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I think it comes to the qualitative differences in Seons vs Spren, and in Roshar vs Sel. Part of the Puzzle (Per This WOB) is that Spren are significantly more numerous than Seons, so they provide a "pressure release" for the Raw Power left on roshar that the Seons cannot. That fits with This WOB that says seons are just a tiny piece of the power, like sparks or the dust that falls off when you break a stone. Also there is This one that implies that Honor saw his splintering coming and took conscious steps regarding how his Investiture fell out. Aslo This might be a misnomer, since even though there were Spren around all predate their Arrival, per wob ALL Investiture across the Cosmere was assigned to one of the 16 shards, so whatever spren were present would have theoretically either had their entire generation wiped out during the Shattering of Adonalsium to create the newer more specific breeds, or else they already had a strong philosophic connection to Oaths/Bonds/Honor and to Cultivation and simply maintained it; perhaps that is what attracted the attention of those two int eh first place

Thank you Captain Obvious Does anyone have any actual thoughts or theories?

That's pretty much it. What do we know? What do we suspect? What does it imply about the rest of things?

I still think the Ire has one, or at least has witnessed one being passed. They were too prepared when they showed up to capture one in Secret History. But unless they have some amount of Ambition (still unaccounted for that Investiture, yes?) it would probably be one of the unrevealed ones.

I doubt it, but that's entirely based on how Hoid spoke of her as if his original acquaintance were still alive and filling that role, and there's no guarantee that he knows all the current events. Though I could really get behind the idea that her schemes are all about Cultivating new Vessels for both or even all three of them, and that she does intend to Join Tanavast when she's settled matters in the Cosmere.

Agreed, in that however the madness manifests it is going to mark a dramatic shift in personality, one that would or at least could make them no longer compatible with their Order. But I would argue that it entirely depends on how their individual madness, and in some cases (like Ishar v. Bondsmiths) where there may have never been much in the way of a specific and/or common personality given how unique their Spren are. Ishar, for example was known for "Piety and Guidance" and it looks like that may be intact but simply have shifted toward Guiding for a different God. Jezerin was Patron of Leadership and Protection and he became a drooling madman that himself needed to be led and protected like a child, rather than moving toward some other order's philosophy. Nale, the only confirmed Radiant Herald, was previously Confidence and Justice, and he still believes in those things, he has simply lost Confidence in his own ability to identify Justice. Meanwhile, Ash is the perfect example of how it could end up manifesting in a more directly polar way, enough to fit some other order since she was nice and primal and went from Creation to Destruction, which was still considered a virtue of another order.

Per wikipedia he heads off into space with the three of his children that inherited his genetic deformity, leaving his wife and normal kids behind. It's all about the four of them trying to survive alone, cure the deformity that makes them giant geniuses with an expected lifespan of 20 years, and meeting some surviving buggers. Bean apparently reaches 14 ft but they fear he cant survive outside of relativistic microgravity.

Just got back from Ye Internets, It looks like he does have a Planned novel tentatively called Shadows Alive that is intended to be the conclusion to the whole thing and tie the two back together. Shadows in Flight is a tie-in with Bean that bridges it some, apparently grew out of the first chapters back in 2012. Other than that there are a few at the early days of human galactic expansion, but none that actually tie back in with the Piggy timeline. Closest is a short story that apparently shows Ender first meeting Jane. Dammit, now Im really excited for the actual conclusion.

The extreme future trilogy (Speak For the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind). It really spent a lot of time delving into the metaphysics of perception and reality, while taking a fairly stark look at society and family dynamics. As far as I know he never revisited that Era in any of followup novels, but please tell me if I missed one. I want to say I saw clues that the super-smart family it featured might have been descendants of Bean, but it could have just been me reading too much into it. Did you ever read the third one? They really jumped the alien metaphysical shark in that one

As far as I know the leading theory is that Autonomy took intentional steps to close it off and/or make it inaccessible. She hinted as much in the Letters with the "overcome the tests we have create, and we do know that Patji is an avatar of Autonomy (though we dont really know what that means).

All evidence suggest they can. We know Radiants can wield an Honorblade of a different Order, so there is no conflict there. And Nale has bonded a Spren, so there isnt anything about the Herald's status that prevents it. That being said, the Heralds are almost by definition the most perfectly suited candidates for their own Order, so the odds would lean strongly toward them attracting a Spren of that compatible order rather than something else (setting aside the whole Madness talk). And at the end of the day, Spren are different than basically any other cosmere magic in that they each have an individual (non-shard) Sapient Creature that is making a Choice to Bond; that makes it a far less random, less Game-able option because at the end of the day you just have to convince a Spren to share souls with you. Simple.

