Aleph

The bones. This is what I kept thinking after the epilogue. How long was that little girl there after her mother was crushed? As for the Sibling, I'm pretty convinced they were killed during the Recreance. Here's why I believe this: There can be only three Bondsmiths at a time There are three greater spren they can bond: The Stormfather, the Nightwatcher, and the Sibling (This is the part I'm least sure of) The final generation of Knights Radiant had only one Bondsmith -- one of the gemstone records speculated this was why the orders were failing Spren who were bonded to KR during the Recreance died Stormfather and Nightwatcher aren't dead

I really enjoy how up front Brandon is about his own success. Sometimes I get tired of people wringing their hands over being successful, and he just states it without coming off as either contrite or boastful. But also, "Actually, I'm on the New York Times' best seller list right now. BAM!"

You find it easy to get what you want in life, but blood follows you like a plague. Every morning you wake up in a pool of blood. You have to take showers throughout the day to wash away a ruddy sheen. Your nose, your eyes, your gums, and less pleasant places, all leak blood. You will never lack for what's "really in your heart." (Feeling evil today) I wish for the ability to sleep restfully at will.

Kaladin. I want to give that guy a hug. Would you rather play the dozens with Shallan or the Lopen?

I dabble in. . . um, coding, yes And I know this cookie trickery for what it is. @Daniyah's introduction thread was actually the first one I read before making my own, and the secrets of chocolate chip hemalurgy were revealed. Edit: No, I'm wrong, it wasn't that thread. That was the facepalming avatars club thread. I remember this now.

Thanks for the feedback! I will be reading BoM and Secret History very soon, so I'll revise and reconsider after that @Pagerunner thanks for clearing that up. I was under the impression that "cognitive shadow" refers more explicitly to a being that is created in its own right, physical body included, from the collective perception of another, distinct entity who has died. Again, maybe that's because I haven't read Secret History yet. All the more reason to read on. Edit: @Argel my supposition is that the sun seen in Shadesmar should be visible from everywhere else in the Cognitive Realm, i.e. including the region corresponding to Yolen. So I'm thinking of it as less local, more global.

Living blade > plate > dead blade. Would you rather have to meet Tonk Fah or Bloody Tan?

Note: I will try to consistently use "Shadesmar" to refer specifically to the region in the Cognitive Realm that corresponds to Roshar/Greater Roshar. When Shallan first went to Shadesmar in WoK, I didn't think much about the sun. I didn't really know anything about the Cognitive Realm, so I sort of implicitly thought, "Sure, that's the cognitive representation of the sun." But after her visit near the beginning of WoR something seemingly really obvious hit me. We've seen that in Shadesmar, physical objects, seemingly no matter how large they are, become spheres. We have no reason to think that a star, just because it's huge and produces light in the Physical Realm, would be huge and produce light in the Cognitive Realm as well. Rather, we've seen that the consciousness of a being in the Physical Realm appears in the Cognitive Realm as a pale light. That is not the sun. It's a mind. I think the sun in Shadesmar is the cognitive self, or the cognitive shadow, or something like that, of Adonalsium. Most of what I've seen has tried to figure out what the sun is in terms of what we know to exist on Roshar. People have discussed it being the mind of Honor and/or Cultivation, or being a countdown clock of some kind until the next desolation. I think this totally misses the sense of scale. Planets in the Physical Realm are regions in the Cognitive Realm. Everything is scaled down. The vast emptiness of space is reduced to mountain ranges between the regions. (Side note: It's kind of funny to wonder whether there's a sad little sphere representing Roshar's sun somewhere in the mountains surrounding Shadesmar.) With this distortion of scale, the sun that is visible in Shadesmar should be visible in the Cognitive Realm region corresponding to any other planet. What is a dwarf galaxy in the Physical Realm is more or less a planet in the Cognitive Realm, at least in terms of distances, so the sun in Shadesmar is the sun everywhere. This is where the more savvy among you will, I hope, fill me in or shoot me down. Brandon has said that matter and energy are essentially manifestations of Investiture. We know that a shard of Adonalsium doesn't act on its own in a meaningful, sentient way. It affects the cognition of a person who holds it, but it doesn't seem to think for itself. I think that the shards of Adonalsium were, at least at the time of the shattering, literally physical pieces of the body of Adonalsium. These pieces by their nature held an incredible amount of Investiture, granting all kinds of power and causing all manner of effects on the holder that you wouldn't normally associate with a simple physical object. I think the cognitive self of Adonalsium remains, independent of a physical body. I haven't read Secret History yet (Bands of Mourning is next on my reading list!), but I know that Kelsier discovered it is possible to linger in the Cognitive Realm after physical death, and that it seems to be dependent on the significance of the being who died. If Kelsier could stick around, Adonalsium surely could have. I don't know how the spiritual figures into any of this, because, well, nobody seems to know much of anything about the Spiritual Realm yet. If I'm wrong and Adonalsium's mind isn't still around, it does stand to reason that the cognitive shadow of Adonalsium would be incredible. The Stormfather himself is the result of the worship of a portion of the population of a single shardworld. Imagine the cognitive shadow of a being who is as close to God as we've seen (short of the God Beyond, whose consciousness I expect wouldn't have a finite size), whose death directly or indirectly motivated just about every story we've been told in this setting, whose essence literally makes up the physical substrate of the Cosmere, and who is known of by at least part of the population on seemingly every world. The Cognitive realm is structured by perception, and Adonalsium seems like a good candidate for the radiant center of sentient perception in the Cosmere.

If another shard traveled to Scadrial, would they produce a new god metal? Would this also reveal/create (exactly four) new metallic arts? If the answers are yes, this could explain Brandon's previous, slightly cryptic statement that there are either 10ish or 30ish magic systems on Roshar, depending on how you count. Also: Do the 16 shards account for 100% of what is left of Adonalsium after being shattered?

o/ I just finished the WoK and WoR audiobooks in an unhealthily short amount of time. I've previously finished Warbreaker and the first five Mistborn books. I've become increasingly fascinated with the Cosmere, so here I am to talk theory with you fine folk. I'm mostly worried that between the TWG archive, Theoryland, and the rest of this forum, anything I post will be a duplicate of something I missed. Feel free to shout at me if that happens. Cheers.