Ciridae

Yeah, that's valid, but wouldn't that hold true for all of the other surges? If you cant soulcast someone full of stormlight wearing shardplate you shouldnt be able to use Division efectively either, right? Soulcasting does seem to burn a lot more than lashings, true. And I bet teleporting isn't cheap either. Hmm, so in efficiency they're probably outclassed, but I still think the powerset makes them the hardest to kill. By the way, does Progression offer any benefits for the Radiant in terms of healing compared to regular stormlight healing?

I don't know. I really, really doubt that Adhesion is only capable of what we've seen so far. I'm almost certain that it does more than stick things together. In the Ars Arcanum it's described as the surge of atmospheric pressure IIRC and I've seen speculation that when Kaladin says his oaths and people get thrown away from him that's Adhesion in action. I agree. I'm sure with Kaladin and especially Dalinar practicing more with their powers we're going to see what Adhesion really can do. I hope it's something Dalinar figures out and ends up teaching Kal. On what order is the most powerful, I'll have to go with Elsecallers. The biggest downside to the surges is their range limit, Kaladin cant just make people fall up by thinking about it, he has to touch them and infuse them. Same presumably goes with most of the other surges from what we've seen. So while Division will certainly be powerful, you're probably going to have to get in close if you want to blow stuff up. Upside for Dustbringers and Skybreakers is that they are both very mobile. Still, we've seen that Jasnah can actually perform ranged Soulcasting. It could be a result of practicing magic that works through the CR, but I think it's a result of her surge combination, Transportation allowing her to Soulcast from a distance. Pair that with the ability to (hopefully) teleport and when necessary retreat into Shadesmar and you're pretty tough to beat. A hypothetical order with Transportation paired with Gravitation or Division would be truly terrifying though.

Ah gotcha. Yeah you're right, something does seem fishy. It's been proposed that Odium was going easy on Taln for all that time so that humanity would turn to fighting itself, forget the KR, forget how to fight desolations and generally be easier to beat. If Odium decided that humanity has grown soft enough and now is a good time to crank up the heat and force Taln to break, the Unmade would start preparing for the coming desolations and the spren might know what that meant. So Odium decides it's time to hit hard, and tries to break Taln in earnest. The Unmade hear its go time and do their thing, knowing the desolation is going to start in a few years. The nahel spren realize what's going on and cross over. This only works if Odium really was going easy on Taln for 4500 years, but right now it's the only explanation I can come up with. I agree that the heralds are probably sent to Roshar immediately if one of them breaks. Edit: Here's a quote from Tanavast in one of Dalinar's visions:

The unmade became more active again, maybe that tipped them off. Maybe Cultivation or the Nightwatcher saw something and let the other spren know. The Stormfather started sending visions, but we don't know how long he has been doing that. All in all I think things started to get hectic in the CR and the spren got nervous and figured it was time to do something before it was too late. Do we know what spren type was the first to cross? Probably Cryptics, right? Maybe they figured something out, sent pattern as a test. IIRC Wyndle said that all the other spren were sending some of their own to cross, so the Circle decided to follow suit. Syl was told not to, what does that imply?

The listeners as a whole probably. I know a lot of people don't like Eshonai that much, and Rlain hasn't undergone a lot of development yet, but I think as a people, especially because of their versatility and diversity through the forms, they are fascinating. I love details like the rythms, their oral history and their biology. I actually like Eshonai a lot, and I'm very excited to see Rlain continue coming to terms with fighting his own people. The potential of the other forms is enticing too, and one of the things I'm most excited for in Oathbringer. There's so much we don't know about then yet. I really hope Venli is fleshed out as a villain as well, I think she has a lot of potential.

@CaptainRyan They would have to be quick, you're right. But not all of Roshar has soulcasters and not all of Roshar has a stockpile of gemhearts. I think it will be a very short fight for some of the less-prepared cities. It's a big continent, and not all cultures are as war oriented as the Alethi.

