Geniuses Wanted- Well Read Sanderfans -with restrictions

[ScarletSabre]

Spoilers for AU reveals!

Spoiler

I predict that Dark One will take place on the world that the wounded Shard Ambition relocated to before ultimately being splintered, and the Shard's twisted intent will be responsible for the protagonist being the prophesised dark destroyer of the world.

 

[What's a Seawolf?]

The Ones Above in Sixth of the Dusk (just read it, one of my favorite Cosmere works) are NOT from Scadrial as commonly thought.

The Ones Above are from Silverlight.

Khriss in her essay mentions the world Sixth of the Dusk takes place on is very difficult to get to.  This would obviously frustrate a (in theory) group of people who very much want to research the Cosmereverse, among other things.

However, as time progresses and FTL travel becomes a thing in the Cosmere, now the denizens of Silverlight have a way to get to the planet without having to pass through the shardpool of almost instant auto-death if you're not a Trapper.

And what do the Ones Above seem most interested in?  Researching the Investiture laden creatures (Aviars) and going directly to the place with the shardpool.

Now, a lot of that could apply to the Scadrians as well, and they are still far and away the most likely suspects for the Ones Above, but I like the idea of Silverlight finally gaining access to a place they've been trying to get to for a while.

Now, Silverlight's end goal with the planet could be anything, but that's for another theory.

[ZenBossanova]

Book 10 of the Stormlight Archive, will end with Odium defeated, and out of the Roshar system, but still at large. Perhaps helping out Bavadin.

[ScarletSabre]

I predict that Dalinar will give the Honourblade Kaladin gave him at the end of Words of Radiance to Navani to bond and hide.

This will be due to him wanting her to have some protection should she be alone, her being someone people wouldn't suspect of having it, and due to her just outright bullying him into letting her and her artifabrians study it, how it compares to Shardblades, and how it bestows Surgebinding.

[1stBondsmith]

Eshoni, who somehow survived her fall, (because a future book will be feature her) has a rematch with Dalinar, but he no longer holds a shardblade. He uses the power of Bondsmith's to break the hold the spren has on her. releasing the Stormform and allowing the Song of Peace to again flow from her. She turns to her people, striving to convince them to release the Voidspren, but they fight her. She is protected by Radiants, and is left without a people...for a while. The other Listeners that left before the Everstorm find her, and a long apology and convincing takes place. A new plan for fighting the effects of their New Gods is concocted, and sprung on the Stormform. It fails, but allied with the newly power-upped Dalinar, reduces their numbers greatly, and an allied Listener army is created, seeking to fight Odium.

[Entreos]

Odium's younger sibling, Tedium, will be featured in the novel Mistbored.

[What's a Seawolf?]

Gonna copy something of mine from another topic.

The Nightwatcher/Cultivation engineered the entire situation which caused Lift to visit her in the first place.  (Mother dying etc.)  Cultivation/Nightwatcher foresaw the need for someone with Lift's new found abilities, and knew Lift would be the right person to give them too.  (I mean come on, how much of a curse is her actual curse?  Granted there is still A LOT we don't know.) 

This will result in a future back 5 book Lift arc where she starts hating and even planning to attack Cultivation/Nightwatcher in addition to whoever the big bad is.

[ZenBossanova]

It was all just a dream and Kaladin is really just an accountant. 

[UpLifted]

I believe that Marasi will be the last surviving character from era 2 Mistborn to be around in Era 3. I think she'll act as some sort of guide to the next Era's protaganist. 

I also believe that Renarin is being manipulated by Odium or one of his agents, such as the Unmade. This is due to him seeing the future, which as we're repeatedly told is "of the voidbringers." 

I hope hope hope that Shallan and Kaladin don't end up together. I don't really care about Shallan and Adolin but for her to end up with Kaladin would seem too pat for me. 

[skaa]

I just formulated a quick theory a few minutes ago. I'm putting it here because it's not the typical (over)complex Skaa Theory(TM) and also because I don't foresee any interesting discussion coming from it.

