King's Twit

Yeah, I've had a quarter-formed idea about this floating in the back of my head for a while too. I've been thinking that aluminum and silver are similar, but affect different realms. Aluminum might be fairly similar to every other metal in two of the realms, the physical and either the cognitive or spiritual realms. But in that third realm, aluminum would act as almost like a vacuum in space, or maybe even something like anti-matter. And if aluminum is cognitive anti-matter (hypothetically, not sure which realm it would be), then silver could be spiritual anti-matter. We don't see an effect similar to that of silver on Threnody's shades anywhere else (except maybe Kel) because something about being a living being, or at maybe having an anchor in the physical realm, prevents the silver from interacting with anything. Shades are possibly stripped in some way of this protection they had when they were alive.

He might have just always had it with him so he could communicate more complex messages than he could act out to the servants outside his door. He knew the artisan's script well enough to read it and I think write it too.

What are the Iriali's intentions? Also, are they Cosmere-aware? Am I missing something? I feel like you may have used the wrong name, but it is possible that there is some large chunk of Stormlight Archive that I've forgotten.

Of course Hoid would be horrified by the deaths of Aona and Skai. One, their Shards were splintered, so if anything, Odium made it harder for Hoid to take up Devotion or Dominion. Two, people can make all the "Hoid is the antagonist" theories that they want, but there is no doubt in my mind that Hoid is a moral, caring person regardless of whether his goals put him on the "good guy" side or not; two people who he had known for hundreds, maybe thousands of years were murdered, and the event probably caused a lot of problems and suffering on Sel as well, so it is understandable that he would have been upset regardless of whether or not Odium might have accidentally helped Hoid advance his goals.

I think you may have misunderstood what Voidus was saying. I believe he meant that since Nightblood is essentially a weird shardblade, and (living) shardblades can change their shape at will, it would make sense for Nightblood to have a similar ability.

I have a pet theory that all of the major spren who are active in Roshar's Physical Realm (Stormfather, the named Unmade, and probably the Nightwatcher) are bonded to massive greatshells. Thus the glowing figure would be the Stormfather and the sleek, alien one is the greatshell to which He is bonded. This is a theory that as of yet is not supported by too much evidence, but I think these spren, like the spren that form the Nahel bond with humans, are mindless in the physical realm unless they are bonded to something "alive." This is also what I believe to be the basis of the name "Unmade." I believe that the greatshells that became bonded to the Unmade were on Roshar before the Shards came, and they were originally bonded to spren of Adonalsium when He/She/It first created the planet, but Odium created spren that "hijacked" the greatshells. Thus they were "unmade" from their original form.

Well, Nightblood was going to get spotted in any case, seeing as he's essentially shouting "you should steal me!" to just about anyone within a certain range nearly all of the time. But I guess an inconspicuous Nightblood might not be noticed by people who are either too far away or too "pure" to be influenced by him, as long as you aren't paying too close attention to where most of the people near Vasher at any given time will be looking: right at Nightblood.

Maybe it was a phrasing thing. "body, mind, and soul" is the phrasing that sounds best for this list, at least in my mind, and it would be awkward to put the "...Even I don't know" in the middle of the second list rather than the end. "Soon one will return to the earth, another to the cosmere, and the third...Even I do not know" vs "Soon one will return to the earth, another...Even I don't know, and the third to the Cosmere" The "and the third" part is not necessarily referring to the third item in the progression of the list (body,mind,soul), instead it could refer to the fact that there is one remaining item on the list to discuss. This is by no means a definitive argument or claim, I'm just trying to argue against putting too much stock in the exact phrasing of this quote, as I've seen some people doing.

Does Hoid ever really seem confused about what he's doing? I just think he's fully in "go with the flow" mode and just does whatever his Feruchemy tells him he should do with confidence, even though the confidence is not founded on any surety about what he's actually doing, it comes from his trust in his Feruchemical senses.

If he knew what Lerasium had been used for in the past, then he might assume that if he feels compelled to find one of these beads it is because he is supposed to become an Allomancer, which would lead to WoB like the one I believe you are quoting. I understand that this is a bit weak of an argument; maybe Hoid wasn't following his Feruchemical instincts at this point, and just personally thought that it would help him achieve his goals if he was an Allomancer. It also appears that his senses for where he needs to be are way more specific than just what planet he needs to be on. Planets are huge. We saw in his adventures as Wit that he was in the exact right place and time for both the reappearances of Taln and Jasnah. He also just happened to be Wax's new carriage driver just in time to eavesdrop on one of the only two or three conversations Wax ever has with Harmony. I am pretty convinced that Hoid is just heavily tapping Fortune, and it works like Liquid Luck from Harry Potter where it just gives you a sense of what you need to do without giving you any sense of why. Hoid has to try to deduce that part for himself.

