Chandlerhimself

I think the answer is that giving people Raysium or other info would be breaking the rules of the pact between Odium and Honor. Think of all the things both of them could do without even getting into Raysium, anti-void light, gemstone trapping, etc. Instead of 5 honor blades he could have made 10,000 and used normal humans to kill all the fused. Odium and Honor could have replaced the fused and Heralds as they started to go crazy or even added more. I believe Rabonial even says no other fused have been added since they were first made. I don't think there is some deeper thinking behind this. I think Odium and Honor both have their hands tied by the agreement and if they break the rules it will create a hole in their soul that will allow the other to kill them. Rayse even says he can't trick people by sticking to the word of an agreement and then using semantic loopholes. He has to stick to the spirit of the agreement. If honor and Odium had an agreement about interference, then neither of them would be able to give out info about those types of things. Honor may have known where the Dawnshards are, but he might have been barred from revealing it. I'm sure he also thought humans could bond with Spren, but I'm guessing he had to let the humans figure it out themselves.

They just went back and lived their lives. Also the Humans don't really win, persay, they just stop the desolation. There are still tons of singers and humans left. If the humans continued to attack afterwards, the humans might lose. In general it seems that both sides pretty much destroy their civilization each time and after the desolation is over both of them just want to go back and try to rebuild. I don't know if the humans could defeat the singers after the desolation ended. Also because of certain oaths, I don't think many Radients could help them commit genocide. There are also practical reasons. After the desolations there is free land and resources, so if someone leaves to fight the singers, the other humans will just steal their kingdom. In some desolations, there was so much damage that the humans went back to the stone age, so rebuilding and perhaps even getting free resources is a better use of time than trying to go after the singers with sticks and stones. The final reason is that the humans don't know where they are. Roshar is large and the technological level is still low. In WOK the humans are at peak technology for Roshar and they still can't find/defeat the singers on the shattered plains. In previous desolations they would have had even more trouble.

I forgot that they just contacted the humans. It seems that them being lost in the shattered plains makes the most sense. Especially considering the high storms and how light they are. I can imagine a war going on and a high storm comes along. Shardbarers die and their Shards just get caught in the storm and thrown all over the place.

I don't think Honor could have helped Taln, because is isn't allowed. I'm also guessing this is why Odium doesn't give the singers forms of power. It seems like there is some contract the forbids certain types of interference and helping Taln like that I assume, would violate it. If they could, I'm sure Odium and Honor would cure the madness the Heralds and Returned suffer from. For the Returned at this point it would be better for Odim to just kill some of them because they are just wasting bodies. They would also benifit from swapping out the old member and getting new ones that aren't crazy. The fact that they don't leads me to believe that they can't. I think all of those things would fall under direct interference. However if a part of their investure were to break off, develop it's own mind and want to help a willing human or singer, well the shard couldn't be held responsible for that.

I don't think Adolin will die because he hasn't completed his arc and killing him would kind of throw away everything he built up with Maya. If he dies and Maya lives then either Maya would need to leave the story or have her bond with someone else(most likely a new character). Unless it was done with extreme care it would come off as a wasted character.

I think humans might have just lost them. I imagine some people might have gone into the shattered plains, perhaps looking for gem hearts and just died in there. Over hundreds of years I'm sure more than a few did, so they'd be able to get a few just by accident. They could have also had someone act as a spy like Rlain did and steal them. Pretend to be a parshman and then when you have your chance, kill your master, take the shard blade and escape into the night.

Ah, I got them confused with the Iriali. I forgot that Ishar appears shin, however none of the others do. All the rest have epicanthic folds and appear large than the Shin. On Roshar there isn't enough time for them to evolve, but let's say it is magic. Why would the people all evolve to look like Heralds. The only way it would make sense is if the majority people with epicanthic folds decided not to listen to Honor and the those with them did. That doesn't make much sense. I think the Shin definitely could have come from Ashyn, but I don't think they were a part of the same group as the others. They still have ideas of things from long ago such as the tranquiline halls. The Shin might have ideas about this, but it doesn't seem to be a major factor in their religion. The Shin and Singers both have nature gods, especially stone. No other humans except the Shin realize that they were supposed to stay in Shinovar. It doesn't seem to appear in their history at all. Their religions are completely different, which is extremely strange since they should have been based on the same events. The Vorins seem to be fairly religious, but they don't seem to remember their god telling them to stay in Shinovar and that same god never reminded them in the thousands of years afterwards. They seem to be in a completely different language family. All of the splits make sense(the Makabaki split from Vorin is a little weird), except the shin and singers being in the same language group. The rest of them are clearly different groups of people such as the Iri and Aimians. The quote below it doesn't really apply because it is only referring to written language and not spoken Of course I don't know if it is true or not, but there is evidence to support that they aren't the same group of people. I never said they didn't come from Ashyn, I said they weren't together. They seem to be a completely separate group of people, but beyond that, if they were part of the same group, Honor seemingly didn't care that they broke a promise almost immediately after they made it. Honor turned on the singers, he had taken care of for perhaps thousands of years, for humans right after they disobeyed him. That doesn't make much sense.

