of mass destruction. We are our own worst enemies, which is why he keeps telling Dalinar that he must "unite them." Unite the people. Unite the Radiants. (Unite the Heralds. Unite the humans and Parshendi. Unite the realms. Unite the Shards.)

Hi all, I apologise if this is in another thread but if it is my 'extreme' technological skills have been unable to locate it. So I don't know if I'm missing something from oathbringer but it seems to brush over Kaladin and Jasnah's first meeting. They both arrive in Urithiru at the same time and Jasnah references meeting the windrunner (Kal) and seems to like his challenges from the meeting that followed about the parshmen. Why do you think this is? Was it just not not important? I think this is unlikely as it's two of the most important characters meeting for the first time. Do you guys think this will be explored in a future book? Possible start of a Kaladin/Jasnah romance? Jasnah did seem pretty annoyed with Shallan about her sketches of Kal. Maybe it has something to do with this rather than just the whole indiscretion thing on Shallans part and I know there's a lot of Kaladin/Jasnah shippers out there;)

Hi Sharders! Long time lurker here but this is my very first post. Forgive me if this has been discussed but I don't think I have seen it yet though with all the ideas thrown around on this forum it is hard to keep track sometimes. I am of the opinion that the Fused are in fact souls of dead Knight Radiants who have been broken or corrupted by Odium. As far as I have been able to tell no where in Oathbringer does it actually say that they are Parshendi (it does say "they" and "their" though). From memory it says they are ancient soul of leaders and kings who are valiant warriors from long ago. From what we know of the cultures on Roshar, that sounds a lot more like KR than parsh. I believe that this would explain their access to Voidbinding too, as well as their deteriorating minds. As quite a few people have speculated, due to the Nahel bond replicating Honorblades, perhaps an unexpected side effect was that they get sent to Braise, like the heralds, after death. With the link to their spren broken at death this would leave their cognitive shadow stuck on Braise without hope of resurrection, giving Odium an unlimited amount of time to break their minds. Also with the Nahel bond broken, Odium would be able to easily fill the cracks in their sDNA with the requirements for Voidbinding. I think the KR learned this from Honor when he was losing his mind which was the final straw that caused the Recreance. Lastly, to back to back up this theory is the fact that all of the Fused eyes are permanently Red, indicating corruption by another shard. My other theory, along the same lines is that the Fused are the souls of the original Voidbringers, the first humans to settle on Roshar. This would be a better explanation for Voidbinding as they would have arrived on Roshar with it after destroying Ashyn. I do enjoy reading theories that get shot down as much as the plausible ones so if I am completely off the mark please let me know!

I'm dedicating this, mainly, to discussions about the Unmade, particularly Sja-Anat, Taker of Secrets, and where they fit in the plot of SA. This was mainly inspired by section 4 of Oathbringer where Shallan communicates with Sja-Anat before using the Oathgate. Any theories, speculation, or hard evidence is accepted.

Why was Hoid named the Bearer of the First Gem? What is the First Gem? Is it part of the weapon they used to shatter Adonalsium? Perhaps they captured investitures of Adolnasium with, say 16 gems, and Hoid actually held the first, being the first to go near the omnipotent being to give the first strike?

Hello all - for a while now a number of people have speculated that the Iriali, on their long trail in pursuit of the knowledge of the one, are a society of Worldhoppers that periodically change worlds so that they may truly experience all of the One, Adonalsium. So where have they been? I am currently on my second, much slower and more observant read through of Oathbringer, and am only in part 2, and I already have some ideas for where the Iriali have been. I base all of this on things they have said. Sadly, we do not have many sources. Ym through the Words of Radiance Interlude, and Evi through Dalinar's flashbacks, when she appears and has conversation. They do not provide much, but here is what I have found, most of which is from the same chapter in Oathbringer. Chapter 36: Hero In this chapter we see Evi at what is likely her happiest, pregnant with Adolin, living with Dalinar. I picked up on four things she said that link to some other stuff in the Cosmere, emphasis mine: {Temporary edit: I am at work, so I can't really flip through the book to get exact page numbers and quotes. I intend to come back and fix the format of this later this evening} 1) White like the sun at night. She uses this idiom with Dalinar when he stops the fireplace from ash coating their walls. Worth noting that she phrases it as 'a sun,' not 'the sun.' Seems to indicate that the Iriali have been to Nalthis for a period of time before Roshar, given the colour based idiom that is also prevalent with our two Nalthians. 2) Like the blackness of old stories - When describing Dalinar's mood. While this could refer to the Desolations, I feel that this refers more to a single crushing darkness in a history that would leave all bleak. This feels like a reference to the old legends of the Deepness on Scadrial, which was often depicted as a formless blackness in art. 3) A stone still wet with moss. When describing Dalinar's thoughts on the nature of spren. I can't currently tie it to any one planet, but moss sticking to rocks does not seem likely native to Roshar. A Highstorm would strip that right off. This to me would hint at less hostile, more temperate climates not found outside of Shinovar, which is not where the Iriali live. 4) Nightwatcher, avatar of the One. This to me is not necessarily a reference to another planet, but it does line up with the second letter in the epigraphs of part two, where the shard describes the formation of a new avatar that is being bred to distrust Hoid. The comparison seems to link both the idea that intentional splinters/slivers of a certain power level could be considered avatars, and that the Iriali have been to that shard's planet on their long trail to pick up that terminology. Once again, I apologize for the format. I will be coming back to this later, today hopefully, to clean this up - add proper quotes with some context and page numbers. But this is what I have spotted so far. I do not recall much from Ym's interlude that would hint as to which shardworlds the Iriali had been to before, or even how the entire society manages to worldhop, or what their criteria for moving on is. There are a small handfull of other chapters where Evi has actual lines to deliver, but I have not gotten there yet. Has anyone noticed any other hints as to previous stops on the Long Trail? Does anyone dispute the examples I have given here, or have alternate interpretations of them?

