Serack

I think it’s more like that’s the tone that resonated in that part of the world and the singers sang it into the shape of the city which resonates with that sound. Effectively all 3 make that sound. The land, the singers who shaped the land into that shape, and the shape itself makes the sound like a tuning fork makes its tune because of its shape. Back to the shattered planes: I expect the land there has a tone associated with it that governs the symmetry of the shattering that has been noted many times.

I posted this topic with my thoughts on the subject (edit, when I posted the link the forum put a version of the post in this one, but it doesn’t include all the quotes)

Well Dalinar certainty has the existing connection to Odium's power... I've been getting different impression for Dalinar's potential path though... *reads more responses* wow, @notsawerd articulated a lot of it pretty well. It really does seem to me that the 3 shards of Roshar will become allies in prosecuting war across the Cosmere, and thus Dalinar is pre-destined to fill the roll you are suggesting. This also implies that he will "lose" the contest in book 5. It's either that or he will feel like he lost in that he will ascend into a Honor/Odium shard dualship and will feel taking the power of Odium is a loss for him when it comes to his ideals. I get the impression that the Nael bond is exclusively 1:1, and thus the only way the Avatar of War thing could happen is that the Thrill and the Stormfather would have to fuse into a single being. Off topic drivel put in spoiler code to condense it.

Hmmm, another thought. Since Taln and Ash are expected to be major PoV characters in the back 5 books, it seems reasonable that if your reasoning is correct, we can expect that book 5 will feature the reinstatement of Ba-Ado-Mishram and that act will help Taln and Ash with their supernatural mental maladies, in addition to possibly restoring the deadeyes.

Excellent thoughts. Somehow I feel like the fact that so many spren are emotion spren, and thus logically are relevant to Odium, is tied to this. Also, this line of thought needs to be compared and contrasted to Sja-anat's "corrupting" spren. I'm interested in hearing thoughts in that regard. Here is a relevant passage from the book:

I haven't finished the White Sand graphic novels so I had to reread the Taldain section of Arcanum Unbound. Quoting from that: I'm going to theorize that "the Investiture is received directly from the sun" is an oversimplification like saying Mistborn investiture comes from burning their metals. The Investiture isn't in the metal, the metal is a "focus" and perhaps the sunlight on Taldain is similar, in that it is the key that allows the microorganisms on the sand to access/store investiture.

Reserved

Over the course of obtaining my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, I came to really enjoy some of the higher level mathematics that describes what this post is about, but I'll spare you most of that with some handwaving, and maybe a few links for those interested in digging deeper. For now please forgive me while I indulge in showing off a selfie of our department's club shirt that's about as math geeky as you can get. This is actually the fundamental equation behind this post. Ok, that out of the way, Rhythm of War has a great deal of stuff in it that danced around real world stuff I learned mostly from a class called "Sound Engineering" that I found really exciting and wanted to post about. Hopefully I can do a good job of communicating this that doesn't hand wave away too much of the underlying principles, while also not getting dragged down into boring details or assuming too much prior knowledge for most people that might also find this interesting. I'm building this from a post I made here. The post will be mostly about the RL principles. I'll reserve a first reply where I might post speculation on how it might influence where the story is going. Sounds, particularly constant sounds like a note from an instrument can be analyzed according to their frequency content. (That's what the equation in the image does) A "pure tone" will have only one frequency associated with it that is a perfect "sine wave" however, in real life, things generally aren't "pure" and actually, less "pure" tones are usually more desirable. Here's a picture of a sin wave pulled off the internet. Because of the nature of how a bow draws across a violin string (or a plate as in the scenes in The Stormlight Archives) the wave generated from them is more like a "saw tooth wave" like this: Now what really matters, is that mathematically it has been shown that for non "pure" repeating waveforms like the saw tooth above, there are multiple contributing frequencies that add up to make them, and the primary one or "fundamental frequency" is the pure tone with the same frequency as the repeating waveform. The next important characteristic is that all other frequency "components" are multiples of the "fundamental frequency." So the note A at the middle of the piano has a fundamental frequency of 440Hz, and that note is also comprised of other frequency content at frequencies of n*440Hz. That is, 440 (1x440), 880 (2x440), 1320 (3x440), 1760 (4x440), etc. This higher frequency content in a note is sometimes called the "harmonic frequencies" and whether two notes harmonize is dependent on if this higher harmonic content meshes together mathematically, or it can be dissonant and the higher harmonics can "beat" against each other (more on that beat later). What makes an "octave" an "octave" is that it is the next note up or down on the scale that matches this pattern, so the "A" one octave up on the piano has the fundamental frequency of 880Hz, and all it's other harmonics are the same higher frequency harmonics as the note that corresponds to 440Hz. This is the underlying principle for why properly tuned octaves are in perfect harmony with each other. The notes on a scale are placed such that choosing ones that harmonize will have other parts of their higher frequency content mesh up perfectly with each other. (Edit: This is a gross simplification. After reading my post for context, @Zincmind's post below has much more on how notes on a scale are placed where they are mathematically) Back to Beats The concept of "beats" relies on constructive and destructive interference. Here's a 12 minute youtube video you can skip or watch for more on what that means, but here's the hand wavy version in a few sentences. When two pure tones are almost but not quite exactly the same frequency, adding them together will have moments when they cancel out and become silent and alternating moments when they add together and become twice as loud in a rhythmic interval like a "beat." How fast they beat depends on how close together the two frequencies are, with closer making for slower beats, and the beat speeds up as the frequencies get farther apart. This 1.5 minute video, you shouldn't skip, because it demonstrates the phenomenon audibly, while displaying a representation of the waveform, and the experience really makes the concept click. Dissonance At higher frequencies, beating tones can be harsh and annoying, a property sometimes used by some alarms to really get your attention. This is also the principle that underpins why dissonant notes are dissonant. So when you play two dissonant notes on a piano, on a superficial level, you just hear the two fundamental frequencies with no louder and softer pulses, but beneath that the higher frequency harmonics of the notes are of frequencies that are slightly off from one another and they "beat" against each other. You can't necessarily hear this on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level you do, and it generates tension on this subconscious level. This is why "chopsticks" is grating on your ears, and it is also abused in horror movies to generate tension with the music alone.

