Tobbzn

All I care about is the possibility of the expression "The Bendalloy Bends" being in an official Cosmere work.

Holy rust. Then, if Shardblades don't do physical damage, he'll be able to kill with it by severing the soul?

HAH! Geddit? It's light!

So this is probably unrelated, but didn't Kandra have some issues with hair? If they could not grow it naturally, a long-term bald disguise would work well, no?

I mean, I only brought it up because I dreamt the "Blue" connection to Siah Aimians, and come to think of it... the thing with their shadows going the wrong way. If the "9 shadows" are the 9 unmade, then it'd make sense if the unmade tossed shadows in different directions, and their offspring might as well. It's far from confirmed, but it feels to me that it fits Brandon's style. And I think the point of Sja-Anat's words to Shallan is that the Unmade should have messy origins - they should each be treated as having their own individual backstory that happened to interact with the Heralds and Odium, and that's why they're so vastly different, not only in personality but also in form. That still fits the broken Herald theory - the investiture that would have made the first Siah Aimian should have come from somewhere, so why not the moon that shares their color and is associated with a Herald? Of course, perhaps the story really is just about the Natan, but considering The Girl Who Looked Up, I think we should be looking for alternate interpretations. The Mishim chapter even has its epigraph about the Bondsmiths, so it feels like there are too many coincidences for this to not be related to Ishar, at the very least. Perhaps the Siah aren't related to it, though - but my core interpretation is this: Some Queen-like authority figure somehow tricked a divine entity, who was connected to the Shards and known for being clever, into giving her something connected to Ishar, thereby starting some important historical event involving blue people. Some ways of filling in the unsubstantiated part of the interpretation is that the Queen is Bo-Ado-Mishram, Mishim is the third Bondsmith or Cultivation, Nohon is Ishar or Honor, the thing given is the ability to provide Light or the ability to feel Loss, and the blue child is Siah or Natan. I can't see Tsa being anything but the villain if the moons represent Shards or Bondsmiths. For what it's worth, I also have a gut feeling that Chemoarsh is literally Chanarach, the Dustmother of the Dustbringers, but that really is unsubstantiated

I think this question would immediately get RAFOed, and it's likely to be hard to answer - there are several parts of an Unmade's history that are important to their creation. They were first Made, then Unmade. Which does "Creation" refer to in that case? What defines the identity of the current iteration of the Unmade, if they are changed whenever there's a desolation? To make an analogy, I would say that while my body was created during my mother's pregnancy, much of my personality was shaped by important events as an adult causing upheaval in my identity. When dealing with something like the Unmade, the distinction would be more than just poetic, since their unmaking is essential to their being as we know them. Still, judging by Sja-Anat, they may not see themselves that way. Perhaps a better question would be if they were all unmade in a similar manner?

While it's possible an Aimian race was lost during the Scouring by Dai-Gonarthis, remember that "Aimian" simply refers to someone from the subcontinent of Aimia. I don't think they are otherwise related at all, and I think the Sleepless being made of cremlings suggests that they are native to Roshar. I'm starting to doubt the literal spaceship theory though. What if it's just a representation of the three different forms of power on Roshar, with Nohon representing Honor's power? Mishim is the Third Sister, the clever and scheming one, and Odium was the third to arrive on Roshar, and he's been scheming ever since. Then Siah Aimians could have, as I previously suggested, come from being given parts of Ishar's soul (of Honor and represented in iconography as associated with Nohon). Edit: OR! Siah Aimians could be corrupted Nalthian returned? certainly seems to imply so!

Well, I dreamt that Ba-Ado-Mishram was be a the first Siah Aimian, the "Returned" offspring of Tsa and Ishar, invested with Ishar's investiture rather than Endowment's. Could Tsa have taken the place of one of the Heralds during a desolation based on Ishar's conjectures (he thought the Oathpact might hold with just Taln too) and ended up turning to Odium and being rewarded with Ishar's soul "reviving" her stillborn son? We know some Returned traits can be inherited, like the Royal Locks, so that Aimian could be the progenitor of all the Siah. Or perhaps Tsa was simply a corrupted Bondsmith (the Mishim Bondsmith, assuming there's a Bondsmith for each moon) that was given Ishar's soul and bonded it to their baby? But it's excellent speculation!

