Djarskublar

Being a sliver is holding the power, and then not holding the power. It changes you. Come to think of it, it is exactly the same as savantism. You fill the soul with power such that it stretches, and when you let it go, it doesn't shrink down the same way. Ascending is just a lot... bigger. @Spoolofwhool @Thanatos : Vin experienced mind expansion. She definitely was holding the power, and therefore Ascended. She was Ascended, so she was a Sliver after she let it go. It is the same thing as Stormlight. She took the power by dipping into the pool (equal to inhaling Light), she held the power and Ascended, and then rather than do anything with it, she let it leak away (same as a Surgebinder sucking in Light, and then not binding anything with it, they still had the power). She then later Ascended again with the mist. No rules against that, Thanatos. I think that is a conclusive argument, so I will bring this back on topic XD My personal thoughts on the function of the SR is that it is like a web or a pool. While location doesn't matter on it, it is like those in that if you pull on one Connection of a person or thing, you can affect things that are also Connected to it. I simultaneously think of Identity and Connection like a massive matrix of all sorts of values, though I don't know enough about matrices to say anything more on the subject from that perspective. On a more meaningful and less abstract note, your spiritweb exists in the SR, so if you can affect your own, you may be able to hack it to affect other peoples, since location is irrelevant in the SR. There are issues with understanding how your powers work actually affecting how they work (see: awakening, soulcasting, lightweaving), but you may be able to do some interesting stuff.

The fact remains that Vasher apparently can bond a spren. That is highly interesting. I love the idea of him sucking in some Stormlight and surgebinding something. If he could choose knowing what surges he would get, my bet would be he would go for Elsecaller or Lightweaver. Cuz Soulcasting is interesting for him.

I assume they meant Returned, which is interesting in it's own way, since they are Cognitive shadows.

It would be a good catch, but it actually says sleeper agent, which is something totally different.

Eki has my back. I fully agree the goals of the Sons of Honor are idiotic, from a readers perspective. From theirs though, they are restoring their gods in exchange for the potential near destruction of humanity. They always defeated the desolations before, so it's not a bad trade... right? To go to the point though, he had to have a reason to think he was a Ghostblood. As you say, absence of evidence and all that. He doesn't need to know everything about the Ghostbloods, he just needs to know they are a group that might want to kill him and have a distinctive tattoo. There wouldn't be a reason to believe it wasn't some assassin from one of the other Princedoms or vassals if there was no tattoo.

Heh this just reminded me of a joke I made a couple years ago. What Star Wars character is the best at delivering babies? Obi-GYN Kenobi. Ha!

Well, it could give notifications. Just to suck even more of my time, it would be nice to know when someone replies to a thread I follow. Then again, I only follow theory threads, and the people that follow the general discussion threads would have their phone virtually ringing from the single dings of replies, so it maybe isn't the best idea. If you could filter it by subforum, like The Cosmere, then it would be super useful. The site has good notifications, and I like them, but having some notification for my phone other than a potential email that only comes in batches every couple hours would be nice sometimes. That is the only benefit I can think of. This is literally the first time I have considered this though, so take this with a heavy dose of salt.

O really? Seriously though, I'm partial to OB or Ob

I don't have access to the text atm, but Amaram isn't some schmuck. He is important in the Sons. He either had the tatoo, so Amaram would think he was one of them, or he didn't and Amaram would think of, say, a Diagrammist. I will address this more fully after work. Except she had already become a Surgebinder, and one who has progressed far enough to have a Blade. If her mom was an Envisager, she would be celebrating, not attempting murder. I addressed this in the OP, but I guess it wasn't clear enough.

Yeah, it really isn't a big deal right here. It's your own question thread, after all. If it was in one of my own theory threads, I would have been a little pissed, and asked a mod to merge the posts or something. It still wouldn't have been a major issue, though. Again, it was FYI. There are good reasons to double or triple post on occasion. I have done so myself within the last couple weeks. Perhaps read the posting guide we have pinned on one of the boards somewhere? It has good info so you can preempt other mistakes, I guess. I hope this doesn't come across as confrontational. I'm just trying to help you avoid getting told off by someone less understanding and causing you to stop posting. More posters is good XD

Triple post?... You can just edit your previous posts, even on mobile. Just click the edit button at the bottom of the post. Please avoid double posting under most circumstances. Just FYI, not particularly miffed or something.

