A weird number of something now

[Ripheus23]

So are there the ten Honorblades and the one Honorspear? But then eleven "Honorweapons" in some relevant sense?

Here's some Coppermind lore:

Quote

The existence of eleven lamps in each Oathgate control chamber indicates that it might be possible to transport people directly between any two platforms. However, at the present each Oathgate is tied only to one other, connecting each of the ten ancient cities to Urithiru.^[18]

Suppose, for the sake of crackpottery, that the Honorspear can interface with the Oathgates to access this "eleventh factor" or whatever. Or, I mean, might there be a previous "eleventh Honorweapon" too, but which was destroyed in abstract counterpart to Jezrien's future destruction (and in spite of not being his Honorblade, after all, beforehand, but a currently unknown, unWoBed weapon)?

At least, are there any other Rosharan/Archive contexts in which eleven is important in the way that nine and ten are, on different terms though then?

[OverlordBob999]

The numbers 10 and 9 are both important to the Rosharan system, as Honors number is 10 and Odiums number is 9. Cultivations number is currently unknown / possibly nonexistent (not every Shard has one), but I doubt that hers would be the new magic number for the Oathgates since she left Roshar. however, it is stated that Jezriens Blade was corrupted by Odium, possibly impacting whether or not it is considered an Honorweapon (now it's an Odiumblade??), which would keep the number at 10. But I do like the theory of Kaladin being able to connect and heal the peoples of Roshar after he's done / satisfied with the progress of healing the Heralds. 

[1000CremlingsInATrenchcoat He/Him]

I was assuming that his "blade" was just replacing Jezrien's Windrunner blade. I've gone back and listened to day 10 again and Szeth narrates as if/Ishar speaks as if there are 9 blades, discounting a Windrunner blade, as if that weapon were no more. I think its connection to the pact may have been severed.

[PanicPug]

3 hours ago, 1000CremlingsInATrenchcoat said:

I was assuming that his "blade" was just replacing Jezrien's Windrunner blade. I've gone back and listened to day 10 again and Szeth narrates as if/Ishar speaks as if there are 9 blades, discounting a Windrunner blade, as if that weapon were no more. I think its connection to the pact may have been severed.

I read it like that as well and seen to remember the description of an open slot where Jezrien's blade was before while all the other blades were there each in its slot. So Kaladin's spear filled the gap that was left ultimately by Jezrien's death and the loss of his blade.

[TheoreticalMagic]

5 hours ago, OverlordBob999 said:

The numbers 10 and 9 are both important to the Rosharan system, as Honors number is 10 and Odiums number is 9. Cultivations number is currently unknown / possibly nonexistent (not every Shard has one), but I doubt that hers would be the new magic number for the Oathgates since she left Roshar. however, it is stated that Jezriens Blade was corrupted by Odium, possibly impacting whether or not it is considered an Honorweapon (now it's an Odiumblade??), which would keep the number at 10. But I do like the theory of Kaladin being able to connect and heal the peoples of Roshar after he's done / satisfied with the progress of healing the Heralds. 

Slight tangent, but this book ruined my theory that five is Cultivation's number. A lot of stuff in the cosmere is about things working their way up to the number five, growing and evolving over time....its important to a lot of magic systems like the Fifth Heightening in Awakening, the Fifth Ideal in Surgebinding, etc....it just made sense to me that it was like....the cultivation of Investiture. But Honor seems to dislike the number five, not just dismissing it as an option for the Oathpact but calling it weak, etc. Just doesn't feel like something he'd associate with Cultivation....hmm, UNLESS that was more the power's influence talking, and the power has a grudge against Cultivation because it blames her for being a bad influence on its Vessel, such as their initial agreement to settle a world together, which made the Shards' initial isolation policy the first vow Tanavast broke? Hmm, maybe I just changed my mind. Alternatively, I could see Ambition applying to working your way up the Investiture ladder, and being someone both Tanavast and Honor wasn't so keen on, so maybe five was Ambition's number.

Edited January 14, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[AlmightyGir]

5 hours ago, 1000CremlingsInATrenchcoat said:

I was assuming that his "blade" was just replacing Jezrien's Windrunner blade. I've gone back and listened to day 10 again and Szeth narrates as if/Ishar speaks as if there are 9 blades, discounting a Windrunner blade, as if that weapon were no more. I think its connection to the pact may have been severed.

