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Totally legit Oathbringer Post Credits Scene: Kaladin sat in his barrack room alone, studying a folio on military tactics. After finally obtaining married housing for Rock and his family, Kaladin had moved back into his old rooms. Out of the corner of his eyes, Kaladin noticed a twisting figure slip under his door and slide across the room. It finally halted, sitting on the border between Jah Keved and Alethkar, buzzing in his bizarre rhythms. “Umm…Pattern?” “Yes?” “Did you…need something?” “No. Shallan kicked me out. She said to come bother you.” “Why…?” Oh. Sighing, Kaladin returned to his folio. Or tried to. Pattern sitting on his folio was inconvenient for studying. And for other things, apparently. “Kaladin?” “Hmm” “What is—“ “No. Just no.” … … … “No can be just?” Kaladin groaned.

Very quick theory: When we first see Pattern he is appearing on things, then disappearing when Shallan looks at him. He ceases to do this when Shallan draws (aka measures) him. Did Shallan inadvertently lock Pattern's ability to become invisible (like other Radiant Spren) by drawing him, or is this inability a thing of Cryptics in general? What do you guys think?

In Chapter 17 of Words of Radiance, Shallan is trying to figure out how to use her Lightweaving. She asks Pattern, "So, how do I make it work?" He replies, "Perhaps eat it?" Shallan, of course, finds this a bit ridiculous, but I think she'd be surprised how far some of the other denizens of the Cosmere go to use their powers.

I have a theory that may might need some scrutiny. The Soulcaster Shallan has in The Way of Kings was cut, and it stopped working. What if the soul casting fabrials are just prisons that hold a Spren capable of soul casting? Maybe I am overthinking, but it seems to me that all Soul Casters would need to contain some form of intelligence that could exchange Stormlight in Shadesmar to effect an object's change into one of the ten essences. Shallan is an intelligent human that could not convince a stick that it wanted to be fire, so we know that the objects can be willful, if not stubborn. Either there exists some trick to force a soulcasting, or an intelligence must present an argument to convince the object to change. If this is true, a Lightweaver's Cryptic could potentially be bound into a soulcaster for others to use, without needing to have a bond. Soulcaster Fabrials are a delicate pattern of chains and gemstones. I imagine them as a web of delicate lines with gemstones interspersed. What if they function as a web and hold a spren in between the cognitive and physical realm? Shardblades are the remnants of a broken bond and a formerly bound spren in some form of agony, which is why those sensitive to a bond can't touch blades without hearing the screams. It does not seem unlikely that Soulcasters are similarly remains of Spren, but in a more active capacity. If this is true, then cutting the soul caster might free an imprisoned spren. We are told that Shallan did not attempt to summon Pattern as a blade after the death of her mother, due primarily to that trauma. She Imagines that the blade is imprisoned in the safe in her father's study. But this does not explain fully why the Cryptic was never visible to her until the events in The Way of Kings. (Assuming that the pattern she is looking at on the ceiling of her quarters before she first heard the "What are you?" question was actually the Cryptic.) Why did Pattern seemingly not appear to a young Shallan after the death of her mother as she was growing up? It's possible she just wished him to leave her alone, but then why dld he come back later? Could there be a procedure that would have allowed her father to bind Pattern and create a Soulcaster fabrial? If the Ghostbloods knew of an ancient secret like this, and found that the Davar daughter had a bonded spren, possibly because her mother talked about her child's supernatural nature while looking for a "cure", it does not seem impossible that they might offer Brightlord Davar the method, and use of the resulting fabrial, in exchange for his allegiance. Perhaps a young Shallan would rationalize an event like removing her bonded spren as her father taking her blade, and putting it away in a safe. It always seemed incongruous to me that Lin Davar, portrayed as an ambitious man who would do almost anything to get a stronger position, did not attempt to gain anything from his daughter having a shard blade. I realize that the Radiants were looked at with scorn, and that it is possible he did not want his House tainted by their memory, but would he have not looked into how the shard blades of the past were separated from their owners originally? It would have solved multiple problems at once. Would questions along these lines eventually lead him to the Ghostbloods? If he somehow took advantage of his daughter after finding out she was bonding a Cryptic, and manipulated events so that he could get a soul caster made from the Spren, that would seem to me to be more in keeping with his character. Pattern lost his memories at the time of Brightness Davar's death, possibly because his bond with Shallan was weakened by her wanting nothing to do with him, and, at the same time, Shallan went mute and became antisocial, presumably due to guilt. I propose that Brightlord Davar somehow took Shallan's spren after the death of his wife, and used knowledge gained from the Ghostbloods to imprison Pattern and create a fabrial for exploitation. I also think that the forced breaking of the bond was what damaged Shallan's young mind and fractured Pattern's memories. Are there any holes in this theory that I am overlooking?