I'm pretty sure a few of the assumptions here aren't correct. Odium most likely didn't create the human's on Asyn. He didn't want to invest in a planet and also humans don't have any cultural connections to him. Maybe the iriali are influenced by him a bit, but none of the other cultures seem to be. It is also extremely unlikely that the shin and other humans are related. Most seem to think that humans started on Shinovar and then left, but it seems much more likely that there were 2 groups of humans who came that were unrelated. My guess is that there was a misunderstanding and Odium instigated problems that turned into a war. The Shin and the other humans are extremely different physically. The other humans such as the Alethi are described as tall Asian looking people. The Shin are described as short white looking people. There isn't enough time for evolution to make those types of changes. Even if we assume there was enough time we know it wasn't a result of evolution because the Heralds look like people from Alethkar, Azir, etc. None of them look shin. They also have different religions and don't seem to even know about historical knowledge of the other. On top of that their languages aren't related. The other humans languages are all from the same group, but the Shin's language is related to the dawnsingers. All this leads me to beleive the Shin came way before the other humans. I'm guessing the other humans didn't know about staying on Shinovar and the Singers thought that they were invading. Odium caused them to start fighting over a misunderstanding.

I don't think anyone there needs to actually defeat Odium if he breaks his word. Instead of temporarily weakening him, I'm pretty sure it will cause a lot of permanent damage. Even if Dalinar, the storm father, cultivation, etc don't attack him afterwards, another shard or even something below a shard might be able to defeat him. Todium wants to leave Roshar and control other places, if he is weak others will just stop him immediately. That said, it might be interesting to see TOdium as a broken god that has to trick people and use cunning instead of divine power to get what he wants.

It thought Painter himself was from the country. I assumed they had Ion going everywhere, so there would be rural areas of just farms lit by Ion, but they might be rare. They might also have farms that people don't live on, but just work at during the day. I assume mining is fine and they make mines just like they make everything else. I'm guessing the limiting factor is the number of painters available and as such it makes more sense to live in a city. A small town with a few farms would be too much for a painter to cover by themselves, so there would need to be a lot of painters for only a few people living there. It would make more sense to make a farm and then just commute to it instead of living there. The same with mines. Just do your 9-5 job and then come back home to the city everyday. The same would apply to fishing.

I'm guessing it is someone we haven't met yet. The only characters we have from the future so far are the people from sixth of dusk. They don't seem to know much about the comer, so they wouldn't understand the references. I'm guessing it is someone in the future we don't know yet, or a current character that will become immortal.

Why are the Dawnshards being used to group Shards into categories? Is there a word of Brandon saying they are split this way? The Dawnshards were around pre-shattering and Brandon said the Adonalsium could have been split in different ways. To me it makes more sense for the Dawnshards to just be commands and the Shards to just be intents with nothing really connecting them. Is there some reason people think they are related that I'm not aware of?

The shades don't have to be from the forests. Cognitive shadows can move just like people. They could be from the main land and just migrated there. Perhaps there is something in the forests that attracts them. The shades are drawn to something in the forests and that is why they are there. Another possibility is that the evil of the main land chased them off and most settled in the forests of hell. Perhaps it is similar to the situation in Elantris where the farther they get away from their area the weaker they get and the less intelligent they become. If the evil chased them off maybe the forests of hell are the closest place they can settle down. We still have no idea, but hopefully it is explained in the future.

Thanks. Yes I played guitar on this, but I had to program the other instruments. I'll tell my wife someone appreciated the art. The pics are supposed to be of a marewill flower or the drawing of it(which the ghostbloods use as a symbol). My wife hasn't read the books, so I just described it to her and that is what she came up with. Thank you for the kind words.

I wrote this song after being inspired by the books. I wanted to create something somewhat melancholic, but hopeful. It is jazz fusion, so if you're not into that you might not find it interesting. I hope you enjoy it. My wife did the drawing. I think she did a great job, so I'll post some of the others she did as well.

The behavior described by ettmetal is the same for all alkali metals. The reason I mentioned sodium is because it the the one most people would be familiar with. I didn't know about the WOB, but there doesn't seem to be a big enough difference between them when comparing them to ettmetal. I guess I could have said Potassium too.

The discription fits with sodium. What you are thinking of is table salt which is sodium chloride I beleive. Sodium is an alkali metal the explodes when it touches water.

