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Whatever happened to his cryptic Design? We last saw them together in Stormlight 4 and I am not sure a Nahel bond can reach that far. You see no mention of them in the book. Based on the discussion in the thread the book seems to take place way after he made the bond so did he lose Design maybe during the events of Stormlight 5?

I woke with a massive head ache, and there was a body lying next to me. There was strange looking creature standing over us. Around me it looked like a deep crevasse in the roughs. As my head cleared I asked the creature "Where am I?, and Who or what are your?" It said I am a Cryptic and you can call me Fractal. You are in the Chasms on the shattered plains. Then it asked me "whzy dos I feel az if you aren relatedz to Taldar mynz bond matez?" I looked at it and replied "I am not sure what the shattered plains are but where I am from I am considered an Identity mirror. It is kind of like being a living hemalugic spike except I copy personalities to my metalmind of people I come into contact with then I weave parts of that Identity into myself." I continued "You can call me quicksilver. I must have come in contact with this Taldar while he was alive and before his journey lead to this final destination" Out of nowhere I heard or felt something say your oath is accepted. Suddenly I felt an infusion of power and my headache vanished as well as many other minor pains. I also felt a flood of knowledge about what Taldar had known of these new abilities. I seemed to suddenly have as well, an understanding of who and what Fractal was. I filled the Pewter and Gold minds I had gained access to when I mirrored some other ferings Identities with the surge of power I felt. Once I gathered anything useful I looked at Fractal and said I guess we should get moving since I don't think we are safe down here. Then with pewter aided strength and filling Iron climbed to the plateau. Looking around I said to Fractal "where to from here?"

Spoilers for RoW Also, sorry for the late replies, my phone has been wacky until recently

Let me get this straight. In Mistborn: A Secret History, Hoid takes a bit of Lurasium from the Well of Ascension. If Wit on Roshar is Hoid, then he also has a Cryptic, which could mean that he is now a Lightweaver. And then, in the final chapter of Oathbringer, it says something about repressing his healing, which hints at him being a Returned from Warbreaker. How much damage would that much Investiture close to your soul do to you? And how would his Connections in the Spiritual Realm be affected?

Spoilers ahead! The topics covered should all be in TWoK and WoR Hey all I've been trying to sleep but this is eating at me now so I guess I gotta post it. First things first let's cover some basic things: Theory: You could speak with a dead person in Shadesmar if you're a lightweaver. Some things we know (correct me if I'm wrong here): -Everything has a spren on roshar, even body parts. -These spren gain identity in Shadesmar based on how they're perceived by living beings. -Pattern can talk to these spren's beads and translate/interpret. -People have souls, but when they die the soul leaves behind the body. So! A person might lose its soul when it dies, but the body remains there. Everything has a spren so the body probably has a spren, especially since it sees itself as a whole. Therefore you could probably find a corpse's bead in Shadesmar. This corpse would have very strong ties to the person it used to be, having been there to experience everything the person had. Presumably this means that the body's spren would behave very similarly to the deceased person. I think that because of this, Shallan (or any radiant in Shadesmar, even) could go into Shadesmar and speak with carbon copies of dead people; this would likely be especially easy with soulcast lighteyes statues, because they're still the same person and are perceived that way. What do you think? What use could you see in this?

As we see in the Oathbringer epilogue, Hoid appears to bond a cryptic (Elhokar’s to be exact). But Hoid is also very weird. It is relatively common knowledge that spren are only able to bond with someone who has cracks in their spirit web, which allows the spren to “slip in” and meld the Radiant and spren’s Spiritual aspects into one. Another important fact is that Hoid has crazy healing abilities. Brandon has literally described it as “healing the soul itself.” Obviously Hoid would have healed any spiritual wound instantly, or at least within a few days since he can repress this ability. So how is Hoid able to bond this spren?

While reading another thread something dawned on me . People were speaking on how shallan saw cryptics before she bonded them . That is a big error . For one we know that Shallan has been bonded to pattern for years . Yet when she took a mental picture of Teravangion she saw two cryptics standing behind him . Pattern has been her spren since she was a child . She should know him . Were the Cryptics their evaluating Teravangion or perhaps adfrotagia? They are not there for Shallan . I can’t believe this question has never been. Asked before ?

