Valigus

Yeah that’s all fair tbh, but im almost done and I get why people would want this but if there is a sequel I am almsot 100% sure they will get together. In a solid half of Joel’s interactions with melody he things about how she is “quite pretty” or is a wearing a dress that is “quite fetching” and the book actively puts them in situations where they look like a couple and neither of them seem to rail against the suggestion. speaking personally when i or others I’ve seen have been in situations like that they will usually tail against the implication if anyone brings it up, people generally find it very uncomfortable I feel like to be implied to be in a relationship or attracted to someone who they aren’t (attracted to or in a relationship with). So in my mind that goes a long way. I could see her not reciprocating but Joel is attracted to her.

Yeah though I’d say solid chance I’m wrong about re-shephir specifically being from ashyn. However the idea that Ashlyn’s disease magic system was based on aethers seems very plausible. (Though I will say I think solid chance it just became spore-eaters from tress)

that is a little ambiguous but yeah I guess that means probably wrong. though I will say the way he hesitates makes it still possible as the prime aether that re-shephir was and the unmade may be more or less separate entities and the unmade is native to roshar. Cause he does specifics that they “count as being native”

So I recently finished tress and was listening to the podcast and I had a thought. If we believe as was discussed that potential the primal aethers are essentially cultivating a bunch of aether strains all over the cosmere, and we have re-shephir on roshar it is as proposed entirely plausible that this is a prime midnight aether from roshar or ashyn. however going from this I think it makes way more sense to be from ashyn. because as Brandon has said ashyn was supposed to have a magic system based around diseases that infect you and give you powers, given what we see in tress this sounds right In line with another very virulent strain of aether as we see in this book. so essentially the magic system on ashyn was an essentially viral strain of aether possibly similar to that seen in tress though potentially far more stable due to potentially a lot more water. Re-shepir is just a corrupted prime aesther from ashyn then. granted it’s also very possible that the ashyn magic system has been scrapped and possible that the idea was actually turned into the aether gestator we see in tress

I think lifeless should probably count for more militarily, they are relatively few but the logistical advantages are huge, not to mention they are probably the only military force in the cosmere shown to date capable of reasonably beating rosharan troops in morale and maybe in skill.

Yeah I also realized you addressed this right after I wrote it, but I m gonna replace that comment with some observations I’ve just had about rosharan military capability relative to tech and social ordering

One thing I do think is missing is that rosharan military capacity is in many cases well beyond that of other divided planets. overall the planet seems to about early renaissance or late medieval era in terms of technology lacking notably guns and with the very notable point in their favor regarding fabriels which all them some industrial/modern era capabilities without a lot of the disadvantages like pollution that usually come with it. this is based on their general tech and the fact that despite being largely feudal they have a relatively advanced economy and some sprawling urban centers. it also seems clear that based on the casualties and numbers seen in rosharan warfare we are talking an industrialized military machine in most cases, these aren’t feudal armies they are often professional armies with a state war machine at their back. for example- Azimir is a classical republic/empire which has similarly advanced logistical and economic capacity. Notably the vorin peoples(it’s like always the vorins) are capable of feats and military industry and power projection similar in scale to classical/napoleonic states of similar sizes. Specifically the alethi sent o be able to field an army similar in size to napoleonic France and mustered an army of about 130k for the shattered plains, which was basically about as much of a peer to peer conflict as anything the us has fought in the Middle East. Plus barring the minor pitched battles the war probably has strategically more in common at least to my eyes with counter-insurgency than a full scale war. plus even after being cut off from large portions of their kingdom they still are able to supply a significant number of coalition forces and each high prince seems to be able to muster about 30k or more professional trained soldiers. thats insane, the vorin states are decentralized feudal societies with the military capacity of an industrial napoleonic era state. tldr: vorin people’s punch far far above their weight in military capacity based on their tech level, economic level, and decentralized social structure. Now to the next point, the rating of armed forces seems to be to not count the huge quality advantage for roshar. of all the planets in the cosmere roshar has by far the oldest military history and the largest scale of military development, as well as the best troops bar none. as of Stormlight 5 the average rosharan human soldier faces a foe that is 1. Likely a demon in their religion, and 2. Is a 7-8 foot armored crab man, that can jump 30 feet. Warform singers are in my estimation objectively superior to koloss in nearly every way. rosharan troops have clearly exceptional morale, are largely professional soldiers and with millennia of military theory behind them. this is especially notable compared to Scadrial who has very few real professional experience troops(at least in the north) and roshar still seems to be on par in terms of macro scale with Nalthis and sel. but large numbers of rosharans troops come from militant warrior cultures, are professionals plus they are able to stand their ground against superior troops and win. But they can take their ground and defeat them due to their skill and that of their commanders.

