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So, you do not believe that Iyatil is a Hunter?

First question: Have you read Shadows for Silence? If not, the answer is a big spoiler. Non-spoiler attempt: Threnody is a planet in the Cosmere. One of the characters you saw in Secret Histories - Nazh - is from Threnody originally. Shadows for Silence takes place on Threnody and explains, at least in part, why the Ire were scanning to "Threnodites". Second question: not kandra. These are other creatures, possibly having the power of possession. Kandra don't do the red eye thing.

So, something small but funny I did not see mentioned on this pages, I thought I'd bring up. There is a rather hilarious MeLaan horse joke in the book. There is WoB somewhere that the first mental image of Wax and Wayne books he had was Wayne riding into a Roughs town on a kandra disguised as horse. He then had to abandon that scene because other things became more important. The fact that the whole "Oh, you mean *riding* them?" is an homage to that first mental image he had, makes it even more fun to read....

I don't know whether the Holder of Adonalsium was human (as in, a native of Yolen human species), but between this quote and the various Scadrial Ascention scenes (Kelsier taking up Preservation and Sazed taking up Preservation and Ruin) it seems like there are enough parallels to fill the gaps.

There is a WoB that says that for a different group of people Adonalsium could have shattered in a different way. So I took it to mean that the actual Intents formed at the moment of Shattering - or to be exact, when the 16 tried to take power. But you raise a good point - how many people were actually trying to go for a Shard, and what did they know about taking a Shard before hand. Hoid, by all accounts, was there, but he was not an explicit part of the cause that Shattered Adonalsium (based on WoBs and what Leras says about Cephandrius in Secret History). But perhaps there were indeed more than 16, but only 16 succeeded.

Mmmmmmmm

This is my question as well. First, it would be nice if someone asked Brandon a question tomorrow during the twitter free-for-all (I cannot, unfortunately). The best way to phrase it I think is something like "What are the possible things that can happen if two people attempt to take the powers of a Shard whose holder has just died?" (although this specific phrasing may give Brandon enough rope to give and Aes Sedai answer). However, a "RAFO" as an answer is actually useful information. In-universe, someone looking to do something like this must be very Cosmere-aware, and must understand what subcomponents a Shard might have and how to build up Connection to them (in addition to being able to actually murder a Shard). Also, if any Shard is ever subdivided into Grumpiness, I vote for Grump to take that part up!

Well, if even Hoid thinks they are funny.....

I had exactly the same thought - thinking that Marasi is going the play the straight man to the freakshow that the other four were displaying... Which made it even more hilarious. I agree with DSC01, Brandon is getting better with humor, but he is also getting more diversified when it comes to humor. It is not that he is telling similar jokes better: he is actually finding different ways to make funny in his books.

This is because she *was* awkward in AoL and lacked screen time. We saw her see herself as an old maid needing an arranged marriage, and then she became a damsel in distress right away. What little screen time she had after that suggested some interesting possibilities (compare the AoL scene of Wax rescuing her with the BoM scene of leaving the reception), but she just want not the focus of the book. And yes, props to Brandon for building her up this way. I am late to this particular conversation, but from the very first chapters it was clear that she is going to be great in BoM. There are two very tell-tale moments in SoS and BoM: at the end of BoM, when, of all people, *she* is there for Wax, and second, in the train, when it dawns on Wax just how big of a jerk he is for saying "Oh, we'll not be having sex too much anyway". As for Marasi - she too is awesome in BoM, but in a different way. Her arc is going from a start-struck understudy for a scarily competent independent agent. For the entire duration of the book, she and Wax share the crew leadership duties, and she hold her own each time. (Steris giving her an 83 is hilarious but not undeserved, Wayne getting a 75 is even more funny). But the point Brandon is making - perhaps too well, is that Marasi can only become the new and improved Marasi, if she stops being Wax's fangirl. By the end of the book, she has established a partnership relation with Wax where Wax trusts and does not second guess her, and accepts her as an equal. Compare that with her first appearance in SoS.

Irich? The Ninja Yodeler, I think, covered the answers pretty well. More food for thought about the last scene can be found in the Secret History which is essentially mandatory reading these days. Hoid throwing Wax the coin is an important event. For some reason Hoid thinks Wax has a role to play in larger picture.

Why the 16 appears to be fairly straightforward. Adonalsium's Holder died, dropped a body and 16 people stepped into the ring. Whether they knew ahead of time that there'd have to be 16 - we do not know. Whether they knew ahead of time what Intents they will receive - we do not know (but I suspect they did not - or at least not precisely). I think the question of whether or not Shards can be subdivided or whether current Shards (except for whatever Sazed holds) represent minimum possible cohesive Intents is an open one. There is a reason why in-world secret society calls itself the 17th Shard rather than "Hoidhunters" or "The Cosmere Research Labs Incorporated". It might have to do with what *they* understand about being a Shard and taking a Shard up.