I have a theory that may might need some scrutiny. The Soulcaster Shallan has in The Way of Kings was cut, and it stopped working. What if the soul casting fabrials are just prisons that hold a Spren capable of soul casting? Maybe I am overthinking, but it seems to me that all Soul Casters would need to contain some form of intelligence that could exchange Stormlight in Shadesmar to effect an object's change into one of the ten essences. Shallan is an intelligent human that could not convince a stick that it wanted to be fire, so we know that the objects can be willful, if not stubborn. Either there exists some trick to force a soulcasting, or an intelligence must present an argument to convince the object to change. If this is true, a Lightweaver's Cryptic could potentially be bound into a soulcaster for others to use, without needing to have a bond. Soulcaster Fabrials are a delicate pattern of chains and gemstones. I imagine them as a web of delicate lines with gemstones interspersed. What if they function as a web and hold a spren in between the cognitive and physical realm? Shardblades are the remnants of a broken bond and a formerly bound spren in some form of agony, which is why those sensitive to a bond can't touch blades without hearing the screams. It does not seem unlikely that Soulcasters are similarly remains of Spren, but in a more active capacity. If this is true, then cutting the soul caster might free an imprisoned spren. We are told that Shallan did not attempt to summon Pattern as a blade after the death of her mother, due primarily to that trauma. She Imagines that the blade is imprisoned in the safe in her father's study. But this does not explain fully why the Cryptic was never visible to her until the events in The Way of Kings. (Assuming that the pattern she is looking at on the ceiling of her quarters before she first heard the "What are you?" question was actually the Cryptic.) Why did Pattern seemingly not appear to a young Shallan after the death of her mother as she was growing up? It's possible she just wished him to leave her alone, but then why dld he come back later? Could there be a procedure that would have allowed her father to bind Pattern and create a Soulcaster fabrial? If the Ghostbloods knew of an ancient secret like this, and found that the Davar daughter had a bonded spren, possibly because her mother talked about her child's supernatural nature while looking for a "cure", it does not seem impossible that they might offer Brightlord Davar the method, and use of the resulting fabrial, in exchange for his allegiance. Perhaps a young Shallan would rationalize an event like removing her bonded spren as her father taking her blade, and putting it away in a safe. It always seemed incongruous to me that Lin Davar, portrayed as an ambitious man who would do almost anything to get a stronger position, did not attempt to gain anything from his daughter having a shard blade. I realize that the Radiants were looked at with scorn, and that it is possible he did not want his House tainted by their memory, but would he have not looked into how the shard blades of the past were separated from their owners originally? It would have solved multiple problems at once. Would questions along these lines eventually lead him to the Ghostbloods? If he somehow took advantage of his daughter after finding out she was bonding a Cryptic, and manipulated events so that he could get a soul caster made from the Spren, that would seem to me to be more in keeping with his character. Pattern lost his memories at the time of Brightness Davar's death, possibly because his bond with Shallan was weakened by her wanting nothing to do with him, and, at the same time, Shallan went mute and became antisocial, presumably due to guilt. I propose that Brightlord Davar somehow took Shallan's spren after the death of his wife, and used knowledge gained from the Ghostbloods to imprison Pattern and create a fabrial for exploitation. I also think that the forced breaking of the bond was what damaged Shallan's young mind and fractured Pattern's memories. Are there any holes in this theory that I am overlooking?

Okay. Fairly simple rules. You post an encrypted code, the next person decrypts it, posts a new encrypted code (different message, different encryption) and the next person decrypts it, and so on. E.g. (the first code is just a letter-number conversion. The second one, though I didn't post the answer, uses something called leet speak.) You get the picture. So here's the first one. xlwvh ziv ufm.

Well the release date is just over a month away now but we've run out of free previews and so the only solution is to honor the noble cryptics and create our own. I've been posting a few of my own in the comments under the 'official' previews on Tor.com but I've also noticed a few being added on the chatbox here over the last few days. These poor orphaned snippets of dubious canonicity need an official home and here it shall be. Warning - Outrageously suspect spoilers lie within ---------------------------------- How about that assassination attempt with the spandagger fabrial in chapter 26, there Kaladin was inspecting knives in the armory when one of them leapt off the rack straight for his eye. Luckily he was saved by a nearby (hidden) King's Wit who managed to steel push it off course, the assassin hidden at the back of the room getting yanked into the open by his conjoined weapon. -------- Also try not to get too attached to Teft cause that bit where he dies at the end is heartbreaking - "Teft!" Jasnah screamed, holding his bloody body in her arms "Why?" He didn't respond. He just stared into the air, eyes glazed over, his spirit gone. She shivered, pulling him close as his body cooled. "You can't die, you can't. Please." It was no use. Teft was dead. Really dead. As dead as a corpse with burnt out eyes. So very, very dead. "But you had so much more to teach me about the Radiants" She felt at his pulse, just in case. There was nothing. "Oh cruel world" she said sobbing. She poked him in the ribs, it could have been a bad joke. But there was no reaction, seeing as how Teft was completely and utterly dead.

So we were having a discussion about the cryptics in the "Symbol Heads" thread and I hit on an idea that I hadn't heard anyone toss out yet. Now don't scream and fuss about this idea to much. I know it is thin and the evidence is thin as well. But, I don't know of anything that particularly speaks against it. As a preface to this, I have heard people grumble about the fact that it appears that all the Main characters so far (Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, and Jasnah) are on the road to radianthood. I myself personally thought that this was kind of a bit damp. It seemed like it would be nice if one of these four went astray or was not on the path. This idea may appeal to those who share this sentiment. So, the prevailing thought about the cryptics is that they are the bonding spren responsible for Shallan's soulcasting ability. However, by all appearances, the cryptics have different symbols in place of heads. Now this could simply be individuality, but Brandon indicated that we may recognize these symbols, though they are not glyphs. What if these symbols indicated separate classifications or orders of cryptics? Now, clearly, Syl is not a cryptic and she is the right kind of spren to associate Kaladin with the Windrunner order of the KR. This could mean that the cryptics are not associated with the KR. What orders then would the cryptics be associated with? What if the cryptics were associated with voidbinding? Could the symbols be the ones we see in the back cover lining chart? This may explain Jasnah's concern at seeing the picture of the cryptic.