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Shash


FeatherWriter

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The more I read, the more I keep seeing the word "shash" everywhere. It's on Kaladin's forehead and as a glyph means "dangerous". However, it's also apparently one of the orders of Knights Radiant, the sixth, garnet, and the best contender for Shallan's order. Shalash, which is very close, is the Herald whose statues are disappearing and possibly Baxil's mistress.

Beyond that, in Warbreaker (slight spoilers)

Shash is apparently a letter on Nalthis! It's the first, and only, letter we hear Siri teach Susebron.

I have a feeling that there is something very significant with that word/letter/glyph. It's just in too many places.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Cosmere Spoilers!!

My guess is that "Shash" is a letter from the Yolen language, pre-Shattering. After Adonalsium shattered, the Shards ascended, and they split off to different planets. However, since they have a common base of language, some things are the same.

Note that there are very different languages. Not all languages necessarily have a Yolish base. We see Demoux having trouble with the language, and Galladon slipping into Dula after everyone leaves. (And neither of those worlds have "Shash"). However, I believe that there is a base language that all of these languages come from (like Latin? I don't know linguistics very well), and "Shash" is supposed to show that to us.

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Cosmere Spoilers!!

My guess is that "Shash" is a letter from the Yolen language, pre-Shattering. After Adonalsium shattered, the Shards ascended, and they split off to different planets. However, since they have a common base of language, some things are the same.

Note that there are very different languages. Not all languages necessarily have a Yolish base. We see Demoux having trouble with the language, and Galladon slipping into Dula after everyone leaves. (And neither of those worlds have "Shash"). However, I believe that there is a base language that all of these languages come from (like Latin? I don't know linguistics very well), and "Shash" is supposed to show that to us.

I had assumed the recurrence of words like this was a coincidence, but this makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps Yolen==the Tranquiline Hills? But then why would the Hallandren speak a Yolish language? (Because the Returned talk with Endowment? Was Vo actually the first Returned or just the first in historic times?)

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I don't think that Yolen is the Tranquiline Halls. My guess is that the Tranquiline Halls was Honor's original Shardworld. We know that that humans are in fact the ones who aren't native to Roshar, so presumably their original world was lost to the Voidbringers, and Honor brought them to Roshar. I know that the main Dragonsteel sequence will take place on Yolen centuries after the events of the first two books. Does anyone know when the main Dragonsteel sequence is chronologically, in relation to the Way of Kings? Because if that series is set afterwards, and presumably isn't dominated by Voidbringers, then we know for sure that the Tranquiline Halls isn't Yolen.

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  • 4 weeks later...

My idea about Shash comes from a theory I've been developing for a while but still needs more time before I post it. The idea that I have is that the letter/word Shash comes from the Herald Shalash on both Roshar and Nalthis. THe idea here is that after the Oathpact was broken the Heralds either didn't stay on Roshar but instead went to different shard worlds and did stuff there, this is how the word Shash ended up on both Nalthis and Roshar.

The other idea I have is that the Oathpact was a Cosmere wide treaty thing and not just exclusive to Roshar. The desolations would occur on different shard worlds and the Heralds would go there to fight them. it was only coincidence that they broke the Oathpact of Roshar. This also could explain why Shash appears in both Warbreaker and The Way of Kings.

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I actually hadn't thought of this. I haven't had the idea of the Desolations happening on different worlds for as long as the other one but I do have a few explanations of why there wouldn't be stories of Heralds on other Shardworlds.

1) Ending the Oathpact was supposed to end the cycle of Desolations. I can think it's safe to say that this didn't work as the Last Desolation appears to becoming unhindered. It took ~4500 years between the end of the Desolation that ended the Oathpact and the start of the Last Desolation, I'm going to assume that this is a fairly standard length of time between desolation. We know that there are 10 shardworlds, this would mean that it could take up to 45000 years for the desolations to cycle through all the worlds this is plenty of time for the desolations to be completely forgoten by the time they roll back arround. This doesn't explain why Roshar gets 2 in a row however. the only way I can think to explain this is that it is because the previous desolation ended without getting rid of the void bringers on Roshar.

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Mild note: Warbreaker appears to use a phonetic alphabet of some description outside of Artisan's script, while Roshar's glyphs are pictographs. It is thus highly unlikely, although not impossible, that both writing systems are descended from the same source and that Shash is a character in both of them and the original language. However, it is quite possible that both uses are derived from Shalash.

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