[SH spoilers] The spheres

[Oversleep]

I'm not sure whether it should go into Cosmere Theories or here.

So somebody on reddit was wondering whether the Gavilar's black sphere could be similar to Connection orb Kelsier stole. If it really held Connection to Odium, it makes some sense: obviously it couldn't have been used to Ascend to Odium, but perhaps enough to attract attention of Unmade or even Odium himself. Or maybe just to gather voidspren en masse which would be helpful in the attempt to bring Voidbringers back.

[Yata]

I think this post have to be in Cosmere Theories.
Indeed in theory it's possible, but something made me think to evidence aganist.

First of all, the Sphere seems to be a Gem and contains directly Shards' Investiture. We see no trace of fluid there. If the Connection to be made physical manifest themself as a golden Liquid this alone disprove the idea.

Much more the Gavillar's black sphere is too much linked to Roshar's Magic. And so far we know there aren't surge to collect Connection with Roshar's Magic.

To be more clear, while the Connection Orb (and Ire's Drink) are likely to be made with an unknown magic system (or a mix of them) foreign to Scadrial. The Gavilar's Black Sphere is mostly native of Roshar as fabrication.

Probably it's not enough to disprove this idea, but i have a strong feel aganist

Edited July 31, 2016 by Yata

[CaptainRyan]

I have seen recently that black is the color of mixed Investiture. What if both Honor and Cultivation are, at this point, shattered and this sphere is similar to the Ire's device except it holds Connection to both Honor and Cultivation; hence, it is black colored as it could be mixed Investiture. Perhaps the goal of that Black Sphere is to help someone Ascend to be the holder of those two Shards?

Though, it does beg the question of how Gavilar, or the secret society/ societies he was part of, planned on putting two shattered Shards back together so they could use it. Maybe they just wanted to have it on hand for if/when they accomplished the task?

[Oversleep]

1 minute ago, CaptainRyan said:

I have seen recently that black is the color of mixed Investiture.

Do you have a source for that? I mean, on Scadrial Preservation was white and Ruin was black, so I don't know where are you deriving that from. Also, Dor is bright and glowing, so...

2 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

What if both Honor and Cultivation are, at this point, shattered

Cultivation is whole and fully sentient, busy opposing Odium.

[CaptainRyan]

30 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

Do you have a source for that?

@Argel : Do you have a source for the "mixed Investiture is black" quote? I am struggling to find it.

31 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

Cultivation is whole and fully sentient, busy opposing Odium.

That I could find a source for so there goes that theory. Mayyyybbbeee the sphere is to be used after Odium kills Cultivation? Yeah, that is a huge stretch, I know.

[Yata]

Just because mixed investitures turn often black (but probably this happen if those invesiture don't merge well together), this doesn't mean that every black Investiture is mixed Investiture. Like Oversleep said Ruin itself has Black Investiture.

Anyway the Connection Orb would not be different if it was made to Connect to others Shards I assume. The Connection aren't made of Shard's power (or to be honest they may be, but they can't made by everykind of raw Investiture). The Ire's Orb probably wasn't made by Preservation's Investiture and for example if a guy burns Lerasium to get a strong connection to (for example) Endowment, this connection would be made of Preservation's Investiture.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Yata

[CaptainRyan]

Hey @Oversleep, @Argel came through for me and provided these two WoBs to substantiate the claim that "mixed" or "corrupted" Investiture is black.

 

Argel's message to me:

Black is implied from these two:

http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-chapter-fifty-one/

Quote

Anyway, Nightblood is named for the smoke he leaks, and he originally had a different name when he was created. Vasher himself dubbed the sword Nightblood after he had used it to kill the woman he loved. The blackness that leaks out is actually corrupted and consumed Breaths, the ones that Nightblood leeches off anyone who draws him.

 

Me: How does corrupted investiture work, like Nightblood.

Brandon: Oh, Nightblood. Again, this is a definition of what somebody feels is a corruption. For instance, there are spren people would feel are corrupted. But that is corruption where the mixing of different shards has changed things, and I think a lot of times when people say corruption, people are meaning the mixing of shards powers.

Me: So is there a mixing of shards power with Nightblood?

Brandon: *smirks* RAFO. That's the natural question, I'm glad you asked it.

[Oversleep]

That... that is no evidence that mixed Investiture turns black. We don't even know if Nightblood mixes Investiture. We only know it corrupts it. And that in that example it turns black.

Since we have seen Dor flowing into Ire fortress and we know Dor is mixed Investiture of Devotion i Dominion and it definitely wasn't black.