I don't think they are really atoms, but they are close. The different elements are determined by the number of protons, but the God metals seem to have some properties of normal elements while also behaving differently. The God metals couldn't fit on the periodic table, so I think there is some extra investure particle involved. For example I think ettmetal is either sodium made out of investure subatomic particles or is normal sodium with investure inside the atom. I think the axi are basically atoms, but there might be some extra stuff in there that allows them to behave differently.

I think whoever knows the most about their enemy would win. This is of course assuming there are more radients than there are now and people understand how to use their power. Current armies could bomb the people of Roshar and there is nothing they could do about it. Jets are much faster than Radients and if you aren't familiar with bullets I doubt you'd even know what is happening. They could do the same with other technologies as well. The Radients could use elsecallers to teleport inside Earth's bases with Radients and break havok. A single elsecaller could destroy a battleship in seconds. A group of elsecallers could destroy a countries Navy or Airforce in a day if they knew their locations. Lightweavers could hide entire cities as well as armies or just make Earth's armies look like enemies. Since Lightweavers can work with light and sound they could also trick radar, sonar and night vision. I think the determining factor would be be how well the other side knew their enemies capabilities, location, strategies, etc. Whoever has the better spies and strikes first would win.

2 possiblities exist for voiding the contract that I don't think are mentioned here. If neither champion is willing to fight I imagine it would void the contract. I'm sure you need to pick someone willing to fight before hand, but it seems they could change their mind while fighting. Imagine if Dalinar is beating someone and when they are down and Dalinar is about to strike the finishing blow the person pleads for his life. Dalinar decides not to kill him and the other person doesn't want to fight. Now there are 2 unwilling champions. Also in the contract it says people from your side can't interfere with the champions. It doesn't say anything about outside forces. The ghostbloods, aimeans and the Shin(I believe) aren't on either side, so if they interfered it would void the contract. Of course neither side could tell them too interfere, but for whatever reason they might do it. I think even cultivation could do it since she doesn't seem to be on human's side. Now that I think of it cultivation might want to control Roshar herself now. Rayse wanted to control Roshar, but TOdium may not have the same plans. Making the contract void and releasing TOdium would give her Roshar all to herself.

I thought it was because Kalladin was close to the 4th ideal. Didn't they say they needed to get Dalinar out of there because his connect with the storm father was too strong to suppress? Didn't they also want Jashna to leave because she achieved the 4th ideal. I'm guessing that in the battles they never encountered any radients with Shard plate except Jashna, so they assumed it would work on everyone in the tower. Kalladin was basically at the 4th idea but hadn't said the words yet, so I thought that is why he could still use some powers.

I would guess it is pretty much unknown. I think the shards might know or maybe even some dragons. I doubt any normal people would though. In almost every other world besides Roshar they aren't really focused on sound AFAIK and on top of that investure is expense and rare. Roshar is the only place investure is easy too obtain and experiment with. Even though seekers on Scadrial might be able to hear the rhythms and tones, there is no atrium or lerasium. I guess they could experiment with harmonium, but it seems that the current experiments with it are going in a different direction.

I think we actually agree on most of it. For example I think we both believe that Mateform give them a better chance at having a child than slave/dull form, Let's say an 80% chance. Slave form might have a 50% chance. I think you believe the others have a 0% chance and I think the others have a 3% chance. I agree that there are physical changes that could make some forms nearly impossible though. Warform might give you a carapace chastity belt or something that you'd need to cut through, making it practically impossible. Anyway, perhaps Brandon will give us answers in the future or most likely wonder why we are spending so much time talking about this small strange point.

I think part of the problem is that the word asexual has 2 meanings. Something that is neither male nor female or a person that has no sexual desire. Jashna is asexual, but she can still reproduce and I don't think anyone has ever mistaken her for a man. I believe singers when malen or femalen are asexual in the psychological sense and their fertility is decreased, but not gone completely. I imagine it might be uncomfortable in warform with all that carapace. I think they are more androgenous in malen and femalen forms, but all the art seems to show them clearly to look different. If malen and femalen were sterlie and looked exactly the same there would be no reason for a distinction and there would only be 3 genders. Until Brandon says something official it is impossible to say. I think the quote about swinging a sword means that all of them could theoretically reproduce, but that is up to interpretation.

I think TOdium is going to try to purposely void the contract and then renegotiate with Dalinar. I think Dalinar and TOdium are both aligned in what they want. Rayse wanted to take over Roshar and use it as a breeding ground for a strong army. TOdium thinks Rayse's plans are foolish. If he thinks that the Roshar plan itself is foolish he can just force a draw. Then he could just tell Dalinar he is Taravagian, explain that he doesn't want to be on Roshar anymore, and give up his influence there. Dalinar ends the desolations and gets rid of Odium at no cost to anyone on Roshar. From his POV it is a great deal. Hoid might not like it, but assuming he can't convince Dalinar not to do it, it should be easy.