The above is from the Coppermind. Meanwhile from https://wob.coppermind.net/events/131-general-reddit-2016/#e3977 So Nohon could represent the non-cremling version of the aimians. If we accept the spaceship theory, then *they* would be the ones to arrive by moonship, not necessarily humans!

I edited my post with more information, and *now* I feel like I'm on the cusp of something... but it's 4 am and I really have to sleep. When I wake up you guys better have figured out the rest so I can take credit for it

Some added bits, specifically about Ba-Ado-Mishram: Adoda = Light Mishim = A Moon, the Third Sister Epigraph from the chapter "Mishim", which also features Hoid's story about the Queen and the Moon: Official art of Ishar: https://coppermind.net/wiki/File:Ishar_Endsheet.jpg (Featuring the blue moon Nohon, with whom the Princess, Tsa, had a child with while she had taken the place of Mishim in the story) What Mishim learned: Loss. What Tsa and Bo-Ado-Mishram are describes as: Queen/Highprincess. What Mishim is described as: The most clever of the moons, eager to escape her duty. SO MUCH BONDSMITH -> MOON ICONOGRAPHY What if the "new" Ishar is so zealous because he's lost his ability to feel loss? Edit: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/117/#e1654 and https://wob.coppermind.net/events/64-firefight-phoenix-signing/#e916 Is the picture of Ishar *directing* the Stormlight, like a highstorm musical? Is that how he provides Stormlight? Is that the other thing he has lost, which now lets Ba-Ado-Mishram supply Voidlight?

Mishim is the third sister, the green moon, according to https://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar#Celestial_Bodies Nomon would be the big, blue moon. HOWEVER, note which one appears on Ishar's official artwork: https://coppermind.net/wiki/File:Ishar_Endsheet.jpg DUN DUN DUN What if Ishar got tricked by the "highprincess" Ba-Ado-Mishram in the story of the Princess and the Moon, and Mishim ended up being named because it's the special prison for Ba-Ado-Mishram?

I just heal the tear with Stormlight.

Made me tear up a bit. It's beautiful!