If you know of a topic or post that provides an excellent expose into real life science that seems to be highly relevant to the underlying principles in Navani's research (or other goings on in The Stormlight Archive), please share it so I can add a link to the above.

@G2F4E6E7E8 said it well in the title of his inaugural post here on the 17th shard when he said, "Rhythm of War works as an amazing science fiction book." That post explores an aspect of real life scientific principles and how they are relevant to the Cosmere/RoW, and I have written a few posts that do something similar for other scientific and engineering principles and I thought I would make a separate topic that collects links to these resources, and I'll add it to my signature. Also, if you didn't know it, Bandon intends for the Cosmere to eventually include what he considers genuine science fiction stories. Investiture and Field Theory: why Rhythm of War works as an amazing science fiction book @G2F4E6E7E8's inaugural post, and it's FANTASTIC. The speculation about Storm Wardens is worth the price of admission. Investiture "Light" ("Shardlight") musings framed in terms of Bosons and Fermions My post about some of the principles of the fundamental particles that make up matter and energy as they relate to Investiture. Some mathematical principles of "tones" that resonate well with Navani's research Tones really do generate beats when played together. I'm going to append to this topic links to theories I've posted that I'm proud of and want to keep an index of. Some of the text describing these links may have spoilers Taravangian may have ascended as a Cognitive Shadow Roshar is engineered to be a shard trap Theories and Reference topics other people have built that I want to retain a link to @LewsTherinTelescope's reference of information we have on the Recreance timeline Amazing theory on the origins of the Unmade, and the Sin of the Singers Good theory on Mraize's nature. The discussion is where the evidence for and against is brought in. [Theory] Taln Wasn't the Herald Who Broke; It Was Chanarach Hoid makes people hungry Hoid has betrayed Roshar in the past and will again

