TheFoxQR

The only problem most of us have with that is that it feels too similar to Mistborn. Otherwise, it's a solid theory.

Aha! Yes the situation was untenable. Honor I think didn't understand that for quite some time. Or maybe he did, and let it happen anyway. There two interesting things I'm gonna point out to you that I think are relevant here: First is the Stormfather's perspective of the Heralds throughout the books. At first, he hates them for their cowardice because they broke their Oaths. The Recreance didn't help matters either. His paranoia goes far enough that he forbids spren he has any control or authority over from bonding new Radiants. However by the end of OB, his bond to Dalinar is beginning to help him understand the Heralds's sacrifice - that they knew what they were in for and went for it anyway. He respects and understands them a lot better for it. The second thing is in one of Hoid's semi-lectures to Shallan. IIRC its in the Chapter titled Aim for the Sun, where Hoid tells Shallan about the two kinds of people in the world. The first I think is relevant here - to Hoid, the first kind of people stand against the boulder of time and end up getting crushed by it. I'm pretty sure he's referring to Honor - the idea that Honor knew what he was doing won't work long term and yet he did it obstinately and died for it. The Second is his allusion to Odium: this second kind of person looks at where the boulder rolls and takes credit for it. Odium repeatedly tells everyone he converts that he is the one that makes them do terrible things and its not their decisions and them that did it, but him. Only on further prodding by Shallan does he admit that there is a rare third kind: one that quietly watches and studies the boulder and makes small changes that cascade out long term. Sound like Cultivation? Well the other two are nice and all but it's his rendering of Honor that's relevant to your post - Tanavast-Honor knew at some level that what he was doing was just gonna get him killed. Or maybe he had fallen prey to the fact that a Shard has more and more influence on their vessel over time, and was blinded by the raw intent of the Shard he held. Either way, tell me, does this answer your question?

I recently had this idea, and I'm not sure I've written it down yet. We know that Renarin is using the Voidbinding version of Illumination. We know this is because Glys was "enlightened" by Sja-Anat. We know that Sja-anat has only recently learned to "enlighten" Radiantspren. We know the idea of symmetry is extremely indentured in Alethi society. We know the Surgebinding chart was on the front cover of Way of Kings, and the Voidbinding chart was on the back cover. We know Odium likes to be 9-centric, and Honor likes to be 10-centric. The Voidbinding chart shown is 10-centric. What if Brandon did that as a hint? In the Way of Kings, the kind of Surgebinding depicted in the chart is considered as being a thing of the past. What if the Voidbinding depicted in the end chart is something from the future, and doesn't yet exist? A sort of temporal symmetry. What if Renarin is indeed the first Voidbinder, and not even a true one, at that? Between a Voidbinder-Surgebinder.

One, you're assuming every Cognitive Shadow is of the Kelsier variety, and can be killed easily in the Cognitive. In truth, it might be a bit more complicated. Two, as to why Honor didn't directly give them a weapon with that capability - he kinda did. Honorblades and Shardblades cut in the cognitive. Probably even spiritually, given that they seem to cut the soul. But also consider this question: How much should Honor directly help them? What if he gave every Human a Shardblade that channels all 10 surges? What happens when the Humans wipe out the Fused, and their next problem is... say disease. Should Honor also give them a panacea? What then? Should he directly solve their next problem? I feel like that is one of the questions being explored through the Cosmere; Sazed-Harmony also talks about this a bit. And three, The Heralds were 10 people against an army and a Shard that has no compunction to play fair. You could even say their opponent had no Honor. That was part of the deal - they would be a stopgap vs the Fused. The fact that they were captured and tortured wasn't. That was all Odium. And they may have done well initially, but come on, after a while, the Fused had to have just understood them enough for it to not be a problem. And Talenelat held for 4000 years. That is a monumental achievement by any standard.

Look at the Nohadon vision in OB. It does feel like Dalinar is talking to Nohadon in realtime. Also, one curious thing is Nohadon reminds Dalinar of Taravangian. Make of that what you will.

Atium seems to be tapping Fortune, Gold is similarly tapping Destiny? Is this a Fortune + Destiny combo for Malatium?

Why not have a different end? The Stormfather, being Honor's Cognitive Shadow, holds most of the Shard of Honor right now. Why not leave it like that? It could be a new kind of Shard, where the power will primarily be held in the system, and periodically, whoever is bonded to the Stormfather can access it. It's like the God being literally in the Church, readily available to the Pope who is also a Paladin. Except Popes change. Odium could similarly end up with 9 vessels - the 9 unmade taking on the bulk of his power and keeping it in the System and away from coalescing onto one vessel.

