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What do you think will be the main conflict of the final Cosmere novel. Maybe it will be Harmony vs. War (with War being Honor+Odium like Harmony is Ruin+Preservation). Maybe it will be 8 shards vs the other 8 shards. Maybe it will be something else. What do you think?

The weaknesses were inherently tied to Calamity's corruption(/presence), because when an Epic faces their fear, they also drive back the darkness, which we know was because of Calamity and his contempt for humanity (and fear/startlement of the physical world). Now that Calamity is gone (or in the case of the otherverse already left a long time ago) does that also imply that the Epics no longer have weaknesses? Does that mean Megan literally can't die and David is literally invincible to all physical damage? Is this why Obliteration is still wreaking havoc in the otherverse even though they have an actual Superman expy helping them out, because he can't be killed since he just teleports forever?

Assuming the deal Odium made with Taravangian is still valid as Todium, couldn't Dalinar choose literally anyone from Kharbranth and force him to lose no matter what happens?

Listening through again getting ready for ROW and a thought occurred to me. Creation spren are mentioned way too much and seemingly always dismissed. I've read enough Sanderson to suspect that this may be some foreshadowing/hints about something. Any thoughts? Any knowledge out there that I don't know?

So, hello! I hope that you are well. I am new here and this is my first theory. YEEEY ( I do apologize if someone has already done this), but is Renarin somehow connected with Gostbloods or Wit or some third party. My speculation for this is based on the cube toy that he had in WOR and OB and I think that that cube toy is the same one that Shallan had when she was contacting Mraize in Shadsmar and therefore is Renarin contacting someone behind the curtain? Is it Wit or could it be Mraize, also? Thanks for reading my theory

We know that Endowment's vessel is a Dragon, and after RoW, it's almost certain that Cultivation's vessel is a dragon too. Don't you guys think it too neat that a weapon of massive power gets created in one planet, ends up in another, and is then used by a shard to fulfil her plans in the new planet? Could it be that cultivation hinted to endowment about helping create such a dangerous weapon, that could be used to kill the shard vessels? We know how far cultivation can see and how well she can predict how events can play out. We know that odium killed her husband, and even before that, came to Roshar to destroy the shards there. Could it be Cultivation's way of getting revenge? Plot for a plan so far ahead in time, that Odium could never predict it? If this is true (total seculation), could it be that being dragons has got anything to do with this possible affinity? Can dragons in Cosmere communicate with each other over far distances or being shards of Adonalsium help being able to know events of distant places? I can't help but feel that, there has been some kind of truce and affinity between endowment and cultivation. What do you think guys? Could creating Nightblood be another one of Cultivation's crazy plans (through Endowment)? Have I gone totally crazy with this one, or you guys think it is possible? Would love to know what you think..

In the chapter, the dog and the dragon (Or that one chapter where Hoid tells his new story) in ROW Hoid says that he got the story from someone whos name was lost and that the owner of the inn who Hoid got his story form, was someone he should have loved. In WOK, Hoid is asked if Hoid is his actual name. He says he stole it from someone he should have loved. I believe there is a connection here. Is it important? I don't really think so, but it is interesting. I would love to hear any other ideas about Hoid. Thanks Mayalaran

Given that in Roshar there are lenses, it seems clear that if there were bacteria, somebody (in Kharbranth, for example, if Lirin doesn't) should know it. Perhaps the beings that cause infections are the rotspren, and not the other way around (that is, the infections attract rotspren), as I thought initially. But that doesn't make much sense, does it? Rotspren seem the kind of spren that can't affect the physical realm, and if they caused the infections, they should be attracted by wounds, and this doesn't seem to happen. Moreover, plaguespren are attracted by other kind of infections. (Viral?). So, rotspren are attracted by infected wounds and other rotting processes, like in old food and corpses. So, why has nobody discovered real infection agents? There is plenty of tecnology to develope microscopes. Perhaps bacteria in Roshar are smaller than in Earth?

In the chapter, the dog and the dragon (Or that one chapter where Hoid tells his new story) in ROW Hoid says that he got the story from someone whos name was lost and that the owner of the inn who Hoid got his story form, was someone he should have loved. In WOK, Hoid is asked if Hoid is his actual name. He says he stole it from someone he should have loved. I believe there is a connection here. Is it important? I don't really think so, but it is interesting. I would love to hear any other ideas about Hoid. Thanks Mayalaran

Any Ideas/speculations on Maya and her past/future would be much appreciated. Iḿ deeply interested in her, and will probably accept even the most stupid/wild sounding ideas. One I liked was given by honorless and they put it as, ¨Maya will say the words and heal herself and learn to summon Adolin as a Shardblade! Adolin will be very confused about this development but very supportive.¨ Love this idea. Again. More ideas/theories will be appreciated. Thanks!