This seems reasonable.

Though the blades themselves are made of pure Tanavastium, Jezrien's blade is the only one that exists without it's coupling Herald. With Jezrien dead, it's likely that some or all of the Connection that made the weapon a "true" Honorblade is likely gone.

The weapon itself (apparently sentient, according to Nightblood?) might have been searching for a new Intent once Jezrien died.

Obviously the above is guesswork/speculation, but to me at least it makes some kind of sense. As the blades were formed during the oathpact and each one was formed by or for the Heralds specifically. I can't imagine they were just made without some kind of Connection directly to their respective Herald.

[+Child of Hodor]

Nale says that Odium claimed Jezrien's blade when Moash killed Jezrien and took it. It's been "corrupted". 

Quote

"The Windrunner Honorblade has been corrupted." Nale called from ahead. ... "Our king, Jezrien was killed by the Windrunner traitor, Vyre. Odium took his Honorblade unto himself in that moment, corrupting it."  WaT Ch. 72

I think this means it no longer counts as an Honorblade. 

[Ripheus23]

51 minutes ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Slight tangent, but this book ruined my theory that five is Cultivation's number. A lot of stuff in the cosmere is about things working their way up to the number five, growing and evolving over time....its important to a lot of magic systems like the Fifth Heightening in Awakening, the Fifth Ideal in Surgebinding, etc....it just made sense to me that it was like....the cultivation of Investiture. But Honor seems to dislike the number five, not just dismissing it as an option for the Oathpact but calling it weak, etc. Just doesn't feel like something he'd associate with Cultivation....hmm, UNLESS that was more the power's influence talking, and the power has a grudge against Cultivation because it blames her for being a bad influence on its Vessel, such as their initial agreement to settle a world together, which made the Shards' initial isolation policy the first vow Tanavast broke? Hmm, maybe I just changed my mind. Alternatively, I could see Ambition applying to working your way up the Investiture ladder, and being someone both Tanavast and Honor wasn't so keen on, so maybe five was Ambition's number.

IIRC, five is important relative to Endowment. But I don't know that this is confirmed to be in the way that nine is important to Odium and ten is to Honor, etc.

24 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

Nale says that Odium claimed Jezrien's blade when Moash killed Jezrien and took it. It's been "corrupted". 

I think this means it no longer counts as an Honorblade. 

Hmm. A good candidate now for a Retributionblade, then, though...

[elihaun]

Another thing to note is when considering the number of possible heralds, Tanavast gave a few different numbers.  He DID say that one was possible but would be too much of a burden (I don't have the book next to me to look up the quote), so It might not be '10 heralds' anymore. It might now be thought of as "nine and one".  I know this seems like semantics, but it is something to consider.  and in a way, it WAS one for a LOOoooooong time. So there is precedent.  

[alder24]

3 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Slight tangent, but this book ruined my theory that five is Cultivation's number.

Number five is Endowment's number. Tears of Edgli has five petals, there were Five Visions, Five Scholars, five God Kings, the Fifth Heightening is equal to the Divine Breath and many other things. The number five appears over and over again in Warbreaker and on Nalthis, so it's most likely Endowment's number.

Edit:

I think three is Cultivation's number. This number appears very often in SA and it might be connected to Cultivation because of that. 

Edited January 14, 2025 by alder24

[Argenti he/him]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

I think three is Cultivation's number. This number appears very often in SA and it might be connected to Cultivation because of that. 

The prevalence of threes might not be related to Cultivation. It might just be the rule of threes cropping up. But I think I's possible. 

[Returned he/him]

Maybe eleven is Retribution's number, though I personally join many in this thread in subscribing to the idea that the spear replaces Jezrien's sword. It's not obvious how metaphysically prescriptive the Shards' preferred numbers are.

Edited January 14, 2025 by Returned

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

15 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

So are there the ten Honorblades and the one Honorspear? But then eleven "Honorweapons" in some relevant sense?

