IndigoAjah

He's gone as far as Zillion can tell in the Cognitive which is different to Syl and Maya imo (the former seemed when "dead" to basically be what Aux was, the latter was present in Shadesmar and thus the Cognitive). However: this story kind of emphasized the unknowable aspect of the Spiritual at points and that's a life line. Is he recoverable on that plane?

I don't agree If Nightblood is also technically not a Spren or a Shardblade as I'm pretty sure Brandon has said, then as an artificial Dawnshard like thing that acts mostly but not exactly like one, he is also very specifically NOT a Dawnshard. I mean, Dawnshard already implies existence from the Dawn of time But still kind of is He's Nightblood. He's unique, but he is also accidentally a lot of unintended things.

The defining difference between Shards and Dawnshards is that Shards are Aspects, nouns defined by an adjective, that are heavily based on Intent and Being a certain way Dawnshards are verbs, Commands that need a degree of Intent to drive them, and which are inimical to certain Intents Shards seem to be driven by inherent aspects of an omnipotent God and fit with traditional attributes given to God. Thus I agree that actions probably fit the picture for Dawnshards but probably on a more metaphysical level than Forces of Physics (which Rosharan Surges cover), either forces that define sapience, or life, or God. I'm inclined to think the latter. Not what God (as he is imagined, whether you think one exists or not) IS (Honourable/Honest, Passionate - I still Odium is corrupted from his original Shard possibly by the act of attack on Adonalsium-, Preserving etc) and more on what actions set God apart. In that regard, God is usually set apart not by what he can do (everything!) Or must do (nothing) but what cannot be done to God. After all, in the Cosmere these things WERE done to God and it made him God no longer, and the Dawnshards are what did this. By some schools of thought, God is unchangeable - giving us Change as a Command. He also can't be Created, which I think might be another DS. He can't be Broken, which might be something similar to the Command used to do the Shattering we have seen, though maybe that's too simple given how all the DS were needed to Shatter Adonalsium. An alternative would be Bound. And he can't be Understood. I think Empathise/Understand/Know could be Hoid/Sigzil's Command, it fits the divine and "people" in general, it fits the Shattering (you have to understand Adonalsium or know how to break it to break it), it fits the characters of Hoid and Sigzil to a tee, and it fits their Torment imo - the more you understand the more you feel what they feel and the less able you are to harm them

Personally I like the idea but think it's more likely that in addition to kind of creating an artificial Spren, by creating something Sentient like that and so powerful but also given such a binding (if poorly defined) Intent and indeed Command (which is what defined the Dawnshards), the Scholars actually accidentally created an artificial Dawnshard too So NB is a new, 5th Dawnshard,.Destroy, that doesn't act exactly like a normal one

I kind of agree Also I think it answers part of the "Cognitive Shadow anchor" problem. I'm not sure that Yumi is a Cognitive Shadow in the simple term (I think she's something unique) but we've seen CS use a non-physical bond to tether them - the Oathpact. Yumi ALREADY has some such an anchor, one she has explicitly used as an anchor already - her Connection to Painter. That may have been (though who knows if fully?) cut by the machine but it's explicitly reformed after that, seen in how the two can mentally communicate. Why would she need any other anchor?

I'm not sure that it does make that clear. Just that it isn't yet and Saze can't consciously do it, but he has still formed Atium via Wax and planning to try to make more It implies that Sazed is currently unbalanced and Ruin already taking over and that excess still has to go somewhere...

I actually think that Autonomy's long term plan is to unbalance Saze so he feels he cannot hold the two Shards together or they are driven apart without him wishing. Driving him to be Discord, where the Shards are in opposition and presumably Ruin is in excess, would seem a decent broad way of doing this.

My bad re Malatium, I was sure it was silver but I am wrong. It would be easier to know re the spores of the Aethers if we knew what exactly was "wrong" with them, as has been implied. Given Shades probably exist as a result of Odium's fight with (where he splintered) Ambition, it is conjecture but not, imo, pushing it. And re the Returned, has anyone asked Brandon? Do we see Silver on Nalthis? And we've probably seen Splinters on every world, except, according to the Coppermind, Scadrial, where we've seen Slivers (I had to remind myself on the difference, and I made no distinction in the first post, sorry) That said, searching for Silver in Nalthis online brought up the concept of a cognitive anomaly, Silver Chains from Threnody can be used to anchor things to get through. That implies Silver from Threnody (but maybe not just Threnody? What does Lumar share with Threnody?) IS special. And could we say Shades and Spores are Cognitive Anomalies?

Whose to say as part of making a deal with him a Shard hasn't given him a Splinter to corrupt? And even Voidbinding ACTS like Surgebinding, which also sounds like it was linked to Odium once but has Surges unique to Honor. We don't know enough about Voidbinding and the history of Ashynn to know whether Odium corrupted Honor's magic or Honor copied Odium's but the similarities are clear that one is a copy of the other

Those are things he's invested in, none are things he's made. (Explicitly, the ones we know anything about seem to be things already present like Parshendi, who turned to him from their original Shards, corrupted by him.) And we don't know how the "magic numbers" for Shards work. Is there an unavoidable element? Can they pick to a degree? Even if it's a pure coincidence, it doesn't really affect the theory. And Odium's exact aim is to end up as the ONLY Shard. Why do you think corrupting some of their essence is going to upset all the Shards more than knowing he plans to eventually kill them all?

Sounds like Silver kills slivers, somehow. The thing about Scadrial that's current unique in the Cosmere as we know it is that we think Ruin, Preservation and Harmony didn't have any Slivers/splinters so maybe that's why it isn't seen to do anything there? Allomantic inertia isn't Investiture inertia, after all. That said, given that the Lord Ruler is a pseudo Splinter of P, holding and changed by much of its Power, if that element is what makes beings vulnerable to Silver (presumably with a Cognitive and/or Spiritual component) then maybe if someone had stabbed the Lord Ruler with a seemingly pointless silver knife years ago it would have solved a lot of problems! Indeed Silver's main impact in Scadrial to date was its compound with Atium which directly led to TLR's death, maybe that's a metaphor?

Maybe each is an unmaking/corruption of a Spren like entity from various Shardworlds/similar? With Shards paired up, and Aethers probably not being Shard-alligned, 9 might be the number of worlds represented by Shardworlds+Aether. So you get a corrupted Aether, super-spren (allá Stormfather/Nightwatcher/Sibling), Seon/Skaze/Elantrian, Kandra?, Returned, Shades etc? Makes Odium like Morgoth who cannot create, only warp creation, stealing from all the other Shards. Currently this is just a throw away concept that hasn't been bulked out,.but it has an elegance that appeals to me

Anyone else get Princess Bride as a starting point for style and content? Until the Cosmere craziness amped up of course