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Hello! I've been trying to work out the timeline for the first events we know that happened in Roshar. We know the Singers "betrayed" the Spren and I am extremely curious! I don't think we have clues about what happened, but this is what we know: 1 - Roshar was inhabited by Singers and the shards Honour and Cultivation 2 - Humans arrive on Roshar after destroying their original planed with surgebinding. Ishar was a bondsmith and the one able to transport the people Odium came with them to Roshar Questions: how did investiture work in Ashyn? Via Honorblades? Did the Honorblades come from Ashyn? If so, why honor blades? 3 - Once the humans arrive, the Singers give then Shinnovar. 4 - We know eventually 2 things happen: Humans start conquering other regions War with the Singers, they betray the spren and loose their connection to them. Is this when the Fused and Unmade show up? 5 - The oath pact is made, the Heralds vanish Odium. Question: what happens with the singers between Desolations (before the false Desolation and imprisonment of BAM)? 6 - Spren imitate the honor blades and give surges to humans. Question: surges are based on Roshar´s surges, were Ashyn ´s the same? Or maybe, the Honorblades and Surges were created after humans came to Roshar... I think this makes more sense. 7 - The cycle of Desolations begin. Lets discuss if this timeline is correct (I'm probably forgetting something!) and what may have happened to make the Singers side with Odium.

I can’t get this idea out of my head, and I haven’t been able to find folks talking about it, so I thought I’d put it to the hive mind. If this has been debunked already or is being discussed elsewhere please let me know. Also, strap in, because this gets long and rambling. Possibly mad. Theory: I think the Unmade are the Dawncities (Dawnspren) In the same way the Sibling is Urithiru. I think that Odium unmade the Dawncity spren, most likely with their consent, by offering them more freedom in the physical realm, but at a cost he played down. And the Singers either helped Odium accomplish this, or choose to attune his Rhythms anyway after seeing it happen, which I believe most other Spren would see as horrifying and unforgivable. So reasons I think this: Brandon’s world building, and foreshadowing are masterful. And anytime we get big exposition dumps and insight into the structure of a shardworld or the Cosmere (pretty much all of Oathbringer and RoW) he’s usually setting up mechanics for later stories and reveals. So we learn in RoW: The Shards are Sound. They’re vibrational energy that can be perceived as a Tone as well as light (Iridescent Tones anyone?) People can blend those tones to create new harmonious or dissonant tones/light, and Shards can blend their tones/light to shape the stone of Roshar and with Intent create a massive sapient spren. Those spren can be Unmade. Exactly like we see Raboniel doing to the sibling, but Odium would be doing this at a much greater scale, and more quickly. Add to that to all the comparisons between Urithiru and Kholinar’s strata in Oathbringer. So here’s some wild speculation: Before the Shattering, Adonalsium creates the Rosharan system, and the planet of Roshar. He is God, and as God created an ineffable and infinite universe. But maybe, the part of Adonalsium that is sentient and personal, wanted to create an Eden. A place of perfect harmony and symbiosis where the perfect tones of Adonalsium ring through the cosmere. Regardless, he makes the system and the planet, and it is the Garden of Eden, for crabs. As part of this elegant and divine ecological system Adonalsium uses his pure tones to shape the Dawncities, which is why they look like cymatic patterns, and in that shaping gives the Dawncities sentience and effectively creates the first spren. Or maybe creates it all simultaneously, because he’s God. So crab folks have a place to live, the continent itself talks to them and cares for them (there has to be a spren of Roshar, the closest real world analog I can find is Roshii, Japanese for old teacher. And often associated with a Turtle. Shelled creature. That cannot be a coincidence when the other two planets are called Ashyn and Braize- the burnt and the burning, respectively.) Tangent aside, these folk are happy as clams. They’re singing to their stones, and the stones are singing back. All is peaceful, and harmonious and in perfect symbiotic stasis. And probably so, so, boring. As Raboniel tells us, and shows us with her actions, the Singers are more inclined to work within natural systems, than push the boundaries of the systems. Enter Hoid, and/or the 16 original vessels, I think as the Cosmere developed, life found ways to travel and eventually stumbled upon this idyllic crab world and Hoid got to dance with a Dawnsinger. (Although this could definitely have happened post shattering) I think that their visits to Roshar may have seeded the jealousy and ambition that led to the shattering So Hoid and the vessels leave, shatter Adonalsium, scoop up some god bits and ascend to limited divinity, hoping to go make they’re own little paradises. Then they realize, oh damn, we did not understand what we were getting into. They agree to go their separate ways, and play with their own toys in their own rooms. Hoid gets no toys. Honor and Cultivation make their way back to Roshar, because it calls to their respective Intents, and set up shop. But it’s chugging right along because it was designed by God to be a perpetual investiture machine, and doesn’t really require him to be “present”. Honor and Cultivation start experimenting and copying what Adonalsium did with the original spren(Dawncities), and from this we get the Stormfather, the Nightwatcher, and the True Spren. Enter Odium. He’s been wandering around the Cosmere, splintering shards, like one does. Sees Honor and Cultivation and says: I am going to break their toys, and then break them. He enters the system, sets up shop on Ashyn, and either creates human life there, or he appropriates humans that settled there pre or post shattering. Odium pushes these humans’ passions to such an extent that they break their planet. Honor and Cultivation allow refugees to come to Roshar, and set up a nice ecological reserve for them, they just need to follow some rules. The Serpent is in the Garden. I think allowing the humans onto Roshar, gave Odium the foothold he needed to work around Honor and Cultivation. Probably through some Connection mumbo-jumbo. Because it definitely allowed Odium to become a pure Tone of Roshar, which I don’t think he was entirely just being in the Rosharan system. Odium becoming a pure tone that the Singers could hear would definitely influence their feelings about him and would allow him to spread his promises and suggestions, like the proverbial serpent from Genesis. And convincing 9 of the most powerful spren on the planet; the Dawncities themselves, to embrace their passions and take his light/tone, would be very thematically consistent with Odiums Intent. (Also don’t think the similarities between the Unmade and the Nazghul are coincidence. 9 unmade, 9 nine rings of temptation, 9 kings, come on.) So Odium corrupts and unmakes the Unmade, and probably creates the Fused at the same time with similar promises. Then he pushes those humans still loyal to him to start a war. Honor, Cultivation, and most of the spren, see this as a horrific betrayal. They swear off the Singers and convince those humans disillusioned with Odium to fight against him for the good of the planet. Honor copies Odiums idea with the Unmade but tweaks it a bit to create the Heralds. Ishar uses his knowledge of Connections to create the Oathpact. Which binds Odium to Braize, and probably stops him from being able to unmake any more spren, or make more Fused. But the Heralds constantly bending/breaking their oaths while intrinsically bonded to the god of Oaths create the opening needed to splinter Honor. Similar to what Odium says to Dalinar when they’re hashing out the details for the contest of champions. Whew, ok. Done now. Timeline may be a bit wonky, but I think it fits.