The Rhythms are a part of wider phenomena, as mentioned by others. Other examples are Seekers, which can hear kinetic allomancy. Skilled ones can also distinguish between different forms of Kinetic Allomancy by the specific beat. Alendi and Vin also heard the Well as beats. Same thing probably.

There is definitely more to Kaladin's parents than meets the eye. Remember, The fact that both Tien and Kaladin started attracting spren at a young age implies that the spren were already around someone close to them. And the closest was their parents. Besides, the whole Child of Tanavast thingy implies there may actually be something to Kaladin's heritage. Not to mention Kaladin's focus book was titled "The Way of Kings". And then there's this doozy: The Tower and Crown being the Kholin family crest, and the Spear being a symbolic reference to Kaladin.

Could the Withdrawing have anything to do with the Recreance? There are examples of future events resonating in the past, maybe this was a case of that? Also, the reaction recorded in the archives is pretty non-chalant given the context. It's like, yeah, that's just happening. Like, the Sibling is kin to the literal God of Storms and Goddess of... something. Maybe show a little more panic?

I found these WoBs, and they are extremely intriguing: Brandon's reaction to the second question is telling us something, though I don't know what that something is. What's going on with Nohadon? Was he a Radiant? Is there a connection between him and Kaladin, the primary protagonist of SA1: The Way of Kings, titled after Nohadon's book in-world? Is there something to the Child of Tanavast thingy and this? Edit: umhh I accidentally created 10 thousand of these, can a moderator remove the extraneous ones? Edit 2: I hid the duplicates

It also thematically mirrors the idea of browbeating the Stormfather - a literal storm that sweeps the entire planet and practically annihilates anything stupid enough to be out in the open in it's path - into bonding.

Personally I suspect Sanderson is doing something sneaky - each book isn't just introducing one order, it's introducing two. One for the Knights Radiant, and one their Void Knight counterpart. Moash is being prepared to be the Windrunner equivalent on the Voidbinding chart. He is either Kaladin's antithesis, or a pawn in one of Cultivation's many plays against Odium.

Everyone becomes a Cognitive Shadow upon death. Usually, most just last for seconds or minutes before dissipating. However, Roshar is... unique. Its ecology was built to support spren - bits of investiture connected to fundamental physical forces that have gained sentience by human perception. These beings exist on two of the three realms - Cognitive and Spiritual, with a cursory presence in the Physical. However, this ecology is also suited to sustaining Cognitive Shadows. Moreover the Fused were designed to have a specific kind of immortality - specifically one that allows them to come back again and again. This is the same form of immortality that the Heralds have. Both are cognitive shadows that get stapled to physical bodies by different means. Also, the "Fusing" and dying over and over does seem to wear out the Fused spiritwebs slowly.

We literally have WoB that the theme of the Cosmere is to explore what happens when Men are given the power of the Diety.

Hmm. Does this mean that the sequence of events is something like this? The mechanics that drive Fabriels and the nature of spren imply that spren spiritwebs are essentially a Cognitive and Spiritual manifestation of the 10 fundamental surges. Proto-stormlight is already the fuel of choice here, for when the flaura and fauna of Roshar utilise this spren-surge connection. Odium, on Ashyn, creates spren that can allow Humans and in the future Singers to access these Surges, and creates a framework where this can be powered by his investiture. This is proto-surgebinding, with 9 surges, and 9 single surge orders, each surge given to one order. These surges are powered by Voidlight. Possibly the first voidspren were created here. After Humans arrived on Roshar, some sequence of events convinced Honor to help them against Odium. He modifies stormlight so it can be used by Humans to power this proto-surgebinding. This is potentially where a tenth single surge order is introduced. So at this point, there are 10 orders in this proto-surgebinding, each order accessing one surge, 9 of which can be powered by either Stormlight or Voidlight, while one is exclusive to Stormlight. My guess is that Adhesion came later, because that sounds like Honor's surge, focused on bonds. Also Windrunners and Bondsmiths, the two Radiant orders having access to Adhesion, are considered closest to Honor. We potentially see a proto-surgebinder in action in one of the Nohadon Visions - where the one thing that struck me was how that entity was referred to as a Surgebinder and not a Radiant. This to me is evidence of a later bullet in this sequence. First come Regals? Odium convinces Singers to bond spren to use this Voidlight fueled Proto-Surgebinding, despite Honor and Cultivation having forbidden them to. When these die, Odium will make them into Cognitive Shadows, and they will use this Proto-surgebinding inherently without spren bonds, using Voidlight as fuel. These Cognitive Shadows each fall in one of the nine original orders of Odium induced Surgebinding. They take advantage of the fact the singers can bond spren and take up forms, except these will play the part of invasive spren for a singer that is alive, taking over their body. They are literally two singer spiritwebs "fused" together when they're occupying a body. Humans start losing, and on their request Honor grants the Heralds the Oathpact and Honorblades. This makes them true Cognitive Shadows, in mirror to the Fused. Here we get the First Generation Shardblade, and the dual surge framework which will later be copied and used for the Knights Radiant. The Knights Radiant are established, and Second Generation Shardblades come into existence. The Radiantspren enter the picture. The idea of a moral check for a surgebinder is introduced with the Five Oath progression system, to be judicated by the spren of each order. This is why they are called Knights and not simply Surgebinders - these are Surgebinders with a moral code. Somewhere along the way, the Unmade enter the picture. Sja-anat learns to Enlighten regular spren, which inverts the primal/fundamental spren-surge connection so that the manifested surge will have some component flipped. For e.g. Illuminating the future, instead of the past/present. This would in the proto-surgebinding framework have created proto-voidbinders. She will eventually enlighten Glys, and we will have our first half Void Knight (Knight Voidant? Knight Lacuna? Knight Abyssal? Knight Oblivious?), half Knight Radiant. Does this mean that the Voidbinding chart is from a future date, from when Radiantspren can be completely corrupted to use two voidsurges? Sja-Anat only learnt to enlighten Radiantspren now, but the Voidbinding chart still has 10 surges and orders. Odium would create a 9-centric system, so when and how did the 10 surge 10 dual surge order Voidbinding truly originate? It would be fitting with the theme of Symmetry, if the front cover of the Way of Kings showed a System from a bygone era (from the past) and end cover showed a system that from an incipient one - something that will exist in the future in symmetry with something that was in the past. Also fits with the Voidbinding being of the Future theme. If we accept this sequence, then I think we have a much more logical explanation for why Ishar makes Nale hunt the re-emerging Knights Radiant after the Recreance. The Heralds only see the Knights during desolations. To them, the Knights were a new thing, an experiment where access to the dangerous powers of Surgebinding would be checked by readiness and morality. After his death and the Recreance, Ishar sees these moral Surgebinders, these Knights as a thing of the past - a failed experiment. Possibly, it was decided that no more Spren will submit themselves to being bound, like @RShara's theory that the Spren saw the Recreance as a necessity and were in on it. To him, they were foiled by Odium, and Surgebinders were again going to be free of any checks. From his perspective, gone was Honor, and gone were his Knights. Cultivation was hiding. Any surgebinders coming forth from that point onwards would be old school Odium influenced Surgebinders, like the kind that destroyed Ashyn, which potentially most of the Heralds experienced firsthand. And so they needed to eliminate these Surgebinders before they learnt of their powers and could gain any traction. @RShara, @Calderis and @Argent - At this point, I think this is offtopic enough, so should I move this into a new post? If so, which forum should I move this to?

Most Rosharran species wouldn't be able to survive off Roshar. Think of it like this: Life, will always evolve to fit better in its environment. This process never stops. For example, we developed iur eyes to see only a narrow slice of the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum. The slice we do see is the one that is most readily accessible to us. On Roshar, Investiture is much more readily accessible, and pervades this environment. Also, the fundamental rules of physics manifest a Cognitive component in spren. So, life has evolved to use those things, helped by the fact that the very cosmic intent of Cultivation was focused and invested there. The gemhearts are an evolutionary solution to the same realmatic physics that drives fabriels - namely a way for living creatures to trap spren, ingest stormlight and create organic fabriels with effects that can sustain them. It's the same principles that can be used to make magitek on Scadrial, which will look different because of the different components that will go in it. But the fundamentals will be the same. Fabriels relate to life on Roshar in a similar way to how a mechanical Camera relates to an eye on Earth. An artificial construct in relation to an evolutionary biological one, both working on the same fundamental properties of light. Chasmfiends for example, are possible due to two factors - firstly, Roshar is a high oxygen environment with low gravitational constant. And secondly, they have evolved an organic fabriel that reduces their weight. This is why they can sustain such massive exoskeletons. This simply is not possible on Scadrial, because the environment doesn't have enough latent investiture for life to be able to access and use it. A chasmfiend on Scadrial would simply get squished and suffocated by the high gravity and lower oxygen atmosphere. Not to mention there wouldn't be any spren or nearly enough stormlight to drive their organic fabriels. Since Roshar doesn't have planetary tectonics that would create gems, these gems are formed by coalescing investiture. Possibly the Shards had a hand in it. On Scadrial, this happened because the planet itself was coalesced Investiture from Preservation and Ruin.

