emailanimal

There is a rumor that it is Tanavastium.

I, in turn, agree with most of your narrative, as it parallels the things I've been thinkng for a long time, and writing.. well, as recently as earlier today in a different thread (the Irali Long Trail discussion). I even agree that Heralds may have been from the first generation that migrated to Roshar, although I am not certain that all races settled at the same time. But I am not certain that I am ready to draw the conclusion that the resettlement itself qualified the creation of 10 Cognitive Shadows whose role is to be tormented in hell for eternity. Something does not compute here, because remember - the Heralds were not inducted to lead the Rosharians in the time of peace. They are harbingers of Desolations and the first line of defense (in many different ways) against them. But once the battle is won, they go to literal Damnation. This means that their raison d'etre is the battle itself. Which to me means that Odium was in the picture when Tanavast told Jez "you are it".

Hoid is NOT a nice person (WoB). What Hoid is doing does not necessarily help humans on specific planets survive (TWoK). At the end of the day, it is not even clear that his goals are actually helpful. It is also not clear that he will ultimately succeed. But I sincerely doubt that he is trying to destroy Scadrial. This does not seem to be his MO. He is also incapable of hurting people.

I just reread the Prelude, and I revise my earlier comments from another thread - all Heralds indeed entered the Oathpact voluntarily. Now, where I do not agree, is I do not see the need for Oathpact without the presence of an outside threat. The thing is, what Brandon is saying is that the Oathpact was an agreement between the Heralds and Honor. Odium was NOT a party to THAT particular agreement. But I still think that the agreement was a reaction to Odium's coming. Odium arrives. Tanavast and the Cultivation Vessel pick five champions and explain the deal to them. I am a bit fuzzy about what specifically about the Heralds burning in Hell makes it harder for Odium to act, but I suspect that it achieves some other form of Odium's Connection to the world - perhaps to Braize. So to me, Heralds and Oathpact are a reaction.

and Here is timeline: 1. Heralds were victorious 4500 years ago. They left, relying on Taln and KRs 2. At some point, someone/something caused KRs to abandon their Oaths. 3. Next thing we know, Honor was Splintered. So, there may be more impact of Recreance on the death of Tanavast, than of the Heralds winning. I think KR's abandoning the Oaths weakened Honor much more than Heralds doing the same. This is similar to how I think about it. Honor cares about Cosmere implications of Odium getting loose. That Honor bound Odium to the system we knew. What we did not know from the outset was "how" and "why Odium agreed". My theory above kind of addresses it. Honor let Odium even the odds on Roshar (my theory is that Honor Invested in Roshar vs. carpetbagger Odium ends in Odium being defeated) by Investing in, and giving Odium a fighting chance against himself. If Odium saw no other way to defeat Honor, he had to take that deal. This is a catch-22, kind of scenario. And "how" is the actual nature of the fight - it the fight between the Invested proxies of Honor and those of Odium. Odium Invests into Roshar, gets connected, cannot live. Honor wants Cosmere in which Odium is not a threat to everyone. His best bet is to set up the rules and hope that the circumstances are mitigated. Every Desolation throws civilization back into the stone age. But Honor is not Preservation - so he lets humans die. Cultivation helps new humans grow and partake of the battle when the time comes.

So, I want to run this by everyone to see if I am repeating something that is generally understood. Odium comes to Roshar. The goal is to Splinter Honor. Honor knows this. He lays a trap. The cost of possible Splintering (edit: of Honor) is that Odium must be bound to the Roshar system and therefore not be able to leave and chase other Shards. Something Honor would do - put himself between the danger and those it pursues. The Oathpact suddenly makes sense. The way to keep Odium bound to a system is to have Odium Invest. How does one do it on Roshar? Give up its Investiture to create a lot of spren. The more spren, the higher one's Investment. So, Odium, by Oathpact, can battle Honor, but in the way that bounds him: by Investing in Roshar, and fighting the spren war. Basically, the voidspren, the Unmade, *any other object* Invested by Odium on Roshar, makes Odium's Connection to Roshar higher. Which is why there MUST BE multiple Desolations - Odium must be permitted to grow its influence on Roshar to the point of active war. And this is why, short of Splintering Odium himself, this must repeat - if Odium's influence on Roshar wanes, he leaves the system and goes after other Shards. So, Honor chooses to play a long and dangerous game with Odium, just like Preservation chose with Ruin. Also explains Hoid's "I sympathize with you, Dalinar, but what I seek to achieve and what you do are not one and the same, and *my* goals are more important!" Hoid wants Odium bound to Roshar. Odium whose influence is purged from Roshar is free to roam elsewhere. Hoid does not want it. The problem right now is that Odium has splintered Honor. Achievement unlocked. Now is the time to leave the system (or Splinter Cultivation and leave the system). To do this, there must be an all-out war that ends with destruction of all Odium's assets on Roshar (at the cost of a massive devastation), and frees him. TL;DR: Desolations and voidspren are the means of keeping Odium Connected to Roshar. Odium must be kept Invested. This obviously skims over a lot of things (like, why Heralds). But overall, what am I missing? Edit: It has been wisely pointed out that the Oathpact refers to the deal Honor made with the Heralds, not Odium. I struck that unfortunate phrase. The rest of the point remains salient: Honor promises Odium a chance to take him out, but Odium must Invest in Roshar to be able to Splinter Honor.