Turn Sel into a WarWorld? Nice!

That's the catch I see, based on how it's described in Secret History I dont think the space between planets has anything like that kind of 1:1 relationship with the cognitive realm between those planets.

Supposedly we are also getting Eshonai POV in coming books, so that alone is probably not any guarentee they will survive to the "current" events of the incoming books.

There is a simple way that we can all come to a place of Forgiveness regarding the Shamalanatrocity: It would only take one cameo poster to establish that it was all just the screen adaptation of the Ember Island Players production They tried some new scheme to fuzt with the frame rates; they thought it would counter some of the CG "floatiness" (and I assume save some budget), but it ended up making a bunch of scenes super choppy. They've admitted it wasnt the right call and promised to fix things next season. As far as Netflix giving things a decent Budget: they did just steal Superman away from the DCEU to star in their Live action Witcher series, so Im not all that worried about them being cheap.

This particular bit I dont think will pan out, on the logic that if there was a God-spren among the UnMade then they'd have their Bondsmith equivalent.

Setting aside a whole phase I did where I read every off-the-wall 70's sci-fi 2nd hand paperback I could find (most of which were terrible and lived up to the beatles song), there have only been a few that really stood out as just plain weird: Weapon Makers - Extreme Future society, took several sharp left turns Principia Discordia - If you though the Illuminati Trilogy was weird, this is the pseudo-philosophic, mostly crowdsourced, and entirely drug induced "religious text" it was based on. Replay - Picture Groundhog day, but reliving your life from mid-college to your mid-life heart attack over and over. Slow Regard of Silent Things - Literarily speaking this one was a unique experience, something that engaging with Zero dialog. I think this one will be studied in colleges in years to come. The entire Speaker for the Dead followup to Enders Game. I think I was in middle school when I read them, and by the time they are done they've been exploring the lines between Plant and Animal, Religion and Mental Illness, Reality and Imagination, Integrity and being an insufferable a-hole. Also a sentient Internet is a POV character.

So, in respect to Autonomy, am I remembering correctly that a Rainbow deck was a thing in Magic? (I never had the cash to really get into it, but had some friends that loved to talk about their decks).

Oh, OK sorry, I see where you are going with it now. It doesnt fit my current model for how the Cognitive Realm works and/or moves; The Dor doesnt create the Cognitive Realm around itself, it was simply crammed in Cognitive realm local to Sel. I think to extend the Cognitive Realm into space would require an actual living population to expand outward, to see and think and perceive the bridge on the physical realm before it could be reflected in the Cognitive. That would be the case from Sel or Scadrial. But I could be wrong, and we havent seen any of how Aons interact with Shadesmar, so it's hard to say anything with conviction.

I dont think that would work, the Aons themselves stop working as you get further away from Sel. It's all that the Dor is fundamentally different from the other magics, in that it exists in Sel's Cognitive Realm rather than the Spiritual where you get to ignore space/time. In fact, my understanding is that you have to take special steps just to get most of the different systems to work outside their homeland, and that none of them can reach offworld just because they only work in locations that Connect/overlap with Sel's Cognitive Realm. We can all go home, you won the Internet for the day! EDIT: Oh god, Roc'k even has a slave symbol carved into his forehead! Bwahaha!

Agreed, and in particular Nale seems to have made the argument that he never actually betrayed anything since he continued the Order. Besides, Humans tend to label anything they see as too polarized or extreme as "Insane" because we tend to value a balanced outlook. But I dont think spren are going to agree with that measuring scheme, since they are all going to be a little more extreme in their own views by the very nature of their various races.

True but as I understand it the sum total of all three are attributed to Adonalsium, so while it's an important distinction post-shattering I think would have been more moot back then.

Building on what @Gavtyven said, it could be interesting to explore with them teh ideas of what they might want to change, and what sort of small changes might be easier to make than others, but be more impactful none-the-less. Especially right now you can dove-tail that into the classic "It's a Wonderful Life" example of how small changes propagate down the line. There'd be a lot of opportunity for folksy "Consequences" and "Be Prepared" type life lessons in there too, I think.

Ya, all it took to keep his secrets was war and a violently downtrodden populace and lots of human experimentation.

Honestly, I think whomever happens to be holding Ishar's Honorblade is going to be pretty high on the list. I generally expect the Bondsmiths to be potentially some of the most powerful (or at least most catastrophically dangerous) of the Surges, which in turn are some of the most potent expressions of Investiture around. And the Honorblade trades the Radiant's efficient Stormlight channel for a complete lack of Sprenly oversight, which I think ups the Danger level dramatically, especially in the hands of somebody realmically aware enough to supplement the power source.