(Cross-posted from reddit, figured you might also like to hear this theory. I was worried about the [OB] tag ruining the ketek if I put it in the tags or title, but I've aggressively spoiler-tagged everything that I could argue is tangentially OB-related, even going so far as to censor my own menstruation comment. Alas, this theory is probably so correct that it spoils every future book too, but those don't have tags yet. EDIT: "rust" is apparently an auto-censor for a slightly more profane way of saying poop, so I had to change a few things.) While the Intent of the Sanderson seems to be to have a highly realistic world, there are some taboo subjects that he to some extent avoids, such as his characters' sex drives and access to toilets. With some notable exceptions, this is pretty standard. You see this trend in works ranging from fantasy to scientific literature, but it can have many reasons. Primarily, these subjects are taboo in our society, and it's easier to supplement a fictional society with new taboos (such as safehands or male writing) than to abandon our own. Brandon could feel uncertain about whether he could pull it off in a way that wouldn't alienate his terran readers with terran taboos, and this is often brought up as the difference between "Martin realism" and "Sanderson realism". Martin just goes there, and if he cares about the reader feeling uncomfortable, it's the approving type of care. If Martin had written Oathbringer, - but I doubt either feels a particular need to change their style to be more in line with the other's. Implied threats of rape gives enough realism to Jasnah's hands-on lesson in philosophy, and it would be jarring if it had been explicit. However, there was one scene in Oathbringer where This abnormality of pointing out traditionally "unclean" things made me rethink the Sandersonian importance of blood and poop, two topics that not only aren't taken seriously in-world, but out-of-world as well. Considering that even scientists are having trouble working on these taboos in the real world, it's not surprising if most fans would rather assume that the messy parts of our nature is irrelevant. However, I believe they aren't. Blood: Comparatively speaking "clean" portrayals of blood have appeared in Warbreaker (The Lifeless have their blood replaced with an artificial substitute which makes the Lifeless hold Breath better) the Emperor's Soul (Bloodsealing) and Mistborn (Hemalurgy and Bloodmaking). With the exception of Bloodmaking, blood is portrayed as just another arcane reagent -albeit a dark one by our standard cultural standards- but it does provide precedence for blood being important. Bloodmaking can help you recover even from Hemalurgic attacks, so in this case "Blood" seems to effectively be an allegory for health on both the physical and spiritual planes. Now, there's an epigraph in WoK which I latched onto, but I haven't seen it be brought up in theory discussions before. Not that I've read every theory thread, but I'd think it foreshadows important secrets about the mechanics of magic in general. This oddly phrased epigraph predates two important scenes that share a bloody common factor: Kaladin: There's one scene where Bridge Four loses a member, and it's specifically pointed out that Kaladin gets blood all over his hands trying to save him. It ends in despair, as it always does. Soon after that, his magical evolution kicks into overdrive. He starts successfully saving the members of Bridge Four on bridge runs, and eventually saves a lot people beyond Bridge Four. One could say, he gained them further breath to draw, once he himself gained the ability to breathe in Stormlight. He also grew up around lots of surgery, and it's entirely possible this was when Sylphrena started being pulled towards him. Shallan: The other scene that comes to mind is when Shallan accidentally Soulcasts blood for the first time and subsequently cuts open her own arm in an attempt to cover it up. Blood all over her arms. Later on all of her blood is even replaced with Soulcast blood. This immediately raises the question: Is there any notable biological distinction between her old blood and the Soulcast blood? This WoB gives a RAFO as to the exact nature, but this WoB suggests that it's very important to get Soulcast blood transfusions right. And that's difficult, particularly considering their understanding of blood types aren't exactly up to modern standards. This could lead to major unforeseen consequences, particularly given the importance of blood in Hemalurgy. It's possible that Jasnah has significantly affected Shallan's spiritweb in some way, and done so relatively soon after Shallan had the "blood over her arms" experience. Would this make Shallan more open to accepting investiture, perhaps? If one were poetically inclined, one could also argue that Shallan had figurative "blood on her hands" in her childhood, or that there were other likely reasons for her to have literal blood over her hands during her miserable childhood. Around when she started to attract Pattern. By itself, it's very hard to make predictions based on this, beyond conjecturing that bloodied hands is somehow comparable to Snapping on Scadrial. However, it does tie into various other theories. It is particularly noteworthy because of the theory that Shallan's red hair indicates Getting the blood wrong could potentially be disastrous - but as of yet, it doesn't seem like it was outside of biological error bounds. But... If an Awakener drained the color from her hair, would it grow back as red in the future? Or, if you subscribe to the theory that Jasnah has hidden powers beyond the ones publicly known, could those have been imparted to Shallan? Is it possible that the dying member of Bridge Four was invested in some manner, hastening Kaladin's growth? There are a lot of possibilities if you start following the blood in this manner, but one intriguing theory that blood could be an analogue to a gemheart - it is the part of your body that manages investiture over time, and the connection between your physical body and your spiritweb. After all, in the real world the blood stream is what carries most of the caloric energy and nutrients around the body, not just the Oxygen. If we subscribe to the claim that all energy is a form of