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Ok so I was confused at first but I have a theory to explain it. So trel is said to be male avatar but telsin is female? This confused me might here is how I think it works. Autonomy makes a male avatar on taldan name trell, that avatar ascends and now is also a holder of the shard Autonomy. After he ascends he begins to make a avatar of himself telsin. Dose this theory make sense lore with the lore we have on avatars?

So, there is something very weird and not yet revealed about the timeline for the human migration from Ashyn to Roshar, the Heralds, and the Oathpact. From what we are told in Oathbringer, humans came to Roshar and were granted Shinovar to live in, eventually they wanted more land and fought against the singers/Dawnsingers, starting the wars that became the Desolations. But most if not all of the Heralds were born on Ashyn, before the migration to Roshar, with the only possible exception being Shalash. And the Heralds became Heralds when they were the age they now physically appear to be. (See the WOBs at the bottom of this post...) This puts a fairly tight constraint on the time scale for these events; probably no more than 30-35 years or so, if Shalash was born around the time of the migration. Yet it seems this must have taken a very long time. Shinovar is a pretty large land, and much more favorable to human life than most of Roshar - there wouldn't seem to be an immediate need to move beyond Shinovar. And the humans from Ashyn presumably arrived as refugees, not immediately ready for a war of conquest. And furthermore, it seems the Oathpact couldn't have been a response to the initial war with the singers. The Stormfather says (Oathbringer chapter 38; I'm not copying his ALL CAPS): So the Oathpact didn't happen until after: - humans fought a war with the singers - the dead singers became the Fused to fight against humanity further, and were repeatedly reborn - this process continued long enough for it to become clear that humanity couldn't win the war unless something drastic changed That pushes the timeline out even further, as these wars probably lasted years (maybe many years) by themselves. This seems to be a major timeline issue. But do we really know that the Heralds became Heralds at the same time as the Oathpact was formed? The Stormfather says (same chapter) that the purpose of the Oathpact was to seal the Fused spirits in Braize: But then, why do they get Surgebinding powers and Honorblades? How does that help? (This question isn't original to me- wish I could remember who brought it up - but I've seen it used as evidence that repeating Desolations, and thus a need to fight, was Honor's plan. But the Stormfather made it very clear that it was supposed to "end the war forever", ie no more fighting needed...) We do know that the Honorblades were given to the Heralds as part of an oath (Oathbringer Chapter 16, the Stormfather speaking:) But perhaps there is more than one oath involved. One maybe 30 years after the migration to Roshar, when the Heralds stop aging, get Surgebinding and Honorblades. And a second one, the actual Oathpact, after decades of war with the singers, becoming an endless losing battle as the Fused arise and reincarnate endlessly, which doesn't involve Surgebinding but does trap the Fused spirits on Braize. WOB #1: Post-TLM Update: I think the Honorblades were originally granted by Honor to provide a limited, controlled form of Surgebinding to replace the destructive Ashynite form. Mistborn TLM Spoilers: I think their granting also made the Heralds into Avatars of Honor, and stopped (or greatly slowed) their aging -- before they ever became Cognitive Shadows. If their original granting created Avatars, that could explain the Stormfather's cryptic comment that Jezrien's Honorblade is much more powerful than Dalinar realizes: "you would be a Windrunner unoathed. And more. More that men do not understand, and cannot. Like a Herald, nearly." From what we know so far, a Honorblade's powers are strictly worse than a 3rd Ideal Radiant's - same Surges and Shardblade, but much worse healing. And by 4th Ideal, with Plate, the Radiant is ridiculously far ahead. But if there were an unknown way to use a Honorblade to become an avatar - maybe one requiring Shard/Sliver/Avatar expanded mind ("men do not understand, and cannot") - it would make sense. More timeline anomalies Raboniel says (ch 76 RoW) that she wasn't around when humans arrived, but her grandmother told her about what it was like, in a way that implies her grandmother was around to see it. Essu, Raboniel's daughter, became a Fused, so given that apparently (according to Raboniel) all the Fused were "elevated" at once, and presumably Odium wouldn't have chosen a baby or young child, Essu was probably already adult or at least close at the time the Fused were created. So there were probably about 3 singer generations between human arrival and the elevation of the Fused. Singer generations are shorter than human ones, so that could be argued to be compatible, but it's a stretch. Singers are considered adult at 10, so if that's equivalent to human 18... human generation times in a pre-industrial society are probably something like 25 years, so maybe 13-15 for singers? 3 generations would still be something like 40-45 years ... and according to the Stormfather, the Oathpact was created because humans couldn't win a war where their enemies kept reincarnating, which means there was more war between the creation of the Fused and the beginning of the Oathpact. There is no way the younger Heralds are physically 50, or even 40. It's not completely definitive, because it's possible that Raboniel's mother was alive - maybe even adult and just somewhere else - at the time of human arrival, and that Essu was made a Fused before full adulthood. If Raboniel was born only a few years after the arrival (say 3 years), and Raboniel had Essu at say 12, and Essu was made a Fused at maybe 8, and only two years passed between the Fused being created and the Oathpact... then Shalash could be like 25 at the time of the Oathpact. But that seems like a stretch.

Clearly, there is a plan for Marsh down the road. I don't think Sanderson would make him immortal and keep him around for no good reason. So what's going to be his story going forward? Marsh is currently probably one of the most (if not the most) heavily ruin-invested individuals in the cosmere, save Harmony himself, and as lost metal tells us that's not likely to change. Hemalurgy was different in the era of the final empire, and you just can't have as many spikes now as Marsh does. Sazed, meanwhile, has a problem. He has more ruin in his system than he does preservation, and it's making things difficult for him. Perhaps one way to solve this issue is to shunt that extra ruin into an avatar, a minishard. And who better to make an avatar of Ruin than the person already most heavily aligned with him? Ruin is the end of all things. The fall of the great civilization, the mountain ground into dust, the star that goes out. Preservation gave a part of himself up to create life. So what then, is the avatar of that opposite part of Ruin? Death.

