Zalocx

So we recently found out that the essay prefacing the White Sand sections in AU referred to Autonomy as "she" and thanks to some intrepid sharders like emailanimal we recently got this WoB on Reddit: This has lead to discussion in a few threads that she might be a Dragon or another non-human shapeshifter since she has so many male and female personas spread across the Cosmere. I would like to argue that instead her MO can be explained by her being or having been a Yolish Lightweaver. This doesn't preclude her from being a Dragon or a member of the third sentient race on Yolen of course, since we don't know what the requirements for initiation into investiture was back there. But she could also be a human. Consider what the two Lightweavers we know best actually do, not in the specifics of their magic but what they use it for: Shallan has used it to both make her self look more impressive and to create and use the persona of Veil. Hoid has shown up as a beggar, a smuggler, an informant, a storyteller, and two different flavors of court jester. Both have used only human personas so far, and always the same gender ones but I don't necessarily think this is limit of the power as opposed to how the two have thus been seen using it. And this bent towards using their powers of illusion and disguise in a way to become someone/something they are not may refer to an innate mindset that Hoid referred to in WoR as "the nature of lies" and Pattern's very nature as "liespren" supports.This is why even the times we have seen Hoid use more mundane methods for disguise I believe underpinning them is still this mindset that seems to come from being a Lightweaver. The WoB says Bavadin has a gamut of personas to the point where multiple pantheons are just her in different guises. To me this seems like the Lightweaver penchant for being able to become someone else, even multiple someone elses!, taken up to deific levels. Her still having/using lightweaving is irrelevant since from Ruin becoming Reen in HoA we know Shards can change how they appear to mortals even if the Vessal is not a natural shapeshifter. What matters is that her being/having been a Lightweaver means she understands the nuts and bolts of running all these various personas of her across the Cosmere (again the whole Nature of Lies thing). This also may explain the animosity Hoid has towards her, he explained why he's against Rayse: he finds him to be an evil man given a power that makes him even more evil and destructive. But never really touches on Bavadin in the letter to Frost besides mentioning her. But if she was another Yolish Lightweaver who used her powers in a way Hoid found to be at odds with his belief on how they should be acting. Well, that's one of the few things in the Cosmere that might really upset him: one of his own turned bad.

There were a lot more reveals than I expected to find in a novella! My two cents on some things other people have commented on: I always thought the Skybreakers *WERE* the Skybreakers, so its nice to have confirmation. Most people point to the nature of the Order and Nale (which are very valid) but my biggest piece of evidence has always been the epilogue of WoR. Jasnah says "The words of the Highspren could be meaningless" when discussing how the Everstorm overrules everything she learned about the past. That always struck me as really odd. Why would you go to see the Justice spren for information about historical accounts? Why not more scholarly focused groups like the Cryptics or potentially Ivory's own people? But it all falls into place when you remember that all the bond spren we have met claimed that the Recreance was a genocide that decimated their populations and they don't remember what happened back then because all the members of their race who were sentient died. The Skybreakers never broke their oaths, the Highspren never suffered the Recreance and that is why they are the only group of Nahelspren who actually remember the past Devestations with any reliability and thus Jasnah went to them for info! Also as for the revelation that Wyndle may have ended up with Ym, put me squarely in the camp that says Ym, Stump, and Lift were/are all Edgedancers. One made shoes for urchins, they other runs an orphanage for urchins, the third IS an urchin. . . there is a distinct theme about caring for the most vulnerable and forgotten among us going on there. That doesn't mesh with what the Truthwatcher's "niche" is hinted at being due to Renarin's actions in WoR.

I'm really liking the Svarkiss theory, especially since it makes sense with what we know about Odium and Autonomy teaming up on Sel. I've made the case before that Devotion is Odium's opposite and Dominion is Autonomy's and that's why the two attacked Sel together. Plus with Bleeder harping on and on about "Freeing people from control" alot of people have been guessing Trell is Autonomy. Which make these "Faceless Immortals" be the Svarkiss fit very well. Remember that the Derethi *HATE* the Svarkiss and their religion is based around control and hierarchy, i.e. what Dominion should embody. So it makes no sense for the Svarkiss to be Dominion's servants if the people who worship his Intent loathe them. But if Autonomy is the antithesis of Dominion than the Svarkiss being his servants makes perfect sense.