Yep, I think that Hoid was the weapon too. I also think that he was intentionally created to be the weapon, possibly by the Sixteen, to kill Adonalsium. It makes about a million Hoid quotes make more sense, and partly explains his obsession with stories and storytelling. Edit: Also one minor correction. My understanding of the Bands was that they didn't just work for anyone because they were created without Identity, and so weren't "attuned" to anyone as you say. This lack of identity on the metalminds (I'm going to call them unkeyed metalminds from here on out) lets them be used by any Feruchemist, either a full Feruchemist or an appropriate Ferring, but not any person. You still need the genetic ability to do Feruchemy to be able to use an unkeyed metalmind. The aspect of the Bands that lets them be used by anyone is the Nicrosilmind. Tapping this (also unkeyed) metalmind overrides the information in your Spiritweb and makes you functionally a genetic Feruchemist as long as you are tapping the nicrosilmind. Once you are effectively a normal full Feruchemist, you can now tap or store into any of the other unkeyed metalminds that constitute the Bands.

The main evidence that we have of Lerasium giving Allomancy to non-Scadriens is that Hoid appears to have Allomancy. There is this WoB as well, but keep in mind that it is paraphrased (is this the paraphrased WoB you were referring to?). I am dubious of paraphrased WoB as well, but even transcribed WoB come to us through the efforts of a fan. I trust paraphrased WoB at least on the content of the quote, if not the exact wording. We have confirmation that Hoid doesn't always understand why he is doing the things he does, he only has a sense of where he needs to be and when, and probably some hints on what he needs to do/say. It is very possible that Hoid had no idea why he felt that he needed to steal the bead, but he guessed that it was because he would at one point need to use it to become an allomancer, which is where we get the WoB about his original intentions for the Lerasium bead. I wholeheartedly believe that if Hoid felt that he was being pushed to giving someone the bead (if he still has it), he would do so.

There's been a little, though I'll admit that my definition of cryptography might be off. The Diagram had at least one encrypted message. We saw with both the spanreed communications between Dalinar and Jasnah and the ones between that con artist and her informant that some people at least are using code phrases and the like to secure their messages, which in my mind is like proto-encryption. That was to protect against the wrong person having the paired spanreed, though; your idea about a hijacker of the spanreed signal is interesting, if I am understanding you correctly on that. I'm not sure it is possible to "wiretap" a spanreed message, since (so far as we've been told anyway) spanreed technology requires the a gemstone be split into two, then each pen gets one of the rubies. It's based on maintaining the identity of the gemstone as still being whole, instead of splitting into two separate identities, so I'm not sure that you could link a third spanreed to an existing pair, unless the original gemstone is split into three pieces when the spanreeds are first linked. Now that I type it out, I'm becoming convinced that this might actually become a plot point in the book, like one of Dalinar's spanreed pairs was actually made with a secret third pen, and someone bad is spying on all of Dalinar's communications with it. But the real reason that there is no encryption is probably because Cryptics haven't really interacted with humanity in thousands of years, since Roshar was still an early civilization. It might become a thing in future books that Shallan and all of the other new lightweavers use their bonded Cryptics like the Navajo Code-Talkers, and use them to send messages that only another Cryptic can decode, but we'll have to wait and see.

There's two possible viewpoints on this death rattle that I can see. Either: a) "The Broken One" refers to Odium, and him being Broken refers to a broken mind or maybe something that he's done to his Shard that has caused it to be considered "broken", or possibly both. or \b)"The Broken One" refers to Honor and the fact that he has been splintered, but he is still considered the reigning Shard of Roshar, possibly because Odium is trapped on Braize and Cultivation seems to have gone dormant/MIA. It's probably Odium, as you suggest, since, among other reasons, Honor himself says that "Odium Reigns", but I think its important to not discount possibilities until they have been confirmed false.

You've said you're doing a reread, so I'm going to assume that I won't be spoiling something by saying that Jasnah survived. If you haven't read the Jasnah story on Tor that takes place after WoR, I would recommend reading that as well. It's not officially canon yet, but Brandon is treating it as a rough draft and has read it at multiple book signings, so I think I can assume that at least the main events of the story happened in a very similar way to how they will be portrayed in their final draft. So Jasnah is alive. Hemalurgy doesn't have to kill you, but it usually does. Having a spike made from you and surviving is supposedly horrible, I believe brandon has described it as like being a drab, but much, much worse. But even if we assume that we would not be able to tell if Jasnah had one or both of her surges taken from her, in some way, by looking at her appearance and behavior in the WoR epilogue, we see in the Tor exerpt Jasnah using the Transportation Surge to get to Shadesmar (and presumably use it again to get back out), and then later use the Transformation surge to soulcast the ropes. She also communicates with Ivory, so we know that she could not have had her Nahel bond or her Surgebinding abilities taken from her through a Spiking.

