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Hi. I’m new here, I think Shallan is the best, and I’m ready to defend that opinion. Bring it on

Ok so I was in an internet rabbit hole trying to learn more about the Cosmere because I am only 13 and my father has a limited amount of money. I now have more questions than I did before and I was wondering if any of you could try to help more than just saying, "ROW". Here we go, Is Wit Adonalsium reborn? Who hold the Dawnshards? Can Adonalsium be reborn? How was Adonalsium splintered? How did Odium splinter other Shards? Did people collect those Shard's, Shards? Were there even shards from Shards? What are God Metals? Are the HonorBlades MADE of Honor? If so then doesn't Odium need to destroy them and their blades to be rid of Honor's restraint? If Dalinar and the Stormfather killed themselves wouldd Honors power over Odium be gone or would Odium be trapped forever? I have other questions but these will do for now. Please help.

Is it just me or are Shallan and Vin both almost 'little knives' as Mraize calls Shallan. If you think about it, Vin is basically the same thing.

So I was reading Rhythm of War and I noticed a pattern throughout each Part. The titles of the Parts aren’t scrutinized much but in each book the five titles of the Parts are a ketek or palindrome. However behind these titles are symbols, and they also follow a symmetrical pattern. Its obvious with a quick check that the first symbol is of the Willshapers. The second is Stonewards and the third is Bondsmiths, and then the pattern reverses. I’m assuming a similar pattern shows up in the other books, but with different symbols. I don’t understand what they mean? Are they like the Herald banners on each chapter or do they have a greater significance to the plot?