They would be living off of what the countryside provides. Everything that would usually support rural communities or get sold in larger cities goes to sustain these small groups of voidbringers. That is why this tactic is so effective. Cut off the enemy from a large portion of supplies while sustaining their own troops. The small towns in the countryside are already staggering from the everstorm. Add in raids by voidbringers and soon enough the rural population will try to find refuge in the closest large city. Strain the cities resources through the sudden increase in population, continue to make sure no supplies get to the city. Gather all the raiding groups around the city and besiege it. Attack during the next high- or everstorm, stormform should have no problems. Little to no resistance from a terrified, hungry group of people. Easy pickings. Edit: as soon as the war us over I guess they would have to farm again, but until then I think foraging and raiding the countryside is enough to get them through, depending on how long it takes to wipe out those pesky humans. I mean we know the humans is going to put up a fight, but it looks pretty bad for humanity right now. I do like the idea that they may have access to some form of soulcasting, they should have similar orders with similar surged judging by the surgebinding chart.

Wyndle mentions Keenspren at one point, saying that they are difficult to understand. If they are able to communicate there's a good chance they are one of the missing four unnamed nahel spren. I don't remember where I saw this but I think in a translated version of Edgedancer they were called lamentspren. What order could they belong to?

Yes, this would be devastating. Big cities can fall back on soulcast food for a time when supplies from outside farms stop coming. The rural communities don't have that luxury. And as soon as the cities are flooded with refugees from the countryside, without the additional supplies from outside farms these larger cities are going to have a huge problem. The Voidbringer armies don't have to defeat humanity in battle if they can cause famine across the continent. I could also see small teams of Listeners sneak into the cities to sabotage existing food supplies (smokeform comes to mind). That said I think there is an army being gathered somewhere. I'd have all the listeners in one region gather, pillage the countryside, moving from town to town and between farms. Eventually though, these groups would gather somewhere, maybe in multiple locations across Roshar. Sharing knowledge of newly discovered forms is important, and wearing a new form doesn't automatically make the listeners into soldiers, like Eshonai said. So training would be in order. Other logistics like a clear command structure would need to be established too. On the actual army, do we have any estimates on how many parshmen there are on Roshar? How many in cities? Outside of cities? Are they spread evenly across Roshar or are there nations that use them more than others or some that don't use them at all? The Purelake seems to be pretty save from them for the moment for example. I am so excited to see the new forms.

True could be either, but for some reason I expected something about parshmen in Hearthstone to be reavealed. Speaking of which..none of the Hearthstonians noticed evil parshmen, right? They just up and left, there was no fighting. So are they all gathering somehwere?

Most of the things I wanted to say have already been brought up, but what did Hesina want to tel Kal? Something else? Pet axehound?

I can't remember if animals have been shown to be represented by flames. How did Kel describe the giant fish soul in SH? Something with a lot of own cognitive activity like a human should be pretty resistant to the influences of others, but a swarm of bugs? I'd say in terms of complex cognitive activity the hive of cremlings should be much more susceptive to outside perception, somewhere between an inanimate object and a human, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the processes involved here. He does heal a hangover headache though. That kind of sounds like what Wayne can do. Ah no, I was trying to say that a physically wounded body is different from the plan in the spiritweb for a healthy body, just like how a normal human body is different from the plan in the spiritweb after having been spiked. So for example, you lose a hand. Your physical body is now distinctly different from the plan for a whole body that is in your spiritweb. To heal this, you need investiture. In the other case you were (as an example) spiked to become a koloss, meaning that your normal human body is now distinctly different from the plan in your spiritweb that says you should look like a koloss. In the first scenario you don't regrow your hand just because your spiritweb says that's what you should look like. You would need some sort of investiture to physically become what the instructions in your spiritweb say you should look like. So in the second scenario, where instructions in the spiritweb (for looking like a koloss) and your human body don't match, you shouldn't just turn into a koloss without something to fuel lining up spiritweb and physical body. Forging is a great example I hadn't thought of and it fits exactly with what I'm trying to say. You change part of the spiritweb, give the object investiture, and the object's physical form turns into what the spiritweb thinks it should look like. Break the seal, the connection to the fuel, and the object reverts to its trye shape. Without fuel, no transformation, which is why I think that the fuel for the transformation of hemalurgic creatures has to come directly from Ruin.