Anyway, I think the South Scadrians descended from the Bennett people. I'm talking about the people whose maps of pre-Rashek Scadrial allowed Sazed to move the continents of the planet back to their original locations. The Bennett were apparently seafarers who were native to what Sazed called "the southern islands". Like Jordis and her countrymen, the Bennett were brave explorers who valued learning. Come to think of it, flying ships are the obvious evolution of regular water-borne vehicles for people who wish to explore other lands.

The only problem with this theory is that neither Allik nor Jordis gave any clue that theirs was an island society, and Brandon described the south as a continent rather than some sort of archipelago. It's possible that the islands became a single continent if a significant percentage of the planet's water boiled off during the Final Empire. Also, the planet's south pole would have frozen after Sazed fixed Scadrial's orbit, lowering the ocean levels further.

As for how this will affect the future plot of the book, well, I'm not sure. If the Bennett religion has not changed, then then Malwish will certainly want to explore and map the area around Elendel Basin now that they know about it. The captains of Bennett ships were also their religious leaders, so Jordis might have more than just political power over her subordinates.

Edited December 26, 2016 by skaa

[ZenBossanova]

17 hours ago, amazedsazed said:

I believe that Marasi will be the last surviving character from era 2 Mistborn to be around in Era 3. I think she'll act as some sort of guide to the next Era's protaganist. 

I also believe that Renarin is being manipulated by Odium or one of his agents, such as the Unmade. This is due to him seeing the future, which as we're repeatedly told is "of the voidbringers." 

I hope hope hope that Shallan and Kaladin don't end up together. I don't really care about Shallan and Adolin but for her to end up with Kaladin would seem too pat for me. 

My guess is, Shallan will feel lonely if Adolin is exiled, but Kaladin will be too honorable to make a pass at his friend's girl. 

[ZenBossanova]

In book 3, Kaladin will have an epic smackdown with a Herald.... and win. 

The Heralds will be currently, powerful, but merely shadows of their former power. 

[Yezrien]

This is my theory/dream about where the SA is heading, and how its events might eventually affect the Cosmere as a whole.

At some point, the war on Roshar will start to look even more hopeless than it already is. Odium (or some avatar of his, like a really powerful Unmade) will appear on Roshar to gloat, and he'll tell us that he's very close to achieving his ultimate freedom. Soon, he'll annihilate Roshar, and run amok across the Cosmere.

Then we receive a ray of hope: Sazed (Harmony) is on his way to Roshar. He's been monitoring the situation from Scadrial, and he's finally decided to help. But it'll take him a while to get here. Even with all his godlike power, it'll take months for him to arrive. (Shardholders might actually worldhop much slower than normal people, because they've got a lot of investiture to carry around.) But he sends a mortal worldhopper to Roshar, to tell everyone that he's coming. This will literally be his "herald." And it'll probably be a mistborn, so they can actually help with the war effort.

So, for a period of several months (i.e. one book), Dalinar and the other leaders of the war effort will operate under a simple principle: All they have to do is survive until Harmony shows up. It's kind of like the Helm's Deep battle in LOTR, where Aragorn and Theoden just need to hold the line for a few days, until Gandalf can return with reinforcements. On Writing Excuses, Brandon has talked about this arrangement, and how well it worked. It makes sense that he'd do the same thing on a more grand scale.

So our KR heroes hold the line. With this new hope, morale spikes, and they're inspired to win some key victories. 

Trouble is, the bad guys learn what's coming, and they prepare for it. Odium's been afraid of Harmony for quite a while, so I bet he's come up with a plan. A countermeasure. A weapon, with which one shard can defeat two.

So then the day finally comes: Harmony arrives in the skies above Roshar, and announces his grand plan: to kill Rayse, and leave the Odium shard broken and mindless, like Devotion and Dominion, confined to Braize, where it can't do any further damage. Since Harmony has at least twice as much raw power as Odium, he's not expecting this to be very hard.