Greetings and Salutations. I'm new to the forums (obviously), so this is my first post. Feel free to ignore this, I just needed to say it someone who would understand my vision, and my friends are not yet Followers of the great Sanderson... So I'm listening to Warbreaker, yet again, and was struck with inspiration for a GREAT kids' cartoon: Imagine Syl, Pattern and Nightblood (and their bond mates, as supporting characters) fighting to save Roshar from the Voidbringer-of-the-week. The magic! The prosaic good v evil conflict! The side-splitting deadpan commentary!!! I seriously think it would be a hit. On that note: Brandon, if Warbreaker 2 is AT ALL written from Nightblood's PoV, it would really make my decade. "Oh, alright. You can admire me a little bit longer, if you must."

I'm not the only one who has consciously tried to draw Pattern in my phone screen lock pattern am I? Unfortunately after locking myself out one too many times I was forced to revert to an easier less complicated Pattern. Mmm. Lies. Anyone else? Everywhere I go, Stormlight things pop up. (Let me set my Brightness...)

I apologize if this has already been answered somewhere else. I searched and couldn't find any answers. In both Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, Shallan deliberately uses the ten heartbeats of summoning a Shardblade when summoning Pattern. However, we know this is not necessary when the Knight's spren is alive, as Pattern obviously is. I feel like there's some significance to why she makes it the full ten heartbeats. Maybe in her mind summoning Pattern immediately would be the same as admitting to herself that everything she tries to avoid thinking about in her childhood actually happened. That doesn't seem quite right to me though, so if anyone knows why, or has any thoughts on it, I would appreciate the input.

Being involved with the Reckoner’s RP I did a lot of thinking about weaknesses, both for my own Epics and to a lesser extend for those of others. I always wondered if a weakness fits with what we’ve seen from the books. In those musings I noticed some trends, some of which can be spread across all weakness and with some it’s just that none of them go against it, even if they are closely related to the topic at hand. Naturally, the small sample size means a lot of this in conjecture but given that we now know there’s some order to weakness there might be even more. On to the list! The root trauma: This one is a given, the books downright tell us that these roots exist. I just want to take the chance to point out that in my opinion the term “fear” as used in the books isn’t ideal and if anything oversimplifies the matter. Looking at the known origin of weaknesses we know they always come from something in the Epics past that left a scar on them and not just something they just happen to be afraid of like spiders. Even more looking at Mitosis, the Epic who’s reason for being written was mostly to hint towards the fact that weaknesses are connected to their past, his weakness didn’t really come from fear. He hated his situation in life and it ate him up from the inside but I wouldn’t exactly call that fear. Just wanted to get it out of my system that I like the term (psychological) trauma more in this context. Generalization: Pretty much what it say on the tin. Weaknesses are connected to an event but can be triggered without all the details matching up. E.g. Megan reacts to fire not burning houses, Newton doesn’t need to be complimented by her parents, Steelheart didn’t have to be confronted by that one specific guy etc. A part of this is also that weaknesses can’t really disappear, the brand that Sourcefield was poinsioned with as a child may be out of business but that doesn’t mean similar drinks can’t be created. Lack of intent: From what we have seen it doesn’t matter what someone is thinking while doing something or why they do it. Only what they do seems important to triggering weaknesses. E.g. Steelheart had no clue what he actually did, when he pulled the trigger but the explosion still counted as his attack and could harm him. The compliment David gave Newton was obviously insincere, yet it still allowed him to kill her. External/lack of control: This is admittedly one point I’m less sure about and it might simply come from the lack of data points, but no weakness we have seen requires the Epic to think something or do anything specific, it’s always just something around them, be it an object, people with certain qualities etc. Always something they have no control over, which also plays into the lack of intent. Repeat: This one is impossible to prove and more something that seems logical. I simply think that if an Epic is in the situation that his weakness originates from, then his weakness should trigger, which puts a limit on how abstract a weakness can be in relation to the event in question. These are the patterns I noticed and I while again there is little hard proof but no Epic breaks these rules and they make sense with the theme of trauma/fear that weaknesses are connected with.

