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I don't know. Yes, he is a lawman, but I am not certain Nalan would approve of how he does things. Steris for Truthwatcher, though. Wayne for Lightweaver. Marasi... Elsecaller probably.

I think the trail to Jasnah's "crack in the soul" needs to go through her acknowledged and established atheism, not through unconfirmed sexual violence. She is the highest-born Alethi in her generation. Who would even think of sexual violence against her? Her atheism, however, is the driving force behind who Jasnah is and how she approaches learning. She was brought up in a world of Vorin ardentia. You think deciding that all they are telling her about Vorinism is crem dung is not enough for a crack in her soul? You think you need to bring in something else here? WoB stated that Elsecaller spren are inkspren. This is a significantly larger giveaway than one might think at first. Just ask yourself, how would an inkspren get attracted to Jasnah.... It's actually pretty clear.....

We have no confirmation that Autonomy actively collaborated with Odium. All WoBs have been very evasive on this point. My theory is that in situations where we suspect collaboration between the two (Sel, e.g.) Autonomy did something in pursuit of its own agenda, independently of Odium, but the side effects of her actions wound up being highly beneficial to Odium.

The most recent WoB on this topic literally says "You saw him use Allomancy. You know he took the lerasium bead. Put two and two together."

Could be. Trying remember what we know about their origin....

Yes, the chronology seems to be: (1) Last Desolation, (2) many many many many years later: Recreance, (3) some time later: splintering of Honor (I think we use the term "splintering" when talking about the fates of Shards: Devotion, Dominion, Honor, while "Shattering" with a capital "S" is reserved for the fate of Adonalsium). What is not clear is whether the splintering of Honor has been reflected on Roshar in any specific memorable way that has been recorded. Based on what we know so far, it does not seem to be the case.

Windrunners strike me as the chief strike force: powerful attack combos, lots of squires (large squads). Dustbringers are the shock troops: in the words of Quentin Tarantino "when you absolutely positively have to level every #$#@@ in the room". Stonewards based on the discussion of their Surges appear to be the ultimate defenders in the spirit of the 300 Spartans legend. Both of their Surges can be combined together to make barriers that are impenetrable to attacks: shields that cannot be broken, and so on. This is a useful defensive characteristic. In asmuch as Invulnerability is a generally useful attack feature (make your skin bounce all attacks and you can ignore the need to defend yourself when running into 20 soldiers), Stonewards can also be used on other suicide missions - break through an enemy formation, etc... But I think defense is their key occupation in the battle. Willshapers (pure speculation) may be very good as your ace-up-the-sleeve troops: someones who circle the battlefield and hit the enemy from behind. Skybreakers are, of course, MP.

For short distances even a Steel Ferring (w/o the compounding) can win simply off of their stored Speed supply. The shorter the distance, the faster they can run subject to relativistic effects and friction/resistance. Those however only appear at speeds that far exceed what an Edgedancer can accomplish. Edgedancers' trick is to not slow down once motion has started, so over a large enough distance, a Ferring will simply run out of metalmind-stored speed (a compounder won't), while an Edgedancer will continue unabated. However the starting speeds of Edgedancers are not enhanced - they are what a human body can achieve. Faster speeds would require some outside interference (edgedancer jumping from a full-speed train, for examp

Technically, anything is possible, since there are at least six other unnamed Shards to draw from. However... we also need to consider the overall trend in Cosmere storytelling. Brandon never drops anything major in his books unannounced. There are always foreshadowings, mentions, dropped hints, etc.... As of recent, he's been doing it in a way where he drops a name, waits for us to notice, drops it again, RAFOs, RAFOs, then WoBs something, then drops that name again, ..., WoBs another thing... Essentially, he is building momentum. This is how the world learned about Khriss, Bavadin, Silverlight. We are in the early stages of Vax. So, I strongly suspect that when Brandon is ready to introduce another Shard, the first thing we will see, is a mention of it in some off-hand conversation Hoid has with someone, or as an aside Ars Arcana observation tucked into a corner of a philosophical discussion of the abilities of various Surges, or something like this. It won't be the last page of a major book "Trell is the unmentioned before Shard named SPANISH INQUISITION" reveal. Brandon has MO. It creates unexpected twists in his books, but the MO itself is reasonably transparent. It behooves us to understand it.