Sazed has *just taken up* two Shards. PTSD much?

Scadrial, Sel, Sequence, Suit, Shinovar. I also think shshshshsh does count (-:

Not just. There is a WoB that was published yesterday on one of the forum threads - but I cannot for the life of me track it now. Anyone? EDIT: Here :http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52688-secret-history-spoilers-hoid-theory/?p=396930 Under the spoiler.

This is probably more appropriate for the Cosmere Theories board, but because I am relying on Secret Histories information, let's keep it here for the time being. So, I have a thought and a question. * We know that taking up a Shard required Connection to the Shard. * We now can parse, from Khriss's comment about the Shattering, and a very recent WoB stating that Adonalsium was Shattered because the Holder was killed, that the actual moment of Shattering probably looked very close to the "inverse" of the scene of Sazed's Ascension. In the latter case, Sazed was alone and there were two power sources which he, having Connection to both, was able to take up. * In the former case, I suspect that a similar progression occured: after being killed, Adonalsium Holder dropped a body; 16 people should have been *in the direct proximity* of the drop, they would have done the same thing Sazed did: stepped in and attempted to take up the power. As each of them had Connection to a specific aspect/Intent of the Power, they took that Intent and became a Shard. This begs the question: if a Shardholder (like Leras or Ati) dies, drops a body and TWO PEOPLE attempt to take up the power, will the Shard be split into "SubShards" with different "SubIntents"? Or, in general, what would happen? As an example: can I train two people to be (a) very active and be ( passively-aggressively hateful, kill Odium (heh!), and have Person (a) become Wrath and Person ( become Passive Aggression. (these are all examples - I actually do not know what Odium is made out of)?

Ok, so I should clarify that a bit. Bands of Mourning introduced the notion of Connection. This notion is then expanded upon in the Secret History. Essentially, the idea is that in order to take a specific Shard, one must have Connection to it. I believe, and this is NOT that big of a stretch, that the same was the case at the Shattering. The 16 individuals each had to have a Connection to a specific Intent of Adonalsium to take up a Shard. We do not know what was the exact process of taking up Shards of Adonalsium once the Adonalsium Holder was dead. It could have been "16 people do it at the same time", or "16 people do it one after another, with each next person getting a Shard from the leftovers from previous rounds". I think the former - 16 people simultaneously performing the taking of the power of God exercise is more likely. At that moment, the power needed to be split into 16 pieces. Think of 16 magnets attracting different aspects of the power. How this split happened appears to have been dependent largely on who these people were - their Souls. Different people would've attracted the aspects of Adonalsium in different combinations. Different number of people would've meant the same. To me that process - based on how Brandon phrased it in WoB, and based on what we know of Connection appears to be very volatile (with respect to who is taking the power).

My two cents are roughly as follows. I agree with everyone who thinks that Nightwatcher is some form in which Cultivation chooses to appear to people (a Stormfather-like spren, or another form). I think that everyone who visited Nightwatcher has been Invested by Cultivation in a way Endowment Invests on Nalthis. The difference is that the effect of the Investiture on individuals is unique to an individual. This appears to be a function of what Cultivation is, as compared to Honor, Endowment and so on. I do not think that the mechanism by which humans are obtaining their boons and curses is outside of Shardic abilities. Nightwatcher and Stormfather may predate the coming of Honor and Cultivation to Roshar, but I think they have been essentially repurposed to carry on their respective wills. I am also these days under the influence of Ym's religion which basically says that One must become Many to obtain EXP. Because I believe at the moment that Ym's religion actually explains, in some simplified and possibly twisted way, the workings of Cosmere (and the past and future history of Adonalsium and the Shards), it appears to me that just Shattering into 16 pieces is not enough - each Shard essentially is under compulsion to continue producing miniscular splinters of its power and Investing them into sentient beings. I think that Nightwatcher's boons and curses is another way for Cultivation to do so (in addition to its participation in Surgebinding) As for Hemalurgically stealing boons and curses... Here is what I think is a possibility. Because boons and curses appear to be Investiture-based, they *can* be stolen using Hemalurgy. However, I would not be surprised if the following are the conditions: 1. You cannot steal just one - the spike must steal both the boon and curse. 2. The placement of the spike is unique to each individual due to the fact that their boons and curses are unique. This makes stealing boons and curses very difficult, because unless someone actually can compute the location of the spike placement by knowing the exact nature of the boon and the curse, one would never know how to find this spot. Note: The latter assumes that all boons and curses are person-related. I think there was one case mentioned in one interlude (the Shalash one, I think), where the boon was something like a length of cloth to be sold. Clearly, this is not the sort of boon you can steal with Hemalurgy, but it is also not clear how reliable the source of this information is.