Hello all! This is the first theory I have posted, so forgive me if I format things incorrectly or if this theory has already been posted before. Also there are spoilers for Oathbringer, so be ye wary if you haven't read it yet. Whilst skimming the book after having read it my first time, I found myself reading one of Hoid's little bits with Shallan in Kholinar. On page 676, Shallan notices that Hoid has a small sealed jar that was mostly black, but with a white part facing her. (Let me be plain here. I have scoured the Coppermind wiki a lot on the topic of Hoid so I'm mostly just reaffirming what I read there, forgive me if this information is already known by you fellow 17th Sharders.) I remember reading in Warbreaker Hoid telling Siri and Lightsong a story. In this story he used sand that could transform from white to black. Since we know that there is a sand based power on Taldain, this leads me to believe that Hoid must have gone there and learned sand mastery. This makes me wonder if Hoid has plans to use sand sometime in the SA series. While I must admit that I am uncertain about how sand mastery works, we do know that Investiture can be "replaced" (Stormlight can fulfill the need for Breath, as we see with Nightblood on Roshar.) This makes me wonder if you could use Stormlight to re-energize sand that has been used, or if you can draw upon the Investiture stored within the sand. I hope you all will understand this balderdash. I also hope that you can leave behind some helpful insight to help me understand more the integration between Invested magics. As I mentioned this is my first thing I have posted, so forgive me if it isn't strung together well.

Before reading Oathbringer my running theory for what spren were was that they were essentially shards of Honor. Shards of a shard if you will; tiny pieces of Adonalsium. However, after reading Oathbringer it seems like Honor was creating spren even when he was alive along with Odium and possibly even Cultivation. I was also wondering why spren don't appear in the cosmere outside of roshar. I'm somewhat confused about this topic and would love to hear what you all think.

So based off of the revelation of this book the humans on roshar were originally of odium instead of honor or cultivation. That begs the question; why is Renarin the only human we know of to have bonded a spren of odium? Why are the humans bonding spren of Honor? And why was Honor so accepting of the humans if they were so cruel to his beings?

Spoilers up to Part 4. I think it's possible that Soulcasting, while it might slowly deteriorate your physical form, slowly changes your cognitive form until you become a Spren. (One to match the type of Soulcasting done) When I read Kaze Interlude, I thought she was just slowly turning into smoke. Of course, she soulcasts matter into smoke, so it seems like a plausible consequence. Chapter 105 talks of an ardent Soulcaster whose "skin beneath was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within." This description matches that of some of the spren walking around in the Spren port in Shadesmar. This made me realize that there was also a Spren to match Kaza's trabsformation in that town. There were smokespren there as well. Anyone have a similar thought or theory about the end cost of Soulcasting?

So we have seen a little bit of a convergence of how Cosmere Magic systems are working, like Soulcasting to Forgery, Sel's symbol based system and now on Scadrial we're seeing symbols start to pop up (I may be wrong on this, I haven't read Era 2 in about 10 months, and I've read a lot of books in the past year). We have a WoB saying Awakening can be fueled by Stormlight... What if a Bondsmith or Herald used Connection abilities to use Awakening Commands and magically subdued/subjugated the Parshmen?

This topic’s called Consequences of Honor, but I think we should really be looking at the consequences of a lack of honor. Well, a lack of Honor. Let me explain. We all know that Honor was splintered, and that Honor used to have certain ‘checks’ on Surgebinding. These checks, along with Honor himself, are gone after the Splintering. What were these checks, though? I think we may have already seen a few things Honor might not have wanted to happen. Example 1: Kaladin and his magical highstorm-stopping wall. We’ve theorized that this was a use of his Adhesion Surge, maniplulating pressure to divert the highstorm around himself. I do think that is probably true, but the important thing that I noticed was that Syl had never heard of anyone doing that before. It’s a new, scarily powerful thing. Example 2: Unity. Dalinar’s moment of Ascension was awesome, and true, it’s most likely due to his bonding a big piece of Honor’s power, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. Having a Perpendicularity on call? That’s scary. Example 3: Shallan’s Lightweaved army. She’s still only at her 4th Oath, as far as we know, and it’s surprising she was able to summon that ridiculous number of illusions out of nowhere. It’s a huge power boost from what she used to be at. Also, I’d like to talk about how her illusions had mass, and splattered illusions of blood, too, even though she’s not at all practiced with Soulcasting, which is what she assumed was going on. There might be other examples that I missed, or there might be perfectly reasonable ideas for why these types of powers seem to be new, surprisingly powerful manifestations of Surgebinding. I invite you all to try and tear my theory apart!

