Odium's plan

[Ripheus23]

I was thinking, Odium would be a foe likelier to inspire someone else to destroy a world, than to directly destroy it himself. Or, there's some chance of that. Think of the end of OB, for instance.

He thinks of himself as "Passion" in some way, and the Unmade are related to various passions (e.g. the Thrill). The Dawnshards can "bind" beings and one of the Unmade has thusly been bound. Odium is interested in the tower of Urithiru.

So, theory/guess: Odium will betray all the Unmade to the Dawnshards, which will bind all of them, but then when they are brought together to be contained in Urithiru (think Ghostbusters maybe ) their power will intensify too greatly and form an Investiture-gravity well that will literally start fulfilling Dalinar's vision of the world being devoured.

[Angsos]

I doubt it since I don't think they'd gather the Unmade in one place, especially since one Unmade was haunting Urithiru. Also, Dalinar rejected Odium and he's also bound to the cognitive shadow of a Shard Odium killed, I think it's personal now. Odium may recruit all he can but he'll want to kill Dalinar and co. himself.

[+Child of Hodor]

He may be wary of acting directly on Roshar too much for fear of opening himself to a counterstrike by Cultivation. He can't kill her right this minute and he's not sure exactly where she is. She could pop out and hurt him if he's not careful. 

Quote

 "I'll kill the other one too, eventually. She's hidden herself away somewhere and I'm too ... shackled" Oathbringer Chapter 57

His gambit of accepting Dalinar's challenge and choosing Dalinar as his champion backfired and now it is risky for him to show up in "person" as Taravangian tells Odium

Quote

"You have agreed to a battle of champions. You must withdraw to prevent this contest from occurring, and so must not meet with Dalinar Kholin again. Otherwise, he can force you to fight. This means you must let your agents do your work. You need me." Oathbringer Chapter 122 "A Debt Repaid"

As for the Dawnshards, we know one of them can be used to bind. Since  There are multiple and they are not all alike. 

Quote

 

#1 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/226-words-of-radiance-release-party/#e4824

Brandon

One Dawnshard is different from all the rest. 

 

 

I think he might want to get the people of Roshar to destroy the world like the people of Ashyn mostly destroyed Ashyn. (People still live on Ashyn in pockets). We don't know much of anything about the Dawnshards, but my guess is that they amplify surgebinding to a large degree and could devastate a planet. 

 

I suspect Urithiru will fall next book and I think this death rattle hints at that. Probably due to the Sibling not being there to keep the Unmade out. Then maybe someone finds the Sibling and the Radiants retake Urithiru. 

 

Quote

“Victory! We stand atop the mount! We scatter them before us! Their homes become our dens, their lands are now our farms! And they shall burn, as we once did, in a place that is hollow and forlorn.” WoK Chapter 8 Epigraph

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by Child of Hodor

[Ripheus23]

@Child of Hodor haha, a Stormlight sa'angreal, eh? The Choedan Kal strikes again!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but does Lews possess Rand at the end of the penultimate WoT book? Was that one written by Sanderson? I guess I could look it up quick but I am gonna be lazy...

Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, the problem was that Lews was gonna use Rand to use the Choedan Kal to rend the world. IDK if Sanderson would closely map the threat of the Dawnshards onto that kind of danger. I think the binding power of Honor's power is very intimately tied to the power of creation that Adonalsium would have originally used, in the sense of an LDS-esque deity (not the same thing exactly, to be sure!) being one that creates not from absolute but only relative nothingness, i.e. demiurgically. The LDS Church tells its priesthood that they are using a fraction of the same power as God used to create the world, when they exercise the offices of the priesthood. Now in philosophy there's this thing about how "propositions" are supposed to be bound, i.e. what is it that ties subjects and predicates together? Since propositions reflect the form of reality (the mathematical-Cognitive Realm?) in this way, the form of propositional truth would be related to the power of creation, or an example of it that is. (A theological aside: if God is a simple force, and yet has a truth to It, then Its truth is not divisible into a complex of a subject and a predicate, but is as one, so maybe it is the alethic simplicity of God that causes created subjects to fuse with created predicates, as Its unity affecting their plurality.) And the concept of binding forces is a major aspect of nuclear physics, of how different parts of matter become atoms and molecules and systems of these and so on. So, to create by binding, is not only the moral office of the Church (via the priesthood and e.g. the binding sacrament or covenant of marriage), but of God as such, so that moral bindingness is identical to propositional and physical bindingness, from God's vantage. I suspect that it would be terribly difficult for the Radiants to even have a type of attack that, if amplified too greatly but within their range of enhanced ability, would devastate the planet, at least as far as amplified Surgebinding goes, because this would contradict Honor's power in the world, and in them, too much. I foresee more in the way of "out-of-control spellcasting spirals that alter the highstorms" or similar environmental-level interactions, being more likely candidates for the way the build-up of magic will endanger Roshar as a planet.

