hoser

Much as I agree with the sentiment, Alzabar created this as a shipping thread by shipping in the OP and seems interested in discussing shipping, so there's that. Should there be rules about where to do shipping? There is a line that caught my eye: I don't really accept the assumptions underlying the question. I don't really understand Jasnah or why we haven't seen any romantic engagement. I love her for kicking butt and naming names and I look forward eagerly to understanding her better. I don't know that loftiness is the reason for her lack of romance. Someone suggested trauma, which seems possible, but I'll be happy if she turns out to be asexual.

This sort of overlaps the OP points, but I think there are other factors that strengthen them: Truthwatchers probably have some inherent trap-evasive properties by observing/having insights about situations I think the fact that it is Odium's investiture that corrupted Glys seems like it could be confusing to Odium Sja-Anat's corruption seems unpredictable Sja-Anat seems to be drifting in intent which could be even harder to predict.

Interesting topic! Nice work with the quotes, Ookla. My main issue with the theory that the moons are associated with the bondsmiths is that I find more associations with the Shards. Since I consider the bondsmiths to be primarily associated with Honor and secondarily connected to Cultivation, then I run into the same issues as the OP with an Odious bondsmith. The coloring of the moons is almost too obvious. Nomon seems associated with Honor by color and "propriety" in the story. Green goes with Cultivation and purple seems like the voidlight even if Odium's main color seems to be gold. The moons being artificially placed fits with the coloring as having a Shard related purpose. Why do effectively disembodied beings need astral objects? The linked thread seems interesting and more reasonable than the "gods" needing bases. An adventure with Kaladin flying to Nomon to visit Honor's secret base might be fun, but doesn't seem reasonable, given how the Shards work. I am intrigued by the story. Natanatan coloring relating to Nomon and, by implication, Honor makes me wonder about there being a germ of truth to it. This in turn, makes me curious about why the Natanatans were changed. The fate of Stormseat seems to fit how bad things happen to those associated with Honor. But this seems like the subject of another thread, so I'll stop now.

IIRC, they were trying to make use of Renarin at one point. Are they more than a group of Stormwardens at this point? Still, an organized, literate and ambitious group could be dangerous under informed direction. Are they open to being used at this point? It seems like they could be recruited. And what of Restares? Who are they? What are their goals?

We haven't had the"What I did on my summer vacation" report from Jasnah yet. She could have been to Braize, Ashyn or really anywhere already. Obviously, Ash and Taln have been to Braize and they stood up with Dalinar at the "ascension." Fundamentally, I agree, though. I can't wait to see our new crop of Radiants world-hop on-screen!

@Animar - Szeth has had a highspren all along? I totally missed that. It makes sense for how he became truthless, maybe. So many implications! I totally agree that communications need to occur. I doubt that they will mostly happen on-screen due to pacing concerns. Another factor that led to his acceptance was Dalinar expecting the presence of one of each of the orders. I'm not sure why he expected it, but it made Szeth fit the pattern. It also suggests to me some coherence of the Shard. Szeth knowing about the hospital murders and why they are committed could be interesting, as pointed out above. So many juicy ways to work these loose plot threads!

Moash has handed his feelings over to Odium and been given a new name. I would guess that he is on a dark path. Irrationally, because Kaladin liked him, I want him to twist free of Odium. I don't see how killing Roshone serves Odium significantly. Pursuing revenge might actually be rebellious. Odium could actually object to Moash free-lancing for his previous identity. Realizing the emptiness of revenge and resenting Odium's control seems like his only hope. Not bloody likely, though.

So wait! Our heroes need lots of Knights Radiant? Taravangian has means of reducing the spren available to bond potential Knights? Luckily Mr. T is a trustworthy ally, not a traitor making private arrangements with Odium. Otherwise I might be worried. I'm sure it's just a random bit of world-building and not a detail that will turn out to be relevant later. Are these spren that allow manipulation of Gravity, Adhesion, Tension? I imagine the realmatic scholars among us can figure out what orders' spren is involved. I look forward to learning from the responses.

Our big mystery man! To me the most relevant mystery is revealed by: I infer that Kaladin doesn't know how to wield the bow even with his surges. I conclude that he had to develop some non-Windrunner radiant skills to use the bow. Hence, he is already a non-Windrunner Radiant. Further, his order must allow him to use a Shardbow. My favorite theory is that he is a Stoneward. I imagine that he was able to manipulate Tension somehow to use the bow. Maybe temporarily make the bow easier to pull then, as he releases, restore the tension of the Shardbow? Seems sketchy to master on the first shot. I think pulling the bow is the relevant mystery. I feel less certain that he is a Stoneward or that Tension was used, but he does seem quite stubborn ... I also think that his notable glowing could be associated with a level-up.