So now that we have confirmation that shardplate is made of lesser spren this opens up the question as to how its going to be handled for Knights bonded to a Sja-anat spren. Are they going to just use normal spren? Will they require more corrupted spren to be made for their plate to be formed? Is it individual to the Radiant as to which of the above? Based on what we see with Kaladin it does seem to take _alot_ of spren to form the plate. Thoughts?

There's been discussions about whether there's any real downsides, from the Fused perspective, to getting killed. Several people have said that, well, each reincarnation breaks them more, they're going to go mad much faster. That may well be true. However, I'd like to present an alternative hypothesis: that the mental damage of spending up to nine days in the Everstorm in negligible compared to spending decades or centuries stewing in Odium juice on Braize, which is what happened when they died in previous Desolations. I personally think that repeated deaths this round will have less of an effect on them than their one-and-done deaths in the past.

There's been a lot of speculation about the Fourth Ideal of the Windrunners, but less so about the fourth Edgedancer Ideal. I'm speculating that the Fourth Ideal of the Edgedancers is something along the line of "I will speak for those who have been silenced". I think this makes a logical progression with the other Edgedancer ideals we've seen. Their Second Ideal is to remember, which is a very passive act (you just have to refrain from forgetting what you already know). The Third Ideal advances from remembering to listening, so now you not only cannot forget the little people but you need to actively be willing to open yourself to their concerns and problems. And then the Fourth Ideal goes from listening to speaking, requiring that the Edgedancer not only be aware of those who others overlook but actively do something to help them. Thoughts?

So at the end of Oathbringer, Lunamor was able to draw and fire a Grandbow straight through Amaram's black heart. How the flip did he do this? I have no clue if anyone has done the math on the draw weights of Shardbows, but they fire arrows "as thick as three fingers", so the strength required must be incredible. They require augmenter fabrials in order to avoid shattering, and previously only people in Shardplate can fire them. I believe that Rock's miraculous shot was made possible through his status as an alaii’iku, his ability to see and communicate with spren. The augmenter fabrials involved with the bow enhance the durability of the metal, its tensile strength. If Rock was able to contact the spren, and maybe influence them with Stormlight, could he convince them to make the Shardbow more pliable? This would be like a weird offshoot of Soulcasting, where negotiations with spren lead to powerful affects. This might also relate to Tension in some way, too bad we know nothing about it. So bottom line is I'm saying that Rock somehow talked to the spren inside the fabrial and convinced/bribed/bullied. them to make the bow easier to draw. I wish I had more evidence, but we have so little info on both Rock and Fabrials. Perhaps part of Rock's conflict after Thaylen Field came from cussing out spren (Tensionspren?), which he reveres. What does this mean for the future of Lunamor? Well, I would like to see him and Navani team up to restore Urithiru. Not only would any interactions between those two be pure gold to read, we would get to learn more about spren and fabrials, and the Urithiru light-up scene needs to happen ASAP.

We all know that Nightblood is a heavily Invested object. I had the thought that it would be interesting if he was used as a Hemelurgic spike, but then I dismissed the thought due to the aforementioned Investment. However, he is sheathed in an aluminum sheath. I was just wondering if it was possible to use his sheath as an aluminum spike to rob someone of their powers. Aluminum "removes all powers" and I remember reading a WoB that says Hemelurgy doesn't always kill the subject. Iirc Hemelurgy also works anywhere in the cosmere so long as you have the knowledge of spike placement and the Intent. I admit I don't understand aluminum or its hemelurgical abilities very well. Thoughts? I hope this inspires some discussion! If there are any WoB you know to refute or support please share!

So say Vasher or someone is able to finally figure out awakening through Stormlight, seeing as it would be a (semi) reasonable next step, as he has already discovered how to fuel his divine breath with Stormlight. It seems as if he could easily become one the strongest/most invested people on Roshar, as Stormlight is of course much easier to find and use then Breath, of course this could depend on the actual conversion of 1 breath to how much Stormlight. But for example, during a high storm could he reach levels never reached by anyone on Nalthis for example?