Well, let the community know your opinion! Which Spren do you like the best, and why? I personally am a big Pattern fan. I love his personality and thoughtfulness, and his ability to mimic anyone is quite nifty as well. Also, his questions about human behavior make for some pretty hilarious reactions from Shallan

Our dear friend Pattern is a fractal. This much is clear from Shallan's comment the first time she draws him: “The pattern seemed impossible to capture. Its complex repetitions twisted down into infinity.” (pg 67, WoR kindle edition) It takes a while, but Shallan finally gets around to asking Pattern if he has a name beyond the one she has given him. His response: “Name is numbers. Many numbers. Hard to say. Pattern…Pattern is fine.” (pg 215, WoR) Fractal patterns that are on some level infinitely complex can often be described by seemingly simple equations and/or sets of rules. You can see this in things like the Koch snowflake, Sierpinski's triangle, the Mandelbrot set, and the Julia set. Theory: Pattern’s true name is a mathematical description (in some form or other, there are multiple possibilities here) of his fractal form. The fractal exists in multiple dimensions and his appearance in the physical realm is just one tiny slice of his full form - the intersection of his fractal with the physical realm. His apparently changing patterns are not actually his pattern changing, but instead him moving so that the intersection changes and we get different views of him. His ability to shrink corresponds to moving so that his intersection with the physical realm is smaller. As a fractal, even a tiny intersection would have the complexity necessary to, say, pick a lock. Now I really want to know Pattern’s true name.

Over in "Buy or Sell" somebody theorized Pattern's death. As Brandon likes to keep it interesting, I don't think that Pattern would die in the same way Syl "died" in Words of Radiance. Today at Comic Con, I asked him if a splinter could use up its mind like Leras did when he imprisoned Ati. Brandon said yes, but that a splinter couldn't achieve something so powerful with it. So whatever splinter you love (Pattern, Syl, Nightblood, Ashe, Zahel's soul) could expend its mind in a burst of power. Do you think that any of these tiny pieces of god will ever be pushed to the point of using this ability? Zahel's soul's mind? Weird.