Kalak's Breath, what if that's a reference to Nalthis?

I have a very simple theory on acquiring/becoming squires as/to a Knight Radiant: 1. You need Connection between the Knight and the squire, 2. Windrunners have more squires than other orders because they have spiritual Adhesion, which works differently than that of the Bondsmiths. The Windrunners may use spiritual Adhesion to acquire squires in 2 ways: 1. Making it easier for people to Connect to him, appearing more inspiring in their eyes, 2. Becoming a lashing point, when people stop resisting his Connection, it will be very easy for them to be stuck to his spiritual web and acquire the ability to use Stormlight. Per Skar's teaching, Kal's squires should not try too hard, but let it happen. It sounds like the power is there like a pool of tar, but you by instinct will try to escape, which takes you farther from it. Stop trying and you get stuck.

We already know that there are at least 4 types of cognitive shadows that are left behind by human-level creatures: 1. Shades on Threnody, 2. Fused souls, 3. Svrakiss, 4. Kelsier. Now, the description of Svrakiss from Coppermind: sounds quite familiar after reading Oathbringer. They both hate, they don't go to the Beyond, they curse a lot, and they prey on the living. People have speculated if Svrakiss are what's behind the Set's Faceless Immortals, and now we have another option which is almost identical. Knowing that they are both from planets which Odium set foot upon makes me ponder. Also, Threnody was associated with Ambition, who was also splintered by, well, Odium. Below is the description of the Evil: Odium feasted on the guilt of the humans, which is what keeps most people on the right track, making right choices, doing right things. With Odium to blame for any crime passionnel, a man can be considered soulless, and the rest of the humankind did the right thing to flee them. My theory is, all these 3 types of cognitive shadows are created by Odium. He may not have invested on Sel to keep the Svrakiss from going to the Beyond, but there is enough investiture in the Cognitive Realm to do it. Odium may have used the investiture he tore from Ambition to create the shades. And we know about the Fused already. Odium is like a master Necromancer, leaving behind an army of undead everywhere he goes. And he will not hesitate to use the army when there's the chance. And that's perhaps what Hoid is working against, to release the cognitive shadows? After all, they're basically the only people he can beat and hurt without breaking his oaths. And he even danced with some of them, and he may have wished them a peaceful rest.

Until Dalinar's talk with the Stormfather, no one (outside of Mraize) seems to think Tezim is anything other than an ordinary human who just happens to be ten shades of bonkers. Which implies that Tezim's rule hasn't been longer than a normal human lifetime. So what has Ishar been up to in the past few generations, before he took over Tukar? Or do you think everyone just assumed "Tezim" was a Dread Pirate Roberts situation?

So, we have some Hemalurgy on Roshar. Not only is what Moash did considered at least partially Hemalurgy, but we have apparently seen some people who have Hemalurgy. Who have we seen with Hemalurgy? An Inquisitor? A Kandra? Something I'm curious about is if the dagger Moash used was made of Odiums godmetal, if he has one, and how this somehow stole the part of Jezriens soul that makes him go back to Damnation when he dies. Another thing that REALLY stuck out to me when reading Oathbringer was this line I feel like Odium was using some form of Hemarlurgy to transform Dalinar into his champion, giving him acces to the other surges, and giving him the "9 Shadows" this is supported by this WoB Thoughts?

I recall partly reading a teaser chapter from BS from Jasnah's POV after she Elsecalled into Shadesmar from the Winds Pleasure and presumably saved Shallan's life and the trunk. I didn't finish reading it, I read Oathbringer and don't remember this scene included. Why? Please where can I find this scene once more?

Now, Nightblood is a pretty badass sword, with his sense of humour and intent to eradicate evil in whichever fashionable way possible. Whilst his power is somewhat nebulous as of right now, I am wondering what happens to a Fused struck by Nightblood. He destroys across all three realms, so what does this mean for the Fused who intend on returning to a new Parshman body? I think that NB will be the way to stop Fused from being reborn in the Everstorm. We saw a Thunderclast cleaved in two by Szeth as he saved Lift, maybe it won't be 'reborn'! Personally I don't fee Nightblood is in the Stormlight Archive just for the sake of being in them, he has a bigger roll than shown so far, and maybe this is it? Instead of the Fused going to Damnation, they just stop existing. Thoughts?