Heralds make no sense to me without the presence of the outside threat. They must've been empaneled in response to the threat of Odium. Whether the initial threat from Odium involved the Unmade or not. I think there is more to that. The Parshendi seemed to be specifically afraid that Gavilar and company possessed the means of bringing back the voidspren which would force the listeners into stormform. The thing Gavilar gives Szeth appears to be a trapped voidspren, no? Gavilar basically described to the Parshendi his plan that they knew would doom them. After which they very promptly proceeded to doom themselves anyway, but that is tangential. I think it is more likely that Odium's influence caused appearance of certain spren that were not present on Roshar before.

Spoilers for The Thrill:

Bygones. Let's talk about the Long Trail instead.

My reading of the old history is somewhat different. This is how I envision it. Honor and Cultivation make home on Roshar. Perhaps move some humans in the process, perhaps not. Take over highstorms, kick off a new generation of spren, life is good. Then Odium shows up and is all like, I am gonna kill you. And it is difficult, because Cultivation and Honor are strong, and they are entrenched on Roshar. So, Odium starts attempting to weaken their bonds: steals Listeners away with stormform, basically is causing issues. So, Honor and Cultivation put their heads together and figure out the Heralds and Oathpact. In the process, 10 people are offered the jobs - perhaps not all of them Roshar natives, perhaps not all of them are really *given* that choice. Honor picks dudes, Cultivation picks ladies. The Oathpact happens. Each Herald plays a separate role in dealing with desolation. Someone is a craftsman, someone is an organizer, someone is the strike force, someone is the healer, someone is the scout, someone is the CIA, someone is the last line of defense.... To me, Ishar as an entity, as a Herald is important after the Oathpact, not before. Before it, he may have been a wily priest, or a wise monarch, or a Mr.T.-style visionary. But the real impact is really, post-becoming a Herald/Cognitive Shadow.

Notice that I did not write "a lot of power". More like "a lot of breadth". A good question to Brandon is "How many Shards or possible Shard combinations can create life?" Yes! Forgot to mention that, but this was one of my favorite recent WoBs. With the caveat that neither race (i.e., how one looks), nor language are perfect predictors of one's ancestral roots, I tend to agree that in the case of Roshar, this may be evidence of three distinct origins for three distinct events of people coming to Roshar. The last one could've been Honor bringing what later became the Vorin nations to Roshar. At the same time, there are examples of linguistic changes that do not fit "one race = one langauge group" pattern. The two examples I will cite are Jews switching from Hebrew which is from Semitic branch of Afroasiatic family to Yiddish (a Germanic Indo-Eurpoean language) in Germany (the Ashkenasim) and Ladino (a Romance Indo-European language) in Spain (Sephardim), and the example of Germanic tribes: Franks, specifically, adopting Latin vernacular as their language upon conquering Latin-speaking Gaul in 5th-8th centuries (Goths did the same earlier). Ho, Horneater might be a descendant of Dawnchant because Horneaters are the descendants of Listener-human interbreeding, but Shin may be speaking a related language simply because they have arrived into an area populated by the Listeners, were a minority population for a while and picked up the language of the majority, developing it later into one of their own. My original comment on Shin being a Dawnchant descendant was that regardless of the explanation, the reasons have got to be really interesting.

I am looking at the Irali situation as follows: 1. Humans cannot be native to Roshar. Even if we assume benevolent Creator who can create any sort of life at any place, this still does not look right. Listeners are native to Roshar in that respect (although they were also "created"). 2. So, all humans came to Roshar at some point from somewhere. 3. Probably from different places. 4. When? A long time ago. Pre-historically. Two options are: before Shattering and after Shattering. The latter would mean, brought in by Honor and Cultivation. 5. Recall that creating life requires a lot. Preservation had to have Ruin. Not certain if Honor and Cultivation have it in them to creat life from scratch (although Cultivation might). 6. My money is more on humans migrating to Roshar, or being brought to Roshar by Shards. 7. Irali mention The One who is now many. This is, to me, a reference to Adonalsium and the Shattering. 8. The analog of the Long Trail on Earth is The Trail of Tears. We can ask Brandon, but I bet, this is what he was thinking about when he developed this notion. 9. He mentions Irali in the same breath as the Threnody situation. There is a massive resettlement on Threnody because Evil came to a continent. 10. Conjecture: Irali may be originally from Yolen, fleeing fainlife to establish new homeland. 11. They talk about Roashar being the fourth land. It is possible that they fled through Nalthis, as part of their Trail. Perhaps some people stayed on Nalthis. 12. It might make sense to ask Brandon if Evil on Threnody is related to fainlife. Just to see his reaction.