investiture, then that is consistent with the previous theory. Poop: Off the top of my head, there are four forms of magic that are explicitly related to the digestive system. The big one is Allomancy, in which metals are ingested and burned as a catalyst for accessing investiture (It's not the source of the power, merely a channeling aid). There's Sand Mastery (White Sand) which mostly consumes water in order to manipulate White invested Sand, but at high levels can also produce water. When White Sand is used, the investiture is spent and it becomes dark - it must be recharged with investiture by sunlight. There's the Kandra, who can consume someone's bones and shapeshift into them. Finally, there's Lift's... "ingestiture", which lets her convert food into a generic form of investiture she can use for Surgebinding, leaving her hungry afterwards. This is something I feel ought to be explored in Mistborn, if not for the imported terran taboos. What happens to an Allomancer's digestive system as a result of their powers? Do the metals disappear into the void when burned, or do they change form in some fashion and end up in the feces? Does Aluminum sabotage metal reserves because it somehow reacts with and messes up the Allomantic purity of the other metals (putting them all in the poop) or does it make the metal magically disappear? We know Allomancers are advised to burn away their excess metals before sleeping to avoid poisoning, so whatever the end result of an Allomantic burn is, it should safely pass through your gut and be deposited in your poo. Could this then be refined or recycled? If Icelandic fishermen could figure out that letting a poisonous shark rot while submerged in urine makes it edible, it seems unlikely that no Allomancer would ever try eating feces and burning it. In particular, the noblemen scientists who tortured and experimented on Skaa mistings would be very likely to try something like this, since the ethics committee wasn't around to slash their funding. This is important research, dammit! By the way, it's a fun fact that a lot of the brown in your poo is dead blood cells being flushed, with your body producing new blood to take its place. Depending on your perspective, you could argue that it's still blood in motion while it's in your gut, and it could possibly be that this is where the actual Allomantic burn happens - while it's touching the blood but before it has time to be absorbed and poison you. I seem to recall a Compounder burning gold via the bloodstream, but I've lent away my Mistborn books so I can't check. This leads me to the second point: Can Kandra use poop to shapeshift? What if it's the poop of a cannibalistic Horneater, who had eaten his identical twin brother, bones and all? The chemicals added by the digestive process are no different than from those present in the live specimen pre-eating, and it shouldn't matter if most of the otherwise edible bits had rotted away to leave only the bones. It seems to me that pooped remains should be able to serve as a substitute for rotted-away remains, but I might be missing something. At any rate I suggest we call this process, if it's permissible, "Shapeshitting". There are also questions about urine for the Taldaini, a really convenient way to preserve water for anyone without access to slatrification. My personal speculation is that all Taldaini fresh water is a really spread-out form of Autonomy's Shardpool. After all, Patji's Eye on First of the Sun is allegedly smaller than the other Shardpools, and Autonomy's power is likely to be spread out like the many pantheons of gods maintained by Bavadin on various worlds, and would be likely to associate their investiture with something worthy of worship. This is also consistent with how it's really damnation hard to get back to Taldain if you ever leave - there might not be anywhere with enough fresh water to form a perpendicularity, and the rest of the investiture is on the relatively thin surface of the White Sand. Meanwhile, I also surmise that the sand darkening when spent is analogous to your blood turning brown when spent in the poo analogy. Khriss, the worldhopping Scholar, probably knows if this is true. Granted, I haven't read the newest White Sand so the answer could be in there, but if I may talk directly to it for a moment: I doubt urine there. Of these, Taldaini sand mastery is the most similar to Lift's ingestiture. By this WoB one can argue that anything part of a life/death cycle contains some of Cultivation's investiture, and in fact, I would go so far as to say that regular caloric intake is a form of investiture transfer in the form of chemical energy. Then, the remaining droppings, which are not really inert, provide fuel to another part of the ecosystem. One of Lift's distinguishing abilities is to turn the food into pure investiture, and once the investiture is spent, she becomes hungry. This suggests that she's able to extract all of the available investiture, and thus whatever comes out of her should be inert in terms of investiture. Let's not beat around the bush: Does Lift poop Aluminum? Is she focused on Dalinar's nice butt because her own butt holds the Shart of Constipation? As a reminder, Aluminum, with its chemical designation [Al], not only drains an Allomancer's metal reserves, but it also is counter to almost all forms of investiture we know of. [Al] doesn't give off Atium shadows, it can't be affected with Steelpush or Ironpull, and it's believed to ward off emotional Allomancy. [Al] can't be Awakened on Nalthis. [Al] is implied to block Forgery on Sel. An [Al] scabbard can contain Nightblood. [Al] can block Shardblades, and it resists Soulcasting. [Al] blocks investiture from healing wounds until it's out of the system. Partial Aluminum content, like an Aluminum piece on a gun, makes investiture harder to use on it, even if not quite impossible. If you were about to take an Aluminum poop, you'd have a hard time healing your butt region, but afterwards you'd contain less Aluminum, less waste-blood, and on average you'd be less inert. I therefore propose the hypothesis that if Lift's leftovers contain Aluminum, then if Lift poops to get rid of the Aluminum/gut-blood mixture, she'd be able to use the storage of Stormlight surging through her blood for longer, and more easily.