Previous WoB has shown that the names of many of our favorite Northern Scadrians from the Central Dominance sound French. Without “hearing” the language or seeing it written, we can only assume it, as a whole, is French sounding. source As I’ve been re-reading BoM, I noticed that Allik’s use of language sounded distinct from what we’ve been accustomed to from Northern Scadrial. His words reminded me of a Germanic language. I first noticed this when he used the medallion to speak in the language of our protagonists, because he kept ending sentences with “yah”. This is the same sound that the word “yes” in German makes, and is spelled “ja”. Then came the word “Jaggenmire” that didn’t translate to our protagonists’ language. Marasi tried to pronounce it and came up with the following: She hears the “Ja” sound as a “yay” sound, which is similar to Allik’s frequent use of “yah”. This was further evidence to me that Allik’s language is Germanic in nature. Now it was time to dig deeper, and find other words to help provide evidence for my hypothesis. After further research, I think his language is actually linguistically similar to Northern Germanic— i.e., Scandinavian, specifically Danish. (Note, Denmark is literally just north of Germany.) I started my linguistic sleuthing with Allik’s name and googled German names similar to “Allik”, and came up with the following list (with their meanings): · Alrik: “Noble Leader” · Aldrik: Noble Friend” It appears that the shared root is “Noble”. Maybe this means something about who Allik will be one day? However, these names added an extra consonant, so I kept looking and found the name “Alek” in Danish. Alek is short for Aleksander, which means “Defender of Men”. Is this where Allik gets his name from? Will he be a defender of Southern Scandrian peoples and a noble friend to our protagonists? Allik’s name wasn’t enough for me. What about words that he says in his language? My favorite words he used were the names for Preservation and Ruin: I first googled to see if these names were German words. “Herr” means “Lord” in German…this seemed like a good sign to me! Unfortunately, “Frue” is not a German word. But it is Danish. In Danish, it literally means “wife” or “Ma’am” and “Herr” literally means “Mister”. So we have Mister and Missus…just like how Allik describes them. When Allik first realized Wax was an Allomancer he said a few words aloud in his own language that Marasi overheard: “Fottenstall” doesn’t really translate to much, even if “fotten” means “feet” in Norwegian. However “hanner konge” has a very interesting meaning in Danish: “Male King”. Allik notes that Wax seems very powerful, like the Sovereign, and thinks he needs to always use some type of title for him. The Sovereign described himself as a former King from Northern Scadrial. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me that Allik may be asking Marasi if Wax is a king. I didn’t look at very many other words other than these, because all of this already seemed like good evidence that the Southern Scadrian language is similar to Northern Germanic languages, specifically Danish. If people from Northern Scadrial speak with a French accent/sound, then it seems entirely plausible that the southerners speak some type of Germanic/Scandinavian language, given the clues. What do you all think?

So heres a weird thing I've been thinking of: What if the Shards are just heavily invested by Adonalsium and he tricked them into thinking that they killed him? ...hear me out. It could be that Adonalsium foresaw a tragic occurrence befalling the cosmere and knew that there would be some sort of effort to shatter him or steal his power. Maybe he glimpsed the best possible future as being one where he invested 16 specific individuals heavily and convinced them that they, together, held all of his power... while in fact his true power is infinite and hiding in the spiritual realm, hidden from the shards. My only "evidence" for this is when Sazed said he cannot see Vin or Elend in “the place beyond” which makes me think that maybe none of the shards can see into the spiritual realm or into certain parts of it, like where souls go when someone dies. So... that hardly counts as evidence... and this hardly counts as a theory... but I find it interesting as a possibility and would love to hear what anyone else thinks about this idea.

The title is pretty self explanatory. We know that there is a surge (Tension?) that allows the manipulation of stone as if it was water. Could the Cities have been created by application of this Surge on a tremendous level, making the ground Liquid, while the Rhythms were being externally channeled? We know that when multiple Singers attune to a Rhythm and sing a song, they can ritually create consequences. For e.g. Summoning a Highstorm If so, are these Rhythms the same that Singers normally attune to, or was each city built on a separate special Spiritual Rhythm, like the special Rhythm for summoning the Everstorm? If these are the same Rhythms, do they have anything to do with the nature of each of the Kingdoms that sprang forth from each city? For e.g. Rhythm of War/Anger for Kholinar, as the Capital of Alethela, the Kingdom of War? And, how did they channel that much Stormlight into the Surge of Tension? Possible sign to the function of the Dawnshards? (Each Dawnshard channeling one surge on a massive scale? This explains their name: They were the Shards of the Dawnsingers, used to create the Dawncities, perhaps these were Honor and Cultivation's means of allowing them to use the Surges before the Honorblades, since the Singers couldn't innately surgebind?)

