Aliroz-The-Confused

That was supposed to be my bead of Lerasium, Leras left it to me in the will. Flipping Midius, stealing my inheritance in the one moment when nobody's looking. He'll have to give it back, though, if he ever wants to see his previous flute again. ...or maybe I'm just messing with all of you.

My point is that we have the vocabularly, whether or not we use it, and the Alethi don't, even after all this time. It doesn't add up unless it's intentional worldbuilding or just wrong... but from the rest of your post it does seem to be intentional worldbuilding. @Offer, oh, dang, I must have forgotten that note in Arcanum Unbounded.

Yeah, but given the sheer amount of time the Voidbringers have been around birds, it makes no sense for them not to have diversified the names. The Koala may have been called a "bear" by the first westerners to know of it, but it's not been that many generations since and I have the vocabulary to speak of Marsupials. Something else must be going on here, and the only way this can linguistically make sense is if there genuinely are no non-chicken birds around outside of Shin Kak Nish.

Except for "the humans came to Roshar thousands of years ago", I don't remember any of this in any book. It does makes a lot of sense for Patji to be an aspect of Autonomy, especially given the themes of colonization, indigeneity, and exploitation that The Stormlight Archive and Sixth of the Dusk share. The most significant thematic difference being that the people of First Of The Sun are beginning the process of destroying their world while the Voidbringers of Roshar must face the realization that they already did irrevocably, irredeemably, destroy their world and are essentially cuckoos in the Listener's nest. Even if Aviars get their powers from Patji, that doesn't mean Cultivation wasn't, at some point, there, feeding the birds and slumming around in Autonomy's planet without Autonomy's permission, before leaving for Roshar. Honestly, given how Cultivation and Honor abandoned the Listeners for the Voidbringers, and how Odium forcibly "adopted" the Parshendi, this theory makes a lot of sense and even adds another layer to the deific custody dispute from heck. How horribly fitting it would be for Odium to do unto Cultivation as she did unto Autonomy. Even the idea that the accord was a promise that ought not to have necessarily applied to all Voidbringers is an autonomy-honor dispute very much applicable to any treaty and any interaction between colonizers and indigenous. It would be in character for Honor to see this accord as totally binding and applying to all Voidbringers and all Listeners, from Honor's point of view, such a thing is really no different from a treaty applying to all people of the relevant civilizations regardless of whether each individual agrees to it or not. Honor doesn't have to be reasonable. And, well, there has to be a reason why Roshar has no birds other than chickens, and this would explain it so well. Well done, Vailima.

Kickstarter is a malicious thing; it's devoured two of my favorite storytellers already. They got too much money and now are trapped by their own ambitions and promises in a Sisyphus-and-Stone scenario, and I worry the same is starting to happen here. I suppose the question now is whether Mr. Sanderson is like the protagonist of a Greek Tragedy, in which case his fate is already sealed and any warning would come too late, or whether he's like the protagonist of an anime, in which case any warning will be responded to by a successful accomplishment of the previously impossible. A Moshe-edited, Joshua-screened, traditionally published book that serves as a compendium of random Cosmere lore would be interesting (and we got some of that with Arcanum Unbounded), but if there's one thing we ought to have learned from Rowling, it's that editors, agents, and publishers are crucial and ought not be removed from the process if the readers want good content. Or, in other words, even that would probably fail to get past my increasingly irrational opinions, for many of the same reasons Dawnshard does. It would probably be good for the more reasonable Print Fanatics out there, though.

I feel like Obi-Wan at Mustafar now. WHYYYYYYYYYYY FRUS, WHYYYYY!???!?!?

Edgedancer has been published as part of Arcanum Unbounded, and thus has the same canon status as Secret History. (This posting genuinely isn't an elaborate joke, it's just my, to other people very bizarre, opinion. I was, in all truth, planning not to read Stormlight 5 when it comes out, or any Stormlight after it, because of how much I resented Dawnshard for not being available in print when I wanted to read it (I refuse to have anything to do with e-books or audiobooks), but since my cousin is reading the series I've found myself planning to actually continue with Stormlight because I love talking about it with her).