Perhaps the body shown was produced by stolen Illumination? After all, Pattern seems to be yelping about lies and truths out of context the previous night, which could mean that Jasnah was practicing her Lightweaving. In fact, I'm inclined to believe she's got a bit of all the surges, including Truthseeing, which would explain her being terrified the day before her "death". Note that Hemalurgy is relatively poorly understood on Scadrial, and it's stated that it's the blood that is important for hemalurgy, thus the name. In the interest of my massive case of confirmation bias, I'm interpreting this as "there are other ways to use hemalurgy than the ones discovered on Scadrial". Notably, Jasnah has soulcast blood before, and I find the possibility of attaining surges that way to be rather likely. Unrelated to any responses, I would like to amend the OP with this neat find: Does that sound like soulcasting, or willshaping?

What if bondsmiths are literal smiths, able to forge plate from others' Nahel bonds?

What if the leadership of windrunners is two-fold? Kaladin is naturally charismatic, leading people to follow him, but his nahel bond as a windrunner builds upon this, and gives his followers squire powers more easily?

Yes, transportation is properly illustrated in the prologue: However, if Jasnah was originally a willshaper, cohesion and transportation would both be innate abilities, and I can't see anything in the prologue that hints at soulcasting - at least, not the way Shallan's works. Shallan's soulcasting involves bargaining, not demanding stuff. The effect is also different, altering the arrangements of beads (molecules) instead of the actual materials. There's no reason to believe that she did. She could have stolen the surges of an Elsecaller to get soulcasting while boosting her own transportation, or she could have even more surges that have yet to be revealed.

Why's that? Considering the many different types of spren, I figure some might accept its use, while some might not. After all, Hemalurgy is of Ruin, not of Odium.

I figure cohesion predated her soulcasting ability, appearing in the prologue which takes place before she's shown to be soulcasting. Neither she nor Shallan knew about the Illumination surge at the time when Shallan's treachery was revealed - it was only discovered during the boat trip, at which point they were on friendly terms. Also, Shallan's blood is now soulcast, and the investiture may affect hemalurgy in unexpected ways...

Prologue: WoB: Did Jasnah use cohesion? We've seen her use the abilities of an Elsecaller in the epilogue and the first book, but the description in the prologue seems very out-of-place if it's supposed to exemplify accidental use of transformation or transportation. One could argue it was accidental transformation, but mud is not even an Essence, which implies it should be a difficult transformation. If the mud description is intended to mean anything at all, it would be a hint at cohesion, only available to willshapers and stonewards. This is all just one data point, of course, does anything else support the theory? I don't see this as exemplified transformation, as nothing looks to actually change material, but it does sound like willshaping, even ending on a note about being willful. Edit: Consider also the following quote from WoK which also shows off Jasnah's power over Shadesmar: The theory is by no means confirmed, but I find it compelling. It implies, however, that it must be possible for a person to acquire more than their share of surges. Luckily, we know of a way that could be possible. The epilogue seems to imply that she's been hanging out with Wit for some time: So maybe, just maybe, she's been involved in the greater cosmere for a while. Certainly, she refers to "the cosmere's great mysteries" and has been killing Ghostbloods, who displayed artifacts from other cosmere worlds in their cellar. So in this Jasnah-versus-Ghostbloods conflict, could we really expect hemalurgy to be disregarded as a tool, provided both sides know of it? Jasnah's hands-on lesson in philosophy seems to imply she's not beyond using magic to kill, so I'm inclined to believe she would use hemalurgy if she could. Open flame: Long and thin knife? Sounds somewhat like a spike, wouldn't you say? I figure they know of it. The prime weakness of the theory is that Jasnah's bathing scene in WoK did not mention any spikes, though the philosophy lesson chapter mentions earrings. Then again, the healing properties of stormlight and the presumed reshaping abilities of the willshaper could provide a convenient explanation?

Kaladin learns to kill stuff back in time, because gravitation surge and relativity and time something something. Nobody ever questions it. It's really useful when all his friends are killed by Szeth, because they come back to life after Kaladin uses it to kill Szeth in the past.