Ok, so bear with me on this one. Something has been bothering me, like many who read Oathbringer, ever since Odium said "We killed you." Like many Stormlight fans, I have been mentally (and literally) screaming "What do you mean by WE!" And anyway I've done some thinking, and I think that Unity, instead of a new Shard, as many have theorized, is actually and old Shard that used to live on Roshar. A Shard that was (presumably) killed by Odium and ((possibly Honor?)) (((Working together?))) There is a little possible evidence for this. In the death rattles, one of them goes like "Three of Sixteen ruled, now the broken one reigns" or something like that. Feel free to correct that. Anyway, the way that is worded makes it seem like Odium, the broken one, is not in that original three. Also, since we know there are 3 god-spren--the Storm dad, Nightwatcher, and the Sibling, that leads me to believe that there used to be 3 Shards other than Odium, since it doesn't make sense to me that a Knight Raidiant would bond to a spren of Odium, or that Cultivation or Honor would have two god-spren. That other Shard, Unity, was not liked by Honor or Cultivation or any other Shard. Which makes sense, because they might feel threatened by the fact that he might try to Unite the Shards back into Adonalsium or something. I'm thinking that the Cryptics might be spren of Unity, which is why nobody likes them. It also just makes sense, because math and lies don't really make sense as belonging to Honor or Cultivation, but I can see Unity liking the fact that math is a unifying principle of the universe or something like that. Also, it would make sense because the Dawn Cities are all math based, and they are linked the Uthirthiru in some way ( I think theres a line about the strata being similar? And they both are grown out of rock? Feel free to check that.) And we know that the sibling was related to the tower city as well. So, if the Sibling is a spren of Unity, it all works out. Honor or Cultivation (or both) wanted to get rid of him, but couldn't due to limitation based on their Shard Intent. Neither of them could kill Unity, so they invited Odium, knowing his violent reputation, to come on over to Roshar so he could take care of Unity. That also explains why Odium was allowed onto Roshar on the first place, because I feel like two Shards working together could have blocked him from coming there, if they so wished. Anyway, Odium splintered Unity (possibly with help from one or more of the other Shards) and decided to stay. Eventually, he also splintered Honor, and Cultivation went into hiding. A part of Unity survived, and may have been that voice that's been guiding Dalinar since Book One. That voice seems really distinct from the Stormfather, and I think he once even said so in Oathbringer that he wasn't talking when Dalinar heard the "Unite them" voice. The light that Dalinar feels at the end of books Two and Three may also be the effects of Unity. Dalinar was able to briefly hold whatever is left of Unity, which allowed him to summon the Perpendicularity and all that fun stuff at the end of Book 3. I think that as the books progress, we will only keep on seeing how Unity is actually separate, and wants to be revived. Some odd bits: The splintering might have been the Scouring of Aimia. The Aimians that are a bunch of cremlings seem like something that Unity might have created or liked (since it's a bunch of cremlings unified into one creature) and he might have lived in Aimia. The Unmade might be corrupted Splinters of Unity. I don't think that Odium could have nine relatively large spren of himself and still remain as powerful as he is, so I think he corrupted the Splinters of Unity after he killed him, and those became the Unmade. Obviously, it isn't a perfect theory. And if you've made it to the bottom, congrats on somehow getting through all my disorganized thoughts. Anyway, I want to know what you think, so please feel free to share your thoughts on my theory!

what name do you think the greater shards will be called we have harmony so far but what do you think the other 119 combinations could be called? i like discipline being odium+honour

