TheFoxQR

Imo Nightblood is essentially one extremely powerful investiture recycling machine. WoB states that it is "leaky". Warbreaker Annotations state that the black smoke is corrupted breadths. Essentially, every time Nightblood is drawn, it starts pulling in whatever investiture it can. This makes it more and more invested. But Nightblood is also constantly leaking that investiture. So theoretically, if you leave Nightblood drawn with no one holding it, and leave it there for a long while, eventually, it will be completely depleted. In its normal use, the rate of investiture consumption is much higher, making it more and more invested the more it is used. The "corruption" seems to be it breaking down all investiture into some base form when it consumes it. I don't think it's a returned though. The returned are just cognitive shadows really. But to make a cognitive shadow, you have to be an actual living being first. If anything, think of Nightblood as an inverse shardblade. A Shardblade is a sentient being first (the spren), and comes into the physical as coalescing white mist. Nightblood on the other hand, was a physical object first, got invested, and then became sentient. He also leaks black smoke. Fun fact: Nightblood is not Nightblood's original name. This very explicitly states he's truly an awakened object. Moreover, Nightblood's interpretation of "Destroy Evil" probably comes from what he saw here.

Not sure if this counts, but here we go. I was raised in a mostly atheist family, and as such, did not have much contact with scripture. So this kinda intrigued me. I was reading an English translation for Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary recently, and came across these passages: I'm pretty sure Brandon either consciously or unconsciously drew on some version of this to form the Knights Radiant. The fact that they call Honor "Almighty" kinda corroborates that.

I know, and in every way, it does feel like he was killed by his opposition. I understand that it is very likely that they did, just that without an actual explicit WoB, I'm reluctant on making that connection. The problem is also in the word "Opposition". What this means can change heavily depending on the very nature of Adonalsium. Was it an opposition that opposed what Adonalsium wanted? Did they oppose his existence? Did they oppose the fallout of his power? Did they oppose his ideology? Were they an all out war with him for a long time? Or did they just oppose him in one thing, once? Hell, all of these aren't even mutually exclusive. The opposition could very well have been Adonalsium's own followers, or representatives of the people of Yolen, or any number of things. I'm with you here. It also fits nicely with all the subtle reverence it is treated with all the time. Also fits with Hoid's Gibbletish speech. Another possible interpretation would be that Adonalsium couldn't prevent his own shattering because he was bound in some way. So he laid out some very intricate plan to return, and that is where Dalinar's "Unite them!" comes from. This could be possible if Ashynites were actual refugees from Yolen, giving Dalinar a possible Yolenite heritage. And Adonalsium being the big bad of the cosmere fits very well with Sanderson's "Set up expectations, then subvert them!" kind of writing. If this is true, the cosmere could follow this arc -> Adonalsium forms the humans. For some reason he gets corrupted and starts strangling Yolen with the Fain life. In order to stop it, a group of people manage to trap him. Fast forward a bit, and Adonalsium seems to be breaking free. So they shatter him, knowing full well that the consequences on Yolen will be immense, and go their separate ways in order to keep his pieces as far away from each other as possible. But some pieces stick closer together. In case of preservation and ruin, it was less of an issue because of their polar intents. But on Roshar, the close proximity of three shards for so long has allowed Adonalsium's mind to slowly reform over the years (possibly from Tanavast's cognitive shadow) - causing the "Unite them!" thingy to happen. Something along these lines. I have had way too much coffee.

Thanks! I contacted Special Collections at BYU, and they said it would be fine so long as I go and read it there. But I am currently a student, I'll look into the inter-library loan thingy.

