theory Odium's a bastard and the Scar is spreading

[Yezrien]

I've just started my first Stormlight reread, and this is the first thing that's caught my eye. It's the first death rattle we get in WoK, the very first epigraph in the Stormlight Archive.

Quote

You've killed me. Bastards, you've killed me! While the sun is still hot, I die! ”

— Collected on Chachabah 1171, 10 seconds pre-death, by the Silent Gatherers. Subject was a darkeyed soldier thirty-one years of age. Sample is considered questionable.^[7]

The Coppermind article on death rattles offers no commentary on this one. I checked Arcanum and I couldn't find any WoBs about it. All I have is my own thoughts. And I have many. I think Brandon chose the series's first epigraph carefully. Remember how important it was in MIstborn?

The first part, "you've killed me," sounds like it could be nothing. It could just be a dying person screaming at the Silent Gatherers, or whoever's actually responsible for their death. I'm guessing that's why the "sample is considered questionable."

Then again, maybe it's not nothing.

"Bastards, you've killed me!" Bastards, plural. The speaker was killed by a plurality of bastards. So if the speaker, who has been killed, came back from the dead, one of the bastards might say "we killed you!" I propose that whatever Odium saw at the end of Oathbringer is the same being who is speaking through this death rattle. And Odium is one of the bastards who killed him. We talk about the infamous "we killed you" like it came out of nowhere. But maybe it was alluded to at the very beginning of Way of Kings.

So maybe it's Honor. Maybe it's Adonalsium. Maybe it's some other thing called Unity. We don't know, and Brandon's RAFOing this topic. There's nothing left to say about this theory.

But there's another clue in the death rattle. The last part: "While the sun is still hot, I die!"

Sounds simple enough. Whoever the bastards killed is dying during the day. It's still sunny.

Or maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe we should take this literally: this person is dying while the sun is hot, as in before the sun itself gets colder.

But why would the sun get colder? Lots of reasons. I'm not an astronomer, but I know different stars burn at different temperatures, and sometimes they shift from one temperature to another. And a star's temperature affects its color. Hotter stars are white and yellow. Colder ones are red.

So when this death rattle implies that a sun is going to get colder, maybe it's saying the sun will turn red. Maybe there's something in the cosmere that turns stars red. Maybe the Scar (aka Taln's Scar and the Red Rip), the infamous cluster of red stars, wasn't always red. Something turned those stars red, and it might not stop there.

Spoiler

I'm spoilering this part because it's basically a separate theory, almost pure speculation. But I support the theory that the Scar represents the spread of Fain life through the cosmere. My hypothesis is that one of the unknown Shards is a Sho-Del, a Fain humanoid, who is turning suns red to facilitate the Fainification of new planets. I haven't read Dragonsteel Prime, and I don't know much about Fain life, but I know it's supposed to be fundamentally different from normal Earth-life. Maybe Fain plants perform photosynthesis more efficiently under a red sun.

Has the term "Fainification" been coined yet?

The interesting implication of this is that the redness of the scar might not be related to redness of corrupted investiture and various red-eyed evil things. Two completely separate issues.

Thoughts?

[Ashspren]

1 hour ago, Belzedar said:

I've just started my first Stormlight reread, and this is the first thing that's caught my eye. It's the first death rattle we get in WoK, the very first epigraph in the Stormlight Archive.

The Coppermind article on death rattles offers no commentary on this one. I checked Arcanum and I couldn't find any WoBs about it. All I have is my own thoughts. And I have many. I think Brandon chose the series's first epigraph carefully. Remember how important it was in MIstborn?

The first part, "you've killed me," sounds like it could be nothing. It could just be a dying person screaming at the Silent Gatherers, or whoever's actually responsible for their death. I'm guessing that's why the "sample is considered questionable."

Then again, maybe it's not nothing.

"Bastards, you've killed me!" Bastards, plural. The speaker was killed by a plurality of bastards. So if the speaker, who has been killed, came back from the dead, one of the bastards might say "we killed you!" I propose that whatever Odium saw at the end of Oathbringer is the same being who is speaking through this death rattle. And Odium is one of the bastards who killed him. We talk about the infamous "we killed you" like it came out of nowhere. But maybe it was alluded to at the very beginning of Way of Kings.

So maybe it's Honor. Maybe it's Adonalsium. Maybe it's some other thing called Unity. We don't know, and Brandon's RAFOing this topic. There's nothing left to say about this theory.

But there's another clue in the death rattle. The last part: "While the sun is still hot, I die!"

Sounds simple enough. Whoever the bastards killed is dying during the day. It's still sunny.

Or maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe we should take this literally: this person is dying while the sun is hot, as in before the sun itself gets colder.

But why would the sun get colder? Lots of reasons. I'm not an astronomer, but I know different stars burn at different temperatures, and sometimes they shift from one temperature to another. And a star's temperature affects its color. Hotter stars are white and yellow. Colder ones are red.

So when this death rattle implies that a sun is going to get colder, maybe it's saying the sun will turn red. Maybe there's something in the cosmere that turns stars red. Maybe the Scar (aka Taln's Scar and the Red Rip), the infamous cluster of red stars, wasn't always red. Something turned those stars red, and it might not stop there.

