MikeBridgeFour

I think in my original post, I misconstrued the Evil and should adjust my premise. The Ire might not be the Evil that drove the Threnodites from their homeland. As Pagerunner correctly pointed out above, that could be a separate thing than what created the shades. I still think the Ire are the reason that the shades behave the way they do. Although there is no actual support for why, more of a gut feeling. Threnody does not have a Shard so the Ire don't seem to have a reason to go there, but they do seem concerned about interference from Cognitive Shadows from Threnody to the point of placing forces on the border. If they did something to confine the Cognitive Shadows to Threnody it could have affected the way those Shadows interact with the physical realm creating the shades we see in SSFH. The timeline is not exact on when SSFH takes place but Brandon has placed SSFH in the later half of the cosmere sequence but before the Stormlight Archive which should place it after Mistborn era one books. Nazh curses with the word Shadows not Shades as the residents of the forest refer to them and Nazh speaks of Shadows almost reverently. His using the word Shadows as a curse does not imply that he views them as bad anymore than someone yelling Jesus Christ is implying something negative about the Christian messiah.

I don't know how to do spoiler tags, so I am stating here in the beginning of the post that there are spoilers for Mistborn: Secret History. If you haven't read that and also read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, you should not read this thread unless you don't mind those books being spoiled. Having said that, I will move on to my theory. I believe the Evil mentioned in SSFH is the Ire. From what is known of the timeline the first era Mistborn books are set 200 to 300 years before SSFH. In it, the Ire seem to be working against people from Threnody or at least working to keep the Threnodites out of what they are trying to accomplish. The relationship seems adversarial with the Ire even stating that they had forces on the Threnodite border. The Ire are concerned about shadows from Threnody and have what seems to be some kind of fabrial that can sense whether someone from Threnody is within a day's march of their fortress. I believe that at this point whatever happened to turn the shadows into the dangerous creatures we see in SSFH, hasn't happened yet. I believe this for a few reasons. One the Ire were concerned about a Cognitive Shadow from Threnody not a Shade. Two, Alonoe muses about the powers of Threnody wishing to join the main stage, which implies a level of intelligence and motivation that the shades don't seem to exhibit. And three, when Nazh meets Kelsier, he says, "One doesn't merely decide to become a shadow! It's an important rite! With requirements and traditions." This seems to imply that Shadows on Threnody were created on purpose and were seen as something good, at least when Nazh was there. If Cognitive Shadows were on Threnody at this time but did not behave as the Shades we see in SSFH, then something happened to make them that way between Mistborn era one and SSFH. My theory, which has no actual support except that it fits with what little we know, is that the Ire did something to Threnody to prevent them from interfering with the Ire's goals. They did something to Threnody that fundamentally changed the way Cognitive Shadows behaved. Any thoughts?

You're right, Pagerunner. That line from the letter does imply that he is elsewhere. I thought I was onto something with the fact that all the epigraphs seemed to have been written on Roshar. Maybe instead they were all either written or read on Roshar which means that we can conclude nothing about where the letter was written. That does not mean that Roshar could not still be part of a splintered Yolen but it does pull some of the support for the theory away.

If the religion of the Purelakers is formed out of some knowledge of Odium and Honor, maybe Odium hates that some of the other Shards are worshipped. Its tenuous but could be a clue to his motivation. This would fit with Pagerunner's view of divine hatred. Also Odium splintered Devotion and Dominion but didn't stick around to destroy the pesky humans on the Sel. So it seems as if his grudge is specifically against the holders of the Shards, not against everyone.

The listeners could be one of the three races of Yolen with humans and dragons being the other two. If this is the case and my assumption of Frost being on Roshar because of the letter, then all three races are on Roshar. As to the listeners predating humanity on Roshar, that could simply be because they predated humanity on Yolen or it could mean that they survived the splintering of Yolen and the humans didn't and had to be created or brought there by Honor or Cultivation. Or maybe when Yolen was splintered the listeners were on the part that ended up forming Roshar while the humans were on a different part. My theory could easily be wrong but I haven't found anything that directly refutes it yet. If anyone can find something that makes the theory not work, please let me know so I can move on to a different theory.

