Raffaine

Interesting and I would think taht Sanderson wouldn't be picky with this as it can spin out of control pretty easily. But, I still don't think that it is all sorted out and that the differences don't matter. I like the idea of a relativistic effect of sorts and how this would play with Investiture. Also, Wax and Wayne stories are fairly after the Final Empire ... but Roshar? Everything there is millenia+ ... how long have humans be there? Also ... in-world time tracking may be subject to misinformation and contextual differences. History tells us that we sucked at keep tracking of past events for a long time, we lost much information when it was passed from generation to generation. The seasons on Earth and the stars are usually good ways of tracking year passing (day passing is trivial) even thou imprecisely, it's easy to correct discrepancies. But this takes time to understand. Of course, the influence of the divine is quite obvious on the Cosmere, which may have given humans on Shardworlds a good way of starting.

Woah ... this is an interesting one. But I'm having trouble with some of the premisses here. Where does it mention that Shardblades can't cut aluminum? Or that it does not have a Cognitive Realm manifestation (I don't understand the Spirtiual Realm too well to comment on that)?

Throwing something out that nobody mentioned (and it is way simpler than some theories): It maybe something that happened at the end of Oathbringer, like uniting the three realms and forming the perpendicularity. I remember that, in Thaylen city, the stones themselves asked to Dalinar to "unite them", so we may be really sure that the request for "unity" is quite common and come from different sources. In the particular momment of the Perpendicularity, Dalinar claims that he is Unity, so he is the Bondsmith in charge of Uniting stuff.

This is more of a question than a theory, but despite the appaling amount of world building marvels we have seeing on Cosmere books I haven't seen much of a discussion on the experience people have with time, especially world hoppers and shard vessels. The origin of the question is the fact that an Earth day is a chunk of time related with the sun positioning in our sky (human perspective) and the rotation of earth around itself (cosmologic perspective). Same goes for the year, which is the cycle of seasons (humans) and the rotation around the sun (cosmos). So, given these facts, we know that time passing is very dependent on where you are, if we one day go to Mars and establish there, we will need to rethink how we track time there, because days and years are different (not sure if shorter or longer) and how do we sync human history after that? We may use the Earth calendar as our Interspatial standard, but that only works because Mars is close by. But Cosmere? Planets are supposed to be in different solar systems, so, not easy to sync up history. What about time passing in the Cognitive Realm? I know that days and years inside a single world is not very relevant, since it shapes the experience of those there, but I get completely lost when we add the Bigger Scheme of Shards and Adonalsium. Rayse (Odium) "killed" a few of the Shard Vessels out there in what was a millenia in Roshar but how long that would be in Sel? Scadrial? Anyway ...

We don't have much evidence that Odium will stick with a duel of champions ... since he couldn't do it the way he wanted, he might as well change strategy. I wonder why did he accept that in the first place, Sanderson is very vague on the how would that help Odium but it was obviously something Odium was planning for (since he had Dalinar for years in "preparation"). I was thinking it could be due to Dalinar being a Bondsmith, but I feel that all started before anyone could know that for a fact, as Dalinar/Bondsmiths seems capable of joining worlds and that may be the door Odium is looking for. Also, no rules were established for the duel, and without a commited champion to fight for you, he may as well concede to the other champion. If he decides to continue on this path, I think Adolin is a more plausible choice, giving his past experience with the Thrill and his recent assassination of Sadeas. Renarin even having a corrupted spren, sounds like a lot more effort to bend his will.

Wow .... I haven't read The One Who Connects Hidden content before posting ... that sounds solid. And it even provide foundation to explain why the Skybreakers would be able to keep their bonds, since they are able to choose the law they abide to, and that it's okay the in-order fighting, as Szeth seems to fear that he and Nale will be in opposite sides in the conflicts to come.

One thing I rarely see being mentioned is that when they abandon their Oaths they are intentionally killing Sprens ... that sounds pretty awful for one doing this because of "past deeds". In my view, if you feel bad because you were an invader/destroyer-of-worlds/enslaver ... you would be better served killing yourself than killing your spren and living your life as a clean conscience after that. One also has to consider that the Heralds created the Orders, and they may have done it because of their past, as a way of not having any crazy dude bonding sprens with no moral high ground. That or the Heralds have some damaging back story. Stormfather also glimpses on the fact that Honor was weakening (maybe due to breaking the Oathpact) and the later generations of KR were affected by that. Also, what about the Skybreakers not abandoning their Oaths? That doesn't fit the narrative of feeling guilty, but their intention to murder any possible surgebinder fits in my theory below. My theory is that they wanted to kill the sprens ... as they may have believed that it was the only way to avoid new bonds, to avoid the True Desolation that would destroy the whole world.

I don't think Sanderson would go over all the effort of presenting Maya to just later drop this arc with no closure whatsoever. So, something is being set to happen here, and given that Adolin started the whole thing, he will probably be the one to end it. Given that, I don't see much of a way for him not to revive her, but this may not end well for him as mentioned, maybe the cost is too high and he ends up either dead or disabled. In any way, I don't see him becoming a Edgedancer though, since he doesn't seem fit to that Order and the Ideals they have (well ... he would have remembered Maya ... thinking this way, it would be a good match). The way I would most like to see this ending would be to the revival of dead spren to result in the creation of a new order of KR. Finally, I don't think we can only base future expectations on past events, as the Everstorm has never happen, Honor's perpendicularity was never opened after Honor's death and Singers are now bonding sprens like humans. With surprising events like this happening, one can expect the unexpected.

Thanks everybody, really warm welcomes here ... Although the cookies look pretty good, I'll skip this time ... not very hungry. BTW, thanks Archer for the explanations, I was feeling really lost.

Hi everyone, My name is Julio, I'm new to the whole Sanderson world, getting into it through the Stormlight Archive and having read also Elantris. I really like his world building and storytelling abilities, having started on the Mistborn as well and looking into others. I feel that he preserve some of the classical approach to fantasy, drinking from the fountain of Tolkien and others, diverging from the current GRRM more dark fantasy. I feel that sometimes it's too good vs evil, but he keeps surprising me with nice turns and deep philosophical and moral questions.