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First off, seeing as this is my first post on here, I'm not really sure if someone else has already expounded this (frankly fairly weakly conjectured) theory, so if they have, sorry about that. Anyway, both Shardblades and Hemalurgy work with Spiritwebs, yes? And we know that Shardblades create a bond with the Spiritweb. So what I was thinking is that maybe instead of simply creating a bond, Shardblades (the present-day versions, not Radiantblades), they work more like Hemalurgy and tear off a part of the Spiritweb to create said 'bond', something that could have changed after the Day of Recreance. It would explain why spren, or at least Syl, dislike the blades, as rather than them being representative of Odium or something like that, they are simply fundamentally broken.

I know WoR is just a few weeks away now but I just can't restrain myself from theorising on stuff! So here we go, I have been thinking for some time about the problem of the number of shardblades on Roshar. For those unaware, the main argument is that, in the Feverstone Keep vision, we see ~300 Radiants from 2 Orders (Windrunners and Stonewards) give up their plate & blades. Extrapolating over the 10 orders, this implies over 1000 blades overall. Dalinar states that they cannot be more than 100 known blades in all the world (an this is generous by his estimations). It is clear that there were, at one time, more sets of plate and blade than can be accounted for on modern Roshar. The most popular resolutions is that there is a cache of blades / plate hidden somewhere (probable Urithiru) awaiting discovery by the series protagonists. I would like to propose another solution. Theory: Blades and Plate sets originally crumbled to dust when the KR to whom they belonged died UNLESS they were deliberately given away (at which point they behave as we see them in the books). Obviously I have not textual evidence for this but I have some logical points to make: 1/ During the desolations in which the Radiants fought, presumably some of them died. It all they shardblades dropped when they did, then non radiant would surely have picked them up and continued fighting. I do not think that the Radiants could have controlled the spread of the blades among the populous unless this was not possible (due to the shards being destroyed on the Radiant's death). Then again, maybe this did happen and some of the modern blades are descended form instances like this. 2/ We have never seen in world, what happened to a shardblade (i.e. Radiant blade) when the original holder dies while carrying it. This is not much, I agree. 3/ I feel it is heavily implied that sets of blade and plate are intensely personal items tied to a persons soul. I think thematically it works quite well for the blade to follow that soul to the afterlife (unless it was given away freely). There is evidence for this in world as the Honorblades follow the Heralds to Damnation when they die. I agree these are quite flimsy, but I feel they suit the idea of the blades as tied to the soul and arising out of the Nahel Bond (both not proven yet). Plus the possibility of the blades and plate naturally being destroyed neatly solves the numbers issue. This could also be what Brandon was referring to when he said modern blades are 'different'. What do you all think?

First off, much credit to vikorr! He is the person who set this off in my brain case. Second off, if this has been said before, then I'm sorry! And finally... the theory! Alright, ladies and gentlemen. The main of my theory lies on the principle that a spren bond has to do largely with your cognitive aspect. Which is not only decided by how you view yourself, but how others view you. In the Emperor's Soul, Shai tells us, It is important to know that when Shai describes the Cognitive Realm, she says that the way an object is viewed before she says and how it views itself. Which brings us to our next point. When Syl is talking about what Kaladin used to be, and why she followed him, she says, A large part of the reason that Syl joined with Kaladin was because that others saw him as upholding his honor. Even when he was a wretch, he still held some of that respect. Now, onto the recreance. There are two death rattles that are particularly significant: Emphasis on the love. In it's absence, the bond dissolves (which relies on the conjecture we get, finally, by moving onto Feverstone Keep). From <WoR Spoilers!> We know that many spren died in this event. They died because not only did the knights Radiant forsake their vows, the people of Feverstone Keep visibly saw it as a betrayal. They had thought of the Knights Radiant as enemies and traitors, and were prepared to fight for their lives. So... Tadaa! In culmination: A massive part of the nahel bond is having an honorable cognitive aspect, which is largely determined by how others view you.

Very quick, but I hope provocative... The Soldiers in the flashback scene in WoR seem to have stormlight faintly and people have speculated that they are proto-Radiants or that the KR in the scene has somehow enowed them with stormlight. But how about this... Those men do not have a spren... they are like everyone's favourite truthless. Discuss.