Here's some Coppermind lore:

Suppose, for the sake of crackpottery, that the Honorspear can interface with the Oathgates to access this "eleventh factor" or whatever. Or, I mean, might there be a previous "eleventh Honorweapon" too, but which was destroyed in abstract counterpart to Jezrien's future destruction (and in spite of not being his Honorblade, after all, beforehand, but a currently unknown, unWoBed weapon)?

At least, are there any other Rosharan/Archive contexts in which eleven is important in the way that nine and ten are, on different terms though then?

This thread is tickling my Sander-sense. Brandon has said more than once that Shallan is an unreliable witness to her own past (probably much more reliable now) but he's also said that the Heralds are also unreliable witnesses. All of this speculation, in regards to what Ishar said/did, all happened before the restoration of BAM, and the subsequent cleansing of the madness of Odium. I do think there is more here, that we don't yet know. It feels like we did not get a truthful account from Ishar or Nale, despite them both sounding more lucid than we've been accustomed to, before now. It might be big, or it might be little, but I don't think that it's nothing.

I agree that 9 and 10 are important numbers for Odium and Honor, but does that mean that those numbers are the same when they merge? Could 9 and 11 making 20 have significance? I have no idea, because I've never really understood why 16 meant something to Preservation, but 9 for Odium and 10 for Honor? I'm just of the opinion that it has potential for significance.

[Voidmaker he/him]

23 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

because I've never really understood why 16 meant something to Preservation

It's Adonalsium's number, as far as I can tell. Honor mentions it, saying 'strongest would be sixteen or my own number of ten' when reformatting the Oathpact. Adonalsium split into 16 Shards, which is also very strong evidence. Assumably, if certain Shards don't have a significant personal number, then they default to 16 as the strongest number since it was Ado's (if Pres did have a number, I'm not aware of it).

[Hexagonal He/Him]

2 minutes ago, Voidmaker said:

(if Pres did have a number, I'm not aware of it).

The fact that of those who were stricken with the mist sickness, 1/16th of them were bedridden for longer and that was the clue they were mistings. That suggests, at least to me, that pres's number was sixteen. I think the fact it was Ado's number and then the shard all about keeping stuff the same used it next would be neat and make some sense.

[Voidmaker he/him]

12 minutes ago, Hexagonal said:

I think the fact it was Ado's number and then the shard all about keeping stuff the same used it next would be neat and make some sense.

I don't think the number is purely Ado's (in the way that it can be used by anyone), but that logic tracks. Preservation was probably happy to adopt it, but considering how Honor refers to it as the strongest or at least the most valid alternative, 16 just feels like a universal number all Shards can use, but most are drawn to using their own. However, I can definitely believe that Preservation never bothered to get a number or strictly uses Ado's number purely because of the preservative nature of not adopting a new one. Also, Ruin copied Preservation's homework when Hemalurgy came into existence, and it also uses 16 as a base, so it's clearly not just Preservation's number considering how different the two are as Shards. (Honor didn't want to use 9 because it was Odium's number, meanwhile Pres and Ruin don't care about using 16 together, as far as we can tell).

Edited January 15, 2025 by Voidmaker
clarity

[TheoreticalMagic]

On 1/14/2025 at 6:12 AM, alder24 said:

Number five is Endowment's number. Tears of Edgli has five petals, there were Five Visions, Five Scholars, five God Kings, the Fifth Heightening is equal to the Divine Breath and many other things. The number five appears over and over again in Warbreaker and on Nalthis, so it's most likely Endowment's number.

Edit:

I think three is Cultivation's number. This number appears very often in SA and it might be connected to Cultivation because of that. 

Now that I think about it, with five being Endowment's number it makes a lot of sense why Honor would be so intent on specifying five wouldn't work for his purposes. Endowment is about giving a gift with no expectations or needed reciprocation....whereas Honor demands that for something given/received something must be offered/upheld in return. Endowment offers boons freely....Honor demands his power must be earned. And especially since the entire nature of his concern around the time of the abandoning of the Oathpact was that Surgebinders using their powers unchecked, without the strict bonds and oaths he'd structured originally, would lead to the destruction of Roshar....it makes a lot of sense that he'd view five as being the exact opposite of what he needed there. The power sought to seal Odium had to be met by an equivalently weighted offer from those seeking to use it to seal him, in terms of what they were willing to do in exchange for it....5 + 5. Five Heralds maintaining the Oathpact would have just reflected Endowment, a gift given without terms. Entirely counterproductive for his needs.