You are making a very big assumption that Surgebinding comes solely from Honor. Based on available evidence, it appears that Surgebinding is a way in which Honor and Cultivation combined their way of Investing into people.

Are you sure about White Sand, though? To be more specific, let's do this.... We have the following cataclismic events in Cosmere: 1. Shattering of Adonalsium 2. Splintering of Dominion and Devotion (death of Aona and Skai) on Sel 3. Oathpact on Roshar 4. Splintering of Honor (Death of Tanavast) 5. Entrapment of Ruin by Preservation 6. The Last Desolation/Heralds abandon Talanel ( Roshar) 7. Evil comes to Threnody 8. First Returned on Nalthis All of these have so far been off-screen. So, the question is: what is the correct order of these events (the order above, except of the Shattering, and Roshar timeline, is close to arbitrary), and how do the books fit between them? Here is what we know: a. Liar of Partinel < Dragonsteel b. Dragonsteel < Shattering (I am using beginning of the novel as the time marker) c. Shattering < White Sand d. Shattering < Aether of Night e. Shattering < Skai/Aona dead f. Skai/Aona dead < Elantris g. Elantris < Emperor's Soul h. Elantris < Mistborn 1,2,3 i. Shattering < Ruin trapped j. Ruin trapped < Mistborn 1,2,3 k. Mistborn 1,2,3 < Warbreaker l. Warbreaker < Stormlight Archive 1-5 m. Shattering < Oathpact n. Oathpact < Tanavast dead o. Oathpast < Last Desolation p. Tanavast dead < Stormlight Archive 1-5 q. Last Desolation < Stormlight Archive 1-5 r. Last Desolation < Mistborn 1,2,3 s. Last Desolation < Warbreaker t. Mistborn 1,2,3 < Mistborn 4,5,6,7 u. Stormlight Archive 1-5, < Mistborn 4,5,6,7 v. White Sand < Mistborn 1,2,3 w. Aether of Night < Mistborn 1,2,3 [possibly non-canon] x. First Returned < Warbreaker y. Aona and Skai dead < Tanavast dead (Do we know what came first : Tanavast Dead or The Last Desolation? ) Unfortunately, this is still a partial order. We do not know how the following are related to each other: * Death of Tanavast vs. Entrapment of Ruin * Death of Tanavast vs. Mistborn 1,2,3 * Oathpact vs.Mistborn 1,2,3 * Returned on Nalthis vs Mistborn 1,2,3 * White Sand vs Aether of Night and many more...

We have a confirmed South Poler sighting on Roshar circa *before* Shadows of Self. This means that at least one Southerner worldhopped before. Given the timeline, (and based on how books 3-5 of SA go), the actual worldhopper reported in the SoS broadsheet may be *that very person*. We don't really know how many shardpool there are out there. We've usually seen a one-to-one sharpool - to - Shard correspondence so far, so perhaps there is only one Shardpool left on Scadrial. Incidentally, has anyone ever asked Brandon how the geographic location of a Shardpool is "decided" upon? Does the Shard have actual control over where it shows up?

I took it to be sparkling lemonade: Orangina, or something like that.

But also meta: there are 16 individuals who took the Shards. The way Adonalsium split along the Intents was guided by the personalities and desires of those 16 individuals. Each took from Adonalsium what they consciously or unconsciously wanted subject to constraints set forth by other 15 individuals. So, are you certain that the 16 individuals were paired initially into eight <Intent> - <Opposite Intent> pairs? This is very difficult to pull off IRL, and would look highly artificially. All of the Aon aspects you are listing are good candidates for possible Shards under alternative splits. For example Order+Protection is very close to Preservation.

No. Not saying that. I am pretty sure that the 16 have conspired to kill Adonalsium against AdonalsiumHolder's will. What I am saying is this: Adonalsium is dead. The 16 Shards were alive. Post-Shattering, they were the ones controlling religious thought. Ym's entire religious systems sounds like the apologia for what they did. Or maybe - like the reasoning behind why it was necessary to do so (objectively or subjectively). But more importantly, I think this religion contains another interesting observation: that Shattering into 16 Shards is not enough. The belief is in fact that eventually a piece of the One shall be found in every sentient being. So, this is reasoning behind the Shards splintering themselves. Remember the "there is a part of Preservation in every human on Scadrial", or that Endowment gives everyone born on Nalthis a Breath.

The Pits would qualify. My understanding is that there was no Shardpool there. WoBs suggest that there are other ways of traveling, but the Shardpools are essentially the most straightforward. Elsecallers and Lightweavers on Roshar to not need a pool to transfer into Shadesmar, so I suspect they can at least originate their travel not at a Shardpool.