Shaggai

Thanks.

Hoid. Hoid is, apparently, practically invincible. He claims to have spent the better part of a year being digested. He's immune to Shardblades. Sure, he can't do any direct harm, but on the other hand he might, with some luck, be able to tip things into a rebellion against the Lord Ruler, thereby getting him killed by Preservation's champion. On the other hand, that's rather unlikely. He'd probably never manage it. Oh, wait. He did. It's debatable how much he actually shaped the rebellion, but he almost certainly influenced things quite a bit, behind the scenes.

Well, if you also happen to be a Ferring, you can instantly form incredible trust bonds with people.

Yes, that was the joke. Hence why I mentioned Lightweaving clothes.

For the uninitiated, this is Argument Champion. It's a game in which you win arguments by connected good concepts with your side, and bad concepts with the other. And it is awesome. For those who have previously played it, or who played it just now after reading this, what do you think? Brilliant satire of modern politics, extremely fun game, or both? (Hint: Both.)

I'm pretty sure that no matter your eye color, you're not allowed to walk around wearing only a glove. I mean, if you Lightweave some clothes, sure, but then how would Flywinged notice?

That's it? I think the Alethi have somewhat stricter standards than that.

That's why you start storing before you kill them. Well, if you tap it hard enough, you can probably do it just by looking at them. Perhaps you would have to be a Compounder.

Eshonai appears to feel it during WoR, so probably yes.

Feruchemical duralumin allows for the quick formation of trust relationships. It's not quite the same. People will trust you significantly more when tapping, and significantly less when storing. Come to think of it, a Duralumin Ferring (or even Compounder, if we want to get really powerful) would make a deadly assassin or serial killer. You would just tap it and have your target trust you enough to follow you somewhere secluded, then store and slit their throat. Now that I think of it, Feruchemical duralumin is probably the best Feruchemical power to have.

Just clarifying for everyone else here: There's almost certainly no Cosmere significance to the shape of Roshar. Unless you want to believe that Brandon specifically made and uploaded the animation to Wikipedia, there's no Cosmere reason it should be that specific projection of that specific cross-section of that specific Julia set.

It'll probably be on PC as well, at the very least.

I have a deep suspicion that your words have been changed. Odium has no reason to wish to travel outside the Cosmere, and we know nothing of many of the other Shards. Bavadin is dangerous, apparently, but we know not why. Others could be subtler, but still as dangerous. Imagine if Preservation (pre-Harmony) managed to subsume the personality of Leras just as Ruin destroyed Ati. Eternal stasis is just as bad as oblivion.

Do inanimate objects have Spiritual aspects? Would Shardblades still have the same properties on another Shardworld?

Well, they have a Cognitive aspect which appears to have some Spiritual properties (most notably Identity. "I am a stick"). Inanimate objects on other Shardworlds might not have strong Spiritual aspects, but Roshar has spren which almost certainly do.

But inanimate objects do have souls on Roshar. Perhaps it's similar to the killing of specific limbs. The Blade destroys the soul of that particular section. When this happens to inanimate objects, it destroys only the soul of the specific location being cut, and therefore cuts cleanly through.

Your analysis is certainly quite intelligent. It is true that a human could be behind these changes, and if that is true we have little to fear. The changes do not alter the meaning of the texts, and current memetic technology among humans is - to the best of our knowledge - too primitive to turn mere phrasing into a memetic hazard. As such, the probability of danger is a*b*c, where a is the probability of a nonhuman source of the changes, b is the probability of the entity being able to use phrasing as a memetic hazard, and c is the probability of the entity being hostile. a is probably fairly small, given that there are a large number of humans who would be able to alter the text, and probably not many nonhumans. b is fairly large, as there aren't many reasons for a nonhuman entity to alter the phrasing but not the meaning. The only two possible reasons I can think of are memetic purposes, or an attempt to signal its existence. The latter is unlikely, however, as it would be more effective to alter the text to be a direct signal of existence. c, on the other hand, is very large. Given the set of all possible minds, and selecting a random mind from within that set, the probability of it sharing all of the goals of humanity is effectively zero. If it's something similar to a Shard, the base mind is likely to be human, which mitigates the danger, but the Intent removes most of that benefit. So: Should we be scared? That's unclear. It's probably not a big deal, but there's definitely still a chance of it being dangerous. It's really up to you and your estimates of the probabilities.

Certainly. Brandon's definitely religious. It makes sense to have some sort of full-on God faded into the foreground.

I agree. I mean, I don't agree that letting something happen is different than doing it yourself (in some abstract moral universe, anyway, because psychologically there is a difference), but he would almost certainly be doing it for some higher cause.

It was Plato, no? Platonic forms?

I think "types" is generally used, since it has the same denotation without the connotations. It's not anything official, though.

That seems much more likely to me. Brandon likes to explore complex themes around morality and religion, and just copying God and splitting up the copy wouldn't be as interesting.

I believe it's mentioned in Shadows for Silence, and Hoid may have mentioned it at some point. There's really no other information around it, though.

Well, there is a God Beyond apparently, or at least some people worship a God Beyond, but that doesn't appear to be related to Adonalsium in any way.

Adonalsium created the Shardworlds. If a copy of God's attributes could create planets and life, then we should really start reconsidering whether or not it would be considered God in and of itself. Especially when there's no textual evidence that Adonalsium was a copy of anything whatsoever. I did read the Letter all the way through. I find it odd that you would assume I didn't, since I have a theory about the Seventeenth Shard in my sig, and the only textual reference to the Shard is in the Letter. The dragon is almost certainly at least affiliated with the Seventeenth Shard, and the Seventeenth Shard is looking for Hoid. Furthermore, the Seventeenth Shard is the primary worldhopping organization as far as we can tell, and Hoid is and/or was affiliated with it at some point, so it's entirely relevant.