My theory, based solely on Renarin's behavior at the end of WoR (both before, during and after the discovery of Urithuru) is that Truthwatchers' Oaths sound something like "I will see what others don't" and "I will see even if it is something no one wants to know about" (I am paraphrasing here trying to keep up with the format for the known Second and Third Oaths, so the actual text may be different) We know that the Oaths themselves often do not have immediate relationship with the surges granted ("I will remember those who are forgotten" vs. the ability to slide on the ground free of friction, anyone?). Edgedance spoiler

Edit: @wildbuc117 Uhm... the parallel does not quite work. Taravagnian clearly understands that whatever broke KR can be reused again. If that was what killed Honor, it'd be weird, because Honor (as well as Adonalsium) could be killed only once, whereas the Diagram indicates, that KRs can be broken repeatedly with this one little secret. So... what you are thinking is not impossible (although I think that there is a WoB somewhere concerning the chronology of the Recreance vs. Splintering of Honor), but the reason why you think it is the case does not really support your theory.

My current theory about Desolations is that this is something Honor traded to Odium to have Odium bound to Roshar/Roshar system. Voidspren are Odium's Investiture into Roshar itself. Without them, Odium can leave the system and wreak havoc elsewhere. So Honor agreed to subject Roshar to Desolations periodically (see below), to make sure that Odium remains bound. The periodicity (this is the new thought here) is determined through the Heralds. Looks like Heralds being in Damnation by itself potentially binds Odium, but when Heralds are out, Honor has to let voidspren come back again, lest Odium is no longer bound.

As cool as Taravangian saving the world via his two standard deviations apart from the mean stupid days would have been, I have to disagree. We have the following: 1. Taravangian asked for capacity to save the world. 2. Cultivation has some foresight into the future. In Cosmere terms it probably means that Cultivation has a way of accessing Spiritual Realm, and interpreting what she observed there in terms of chronology. 3. One interpretation of "capacity" to save the world is to allow of transference of this foresight ability under certain circumstances, onto a human. 4. The Diagram sounds like the result of such foresight/insight. 5. Giving this capacity to a person without making any other changes basically creates an augur (with a lower-case "a", NOT a Scadrial misting) with a lot of power. So, the curse is something that should limit it. Creating the bell curve of intelligence overcomes this issue: it is difficult to comprehend the insight.

You may very well be correct. The Vessel of Scheming appears to be Bavadin.

And I am saying that what affects Odium is something else that is between Odium and Honor.

As a nitpick, Oathpact is an agreement between Honor and the Heralds; Odium is not part of it. But I see what you are saying. I have a feeling (see my "Odium's Dilemma" post from a few weeks back - I know you've commented on it) that Odium and Honor did have a separate pact though, with Tanavast allowing Rayse to use Odium's investiture to create /corrupt voidspren and cause Desolations (Honor's concession) for the price of Odium being tied to Roshar system and not able to leave (Odium's price to pay for a chance to splinter Honor). We have in-world proofs, indeed, of Cultivation's Investiture being present. As I mentioned above, the *evidence* points to it. But I would like an actual WoB.

To me this is less of a direct acknowledgement that Cultivation is on Roshar. "She is still there" can be interpreted as "she is still alive", which is, indeed a question Brandon seemed to go back and forth between answering "yes" and "RAFO" for a couple of years. "She has learned from the experiences of others" on its face is not a confirmation that she currently resides on Roshar. Experiences of others appear to have ranged from taking a stand (Skai and Aona), playing some sort of a long game (Tanavast) and running around (Ambition). So... To be exact: I actually do believe that Cultivation is present on Roshar in Stormlight Archive. I just am looking for unambiguous confirmation of this fact by Brandon, not just for convincing arguments that it cannot be otherwise.

Windrunners's oaths certainly aren't of Cultivation. But Lightweavers... there is Honor in telling Truths, for sure, but in case of Lightweavers it appears that telling Truths teaches them how to lie better. We do not know many other oaths (Edgedancers, Bondsmiths). The jury is out whether "I will remember those who are forgotten" are of Honor or Cultivation. "I will listen..." sounds Cultivation-y to me. "I will unite..." appears to be of Honor. Now, this is interesting: Taravagnian is an excellent champion for Cultivation. I agree wholeheartedly. Just as Rashek was a great champion of Preservation. Dalinar is the chosen of Honor (now that Gavilar is no longer in the picture) and we like him and assume that just because he is a positive character (now), so should be other champions of other "good" (i.e., opposing Odium) Shards. Not really. Notice that in both cases of Rashek and Taravagnian - they appear to be champions of Shards, not of people populating the planet. Dalinar's case reflects perhaps the relationship between Honor and humans that was different from that of other Shards.