Enough is enough! I have had it with all of these monkey-flipping Dawnshard theories on this Multi-Fractal forum! First off, Dawnshards aren't real, have never been important in any canon Cosmere book, and aren't going to be important in any canon Cosmere book. This is because Dawnshard isn't canon, which is self-evidently obvious but I'm going to explain it anyway (because you SMART PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET said my theories were unlikely and unsupported-by-evidence-and-logic so I'm insecure about making claims without at least a page or two attempting to justify my thoughts). This is best demonstrated by the fact that Dawnshard, for the longest time, was not published as a physical book, but was only available as an electronic text. You know what else is only available as an electronic text? The Way Of Kings Prime. Which, as you all know, is not canon, and is also garbage and not worth reading (don't worry, I didn't read it). Just because Sanderson wrote it doesn't mean it counts, if Moshe, Joshua, and the publishers don't deem it worthy of the printed page. If the book was worthy like the others, it would have been published from the start. Also, Dawnshard cannot count as existing/mattering/canon because it would ruin the entire Stormlight Archive's basic structure of being ten books (that's the entire basic thing of it, with a world built around tens, and Sanderson promising ten books, it has to be ten books), and Dawnshard sure as heck isn't Stormlight 5. Mistborn was promised as a trilogy of trilogies, and Stormlight was promised as a ten-book series. The Way Of Kings Prime doesn't count in the numbering, it doesn't count as canon, and Dawnshard must be the same. Look, I have faith in Sanderson's abilities, I don't think he's going to screw it up when he has ONE JOB (a ten-book series). Okay, Sanderson screwed up a bit with Mistborn by writing a trilogy that wasn't the second trilogy but saved himself by making it a side-thing that's not part of the proper Mistborn Trilogy Of Trilogies, but then you fans Ati'd that all up and got it republished and marketed as Era Two and as the second trilogy, so you either ruined the WHOLE THING or cheated me out of three books. Still, I stand with the publishers of 2020, no matter what happened in February of this year. In Summary: Dawnshard = not a physical book at release. Way of Kings Prime = not a physical book at release. Therefore, Dawnshard = Way of Kings Prime. Way Of Kings Prime = stupid garbage unworthy of publication which is not canon. Thus, Dawnshard = stupid garbage unworthy of publication which is not canon.

If the Radiants can't manage it before Odium is freed, what makes you think they can manage it after? If Odium gets off of Roshar, then the only noun in the universe to have successfully eternally prevented an evil shard from becoming a multi-system problem will have been Preservation, which, as has been established, is gone from the Cosmere. At that point, I'd trust the Scadrians over the Rosharans, given their respective records of success, failure, and learning-from-failure in such regards (heck, in that situation, I'd trust any system in the Cosmere over the Rosharan system, given that none of them messed up so badly as to cause/not-prevent a shard-level multi-system disaster like that).

I don't think sDNA is a real thing, it's too silly. That would imply sRNA, sMRNA, and all sorts of spiritual proteins and cellular gobbledygook.

I don't think that the different creations can interact like that. Without a shared originator or creator, I don't think that-which-we-commonly-call-the-humans of the separate worlds are truly the same species as one another. In a very real sense, they would be closer to the other species of their same creation than to each other.

Oh, dang, you're right! The significant powers on Roshar are incredibly well-suited to defend against external attack... so the best strategy to weaken that turtle would start while it's still developing in the egg. In fiction, and likely in history, there are fortresses which were never taken by siege or attack, but fell to internal scheming and treachery. These early stages of the next era of the Knights Radiant are absolutely crucial in this regard*... perhaps Gavilar was right to say that Thaidakar was too late. *Not to mention that the stronger the Kholin-aligned side gets, the more difficult it becomes to stop their scholars from innovating and discovering. If, as my cousin predicts (and I agree with her), the next book or two in the Stormlight Archive will contain a/the genocide of the spren, (much of) it will be Navani's fault, and who knows what they'll figure out next... Yeah, things are going to get hairy.

Greetings and salutations!

Lord Ruler > Everything and everyone, except maybe shards. No printer, just fax.

I'm not sure what you mean by that? I guess being able to track the movement of investiture is important to finding and shutting down the routes by which it is transported, but if I'm interpreting "the first investiture ring" right, such a thing seems counter to the end goal of Roshar as an eternal prison (or, if necessary, a tomb) for Odium.