While the Shard that Brandon mentioned not having an intent that relates to its hiding and trying to survive does not mean that there is not one that has an intent related to survival, I don't think that Survival or Self-Preservation have the same kind of feel as the other Shards that we have seen. I still see the connection between the three rules and survival. Maybe it is simply that shades are drawn to people that break these rules because they associate these actions as signs of life, maybe the most primal base actions of people trying to live (run or fight, or build a fire because, to quote Survivor "fire is life"). If the shades are souls stuck in a limbo between life and death, unable to move on for some reason, they might simply being trying to get back to the world of the living since they can't reach the land of the dead. They wither people because they are sucking in the souls of their victims trying to strengthen their own.

What if Braize isn't Yolen, but a part of Yolen? What if the act of splintering Adonalsium split the planet and Roshar and Blaize are the two largest pieces. They might not have been the largest pieces originally. Honor and Cultivation might have created Roshar by assembling some of the pieces into their new world, while Odium could have done the same for Braize. Rayse being less inclined to make his world a pleasant place to live could have created a world that seems like damnation to most who view it. This would make Yolen much harder for Khriss to find than just simply renaming it. While we don't know much about Braize, there are many things we know about Roshar. Roshar is an obviously artificially created world or at least artificially manipulated world which might not mean much since most shardworlds should show signs of less than natural forces in them. But of all the worlds we've seen so far, Roshar seems to me to have the largest discrepancies between it and a naturally formed planet. Roshar is the only world that I know of that has splinters of Adonalsium in it as Brandon has stated that some of the spren came from him and predate the ones of Honor and Cultivation. His spren being there makes sense if it was Yolen at one point. In the Stormlight Archives, the chapter epigraphs all seem to be from writings done on Roshar except the letters. You have quotes from Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, quotes from Navani's journal, writings from the diagram, collected death throes that have been recorded, listener songs, etc. The letter in WoKs that Hoid writes could fit this since Hoid could have written it while on Roshar. What if all the epigraphs are written words from the world of Roshar? If this is true, it would mean that the second letter, the one in WoR, was written on Roshar. And if that letter is from Frost, a confirmed non-worldhopper, it would imply that Frost is on Roshar and has always been on Roshar. This would fit with Roshar having once been part of Yolen. It would also explain how Hoid gets the letters to and from Frost since they are on the same planet. This is just another theory with both pros and cons and it seems likely to me that whatever theories we come up with, Brandon will still find a way to surprise us.

Gaining the tenth heightening so that you could use your awakenings as "white out", draining the color from ink when you make a mistake writing.

This seems somewhat supported by Warbreaker. I don't know how to do spoiler tags or if they are even necessary for this but just in case I won't mention it specifically. If you've read Warbreaker, you should know what I'm talking about, hopefully.

This is my first post. Just read Shadows for Silence and had a few thoughts to share. Threnody is not a shardworld but maybe it used to be. Once a Shard has invested a world, it is anchored to that world. To leave, the Shard must pull its investiture back into itself, apparently not an easy task. Maybe a Shard left Threnody and its removal is responsible for the shades somehow. My other thought is on the three rules. The one thing that links the three rules, to me at least, is survival. The basic survival instinct is known as fight or flight. These could be seen as drawing blood or running. Also one of the most basic survival skills is building a fire. If the three rules are based on survival, then maybe there was a Shard on the world before, the Shard that Brandon has hinted at, the one who just wants to survive. Maybe this Shard is Survival or Self-preservation or some similar intent. A Shard like that seems the most likely to pull up roots and run if faced with a dangerous situation. The shades could be splinters that became twisted when their Shard left them. Or rather the original shades may have been with most of the current ones their creations. These are just rough ideas in my head. I may be completely off. Let me know what you think.