So, we learn from Leshwi that the ancient Singers apparently did something to anger the spren, current-day spren seem to be much more fine with the Singers, with such a long gap without Desolations and the memory of the Recreance, plus the fact that most of the older spren became Deadeyes during the Recreance. Moving over to the Sibling, they are not fine with fabrials, even though the modern-day spren are fine with it, as fabrials employ non-sapient spren. Fabrials employ gemstones to capture spren... which is also what the Singers do to change their Forms, they capture spren within their Gemhearts. We've seen other creatures with Gemhearts before in the series, notably we've seen the process of Gemheart extraction when Eshonai pulls the Gemheart out of a Chasmfiend. Chasmfiends use spren bonds with Mandra or Luckspren so that they are not crushed by their own weight. These spren are seen flitting around Chasmfiends as well as other Greatshells like the Tai-Na [minor Dawnshard spoilers] We also see them around Skyeels, iirc, who probably use their bond with them to fly. Similarly, Musicspren seem to flit around the Ryshadium who might be in a bond of some kind with them. Though Ryshadium don't have Gemhearts. Spren can be captured in gems the same as Lights because they are made of Investiture. Is the purpose of Gemhearts really to capture spren? Because it would seem you can bond spren without trapping them in Gemhearts. They are attracted to natural phenomena and emotions... and the Rhythms. We saw the Dawnsingers seemingly Stoneshaping by using the Rhythms. We saw Lifespren responding to the Rhythms. Spren, like the Investiture they are made of, respond to the Rhythms. We saw other creatures that have gemhearts and need spren bonds, and they didn't seem to trap spren within their gemhearts. The spren were flitting about freely with them. They extract gemhearts from the Chasmfiends but did they ever find a Luckspren trapped within their Gemheart? We saw Eshonai extract a Gemheart from a Chasmfiend but there was no spren within it. (Would the spren be free upon the creature being killed or only if the gem itself is cracked?) What if the Dawnsingers originally used their Gemhearts to store Light? What if the crime that the ancient Singers committed against the spren which angered them was this? Trapping spren within their gemhearts to change their Forms.

