StrikerEZ

This is actually a pretty popular theory, if expressed differently than it usually is. Many of us, including me and @Calderis, believe that what the Fused do is simply surgebinding, hacked to be fueled by voidlight. The reason there are only nine Fused could be because one of two reasons: 1) Moash never saw the 10th Fused because they're far more rare, which means they would probably be the Bondsmith-equivalent of Fused or 2) there are only 9 types of Fused because Odium didn't want to create a bondsmith Fused or that's just how the Fused work, since they're associated with Odium. Most of us think that the reason Renarin has weird stuff going on with him isn't because his spren Glys has been corrupted by Sja-Anat, making him partially a voidspren, which grants him the voidbinding version of the Illumination surge. This is because he has been shown to use Progression basically the same way as we've seen it used by Lift and has been unable to use Illumination as described by Shallan. Presumably, he would use this surge in a completely different way from normal Truthwatchers. In addition, since many people believe that normal Truthwatchers' Resonance is some sort of ability that allows them to see the truth, we believe that Renarin's future sight is his Resonance between the surgebinding and voidbinding surges he has. I don't think that what Venli is doing is voidbinding. I think it's more likely that she's just becoming a normal Radiant. I think it would be weird if a normal Radiant spren could grant voidbinding while it took Glys being corrupted in order for him to do so. Overall, this is a pretty good theory. I'm excited to see more from you!

@Cespan Duliwitz Hey, welcome to the Shard! Have a free upvote and a spiked delicious cookie! DISCLAIMER: Side effects include, but are not limited to, hearing voices, gaining supernatural powers, having the sudden urge to kill everyone, and completely losing control over your mind and body. The Dark Alley™ claims no liability for any damage done to/by the eater of this cookie. What's your favorite Cosmere book? Who's your favorite character? Least favorite? If you could live on any of the Cosmere worlds, which one would it be? If you could have any of the Cosmere magic systems, which would it be?

Yeah, that's what's so fun about theorizing about the Cosmere. You can think one thing about the Cosmere and have your entire view of the Cosmere shift in one moment because of some obscure WoB.

It is completely separate. Odium was not involved at all. The Fused were Odium's best way to attack and destroy Roshar. Taking them out, in theory, would be a great way to help the humans survive. Honor did not take into account the fact that humans are not bound to oaths in the same way Shards are. There is something else that is keeping Odium trapped in the Rosharan system, presumably something that involves both Honor and Cultivation keeping him trapped in some way.

Well, think of it like this. Honor designed the Oathpact to keep back the Fused. The Heralds would go to Braize and keep the Fused there. What he did not plan for is the fact that the Heralds were tortured and could bend the Oathpact, letting the Fused come back to Roshar. This event, the start of a Desolation, was a consequence of the Oathpact being "broken" repeatedly. In no way was it an intended part of the Oathpact.

Again, the Desolations were not apart of what happened between Honor, Cultivation, and Odium to trap Odium in the Rosharan system. The Oathpact was not meant to be able to be broken, so the Desolation Cycle was never a part of Honor's plans. I just think you're giving Tanavast way too much credit.

Yeah, I guess. It just really bothers me that we never see spren, or at least hear mentions of them, around the regrowth of Shardplate. I think it'd be much better if Shardplate's creation was facilitated by lesser spren and it's made of stormlight rather than being made by lesser spren. It would solve the Identity problem, the fact that Shadplate can be regrown, and the appearance of lesser spren when someone is about to get their Plate.

Eh, the main problem I have with this is we never see any lesser spren attracted to Plate when it is regrown. We've had at least one scene of Plate being regrown, so that would be a perfect chance on Brandon's part to foreshadow this relationship between spren and Plate. It just doesn't make sense to me that Plate can be made of spren when it can be destroyed and regrown without having to use new spren. I could understand it being made of spren if just the physical form of the spren is destroyed, and the stormlight provided to the Plate just pulls the spren back into the Physical Realm. I don't like it as much as the theory that Plate is just crystallized stormlight, but that's the only way I can see lesser spren becoming Plate. The problem I have with this one is the same as above. Even though you've solved the Identity/Investiture interference issue, how do you storming regrow Plate? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Oh yeah, I know. That's another part of why I find him so interesting. He seems like such a fun character in that little bit we got to see of him besides the prelude.

There is a Shard that is on Scadrial going by the name of Trell, but it is a Shard we already know. There was an original WoB a long time back that asked this question and we didn't know about Ambition yet, so it can't be her. The most likely theory is that Trell is Autonomy.

Kalak is one of my favorite Heralds. Mostly because he's the Willshaper one and I want to see more of that order because their combination of surges and the little bit we know of them as an order seems so cool to me. So I'm very excited to see more of him.

