Part of the One

Here's one - creating Nightblood was supposed to be an attempt at creating a shardblade with Endowment's investiture. But instead of trying to animate any old piece of metal, they used an actual, dead shardblade they got from Roshar, and woke it up into kind of a Frankenstein's monster (lifeless spren?). My money would be on an Ashspren, because Division seems like Nightblood's thing. To be clear, not an abandoned spren, but one they tried to take back to Nalthis which caused it to die, which maybe they didn'tknowwould happen. So Shashara tried to fix it... I haven't read anything that would specifically disprove this even though there's a good chance it's out there.

I definitely think that the splintering of Honor, the weakening of the Oathpact, and the Heralds' madness is all related. My theory is that the Heralds betraying the spirit of their oath (though not tge letter of it) led to the splintering of Honor, but the events could have been in reverse too where Honor's death weakened the pact and done something to their minds.

I think this is definitely a likely point, that the Oathpact was changed and the bonds were all transferred to Taln. I was also wondering if this was a catalyst that might have led to the splintering of Honor. Not quite a broken oath, but enough of a deviation that it allowed Odium an opening, or that the shift took an even greater part of Honor's power to bind Odium and so left him weaker like Preservation in MB. The timeline would indicate that Honor was dying during the time of the false desolation, which is after the Heralds abandoned Taln.

For the guy Lift found - Mraize was also after his aviar. In fact I think his aviar was trying to hunt it, which would imply that he was targeted. And further, after he dies, someone stole his shardplate, which seems like a GB thing even more so as they're all about collecting invested items.

I'm going team Endowment. I think she's got a big part to play in how all this will go down, between Vasher's and the creation of Nightblood which obviously has major cosmere implications. Speaking of Vasher's purpose for being Returned, the name Warbreaker might still have a foreshadowed meaning in the future, like finding a way to stop an interplanetary war.

I'm actually not sure about this. Bronze allows allomancers to feel a pulse (rhythm) of investiture being used. Vin can even tell the difference between different types of metal being burned eventually. To me it suggests that this is a Cosmere wide phenomenon, though you would need the right combination of magics and equipment to be able to both detect and duplicate the creation of different types of anti-Investiture the way Navani has. Though Gavilar's ability to create it before means there might be still other ways of creating anti-light that we don't know about yet.

If the smoke that bleeds off of NB is converted Ruin investiture (cool idea btw) that opens up some other interesting possibilities. Would there be a way to freeze/coalesce that investiture into Atium? And speaking anti investiture, if you had a source of anti-Ruin, you could destroy whoever was holding NB in the physical realm by bring it close and letting them mix. In a gem? The way it eats/bleeds the investiture it would be like setting off a nuke probably.

I have a couple of thoughts on this. Firstly, humans look different when they are physically in the CR, vs when they can be seen from there but are still in the physical realm. So this means a couple possibilities: -Spren aren't physically transported to the CR when their radiants go there, but are merely seen in their cognitive aspect once the radiants cross over. Or -Spren do look different when they cross over because their cognitive entities, and this is how they perceive themselves. However, something about the box blocks the cognitive aspect of the seon, and so it remains in physical form when being transported over to the CR. I tend to think this second one is closer to the truth, which potentially means that the metal in the box somehow blocks connection. If the Ghostbloods knew what this was made of, it might be exactly what they need to transport a cognitive shadow offworld. Though it's possible that severing that connection could have similar issues to trapping a Herald in a gemstone and they would just kind of dissipate in transport.

I'm definitely in agreement that it's probably Autonomy, for these and other reasons. But I can't deny that this was a new and intriguing idea @Attentea proposed. And half the fun with the Cosmere is theorizing wacky stuff like this in lieu of any real knowledge.

Some interesting, if conflicting info on the Coppermind related to this. First, Raysium and Trellium do not appear physically the same: Raysium is a bright golden metal, so light it is almost white. Trellium is a silvery metal with a red cast to it, and dark red spots similar to rust. But also interesting to note, there are similar known properties of the two metals: Raysium can naturally conduct Investiture, drawing it in from any source. This applies to all of the Lights, but also to spren - allowing someone to transfer spren between gemstones, including spren halves produced during the creation of pairing fabrial. Trellium can steal Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities and grant them to kandra. Presumably its Hemalurgic ability is similar to that of Atium, allowing the transfer of any ability with somewhat variable success depending on the binding point. One can conduct investiture and cognitive entities, and the other, through hemalurgy, can transfer an individual's connection to investiture. Presumably it could also be used to spike out a nahel bond from a radiant in the same way, feasibly granting anyone with the right knowledge the same capability in that regard as Ishar and his ability to steal bonds. Or Dalinar as an unchained Bondsmith under Odium's direction. This leaves open the possibility that Trellium is an alloy, perhaps of Raysium, with an existing metal or another god metal. Also (and I can't find the citation for this), Brandon has said that a new vessel carrying a shard could, over time, produce a god metal with different properties. It's possible that with T as the new vessel that after some time (not sure if MB era 2 is long enough after his ascension) that this could be the case.

Another concept: could the Iri use one their globes full of anti-Selish investiture to try to make the CR there less dangerous? And if they screwed up and blew it up instead... Though I doubt they'd be able gather enough anti-Investiture to make a dent in the problem there, they could still make a spectacular CR explosion

I've been lurking around here a while, but with all the juicy stuff that came with RoW felt like I finally had to make a post and contribute. I had some thoughts about the potential to seriously weaponize anti-investiture that could have devestaconsequences for both Roshar and the greater Cosmere. I understand that by the end, El is already testing a spren-killing weapon, but that's not what I wanted to talk about here. Rather, this is about the possibility of intentionally making bombs like the one that Navani's scholars accidentally set off. This fairly explosive reaction that was enough to turn a couple of people to chunks was set off by a small gemstone's worth of anti-Voidlight. How much bigger could an explosion exponentially be using something like a gemheart, or even a perfect gem? If a Fused could sneak into the vault in Lasting Integrity where they store the Stormlight, would they be able to make an explosion capable of leveling the fortress itself? I'm not sure that it could permanently damage the spren in the CR, but at the very least it would destroy their reserves of light. I can imagine in the future making bombs out of two gemstones, one infused with storm/void/lifelight, and the other with it's opposite, with a trigger switch of Raysium that could be flipped to connect the 2 and set off the detonation with a remote fabrial. For that matter, what would happen if you blew up a conjoined ruby? Would it's opposite detonate as well? That takes this from more of a suicide bomb Fused potential to being able to assassinate someone from the other end of a spanreed, which has some terrifying consequences. Other horrifying ideas: could you infuse anti-Towerlight into the Sibling and detonate the mountainside of Urithiru like an atomic bomb? Could you have an anti-Stormlight sphere that could blow up a Bondsmith trying to open a perpendicularity? It also raises the question of analogous anti-Investiture for other shards, and how that would work. Let me know what you think!