I am basically just going to put out the timeline that I just theorized, and then put in support for it afterward. I need to get the timeline out so I can see it and support it, and I'm not editing the whole post. First, Shallan breaks for some unknown reason and becomes a Lightweaver. She progresses past the point she is at in WoR, so she was a complete or very near complete Radiant. Her Skybreaker adherent mother finds out and attempts to kill her. The events of Shallan's flashbacks take place. That is Shallan's timeline, but it drastically impacts Helaran's. First, after his mother is killed, he like others believes it was done by his father. This plants the seed of hatred if it wasn't already there, which it likely was. Give it a few years for his hatred of his Ghostblood father to grow. And then the pivotal moment: he either figures it out, it is let slip, or someone tells him (probably a Ghostblood contact) the actual circumstances of his mother's death. He at some point in the timeline is inducted into the Ghostbloods. He now hates the Skybreakers because their ideals in his mother effectively ruined their family. Seeing how relatively easy it will be to manipulate a passionate, idealistic young man like Helaran, the Ghostbloods give him Plate and Blade to do their dirty work. He still hates his father because of all that he has done to the family since his mother's death, and potentially even before then. Helaran goes off to kill his targets provided by the Ghostbloods so that he can get closer to killing the Skybreakers. Helaran is deployed to kill Amaram and is killed by Kaladin. Now for support and reasoning. First, I would like to establish that his mother was almost certainly a Skybreaker. Of all the secret societies we have seen on Roshar, only the Skybreakers would kill a budding Radiant out of hand. The Envisagers and Sons of Honor would be overjoyed to find Shallan. Diagrammists would be content to monitor her at least to start off. Ghostbloods, as demonstrated in book, would just try to use her. The Listeners would kill her, but that is irrelevant for obvious reasons. AFAIK that covers the known secret societies. I don't think any mother would kill their daughter like she tried to if they started to demonstrate magic powers not seen for millennia simply because they got the powers. She is practically guaranteed to be a Skybreaker by sheer process of elimination. If she hadn't been a Skybreaker and hadn't tried to kill Shallan, things in the family might have gone much better. His father may have been less influenced by Odium. The Radiants could have been refounded sooner. Basically, I have a hard time seeing what she did in a good light, particularly considering events in Edgedancer, and I have no reason to think Helaran would either. I can easily see Helaran displacing some of his various negative emotions onto not just his father, but the Skybreakers as well, once he found out. The only piece of this that isn't really supported in text or by WoB is that he found out the secret. I imagine it is likely the Ghostbloods knew, though, so my guess about him being informed by one of his contacts in their organization is at least somewhat reasonable. This casts his search for the Skybreakers in a whole different light. He wasn't trying to join them. He was trying to destroy them. He probably joined the Ghostbloods in order to have access to the resources necessary to fuel his vendettas. Since his father was also a part of them, they wouldn't directly help him with that, but they would be just fine with having another pawn to help tip the balance of power away from the Skybreakers and towards themselves. Helaran was almost certainly a Ghostblood, since Amaram seems to think he is, and he would have had the obligatory tatoo. That is fairly obvious to me. While I have seen the recent theory that he wasn't the Shardbearer Kaladin killed, it assumes that he joined the Skybreakers, which my theory explicitly holds the opposite to be true. I think this theory fits the known facts well, and really only has one major assumption- that he found out the secret of his mother's death. I would love to see what you all think of it, though, since it just occurred to me today, and I only put a half hour of thought into it before writing this. I wouldn't be surprised if I am missing some holes, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Massspren? That is an amazing thought on so many levels. 3 consecutive 's's! This spren is 'massive' It might actually be a thing, there are gravityspren and pressurespren after all. Makes me wonder if there are accelerationspren. Those 3 thoughts make me want this to be a thing.

The Atium question is something I've wanted to know for a couple years now. The WoB there is interesting. You should post it in the event thread for reporting purposes so people actually see it.

If that happened I think Spook would still be in there. He had all his wildest dreams fulfilled, so I don't think he would give that up and just go to the Beyond to resurrect his hero. Personally, I think Kel has his own body, but the Spook posession theory has merit.

Maybe other coinshots can put up a bubble, but only crashers like him can exclude their own stuff. Another case of 'one or all' (with several caveats) in Allomancy wouldn't surprise me. Nor would this potential exception to it.

Interesting. Denth would have gone before Kelsier destroyed the Pits. Were you trying to gather evidence for him having a feruchemical steel spike?

Yep. Still an interesting subject. You even quoted one of my WoB!

In the event page, we decided we jumped the gun on this one. There that WoB you have at the top was paraphrased, and after listening to the audio we agreed that it was still ability specific. It's a downer, but oh well.

The thing is, there is already Cultivation's perpendicularity in the Horneater peaks. If it was just a matter of creating one, they would just use that one.

No, this savantism thing makes sense. If they are more Invested, they can use their powers more, well, powerfully. This suggests that once you are a savant, you are one, and it will qualify you as one in any power. So TLR was a savant... in everything. It's nice to confirm the Soulcasters Adolin sees are savants, or approaching savantism. This sounds incredibly important. It means that if you use Allomancy medallions, you can gain savantism, and then apply your savanthood to other powers. Practice will still be a factor. You won't be able to gain savantism and then be amazing in some power you have never used before, but it will make it possible to gain savantism for powers that normally would be difficult or impossible to gain it with, like awakening or potion mastery.

Great stuff guys! Can't wait for the outside Q&A audio! Maybe today I will finally figure out the Provo audio...

Yep that's the one. I just assumed their regular exposure to Stormlight was the cause. I guess they could just have better physiology due to innate Investiture.

I saw another WoB about this where he says that because of the ambient Investiture (Light) the Rosharans are very healthy, and so this plague is a 'plague of the sniffles,' so it isn't a huge deal from our perspective.

I think we can conclusively say there is Honor in Stormlight. Someone asked at a signing a while ago, I think at Paris, maybe somewhere else, about where the Light that powers Highstorms comes from. He said it comes from the SR, and is then filtered through the Stormfather into the storm. That clinches for me that some of Honor's intent must reside in Stormlight.