There have been numerous threads about Kelsier being the leader of the ghostbloods, all with some pretty compelling evidence, and they all run into the same wall. WoB's have repeatedly stated that Kelsier is too connected to Scadrial to leave the Scadrian system. All that good speculation goes up in a puff of WoBery, or does it? First, I think @Calderis's incredibly well thought out post about Physical life after death gives us part of the necessary mechanic, but requires a little bit of unpacking (link to the recent thread with the link to Cal's theory spoilered below). I think that one of the main objections to Cal's theory, namely that Kelsier getting a Physical body from spiking out another individual's connection to the Physical Realm seems to break the conservation of mass/energy/investiture, can be easily solved, and further that this solution to this PR body problem has some very interesting possible implications. When an individual transitions to the Cognitive Realm their physical body (i.e. the matter that makes up their body with a given mass) is converted into an equivalent amount of investiture of the form that exists in the Cognitive Realm. If you think of the incredible complexity of a human body, a truly composite universe unto itself, made up of 30 to 40 trillion cells and home to some 300 to 400 trillion symbiotic microbes, the sheer difficulty of this transition to and from the CR becomes truly mind boggling. But that's where the magic comes in, right? Investiture knows what to do in this conversion process, namely because of sentient intent. Because the magic of the investiture is handling the specifics of the actual conversion, the only thing that is needed is an equivalent amount of Investiture for the conversion process. Say investiture is measured in units of adonalsiums, you would have to figure out how many adonalsiums is equivalent to a reasonable facsimile of Kelsier's body, and figure out how to steal and store that hemalurgically. We know from Oversleep's "We do not concern ourselves with common uses" WoB that investiture can be stolen by a hemalurgic spike (even the Investiture of a spren, smalll quote spoiled below), so it seems highly plausible that the Investiture that makes up a physical body once it's in the CR could be stolen and stored in a spike. We know from Hoid's corpse boat "Spanky" in MB:SH that non-living body's can transition to the Cognitive Realm, we know from Nazh's real knife and from the silver chain in Celebrant that real world objects can be brought into the CR (the spike), and further we know that Kelsier and Spook had a century to experiment with Hemalurgy. We also know from an Argent WoB that the Spirit Web of a deceased person doesn't completely break down, and that there's a record of the deceased person's spirit web in the Spiritual Realm for a long time, making it more plausible that the stolen and stored physical body of the deceased could be stapled onto another entity with hemalurgy. Kelsier, it seems to me, is selfish but not intentionally evil. The idea that he would take a living person into the CR and spike out their connection to the Physical Realm and the Investiture that is their Physical Form, and leave them a misty wraith doomed to wander the Scadrian Cognitive Realm as essentially a bodyless idea for all eternity doesn't really fit, just like I don't think all Kelsier would need to do is steal an individual's connection to the Physical Realm (I don't think the background investiture idea works because Brandon has explicitly said that the physical body is converted into investiture, not that investiture coalesced into the transitioning body (like a teleporter in star trek, the composite matter is beamed from the ship to the surface, not collected from the matter on the surface of the planet teleported too, nothing comes from nothing)). The long preamble done, here's the shiny theoretical bauble dangling from the long speculative chain. I am speculating that when Spook was nearing the end of his Emperor or Governor days (either bored or dying), he took a composite hemalurgic spike and a corpse with the same relative mass as Kelsier on a trip to the hills where Harmony's shardpool is located and transitioned to the cognitive realm. After Spook and the corpse were converted into Investiture and were in the Cognitive Realm, Kelsier spiked out Spook's connection to the Physical Realm (but not the investiture of his actual physical form) and he spiked out the investiture of the physical form of the recently deceased corpse. Further, to have a deathless cognitive agent capable of exploring the Universe he probably spiked out Spook's connection to Scadrial if this is in fact a separate attribute (it's also likely that the connection to Scadrial comes with the connection to the Physical Realm). This would leave us with Kelsier, enhanced with a greater connection to Scadrial (this might have some benefit) and the extra investiture of a true physical form. When he transitions to the Physical Realm this extra investiture, like Cal explained in his post, would be used to form Kelsier's spiritual ideal body, replete with Hathsin scars. How he got his fullborn powers is probably less rosey of a story, but he's a you can't break eggs without making an omelette kind of guy. That would also leave Kelseire with a biddable and dependable Cognitive Shadow agent, Spook, able to explore and report on the wider happenings of the Cosmere. With his connection to Scadrial spiked out, Spook could venture wherever he wanted and it seems to me that with the clue dropped by Hoid to Kelsier about the destruction of a whole mercantile system that Kelsier would want his new agent to investigate the other subastral economies for a start. Also, if Connection to a particular shardworld was necessary to transition to that shardworld's PR, then Spook could likewise find an agent that would be willing to have their Physical Realm connection spiked out to become a wandering Worldhopper. Since the investiture for Spook's physical body was never spiked out, with the new PR connection spike he could transition to the Physical Realm on the new Shardworld. And if he ever wanted to leave a particular cosmere planet, he could remove his Physical Realm connection spike (we know this is something he could do because he removed his pewter spike). But just to extend this to it's most tinfoil hat extreme, Spook could in fact be Thaidikar, and either there's no spike necessary for Connection to Roshar or the spike for the Physical Realm connection could be hidden anywhere...It's possibly worth paying attention to details about Thaidikar on a reread to see if there are any mistborn like powers that are hinted at or if there's any mention of metal on his person, like an earing... TL:DR Kelsier spiked a chicken, and now he can lay eggs, but because of his fullborn powers (specifically his ability to regulate his body heat with F-Brass) he can lay soft boiled eggs. Man, that's serious power. Spook got a tan, but just on the upper part of one of his legs, so now everyone can see he's Thaidakar, I mean they can see his Thigh Darker. *Edited: Tried to change Kelsier to Spoiler and Spook to Spoiler in the title but the old Spoilery title still showed up in the most recent threads list. Will consider this next time, nice catch John203