No. What he says is this. South Scadrial is ancestrial homeland. We saw her people briefly in Bands of Mourning. Some people from her nation worldhopped to a different planet. She was born an immigrant on that planet. Since that time, she worldhopped to Roshar where she now resides permanently. So, in Earth terms she is of Japanese descent, born and raised in United States, and currently working in Canada.

Thanks! This specific round was all free time and manual searches, but looking at the HTML, it is pretty parseable, so the next round is probably going to involve Python, BeautifulSoup and NLTK. @skaa: Yeah. Got it. Was looking at the wrong place.

Hasn't Shardplate to be confirmed/hinted at as being Tanavastium? The key observation is that there are probably no Tanavastium Mistings on Scadrial. Spook if he ever came from his retirement/whatever could probably burn it. Pure speculation, but it might give him access to the five Surges that Honor "controlled"? So, Windrunner, Skybreaker and Bondsmith abilities if he knew what to do with them? Also note, that Lerasium is the only god metal that anyone can burn. We've seen atium and it is not burnable but anyone other than Mistborn and Atium Mistings. Now, what happens if you get a piece of Shardplpate that broke off during a fight (presumably with a pointy edge) and stick it into a spirit web of a Surgebinder?

You are right. I grabbed it two days ago, so yesterday must've been it. Removed from the list (or stroken through to be exact)

Someone needs to update Theoryland then. (-:

So, I noticed Brandon calling Nazh's knife and Silverlight weird in Chicago signing and it got me thinking, what else in Cosmere has he ever called weird. I went back through Theoryland WoBs to about 2013 (at which point most WoBs switched to being about Perrin and Mat), and looked for things he called weird. For a more complete list, I should have probably looked for "bizarre", "odd", and "strange" as well, and I intend to in Version 2.0. In the meantime, below is the Compendium of Weird. I list an item/object/notion/person/event from Cosmere, and a phrase of phrases with date attribution confirming the weirdness. Why do this? It helps uncover patterns in Brandon's thinking. If he called something weird in the past and we know now why it was weird, we can determine why the new things he calls weird may be weird. The compendium is under the spoiler tag largely to separate it from this introduction. The plan is to make a few more compendia following off of Brandon's standard figures of speech when he is responding to questions. Edit: Argh.... Misspelled Compendium in the title. )-: This has been fixed. Edit: Per @Spoolofwhool below, excluded the "piercings being burned" from the list.

Feel free. Pretty certain I saw it, but writing something else at the moment, so cannot do an immediate search. On the other hand, Coppermind has a reference:

I checked Theoryland and it is not on it. It is recent, but not like two days ago recent. Might have been JordanCon, or some other pre-AU event.

All the more reason for them to want it, and you know how they trade for things they want. Take ALL our worthless chickens. I have no idea why you even want them. All they do is eat and poop.

Yes, we do. Brandon has coughed this one up not too long ago.

This is an excellent question to Brandon. It is possible that Endowment Returned him for something that he has successfully avoided doing, because he is Vasher. It is also possible that Vasher is Endowment's long game for when Odium comes too close.

What? This piece of crem? Picked it up from a crazy Makabaki darkeyes in Kholinar. The poor sod didn't know one end of it from another. What kind of a blade does not disappear when dropped? Cannot bond it, cannot wield it into battle... Cannot find a more useless weapon in the entire Vorin Kingdoms if I went looking for it. It would be unworthy of even a single chicken, let me just throw it with the rest of the junk I brought.

I think it does not work the way you think it would. You are not supposed to take in Stormlight and hold it. You are supposed to take in Stormlight and let it do its work to heal whatever needs to be healed, or power, whatever needs to be powered to give you a week of life. The Stormlight gets used immediately. It's like eating or drinking - you eat your steak, the steak is gone, but you got the calories. At some point you spend the calories and need to get another steak. The case of Vasher is that he needs to get his "calories" on a very tight schedule. But with the abundance of charged spheres, and assuming a charitable Stormlight-to-Breath rate (which is probably why he is on Roshar), he is good to go and holding Investiture is not needed.