Then Odium uses his Crazy Investiture Superweapon. It's a cymatic vibration signal that disrupts the mingling of Ruin and Preservation. Brandon has compared Harmony to "a king of two countries," implying that his two shards are still distinct entities, despite being held by the same master. He tries to mingle them and reconcile their differences, but for some reason, they just can't recombine. Even though they were once part of the same whole (Adonalsium), they refuse to be rejoined.

So to visualize, picture this. Odium rings a magic bell, and suddenly Sazed is two Sazeds. One representing the part of him that's holding Ruin, and another for Preservation.

It doesn't last long. Odium can't really overpower Harmony, even in this. It only works because he takes Harmony by surprise. The two aspects of Sazed are separated just for an instant, for an infinitesimal Planck time, and then they'll come back together, complete and harmonious. But that split second is all Odium needs. In that brief moment, he can attack. And as Sazed is briefly stunned by the bizarreness of Odium's strategy, both his halves are vulnerable.

Odium attacks the Ruin-Sazed. He splinters Ruin.

The remaining Sazed, henceforth known as "Preservation," recovers his composure, and goes on the defensive. He makes himself invulnerable to future attack. (He preserves himself. It's his specialty, now.)

But the damage is done. With only one shard, Sazed no longer has the power to vanquish Odium. And since his one shard is Preservation, he now has the same problem as old Leras did: he's so focused on keeping things safe and stable that he's incapable of violence. He can't even try to attack Odium.

So that's how the book ends. In tragedy. But all is not lost! The promise of Harmony taught us a valuable lesson: that all we need is hope. It won't be easy, but we can win this thing, as long as we believe we can. We can turn the tide all on our own. Also, Harmony brought a whole army of mistborn with him, so we've got some new muscle.

The final scene in the book will show a migration in progress. Soldiers, civilians, Radiants, tons of Chulls, all plodding across some huge Rosharan landscape. They're evacuating a decimated country, and they're en route to a major rendezvous, where Dalinar is gathering the survivors for a new campaign. There's an air of fear, anticipation... and hope. By this point in the story (which is at least four or five books into the SA), everyone alive has officially survived multiple apocalypses. And that makes them mighty.

And then, a crazy thing happens. It's narrated in omniscient, because none of the characters actually notice. But it happens right alongside the migrating people, and it's enormously important. Two windspren are dancing along with the wind, twisting and turning. And then they collide. The two of them crash into each other. And then there's just one windspren, bigger than the two.

Here's the big theory. Entropy. It's one of the fundamental rules of the universe. All things seek to be in a low-energy state. Things want to be in small, chaotic pieces, rather than big complex, orderly ones. It might take half  an hour to build a house of cards, but it only takes a second smash it into the chaos of 52 pick up. Why? Because building big orderly things is working against entropy, but smashing things to bits is working for entropy.

In the Cosmere, entropy is Ruin. Ruin is the portion of Adonalsium that decided to make entropy part of the universe. It's the aspect of the creator that believes chaos is easier than order. Ruin is the one part of Adonalsium that wanted the Shattering to happen. It may have even caused the Shattering.

And in doing that, it touched every part of Adonalsium. It left all investiture in the Cosmere tainted by its belief in entropy, and bound by entropy. Investiture (first Adonalsium, and then the Shards themselves) could break down into progressively smaller pieces, but the reverse was impossible. Only destruction. Never creation.

But when Ruin was splintered, its effects began to fade. It became possible for shardic fragments (splinters) to recombine, increasing their power. Eventually, as the grand arc of the Cosmere progresses, it will be possible for all the splintered shards to be reforged. Even Adonalsium itself might someday be remade.

And that's about all I've got.

(As I wrote this, it occurred to me that the SA takes place before Alloy of Law, so obviously most of this is wrong. But I think you can transpose these ideas onto later events. I just needed to get all this written down.)  

 

 

[teknopathetic]

1) Jasnah seeks Cultivation after learning about Honor.