I think this story is an allegory to some sequence of events that happened in Natanatan at some point. I'm going to be describing the story on two levels - on the level of Cultivation, Honor and Odium, and on the level of Nightwatcher, Stormfather and BAM (who is not the Sibling). The earlier parts of the story fit the former set better, the latter parts the latter set. The Moons of Roshar are Nomon (brightest, blue), Mishim (slowest, Green), and Salas (darkest, Violet). Of note are the colors that Hoid uses thoughout. So far, for the Rosharan Shards, the colors that can be best associated are White-Blue for Honor (Stormlight is white, Honorspren are Blue), Green for Cultivation (the mist at the Valley), and Yellow-White for Odium. (Voidlight is technically Stygian Blue, which is a fatigue response to bright, intense yellow on black - most probably this fact is a commentary on the nature of Rayse-Odium) Let's jump straight into the story then, shall we? Subtext: Cultivation is cleverest of the three Shards on Roshar. Or, the Nightwatcher is the cleverest of the three spren the moons are most likely to represent. Subtext: Honor and Odium are content sit in the spiritual and manifest avatars, powering the magics of Roshar through their respective lights - Stormlight and Voidlight. Honor has the Highstorm, and a high place on Roshar was called "closest to Honor", whereas Odium is literally on a different planet, and now has the Everstorm. As opposed to these two, Cultivation's influence can be seen in all the flora and fauna of Roshar, and she takes a more hands on approach, if only through the Boon-Curse magic. The reign in the sky could then be a realmatic metaphor, with Honor and Odium always staying away, whereas Cultivation being super invested in the Valley, and personally taking interest whenever she could. On the Nightwatcher level, we don't quite know the nature of the Sibling enough to be able to relate it like this with the sky and light. Indeed, I've been suspecting the domain of the Sibling is "stone", or Crem, so I don't know if it would hold with the reign in the sky. I've been suspecting that BAM is to Voidbinding what the Stormfather is to Surgebinding, and in that case she could be the sister to the Nightwatcher who is also content to stay away and "grace the lands with her (Void)light," whereas the brother, Stormfather, would also be cotnent to drive the Highstorms and "grace the lands with his (storm)light." I don't know what Hoid specifically means by this, other than maybe a sly referral to why Cultivation is training the Nightwatcher to be her heir, of some kind. Yep, Mishim is the green moon, and green is the color most associated with Cultivation, and by extension the Nightwatcher. Take the towers to be an allegory to something else, say... Ancient Fabrials. The Natanatans would, in this case, be leading scientists, trying to maybe autopsy and study the biology of Greatshells to understand how fabrials would work realmatically. The Natan people were trying to make artificial Fabrials, and impinging on the domain of Cultivation - whose system is this integrated Fabrial magic in the ecosystem of Roshar. It also makes sense in a different way, because the Aimians would eventually be providing Soulcasters to the rest of Roshar, and the end of this story strongly indicates that the Siah were born as an outcome of what happens here later. The towers could also be an allegory to a lot of different things and not just Fabrials. If you consider the sky and the lands to be the Spiritual and Physical realms, then the tower would be some kind of invested constructs - the metaphor relies on the same description Brandin has previously given to perpendicularities, something that is "heavier" than normal in the physical and stretching it a bit to reach into another realm. A tower is something that is built on land but reaches for the sky. Translation: I am mortal, my domain the Physical and Shadesmar. The Spiritual is yours. Divinity, yours. Interesting use of color here - why the white pillar? The description is similar to the description of Honor's perpendicularity that Dalinar summoned at the end of OB (to be fair, they're both described as white pillars, which isn't exactly a spectacularly detailed description, but still), but I don't know if that's what Hoid is actually alluding to or not. Also, why would you need Honor's perpendicularity to ascend to Cultivation? Except, the allusion is to the fact that Bondsmiths can do it, and this can be used for specific purposes. The answer to that would of course depend on whether the ability to manifest Honor's perpendicularity was a thing Dalinar could do because of the special circumstances involved with Honor's remnants and the Stormfather. Even if it was, that particular ability could be achieved by other Bondsmiths, just not necessarily in that manner, or by those circumstances. As always, Cultivation was using her Futuresight and her intent/motivation to see how best she could... well, cultivate. Her intent dictates that she constantly be doing that - constantly be looking to cultivate. Especially after holding the Shard for as long as she has, she would be reaching for some Preservation or Ruin levels of singlemindedness. Unlike Honor and Odium, she rarely makes an active play in events, preferring quiet nudges that may yield results favourable to her sometime in the far future. To mortal eyes, this isn't always apparent, her changes may not always be individually beneficial even, and because she uses the Nightwatcher as a substitute, she is culturally characterized with the attributes "loathes her duty" and "lazy". Another element at play here is that it was Honor that was pro-humanity, while Cultivation's own feelings towards them can, at best, be described as lukewarm. Take this from the perspective of a Shard - for whom looking at all of this in the physical would be trivial. Even Odium, who - unlike Cultivation - is actually trapped, can show Venli visions of Roshar from space, implying that is a perspective a Shard could see through if they