The Shard of Scheming appears to be Autonomy. To the original OP's point: I've been saying as much in the past. I would though distinguish between terms like "has teeth" and "good/evil". Every Shard has teeth by definition, and thinking of Cultivation or Endowment (or the late Devotion) as all about fluffy bunnies, flowers and shiny happy people is wrong. They all wield terrible raw power, they just wield it in their own ways. The Nightwatcher is an entity that bears a heavy mark of Cultivation. It is far from being "nice" or "benevolent". It can do rather cruel and terrible things to people's cognition (just think of Taravagnian as exhibit 1 of this peculiar brand of cruelty). Cultivation also influences religions like Stone Shamanism, which has truly rigid tenets, and those who violate them wind up holding Honorblades and their stones at crossroads. Does this sound like a nice religion to anyone? Cultivation is a Shard of controlled development, with "controlled" being as important as "development". We see her in terms of growth, and plants and gardening because this is where the civilization on Roshar is at the moment. But she would also be involved in such non-agricultural endeavors as scientific progress - controlling it as much as she controls what can grow where and under what circumstances.

You are making a very simplistic assumption that Odium must be responsible for all actions that can be perceived as evil in Cosmere. Well, not so. Skai/Dominion based on what little we know of them are far from being all about fluffy bunnies and drinking tea in the afternoon. Shu-Dereth and Shu-Korath are representations of the path of Dominion and the path of Devotion in religious form. The entirety of Elantris points to Shu-Dereth's key principles being subjugation, obedience, hierarchical structure of power and possession of territory. This is textbook Intent of Dominion (as Splintered as the Shard itself is, its Intent is preserved in Shu-Dereth).

You do not know what Tanavast had in mind. In past Desolations, the key task, as far as Honor was concerned was not to kill Rayse or Splinter Odium, but to defeat Voidbringers and rebuild the world so that it could be ready for the next Desolation. The task of the "Champion" can be exactly that: defeat Voidbringers, rebuild after the Desolation. No need to kill Odium - this did not appear to have been the goal in the previous Desolations, and this does not appear to be how Honor operates. (Cultivation though...) Very carefully.... Dor is NOT a Shard. Neither is Dor "benevolent" in ANY sense of this word. Imagine all Investiture in Cosmere colored in 16 different colors representing the 16 Shards. Dor is essentially all the Investiture colored in the colors of Dominion and Devotion. It is two Shards worth of Investiture cooped up in the Cognitive Realm of Sel. It does not have a mind. It has some splinters that achieve some form of sapience, but those splinters are tiny compared to the overall size of Dor. More importantly: Worldhopping Elantrians saving Roshar is a deus ex machina and will not be a thing in the Stormlight Archive.

This, to me, is the confirmation I was looking for. The first part of your response is something I wrote about at the end of my post as an argument in favor of Cultivation being on Roshar, but not direct evidence. Honor is gone but his spren are alive and kicking, so why not Cultivation being absent for a time? But the WoB about powerful shard opposing Odium is direct evidence, so thank you! So, you think that there were two "interactions" between Stormfather and Tanavast: (1) Tanavast "corrupts" Rider of The Storm to become something (and Cultivation does the same to Nightwatcher); (2) upon the death of Tanavast and the Splintering of Honor, Honor's Cognitive Shadow merged with Rider of The Storm/Stormfather to form the entity we all have seen in the books. Am I correct in understanding your theory? Well, we know that there were spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation came (and hence - in the time of a united Adonalsium). I find @Yata's theory to be quite reasonable, but not certain it is mind-blowing: it is a natural extension of the information we already know. This should probably go to a separate thread, but what the heck. Spren are manifestations of activities that have a distinct cognitive component. Roshar has a property that such manifestations are visible in Physical Realm. Knowing that Roshar existed before Shattering, and knowing that it did not really go through a cosmic-scale event of the sort of orbit shift at the time of the Shattering (well, we don't really know, but there is not much evidence for this), spren pre- and post-Shattering are essentially the same. Since wind, or pain, or laughter (hopefully) existed on Roshar before Shattering, it makes sense to assume that all these spren were there, and therefore they were originally tiny splinters of Adonalsium himself. There really isn't any rationale in windspren being of Honor beyond Honor making a conscious choice to change the nature of their Investiture upon arrival to Roshar. Some new spren may be created on the go (inkspren can only exist if there is a written language in the civilization), but the ones representing the core activities with cognitive components must've been there before, and they could only be Adonalsium's if we assume that Adonalsium is the source of all Investiture. We can think of every Shard (as they were produced by the Shattering) commanding Investiture of a specific color. That is - all Investiture in Cosmere got separated into 16 colors the moment Adonalsium Shattered into 16 Shards. Then, there may be two working hypotheses on the nature of spren: 1. (some) spren consisted only of Investiture of one color (e.g., growth spren did only have the color(s) of Cultivation and no other Shard). 2. all spren consist of (somewhat equal parts) Investiture of all 16 colors. In case 1: upon Shattering, and without any further action on anyone's part, spren could become spren of Shard X. In case 2: upon Shattering, every spren remains a spren of Adonalsium. "Turning" them requires someone like Honor to replace 15/16th of the investiture of the spren with his own.