One of things that has always bothered me Is why none of the Singers had ever bonded a non void spren before . Venli is the first to ever do so . Even she thought it was not possible . So on a reread of WoR I found the Song of Spren . The song seems to contradict itself . At first it says that Singers can’t provide what men can provide . Comparing their bond to broth and humans bond as meat . Making me believe that the spren won’t gain much intelligence . Later it says this was promised in days passed. So is a Nahel bond possible or not ? I know Venli has one . But is it that Venli spren is the only type that can do it , and is that why it’s never worked before ? I’m sure the answer is in this song . So can some of you tell me what you think it means

A random thought: Could Cultivation's vessel's name be Dawn as in Dawn's Shadow, Dawnshards, Dawnsingers? Don't have time to think about it any more as I'm at work. It just crossed my mind. Please discuss ;-)

Spoilers for OB.

So I was thinking about the Dawnsingers and I realized what they must have been; The Listeners before the arrival of Odium. When (the majority of) humans fled Ashyn after it was scorched and became refugees on Roshar (the origin of the Vorin myth about being driven out of the Tranquiline halls) the Listeners were already there as well as Honor and Cultivation. Odium was not yet on Roshar. When humans were struggling and scraping to survive in this new storm-blasted lands the Listeners would have helped them. Odium must have arrived and either struct a bargain with or corrupted the listeners to make them the Voidbringers. The Dawnchant was probably their language (maybe still their language) and the Dawncities may have been the cities they inhabited that the humans were welcomed into. At the dawn of humanity on Roshar, the people who sang were helpful to humans; the Dawnsingers. I couldn't find a thread on this, sorry if it's already widely known.

Long time troller, rare poster here. Just read the prologue posted here for Oathbringer, and had some thoughts I haven't seen mentioned. The two black spheres that Gavilar mentions (and shows one to Eshonai), let's assume that these spheres are holding 2 of the Unmade, holding the "Parshendi gods" Eshonai is so fearful of. . Regarding dawnshards, Tanavast mentions in one of his visions to Dalinar that "without the Dawnshards, you're doomed". What if these spheres are two of the lost Dawnshards, the purpose of which was to trap the Unmade ("known to bind any creature voidish or mortal"), which is part of the ending of a desolation? Other posters here seem to think that the dawnshards are like shardblades, and while I agree that each contains large amounts of investiture that doesn't mean that this would take on the same form. I also assume that since we're in Roshar that there are 10 Dawnshards, and probably 9 unmade (since 9 is the number of Odium), which leaves one dawnshard to spare for purposes of ending the desolations. Also, has anyone thought that perhaps the Dawnsingers were the original "god spren" that the 9 Splinters of Odium corrupted into the Unmade? If this has any merit to it, could there be one dawnsinger left that remains uncorrupted? Maybe these are all just crazy theories. I'll leave to the more versed on this board to chime in

Hi everyone. I am new here so tell me if this theory has been proposed before I am reposting this from general Cosmere theories because I didn't realize it should go here. A couple WoB's: These are what first got me thinking that Honorblades might be some kind of spren. Kabsal refers to the Dawnsingers as spren who brought healing. So, Dawnsingers seem like a likely choice for honorblade-spren because: We know very little about them, so they could be virtually anything. Dawnsingers are probably powerful, because they are probably related to Dawnshards, which Honor views as vital against Odium. Heralds seem too weak- Nalan had a hard time catching Lift, an Edgedancer who had only sworn three oaths. They are seen as godlike figures and it would be a little dissapointing for these demigods to be about as powerful as a KR. I think that Nalan with his blade is like a former KR using a dead shardblade, only more powerful because it's a Herald and Honorblade. The parallel between the Recreance and the Heralds abandoning their oaths: they both left their weapons behind for no apparent reason. Unless something to do with the previous bond stopped them from using them right then. Of course, Nalan used his blade in Edgedancer, so this might be false or somehow wear off over time. I think that Kaladin said his father believed in the Almighty because the Heralds were said to have taught healing. This might just have been Vedel, Herald of Healing, but I will have to look at the exact quote to know for sure. I don't have the ebook copy so this will likely take awhile. Anyone who could give me this quote would be greatly appreciated. What do you think?

What were they? And what is their relationship to the Dawnshards? I believe they may be the Knight Radiant Spren, but the 'singer' part might imply listeners. Conclusion: I have no idea what the Dawnsingers or Dawnshards were.

So we have a pretty good idea of the Heralds and the Honorblades now, but what information do we have of the Dawnsingers and Dawnshards? What were they? My best guess is that they're actually Shardbearers that do manual labor rather than fight Voidbringers. I think the Dawnsingers were servants of Honor, like the Heralds, but they used their Dawnshards (Shardtools, maybe?) to help the general populace. If I remember correctly, the Palanaeum in Kharbranth was reportedly built by the Dawnsingers. This would make sense, then. Does anyone else have other theories or information that I missed?