[CaptainRyan]

2 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

The blackness that leaks out is actually corrupted and consumed Breaths

 

2 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

But that is corruption where the mixing of different shards has changed things, and I think a lot of times when people say corruption, people are meaning the mixing of shards powers.

Those two Brandon quotes heavily imply that Nightblood's smoke is "corrupted" Investiture and is the result of different Shard's powers are being mixed. The smoke that Nightblood releases is black. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that mixed Investiture is black, eh? I would not say that it is confirmed that all mixed Investiture is black but there is solid evidence that through some process of mixing Investiture it becomes black.

I realize now that my initial statement was too strong; I definitely made it sound as if all mixed Investiture is black and that is not the case. A better way for me to phrase my idea would have been that we have seen evidence that mixed Investiture can be black and that it is, therefore, possible that Gavilar's sphere contains some form of mixed Investiture.

[Jondesu]

36 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

 

Those two Brandon quotes heavily imply that Nightblood's smoke is "corrupted" Investiture and is the result of different Shard's powers are being mixed. The smoke that Nightblood releases is black. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that mixed Investiture is black, eh? I would not say that it is confirmed that all mixed Investiture is black but there is solid evidence that through some process of mixing Investiture it becomes black.

I realize now that my initial statement was too strong; I definitely made it sound as if all mixed Investiture is black and that is not the case. A better way for me to phrase my idea would have been that we have seen evidence that mixed Investiture can be black and that it is, therefore, possible that Gavilar's sphere contains some form of mixed Investiture.

Honestly, reading those doesn't imply to me anything of the sort.  The corrupted Breaths are black. There may be some mixing of Investitures.  That doesn't mean that the black smoke is combined Investiture or that it is in any way connected to Gavilar's sphere.  It could be, but I don't think those quotes say nearly as much as you're reading into them.

jW

[CaptainRyan]

26 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

Honestly, reading those doesn't imply to me anything of the sort.  The corrupted Breaths are black. There may be some mixing of Investitures.  That doesn't mean that the black smoke is combined Investiture or that it is in any way connected to Gavilar's sphere.  It could be, but I don't think those quotes say nearly as much as you're reading into them.

jW

 

3 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

Me: So is there a mixing of shards power with Nightblood?

Brandon: *smirks* RAFO. That's the natural question, I'm glad you asked it.

That seems like implication to me. Now, I was not there to see Brandon respond but I am also not the only person coming to these conclusions. It could be that these quotes say more than you are reading in to them.  Furthermore, I don't know why you emphasized Breath over the term Investiture. Breaths are a form of Investiture. We have also seen Nightblood leak black smoke on Roshar. In other words, it appears that regardless of the type of Investiture (Breaths, Stormlight etc.) Nightblood seems to "corrupt" it. And that corruption is black colored. Now, perhaps, Nightblood was leaking some leftover Breath when Szeth noticed it but I think that is a bit of stretch if Nightblood has been on Roshar for any appreciable amount of time.

Also, to be clear, I never said that Nightblood is connected to Gavilar's sphere but rather that because Gavilar's sphere is holding black Stormlight (or whatever it is) that it could be related to the phenomena of mixed Investiture being black. Nightblood is merely an example of mixed Investiture being black. It is possible that Gavilar's sphere is also mixed Investiture. It is possible that Gavilar's sphere is similar to another magic orb we saw in Secret History. Now, no one is saying this is 100% truth but I, at least, think the idea holds some merit. 

[Yata]

To be honest and I don't want to be rude.

We have a single istance of Corrupted Investiture (with the probably meaning of mixed Intent Investiture) as Black and much more with Mixed/Corrupted Investiture without the "turn Black" effect on them.

To me this seems to point more to "nightblood's Black smoke is a specific and limited istance of messing with Investiture and don't prove a general Realmatic rule"

[CaptainRyan]

3 hours ago, Yata said:

We have a single istance of Corrupted Investiture (with the probably meaning of mixed Intent Investiture) as Black and much more with Mixed/Corrupted Investiture without the "turn Black" effect on them.

 

21 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

A better way for me to phrase my idea would have been that we have seen evidence that mixed Investiture can be black and that it is, therefore, possible that Gavilar's sphere contains some form of mixed Investiture.

@Yata, to a certain extent I agree with you. Nightblood is a single data point but it does give us the possibility.

One thing worth noting, in my opinion, is that the obvious counter-examples of the Dor and Spren represent instances where it is possible that the mixing of Investitures was orchestrated by the Shards themselves. Dominion and Devotion, for all we know, had melded their Investiture to create the Dor and can also guess that Honor and Cultivation probably chose to meld their Investiture.