Ok this one is a little crazy but here me out. A lot of importance has been placed has been place on Kaliden being called the son of honor/tanavast some have theorized that this means that he is the biological son or grandson of the vessel of honor but this make little sense unlike the Greek gods shards don't seem to have a body that can impregnate someone . They are much closer to the abrahamic form of divinity, however there is a abrahamic form of divine sonship. Now is there anything similar to the incarnation in the cosmere. Yes Avatars appear to function very similar to the biblical incarnation, How coincidental that we are first introduced to the concept of avatars in stormlight. Some other things to consider Kaliden is called storm blessed before he become a windrunner implying a pre syl connection to the highstorm. The storm father seems oddly interested in Kaliden, he rarely takes to humans other then Dalinar but has communicated several times to Kaliden. What do you think dose these make any sense even in a crazy sort of way.

Sort of a splinter of the 'hypothetical magic systems' topic... While we don't understand avatars, it seems that an avatar is a mind/personality distinct from the Shard's Vessel holding a sub-set of that Shard's Investiture (by WOB, Bavadin is always aware of the relationship, but not all of Autonomy's avatars are necessarily aware they are avatars - not sure if that would apply to all Shards). That sounds... really a lot like a Splinter. And we know Splinters can show up on other planets than their own Shard's, though lots of Investiture can make travel hard. We've seen a Seon [with a Splinter of Devotion] and a Returned [with a Splinter of Endowment] on Roshar. Perhaps the difference between a Splinter and an Avatar is the method of creation, Avatars being made from "ambient" pre-Shattering Investiture that became assigned to that Shard at the Shattering? Maybe an Avatar is some kind of merging of a regular person and a Splinter, if the presence of a human named Trell in White Sand is a hint? I wonder if the presence of an Avatar of Autonomy on First of the Sun doesn't really have greater significance than the presence of a Splinter of Endowment or Devotion on Roshar. That would explain the WoBs describing First of the Sun as having no Shard in residence, "natural" magic, etc.? (Maybe the perpendicularity, Aviars/worms/fruit, etc. were all pre-existing and Bavadin/Autonomy just used the already present concentration of Investiture to create an avatar?)

I'm going to just say right off the bat that I am by no means convinced that this is even likely to be true much less that it actually is, and it only just finished coming together in my head a few minutes ago in another one of my posts in which Autonomy was brought up. So for all I know, this is demonstrably false, but I thought I'd just put it out there. So for a while now, I've been trying (and failing) to wrap my brain around just what the heck is going on with Autonomy and why she seems to be acting so contrary to at least reasonable conceptions of what her intent would seem to indicate. What we seem to know about her is that 1) she's 'spreading' from planet to planet and installing avatars of her Investiture on them, whatever exactly that means, 2) she tends to discourage if not outright forbid in the case of Taldain any access to or from the planets under her dominion (pun definitely intended), and 3) that she tends to inspire or deliberately set herself or her avatars up as objects of worship among those on her planets. This has always struck me as extremely bizarre behaviour for the Shard of Autonomy, for which really only (2) could be argued as unsurprising. But then I remembered that there was a WOB in which someone had asked Brandon whether Autonomy was involved in the splintering of Devotion and Dominion, and Brandon answered in the affirmative, albeit only after they rephrased the question to be extremely broad to prevent him from RAFOing it on the spot ("was Autonomy involved in any way), which is so vague as to be compatible with practically anything, but oh well, just consider that one of the unproven assumptions of this theory. What occurred to me is that it almost seems like Autonomy is displaying behaviour consistent with and expected by Dominion and Devotion (albeit interpreted in the sense of 'subservience' and 'sycophantism' rather than 'love and compassion' as Aona seems to). That is to say, I don't think any of us would have been at all surprised to have learned that Dominion liked to spread from planet to planet and claim them for itself, or that a less benevolently-interpreted Devotion would like to set themself up as an object of worship and reverence, but that Autonomy would do those things is, at the very least, somewhat more surprising simply by virtue of it not being as expected given that Shardic intent. So my question is this: IF we assume for the sake of argument that Autonomy was in some way involved with the deaths of Devotion and Dominion, or of disposing of their 'remains' afterward so to speak, is there any chance that the uncontained Investiture of Dominion and Devotion could have in some sense 'contaminated' Autonomy's own Investiture (and maybe even Odium too for all we know, since he's really no different, just even worse) to some extent and instilled into her these tendencies that would be more expected for those two Shards? I mean she clearly doesn't hold their full Shards, that's not what I'm suggesting, but it doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility that when the Investiture of two Shards comes into contact, for lack of a better term, some limited degree of melding occurs (it certainly did in Harmony's case, admittedly through completely different means). Looked at in this way, Autonomy's behaviour would no longer seem quite so counter-intuitive. She'd effectively be a single Shard in terms of power, but possess in addition to her primary attribute, a limited extent of two other Shards as well. Though admittedly, an obvious inconsistency with this theory is that Ruin and Preservation's Investiture had clearly been 'in contact' before and yet neither of them displayed any sort of 'intent blending', so clearly if this has any merit at all it would require the additional assumption that something different and possibly unique occurred on Sel that simply hasn't occurred since. Exactly what this is, I don't know. Does anyone have any thoughts?