(Note: This post was originally titled "Investiture-Attunement in Metal", but I have since decided, due to the discussion below with Tempus, that "Investiture Resonance" sounds much cooler and can be tied with the scientific concept of a resonator.) This little idea came to me while I was reading Tempus' Focus Pattern theory. Tempus' main idea is that a Focus of Investiture contains a pattern through which Invested Power can be modified. One of his examples is the Stormlight pattern found in fabrials. Each Stormlight pattern corresponds to a particular fabrial effect. Several weeks ago, I posted a theory in the Words of Radiance sub-forum stating that a fabrial's Stormlight pattern is imprinted on its metal setting. That theory was meant to explain why fabrial gemstones always have some sort of metal setting attached to them. After reading Tempus' pattern thread, I realized that it could be the key to generalize my fabrial metal setting theory into a Cosmere-wide theory. Basically, I would like to propose that metal (or at least, certain types of metal) is Realmatically special in that it is possible to either imprint an Investiture pattern on a piece of metal or map an Intent of Investiture to a metal, making the piece of metal attuned to that particular Investiture. And this can be done anywhere in the Cosmere. Fabrials are the manifestations of this metallic Investiture-attunement phenomenon on Roshar. On Scadrial, it is of course manifested by the Metallic Arts. Metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes are attuned to specific Invested attributes taken from humans. Regular metals (while not necessarily Invested themselves), are attuned to specific Allomantic powers. The God Metals lerasium and atium (and any other God Metals that might exist) are attuned to their specific Shard. Note that the specific types of metal that can be used in this way may differ across the Shardworlds. On Threnody, for example, silver (which doesn't seem to have an Allomantic use) seems to be the only metal attuned to Hell-type Investiture, although there may be others we haven't seen. But is that all? What about the other Shardworlds? Am I once again committing the sin of taking a specific form of Investiture on one Shardworld and applying it to the Cosmere with little basis? Well, not this time. Here is a WoB about aluminum: And that's not all. From Elantris: From the Emperor's Soul: That leaves us with Nalthis and BioChroma. In Warbreaker, we find that metal can only be Awakened by people with the Ninth Heightening. This is because things that were never alive are extremely resistant to Awakening. Can this fact be used as proof that my theory on metals isn't universal after all? Not really. For one thing, the Scadrian Metallic Arts show that a certain metal might only be attuned to a specific subset of a particular form of Investiture. We don't know what specific metal is attuned to Awakening, or if each type of Awakening Command has a specific metal on which it can be used. More importantly, the limitation of metal Awakening is not necessarily a limitation of Investiture-attuning, because being attuned to Investiture does not necessarily mean being targeted by it. A fabrial's metal setting is not the target of the fabrial's effect. The metal plate linked to an Essence Mark is not the target of the Essence Mark. The problem is that all attempts to use metal objects in Awakening so far have been targeting the metal objects themselves. The sad reality is that unlike Sel, Roshar, and Scadrial, we haven't seen anybody try to use metal as a mere Investiture pattern-holder on Nalthis. (Edit: Come to think of it, Nightblood's silver sheath is capable of keeping his destructive impulses in check. Perhaps it's a pattern-holder for anti-destruction Investiture.) What if an Awakener could store a relatively complex Command, say, "Upon call, become my fingers and grip that which I must" on a metal plate, but without intending to Awaken the plate? The metal plate then becomes a pattern-holder for the Command. Now, if there is a simple Command (preferrably requiring very little Breath) to link other objects to a Command pattern-holder, then that metal plate suddenly becomes something that other Awakeners can use to create a specific type of BioChromatic entity (in this case, one that acts as an extra hand) with less Breath. I'll leave it to you guys to imagine what types of BioChromatic technology can be created using that technique. Edit: Here's an idea I got from the discussion below: A metal attuned to a specific Investiture pattern can be seen as the Realmatic version of a resonant circuit, or at least an Investiture resonator. If you don't like to think about electronics terms, you could instead visualize an Investiture-attuned metal as something like an Investiture tuning fork, resonating only a particular Investiture Intent/pattern/frequency when hit by raw Investiture.