[James The Big Cheese]

When Odium claimed Jezzriens honor blade, he corrupted it with his own investiture. I believe this logically turned the blade into a "Blade of War" Or a "Retribution Blade", fitting for the guy who sought retribution against the late king Elokar.  Regardless, the oathpact functioned because the ten heralds had combined investiture of shards 9 and 10, but the blades were of only honor. Honor said this makes them work as a sort of lock. Hypothetically, if the oathpact was reforged with an honor blade corrupted with that "big-mad-feeling-alloy" of odium,  then Odium could potentially say "lol" and unlock his prison lock from the inside. 

 

 

Also, fun fact:

- five is the number of endowment

- endowment is the investiture of nightblood 

- endowments sword was used to kill Mraise (old daddy odium)

- this was then a "gift" or an "endowment" of odium's shard from one host to another,  thanks to series of cultivating events : p

- endowment and cultivation, you cheeky shards. 

[Voidmaker he/him]

16 hours ago, James The Big Cheese said:

- endowment is the investiture of nightblood 

- endowments sword was used to kill Mraise (old daddy odium)

Isn't it implied that Nightblood runs off of Ruin now (or at least his Intent, since black smoke is Ruin's manifestation and also what Nightblood has trailing off it 24/7)? Might just be a minor thing since he was created through Endowment but operated off of Ruin. Also assuming you meant Rayse and not Mraize in that other point, and while the theory works nicely, I find it hard to believe Rayse's futuresight wouldn't have interrupted their ability to plan for his death. Might've just been a lucky coincidence.

[TheoreticalMagic]

I don't think Nightblood runs off of Ruin's Investiture so much as he runs off Investiture, period. I'm of the opinion that the four aspects of Adonalsium referenced in an epigraph ARE Connection, Identity, Fortune and Investiture. And I think they correspond with the four Dawnshards, and that four of the Shards are indicative of them, with the other 12 Shards also corresponding to each of the four Aspects and Dawnshards, three more for each slice of the pie, so to speak. So for instance:

1) Connection (Adonalsium Aspect), the interactions and intersections between things, corresponds to the Dawnshard Connect/Bind/Unite, as well as to the Shard Honor. And there are three more Connection Shards born of this aspect of Adonalsium, the slices of him that were "pulled out" by their sympathetic resonance with the Connect Dawnshard, when it was weaponized against him. 

2) Identity (Adonalsium Aspect), the form and structure of things as they are, corresponds to the Dawnshard Exist, as well as to the Shard Preservation. And there are three more Exist Shards born of this aspect, pulled out by their sympathetic resonance with the Exist Dawnshard when it was used against Adonalsium.

3) Fortune (Adonalsium Aspect), the possibility and potential for things as they could be, corresponds to the Dawnshard Change, as well as to the Shard....I'm not sure, actually, but I THINK its Cultivation. Either way, there's three more Fortune based Shards pulled out from this aspect by the Change Dawnshard.

4) Investiture (Adonalsium Aspect), that which makes things in the cosmere MORE than just what they are, corresponds to the Dawnshard whose name I think is something to do with Leave A Mark, as in how the rest of existence is changed BY the existence or presence of a thing. With how a thing changes or what it connects to also having great significance to what kind of mark is left on the cosmere. But I think this one corresponds to the Shard Ruin, the embodiment of entropy in the cosmere...the ultimate evidence of things having existed, the final mark left behind, the last bit to turn to dust. The existence of something only ends when everything else that comprises it is all used up....but the mark it made on its surroundings is still left behind. The Ruins of what once was there. The idea that without death, life doesn't have as much meaning, the whole theme of all beings in the cosmere ending up in the same place eventually, that everything dies, is what makes the choices of how you live your life, the legacy you live behind, more important than the act of dying itself.

So I think Nightblood isn't running off of Ruin's Investiture so much as Ruin and Nightblood are just OF Investiture, in a way that Shards (and their creations) derived of Adonalsium's other Aspects just aren't. So there are bound to be similarities, and I think Nightblood is certainly an excellent tool for entropy, but not necessarily because of anything to do with the SHARDS, but rather because of rules/mechanisms older than the Shards themselves...having to do with how pieces born of Adonalsium's Investiture Aspect interact or mirror each other. (Also, I think Endowment is also of the Investiture Aspect, "born" of the Leave a Mark Dawnshard, since the Endowment of anything leaves things in an empirically altered state from what they were before that Endowment.)