@Calderis Thanks, that's helpful but...weird. I thought some more about altering the physical body through spiritweb manipulation and in some cases it still doesn't completely add up to me without a source of fuel, even in the examples you provided earlier. Spiritual healing is based on self perception, the spiritweb has a set idea of what the body should look like, and if it is damaged and if there is fuel and ability, the body heals to match that image. F gold, stormlight healing and probably the healing after a Returned gives you their divine breath should work that way. The healing is fueled by the stored investiture in gold, stormlight or the divine breath. What about hemalurgy? The subject's spiritweb suddenly has a new plan of how the body should be constructed. Compared to healing, the "normal" body to this altered spiritweb should register the same way as a wounded body, in that the physical form does not match the spiritweb's plan of what it should look like. In the same way, it should require fuel to change. It's not the hemalurgic charge inside the spike, because that is stapled to the spiritweb, and logically the fuel should be consumed in the transformation. So why does the spiked person transform? Does Ruin supply the required investiture? In the case of the Returned, there's just so many unknowns. Why does the Returned need the weekly breath? That breath is supposedly consumed, because they need a new one each week, so what is it used for? When Vasher hides his Returned form, is he suppressing his divine breath or does he have to use normal breaths to fuel the transformation? It's probably suppressed because he loses his heightenings, right? But why do some discrepancies between spiritweb and physical form need fuel to fix and others don't? Shouldn't it be consistent? I'm really sorry for derailing the thread so much. On the sleepless, I think a big factor is the perception of everyone else. Like you said, self perception probably plays a big part too, but the perception of thousands of humans probably carries more weight than the perception of thousands of cremlings. We know that outside perception influences how inanimate objects manifest in the CR, I'm sure there's a some cognitive effect behind millions of people viewing a swarm or hive of cremlings as a single entity instead of only individuals. Most of the cremlings we see in the books appear individually, but species living like ants or bees could very well have developed a consciousness like you say after hundreds of years of being viewed as a single functioning entity.

Hmm you're right. Those examples do speak for themselves. It is based on self perception but they are just altering small things in their spiritweb and forcing the body to adjust. Ok but now I am(even more) uncertain about what the spiritweb and cognitive aspect really are. We know the spiritweb leaves behind a corpse and the cognitive aspect usually moves on after death. I don't know if both actually are made up of investiture, because as I understand it you need to transform at least your cognitive aspect into investiture to anchor yourself after death. What about the spiritweb? We know it contains things like age, Connection and Identity but are these things encoded in investiture or can they exists separately? If they are investiture, where is it coming from?

I don't think I can help with the evolutionary part, but their ability to influence the arrangement and internal chemistry of their body at will screams to me of a form of cognitive healing. As you've said, the shadows indicate that they should be very close to the CR, it seems to me that they are capable of altering their perception of themselves very easily and as a result, are able to change their body's characteristics. (Warbreaker spoiler) I couldn't say what fuel source Aimians use for their transformations, perhaps they have gemhearts as well. But I definitely agree that their are native to Roshar. Expanding the thought that they share some characteristics with Listeners, (Oathbringer prologue spoilers)

Yes, I like this. Honor and Cultivation probably wanted to beat Odium in a small stand-in confrontation between the Heralds and whatever Odium put to the table. There probably was some kind of deal that transformed the confrontation from a shard vs. shard conflict to a stand-in conflict fought between splinters on Roshar. An idea discussed on another thread that fits perfectly here, (thanks @Crucible of Shards ) Odium didn't want to lose too much power in this conflict, so instead of creating super-splinters of his own he corrupts existing super spren, the dawnsingers, to create the unmade. The heralds must have won the first couple times, but it was probably a close call. At one point the spren decide to help, creating radiants. Here I don't think that Odium was forced to match the numbers, he can field as many splinters as he wants, but until that point he was probably trying to beat the Heralds as efficiently as possible. He didn't want to splinter off too much of his power because he knew that once he was done beating Honor's ten champions and Honor himself, he would still have to face Cultivation. But suddenly the confrontation turns from a battle between a few individuals to a full blown desolation as Odium has to match what the Radiants can do somehow to stand any chance at all. For him it's either commit in full force, or be trapped impotently in the Rosharan system. So he creates thousands of tiny splinters, not large enough to be very intelligent, but enough to hijack the Listeners. Desolation after desolation is won by humanity, until the heralds give up and leave. Fast forward to the times of the Recreance. Whatever the Radiants were fighting at the time (I still think it was a group of listeners that found and bonded a cluster of voidspren, like Nale said) could have convinced them that a new desolation had started. They figure out the secret that radiants were never supposed to have existed and that it is their fault that desolations have grown to the size they have. They falsely believe that if they remove themselves and their spren from the battlefield that Odium will have to throttle his attack on Roshar as well. They leave their blades for regular humans to use as weapons in the desolation because those shouldn't count as invested soldiers of Honor. But Odium has already splintered off a whole bunch of his investiture, so once the actual Last Desolation comes, he hits Roshar's underprepared humanity, without the heralds to guide them, with his full force.