Magic Pictures Symbology and Patterns as Focal Filters Premise I've never really bought all the talk about the Focus of a magic. Every once and a while a Cosmere terms creeps in from a Brandon interview, and Focus is one of these. He uses the word focus a lot, but only rarely does he talk about it in a Cosmere sense. We've learned some things: metals are a Focus on Scadrial, Commands are a Focus on Nalthis, Aons or shapes on Sel are a Focus, and no one is sure what's going on on Roshar yet.[1] The more we learned, though, the more I felt our fundamental understanding of what was going on with a Focus was wrong. Especially with metals. First metal was a key, and the sDNA of the Allomancer was what you needed.[anno] Then metals weren't a focus after all, the molecular pattern of the metal was.[WoB][WoB] But the mists let you use Allomancy with no metals at all, so where was the necessary pattern? And people started talking about how a Focus was Physical or Cognitive, and no one seems to be able to find the source of that. I can't see any evidence supporting a single realm focus either - Investiture is known to transcend realms itself.[3] I've been gathering a lot of notes about everything, and I have a lot of theories on em'. I can't share my whole framework of Focuses - not only do I not have all the pieces I want yet, but it's super frickin' long, just for the overview. I'd like to share my notes here on one aspect that I've been talking about on IRC a bunch lately, that is very intriguing. Hypothesis The only necessary Focus for any given magic is a pattern. Assumptions Gonna lay down some assumptions here first, each one of these is a theory or two of their own, really. But we're gonna roll with it. Investiture is a waveform, that gets passed through a Focus to produce a magic effect.[Elantris] A Focus does not filter Investiture like a prism, or a piece of red glass. It modifies the frequency like an AC adapter.[WoB] A Focus exists on a scale of Explicit to Implicit, where implicit basically means more Cognitive visualization. This is not an intrinsic value, it's a descriptor. Investiture expands mental capacities, and scales by quantity.[Ars Arcanum] This is different from Mental Speed (zinc). Brandon is imprecise in his descriptions on occasion, because he doesn't want to reveal too much about the underlying system. Logic and Evidence I've long been interested in the role of symbols in the Cosmere, and my interest peaked when I found the Word of Brandon that says that symbols are built into his books to help make the magic systems of the Cosmere feel unified.[4] My theory starts at a bit of a strange place. When Kaladin speaks the third Ideal in Words of Radiance, a large symbol in frost appears around his feet.[WoR] The glyph is recognizable as the symbol for the Windrunners. That's pretty strange, and convenient, isn't it? That the use of magic should naturally produce readable language. How odd. Of course with a weather eye out for it, I looked for more instances of this. Of which there are plenty. According to one Word of Brandon, the first Aon to be discovered by the first Elantrian, Aon Ehe, apparently appeared on a coal in her fireplace when she was taken by the Shaod.[WoB] Aon Ehe brings flame. Aons, as we know, eventually became the basis for written language in Elantris. It's also been noted that the constellations are Aons as well.[Elantris] We're starting to see a link here - symbols appear naturally near magic, and those symbols are often used for language. What other instances do we have of this? The Dahkor monks use a strange magic where the develop bone growths, growths that simulate their alphabet. On Scadrial, the letters they use, the Steel Alphabet, are symbolically attached to each Allomantic metal. On Roshar, as we've seen, the general language of glyphs is associated with both Radiants, Surges, Heralds, it is seen on Shardplates and Shardblades, and burnt in effigy as prayers. In a much more tenuous connection, on Nalthis there is a language of colours. There is a clear link here between magic, symbols, and languages. The original Word of Brandon led me to believe that this link is causative - people are not developing words in language to describe magic, they are developing language to mirror the magic they see all around them. Indeed, we know that Aons exist independent of mankind.[WoB] So why do these symbols appear, though? What makes them show up, how are they important? For a long time, we believed that the Focus on Scadrial was metal, on Nalthis it was Commands, and on Sel it was the Aons (or generally form based). Then Brandon swooped in, and said "Sort of, guys, but not really." It turns out, the focus on Scadrial was not a metal - it was the molecular pattern of the metal. And the focus on Sel was really more about programming than form. And Nalthis? We don't need a Word of Brandon to see that if the Focus is Commands, and Commands require spoken words in your native language, that the Mental Command ability of the God King shouldn't work at all. And when Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they don't need a focus at all, they've got power to spare and it naturally takes the form of the Allomantic powers, as if they already had the focus available. So what's going on? Deduction The metals, the Aons, the Focuses as we know them are distractions from the underlying foundation at play here. The true heart of a Focus is that it takes Investiture, and changes the frequency of it to a new one. And how it does that is by passing the Investiture through a pattern. These patterns are the true Focus, and are represented by the symbols and glyphs we see the magical effects in nature create. This doesn't mean that the symbols we have are all magical in nature, and putting some Investiture in a Surge glyph would make a fabrial. Instead I suggest what we're seeing is a shadow of the pattern. In the same way as a shadow puppet looks like a rabbit, but our hands do not, we get the appearance of a symbol when certain criteria are met during a manifestation of magic. These are the symbols we know. Now, the idea of a pattern being the focus is strongly supported by the Word of Brandon talking about the molecular pattern of metals. Do we have any other instances where a pattern is mentioned as being very clearly associated with magic? You know I wouldn't ask unless I had something to tell, and I do! In Navanni's notes, she talks extensively about the Stormlight generated pattern of Fabrials, a pattern which is apparently not normally visible.