But of course, this is all just personal conjecture.

Edited January 16, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[Voidmaker he/him]

1 hour ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

So I think Nightblood isn't running off of Ruin's Investiture so much as Ruin and Nightblood are just OF Investiture, in a way that Shards (and their creations) derived of Adonalsium's other Aspects just aren't.

I like your theory. Good thinking, but there is so little we know about the Dawnshards (and the Shards themselves, really) for anything to really contest it. Definitely like the connection between the four... I don't really know what to call them, but aspects of Ado sounds cool. Also, lines up with the Allomancy/Feruchemy table (which we just justified Pres 'stole' from Ado) so, even more evidence? Have this to chew on as much as you'd like, I can see you still being right, but this HAS to mean something.

Quote

Walin

Does Nightblood contain any of Ruin's Investiture? Like, not atium, but...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, technically; and I'm not wiggling around that, because technically, location in the Cosmere and who belongs to what gets really weird, right? Because Ruin's Investiture is everywhere--but I'm not talking that way. I'm talking the way you actually mean it. 

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

Edited January 16, 2025 by Voidmaker
felt like adding more

[Hexagonal He/Him]

@Voidmaker, you make a good point. I think, especially with the WoB, that pieces of the cosmere(which is made up of investiture and matter and energy), are keyed to certain shards. We do know that when Ado was shattered, all existing investiture becames labeled as part of one of the new shards. It would follow, that Nightblood(originally invested with Endoment's investiture), could change to be more keyed to Ruin's(the literal destroy shard.

[Light In the Darkness]

Something to be aware of:

Quote

Neon Borealis

The story [Yumi and the Nightmare Painter] uses the Fibonacci sequence several times as a recurring element related to art (and the golden ratio). Given that nightmares need "over a dozen" feedings to materialize and the number 13 features heavily on Yumi's rituals, would you say that 13 is related to Virtuosity in the same way that 16 is to Preservation and 10 is to Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow. Good guess.

Secret Project #3 Reveal and Livestream (March 22, 2022)

So it seems like Preservation's number is actually 16; a couple of other WoBs refer to it this way in asking a question like this about shardic numbering, and Brandon has never been like "that's not actually Preservation's number, so I think that is a pretty good guess; I like the idea of the stability/unchangingness angle on why that was the number given to him, and it being particularly significant to Adonalsium too. 

[Nitpicking]

Folks, have you considered that there are 16 Shards (or were, before some were Splintered and some were merged)?

Presumably their numbers just come from literally assigning each a value from 1-16. Preservation got 16, Honor got 10, etc.

[Ripheus23]

42 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

Folks, have you considered that there are 16 Shards (or were, before some were Splintered and some were merged)?

Presumably their numbers just come from literally assigning each a value from 1-16. Preservation got 16, Honor got 10, etc.

Not all the Shards are said to be have "sacred numbers" for themselves, though. And it doesn't seem that Honor was "the tenth Shard," but rather that he already liked that number, and this played into his attitude towards the Rosharan system, which already featured the number 10 so prominently. If the Shards formed simultaneously, rather than by being drawn one-by-one from Adonalsium, listing them as 1-through-16 would be arbitrary labeling, too. And consider the possibility that e.g. Ruin, if he got a special number, might've gotten a special number like 0, or even a negative integer, for all we know, to reflect destructiveness (though I did see a theory here that his number might be 8, as "16 divided by 2," with division taking the place of destruction, which we see also with Surgebinding, incidentally).

EDIT: what would possibly make the most sense is if each Shard got a definitive function assigned to it, and sometimes this function does uniquely compute to a specific number. Like if Ruin got "leave nothing" = anti-everything:: zero, and Preservation got "sustain everything" = all, then we have the antithesis of all-and-nothing turn into an opposition of 0 and 16, or 8 and 16, or whatever along those lines. But maybe Autonomy got a pure variable x, which can take on any numerical signifier, etc.

Edited January 18, 2025 by Ripheus23