I think there's plenty of evidence in tWoK. In chapter 15 it says: Each of the parables could represent an Ideal. The fact that there are forty is kind of a giveaway. If it was just relevant to the first ideal when the Orders were forming, it would not have had the reputation Dalinar associates with it, as stated above. Consider also how Dalinar uses it. He actively considers the lessons even as a second or third level Knight. I think we know that Ishi set up the constraints and ideals, so they didn't develop over time and would have been known when the Knights formed. If people knew contextually that it was about the Knights, it would not have needed to say so, much like the Words only come when the Knight is ready.

I agree that he was there before the Orders, but I think the orders were established during his lifetime. Otherwise he could not have walked to Urithiru or written the manual for Knighthood and the ideals. The forty parables of the in-book tWoK correspond to the number of ideals for ten orders (leaving out the shared one). A Bondsmith would arguably have had the best insight into the ideals, so I see it as a possible order for him. Was he a Surgebinder before the vision? His referring to Surgebinders as them rather than us hints at no, but doesn't seem definitive to me. Ishi must have established the Knights right after the vision. I'm pretty sure Nohadon became a Knight, given the concerns he expressed and his writing of the Knights' manual.

We know from Jasnah that the Knights abandoned Urithiru some time before the Recreance. Perhaps, after the Sibling withdrew, it wasn't worthwhile. There is an epigraph complaining about the tolls. Maybe they couldn't grow stuff after the Sibling left, but tried to charge enough to make up for it.

Yeah! I'm super-curious myself. Throwing out some semi-random ideas: Gloryspren seem to be the minor spren for Bondsmiths, like windspren are the minor spren for Windrunners and creationspren seem to be the minor spren for Lightweavers. So the Sibling could be related. If we think of the Surgebinding chart as having the more Honor-like spren on top and more Cultivationy spren on the bottom, then the Bondsmiths are most Honory in a way. Glory and Honor seem pretty similar. The value of this idea is that a superspren based on glory could be hurt when the reputation of the Knights goes bad. The problem with this idea is that these superspren seem different. The Nightwatcher seems very different from a gloryspren or the Stormfather. The Stormfather is kind of more of the mother of all windspren that a gloryspren and seems to hang out with the Honorspren. Shallan can't draw Urithiru, similarly to how she can't draw Pattern. Could the Sibling have built Urithiru and be related to a Cryptic? The OP proposes stone above, which makes sense. Maybe related to whatever spren the Stonewards bond? Who am I kidding? After this much buildup, Brandon will come up with something better. But maybe this will help someone think of something cool.

Love the theory and the beautifully researched OP. Upvoted! I don't think it's essential to the main point of the theory, but I don't really get the timeline for Nohadon binding the Sibling from the other side. If we assume that the Sibling is a superspren associated with Urithiru, the state of Surgebinding in the Nohadon vision seems hard to reconcile. I believe that Nohadon was a surgebinder wrestling with the issues of the ideals that ended up distinguishing the Knights from Surgebinders at the time of the vision. Later during his lifetime, Ishi constrained the spren and Surgebinders into the form of the ten knightly orders. Even later during his lifetime, Urithiru was built (by the hands of no man, or something like that) and Nohadon subsequently walked there. If the Sibling was a cognitive target associated with the Knights or created by H+C after the Knights were established, then that would have been after Nohadon had begun Surgebinding. Nohadon was wearing the double eye of the almighty during the vision and clearly became a Knight. How the Sibling became established as a spren is key. If the Sibling didn't exist when Nohadon began Surgebinding, then Nohadon would have started Surgebinding with a different spren. This is not a hard argument, particularly as I don't understand the origins of the Sibling. For example, perhaps the Sibling started as a personification of Surgebinding or was created by H+C before Nohadon began Surgebinding. In this case, please ignore this post and return to your regularly scheduled speculation .

Yes. it's called speculation because there isn't evidence. But consider the Stormfather. Adonalsium visits Roshar, leaving highstorms, listeners and maybe humans, Herdazians, Horneaters and Aimians. Cognitive beings personify the highstorms. Either an existing spren (perhaps a windspren) or a new spren takes on the cognitive load and becomes the Stormfather. With increased investiture, the Stormfather develops sentience and perhaps sapience. Before Tanavast passes on, he invests the Stormfather and charges him with accepting words and playing the visions. If he wasn't sapient before, he becomes sapient then. This is basically compatible with my speculation. There are only 2 superspren that we know about and we don't really know their history. That is the definition of extremely rare. We can speculate or wait for Brandon to tell us. What is the point of deciding how likely speculation is? I was speculating to encourage more speculation. Given the way Shallan describes Urithiru as undrawable, maybe the Sibling is related to a Cryptic. There you go! See, speculation is fun and interesting. Welcome to the party!