How literally, though, are we to think of the devouring-void imagery Dalinar has seen in his visions?

Also, I think there's a clue to the endgame in the account of the gloryspren gyring around Dalinar. We've seen that spren being drawn to things is a crucial form of imagery in this series. A gravity well from Investiture might be conceived of as a great attractor for spren per se, so that the increasing density of the spren causes the Investiture well. So, let's say lesser spren gravitate around highspren, Cognitive-Realmwise that is, so that the Unmade, trapped or not, are like gas-giant planets relative to the solid planets of the highspren, and so on. So, at some point, a great number of the spren, maybe nearly all of them, begin to be pulled towards a Cognitive-Realm Investiture well (caused either by some density of the Unmade or drawing the Unmade towards it, as well), and I can just imagine the kind of delight Sanderson would have in playing with that kind of scenario, as a source of meaning as well as plot action.

[+Child of Hodor]

53 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

 

I suspect that it would be terribly difficult for the Radiants to even have a type of attack that, if amplified too greatly but within their range of enhanced ability, would devastate the planet, at least as far as amplified Surgebinding goes, because this would contradict Honor's power in the world, and in them, too much. I foresee more in the way of "out-of-control spellcasting spirals that alter the highstorms" or similar environmental-level interactions, being more likely candidates for the way the build-up of magic will endanger Roshar as a planet.

How literally, though, are we to think of the devouring-void imagery Dalinar has seen in his visions?

Also, I think there's a clue to the endgame in the account of the gloryspren gyring around Dalinar. We've seen that spren being drawn to things is a crucial form of imagery in this series. A gravity well from Investiture might be conceived of as a great attractor for spren per se, so that the increasing density of the spren causes the Investiture well. So, let's say lesser spren gravitate around highspren, Cognitive-Realmwise that is, so that the Unmade, trapped or not, are like gas-giant planets relative to the solid planets of the highspren, and so on. So, at some point, a great number of the spren, maybe nearly all of them, begin to be pulled towards a Cognitive-Realm Investiture well (caused either by some density of the Unmade or drawing the Unmade towards it, as well), and I can just imagine the kind of delight Sanderson would have in playing with that kind of scenario, as a source of meaning as well as plot action.

I think Division could accomplish something akin to what we see in the vision. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Surgebinding#Division

How literally to take his imagery? Fairly literally in broad strokes, but the details of the city and surrounding areas are so crude vision it's hard to say. What is described in the vision reminds me of some of these of a nuclear bomb being detonated underground. The earth falls inward and is thrown up in a bunch of dust outward in a wave.

http://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons/underground-atomic-bomb-detonation/4830676554001

Something like what happened to create the shattered plains, but larger. Like a magical explosion that radiates outward and tears the ground apart. "It is unknown what caused the landscape to form this way, but during Kaladin's dream he saw the entire area as a symmetrical pattern, radiating outwards from the center as if something massive had struck there.^[3]"     https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shattered_Plains

I like your idea for creating a "Sprenularity" of sorts. I'm not sure if that's possible, but I'm not ruling it out. 

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by Child of Hodor

[Diomedes]

On 6.8.2018 at 7:51 PM, Ripheus23 said:

I was thinking, Odium would be a foe likelier to inspire someone else to destroy a world, than to directly destroy it himself. Or, there's some chance of that.

I don`t think Odium wants to destroy Roshar or kill all Humans. Why?

Take this quote: 

Quote

After you destroy it (Roshar), Dalinar. I am the one who will rebuild it. (...) Push through the agony. The you will be victorious, my son. OB p. 1029.

 So it seems quite clear to me that Odium does not actually hate Humans or Roshar. He thinks they are his children and he loves them as a father would. He does not want to destroy Humans, but to bring them back into his fatherly hands just as they once were.

This is btw why I think Odium regards himself as Passion, because he actually loves Humans. 

[Ripheus23]

I wonder... It might be that Odium wants to kill everyone so they'll go to Hell, so to speak, whereas Ruin just wanted to kill everyone (regardless of whether they then went to "Heaven" or whatever). Alternatively (slightly at least), Odium wants people to be in a state of constant passionate desire, without fulfillment, so that they will be tormented by their own intensity of desire (and therefore he would bring about a sort of "divine" punishment, the absolute frustration of his victims?). Some way or another, he is the personification of the concept of Hell, it seems...