First for the guns, I think gunpowder would be pretty easy, and the exact mechanism may not be soulcasting actual guns, it may be soul casting individual components and then assembling them though I think soulcasting guns would be possible. Also every firearms have almost no moving parts and I think a flintlock would be very easy to figure out for a fused with a little help and then assemble with soulcasting. im also gonna disagree with you on the matter of tactics and training, guns are much easier to train people with than many historical weapons, or at least get people to enough skill that they can impact the battlefield. Additionally musket tactics are sufficiently similar to the pike blocks common on roshar with pike and shot and infantry blocks in later warfare that the tactics shouldn’t be hard to transition to. Additionally it would likely constitute such an advantage that even used very inefficiently it would be impactful and my argument is more that he would have done this earlier and by now the fused would have tactics developed. plus I’d they did manage like a couple wary machine gun type weapons then they Ben deployed in the worst way possible it would likely be devastating. essentially I’d argue guns are in and of themselves (unless they were really bad like pre flintlock) such an advantage and the similarities to their current tactics would make the changes needed for an impact to be minimal. Overall I just think he needs to have a better reason to have never even tried to introduce guns. Now the warrior culture argument I admit I can’t dispute other than to say that I am interpreting him calling roshar s training ground in a more literal sense. This is probably the best counter argument to my theory and in all likelihood it is correct, however the myth of the tranquiline halls being present in the worlds most martial cultures where the thrill also usually hangs out influencing, and the thrill being a nearly perfect delivery mechanism for this plan is a lot of coincidences.

So while I may agree there the one thing that counters that is basically soul casting, all odium would have to do is explain guns to fused soul asters allow them to briefly tinker for a time and then they should be able to make large quantities of funs with enough investiture. Even if this couldn’t be made in super high quantities it should be possible in large enough quantities to turn the war. I’m not disagreeing that odium was trapped or that human wave tactics are eventually going to win him the war, im saying that his claim that roshar is a training ground as well as him not introducing advanced weapons seems to indicate to me that we must be missing something unless he is almost completely irrational. it doesn’t make sense to say “look at this place to train an army” get everyone there for training and then nuke them and repeat for 4000 years, that doesn’t train anyone except for the few immortals who are going mad anyway.

He could and in fact it would are sense to wipe their memories seeing as most likely died fighting odium and it would be difficult to get them to serve him. fair but my problems with that are outlined in the first post, his actions are simply not conducive to winning the war. Especially given that we know harmony was able to just introduce guns, and unless this was his goal it seems to me he would have simply done that before. in the end it just seems to me that without doing something like that to win the war, or harvesting the dead then rayse was far less cunning and far more irrational then we have suspected this far which I find unlikely given taravangian seems to have broadly signed off on the plan. basically my argument is that it rayse was somewhat rational and cunning his plans, stated goals and actions fail to make sense unless this is (a part of) his plan. As well as if this is his plan we have a perfect mechanism for achieving this in the form of the thrill, which does the right thing, to the right people, at the right time and in the right places at least within the events we know the thrill was involved in.

Fair but I think it’s pretty clear that odium doesn’t shares a ton with the fused, and seems to prefer humans. I also suspect that these spirits would be dormant, in fact one thought I had was the everstorm may be made of them but that’s seems weird. that’s valid but if it’s true then the thrill has essentially severed no purpose in all this time since it’s only real benefit to odium is opening people up to his influence which doesn’t help if he doesn’t then use them like at thaylen field. yeah shades may be a good comparison though I do imagine odium has some plan to give them physical form.

Unsure on that one I mean returned as an example of much weaker cognitive shadows though it is possible odium plans to staple them to singer bodies or some kind of like robots though that’s a little far fetched. generally I have no specifics I’m just noticing that given Odium’s resources, goals plans and actions there seems to be a large gap in our picture of what’s going on that this mostly fills. it’s also possible even likely that other unmade are in on this as many are connected to death but who they are recruiting and why would be far less clear and I’m not quite sure how that would fit into Odium’s plan compared with the army part

I’m not sure they are fused like, I think they are likely to be very very weak cognitive shadows with one life, think more returned less fused. At least that’s what I’m imagining I don’t think odium would be willing to invest himself more than that. the best and obvious comparison is Valhalla whose warriors are undead and somewhat powered up but on second death it’s final.