Here is the post in question: Not only do I not know this, but I don't believe that it is true. I narrowed it down to a very simple statement. There are only two possible things that I could be disagreeing with: We know that there are no unintentional splinters of Honor We know that there are no intentional splinters. The second is absurd, given the quote you offered and our knowledge of the Honorblades. So there is only one thing I could reasonably be disagreeing with: #1. So, while it was obvious to me at the time what I was disagreeing with, in retrospect I see that I could have been clearer. I agree that none of my quotes directly contradict the thesis, which is why I just stated that I did not know this. For me, the quotes contradict the the "we know" part. You may "know," but I sure don't. The quotes were just intended to suggest why I might doubt the conclusion that there weren't any unintentional splinters. In any case, you could have simply asked for clarification rather than going off on me as you did (quoted below): Yuk, what a mess. I don't really want to argue with you. Please let me try something different. I found your initial interpretation about the lack of unintentional splinters of Honor to be unsupported by the evidence. I didn't like being told that I agreed with it: "We know ..." I could have stated my initial disagreement more clearly. I think you could have asked for clarification more pleasantly. I could definitely been more constructive in my next 2 responses. Maybe you could have also, Thanks for accepting my apology. There is a lot of back and forth here that I don't particularly care about except that I am sure some of it could have been better said by me and I'm not sure that you couldn't have said some things better. I want to apologize for my part, but I don't want to say that it was all my fault. Does that seem fair enough to you to go forward with? If we can get past the defensiveness, I would like to try to summarize the Cosmere-related parts of our spirited discussion. Your thesis is that "we killed you" means "Dalinar and Odium killed Evi's physical body." I will edit in more later

It's very simple. You say that Brandon "says the only ones are the Stormfather and the Honorspren..." This is simply not part of the quote. The "only" (my emphasis) part is not supported. Based on that quote, it is open-ended. You have chosen to interpret it as definitive. It isn't. But your interpreting it as definitive is objective data about your ability to interpret quotes. Nothing ad hominem about it. I have been to signings and watched the questionings. There are choices that he has to make about which lines of inquiry to pursue and he also deliberately chooses to leave certain things unclear. While you may find it hard to believe and accuse him of wiggling out of the question, I don't see it that way. He spoke to the question and chose to clarify that the Stormfather and honorspren are deliberate splinters that don't lead him to consider Honor less than whole. At the signing I went to, there was a long line of people wanting to interact and he was very generous with his time, but even if he had wanted to, he could not have pursued every line of response. The quote does not say or even imply "only." That doesn't mean that there are unintentional splinters, just that the quote is not definitive for answering the question. You are free to quote it to your heart's content and make arguments about how the things that he says imply certain other things that he doesn't say, but that doesn't bind me to include the entirety of these quotes that seem partially irrelevant to me. Um, no. In my first comment, before, I explained that your interpretation of "only" is unsupported by the quote. Without the "only" part, the early part of the quote is irrelevant. That was before you challenged me further. That's not the answer to the question I was asking. In that instance, the vessel died, but the Shard wasn't changed. I was asking about Shards. Not true. Consider the quotes I offered above. In the first quote, we know that Tanavast and Rayse had a confrontation. While confrontation could mean a variety of things, one possible interpretation is that the confrontation was where Odium splintered Honor. In the second quote, the end of the quote that you insist that I quote entirely, there is something relevant: Honor's voluntary splinters are not what causes the Shard to not be considered whole. I assume that we agree that Honor is not whole? In the third quote, it is implicit that all the Shards that Odium killed were Splintered. In combination with the above point, this is evidence that Odium splintered Honor. In the fourth quote, there is an implication that Odium "got" Honor, and they may have fought. In the fifth quote, we seem to have acceptance that Odium broke 4 Shards. Honor is broken and has been in conflict with Odium. We also know about Devotion, Dominion and Ambition. If Honor isn't the fourth Shard that Odium broke, then what is? Consider also: Questioner I find lots of evidence, but I don't find the clarity in it. The terminology is confusing and the WoB can be ambiguous. I believe that Odium "splintered" honor, but I can't prove it. You seem convinced otherwise, but the evidence you have offered is not as definitive as you represent. explained above So okay, fine. It's nice that we can agree on something. Your "proof" is not supported by the evidence. We know that Honor and other Shards created Splinters voluntarily. It isn't relevant to whether Odium splintered Honor and whether involuntary splinters of Honor were created in the process. I am sure the Shard Honor is not whole. I think we agree that he is not diminished by his voluntary splinters (Stormfather and honorspren for sure, maybe Honorblades). I think that he is splintered based on the quotes I've read, but I don't feel that I have proven it. As I said in the previous post I think it is an obvious articulation of what I am disagreeing with. Likewise, when I say, I have articulated my disagreement. So I don't understand what you are asking for. You offered two quotes as evidence. I think it a matter of clear fact that they don't clearly state what you claim. This was in response to the below paragraph, which I did not consider helpful. While I attempted to not attack you personally, I do not like that part of my response and would like to apologize for it, rather than defend it. You are welcome to quote whatever you want. I reject your demand that you decide what I quote or not. I think I have adequately explained why I use the quotes that I do. I am content with that. This is another unhelpful paragraph. I do not agree. I think it turns a mutual search for understanding into a right/wrong situation of spiraling defensiveness. I want to learn from you, but I have explained multiple times that your interpretation of "only" is not supported by the quote. If you won't listen and just repeat your demand that you control how I make my arguments, I don't find that respectful. Saying "universally agree" and "no excuse" does not help. Um, I have been addressing your evidence, which undermines your insufficiently supported assertions. I claim that my discussion has been generally on point. When you claim that I have been "ignoring my actual arguments and evidence," I don't know how to respond constructively. I want to have a constructive discussion where I learn from you and I agree that your further evidence deserves discussion, but I fear that we have gotten off track.