On the other hand, Nightblood represents something that is (possibly) a mixture of more than one Shard's Investiture that was not created by the Shards. Nightblood is the product of (semi)human research. Gavilar's Black Sphere, if it is similar to the Ire device, would also be the product of (semi)human research and, therefore, might exhibit similar characteristics.

This theory is obviously based on a ton of assumptions but, at this point, we either have to say "RAFO" or make some assumptions, right? We lack the necessary information to definitively say what the sphere is. So, with that in mind, I submit that it is a possibility that the sphere is an Ire-style device of mixed Investiture that could be used in the event of Honor being reassembled and Cultivation dying. I freely admit that this is a pretty far-fetched idea but, hey, what else are we supposed to do until Oathbringer comes out if not make wild, wild speculations?  

[marianmi]

My impression reading Brandon's words was that Nightblood's smoke is corrupted investiture, and *people* associate "corrupted" investiture with "mixed" investiture, so I can draw the conclusion that Brandon himself does not consider "corrupted" investiture and "mixed" investiture to be the same thing. But hey, english is my 2nd language.

[Yata]

@marianmi probably from a Realmatic PoV there isn't nothing like "corrupted" (the word as often a "turn evil" or "turn worse" meaning) because in the end, the only way to twist Investiture is messing with its Mandate/Intent (for example if I take Odium's Investiture and mix it with some of Preservation's one....I have "corrupted Odium's Investiture").

PS: I came here because there was a new reply, and I find my previous post with a downvote....May I ask what I typed so wrong ?

[marianmi]

wasn't me  gave you an upvote for the lost one

[cometaryorbit]

On 8/1/2016 at 5:02 PM, Oversleep said:

Cultivation is whole and fully sentient, busy opposing Odium.

I know we have WOB that Cultivation is alive, but are we actually sure that she is currently, actively opposing Odium?

[Yata]

11 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I know we have WOB that Cultivation is alive, but are we actually sure that she is currently, actively opposing Odium?

I will have to find the right WoB but I am sure we have one of them about "Odium can't do whatever he want, He have a powerful and fully lived shard to oppose him"

[manavortex]

On 31/07/2016 at 10:57 AM, Yata said:

First of all, the Sphere seems to be a Gem and contains directly Shards' Investiture. We see no trace of fluid there. If the Connection to be made physical manifest themself as a golden Liquid this alone disprove the idea.

Much more the Gavillar's black sphere is too much linked to Roshar's Magic. And so far we know there aren't surge to collect Connection with Roshar's Magic.

 

@Yata: Given that I signed up here because of the black sphere and you seem to know quite a bit about it, could you point me to your sources/theories so that I can catch up? 

Concerning "corrupted" investiture

Somewhere I picked up that Nightblood might have been created after a Shardblade (I think wild theoretizing in the Stormlight reread's comments).  Let's just say that it's the case, who of the sixteen might have stood model for the sword's Intent? Who would Nightblood be Connected to that he might "warp" the Breaths by Ben being infusing him with part of his nature? I daresay it's probably not Endowment. 

Edited October 30, 2016 by manavortex

[Jondesu]

26 minutes ago, manavortex said:

@Yata: Given that I signed up here because of the black sphere and you seem to know quite a bit about it, could you point me to your sources/theories so that I can catch up? 

Concerning "corrupted" investiture

Somewhere I picked up that Nightblood might have been created after a Shardblade (I think wild theoretizing in the Stormlight reread's comments).  Let's just say that it's the case, who of the sixteen might have stood model for the sword's Intent? Who would Nightblood be Connected to that he might "warp" the Breaths by Ben being infusing him with part of his nature? I daresay it's probably not Endowment. 

Not so wild theorizing, actually, Brandon confirmed both that Vasher has seen a dead Shardblade and that Nightblood is a sort of robot Spren, an attempt to replicate a Shardblade.

That is an interesting concept to think that another Shard could have been involved, but I'd be surprised myself.

[manavortex]

Quote

That is an interesting concept to think that another Shard could have been involved, but I'd be surprised myself

Not necessarily actively

[Jondesu]

7 hours ago, manavortex said:

Not necessarily actively

Fair point, but that means Vasher or Shashara would have had some way to access the Investiture or magic system of another Shard.  It's certainly possible, of course, and we know Vasher travelled to Roshar at least, but I can't see any particular way in which that would make sense (Ruin's Investiture would make the most sense of those we know, but unless Nightblood was a Hemalurgic spike, which I think has been asked, I don't see any other way Ruin's Investiture could have been involved).