so wanted. Also, yes, if you looked at Stars up close in mortal form, you would truly burn away from the heat of it. Another thing is that Stormlight infused Gemstones glow, and that perfectly cut Stormlight infused Gemstones would glow for a long time. So yes, without explaining the deep physics of everything, in a story, to say that the Stars are gemstones cut by the finest of gem cutters wouldn't be exactly be an inaccurate metaphor. Take the Heavens here, to be a state that you attain be Ascending. Yes, the sheer amount of information you would parse then would drive you mad in your non-ascended state. Moreover, as a scholar of Realmatics, Queen Tsa would know this. No clue what the Starspren mean though. Whatever these towers represent, investiture is definitely a big part of them. Or it could be taken figuratively in a different manner - the societal pillars and domes of that city could literally hold membership with the Knights Radiant - they could literally be Surgebinders, and thus Radiant. The Yellow-Gold smoke is interesting, as Yellow-Gold is the color of Bondsmiths. The green involved could imply this is a Nightwatcher Bondsmith. The Queen was Pious, which is a Bondsmith trait. And the Shard of Cultivation, or the Nightwatcher herself, is described as crafty. Also not an inaccurate descriptor. They're trying to achieve something by Applied Realmatic Theory, but something is missing. They're missing a clue. Something in their equations is wrong. And here they try to convince a Shard to help them. Queen Tsa asks to ascend - to pick up enough of the Shard to be capable of achieving what she wants to. Whether this is something Cultivation also secretly wants to come about, or whether this is really Queen Tsa tricking Cultivation is - atleast according to me - a question the story does not have an answer to. This is probably over analysing (well, technically so is the entirety of this post :P), but why the Orange? Why a random fourth color? I have only one unlikely conjecture - Odium does appear as the entire spectrum of Yellow to Dalinar in one of the Visions, so the Orange could be him. The fact that the word intense is mentioned could be indicative that the Orange represents something related to Odium, if not directly Odium. The Shard is temporarily passed from one vessel to another. Or, the Nightwatcher and her Bondsmith somehow swap places. No clue if this is even possible, although theoretically this could be achieved by rewiring one physical body from one Cognitive and Spiritual aspect onto a different Cognitive and Spiritual aspect. Probably unlikely, but not impossible. hmmm. So after what was ages, Cultivation's vessel, got a chance to be not a Vessel. Of course, she enjoyed however she could. Or the Nightwatcher is enjoying being mortal. I do not know what this part of the story means. The Shardic level was working better so far. But the superspren level makes a better fit from this point on. I don't quite know the exact mechanics/events this story is alluding to. There's something happening here and I don't quite know what. It is however interesting to note the qualities that are associated with each moon - kindness to Nomon (Honor/Stormfather), and thoughtfulness to Salas (Odium/Sibling/BAM). It's interesting to know that the color of Tsa is White, as opposed to the Green of Mishim, Blue of Nomon, and Violet of Salas. White is the one color common to all Radiants. Queen Tsa broke her word. Not very honourable. It is also interesting that that idea - the idea of her breaking her Oaths, is what gets Tsa to relent. This could be a cultural folk based decision in the story if it is not alluding to anything. But it fits this subtext surprisingly well. Roshar does have a significant focus on the ability to "hear" spiritual ideals, like the Rhythms. In that vein, this is interesting. Blue (and White) have so far been associated with Honor. So this is interesting. The first Siah? It is interesting that this was a new song. This is... I already laid out my feelings on this. I don't quite think that Queen Tsa could have tricked Cultivation herself, and this would be a ploy by Cultivation to make it seem like this, but in actuality, the fact is that some of her goals are also being achieved. These goals could be anything ranging from the creation of the Siah so that they could fulfill some specific purpose in the future, to something like letting go of her Shard for a while to potentially delay or decrease the overpowering effect that it's intent could be having in her consciousness. Maybe both, and more. I also don't know what "loss" means to Cultivation, save perhaps a kind of nostalgia on what she had been a long while ago - an understanding that a life like this with Tanavast is what she gave up all those millenia ago. If however, the Nightwatcher is the one in question, then this kind of makes better sense? Especially the parts where she didn't know mortal life, or the fact that she couldn't know loss. Cultivation would have allowed it in this case because she would have thought it would ultimately be better for the Nightwatcher to understand mortal existence, particularly if she was being trained as an heir to that Shard someday. This could make even more sense if Tsa was a Nightwatcher Bondsmith, and pulled something akin to what Dalinar managed at the Battle of Thaylen City, but different by circumstance, skill, and motive. A Child whose mother ascended while she was potentially pregnant, or something else was done by Tsa with her expanded understanding, capabilities, and perhaps most importantly, Honor's (maybe via Stormfather) investiture. Maybe the creation of a certain kind of Slivers was the point of the whole endeavor, or maybe the Siah hold a secret in their genetics/existence that Tsa was looking for all along. (by secret, I don't necessarily mean lore, but rather the fruit of Tsa's endeavors - art of a kind) Read above on what I feel about this. So... yeah. Had to get this out, though it would have been fun if I could have gotten to this before the Myths of Roshar Shardcasts.