Warning: This post contains a single Stormlight 5 prologue spoiler, masked, and potentially significant spoilers should these theories prove accurate. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. Just as the Stormfather provides Stormlight and surgebinding powers to all of Honor's children, Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM) became the Voidmother proving Voidlight and voidbinding powers to all of Odium's children, all of her Singers, during the False Desolation. One BAM to Connect them all One BAM aligned them One BAM to draw them all And with her Voidlight bind them One gem severs the whole One gem divides them One gem rips away souls And then the darkness finds them In the Land of Roshar Where the Singers die And Listeners live We'll explore much relevant history leading up to and beyond BAM's imprisonment (see Coppermind's BAM and False Desolation articles for supporting canon references) and theories explaining the magical science behind what happened with BAM, her Singers, and related events. BAM-SINGER CONNECTION HISTORY The lead up to and fall out from BAM's gemstone capture includes: Long, long ago, Odium unmakes 9 spren who fight during many desolations in which BAM serves as highprincess and commander of Odium's forces, The last desolation comes where all but Taln survive, Taln holds Odium and his Fused on Braize all by himself (spanning a total of 4500 years), During the long imprisonment of Odium and the Fused, BAM somehow gains the ability to pull Voidlight into the Physical Realm and to Connect herself with all the Singers of Roshar, a feat previously only managed by Odium, making herself a little god (RoW 847-848), Even though Odium and the Fused are still trapped on Braize, BAM's newfound powers give her the ability to provide Singers with forms of power including all the Regal forms plus stormform, which allows BAM to wage war against the Knights Radiant during the False Desolation, with no end in sight, The Listeners, tired of endless war and manipulation from both Odium and Honor, "cast off everything - including our very forms - to find freedom," which severs their Connection to BAM (RoW 159), Honor's long, slow death begins around this time, The Knights Radiant form a special Strike Team to imprison BAM inside a gemstone in order to end the False Desolation, Because BAM is a little god and holds strong Connection to the spren and souls of every Singer in Roshar except the Listeners, these tethered souls and spren get sucked along their Connection to BAM, ripping out pieces of their souls, removing both their Identity and Connection, and possible damaging or destroying their gemhearts in the ripping process, Somehow even Honor and Cultivation's spren and the Sibling get damaged by BAM's imprisonment, though to a much smaller degree that perhaps signals a much smaller Connection between the Voidmother and "all who belong to Roshar," affecting the Sibling's abilities to make Towerlight and crippling Urithiru (RoW 621), Close to dying, Honor cannot help the Sibling, Urithiru, or the Knights Radiant, The Battle for Feverstone Keep begins before BAM's imprisonment since the enemy still pushes for that ground and parshmen are anything but pushy (OB 809), BAM's imprisonment, if during the Battle for Feverstone Keep, would have caused all fighting Singers to experience excruciating pain and then simultaneously transform into docile, mindless parshmen, All Singers Connected to BAM become parshmen through a break in Identity and Connection; only the Listeners escape because of their previously broken Connections to her, Hundreds of Windrunners and Stonewards at Feverstone Keep become the first to abandon their oaths en masse as Honor says, "they are the first" (OB 547), Two thousand years later, the Everstorm travels to Roshar through the Cognitive Realm and is brought through to the physical realm, and The Everstorm restores both Identity and Connection by repairing the Singers’ souls and possibly their gemhearts. SCIENCE-MAGIC THEORY BEHIND CONNECTION, CAPTURING SPREN, AND THE SINGERS' SOULS From Newton, we know: Force = mass * acceleration From Jasnah (OB 1179), we know that "concentrated Stormlight has a faint mass to it." So the more we accelerate the physical mass of the Stormlight, the stronger the physical force we have acting on the Stormlight and anything Connected to and by the Stormlight. How do we move or accelerate Stormlight? Navani's lecture on fabrial mechanics includes details on sucking Light into a gemstone in order to trap a spren inside a gemstone. We first lure a spren into close proximity to a gemstone with something it likes (e.g., flames for flamespren) and by using the type of gemstone it prefers (RoW epigraphs, Chapter 1). Interestingly, we already know the type of gemstones preferred by each Order of Knights Radiant (and each associated herald). Moash's knife had a large sapphire gemstone hilt that gave a subdued glow after capturing Jezrien's spren-soul (OB 1205), which makes me wonder if the gemstone in Leshwi's spear (RoW 80) that drained Kaladin's Stormlight and nearly sucked out his soul (RoW 101) was sapphire, as well. The first questions we must ask ourselves would be 1) what would BAM be attracted to and 2) what kind of gemstone would she prefer? To answer the second, maybe the Voidmother would prefer a heliodor, as the Stormfather would. As for the first question, she appears to like war and commanding, and she has shown particular interest in Feverstone Keep (OB 809). One might imagine Melishi, the False Desolation's Bondsmith, and her Strike Team showing up at the Battle for Feverston Keep with a large and perfect (or nearly perfect) heliodor gemstone, knowing that BAM would be nearby commanding her troops and in search of something in the area that interested her. Navani's next stages in capturing a spren (RoW epigraphs, Chapters 2-5) would be filling the gemstone to around 70% full of Stormlight (Voidlight in BAM's case) and then quickly sucking that Stormlight out to create a vacuum that will suck in a nearby spren. Suppose you take a brown paper lunch sack and suck the air out. It collapses, right? The same would be true of a Ziploc bag. By collapsing to reduce the volume, the bag equalizes the pressure. But what about something that has a rigid structure like a gemstone, especially a gemstone that doesn't leak? If you suck all the air out of a glass, for example, you'd suction that glass to your face since you've created a vacuum of extremely low pressure. Because air and Light will always seek the lowest pressure possible, they'll get sucked into a vacuum until the pressure outside of the gem roughly equals the pressure inside the gem. Since volume is inversely proportional to pressure, the larger the gemstone, the lower the pressure (where the lower pressure goes the stronger the vacuum becomes). And finally, the tighter the seal, the less a gemstone will leak and the stronger the vacuum will be. So large, perfect gemstones make the perfect traps for these gods. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how does the spren gets sucked in along with the Stormlight? That's where Connection comes in. When the Stormfather gives Stormlight to his children - his spren and his surgebinders - an invisible cord of Stormlight will Connect that spren or that Radiant to the Stormfather. The same can be said for the Voidmother's children - BAM's spren and her Singers: they're all Connected to their mother by a physical force from the Voidlight she provides. Let's say you have a massive gemstone and a larkin quickly sucking a ton of Light out of your stone. The gemstone will quest out seeking to replace all or almost all of the light it just lost with a powerful force. Once it captures a nearby Stormlight Connection cord, the spren will be drawn in along with the Stormlight the spren is tethered to. Yes, the Connection is mostly spiritual, but there is a small physical Connection, too (because the Stormlight Connecting them has a small mass, as Jasnah said, and mass * acceleration is force, as Newton said). If we yank hard enough on that tether, the spren cannot help but be pulled in. We see this with spren pulled into fabrials, yes, but also with human and Singer souls, tethered to their home planet by their Connection to the Investiture there. We saw Jezrien's spren-soul sucked into Moash's sapphire knife and Kaladin's soul nearly sucked into Leshwi's gemstone-capped spear, both of which had metal that specifically draws in Stormlight including the Stormlight cords of Connection. Let me digress for a smidge to explain that Identity and souls are nearly synonymous. For instance, the Fused (where each Fused is the soul of one ancient Singer fuzed together forever to a surgebinding spren, granting surgebinding powers and immortality) maintain their Identities - and most of their intellect, knowledge, and memories - even though they constantly lose the rest of their bodies because Identity is stored in the soul. Connection for the traditional Singer bond appears to be stored in their gemhearts since that is where their spren and probably their souls reside. Now I said all that to say this: this, this, this is how Singers' souls were ripped away, how their Identity and Connection were stolen, and how they became mindless parshman slaves, by having parts of their souls that were tethered to their Voidmother ripped free, likely destroying their gemstones in the process, as BAM and all her many Connections were sucked into her gemstone prison. With Singer souls damaged, they were not quite soulless and mindless nothings but nearly so. And with Singer gemhearts damaged or destroyed, the parshmen lost their abilities to bond any other spren or to hear the rhythms of Roshar inside their gemhearts. The Listeners were spared, maintaining their Identity and their abilities to Connect with other spren because they had previously severed their Connections to BAM before her imprisonment. TRAVEL & WORLDHOPPING We'd be remiss if, while we're here with Connection, we didn't speculate on travel and worldhopping. Connection tethers Invested individuals to their home planet, not letting them escape lest they rip out part of their souls, their Identity, and destroy their Connection. But of course there is a way around this problem, a way out, because this is Sanderson, after all. The remainder of the post includes a little speculation about how off-world travel may be possible based on what we know of Connection above and a single spoiler from the Knights of Wind and Truth prologue that gives a bit more detail regarding the quote above. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. I've kept all non-Stormlight cosmere spoilers out of this post.