I'm not so sure they would be able to make the exoskeleton work. Because I'm not sure the necessity of bones for Mistwraith/Kandra is purely a bio-mechanical one. I've always been confused about how kandra can create almost every organ and organ system *except* bones. They are described as "masses of muscle" yet can create eyes, noses, skin etc. with no problem, but they need an outside supply of bones (or bone shaped objects made from another rigid material). This despite the fact that bone and muscle are much closer to each other as tissue types as either are to things like skin or eyes. Oh, and I just remembered they can't create hair (or presumably nails) either despite those things being closer to skin (which they can create in on a whim with any natural color and make translucent at will). Heck they can create cartilage! Which is very similar to bone. But a kandra can eat a cartilage-less skeleton and still have ears and a nose. I think their reliance/requirement on bones may be partially tied into their nature Investiture-wise stemming back to that cognitive block TRL used to turn Furuchemists into Mistwraiths in the first place, instead of just being a matter of needing a rigid core to wrap their muscle goop around. If so, the crustacean exoskeletons of native Rosharan wildlife might not cut it

I don't think we know if Ruin/Ati came directly from Yolen to made Scadrial and invest himself on it. He may have stopped over on Vax and that's when the "Ati" persona became subsumed by the intent of Ruin. Thus the last thing he remembers is being on Vax. Or maybe Vax is the name of a shardholder with the planet being named after them, and who looks like Kelsier, or Elend or Vin and thus Ati mistook one of them for the person and not the planet.

Brandon has said not all Shards have direct Opposites like Preservation and Ruin were to each other, but he has also not said Preservation and Ruin were the *only* such pair. My money is on Autonomy/Dominion and Odium/Devotion likewise being paired opposites. Which explains the WoB we got a few months back that Autonomy and Odium teamed up on Sel. If we are using Preservation and Ruin as our example its clear that opposites can't actually "win" a fight with one another. Their powers cancel out and they self-annihilate. This makes me doubt the theory people have that Odium's opposite is Honor, if that was true Odium could not have killed Tenavast and shattered Honor without destroying himself with the backlash like PreserVin did with Ruin. Odium wants to kill all the Shards and be last man standing, if Devotion is his opposite he could not destroy her and survive. Autonomy had the same problem with Dominion. This I'm thinking they worked together: Odium kills Skai and Autonomy kills Aona. A kind of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" deal. Explains why two Shards who should be hostile to everyone else could cooperate at all.

Surgebinding x Awakening seems stupidly powerful. Especially if you can hack the system to convert Stormlight to Breath and vice versa. Even if the exchange rate is lousy like 10 spherefulls of Light equaling one Breath or something you need to remember that: a) Stormlight is a renewable resource on Roshar and Breath "sticks" to Awakeners perfectly. So just spend a year on Roshar and go out in every High Storm and just sit and convert. You will probably hit 10th Heightning levels of Breath eventually. And that stuff won't "bleed" off like Light does so its yours until you use it. And even if the reverse conversion is somehow worse (say 5 Breaths for a single spherefull of Light) If you've accumulated thousands of Breaths that's still enough to fuel hours of continuous surgebinding anywhere in the Cosmere. Also Stormlight gives you healing like furuchemical gold and having enough Breath makes you functionally immortal like Atium compounding as *side benefits* to their actual uses in Surges and Awakening

So when Kel finally leaves Kredik Shaw and finds the crew at a funeral for soldiers who died during the siege of Luthadel he also has a moment with Preservation where he catches a glimpse of the enormity of the god's power and the pain he feels at Ruin's hands. Then Preservation, in his somewhat delirious state, drops and interesting line: -Mistborn: Secret History (Kindle Locations 824-825) I'm guessing this is someone important to Leras, and important enough to be namedropped in a novella filled to the brim with references to the greater Cosmere. I'm also assuming this is a female based on the name "Senna". So who could she be? A fellow Vessel Leras was romantically involved with like Honor and Cultivation were? A potential world-hopping bigwig? Just a minor character we will meet in Dragonsteel?

Also sheer power isn't all that matters, Knowledge/experience is just as, if not more, dangerous. For all his power Harmony is a mere 350ish years old. Someone with half his power but thousands of times more experience wielding that power might be a real problem for him.