Uhhh. This is awkward. We have multiple WoBs stating that Adonalsium's Shattering was intentional. We have WoBs stating that people opposed Adonalsium. We have zero WoBs correlating those two things. Attach popular saying about correlation - causation. The only thing I want to add is this - We know certain shards are better at seeing the future than others, and it has to do with the particular intent of the Shard itself. So if Cultivation can see x distance far, and preservation can see y, what about someone holding them both? Is it additive, or exponential? Either way, what about someone who holds all of them? I'm not implying the Adonalsium was omniscient, just that he would have been extremely good at seeing the future. We are talking about a being that was at least 16 times as powerful and expansive as any of the current Shards. How would you catch someone like that by surprise? And last of all, I'm not saying Adonalsium was wanting to shatter. Just that if he didn't want to, I doubt anyone could have done anything about it. That is all assuming Adonalsium was by nature like a super-Shard by current timeline standards. Could very well have been something very different. Edit: I dug up an old comment I made a year ago on reddit, where I did some theory crafting on the nature of Adonalsium. I'll embed it here. I think it has some interesting ideas, and a lot of holes. Maybe you guys can make something out of it.

Ahh. We should ask if Ashyn's magic system was always micro-organism based. There may have been a time when they didn't cause sickness. Perhaps Odium's doing? See, Honor and Cultivation were on Roshar. If Odium was after the shards, why did he make a pit-stop on Ashyn? Does it have anything to do with his particular brand of Shard-splintering? To gather an army, maybe?

Yes, Ashyn's medical advancement and the diseases granting surges have to be pre-calamity. Otherwise using them to keep cities afloat wouldn't make sense. Also, Calamities like that usually regress societies, not progress. That is not to say new things haven't been developed after, just that the primary means by which the floating cities remain functional have to have been known before. The PoV character even mentions the dangerousness of the powers granted by the diseases when he is pondering on the devastation. There is a fallacy here. The distinction isn't about being physical or cognitive. It's about how invested are you, where does that investiture come from, and what is it's nature? We do not know how any of those work precisely. We do not know anything about what the special steps required for something like the Spren or Kelsier going offworld are. So I'm not gonna speculate there. Azure, Hoid, and Mraize are all very cosmere aware people. If any of those things have this restriction, these characters could feasibly have taken the steps required to untether it. So I'm not sure if we can use those as examples here. Again, you're assuming Ashyn's magic system works on Roshar, or if they even had a choice. Even if it does work, I don't think that the Shards or the Singers would have let them stay if they didn't give it up. That would be like saying "I have this super powerful weapon! Look I accidentally destroyed my home with it, I'm bringing it to your place. Can I stay there for a while?" It could easily have been one of the conditions even. Maybe the Honorblades were created as a replacement. Maybe they did bring the diseases, but they died out naturally. Any of these could be true, and none of it could be true too. I'm just speculating.

I should have used better words. Allomancy doesn't use the investiture or matter of the metal - it is powered by Preservation, with the metal's atom and investiture signature acting as a key. As to Identity storing, what is identity made of? Is it a chunk of investiture? We do not know the mechanics of feruchemical storing precisely, so I don't know how that would work. All three Metallic Arts are weird like that. But then technically, even noble gases react under the right conditions. When I said realmatically inert, I meant how it naturally blocks kinetic investiture. So for example, how it blocks detection of investiture through itself, like screamers or seeking. Stuff like that.

1. Is the Evil on Threnody Uli-Da and/or Ambition's cognitive Shadow? Perhaps co-opted/corrupted by Autonomy or Odium? 2. Was Gaz heterochromatic?

Pretty much the title. I want to read it. For the longest time, I wanted to read it but I'm not from the US, so I could not access the copy at BYU. Now, I am in the US, and would love to get my hands on it. This is for me, and I'll happily oblige by any specific conditions about not discussing it.

Yep, sure. By "balance" I meant something like the noble gases and their chemical inertness. Aluminum has the perfect balance of all 16 kinds of investiture in such manner that it is realmatically inert. By "dead", I was just referring to its effect on Cognitive Shadows as ghosts.

I would like to point out that Adonalsium has extreme similarities to the Hebrew Adonai, which is God. In other words, Brandon could theoretically say "This was God's Grand Plan, where each of you played this part. The struggles, hardships, trials or testing circumstances you went through have only resulted in making a better you." Look at it this way. Each Shardworld is slowly but steadily gaining some specialisation. Ashyn for example, has advanced medicine. Roshar is dealing with morality. Scadrial has good metallurgy/technology. The shattering has enabled life to explore each and every type of power in a much more in-depth manner than would have otherwise been possible. So the Shards in this case are a misdirection. We focus on them, while all along, its all about the stories. Some shards may just remain splintered. Others may remain merged. The end of the Cosmere could just be like... the end of the dark ages, and the beginning of a new dawn for life in the Cosmere. Regardless of any of this, I agree. Unless done in some very special manner, ending at the reforging of Adonalsium is just too obvious, a little too... cliche? It would only serve to make the whole a little less interesting.