Hi all. This is my first post on the forum. I just read the Eshonai interlude from Words of Radiance. This sentence in particular stood out to me. "she and the others had ordered the murder of their king in a desperate gambit to stop the Parshendi gods from returning. Well, that hadn’t worked out." That got me wondering: who are the Parshendi gods, why would they want to keep them from returning, and why would killing Gavilar have anything to do with preventing their return? I have a theory that might sound a little ridiculous, but it makes some sense. I think that the Parshendi might have worshipped the Radiants. Here's why. First, if my understanding is correct, Gavilar was attempting to restore the Radiants. I'm not sure where I heard this, but it was somewhere on this forum, and it makes sense, though I could be wrong. It would make sense if the Radiants were the Parshendi gods for them to try to kill Gavilar to prevent their return. Furthermore, the way the Parshendi reacted to Kaladin in the final battle when he began to glow is further evidence that the Parshendi may have feared and worshipped them. I could be completely wrong on this, but it makes sense to me.

Hey guys, I've been skimming over the associations between the 4 developing Knights Radiant we've seen (including the one from the WoR interlude) and the Heralds. It makes sense that they seem to have matching character attributes (e.g. Kaladin clearly has Jezrien's "Divine Attributes" of protecting/leading), but I noticed that all 4 Knights also match the genders of their respective Heralds. I want to throw a few ideas around for discussion: Brandon's mentioned that we've met multiple Heralds already, beyond the opening chapter in WoK. Is it possible that there's some reincarnation or amnesia element that could make one of our main characters an actual Herald without us knowing? If this gender aspect is, in fact, not just by chance, it opens the way for new guesses on people who could develop into Radiants. Note that there can only be one new female character that becomes a Knight (since we've got 3 female Radiants already out of the 4 female Heralds), and that person would have to match the attributes of Chach (bravery/obedience) I haven't seen anything that completely nails down the mechanics of how spren are involved in the evolution of a Radiant, but does it matter that Syl is female while Kaladin is male?

This is a sort of corollary to my Shardic Constructs theory, it's been a work in process for a while (Although corollary sounds a tad pretentious...). However, it got stopped by a problem that I couldn't seem to get around for quite a while. So I'll start there and then move onto some other stuff. In the old topic, someone brought up this quote. I couldn't get around this. I believed that Cognitive aspects were created by the interaction of Spiritual and Physical aspects. But how could one exist primarily in the Cognitive Realm? I think I have a potential answer to this question now. Humans are primarily Physical, right? They exist on the Physical Realm, everything they consciously interact with and see is in the Physical Realm. So presumably the same would be true of a creature that was primarily Spiritual in nature. But what if a creature was more balanced? Nearly half of both? I think that they would "exist" primarily in the Cognitive Realm, and would live and interact there. So hopefully this is that problem solved. Now, onto what I'd planned on saying the whole time. Last time I connected Spiritual energy to sentience, how it interacts with the Physical portion of a creature gives it a mind. However, given a little thought, it's obvious that it's not quite as simple as that.After all, Radiants get filled with Spiritual energy all the time, yet their mind isn't too enhanced. Returned and Awakeners don't seem to be any more intelligent than your average person. There are minor Cognitive changes, but as a whole, it's not doing a lot. So, what gives? I think the reason for this disparity we're seeing here is that the Spiritual power needs not just a Physical conterpart, but a Physical structure to create a Cognitive aspect. To use a poor analogy, this is like the difference between dipping a chip in some dip, and baking a several layer cake. Returned, for example, are suffesed with power. But it's not built into their Spiritweb, it's just sitting on top of them. A layer of Spiritual power, like dip sits on a chip. Same goes for the Radiants. However, when this power is added to the Spiritweb, such as in Hemalurgy, it can work to create sentience. The perfect illustration comes, I think, when you look at the Divine Breaths and Seons. Divine Breath is not sentient. It's not structured at all, so it's not really conscious either. But then again, look at the Seon. The Aon itself is the Splinter, and it has a structure, a Physical form in the shape of an Aon, so it is sentient. A thought that just occured to me right now is that this structure could be responsible for the Splinters that have their own intents separate from the larger Shards. It's obvious that unstructured Splinters like the Divine Breath don't really have an intent. But a structure could posssibly constrain a Splinter's larger intent into something more specific. It would probably be worth asking if the personality of a Seon is affected by that Seon's Aon. All right, what do you guys think? Comments and disagreements are always welcome, that's how we figure out so many cool things!