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Hi all, this is my first ever forum post, glad to meet you all! Intro As the title suggests I believe that Willshapers are the ones that create shardplate for the Radiants, or at least I believe my theory is pretty solid. I've been thinking alot about the Willshapers lately and Kalak and from the brief descriptions we have, they seem to appear as very finicky tinkerers. So I basically picture Kalak as the Iron Man of the Heralds who designed the shardplates(maybe some 'Honorplate'). There has also been alot of speculation that shardplate is comprised of subspren and comments from Brandon Sanderson's Q & As and subspren appearing around certain characters(Dalinar, Kaladin & Jasnah) point to this. I also believe that Bondsmiths might play a part in this process, I get more into that later on. How I think it works Since the subspren aren't able to make nahel bonds, therefore only able to manifest in the physical realm for a brief period of time. I think these spren are so drawn to the Radiants and their increasing connection to their sapient cousins, but can't bound because of the laws in place. So Kalak, being the inquisitive airhead decides that if they have shardweapons why not make shardarmor from other spren since Radiants can only have one bond per sapient spren. I imagine that in order to make this happen, the Willshaper will blend their surges together like how Dalinar blended Cohesion and Adhesion to repair the ruins in Thaylen City and somehow bring the spren from Shadesmar into the Physical Realm and use Cohesion to reshape them into shardplate(perhaps involving some sort of Godmetal, not too sure I'm not all that knowledgeable on that topic). Now where does the Bondsmith come in? Well that's simple, they use Spiritual Adhesion to identity key the Plate to the Radiant. I also think maybe another way to look at it is that perhaps a Bondmsith would open a perpendicularity that might affect the process in a way or something? Here is further evidence to back my theory(some speculation): Dalinar was capable of using 'Spiritual Adhesion' to communicate with others of different languages. It would lend credence to their Order's name, perhaps how they even got it like Windrunners and Skybreakers are best known for their flight abilities but can do so much more. The radiants takes the subspren(Will) and shape it into the best form for the knight(Shaper) There's been a convenient lack of information on the Order and their Herald and I'm sure we all know our favourite author has a penchant for leaving omitting delicious information for the sake of storytelling. We know Venli is probably on her way to become one and how she interacts with Dalinar's Radiants could be a big thing in the fourth Stormlight book. In Taln's ramblings about the latest Desolation, he talks about training and leading armies, Jezrien teaching men leadership and Kalak teaching them to smith Bronze. Kalak was probably the Herald of Craftsmanship and this translated to his Order as well. Anyways let me know what you guys think, I'm not that knowledgeable on the magic system in Stormlight, so technical and complex but I still love it. Let me know what I got wrong, or missed out. Cheers!!!

In Oathbringer, the Stormfather mentions subspren and true spren. I think that perhaps subspren (assuming that they're the spren with little intellect like gloryspren, anticipation spren, and even windspren) might be able to become True spren (assuming they're things like Honor spren and Cryptics) given the ability. Syl supports this theory, though because she mentions being raised by an aunt - from what? I'd guess that she was raised from a subspren upwards. Also, maybe dead spren revert to their previous form. Though its interesting - that would mean that more than ten types of radiants are possible because even if you subscribe to the theory that there are two types of subspren for each radiant type (for windrunners, general theory states that it is windspren and gravitationspren) and I'd assume that there are more than 30 types of spren, 10 * 3 (2 sub, 1 true), or even triple it (for each magic system)