2) Jasnah finds out that Cultivation let Honour die (or even killed him herself) for the greater good. Cultivation didn't tell Honour about her intention because she loved him, and this is why Cultivation is so depressed. Cultivation believes she had to break honour in order to reap a benefit. 

3) The Oaths for this new group will function differently, and NEW TYPES of orders will emerge (you may need to destroy them). Cultivation wants the orders tweaked. THis causes strife between honour-based spren and cultivation-based spren. 

4) Endowment has sent some of her investiture to help slay Odium. Endowment hadn't invested her magic until she sensed Honour had died and that her people might be the next planet in line for attack. 

5) Nightblood will be thrown into the Everstorm and consume it. Nightblood will gain more power.

6) Roshar will still be destroyed, and the people of Roshar will become refugees. Odium will be defeated but something else will grab his shard - likely an angry Autonomy or something from Aether of Night. 

 

Edited December 29, 2016 by teknopathetic

[sm1550law]

First: "Taln" is actually Jezrien. As described by Nale, "Praise Yaezir, Herald of Kings. May he lead in wisdom. If he ever stops drooling." The drooling might be Nale saying that Gawx is a drooling idiot, or that Jezrien is a drooling idiot. From other references, it seems pretty clear he is talking about Jezrien. The two people most fitting of that insult are the beggar from WoK and "Taln".

From Kalak's first description of Jezrien, "He seemed so cold. Like a shadow caused by heat and light falling on someone honourable and true, casting this black imitation behind." I see the words "black imitation" as referring to either his skin color or the shadow cast on his soul and purpose. I tend to believe it means both things in this instance.

From Teft, the Makabaki "worship Jezrien, though they don't accept him as a figure from the Vorin religion. They name him the only god." So we know that the "Taln" Dalinar had with the ardents looks Makabaki. Somehow I don't see a group of people picking someone that looks nothing like themselves to be their one and only god. Brandon is pretty solid in structuring his in world mythologies to mimic the way real world mythologies are built, and this is one standard practice. Gods resemble the people that worship them (if they resemble people at all).

So basically, Taln is Jezrien and when reunited with the Honorblade that Kaladin recovered from Szeth, he will at least recover enough to remember who he is.

 

Second: Adolin will become the second Edgedancer we see. His murder of Sadeas has created those cracks in his soul that need to be there for a spren to fill in the empty spaces. Adolin doesn't look to be a primary character, so I don't expect him to be the first of any of the Radiant Orders. Making him the second one of an Order keeps with the "secondary, but still noteworthy" motif Brandon seems to be running with for his character.

Brandon confirmed that Adolin's shardblade used to belong to an Edgedancer, but something more would need to happen than for Adolin to merely speak the oaths of the Edgedancers. Adolin already respects his sword as if it is alive, refusing to name it since he thinks it already has one. Maybe he gets sent out (full out exile, diplomatic exile for murdering Sadeas, or while the investigation is pending). He ends up in Azir because that is one of the few kingdoms that didn't just completely ignore Dalinar's warnings so he sent his son to help them or establish stronger ties. Lift does something with Regrowth in order to try to heal something wrong with Adolin, but the Regrowth affects both Adolin and his shardblade, healing the "break" in both Adolin and the spren by joining them together, filling the in cracks in both. Right now we really don't have any grasp on the limits of Regrowth or whether it can affect both spren and people, or just people.

While Adolin may not seem like the ideal fit, based upon what we see from Lift, they have been described as "the most articulate and refined of the Radiants. They were considered elegant things of beauty. But also would ignore things of great import in favor of smaller things, as some would see it." and "although they were not the most demanding of orders, their graceful, limber movements hid a deadliness that was, by this time, quite renowned; also, they were the most articulate and refined of the Radiants." Adolin might not be the smartest light bulb in the box, but he's not an idiot, and pretty much all of that description of the Edgedancers fits him pretty solid.