I like this idea a lot, but the champion has all nine unmade as shadows, so I think it's not just about the thrill, though that would probably be a big part of it. As @Darkness said, it would be odd if it came down to only one of the nine. But the core of the idea is great, I don't remember seeing any speculation on the role of the unmade in relation to the champion so far. Why are they shown as shadows of the champion? They could just as well have been depicted as forms watching or supporting him or her, but instead they for some reason stem from the the figure.

I've never seen this before, but with the speaker referring to the ground as 'her' it sounds more like Rock speaking to me. Could be either, the light tone sure fits Lopen too.

Maybe 'strength of squires' as a resonance means that they do get access to the surges, to a lesser extent, while regular squires of other orders only get healing (or maybe just one of the surges).

I don't know if Nightbloods actually gathers and holds on to investiture. What we've seen is that the absorbed investiture is put to use immediately. Wasn't there a WoB that Nightblood would be 'full' at one point and go to sleep or am I imagining things?

Hmmmm red eyed champion... So listener or voidbonded human? Or is it metaphorical? Everything very exciting, I was worried the Stormfather would stop sending visions for some reason. Also have we ever seen an orange-eyed lighteye before? Excited for Serbarial's new job. Aladar in charge of any potential trial of Sadeas' murder hmm hmm

I agree it's likely that some are lost, others hidden in caches or secretly bonded, but we don't know what the other orders did with their blades during the recreance. We only know for certain what two of the ten did with their blades, maybe others left theirs at the top of a mountain where they actually were covered by crem. IIRC we have confirmation that Adolin has an Edgedancer blade, we know that Stoneward and Windrunner blades should be in circulation. Do we know what orders the other known blades belong to?

@Pagerunner My bad, I was so focused on the comparison with petrified wood that I didn't see what Brandon said that comparison meant. I don't believe that the soul is copied and only the investiture imprint remains, while the actual soul goes beyond. For me it's like the ship of Theseus, you don't have a whole soul going beyond at once. Rather, as an example, when Kaladin's hand is cut with a Shardblade and he uses investiture to replace part of his soul, that investiture then is part of his soul. I have no idea what happens with the bit of hand-soul that was seperated from the rest, but I don't think that it would be considered part of Kaladin's soul after its removal. These injuries are extreme cases and I don't think that most radiants over the course of their lives suffer enough spiritual wounds to force them to become CS that way. I think it would normally be a process like how over time all of the cells in our body die and are replaced with new cells. Slowly, your soul becomes investiture, but it would still be your soul, and not a copy. Sorry that the first explanation was a little sloppy, I hope this made more sense.

The Windrunners were strongly hierarchical, so they would have a leader(/s). Maybe the Bondsmiths along with the Windrunners' leaders formed a small war council, with Truthwatchers giving critical information when necessary and advising. The Truthwatchers wouldn't have to disclose any critical information to those who wouldn't directly need it. Then the head Windrunners move to the front, relay and execute the decisions of the war council. Even if Renarin's visions are not normal for your average Truthwatcher, I think it is likely their resonance gives them some sort of edge in regards to collecting valuable information. 'Seeing' doesn't have to be into the future, it could be something like what we think Shallan is experiencing, with visions of things happening at that moment, but more detailed and clear. An order of spies that doesn't necessarily have to infiltrate the enemy.

@Calderis Really good points and I agree for the most parts. With how weird the Aimians are even by Roshar standards, that reputation wouldn't even have to come from a war. Even if it was the Aimians that were fought at the time, I'm still curious about what Nale said. ED spoilers: