ZenBossanova

New Theories: TOdium will get all three Shards by the end of book 5, but will find himself even more hogtied and limited than Harmony. He may want to destroy immediately, but just can't do it that way. Kaladin will find a way to return TOdium and his minions to Braize. They will return for Books 6-10. The people who took Honor (Tanavast) and Cultivation, took them because they were opposite of their personalities. Tanavast was a back-stabbing rogue/thief/career criminal. Not a nice honorable guy. Nice parallelism with Gavilar.

I strongly agree. But I have to admit, TOdium has a point that they, as a whole, have been evading responsiblity and been most concerned with themselves.

It is worth remembering what Harmony did with the Elendil Basin, and that it didn't solve things, and made some worse.

I suspect Ishar may be the most mad of them all, but in a distinctly spiritual sense. A warped twisted priest, who misleads. Perhaps he is part of the source of their madness?

If Adonalsium had all the powers of a God and Creator, then there should be someone who could act as a Anti-Bondsmith. Of all the Shards, Odium fits that the best. But, since each shard appears to have a characteristic number, and Odium has 9, then there isn't a separate Unmade doing Anti-Bondsmith stuff. That power would be spread among all the Unmade.

Vessel change... meaning from Rayse to Taravangian, or is there another change this is referring to?

Having read the other snippets that Brandon has read from KoW&T, I think it is very clear who is speaking. There are a lot of tie-ins with the current quotes. This character has been very focused on the Wind. Although, now that I go to look for it, I don't see that reading. Edit: Here we are https://wob.coppermind.net/events/504-new-york-comic-con-2022/#e15784

Current theories: Cultivation is the real enemy. This realization is what caused the Radiants to abandon their bonds and blades. TOdium will help Humanity in the end. Taravangian is an End Justifies the Means kind of guy, but his real goal never has changed. Ishar/Stormfaker either wanted replacement Heralds or a Champion to just lose and end it all. It wasn't benevolent. Book 5 will end with Dalinar/Champion defeated and everyone slowly, slowly growing into servants of TOdium (with Cultivation as puppet master). Each step will feel logical and irrefutable, but the overall arc will be to make Roshar an army to attack other worlds. Books 6-10 will be stopping Cultivation and this progress.

There was a line about how special Investiture makes the Charred devoted, though devoted wasn't Capitalized. Of course, the same scientist who said that, had a jar of Dor sitting on the table.

Gemstone/metal combinations were clearly important for Why the distinction between blends of metals versus metals and non-metals? Metals blend more uniformly, usually, but not always. (looking at you, Trellium)

Alternatively, we don't put a number on it. No one asks what the total number of molecules is, because there is no limit. And what do we do with metal with aether dust in it? Gemstone dust? White Sand? These would not technically be alloys, but they are interesting combinations. At this point, we should talk about Fabrial Engineering or Alchemical Engineering, and which combinations have useful properties.

I have been thinking about combinations of God metals. If we sum all possible combinations of 1,2, 3 and up to 16 metals, we get 65535 different combinations, which is a lot of different magic systems for us. Unless Discordium exists. Then the number goes way up. Then we have to count the number of connections between shards. The number of connections between n = 16 shards is n*(n-1)/2 = 120. So the number of God metal alloys from 16 God metals is 2^120 = 1.3 *10^36 Which is the right alloy? If Hoid wants to find one particular alloy, and if he can look at a million alloys a second, and there are about 3*10^7 seconds in a year, then it will take him about 4 * 10^22 years to find the right one. That is 40 million million billion years. Our own universe is about 13.8 billion years old, so this would be a million million times that amount of time. Getting the God Metals might be the easy part.

There was a reading that I remember from years ago, from the sequel to Sixth of the Dusk, that strongly implied Scadrial and Roshar were in a state of opposition - not all out war, but working against eachother.

This also brings up the idea of creating hybrid investiture among any of the 16. If you could make Honor+Harmony light, what would it do? Could Zahel do something unique with Honor+Endowment light?

Odium+Cultivation:: "Nature red in tooth and claw"