So, we have a Word of Brandon that Cultivation is alive. Have we ever gotten an actual confirmation from him that Cultivation is currently on Roshar (or anywhere within the Roshar system)? Why? There is a well-known WoB somewhere comparing Nightwatcher and Stormfather. While he did not draw the exact parallel, he did point out that the question was along the correct lines. Stormfather is a Cognitive Shadow of Honor (right?). Nightwatcher may be something of a Cognitive Shadow of Cultivation. But why would a living Shard have a cognitive shadow? Perhaps because it left the proverbial building. Looking through WoBs on this topic, there is one early one where he says "yes" to a statement "Cultivation is a Shard on Roshar", but this can still be interpreted from a historic perspective, not as "Cultivation is on Roshar now". So, has anyone ever asked Brandon if Cultivation is actually ON Roshar during the events of the Stormlight Archive? (counterpoint is Cultivation is heavily Invested in Roshar, and may find it difficult to leave. I argued elsewhere, that Investing Odium in Roshar was part of Honor's plan, which is why Odium was allowed Desolations and own spren. I do not have a good answer to that, except a vague feeling that Cultivation's Intent may be something that might allow her to, at least for a time, not reside on a planet she Invested into... Not certain why or how. Autonomy may be able to do so as well, so it is not out of the realm of impossible).

I always thought of this as "Tanavast took Honor, Ati took Ruin, Leras took Preservation", but this is besides the point. This is a difficult one to handle because it cuts very close to Brandon's religious roots, which are quite different from mine. There are multiple answers here. One is in line with what on Earth would be the literal reading of the Bible, where the seven days it took Yahweh to create the world are really treated as seven 24-hour blocks of time, and the creation of humans is treated as the actual act of "making" separate from that of other acts of "making"... But to my knowledge, a lot of Christians these days subscribe to a somewhat less literal interpretation of the Creation process, in which the seven days are geological epochs during which the world develops from some God-inspired event. The act of creation of humans in this case is actually through evolution, but with the caveat that the evolution was guided by some outside force (Yahweh). Ditto Cosmere. The way life was created on Scadrial appears to be more in line with the literal interpretation of the first page of the Bible. This does not however, have to be the case for pre-Shattering life. We do not know the Cosmere timeline prior to the Shattering, but Adonalsium could've "created" life by instigating the events that lead to the evolutionary development of life on multiple planets of Cosmere. There is enough evidence on Roshar of evolution (survival of the fittest, adaptation, etc) in the pre-human times. So "Adonalsium created life", until there is a WoB stating otherwise, is consistent with the idea that Adonalsium simply started the evolutionary processes on Yolen and other planets. Having said this, your actual conjecture: appears to be reasonable. In fact, for reasons that are completely different, I think that Adonalsium did have a Vessel, at least at the time of the Shattering and that Adonalsium's Vessel was killed in the Shattering. What I do not know though is whether Adonalsium only had one Vessel ever, or whether different Vessels took Adonalsium. There is also a problem of the initial Vessel: if Adonalsium created all life (no matter how we interpret this process) in Cosmere, then where did the initial Vessel for Adonalsium come from? I personally think that there may be way to split hairs - assume that the creation process itself was initialized by a Vessel-less Adonalsium (acting as a force more so than as a being), but that at a later time, a Vessel did come take up Adonalsium.

Wasn't Serene's nom-de-guerre "Lecky Stick"?