ZenBossanova

Something like Dalinar's Statement, I am Unity? Plausible. And very interesting. Beautiful. May you forever title all of Brandon's books.

I have thought about this. My current head canon is that Cultivation disassembled the Dawnshards in the creation of the Aimians. Now it still needs to explain why she would do that, perhaps she just saw what was inevitable, or the Aimians hadn't sufficiently matured, for the Dawnshards to be used successfully.

I am not convinced Hoid needs all the spren. At most, he may want an Honor spren and a Cultivation spren, but I suspect he has sufficient for his purposes. Is he trying to get every power, or access to each Shard? The latter I suspect. But that also means that he is very interested in bonding a voidspren. Hopefully safely.

The more I have thought about this, the more sense it makes. It reminds me of thin little book I read once, called Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It is light reading. I highly recommend it. It is seriously one of the best books I have ever read. One of the things the book discusses is Godel's theorem and self contradictory systems. You might assume that a Shard does not contradict itself, but it is unclear if that is possible. Any sufficiently powerful logical system can not prove it doesn't contradict itself. For example, you can NOT prove mathematics is true. (Yes, I am simplifying things, but this is entirely true. ) I remember a conversation in the book, where one character continued to purchase new record players, and another character would buy records whose sole purpose was destroying that record player. The question was raised, Could you make a record player sufficiently powerful and tough, that could NOT be destroyed by any possible record? The answer was no, you could not. It is impossible. Now, I also suspect that Cultivation understands this, and she will use it against Rayse/Odium. In other words, mixing magic systems isn't a trivial part of Roshar. This is really what the entire war is about. This may have also been how he splintered Adonalsium. tl;dr Odium is using an mathematical theorem, to make a Shard fight against itself, or in math terms, contradict itself, as a way to splinter Shards.

This is not a strong argument.

Regardless of how we can get more gemstones, Brandon is explicitly pointing out that Roshar is going to have a "magical industrial revolution". We are just arguing how they are going to do it. It might be, that you keep your lit spheres for running your appliances, as if the amount of money you have, determines how much "electricity" you can get from a highstorm.

The problem with foie gras, is that there is not enough incentive to carefully breed, because they are not eaten as often as milk is drunk. It really is a niche thing. Cows have enlarged utters, and it doesn't cause half the problems you see with foie gras.

I am unfamiliar with goose breeds, but I doubt they are as well selected for milk cows. Cows are just more numerous and have been selected for better and for longer. If you breed long enough, their bodies will make the proper compensation for larger gemheart. Again, we have the literal Shard of Cultivation here. She has already bred the entire ecosystem. She could easily do this.

Let's compare it to different sizes of dog breeds - yes, breeds on the extreme ends have trouble, or just shorter lives. But what was once the extreme end, years ago is now common place, and relatively healthy. Perhaps a better comparison would be milk cows. A Holstein cow will produce 9 gallons of milk daily, and I seem to recall even higher numbers. They would not produce this naturally, but with breeding they can.

Just as a refinement of your theory, there is WoB that indicates the Parshmen are of Odium and of Cultivation, but not Honor. Also, was this recent WoB talking about the diagram in the OP? TheFoxQR Is this (Imgur) a valid breakdown of known Rosharan Magic? The idea here is that two Shards on Scadrial gave us 3 systems - two mono-shardic and one di-shardic. Mono-shardic systems being each shard expressing itself, and multi-shardic systems arising from an interaction between the two. So by that logic, on Roshar, 3 shards should give us 3 mono-shardic, 3 di-shardic, and 1 tri-shardic systems. It is mentioned that Odium (the Void) is bound by the powers of Honor and Cultivation. With the caveat that the Everstorm is also probably in between Honor and Odium? Brandon Sanderson RAFO. I'd suggest the chart is worth studying, however. Footnote: I don't know if Brandon was talking about the Voidbinding chart or my linked chart. General Reddit 2019 (Aug. 3, 2019)

Yes, this is how gemhearts are naturally related to creature size, but with breeding, and Surges like Progression, we should be able to make creatures, or even plants, that produce large gemhearts. Even here on Earth we have animals and plants that do things to unnatural levels. Roshar is uniquely suited to Cultivating new breeds.

This is a great point. There is a distinct lack of volcanism and geological activity on Roshar, yet they have an abundance of gems. It would probably be more feasible and economic to optimize those processes. For instance, start with a creature (smaller than a chasmfeind) that produces a tiny gemheart, and breed it for growing big ones. With Surges of progression and other Cultivation related Surges, this is a far easier way to get gemstones. But also, Navani will need to make her fabrials more power efficient, and get more usefulness out of smaller stones.

They may not have the understanding yet, it is within their technological abilities. https://www.gia.edu/gem-synthetic But they do have one big advantage... Soulcasting. I doubt they can soulcast gems, or soulcasters would be money making devices. But they should be able to soulcast the ingredients. But their best bet would be trading with other worlds for cheap gems like quartz or smokestone (smokey quartz). At least, if they didn't have an army of Voidbringers guarding the Shard pool.

Keep in mind how much things we take for granted, have come down in price over the last hundred to two hundred years. We are probably not at the personal washing machine point, but we could have businesses with their own machines. What Fabrials are going to be the most important for day-to-day life? Not all households had Parshmen.

One of the prime reasons for the Industrial Revolution in England, was the shortage of labor. The Black Plague had eliminated enough people that they needed to automate things. On Roshar, they have just lost a lot of manual labor. They are ripe for their own industrial Fabrial Revolution. They have the technology and the understanding. Navani is going to be very busy. People are going to need fabrial washing machines, dishwashers, etc. Mundane things, for sure. But is going to turn the world inside out.

Assuming she has heard of the Leader of Bridge 4 and prominent Radiant, Kaladin, she may not realize that is the Kaladin she knew.

There is a WoB that Parshmen were of Odium and Cultivation, but apparently not Honour.

Could we use some combination of Bondsmithing and Progression, to make an axehound, that bonds with its owner, similar to how Ryshadium bond with their owners?

I think "I am Unity" is two things First, it is an expression, in a word, of what an ideal Bondsmith is. Second, I am going to call it a 6th Oath. This oath will let him fill some of the role that the Heralds filled. Honor will be held, by a fellowship of 10 mortals. If part of the fellowship dies, or retires, others can take their place. It will be able to do what the Heralds could not. This fellowship will probably be the main char of each of the ten books. So, at some point, I expect Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah and Lift, to make similar statements.

That is quite true. But then what would the effect of a Bondsmith on a horse be? Honestly, I am curious.

Not completely implausible. We have not yet begun to see the power of a true Bondsmith in Dalinar's hands. Or in Ishar's hands, for that matter. That should probably worry us.

But the literal Devil said he was. Doesn't that count for something?

My suspicion is, Endowment set Vasher/Zahel and Nightblood on this path, for a reason that has not been accomplished yet. We can't have her interfering too much yet.

That makes perfect sense to me.

Kaladin is accumulating power. Not consciously, not on purpose, but he has an unofficial authority close to or equal to to that of Dalinar. Politically, that is unstable. Jasnah will be aware of times in history where that has caused problems. But if she can rope him in, it is a net gain for the Kholin dynasty.