One potential measure of the goodness of theories on here are the WoBs asked by Sharders from on here. Also, I have so far been successful atleast once. Quite literally.

I know, I'm not saying he created the Surges. This is a smaller leap than to say that Preservation created Allomancy. In that case, the magic system was designed from scratch. Sure, Preservation didn't create the concept of the three Realms or spiritwebs or anything like that. But the framework for Allomancy was his. The definition and mechanisms by which the powers operate was his. He didn't create land, water and gravity in the universe, but he built a canal through which water flowed from one end to the other. In this case, Odium only created a framework for people to access the natural Surges present in Greater Roshar, and took inspiration from something already present on Roshar. The Surge of Gravitation existed in Greater Roshar, Odium created a framework which allowed humans to access and manipulate it in certain ways. And even how to do that was inspired by the ecology and spren already existing on Roshar at the time. The spren already were present on Roshar, and already were bonding to the local flaura and fauna to grant various effects. Odium saw that, and created the framework of Surgebinding - namely defining nine orders, designing specialist spren spiritwebs which when attached to existing Human/Singer spiritwebs would grant access to surges, an initiation mechanism, and a way to power this manipulation of surges. All of this was built on existing systems already in play on Roshar. This was later iterated on by Honor and Cultivation while creating the Honorblades. And later, that was the framework was used by... well someone, for the Knights Radiant. Which then went on to inspire Nightblood on Nalthis. It's all the same things, just different people trying to put their own spin on it.

I know, and until fairly recently, I thought the same too. I was even advocating for it. But the pieces fit a lot more consistently better if you think that the sequence of events is something like this: The Singers evolve a method to attract spren and change forms. Here, the external spren spiritweb extends the singer spiritweb to achieve a composite spiritweb. Odium comes to Greater Roshar, intending to splinter Honor and Cultivation. He thinks Roshar is too much of a stronghold, and goes to a relatively unprotected Ashyn to prepare and better position himself. He needs converts to his cause, so inspired by the spren present on Roshar and the Singer forms, he creates a system of magic that works on Humans. In this system, he creates his own spiritweb extensions, wraps them as Spren, and initiation slams this odiumspren into you, hammering your old spiritweb into a shape more conducive to spren bonds - and you get the original prototype surgebinder. In this system, there are nine orders, and each order gets one surge. Except this system is also compatible with Singer spiritwebs, and gives them the forms of power. Ashyn is destroyed, and Odium and a group of refugees come to Roshar. Honor and Cultivation forbid the Singers to bond spren and become surgebinders, intending to protect them from Odium Sometime later, The Girl Looks Up. Honor presumably changes the nature of Stormlight so that it can be used to power Surgebinding. The Humans are beginning to switch over to Honor and Cultivation. The Singers, possibly in an Odium infused fit of Jealousy, begin switching over to Odium. Odium creates the Fused, and this is him corrupting something existing - ergo red investiture. 10 Humans ask Honor for the Oathpact, and Honor and Cultivation pool in to give each Herald one power each, a powerup as a gift and an ode to their noble sacrifice, something that gives them an edge over the single surge Fused - this makes the dual surge framework that will later be used for the Knights Radiant. Sometime later, Ishar will impose the Five Oath progression for each Order of Knights Radiant, and each Order gets to choose what kind of Oath they will ask for. This allows for the creation of the Nahel Bond - a method of binding that is much less traumatic on the participants and also serves as a moral compass. I don't know. I could easily be wrong on multiple counts here. But this fits better than the other way around.

I have a personal head-cannon theory that there is one death corresponding to each Realm. In life a Person exists on three realms - Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. That death makes a Cognitive Shadow, which exists on two realms - Cognitive and Spiritual. Then, there is one additional state, one which we haven't directly seen yet, where the person exists only in the Spritual. And then there is true death, where even that is wiped off. But that may be a bit wonky considering how the Spiritual is outside time.