The significance of the prelude being Kalak's PoV is probably just the fact that he was the last Herald to get to their meeting spot. It could also be because he didn't want to showcase any of the other Heralds because he wanted to save them for later. Like, Taln and Shalash are getting flashback books later, so it couldn't have been them. Jezrien was already at the meeting place, so it couldn't be him. I just think it was Kalak's PoV so that Brandon could keep the specifics of that meeting between the other Heralds a secret.

@Daizan Hey, welcome to the Shard! Have a free upvote and a spiked delicious cookie. DISCLAIMER: Side effects include, but are not limited to, hearing voices, gaining supernatural powers, having the sudden urge to kill everyone, and completely losing control over your mind and body. The Dark Alley™ claims no liability for any damage done to/by the eater of this cookie. The next books you need to read in the Cosmere are Elantris, Warbreaker, and White Sand. There's also Arcanum Unbounded, which is a collection of short stories from the Cosmere. You can read most of those whenever you want, and Brandon gives spoiler warnings for stories that have spoilers for other books.

Dismissing it wouldn't waste the Stormlight. It'd be just like taking back the Stormlight a Radiant uses in Lashing something.

@robardin I just don't think this Desolation was ever planned as an endgame. None of the Desolations were ever planned because the Oathpact was supposed to stop all of the Fused, but Honor didn't think about the fact that the Heralds could break under torture. By abounding the Oathpact, the Heralds broke the Desolation cycle. In my opinion, there are no more Desolations as we know them. The current "Desolation" is simply just a war on a huge, planetary scale. The is no more Oathpact to return the Fused back after this, and this battle will keep on going until one side has won. I just don't think that Honor could've planned all of what happened. Firstly, he had poor futuresight. Secondly, he was going legitimately insane before he died. And lastly, if he had actually planned all of what happened, wouldn't he have just told the bondsmith to take the CoC? There was no need to tell them to try and force Odium into doing it if Honor knew it was going to happen.

This is the only good explanation for that problem of the sprenplate theory I've seen. Thank you for that! I still don't like it, because it just doesn't feel right. Like Calderis has mentioned, it feels wrong to trap the spren like that. In a nahel bond, the spren is agreeing to it. If this is the case with Plate, the lesser spren are nowhere near sapient enough to agree to it, which is why it feels wrong to me. Syl herself says she doesn't like using lesser spren for fabrials, so I don't see how any true spren would be okay with making Plate this way (especially because spren fishing is illegal in most spren cities). @Solant Radiantplate probably doesn't need to be regrown. The Radiant, no matter if the Plate is made of spren attracted by Investiture or mad of Investiture, would be able to provide enough Investiture right on the spot so that it would not even break in the first place. Eventually though, the Radiant would run out of stormlight and would be unable to fix their Shardplate that way.

@SzethIsBadAsHell I can't remember the exact quote, but I think this exact scenario is mentioned at one of the feasts in WoK. There was a penalty to killing the King's Wit, which is why no one did it, but I can't remember what it was.

@animalia I'd just like to point out that being "broken" is an in-world explanation for people being able to bond spren; this isn't canon, though it hasn't pretty good WoB evidence, but many of us believe that children can bond spren because their spiritwebs are underdeveloped at young ages. You also don't have to be as broken as say Kaladin or Shallan. I think it's a bit unfair to compare levels of "brokenness" between characters. Everyone responds to situations differently and has different emotions, so what may be enough to break one person may not be enough to break someone else. Also, extreme emotions like happiness can also be enough to snap people, which is the same Cosmere mechanic as being broken. It's highly likely Adolin could have "Snapped" through intense joy or some other emotion at a previous point in his life. As for Maya changing spren type, this should be completely and utterly impossible. Unless she is given new Investiture from either Honor or Cultivation so that she no longer would be a cultivationspren and would instead be classified as a Stonewardspren, this cannot happen. I think it's highly likely that Adolin will simply being reviving Maya and becoming an Edgedancer. He fits the order pretty well, in my opinion, and he has already been able to do things with Maya that should be impossible since she's dead.

I don't think that completely disproves the Passion theory. Just because Odium was originally gonna be called Hatred doesn't mean that the true intent can't be Passion. I support the theory that the true intent of Rayse's Shard is Passion and that he (whether subconsciously or consciously) filters it to be Odium, an aspect of Passion. Frost's statement would still be true, because Odium/Hatred would still be part of Passion, but I don't think that's all there is to it. I could be completely wrong though. I can see the argument for both sides of the Odium v. Passion argument, but I tend to lean more towards Passion. Odium just feels too narrow for a Shardic intent, especially considering the description that Dalinar gives when he sees what Odium is, like how previous descriptions of Preservation and Ruin have been given.

Okay first, the Final Desolation was Aharietiam. The current Desolation is the True Desolation. I don't think Honor knew that Odium would be receptive to the CoC. If anything, he figured Odium would be very unlikely to do a CoC because there is that chance of defeat inherent in a fight between two Champions. What Honor didn't predict (most likely due to his poor futuresight) was that Odium would want to have a CoC because he could manipulate it beforehand so that he would win. There was no need for team Dalinar to threaten Odium enough to take the chance of a CoC because he figured he would win it no matter what. Honor, because of the nature of his Shard (some Shards are worse at reading the future compared to others) and the fact that he was dying when he made the visions, couldn't predict that Odium would want that CoC, and he figured that without the Oathpact or himself around to protect the humans, the CoC would be the humans' best shot at beating Odium. At this point, the Desolation Cycle is basically broken. The Fused will keep coming until they're all destroyed somehow or until is beaten. There would be no way to win the normal way of previous Desolations. The only hope the humans have is to beat Odium in the CoC.

@Pagerunner You make some pretty good arguments for the sprenplate theory. Personally, I do not like the theory, but I could see it happening in one of two ways: 1) The spren are the Plate. This is the most common theory out there. It makes sense, considering the fact that Kaladin draws the lesser spren near him both times he's about to swear the Fourth Ideal, which is when Windrunners get their Plate. The one problem I have with this theory, which I didn't see @Calderis mention, is how the heck do you regrow Plate then? If the Plate can be destroyed, what happens to the spren that make it up? When you regrow it, wouldn't you have to get more of that lesser spren to do so? Even if the Plate being given Stormlight attracts the lesser spren needed to regrow the Plate, wouldn't we see spren showing up around Plate being regrown? I could kind of see that the spren don't show up in the Physical Realm when Plate is being made, for whatever reason, but that just feels weird to me. 2) The spren help make the Plate. This is the much better of the two theories, in my opinion. Calderis kind of mentioned this, but the way I imagine this is that the lesser spren show up when a Radiant is about to get their Plate and become the "mold" for the Plate. All the Radiant has to do is provide the stormlight, filling the "mold," and creating the Plate. All it would take to regrow broken Plate is give it some more stormlight, which could be how Radiants were able to create/dismiss their Plate at will.

The whole reason that Odium agreed to the Contest of Champions in the first place is because he was grooming Dalinar to be his Champion from the very beginning. Everything that Dalinar went through in his early years was to make him suitable to be Odium's Champion. Odium knew that Dalinar was gonna fall to him at the Battle of Thaylen City (or at some point, at least), so he was not afraid of entering the Contest of Champions. He engineered it so that he would win by default. Except that Dalinar, with the help of Cultivation, was able to resist and not turn to Odium's side, thwarting his plans. Honor's statement about forcing Odium to take a Contest of Champions most likely did not take into account Odium rigging it before it even began; Honor, by his own admission, couldn't see the future very well. It's highly likely he didn't know that Odium was gonna agree to the Contest of Champions so easily. Dalinar and co didn't need to scare Odium into doing a Contest of Champions because he wanted to do one. He wanted to because he'd rigged it from the start. He thought there wasn't no way he could lose. Now, he's scared because his plan was foiled and has to improvise now.

Welll, it could just be that Adonalsium chose to, for whatever reason, only Invest in a certain area. Or that area just had a higher concentration of Investiture compared to the rest of the universe. Or maybe Adonalsium is just one of many beings like him across the universe. Who knows?

I've got my English teacher to read the first Mistborn trilogy, but she hasn't read anything else. I tried emailing her to see I forgot she was interested in any other Cosmere books, but she never responded. Yeah, the Metallic Arts are definitely my favorite magic system(s) in the Cosmere. Just the way they interact is so cool. Sixth of the Dusk is also one of my favorite stories in the Cosmere. Something about Dusk himself just really makes me love him and the magic is so cool and the world itself is amazing. The plot, while relatively simple, is also quite good as well. Yeah, Hoid is definitely an interesting character. We don't know much about him though, so I don't really consider him to be one of my favorite characters though. In SA, my favorite characters are definitely Adolin and Venli, both for OB spoiler reasons. In Warbreaker, I really loved Vivenna's character growth. Vin is just amazing and Steris is probably my favorite for Era 2. I don't really like many characters from Elantris, though Emperor's Soul is really good (and Shari by extension).

You have to put it in the title, like this: [OB]. It can go at the front or the back, as long as it's in there. On topic, I don't think Odium is the big bad of the Cosmere. I personally don't think there will be a big bad for the Cosmere, that the end sequence of the Cosmere focuses on conflicts between Shards and peoples, not necessarily everyone uniting against a common enemy.