Search the Community

I am growing increasingly frustrated by the slow reveal of the Cosmere, I want it all. Now. Hello there. If you are not currently participating in my treasure hunt, ignore this. If you are, Why am I saying this? good job! You just found a clue. Here it is: K'x jkffgp enwgu gxgtayjgrg, nkmg yjgrg vjg ktkcnk ctg. It's pretty simple. I was working on a theory about the Dawnshards, the Sibling, Ashyn, and how the sleepless tied in, when something caught my eye. It was about the Iriali. They're not from Roshar. Now this really shouldn't be a surprise. Human's aren't native to Roshar. And we all know that. The thing is, the Iriali aren't from the Rosharan system either.* For you to understand the tangent I'm about to go on, I recommend reading the coppermind page on the Iriali. It's a long, long tangent. The more I looked into this, the more intriguing it seemed. I believe Sanderson has purposefully kept the Iriali's origins very vague. But I would not be stopped. You see these are the kinds of things that get me interested. We know that Iriali be important later on. But the operating word is later. I wanted to know then and there. My search for answers sent me on an hour long search through the Coppermind, and Arcanum. The information I gathered lead me to this conclusion. The Iriali have lived on three planet's. And I believe I know which ones. The first thing that I tipped me off is their religion. This is a HUGE clue. There was one. Who became many. This is really, really obvious. Adonalsium and the Shattering. (Though I believe that it has also been colored by Honor's death, or Autonomy's ability to have avatar's.) Or the In other words I believe the Iriali originate from Yolen. This matches up for four reasons: Their religion was evidently based the shattering, even if some details are wrong There was a reason for them to leave: Fainlife It has been confirmed that large amounts of humans have left Yolen And the Iriali are gonna play a large part in the space age/ final stage of the Cosmere, a stage I believe will be heavily focused on Yolen Where they went after Yolen becomes a little less clear. There were four or five candidates in my mind, most likely being Nalthis, and Taldain. After Yolen it's most likely they went to Nalthis. Once again I have less evidence, but there's still some. There seems to be a unusually high emphasison color's in Iriali society, Ex: Body painting The returned could have influenced the Iriali's religion The Rirans are near definitely from Nalthis: Given this, and the fact that the Riran's have large cultural ties with the Iriali it seems probable that the Iriali have been to Nalthis at one point. But where next? This troubled me for a while, and I thought that I had it down to two: Patji, or Threnody. It was Taldain. This matches up pretty well. The Iriali and Daysiders look pretty similar, lot's of blond hair, and tan/gold skin Autonomy has had influence on the Iriali's religion, not a large one but this ruled out threnody 3. The temperature on the Dayside is similar to the Iriali climate, possibly explaining why they picked to live up north These are my thoughts on the origins of the Iriali. Please say how stoopid I am below. I apologize for the wall of text. *Brandon hasn't explicitly said this but he's ruled out Roshar, Ashyn and Braize as possible candidates. The only habitable planets in the system.

So the following contains Cosmere-wide spoilers so I'll hide it just to be safe. *Edit*, I meant to post this in the Cosmere Theories board but did it here by accident.

Since we know where allomancy and hemalurgy come from, I was wondering if anybody knows the origins of feruchemy.

I had this (probably crazy) idea today and posted it on Tumblr and it was suggested I bring it here as well. I tried to search to see if it was already here somewhere and didn't find anything - I apologize in advance if my searching-fu was lacking and I'm creating a repeat topic. Theory: At the very end of WoR, Nin gives Szeth a black Shardblade that lives in a metal sheath and asks in a cheerful voice "Would you like to destroy some evil today?" It is fairly clear that this is Nightblood from Warbreaker. We know that Nightblood was Awakened by Vasher and Shashara. However, even accounting for the sheer number of breaths involved in Awakening steel, Nightblood is odd for an Awakened object. We don't see any other Awakened objects that actively draw the breath from their users or leak black smoke. Here's my crazy idea: What if Nightblood was not originally from Nalthis? What if Nin is returning Nightblood to its native Roshar? We know Vashar was involved in awakening it, but I can't remember or find any mention of where the sword came from before it was Awakened. What if Nightblood was originally a dead-spren shardblade? The thing that got me thinking about this was noticing how well Nightblood's attempts at understanding what evil actually is in a human context parallel conversations we get involving Pattern and Syl trying to understand human concepts. Syl tells us that the dead-spren shardblades are partially revived when they are summoned. Awakening seems like it could be brute forced into reviving a dead-spren shardblade, though without a proper human/spren bond things would be wonky. This could explain Nightblood's odd mental ability. Like the spren in the Stormlight Archive, Nightblood is able to slowly learn to understand human concepts. However, unlike Pattern and Syl, Nightblood lacks a proper human-spren bond and thus is proving to have a much, much slower ability to learn. Spren lose their sentience if they loose their bond with their human (we see this with Syl and Kaladin in addition to being told about it). It would be reasonable for a dead-spren Shardblade Nightblood to require frequent replenishment of breath - just like the Returned require a regular supply of breath to remain "alive". This could provide an explanation for Nightblood's breath draining property. We know that black is a powerful color for fueling Awakening. If Nightblood is originally from Roshar rather than Nalthis, then the BioChromatic breath is not actually the right power source. It would want Stormlight which, as far as I can tell, is white. The process of converting Breath into power the spren-based sword can use could plausibly involve filtering out the color resulting in the black color of the blade and then the excess being released as the signature "black smoke." So, yeah. There's my idea. I'm fluctuating between thinking it is completely insane and thinking it is just the kind of crazy that might actually have a chance. On the off chance there is any truth to it, the power implications for an Awakened Shardblade seem like they would be off the charts... Regardless, I have found it interesting to think about and would be happy to hear other people's thoughts :-)