Spoilered for length. TL;DR version is that Dalinars biases are causing him to interpret the visions incorrectly, and this is making Bad Things happen. Also Alodin killing Sadeas was a really good idea, And Kaladins Wangst could have been avoided if he had gone in a slightly different direction. Here is an excerpt...

This is the first thread I’ve started and I haven’t read every other thread so I pre-apologize if any of this has been discussed or disproven elsewhere. I typed this up and it was pretty long so I'm using spoilers to hide my explanations for some points to give you the option of the short or long version. 1. Shardblades mimick Honor Blades, and Shardplate mimicks Dawnshards. 2. Cultivation's name is Dawn or some variation thereof. 3. The Parshendi call themselves listeners, they listen to a lot of songs it would make sense if they were "listening" to Dawnsingers. 4. Parshendi are of Cultivation, Jasnah is wrong about the voidbringers. 5. The WOK endpage with the non-KR surgebinding chart in my opinion is a Formbinding chart. Cultivation is a logical guess for the woman around the edges (there is a thread on this but I don’t have the link.) A. The following quote from WOK really stood out to me on my re-read from the chapter where bridge four first goes in the chasms and Kaldin is looking at a Parshendi knife B. The Glyphs for KR orders are like hilts to the Honorblades. I think that the Glyphs that correspond to orders on the second chart look like they could be made into stylized decorations for helms on shardplate. C. This is my poor drawing example, to try and visualize what I mean for A and B above using examples of the chart's glyphs to show a shardplate figure with wings and they glyphs as part of a helm. D. I apologize for my poor sourcing I really need to make a list but I read in another thread that Brandon said one of the ways of accessing the magic system has a connection to Fabrials. Fabrials work by trapping spren inside a mechanical device, Listeners work by trapping spren inside a living organism… connection made. Wrapping it up, I promise, so how does this all connect the Dawnsingers/shards to the Parshendi/Listeners. My current theory is that the Dawnshards where a mechanism by which the Parshendi/Listeners could be forced into forms and controlled. So someone wearing/possessing a dawnshard direct the movements/control all the Listeners for example in stormform, most likely using a song. This would mean Listeners weren't free and I could understand that if the Dawnsingers or Dawnshards came back there would be no more freedom for the Parshendi/Listeners. In one of Dalinar’s visions, Honor mentions not doing well without the Dawnshards. If Gavilar grabbed onto this idea rather than the idea of refounding the knights radiant he might have found a dawnshard (small mysterious bead/rock anyone). Gavilar tells the Parshendi his intention to bring back Dawnshards and Dawnsingers. They understand the import and decide to assasinate him as bringing back the Dawnsingers would mean a loss of freedom. We know that Plate can be regrown, so what if the bead/rock Gavilar gave Szeth is the seed of a Dawnshard that would become a magnificent set of Plate if fed enough stormlight? A lot of this is probably wrong but I’d love to hear thoughts form others.

So a few months ago lunarubato over on tumblr posted a theory, and although I disagreed with it, it did spark a theory of my own and I'm finally sharing it with y'all. Thesis: The Dawnsingers are the spren that grant surgebinding abilities through the Nahel Bond. Article One: What are the Dawnsingers? We don't really know, due to lack of information. The following, from Chapter 45, is one of the only bits we have: Now I must admit, I was always rather skeptical about them being spren, because I thought Rosharans might just refer to beings they don't really understand as "spren" even if that's not really what they are. But now I am arguing that they are spren, specifically spren who are Splinters of Honor and/or Cultivation. Personally, I think it would make a lot of sense for the two of them to create beings to act as "intermediaries" so-to-speak, beings that can interact with humans on their own level. Where the Heralds take care of things during the Desolations, these spren would take care of things between Desolations. Article Two: Granting Surgebinding Part of my narrative for this theory is that as the Desolations the Dawnsingers saw how the Heralds were not enough, that humanity was losing. And so they started to Nahel bond "worthy" individuals, granting them surgebinding abilities. Part of this comes from this bit. Which unfortunately is somewhat apocryphal. Basically it mentions that the radiants were a surprise to Honor, and that the spren formed them in the same way he formed the Heralds. (On a side note, so perhaps the heralds are Nahel bonded to the shards themselves in some way?) This could all be just rampant theorycrafting, but I think it holds water. What do you all think? Edit (1): Here is the quote in question about the Radiants being a surprise, from Chapter 4 of Words of Radiance: So I'm not really sure how I want to interpret this quote. I could definitely see it supporting my above theory though. Or perhaps the theory I mention in post 4 about how the spren used The Way of Kings as a model to form the Radiant Orders, and that that is why Honor was surprised. Really, either one would work with the main part of this Theory.