When contemplating the Ghostbloods' methods I had a thought about how the Ghostbloods determined Shallan is a Lightweaver. I don't have hard evidence to back up, but here's the reasoning The Ghostbloods were impressed at Shallan's ability to evade their observers when infiltrating Amaram's warcamp Shallan avoiding assassination returning from the meeting where Shallan demonstrated her astonishing memorization abilities This may have lead to the Ghostbloods setting more than one person to observe Shallan retrieving the instructions. While Shallan was able to compromise Iyatil, a second tail would be able to observe Shallan revealing her head outside of the carriage at the entrance to the monastery (and could later help extract Iyatil). Mraize then leveraged that information in Urithiru to confirm Shallan could Soulcast and pressure her to stay with the Ghostbloods. I acknowledge that the situation of a message retrieval was crafted in a way that one agent should be able to tail Shallan, but as she was able to impress the Ghostbloods 3 times I think it likely that they could foresee the possibility of distraction or obstruction when the message is retrieved.

Wow! My first big theory! Feels good! I can't wait to see how Book 4 disproves all of this with a single paragraph. So, let's get into things. Some Background Most of this speculation comes from a small argument I had on our lovely Discord about magic systems and methods of access. Yknow, stuff like Bonds and Oaths and breathing in Stormlight. So, at the tail end of this discussion, I had a thought. What is Voidbinding's method of access? Well, you might say Voidlight, but I don't believe the Fused are Voidbinding (yet). But even if that's the case, I assume Voidlight would only be a key, similarly to Stormlight. Not everyone can Surgebind, you need to have a Nahel bond with a Radiant Spren, and you need to say Oaths. So that's what I'm going to call a "method of access" for this theory. With that, let's begin! The Nightwatcher, the Unmade, and providing external powers So, two big parts of my theory are these two nuggets of information. First up is the information that Voidbinding usually originates with the Unmade. The second nugget is that Voidbinding and the Old Magic are "cousins", as stated by Khriss in the Ars Arcanum: So, how does the Old Magic work? As far as we know, it's just the Nightwatcher chucking Investiture at people to facilitate a change. So, if Voidbinding and the Old Magic can be considered "cousins", perhaps the similarities lie here. The Unmade provide an external form of Investiture, either in the form the ability to use Voids/Surges/Voidsurges (terminology unclear), Voidlight, or both. But unlike the Old Magic, Voidbinding seems to be a much more rigid magic system standard of Brandon. It was used (at least in some form, since we can assume that Voidbinding has not been fully explored) frequently enough that the Vorins were able to make a (probably incorrect) chart for it. So, if it's a rigid, Sanderson-brand magic system, how's it work? What's the key? The focus? The method of access? Well... The empty pit that sucks in emotion I can't fully confirm what Voidbinding does once it's activated, whether it's Surges used in a crazy new light, to simply corrupted Surgebinding, to something entirely out of left field. But I can ask you a question: why does Surgebinding love bonds so much? I'd think it's because Honor likes bonds and oaths. It's his "thing". Gravitation even works the way it does in Surgebinding because Honor loves bonds. He likes to make them, he sticks by them, and he uses them for all his crazy magic (sealing away Odium, establishing the Oathpact, etc). So what's Odium's "thing"? What does he do? From what we've seen in Oathbringer, and that ominous quote from the Eila Stele I put before this paragraph, Odium "takes away pain". His followers (this is especially apparent in Moash) throw the blame on someone else. They relieve themselves of their pain, and as a result they feel a depressive void. When Dalinar abuses the Thrill, he becomes unable to be sated by anything but Thrill-infused carnage. There is no emotion unless he is accessing Odium's power. While this is obviously a metaphor for drug/alcohol abuse, I do think it still relates to Odium magically. So, how does this relate to Voidbinding? Well, if we go forward with the idea that the method of access for magic systems is related to the Modus Operandi of their Shard of origin, than perhaps in order to use Voidbinding, you have to drain yourself. Possibly of emotion, possibly of a variety of things that the Unmade ask of you, maybe both, but I believe that Voidbinding requires the user to drain themselves of something. Once they give up their "pain", the Unmade can step in, and provide that internal Investiture source, whatever that may be. I'm not quite sure how it works, but one possible way might be like this: Some person has Voidlight. They breathe in the Voidlight, and focus on their "pain". The Voidlight gets to work and takes the person's pain. Some Unmade steps in, and forges a quick connection with the person, filling them up with Voidy Juice. Ta-da! You've got yourself a Voidbinder! This might not be exactly how things work, and it might not even need Voidlight at all, but that remains to be seen. I will give you my sorrow There's still a chasmfiend in the room: Renarin. He's obviously related in some way to the Void, due to Brandon's chart-pointing and the fact that his Spren is "Enlightened" by Sja-Anat. Since he seems unable to produce illusions (this remains to be seen, but he does seem to have an abnormally difficult time producing them, even accidentally), many people have considered the idea that his Surge of Illumination has been coopted and replaced with the Void/Voidsurge of Illumination. But Voidbinding originates with the Unmade, right? Well, only usually, whatever that means. So, Renarin bonding a corrupted spren. That might be one of the less common methods of obtaining Voidbinding. Now, according to Brandon, Renarin is "weird' and not really fully Voidbinding. What does he mean by this? Well, there are a lot of theories, but one I think works is that Renarin isn't really doing much - Glys is facilitating everything. It's definitely possible for spren to access Surges. Syl does a bit of it, and Fabrials obviously work that way in some form. And now, this might be a stretch, but consider, Right before Renarin sees his final vision in OB, this little line shows up : "I will give you my sorrow". And then the next time we see Renarin, boom. Vision time. I might be completely reading too far into this, but if Voidbinding does require giving up "pain" or emotions, than perhaps to use Voidish Illumination, one must give up their sorrow. And since Renarin either doesn't want to or doesn't know how, Glys has been facilitating it for the time being? Can Renarin Voidbind on his own? Does he need an Unmade, or will his strange bond suffice? That remains to be seen. Ending And with that, all my weird speculation comes to a wrap! Thanks for reading, and feel free to tear into this in the replies. I think it holds some water, and even if I'm mostly wrong, this might be a piece to a larger puzzle. See you all soon!