[maxal]

On 12/29/2016 at 4:33 PM, sm1550law said:

 

Edited December 31, 2016 by maxal

[Corax]

This is a fantastic thread, and thank you for creating it! My ideas range from serious to whimsical, in no particular order. (Erm... no pun intended.)

1) The Releasers are the only Order who can unmake a dead Shardblade. They can honorably release men or spren from their oaths. They can also "release" spren from Parshendi, which is how humanity got so many parshmen (formless, rather than Dullform.) Additionally, they are KRs who turned down their first bond or otherwise started out as another Order.

2) Listeners don't touch their dead because they desperately avoid rotspren for fear of decayform. This death taboo contributes to the potential for thunderclasts.

3) Jasnah has had the literary equivalent of Shallan's experience drawing current events (i.e. Wind's Pleasure survivors, Ash's vandalism.) The "visions" involved Tien's gifts for Kal: shiny rocks and a carved horse.

4) Odium has been keeping all the dead KRs for himself on Braize because they were unwittingly loopholed into the Oathpact by their own oaths. He's doing this with a similar to trick to the one he used on Sel, messing with how dense the liminality between Realms is. This was the wicked thing of eminence. 

-

(I'll add more later, and update with strike-throughs, etc, like the cool kids are doing.)

[SedatedDragon]

Calling it now.

 

Stormlight

• Taravangian's visit to the Nightwatcher will be very vital to Roshar and mankind, but not in the way we all think. Taravangian (and my myself, on my first half-dozen read-throughs) assumed that his brilliance will ultimately save mankind, if it can.

We know that Mr T's intelligence and his compassion have an inverse relationship. I think that his intelligence is actually his curse, and his compassion is his boon. I think that eventually, he will have a day like that he had when writing the Diagram, but opposite. Instead of transcended brilliance, it will be a heaviest, most awful mental slowing of all time. And his compassion, by extension, will be so staggeringly powerful that he manages to...save the day? Taravangian becomes Honor's champion? Perhaps that's Cultivation's plan? Make a man so compassionate that he can Ascend, and then his "retardation" will evaporate in the face of Honor's Shardic power.

 

• Adolin will be a runaway. Perhaps even a fugitive.

His murder of Sadeas is obviously going to be a big deal. Being the most powerful of the highprinces before his death, Sadeas is leaving a lot of angry supporters behind. There will be an investigation. Something Adolin didn't plan for will come back to bite him; some missed detail that implicates him. He will panic and leave the Alethi court behind. From there, perhaps even hunted as a fugitive, he has to blend in with the underground (Vivenna in Warbreaker style), having a great life-changing character arc as he is faced with many things he never had to worry about before (poverty, starvation, social placement), and overcomes them. He finds his Oaths in the process.

 

• Kaladin gets a badass moment in Hearthstone

He is completely out of Stormlight before he even arrives in his hometown, and Roshar is still in the Weeping, lacking Stormlight. He gets into major trouble, and with the advent on the first highstorm, he bursts alight and puts everyone in their place.

 

• End of Book 5, Roshar itself is destroyed in some cataclysm, and Odium is freed to wreak havoc on the rest of the Cosmere. Stormlight 5-10 will take place in many different locations.

[Jondesu]

My first prediction:

Shallan will indeed break her bond with Pattern, "killing" him, and she will do it intentionally. She will abandon the Knights Radiant to join either the Diagrammists or the Ghostbloods completely.

[Chinsukolo]

Braize is Damnation.

Ashyen is the Tranquil Halls

The event that ruined Ashyen to the point of everyone living in floating cities and magic being tied to diseases, is the same event that caused the exodus to Roshar.  Which is seen as Odium's expulsion of Mankind form the Tranquil Halls.

The event that "broke" Ashen took place prior to Odium being bound to Greater Roshar, and is unrelated to Honor or Cultivation.  Possibly something pre-shattering, or even Shattering related.

[Andy92]

Lots of good ideas in this thread. I don't have much basis for my theory, but here it goes anyways.