Hey all! I’ve had this for a while but I finally went and recreated it digitally! Attached below is an unofficial script/language/alphabet that I created for the singer and listener people + a “user manual” because I made it far more complicated than necessary. I don’t know if we have any evidence of them having written language but I decided to make one regardless, and I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

I've had this theory bouncing around in my mind for a while and I want to see other's thoughts on it. To start with, I want to say that this is mostly unfounded. I think there's only really one piece of textually evidence, and it's not particularly strong. So I'm not particularly attached to it. Anyway, the gist of the theory is that Tien isn't dead. My explanation of this has a few different pieces. Firstly, Kaladin and Tien were both invested at the time, Tien more so. We have no idea how far along Tien was as a radiant, but he could have been pretty decently far and no one would have known. Kaladin was most likely first ideal at the time, as we know Syl was around, and Syl was able to travel to the physical realm because of her and Kaladin's connection. Secondly, Kaladin and Tien were already heavily connected. This is true for a few obvious reasons, such as them being close brothers. They loved each other deeply, and their connection mattered significantly to each of them. Thirdly, both had a deep desire to protect the other. Kaladin is the more obvious of the pair, seeing as his desire to protect Tien is a major plot point. However I think Tien's desire to protect Kaladin was just as strong, in a different way. Tien obviously wasn't going to be able to physically protect Kal, he wanted to protect Kal in mind and soul. We are told that Tien worked hard to cheer Kal up, and he was extremely important for Kal during the weeping. I think that Tien knew that Kal had depression, and he chose to help him as much as he could. Putting it all together, here's what I think happened. Tien is killed on the battlefield. Being highly invested, he would have stuck around a significant amount in the cognitive realm. But unlike most people, I don't think Tien would be able to accept his death. I think his strong will to protect his brother would keep him from the beyond, as we know is possible (If you don't know that, read Mistborn: A Secret History). I think that as a cognitive shadow, he could have been able to latch onto his connection with Kal, causing him to Nahel bond. However, because of his lack of a solid connection to any realm, I think the Nahel bond may only have been enough to keep him in the cognitive realm. So his ability to communicate with Kaladin would be extremely difficult. The piece of textual evidence I have is Tien's appearance in RoW. I think that was actually Tien, and not a copy created by Dalinar from Kaladin's memory. I want to go over some of the biggest problems with this theory. The first is the thematic implications. Tien's death is extremely important for Kaladin's story and his growth. Having Tien turn out to not have died would be a pretty big reversal of that, and could cheapen the character growth. I don't have a defense here, it's just true. 2: Kaladin has been to the cognitive realm. He has physically interacted with Syl, someone definitely Nahel bonded to him. If my theory is true, Tien should have been there. My defense here would be that Tien has somewhat accepted his current role, and knows that Kaladin needs to grow in ways that Tien cannot help with. This defense feels very loose, so it's most certainly a significant hole. 3: Why doesn't Syl know? Shouldn't she be able to see that Kal is bonded to Tien, or at least that Tien is hanging out in the cognitive realm? My defense is that we don't know if Syl would be able to know, and if Syl would even tell Kal if that was the case. She might assume that he knows, or think it better to not bring up. I think there are a couple different options, but nothing is very solid. I think Occam's Razor here says that Tien is dead, and I'm wrong. That's certainly true, and I'm not holding my breath. I want it to be true, but I think there are plenty of interesting stories to be told with Tien's death, so I would in no way be disappointed. Anyway, what are your thoughts? Can you think of better defenses, and/or more issues? Maybe there's a WoB out there that says "oh yeah tien is 100% dead" in which case whoopsies. But this is something I have put a decent amount of thought into, so hearing thoughts of all kinds would be nice.