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm spoilering this part because it's basically a separate theory, almost pure speculation. But I support the theory that the Scar represents the spread of Fain life through the cosmere. My hypothesis is that one of the unknown Shards is a Sho-Del, a Fain humanoid, who is turning suns red to facilitate the Fainification of new planets. I haven't read Dragonsteel Prime, and I don't know much about Fain life, but I know it's supposed to be fundamentally different from normal Earth-life. Maybe Fain plants perform photosynthesis more efficiently under a red sun.

Has the term "Fainification" been coined yet?

The interesting implication of this is that the redness of the scar might not be related to redness of corrupted investiture and various red-eyed evil things. Two completely separate issues.

Thoughts?

I like the idea of Odium being one of the collective "bastards". I believe that another one of those "bastards" could be Autonomy, who has apparently helped Rayse with a few of his splinterings. Who knows, though? It could be Odium and the Unmade. (Great band name, by the way. )

As for the last part, "While the sun is still hot, I die!", I think this could refer to Ashyn versus Roshar. Perhaps the person is speaking of a time before the humans moved to Roshar. The idea with the colors is also interesting, though. 

[RShara she/her]

I was thinking that it was about Jezrien dying.

[Ashertliden]

I figure that Brandon won't pull the same trick he did in Mistborn, and made the first epigraph be not prophetic at all. I think it may just be a soldier complaining about dying, and is cursing the Silent Gatherers.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Kal-Eldin

[Vargo Seldon he/him]

I like this theory, but I think you're reading a little too much into it.  It could be prophetic, but Brandon Sanderson means all of the cosmere books to be able to be standalone.  If the most prophetic words in the book had to do with another system(s), then that would undermine the vision of the cosmere.  I know, you tell me that hoid's letters to frost have to do with other systems, but what belzedar is saying implies that these words will take effect in the series, like they did in mistborn.  I like where you're headed with this, I just don't know about it.

[Ripheus23]

On 11/24/2018 at 0:00 PM, Belzedar said:

Or maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe we should take this literally: this person is dying while the sun is hot, as in before the sun itself gets colder.

But why would the sun get colder? Lots of reasons. I'm not an astronomer, but I know different stars burn at different temperatures, and sometimes they shift from one temperature to another. And a star's temperature affects its color. Hotter stars are white and yellow. Colder ones are red.

So when this death rattle implies that a sun is going to get colder, maybe it's saying the sun will turn red. Maybe there's something in the cosmere that turns stars red. Maybe the Scar (aka Taln's Scar and the Red Rip), the infamous cluster of red stars, wasn't always red. Something turned those stars red, and it might not stop there.

Extremely interesting idea. IDK how quite to add it in, but Khriss in AU says something about the theory of Taldain's Investiture originally being "Autonomy radiates the Investiture to Taldain from the sun" or what.

[Calderis he/him]

If something happens to Roshar's sun, it is definitely not going to be a natural occurrence. 

Roshar's sun is unnaturally young. 

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

The yellowing of our sun is not actually caused...so our sun being yellow is not based on the star's actual color.

Leiyan

I'm curious about the sun because it's described as white, and our sun is typically yellow. I assume it's a different type of star?

Leiyan

So is it bigger than our sun? Smaller? If there's anything you want to throw out there I'll take it.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay...I'm having to reach into my memory. This is not canon. Younger and larger, I believe it is both. Younger and larger.

Brandon Sanderson

The star's age, at Roshar...Earth astronomers would say that is a star which could not have planets with life on them.

source

 

[Yeti on a settee]

Reading these posts, I think "the sun" could be linked to the warmth/power Dalinar feels on occasion. The epigraph could be the entity that Odium and other(s) killed ("we killed you"). The remnant of this entity would then be what is telling Dalinar to "unite them". After linking the three realms and Odiums proclamation, Dalinar feels this warmth, this other Sun even more.

I hope this isn't off topic but you need to be careful when saying hotter in terms of stars. The surface temperatue is what dictates the colour of the star's light, and it is this that emits more red light when the surface is cooler (around 4000°C). But the internal temperature is still around 15million °C.

The surface of stars do get cooler (red-er) and hotter (blue-er) and fluctuates at different stages of the star's life. Some stars fluctuate periodically over a few days or weeks. The point I want to make is the surface cools down and stays red when it evolves into a red giant, and this happens because the centre of the star has contracted and warmed up! So the star is actually hotter internally !

Edited November 30, 2018 by Yeti on a settee
wording was missleading before.

[Ripheus23]

Well assuming nuclear fusion works in the Cosmere along the lines that it does IRL, with the Investiture caveat, I imagine quantum shenanigans sometimes spontaneously convert matter and energy into Investiture under various stellar conditions. Maybe this all has to do with Adonalsium's thermodynamic shenanigans, and with It/Him dead, the Scar is spreading. (Maybe Adonalsium in Itself prevented the normal entropy problem, so to speak; now, though, stars are getting colder---closer to general thermodynamic equilibrium/heat death---and redder: the Scar as an imprint of the Shattering?)

[Yeti on a settee]

Star's basically have negative heat capacity. So they heat up when they loose energy and cool down when the gain energy.

[tmnsquirtle]

14 hours ago, Yeti on a settee said:

Star's basically have negative heat capacity. So they heat up when they loose energy and cool down when the gain energy.

Black magic. How.

[Andy92]

4 hours ago, tmnsquirtle said:

Black magic. How.

If it works anything like electricity, you can dissipate power as heat when energy changes forms. It probably has to do with the star releasing heat as a changed form of lost energy, and it doesn’t give off as much heat while storing energy.