Did cultivation end up in scadrial?

[Lesser spren]

At Jordancon 2026 Brandon had this exchange: 

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Argent

I have been thinking about the relationship between Shards and planets lately, and so this is half question, half brainstorming exercise. If we were to swap Ruin and Preservation with Honor and Cultivation (Honor and Cultivation on Scadrial, Ruin and Preservation on Roshar), how would you imagine the magic systems of those places changing or evolving? What would you do different there?

Brandon Sanderson

It is a hard extrapolation because.... Let's say Honor and Cultivation come to Scadrial. (They have to make it, 'cause Scadrial's made.) There's no spren. So how do their magic systems work? Does Cultivation create spren? 'Cause they created a bunch of spren; but they had a model and a pattern, like, "Well, we'll do this," and extrapolated. Would they come up with something else? Would they have talking bits of metal that you're carrying around that are your spren? That's possible. Metal tools; but Awakening metal is really dangerous. But I can imagine that they could pull it off.

JordanCon 2026 (April 17, 2026)

This wording is ereily similar to an Advert in "The New Asendacy,"

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"Do your metal tools speak to you?

"Your neighbors probably don't want to here about it, but WE do! Visit 27 Ralen Place. Ask for K&N. Bring the Talking metal with you."

Is this where Cultivation ended up? Did she seek asylum from harmony? Or did she sneak into the system? 

 

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

Probably not. It would have been mentioned at least a little bit in the book.

Edited May 17 by Through the Living Hopper

[Schizoposting]

Unlikely, the evidence provided is very weak—if this was really the case, you'd expect to see more foreshadowing than a random newspaper ad, that is only vaguely connected to a WoB about Cultivation.

[Factor She/Her]

Well, I will say, the Coppermind says that the ad was canonically posted by Khriss and Nazh. I can’t find the WoB right now that says it was them and not some other K & N but… yeah. I think this could have some merit, since the only Awakened metal is Nightblood (not counting Azures sword, it can’t talk) and the timeline says Nazh must have just come from Roshar when this happened, right around when Cultivation left. This could be evidence of Cultivation, or maybe just Khriss and Nazh looking for evidence. If it was, it’s just more of the extremely vague foreshadowing seeded for Era 3. But it doesn’t seem too likely that Cultivation would start actually making pieces of talking metal… Anyway there’s my two cents.

Edited May 17 by Factor

[Frustration]

Possible, and that's some solid reasoning.

I could definately see cultivation fleeing to Harmomy as the only other dual shard to escape Retribution.

However I don't think that's what happened.

[earthexile]

I think she didn't, because Harmony and Autonomy are warring over the system, and it seems like one or both of them would have taken notice if yet another Shard popped in from offworld while the whole situation was coming together.

Of course, her nature is to move carefully and let people not know she's around. So I could be wrong. Until we know for sure, she could be anywhere doing anything that smacks of growth and development. But I think of all the places for her to go when Roshar fell, places with active Shards and advanced civilizations already crawling all over them would make poor choices. Harmony might be the only thing in the Cosmere as dangerous as Retribution, not just because he bears two powers but because he's so young. The elder Shards are way more constrained to their powers' Intents, it's what destroyed Tanavast and left Rayse so vulnerable. Harmony has only been at it for a few centuries, and still behaves very much like a human man with his hands on great power, rather than a melodramatic false god like so many of the others.

And Harmony may be one of the Shards who can perceive and manipulate the future even better than Cultivation can. Leras' capacity for plotting in a way that his confused and ignorant humans could actually discover and execute was *insane.* But that's the nature of Preservation, keeping things together. Holding steady. Not falling apart. Knowing what comes next.

If I were Cultivation, I think I'd try to set myself up on Drominad. There is great potential for growth and development there, and it's got the potential to remain safe and neutral in the larger Cosmere conflict while also becoming more and more vitally important for everyone. And in my more cynical moods, I might try to do something with the fact that these people have placed a lot of trust in a giant magical serpent recently. I'm kind of a giant magical serpent. And these Aviar are just thrilling to my sense of Cultivation, aren't they? I wonder what happens when I feed the worms to more kinds of creature...

[Nitpicking]

The giant magical serpent is centuries in the future of Wind and Truth, though.

[earthexile]

10 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

The giant magical serpent is centuries in the future of Wind and Truth, though.

You're completely right and I just plain forgot. Cultivation doesn't have that situation to grasp at yet, in the Stormlight timeline. Good catch.

[Isilel]

4 hours ago, earthexile said:

. Cultivation doesn't have that situation to grasp at yet, in the Stormlight timeline. Good catch

 

I have wondered about Mother Frond in IoTE. She has been described rather similarly to Cultivation's Vessel's human form, as seen by Dalinar, IIRC and seemed to be rather mysterious. Whether it was just a coincidence, whether she is still Cultivation or merely a sliver, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Cephandrious Maxtori Fae/Faer]

On 5/18/2026 at 12:09 AM, Factor said:

(not counting Azures sword, it can’t talk)

Azure's sword can talk, no? she talks to it in Oathbringer