The only thing that makes me hesitate to go with the Radiant giving up interpretation is the first part - "Death is my life" While there could be scenarios where a Radiant close to death is just accepting their death, the specific phrase implies that the speaker has accepted death as life, as opposed to just death. That is what draws me strongly towards the speaker being a Cognitive Shadow of some sort, maybe even a Herald under torture. Except recently, I'm being more and more drawn towards the idea that Surgebinding as we know it is a mirror to an older Voidbinding, rather than Odium having co-opted Surgebinding to make Voidbinding. There is one specific passage from the Eila Stele, which goes like this: This implies that Humans were already using spren based access to surges before they came to Roshar and met Honor, and that the Surgebinding used by Humans to supposedly destroy Ashyn may actually be what we now call Voidbinding. It makes much more sense to me that a system of magic grants access to only one power, rather than an arbitrary combination of two. It makes more sense that Odium designed the original framework for Surgebinding where each Order got only one surge, and then Honor and Cultivation co-opted it and built it up so that it granted a combination of two Surges to each of the ten Orders in their version of it. The Bondsmith spren are also the odd one out, and if you discount them, the core framework works on nine spren - Odium's number. So it makes more sense if Honor and Cultivation added the tenth kind of Spren after the framework was already in place, and thus that one kind of spren is different. That is why the Stormfather and Nightwatcher, who actually serve a specific purpose on Roshar other than being Radiant Spren, are also Radiant Spren. They were shoehorned into an existing framework with which they may not have anything to do with at their conception. This is further corroborated in the tale of "The Girl Who Looks Up", where the Humans live in pitch black darkness, and see white light as something that saved them, which could be an analogy to them using Odium's Voidlight (described as literal black light) first, and then switching to Honor's Stormlight (which gives off white light) later. If this is true, then yes, it makes much more sense that Ishar was able to impose additional restrictions in Honor's version of Surgebinding. Because Honor is all about Oaths and Bonds, not Odium. In his version, there may only be one Oath, the one that makes you swear fealty. That is exactly what Odium is trying to get out of Dalinar from the end of OB. And it may not be about bonding spren so much as getting directly infused with the Spren's investiture and spritweb. Instead of Honor's version where there is a more gradual progression, Odium slams the spren directly into you. Which also seems to have been a thing in Honor's version before Ishar imposed the Oaths. Flip. This also explains the "Dawn-" prefix.

I'm going on this premise: Odium always asks from people to commit to him alone. Odium converted some Singers to join his cause against Honor and Cultivation, by convincing them to fight against the Humans. He makes these Singers Cognitive Shadows, and they become the Fused. The Fused can Voidbind, or atleast use a version of Surgebinding. One approach to becoming a Cognitive Shadow is to get an infusion of investiture in between the time when your physical body dies and when you pass on into the Beyond. Knight Radiants get an infusion of Honor's investiture when they first speak any of their Oaths. This could also possibly true in Voidbinding, in which case the infusion is of Odium's investiture. I was looking through the Death Rattles, and I came across this one: And I can't help but wonder if this is the initiation oath for a Singer to become a cognitive shadow upon death, and become one of the Fused. The death is my life. The Singer only speaks this upon death, and accepts investiture from Odium to become a Cognitive Shadow. In doing so, they accept that they will never again be truly alive. They accept their death, and it will be the only life they know going forward. The strength becomes my weakness. The old source of their strength, their belief in denying Odium and trust in the wisdom of other, ancient Singers/Honor/Cultivation is now their weakness. Following those old paths will only lead them further from their conviction in Odium. The journey has ended. They have given themselves over to Odium, and absolve themselves of any responsibility going forward. Their journey has ended, they have arrived in a place in their life from where what they want will actually be achieved. Or maybe their Journey has ended, they no longer fight to get somewhere in life, now they fight for a prize they personally will never get. They fight for their descendents. This imo would be genius manipulation by Odium. He literally makes people fight for something they will never get. And the ones they believe they are fighting for don't even know if they want it anymore. The modern singers don't even remeber how this fight started and would be willing to stay with the Humans in peace. But the Fused say "No, we are doing this because you want this, even though you don't know you want this, so come here, listen to our preachers tell you what you should want so that we can fight for it and you can join us. Trust us, we know better." The other possible interpretation is that this from the perspective of a Radiant who has utterly given up - and to me it seems extremely unlikely, as the whole journey of a Radiant is to utterly and truly believe that they will not give up despite their pain and will keep going inspite of it. Edit: In tackling @Scion of the Mists's post recently, I had the idea that maybe the Fused progression could actually end with this Oath (or Commitment?) rather than start with it. This could fit better with the theme of Symmetry that so pervades Rosharan culture. So each of Odium's orders could have a "commitment" based progression which is individualized for each order, but could end with (possibly ritualistic) death as the last commitment. In symmetry to this, Honor's Oath-based progression starts with a mirror of the end of Odium's Commitment-based progression. Commitment here being a stand-in for whatever Odium uses in place of Oaths.

No worries I could have written that a bit better.

That... was my point. The other guy said Ruin is destruction, evidence being essentially "because Sazed said so." I'm pointing out that Rayse says he's Passion and believes it to be true, but WoB is that he's Odium. Ergo, Sazed saying Ruin is solely the power of destruction doesn't mean that it is true.