Not only do I not know this, but I don't believe that it is true. Consider:

Rereading showed support for Crimson Not Blood's theory. Removed questions about it and added textual support to the OP quotes. Added mirianme's theory. I've been wrong so often, I will not add some reflexive doubts. Thanks!

Shards have a named intent that really doesn't seem to change. As I understand it, if Dalinar reassembled Honor, he would become Honor, as vessels find it progressively harder to oppose the intent of the Shard.

Could Glys have crossed over explicitly to bond Renarin before Renarin went to the Shattered Plains? But while befuddled from the crossing, Sja-Anat got to Glys (since Sja-Anat was hanging around the palace). Glys wasn't really aware of what was going on and went ahead and bonded him.

Wow! This thread was a fantastic read. I learned so much! Upvote to the OP! Gloryspren for everybody involved! I feel reluctant to wade in when others have clearly thought about this more. But I like learning from my mistakes, so here goes nothing. What would the third Honorable superspren be? From the manifestation of Honor's Perpendicularity, I presume gloryspren to be the minor spren associated with Bondsmiths (this seems obvious enough that someone must have deduced it before) like windspren are associated with Windrunners. This may explain why Syl accepts windspren around Kaladin, but finds gloryspren annoying. Spren occur when cognitive beings personify a concept (yeah, this is loose. Feel free to correct me, I don't mind). Could a spren related to a gloryspren have arisen to personify Surgebinding or the Knights? The highstorms are clearly manifest and the Old Magic can be sought out. But Urithiru did not exist before the Knights formed (I assume). speculation Let's suppose a gloryspren takes on the cognitive association with Surgebinding and then the Knights. Maybe the listeners already have an association with the surges based on their closeness to the CR. Would this spren be dependent on the reputation of the Knights? The winds just blow and don't care if I'm mad about my house being blown down. But what happens to an evolved gloryspren that everyone reviles? The following quote from the OP seems to fit. After the last Desolation, the Knights don't have much purpose. They persist, but their achievements and existence gets associated with human politics rather than being glorified for helping survival. What does the lack of glory do for the Sibling? At some point, the Sibling leaves Urithiru. Did it start sleeping then? Did it retreat to the Cognitive Realm? Was it no longer practical to grow crops there? Did the Oathgate fees have to rise to compensate for the costs of feeding people there? The knights also abandoned Urithiru. I would guess there is an association. After the Recreance, the Knights are despised. Is that then too much for a poor gloryspren to take? Syl was asleep and lost in the CR. She woke up. The Sibling doesn't seem to be lost, but is known to be asleep.. Where is it now? Guessing the obvious, three places come to mind in the Cognitive Realm: The place physically associated with Urithiru The capital of glorysprenland (if there is one). It could be the same as 1. The place physically associated with the monastery that maintained Dawnchant and tWoK. Possibly the last place that the Knights were glorified. Does it wake up when the Knights are again needed and helpful? /speculation Do I think this is correct? Eh, I hope Brandon has come up with something more interesting than this. This is just extrapolation. But maybe it will help someone come up with something better.

I updated the OP to include some of your brilliant input and provide other context. Thanks! Please continue. I will continue to update the OP if it seems helpful.

joke Kill spren and sell the Shardblades? /Joke Currently reregistering with a new alias