Electrical engineer here, which means I've got a bit of education on signal analysis (particularly in sounds and light) which is directly relevant to what you are talking about here, but I might struggle to communicate some principals involved with what is happening in these scenes that I find awesome. This post will just be about real life fundamentals. Later I might try to extrapolate this to what's going on in the book. Sounds, particularly a constant sound like a note from an instrument can be analyzed according to their frequency content. A "pure tone" will have only one frequency associated with it that is a perfect "sin wave" however, in real life, things generally aren't "pure" and actually, less "pure" tones are usually more desirable. Here's a picture of a sin wave pulled off the internet. Because of the nature of how a bow draws across a violin string (or a plate as in the scene in The Stormlight Archives) the wave generated from them is more like a "saw tooth wave" like this: Now what really matters, is that mathematically it has been shown that for non "pure" repeating waveforms like the saw tooth above, there are multiple contributing frequencies that add up to make them, and the primary one or "fundamental frequency" is the pure tone with the same frequency as the repeating waveform. The next important characteristic is that all other frequency "components" are multiples of the "fundamental frequency." So the note A at the middle of the piano has a frequency of 440Hz, and that note is comprised of other frequency content at frequencies of n*440Hz or 880 (2x440), 1320 (3x440), 1760 (4x440), etc. This higher frequency content in a note is sometimes called the "harmonic frequencies" and whether two notes harmonize is dependent on if this higher harmonic content meshes together mathematically, or it can be dissonant and the higher harmonics can "beat" against each other (more on that beat later). What makes an "octave" an "octave" is that it is the next note up or down on the scale that matches this pattern, so the "A" one octave up on the piano has the fundamental frequency of 880Hz, and contains all the higher frequencies as the note that corresponds to 440Hz. This is the underlying principal for why properly tuned octaves are in perfect harmony with each other. The notes on a scale are placed such that choosing ones that harmonize will have other parts of their higher frequency content mesh up perfectly with each other. Back to beats The concept of "beats" relies on constructive and destructive interference. Here's a 12 minute youtube video that explains it pretty well, but if you aren't interested in watching that and getting the fundamentals behind it, they come down to this: When two pure tones are almost but not quite exactly the same frequency, adding them together will have moments when they cancel out, and when they make each other louder at a regular, rhythmic interval like a "beat." How fast depends on how close together the two frequencies are, with closer making for slower beats, and the beat speeds up as the frequencies get farther apart. Here is a 1.5 min video with the actual sound of two changing frequencies beating against each other that demonstrates this in a way you can experience with your ears. So when you play two dissonant notes on a piano, on a superficial level, you just hear the two fundamental frequencies with no louder and softer pulses, but beneath that the higher frequency content of the notes are of frequencies that are slightly off from each other and they "beat" against each other. You can't necessarily hear this on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level you do, and it generates tension on this subconscious level. This is why "chopsticks" is grating on your ears, and it is also abused in horror movies to generate tension with the music alone.

The god metal article in the coppermind has a section dedicated to this with citations to multiple WoB you can pursue on the subject https://coppermind.net/wiki/God_Metal#Shardblade_and_Shardplate

Hmmmm a subtle distinction. I was wondering if the properties of the Cognitive realm amplified their interaction's effects on their "bond." However, the properties that matter are that the nature of their interactions changed because he was able to perceive and interact differently in that realm. I hope I'm communicating that well. The idea isn't terribly distinct.

An environment can be lush and vibrant without being personally appealing to an individual who finds it alien. As for the Ace thing. His response to that was filtered through Jasnah's limited perspective. Either way, I wouldn't judge harshly an individual who needs physical intimacy if they found it less satisfying because the other party was disinterested.

I wonder if Adolin communing with her in the Cognitive Realm is facilitating this progression

2 years ago I actually did an r/askscience question on the very issue of how hey used sufficiently coherent light for the significant experiments I've learned about that were performed before lasers. Short answer: For spatial coherence they used thin slits/pinholes to force a node at the zero point. Something Navani is already moving towards by placing her source "in a box, use a hole to focus the light" One of the techniques mentioned for "color" coherence was to place the slit/pinhole at the right spot on the spectrum from a prism. (There were several others, but this fits with what is already in the story and lets you tune the color) Ok, now to read past that part of your great post. You might enjoy this topic I made recently attempting to frame investiture in terms of Fermions and Bosons. Perhaps you may have insight on the matter.

Perhaps Mriaze needed an excuse not because of a specific ban on “hunting” Lift individually, but because she was a member of a class that the Ghostbloods have a moratorium on “hunting.” Something like: “No hunting little girls without a grievance.”

*shrug* People get invested in their pet counter theories in fandoms. It's all theory until canonized, and I don't mind couching things until then.

Heck, it’s widely believed that he is an important off screen player known by another name in SA, with very good evidence backing the theory.