Ok so the theory that the tranquiline halls are somehow real has been going around for a bit on the forums, and I like most people mostly dismissed it as extremely unlikely to be the case, however in light of autonomy’s actions within the lost metal it strikes me that maybe the theory should not be dismissed and I will outline a few reasons for this as well as I think the most logical version of theory goes. 1. Odium’s actions on roshar have been entirely non-conducive to his stated good which are a. Killing shards- it seems like once the fused were made odium had clearly given up on easily or quickly splintering honor or cultivation, clearly this was still on the table but his later stated plans seem to indicate that his main plan had switched from just running around and splintering shards quickly to his cosmere army plan. b. Winning the war- it also further strikes me that in light of how autonomy has just given her people all this advanced technology that Odium’s actions have not been helpful in terms of winning the war at all. If quick victory was what he truly wanted all he would need to do is introduce his forces to guns, even if the resources were somewhat problematic on roshar soulcasting renders that a non-issue. c. Training an army- from here it also seems like Odium’s plan to train an army is also incredibly stupid, because it seems as if without the desolation’s roshar would have nearly 7000 years of advanced civilization, they would be so far ahead of other civilizations it wouldn’t even be fair. now I think it’s fair to say that maybe he expected a quick war, but I think after the first desolation it should’ve become clear that killing 9/10 people on the planet every desolation wouldn’t get you an army, and yet he seemed pretty confident in this plan and taravangian seemingly approved. furthermore Odium’s plan just doesn’t seem to make sense because of those level of casualties, trained soldiers do not contribute to your army if they are dead. I will also grant that now it seems like Odium’s goal has become to just win outright, but I think that may be because it’s gone on longer than he would have liked and he needs it to end. but ultimately there are very few ways in which Odium’s plan can somehow manage to bypass these issues unless his goal was not to own the war but to draw it out as long as possible and the army he trained was made of the dead form the 7000 years of war and only now has he decided it’s time to end it after a far too lengthy gap(because odium was gonna win, if taln hadn’t done his thing). 2. granted all of this does not point to the tranquiline halls and Odium’s undead army so let me explain why I think that is a logical explanation for these discrepancies. my main point here rests on one question- what does the thrill do for odium? the thrill 1. Enhances the combat abilities of the afflicted, and 2. Opens them up to Odium’s influence. but based on what we’ve seen the first seems to hep odium only minimally and the second doesn’t seem to allow him to control them only to influence them and so doesn’t seem to have proved that helpful. however the things that are important here are 1. Where does the thrill manifest and 2. How do shards get the ability to go influence people. the answer to 1 is obvious alethkar and vedenar highly militant vorin nations, the ones with the myth of the tranquiline halls in the first place and the ones with the best most elite militaries. The answer to 2 is also fairly straightforward, by investing people. this leads to the conclusion that what the thrills actual purpose is, it’s to invest an army or the best warriors on roshar as they die and send them to Odium’s undead army. while this is still pretty crackpot, autonomies actions combined with the assumption that odium is not a total idiot and generally has a reason for the things he does/makes lead me to think that it may actually be quite plausible even likely.

So we know that there are many people in the cosmere who know a regrets deal about investiture, the prime people in question being the five scholars, kryss, hoid, rosharan scholars, and rosharan immortals. However I was wondering and I don’t think anyone else has asked this question, but given how much more some people know about the cosmere than rosharans(who are so far very advanced as a people in knowledge of investiture and shards of not the cosmere as a whole)(maybe cosmere literate as opposed to knowledgeable) have any of these notable people previously made this discovery, and if so have they kept it under wraps? I lean onto the idea that it’s been kept under wraps, because none of these individuals have any knowledge of anti-investiture yet. I lean on the idea personally that they would have no knowledge and that this is a brand new discovery.

That’s kind of what I was getting at though not in those words and maybe not that strong. But yeah I think Kaladin may have absorbed tanavast a cognitive shadow and that explains a lot of weirdness.

This theory is essentially predicated on three main premises 1. that tanavasts cognitive shadow was while a part of the storm father in some measure distinct from his main consciousness. 2. That tanavast’s cognitive shadow was what spoke to facials and is responsible for the stormfathers weird behavior. 3. That the stormfather is no longer combined with tanavasts cognitive shadow for these premises the second is a solid enough theory on its own, though Ishar is perhaps a more likely candidate, i personally find that given the supposed recency of his reclaiming an honor blade that he is unlikely to have been able to co-opt the stormfather. the third essentially comes from if the second premise is true then there must be a reason for why we have not seen tanavasts cognitive shadow again, and I will provide an explanation of where it went in a moment. So accepting what I’ve said is true, where did the cognitive shadow go. I think that kaladin absorbed the cognitive shadow of tanavast during the first book. This is a theory I’ve seen elsewhere though I couldn’t find the post, but in way of kings when kaladin is tied up in the storm he claims to feel as it something is forcing it’s way inside him. Shortly after kaladin begins to be referred to as “son of tanavast” which we know is important. This would also explain the change in the stormfathers behavior we see. this is definitely not one of my better put together theories but I just wanted to write it down for now.

I believe that the storm faker is actually the cognitive shadow of tanavast, the seemingly much stronger definition of personality and the form made of air are very reminiscent of the shadow of leras in mistborn and explains the weird way he is behaving.

That’s fair, my point isn’t that he can win but that we need to be aware that future develops with kaladin specifically could change the outcome of this fight.

But my point is kaladin is not a normal person, I agree normally he cannot but we don’t know the extent of whatever being the “son of tanavast” does and he also has power armor on top of superhuman combat feats, it is entirely possible that the full extent of his weird powers could allow him to win is my point.

He actively displayed this ability in the fight in WoR where he is surrounded by the wind and claims to be able to have dodged as well with his eyes closed. Ishar later displays a similar ability, it appears to be functionally similar to atium.

The thing with kaladin is he has managed to defeat a lot of enemies he really should not be able to and has a lot of abilities that we do not understand, including an ability that appears to be quite comparable to atium he displays most prominently in the due in WoR.

Pretty much no 4th ideal radiant besides a bondsmith and probably kaladin, but kaladin and whatever is going on with him is comparable to vin in terms of bypassing the normal scaling

I maintain and have maintained since I read the book that they are fused, they have glowing red eyes are mistaken for kandra and have no regard for their own lives

That is quite probably what I mean yeah, it’s been a long time since I read oathbringer