If the desolations went from having 10 magical people fighting for humanity to having thousands, without a roughly parallel increase in Odium's forces, then the desolations would have become little more than inconvenience for humanity, a minor conflict they have to engage in every few decades/centuries, but that does not seem to be the case.

That would mean that Kaladin would have some latent Feruchemy and probably Allomancy in his sDNA, which has some exciting implications, but I think Hoid is too much of an anomaly, too far gone from being a normal human at this point, for there to not be something obviously distinguishing about his descendents. Unless its super far back, but then the Hoid-DNA would probably be so diluted that there wouldn't really be anything particularly special about being his descendent.

Based on zero evidence, I now believe that Hoid led the Forescouts and the other Threnodite founders to Threnody, and then named the planet after the deaths of his old friends/acquaintances Aona and Skai.

Note that pretty much the entirety of this post is based on a theory that as of yet I have not fully fleshed out. I think that Nale's actions are well-intentioned and at least based in rational thought, but I do think that he is misguided. I believe that Nale is working off of what might now be outdated information pertaining to the Oathpact. I think that part of the agreement between Honor and Odium was that Odium, at least between desolations, was only allowed field as many splinters and as much influence on Roshar as Honor did. So for every spren that formed the Nahel bond with a human, Odium was allowed to release another of his spren onto Roshar. I think this is how the first of the odiumspren that cause stormform came to Roshar, and it was only after Talenel returned to Roshar and triggered the start of the desolation that Odium was able to "open the floodgates" and release enough stormspren to turn most of the Pashendi nation into stormform, probably along with all of the parshmen on Roshar, unless the Everstorm is returning other forms of power as well. One day I hope to have my thoughts on this organized enough to present as a full theory, but today is not that day.

I wonder what this theory would say about Aluminum? It is one of the base sixteen metals, but maybe it can't be pushed because it doesn't represent a gateway, an "open channel", to the power of Preservation. But then what is it? It could be a pseudo-godmetal of its own, but I would think that the Scadriens would have discovered by Era 2 if it could be alloyed in more ways than just duralumin to produce allomantic effects. Aluminum is rare, but not that rare.

Since this bomber is made to be able to carry nukes, I think Voidbringer might be more appropriate, seeing as it causes desolation and might cause a horribly destructive world war that causes civilization to revert to a more primitive level. My, that got a bit dark. I'm sorry if I soured the mood of this lighthearted post.

Yeah, but at least the Knights Radiant and the Surgebinding magic system are centered around facing that damage and trauma, then turning it into a strength rather than a weakness. Snapping just gives you powers and then lets you go on with your sad, traumatic life.

I don't believe that it was ever confirmed whether the spear had a metal tip or not, but... Mistborn SH spoilers:

Isn't it confirmed that most of the orders have set, rigid Ideals that they say to 'advance' their Nahel bond? (the only exception we've seen being Lightweavers) WoB has given us at least one Ideal beyond the First Ideal, which every order that says Ideals shares in common, so the second Ideal and beyond appears to be order-specific, rather than individual-specific. I think that each order of the Radiants had a specific ideology that the members, to one degree or another, shared in common with each other and with their spren. This ideology is reflected in the Ideals they swear to uphold, or in the case of the Lightweavers, their ideology is reflected in the very personal, self-aware Truths that they have to speak and accept as true.

I believe you are right in that both the Trill and the Death Rattles are ancient, but I think the point of contention here is whether either of the two effects has always been around and manifesting in people, or if they stopped at some point and have only begun to reappear in recent years. I may have found the WoB which is the source of the confusion Brandon here could either be referring to: a) the two first appeared long, long ago around the same time, likely when the unmade first became active on Roshar or /b) the two were dormant for a long time, but both started up again around the same time within the last several years Does anyone know of a later WoB which clarifies which he meant? There's a WoB that Dalinar might have been able to feel the Thrill in one of his visions because the farmer who Dalinar was at the time could possibly have felt the Thrill. This is suggestive, though not confirmatory, of the Thrill being active back when the desolation cycle was still going strong. This would mean that both the Thrill and the Death Rattles are likely ancient phenomena. Taravangian mentions at one point that he is worried that Moelach, the Unmade that he believes is causing the Death Rattles, has "decided to slumber again," which would suggest that the Death Rattles have only recently come back, as Moelach arose from its slumber. Or it could mean that Taravangian has seen stretches of time where the Death Rattles have stopped, periods of months or years since he first began to record them. Edit: I forgot to mention that when the Death Rattles first started to be mentioned in WoK, they said that there were a lot of rumors around how people recently started saying weird stuff when they died, which would suggest to me that the Death Rattles, at least, were dormant for a long time and have only recently begun to resurface. Or it could mean that Moelach spent a very long time in one area that doesn't communicate much with Alethkar or Kharbranth (maybe Shinovar?)