@Honorless, The “snap” in the narrative I quoted in the OP makes me really curious which way this goes. CS with no connection to a living, physical body The power of ascending remembered the recently snapped connection to his body and reconnected it as if it never snapped Some hybrid of 1&2

I hadn’t considered your first reason before, but I’d long suspected it was an internalized version of your second reason. In that deep down in their ancient culture they are aware that they are guests on Roshar and somehow Shinovar was sculpted to their purposes and they should be good guests by staying there. So theoretically, their culture morphed that into a religious belief that walking on stone (leaving Shinovar) was profaning it.

They found only one body when Taravangian died, killed Rayse, then ascended. Is he holding Odium as a Cognitive Shadow? Here’s a topic I built dedicated to the idea

I'm going to argue semantics a bit. "Fused" is just the Rosharan term for Zahel's "Type Two Invested entity dead man walking" that was invested by Odium to prosecute his war on Roshar. Zahel lists a few other examples of the phenomenon to Kaladin in chapter 15, and I strongly believe there is an example of another in The Bands of Mourning. It seems that Parshendi gem hearts are a mechanism that facilitates Fused being "nailed back into" a parshendi body, but otherwise, there isn't anything special them that we haven't seen in humans already.

I was getting certain feelings on Rayse-Odium's intentions with the human Rosharans that clashed with their expectations of total annihilation, and the terms for his agreement really cemented them in for me. Then Rayse was removed from he picture and slowly ideas have started developing in my head that his (unexplained) plans might resemble what will actually happen going forward, just without him directing them. Here are Rayse's winning terms quoted from Chapter 112 of RoW: To me this confirms my suspicion that winning the war against the Humans never meant he would annihilate them, but that he would assimilate them into a Rosharan Battle/Storm hardened war machine that would then prosecute his interests across the cosmere. Lets call this the Raysian Crusade. There are two other data points that contribute to my understanding of what this Raysian Crusade would have been like. The first is the Mistborn 2nd era depictions of some kind of "Trellian" incursion on Scadrial, which has "Faceless Immortals" serving "Trell's" interests there that seem to follow mechanics much like the Fused of Roshar. The second is the reading we have from the draft of the Sixth of the Dusk sequel (brought to my attention by this topic) So my first conclusion is that battle hardened Rosharians /will/ be prosecuting an intercosmere war on behalf of their native shards much like the Raysian Crusade Rayse envisioned he would wage. But Rayse died, so how is this going to unfold. To explore this, I am going to make two projections about book 5: Book 5 will resolve the "contest" between the Radiants/Dalinar and Odium, now vesseled by Taravangian (labeled Todium here on in this theory). By my understanding of the terms, Todium's "presence" will be "bound" to the Rosharian system regardless of the outcome. At least on the surface, it seems the only things that will be determined by the contest are control of Alethkar and Herdaz, and Dalinar's Sliver(?) soul. With the major antagonistic threat of the story resolved, and a back 5 books promised, Doyalst analysis requires a new, even more terrible threat for the protagonists to strive against for the back 5 books which will be introduced by the end of book 5. I think #2's posited big bad will be significant enough that the forces associated with Honor/Cultivation and the Forces associated with Odium will have to team up against it. Which means that #1 may help determine how much sway Todium will have in this co-joininig of forces. In fact, Dalinar's poorly understood "quazi-Sliver-of-Honor" status if subjugated by a victorious in-the-contest Todium, could give Todium some kind of massive leverage over Honor's power/investiture. It seems to me that the odd dynamic between Dalinar and Taravangian foreshadows ether them willingly working together as piers (pier immortal shards maybe), or Dalinar zealously and faithfully working as Todium's champion. Maybe Dalinar could even become a vassal Cognitive Shadow Shard vessel making both conditions sort of true. Either way, Todium's interests will become subsumed by Roshar's interests against the new big bad, and the forces and powers of Roshar will become united when facing outward against the the rest of the cosmos, and will eventually go forth into the rest of the cosmos. What remains to be seen is how this unification will play out on all levels, including the shard-vessel level. I'm sure Cultivation will have something to say about it to these johnnie come lately players on the scene though.

Hey, I just came across this WoB on the Sleepless that I find highly relevant to our discussion. (Bolding mine) The "generations" part could make some interesting wiggle room in the Peter Ahlstrom quote about Mraize being from Thaylenah in that it is possible that all current members of his swarm were spawned in Thaylenah. The second part I bolded adds to my points that sleepless as a race have done worldhopping before. I need to get ahold of and read the Dawnshard annotations and find more WoB on the novella as they seem particularly juicy.