On earth it would take 5,588,472 basic lashings of a windrunner to go the speed of light. On Roshar it would take 3,911,930 basic lashings of a windrunner to go the speed of light. Can anyone do some investigating on how much stormlight that would take up?

I know that I was not the only one who thought about this when reading through Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and I have seen people mention a thing or two about it in various places, but I figured it would be good to compile thoughts all in one place. What are people's thoughts/opinions about the connections between the people of Komashi and the Shin people? There are just a few choices that seem too intentional to me to not have been on purpose. These are the few things that I have personally noticed about it. Things suggesting there might be a connection: The people of Komashi use the honorific "-nimi" (At least they did 1700 years ago), just like we see Szeth do in Stormlight. Both the Komashi and the Shin do not walk on stone. Things suggesting that there might NOT be a connection: We know that of the people groups on Roshar, the Komashi specifically look the most like Vedens who very much do NOT look like the Shin. The Komashi do not walk on stone because of its heat (they use clogs to elevate themselves off of the stone instead of touching it directly with their skin), whereas the Shin do not walk on stone because they view stone as holy and it would therefore be sacrilegious to do so. Now, on that last note, I do think it is interesting to take a look at the religion of Shinovar. It is stated that they do not worship stone itself, but the spirit of the stone. Considering that on Komashi, one, they have spirits, and two, the spirits are the ones who give heat to the ground, making it unable to be walked upon, I could see some distant connection between them and the Shin here that got warped through time and generations. This is without mentioning the fact that Komashi spirits are drawn in by the stacking of stones, adding more to why stones themselves would be seen as holy. On top of all of that, the religion of Shinovar sees the sun as the "god of gods" which seems to be a sentiment that very much would be agreed upon by people of Komashi because of the whole situation with the Shroud (given there would likely be some timeline issues with that). BUT, all in all, there seem to be a lot of interesting connections between the Shin people, how they talk, and their religion and the Komashi. So, any thoughts on this? Anything I did not bring up or notice?

I've been mulling some of these over for years and with Rhythm of War, I think that there's enough information to make a coherent theory. I'll add citations later... There are 16 surges. We know that Radiant Surgebinding is based off of the Surgebinding granted through the Honorblades. We know that Honor added safeguards to surgebinding so that Roshar wouldn't be destroyed like Ashyn The Lord Ruler hid 16 allomantic metals by telling the world that there were only 10 Looking at the overlap that we see between the other investiture systems that we've explored, there are some glaringly obvious gaps in Surgebinding No emotional surges, even though we see emotion spren... No temporal surges, except for Renarin who has an "enlightened" spren and has lost access to the surge of illumination No direct action surges. We have lashings, but those are changing the direction in which things fall... we don't have surges for pulling and pushing stuff. We now know that the spren that make up Shardplate are related to the sapient spren that form the shard blades. I believe that Honor created the Honorblades by mutating natural spren like windspren and creationspren by giving them splinters of Honor (and Cultivation) and then continued creating the sapient spren to hide the method of creating the Honorblades.