This might also explain why she was the one who was sent to trail Shallan and why she got distracted by Shallan's Lightweaving. I always found it weird that a Cosmerically aware group like the Ghostbloods were tricked so well by a girl who barely knew what she was doing. If she is a Southern Scadrialan she might be Metalborn. Namely a Seeker, since we know with training (and innate strength/hemalurgy) you can pierce copperclouds as well as "hear" things like primal power of the Well. Shallan setting Pattern off to distract Iyatill may have worked better than she though if Iyatill was tracking through Bronze-pulse and decided to follow the source of Investiture.

Do we even know if the Basin is where the FInal Empire was, geographically? We knew that during the thousand years of ash only the poles were habitable because everything else was too hot. Then during the Final Ascension Harmony put the planet back in its old place. Maybe that meant the poles became frigid again and Harmony moved all the people in TLR's caches to the temperate zones and created the Elendel Basin there, but he didn't move the Southerners (for whatever reason) and that's why they started freezing? This doesn't explain the "froze in temperatures a normal person would find mildly cold" line at all though but it does explain the "340 years ago everything froze" thing: the south pole instantly reverted from being that of a close-sun planet to one in a more habitable zone and ironically became LESS habitable as a result.

More fuel for the "Its not that Hoid doesn't want to hurt people its that he CAN'T" pile: -Rock, WoR Chapter 46 As for Hoid's motives, Laras' words about him being and old friend who broke with them implies that he knew about and participated in the downfall of Adonalsium. I doubt "breaking God" was a spur of the moment decision, the Sixteen must have planned for the quest meticulously and if Hoid was someone they all knew he was aware of it about it and was probably part of the plan since he isn't the kind of person you can keep in the dark. Now? He may be having second thoughts, or maybe this was his game all along. We won't really know till Dragonsteel come out I guess.

While Harmony may not be able to "recharge" the earring, thus invalidating the net loss aspect of hemuralgy and Ruin's intent, maybe he was able to simply *stop* the decay using his Preservation powers? So the spike can't been refilled back to what it was originally but it might no longer decay either. And If he stopped it way back after the Final Accession it might still be pretty potent

As I was sifting through the Shadows of Self Ars Arcanum looking for any juicy Cosmere tidbits Brandon may have put in there I was struck by the description the AAA gave about how combining powers is "like chemistry" and you get more out then what you put in. This relates to Twinborn having not just two powers that may be usable in tandem or compounded (depending on what metals you get) but also a third "effect" for each combo. This is super interesting in and of itself and I foresee it becoming the topic of much discussion on the Misborn part of the forum, but this post is about a possible implication this has for surgebinding. The AAA mentions Roshar when talking about combining powers Most theories about Surgebinding have postulated that its a mixture of Honor and Cultivation, but almost relegated *between* orders. Edgedancers with their vine like bondspren may be of cultivation while Windrunners with the Honorspren were of Honor. But this seems to imply that the mixture happens *within* each and every Order. Comparing mixing the surges to mixing allomancy and feruchemy seems to imply that all surgebinders have one surge from Honor and one from Cultivation equaling the two surges per order. The talk of the mixing producing "an effect" is interesting because we see that on Roshar too. Kaladin's natural skill with the spear, Shallan's memory, and Jasnah's uncanny sense of direction. If this is true, however, it begs the question which 5 surges come from which Shard and why. For example if this is right then for Windrunners Adhesion needs to be from one Shard and Gravitation from another. Going through the Orders and using the concept of mutual exclusivity (Lets say Gravitation belongs to Shard A and Adhesion to Shard B, then Division must belong to Shard B and Abrasion to Shard A and so on) gives us this list: Shard A: Gravitation Abrasion Tension Transportation Illumination Shard B: Adhesion Division Cohesion Transformation Progression Does this whole thing make any sense or am I just mentally chasing shadows? And if it does make sense to you, which shard do you think has which surges?

When I first saw the picture in the broadsheet I thought of Iyatil and her mask instead of a Parshendi. It makes more sense as SoS takes place roughly the same time as WoR doesn't it? And I doubt any Listeners have time to worldhop while Everstorms are brewing. While we know that the Ghostbloods have worldhoppers in their ranks. As for the pool, I think that may have been the Harmonypool. I don't think we know if the Pits or the Well are active anymore even if we saw their physical locations. And I doubt its a Third Shard as Harmony may have been unaware of the spike in Bleeder but I'd doubt he'd be ignorant if another of the 16 invested itself enough on Scadrial to form a Perpendicularity.