I think Kelsier will ascend and take up the power of a Shard in a future book. I think the external powers threatening Scadrial will eventually prove to be too much for Sazed, and the planet will find itself in dire straights. I think Kelsier will find the power of one of the Shards that hasn't been introduced in the Cosmere yet, and I think it would be really cool if the Shard was named Hope. He will prove himself once and for all to be the one thing you can't kill. 

[Farnsworth]

Adonalsium will be reformed, like Preservation and Ruin were. The vessel will be Hoid. His goal for all this time was to fix what happened at the Shattering. He was there, and feels guilty about what happened there.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Figberts
Add sentence

[ZenBossanova]

The Red Rip is the fainlife from Yolen killing not only planets, but entire stars. And it is expanding out into the rest of the universe. It is only a matter of time until it reaches the rest of the shardworlds. That is why Hoid was so determined to reform Adonalsium. And why Autonomy doesn't let anyone onto Taldain, lest they break quarantine. 

He will fail, but his efforts will be important for when Adonalsium returns. 

[Hawkido]

Quote

“I’m standing over the body of a brother. I’m weeping. Is that his blood or mine? What have we done?”

 

Jezrien murdered Talenel'Elin to execute a plan based upon Ishar's theory that the OathPact could still be kept with only one Herald holding the Pact, other heralds (not including Taln) might have been aware of the plan in advance, I do not believe that Nale was one of them as he would be forced by his nature to Judge Jezrien, and the conspirators (if there were more than one) felt sure Taln would die anyway, and wouldn't give up the Pact even if made aware of the plan.  The conspiracy required Taln to die, if not naturally in combat then it would need to be arranged.  This betrayal of Taln by Jezrien, has caused him to be wracked by guilt that eventually drives him mad.  Thus the Quote from Nale about Jezrien drooling.  Jez might not have literally put a knife in Taln's back, but merely arranged for support to be just a bit too slow, in the way of historical kings eliminating local rivals while on the same side of a battle (ala, Dalinar and Sadeas)... The above death rattle seems to be from Jezrien, as the Chapter pictures are of Jezrien and Taln this is a hint that the death rattle is about them.  The part about "is that his blood or mine?" seems to be a realization that he has killed both of them.  Shalash seems to have recently been made aware of the plan and has begun a crusade to remove her image from the heralds so as not to be judged with the other heralds as she was not part of the plan, else she is cowardly trying to hide the image as she was part (could also be, much like Shallan, she just doesn't want to be recognized as it "makes it more difficult to fool people", perhaps she has been doing this for millennia, but you would think people would have caught on, "Huh, make a statue or painting of Shalash and it mysteriously gets defaced a month or two later, wierd!"

Anyway, this is what breaks the OathPact, as with honorspren when you break your oath you kill your spren.  When the Heralds break the oathpact they kill what is left of Honor, (which I believe died before any of the 10 Human races made in Honor's image were birthed via Cultivation's last ditch effort to save something of Honor), this causes the WindRunners to break their oaths, either because they were lied to by the Heralds, or they felt something change and threw down their weapons (Spren Blades and Shardplate) in protest of the Betrayal.  The False Knights Radiant pick up the shards and try to continue the Knights but they are flawed and the flaws compound after a few generations, a tradition begins, Kill a Shard Bearer gain his shards, Having shards changes Eye color, therefor Light eyes are Superior to Dark Eyes.  Then the False Knights fall into ruin Uritheru is lost the Heirocracy happens, then ends, and a thousand years later here we are awaiting the final true desolation with no OathPact to protect what is left of Honor remaining in "the Hearts of Man"

This will be revealed in Book 5 of The StormLight Archive.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Hawkido

[Hawkido]

Odium is forced, in his Broken state, to absorb Honor and turns into Justice (due to Righteous Anger).  Then he is forced to kill himself in a bout of SelfJudgement.  Szeth picks up the Combo Shard, and tries to continue the Cultivation romance as she seems to be interested in Just Plants.  LOL that was Bad, Kaladin's Mom would be ashamed of me.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Hawkido