I don't know if anyone has posted something to this effect before, but I think there's a concrete explanation for Shallan's dissociative identity disorder. I might just be dense for posting something that seems obvious to everyone, but here goes. I think the real reason for Shallan's mental problems is because of what happened to Testament. Up to finding out about the Cryptic, we're led to believe that Shallan's mental issues stem from the trauma she experienced when she killed her mother. To be fair, this likely contributed to the problem, but I don't think it's the root cause. I think that when a radiant breaks the mind of their spren, the spren isn't the only one to be damaged by the process. This leads me to wonder what happened to the ancient radiants of the recreance. I've always assumed that the ancient radiants spread stories about a betrayal to make people think they'd been tricked in order to make them hate the radiants so no one would pursue surge binding powers again. But maybe there's more to it. If the minds of the ancient radiants were broken similarly to Shallan, then maybe not all the tales of radiant's being traitors are false.

Hello! So, I'm back again with another hairbraned theory with little to no evidence to back it up. But, it sure would be cool if it were true. At the very end of the Ars Arcanum of RoW, we get an interesting quote about an entity named Foil that lives in an ocean and wants control of the aethers. When RoW came out, the identity of this being was unknown. Then Tress was released and we got introduced to a fun dragon named Xisis. Xisis lives at the bottom of the Crimson sea and studies, you guessed it, the aethers. This implies that they're the same. This is only circumstantial evidence, of course, but it seems to me like a pretty strong connection. A quick search of Coppermind and Arcanum didn't reveal anything, so I'm asking for thoughts. Do you think that Foil and Xisis are the same? Is there any evidence I've overlooked? Please tell me your point of view.

so to my knowledge the reason shardblades work is because they are very highly invested and its the same with shardplate, so if you were to pour a high amount of breaths into a sword of cloak without awakening it would it still cut through anything (like nightblood) or block blows (shardplate)

I have seen speculation that Dalinar would either become a Fused or pick up Honor in SA5. Both are interesting outcomes, but... Venli once said that if humans had a war form, it would look like Dalinar. So, what if Dalinar picked up both Honor and Odium and became a God of War? I think it would be cool if the Rhythm of War became his Dalinar's Rhythm.

This is a question that most likely has been asked, but here we go. In WoR Kaladin was able to have his bond with Syl again after breaking his oath. Something patten says mentions that “ if their knigts still lived maybe something could be done”. He said that when talking of spren who are mindless. In RoW we see Shallans first spren, who she broke her bond with. Could she help her old cryptic and have two spren. I just want some theories or something for this question I’ve had.

Who would win a Fullborn or a 5th ideal Windrunner. This has a lot of different angles we could take and i think it will be cool to explore!

Could stormlight sustain a radiant in space? we know that a radiant does not need to breathe when holding stormlight, and there is no atmoshpere, so I genuinly cannot decide if the radiant will lose stormlight faster, slower, the same or not at all. would lashings even work if you aren't experiencing gravity?

Panorama of Roshar. Hope you guys like it! I had a LOT of fun painting this one, though I was nervous about accidentally spoiling something as I was only starting the Oathbringer at the time of painting this. I'm definitely painting more of Stormlight in the future. Maybe Jasnah... or Pattern? I'd love to be commissioned for official art for the future books, that would be the dream! I also welcome any feedback and critique, both for artistic execution and lore, but keep in mind that there had to be some liberty in putting together Urithiru so low and close to the Shattered plains and Horneater Peaks, for the sake of making the focal pieces clustered [Urithiru + Stormfather above the Shattered Plains] in the center of the painting as requested, for custom book sleeves with for all 4 books. Their spines, when put together, show the center of the painting. "The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step."

I noticed a few weird things about the Dustbringers. Dustbringers are the only ones in the 10 Orders of Knights Radiant info page on Brandon's website whose info about their oaths are written in past tense: They also didn't like being called "Dustbringers" before the Recreance, instead preferring the name "Releasers" according to both the above Knights Radiant page and a Words of Radiance epigraph: Spark bonds Malata for vengeance (Coppermind link): That doesn't sound like seeking self-mastery to me. I'm guessing that the Stormfather would not accept oaths with such intent. Would Cultivation? I don't know enough about her yet to claim a strong opinion on this, as I can see arguments on both sides. Perhaps Spark is corrupted in some way, causing Malata's oaths to be accepted by a different entity. I'd very much doubt Odium would be the one doing this if Sja-anat enlightened Spark since Renarin has advanced far enough to summon Glys as a Shardblade, and Odium probably doesn't want to give the black cloud in his plans any more power. Could Sja-anat be the one accepting or even intercepting oaths? I would need to gather more evidence before posting a full theory, but I am curious about this Order now. I'm wondering if it's possible that the Ashspren and their Order changing. Or maybe something else weird is happening. Or I'm just looking for mysteries where there aren't any, as is a curse for so many in this fandom