Maybe the form of moderation was the structure of Oaths themselves? As in, there were initially no restrictions on spren bonding, and no restriction on progression. Maybe the entire Oaths and progression thingy came about as a sort of Contract between the ten kinds of Spren, Humans, and Honor. Kind of like how the Heralds went to Honor with the "contract" for the Oathpact and he granted it to them. And, while Honor was alive, he could enforce this "structure" on the magical system. So, like a different way of saying this would be that the magic system was broad, and then they sort of modified/tightened it up. And so when Honor was dying, he was convinced that once he died, this enforced structure would collapse, surgebinding would no longer be restricted to a select few, and chaos would ensue. But then the Stormfather sort of became Honor's cognitive shadow, and so the structure still sort of held. Or he held it. This fits with the upholding of Oaths and bonds interpretation of Honor that we have seen from Tanavast so far. Side Speculation: During the recreance, there was only one Bondsmith, and he was bonded to the Sibling. This is why the Sibling is "sleeping", and why the Stormfather and Nightwatcher survived. Also, is this why the spren never bonded to the Singers? Because they were initially excluded from that initial contract?

Like there are spren on Roshar, Ashyn had disease causing vectors like viruses and bacteria that evolved to give you powers. So you would want to be diseased, and keep them around in your system, and they could thrive. We know this because of WoB, and that one reading where he read a little bit of The Silence Divine, which is set on Ashyn. It seems on Ashyn, society developed along those lines, with medicine focusing on how to quickly infect and cure oneself. As to why they didn't bring it offworld, perhaps the reasoning is similar to how spren can't go offworld without specific measures, which they didn't know. So those viruses and bacteria are confined to Ashyn until someone figures out how to untether them from that planet. As to why the Recreance was unanimous, it has to do with the fact that every Knight Radiant was a specific kind of person. That is the whole point of ideals. And Honor was much more actively involved at the time. So every Knight Radiant knew how Honor was going mad. Perhaps the Recreance was Honor's doing too, before he died. He would know (or perhaps consulted Cultivation) that Taln would not break for a very long time, and he realised that there would be a long gap between his death and the next desolation. In this case, he was convinced that without himself to moderate and guide the KR, they were a genuine threat to Roshar. Regardless, the Recreance was a deliberate, planned sequence of events by the KR, and it was accomplished in such a way that its fallout was exactly what they wanted - a distrust towards surgebinding from the human side and a distrust of humans from the spren side. These are not misconstrued, misinterpreted or misunderstood consequences, like Ruin was doing on Scadrial.

Yep, that is pretty much the other side of the coin to my entire write up. The Recreance had to be a well thought out, well planned thing. I... didn't know however that these were all known facts on this forum. I don't frequently come here.

Huh. Yeah, that does cover my questions. I will have to re-read those portions more carefully, seems there is a lot of information in those sections.

That one is definitely interesting. Leras could actively see those. Was it because of the Preservation investiture in them? Or can shards just do that? Also, Hoid vs Kelsier. And his interaction with Kriss and Nazh. Maybe his state changed when he was preserved? Hmm. That's also super interesting. I did not know that. Where do we have that tidbit from? I know he was able to influence events on Roshar even when the Oathpact was intact. I just assumed he was super restricted in doing so. If not the Oathpact, how is he bound to the Rosharran System? Because Dalinar definitely offered him freedom during their exchange. And Odium accepted that offer too.

Yeah, that one actively proves my second theory wrong. But there has to be something going on with Knight Radiant Shadows. With the amount of investiture they hold, their cognitive shadows must stick around for a reasonable amount of time. When Kelsier died on Scadrial, he was actively in the cognitive realm. And Roshar's cognitive is pretty active. We have hints that travel to and from the cognitive was a thing at some point in time from Shallan talking to the spren of the Oathgate, and Elsecallers can actively jump between the two. I wonder what it must have been like in those times. I mean, assume your husband is a 5th level Radiant and he dies. Could you, if you were fast enough, just go have a chat with his cognitive shadow before it passed on?

M'lady, I counter you with this! Granted, yours is significantly more concrete than mine. And its later too. So... yeah. That theory doesn't pan out.

The way that the metals are presented, Aluminium seems like the "balance" metal. It acts as a sort of realmatic "ground" for all sorts of Kinetic Investiture. Any investiture that touches Aluminium immediately returns to that balance, and as such loses all Kineticity. Silver on the other hand, seems like the "dead" metal. It has some special properties, and atleast some of those have to do with it being able to affect beings of the cognitive realm. But I don't think either of them are godmetals. They are a natural extension of Brandon's premise for the Cosmere - that there is a third component to the universe alongside matter and energy. Since it suffuses everything, it is only natural it also influences the properties of existing elements in different ways. This isn't unlike the Allomantic metals. The unique combination of how investiture and matter interact in them is what allows for Allomancy to use them as a key in the first place.

On a side note, I recently had a conversation with R'Shara on reddit regarding cognitive shadows. I'm about to give out a very wild theory, so bear with me. We know that the more invested a person is, the longer they can stick around as cognitive shadows. We know that Knights Radiant constantly suffuse themselves with a lot of investiture. We know that the fused are cognitive shadows. We know that Braize is primarily occupied by cognitive shadows. And I just gave out a theory that atleast some bits of the Vorin religion are deliberate checks by people who knew what was going on. What if there is some more truth in the Vorin teachings? What if, there is, in fact, a battle in the "afterlife"? What if, after physical death, a Knight Radiant's cognitive shadow is truly pulled to Braize, where they join the Heralds in fighting the cognitive shadows of the fused in constant battle? I'm putting down my Tinfoil hat. Sheesh. Well, this one actively goes against a WoB. I'm still gonna keep it here, but its most likely not true.

In Oathbringer, we are given this sort of complicated reasoning behind the Recreance. I'm going to list out all the points that we have solidly been told: -> Honor was dying, and he raved at the latest generation of Knights Radiant that they would destroy Roshar, like they destroyed their previous world - Ashyn, or the Tranquiline Halls. -> Before his death, Honor was there to moderate the power of the Knights Radiant. -> The Stormfather is currently connected to the vast majority of Honor's power. -> Everytime a Knight Radiant in the current timeline speaks an Oath, the Stormfather judges if the oath will be binding. This, I think, is the biggest hint we have. Knight Radiant Oaths aren't some password combination you can just brute force. It is not just about having the Nahel Bond and speaking some words in the right order. Not only are the oaths relatively personalised, but the person speaking them has to truly mean what they are saying. The idea I'm trying to put forward is this - the Knight Radiant Oaths may not be as concrete as we think they are. And, most importantly, it is not just about the Radiant in question saying an oath that they believe in. It is about whether the Stormfather accepts those words. We know surgebinding is powerful - so powerful the it can destroy worlds. This is my speculation on what happened. When the Humans were on Ashyn, instead of bonding with a spren and letting their investiture "initiate" you, access to surgebinding came through diseases caused by invested bacterium/viruses. This process would not be unlike bonding a spren, the end result is still your spiritweb being suffused with investiture. Except in this case, it is not about the spren's investiture, but through a spiritual and physical disease causing vector suffusing you with investiture. What's the importance of this? There is no check on who gets to use surgebinding. Anyone who can get "infected" gains access to it. I do not know what powered it on Ashyn, I have not had the chance to read any excerpt from the Silence Divine. Then, the humans come to Roshar. After some sequence of events, the status quo is this: There is something called an Oathpact that keeps Odium in check, practically trapping him on Braize. This Oathpact is somehow enforced by 10 humans, who have a direct connection with Honor via the Honorblades (Honor is their spren). These humans have to stay with Odium on Braize, and Odium tortures them there. When one of them gives up, and Odium gets a chance to fight free of his bonds. If he fails, the Oathpact is reinfirced, and he and the heralds go back to Braize. On Roshar however, the disease angle is not present. So access to surgebinding is granted through Nahel Bonds. The way Honor would then moderate surgebinding is by "judging" each surgebinder. More "honorable" surgebinders get access to more powerful and efficient surgebinding. This where the oaths fit in. The Oaths are the check - with Honor deciding if a spoken Oath is valid or not. While each spren order gets to decide what kind of person they will grant their particular brand of surgebinding to, it is Honor that decides if the person in question actually lives up to those ideals or not. This would be a sort of contract between the spren and their "father". This would then be how Honor guided the ancient generations of Knight Radiant to use surgebinding righteously. In this theory, the Recreance would then be a response to Honor dying. With a raving Honor's judgement compromised, the Knights Radiant would no longer feel confident in their capability to use the surges safely, without destroying the world. There would be an older generation that was Honor moderated, and a newer generation that wasn't. This would cause the Knight Radiants to unilaterally decide that surgebinding is no longer a trustworthy tool. But how do you disincentivise the spren from seeking out more candidates? How do you force the people to just stop using magic? You have to take a sufficiently strong step. In this case, to make the people hate the lost radiants would also be a deliberate decision taken by the orders themselves. This reason seems strong enough to the cause the almost genocidal Recreance - The KR dropped surgebinding in such a way so as to stop a. The spren seeking new candidates. b. the humans to start considering surgebinding taboo. This also explain why the skybreakers stayed behind. It was their job to ensure that this "law" would then be enforced. This is why Ishar would make Nale hunt down surgebinders through the ages. They would know that despite such drastic measures, there would still be edge cases where a successful Nahel Bond is formed and the person accepts surgebinding. In Edgedancer, Lift convinces Nale surgebinding can still be used safely - that the Stormfather has taken up Honor's mantle. If that scene is taken in this context, it makes a lot more sense imo. Tell me what you guys think about this.