[link] Each pattern corresponds to a Fabrial usage. Of course as well, let's not forget Sel. All the visible Foci on Sel are drawn like a symbol or pattern. Commands are perhaps linguistic patterns too. Back up the truck! If Commands are linguistic patterns, then Mental Command should be even less possible. Hahah, your arguments are invalid! In every magic system, there are parts of magic that don't seem to require being explicitly focused. And there are parts that do. What's most interesting is that the explicit/implicit requirement seems to shift. Soulstamps must be painstakingly drawn in detail, precisely, to determine the effect. Aons are similar. Awakening doesn't seem to care much at all, as long as you have a strong picture in your head, one or two words will produce extremely complex effects. Allomancy is pretty rigid, each metal does one thing and one thing only. Yet how do Allomancers choose which metal to push on when burning Iron? Burning it doesn't push everything, it just shows some blue lines. And people don't have some kind of built-in sudo-magnetic orfice to use. The answer is that patterns do not require a specific manifestation. The pattern for metal is not required to be in metal - in fact, the entire pattern is not in the metal at all. The necessary patterns can be generated entirely by the mind. We know that Investiture gives expanded mental capacity - I'll write up the full theory about that sometime. It's this ability that allows people to substitute mental patterns to supplement the physical ones. It is these mental patterns that allow the illusion Aons to have so much detail compared to the symbol. It is these mental patterns that let a coinshot choose what to push. These are the patterns that let an Awakener use only a few words instead of the long paragraphs Brandon originally envisioned.[anno] And it's this mental capacity increase that explains the Heightenings. As the Investiture increases, the mental capacity increases, and the ability to create mental patterns as a Focus increases. First they gain instinctive basic Awakening Commands. Then they discover other Commands easier. Then they gain instinctive understanding of other Commands, learn to Command newer and more complex things, Command from a distance, and finally they do not even need to speak, they can Command with their mental patterns alone. This exposes the true nature of the Focus as we seem them - metal, Commands, etc, they are naturally occurring instances of the pattern (or a portion of the pattern) needed to Focus the Investiture in a given way. They're crutches. The more mental capacity a magic user has, the easier it is for them to dispose of the crutch and use their mind instead. It's quite plausible that we've seen this in another instance from the God King. When Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they gain a massive amount of Investiture, and no longer need metals to Focus the power they gain from Preservation. The facility of Surgebinders in using their powers in a variety of unique and odd methods may also be an instance of this - they ingest Stormlight, show expanded mental capacity when doing so, and have an extreme level of flexibility in the use of their Surges compared to other rigid systems such as Allomancy. It's notable that Fabrials are not nearly so flexible with their use of Surges. Conclusion For those who thought this theory was far too long to read, here's the tl:dr; A Focus is actually fundamentally a pattern The known Focus (metals, Aons, etc) are an already existing instance or partial instance of the needed pattern, and are simply ways to express that pattern easier With enough mental capacity, the pattern can be generated entirely mentally The natural symbols observed in magic are the shadows cast by the pattern of the Focus Extrapolations This theory is pretty interesting in that extrapolating it is cool. It suggests that, if you could make a person hold a lot of Investiture, such a person could use their magic mentally - an Elantrian could use an Aon without drawing it. In addition, it suggests that mental capacity is essential for using magic with more fine control and finding esoteric skills, such as the ability of a coppercloud to shield emotions. Furthermore, it suggests that people with Shardic levels of Investiture can create powers outside of the known and expressed Foci - thus why Preservation-level power has no problem moving a branch (or a planet) with magic, but the Lord Ruler is limited to pushing on metals. And for technology... Lots of fun stuff implied here, but I'll leave all that for another day! Quotes and References:

I grabbed the hires version of Shallan's sketches of Pattern (after it'd been underwater), and messed with the brightness and contrast until it's pretty much decipherable. It appears to be made up of lines? They're not exactly tendrils or tentacles, they don't grasp or reach, they just keep circling and multiplying and combining into different patterns. The lines always seem to be connected, either at the centeral root of the Pattern or by dividing off from a root line. The delicate shapes mix and overlap and reduce by multple dimensions. It almost seems to phase in and out between two and three-dimensional space. I think it prefers a surface to connect with, but I have seen it swim through the air on rare occasions. It certainly presents some sense of depth, but the Pattern doesn't appear to possess any consistent dimensions in terms of size. I am almost certain that I have seen this Pattern somewhere before. It shares some resemblance with the creatures I observed in Kharbranth but without the body and those strange robes. Is it possibly a child or variant/servant of theirs? Words in bold I'm not sure of.

Just finished Words of Radiance. So I decided to draw fanart. Enjoy.