Is there a periodic table of shardic intents? If not, is there enough of a structure in the intents of the Shards such that we can predict what the properties of unknown intents might be based on those that we do know?

My personal theory is that in Sanderson's original plan, at the end of each trilogy, the shards would be passed on to a new vessel. So Harmony would, by tradition, change hands over time - with each change slowly changing the shards/shard and the vessel over time. Every time they've affected their vessel to the point they can't act, they're passed on. This fits with their past too. Leras and Ati used their fortune-sight to make long term plans, with the whole of Leras's plan centered on his self-sacrifice. So, it was Sazed at the end of the first trilogy. He might feel that the shards affect him too much and pass on the shards and his atleast some of his cosmere knowledge to the next wielder at the end of the original era 2 (now 3?). Maybe he'd do it because he'll feel outdated, that the world had changed too much for his frame of reference, and that a more "current" vessel would be able to guide the world forward a bit better. Feels Sanderson-y.

We know that the investiture oriented with any shard is essentially infinite and everywhere -> each shard has power everywhere, but they are constrained by how much a vessel can process/hold at a time. So the Ascension of a being to a vessel immensely expands that person's being, but it's still infinite power being pushed through (a vast but) finite being. Now, coming to the topic, Autonomy refers to one of its avatars as an "avatar of our being". In dictionary, one of the meanings of autonomy is "freedom from external control or influence; independence." What if autonomy goes around in the cosmere, seeking pools of investiture and investing a bit of its own power to make them sentient. It then moves on, finds another pool, rinse, and repeat. So if a planet has life, and various pools of investiture which are sentient because of the Autonomy oriented investiture in them, then technically, all of those separate, sentient, spren-like beings are "technically" Autonomy. This would explain the "entire pantheons are autonomy" wob. It would also explain this weird multiple personality disorder like impression that we get from the way its presented and how it fits into the concept of autonomy. In other words, Autonomy goes around the cosmere looking for (semi-sentient?) "natural" pools of investiture and raises them to sentience, allowing them to exercise their own "autonomy". These then become (mini) shards of Adonalsium in their own right, because they are fully independent sentient beings of raw investiture separate from the vessel of Autonomy. As to how these avatars and the core vessel interact with each other will be interesting to see.