Extesian

I may not be Calderis, but 1. Size does, I think Sazed talked about a ring being full and Brandon has talked about metalminds being 'full'. I can't see that shape would? 2. Should be no difference by this 3. Same as two i think

When you reply to the post pointing out your Sanderfanness 6 hours later, having slept in between. Possibly, in fact, sleep-Sanderfanning. (I totally do the same thing. With slightly more sleep)

Brandon separates them as different systems As to whether there can be overlap, fabrials that voidbind, or Odium influencing something other than voidbinding, there's interesting wording in this WoB Note that he says "mostly"...

For those keeping track of the progress bars on Brandon's site, the Apocalypse Guard one refers to the entire trilogy, not just the first book. It'll be interesting to see how fast he is, knowing that (currently at 16%).

Hemalurgy is not Ruin's invention. It is a natural product of the interaction of the Shards and the planet they created. It did not exist before Scadrial was created. The focus on Scadrial is metal. That's why it makes sense that only metals can be used. Being able to use it anywhere is because it's end-positive, you draw three investiture from Ruin, whose power is located in the spiritual realm, which is not location specific. But the focus is of Scadrial because that's where the magic originated. That said, I'm extremely surprised i can find nothing saying it MUST be metal. So it could be possible to use a spike that isn't metal. It just doesn't make realmatic sense, from what we know of focuses, to be able to. Edit - @Calderis sorry, I just saw your earlier post. You're right, if a Cognitive Shadow is investiture in the Cognitive Realm infusing someone's 'mind' (no time to find the WoB but it then does use the word 'soul' after), how does that make sense if Divine Breath is in the spiritual realm? My guess is that the Divine Breath does both things we've discussed, providing the actual Divine Breath you can give away, and creating the Cognitive Shadow itself, but provides investiture for each in separate realms. Ie Returning involves Endowment giving investiture that both infuses your Cognitive Aspect and melds investiture into your spiritweb. Then when you give away three Divine Breath, it takes that investiture from both realms. Maybe that's tenuous, now I read it, but I see no reason it can't be the case.

I think the Parshendi nation were a collection of listeners who voluntarily severed their ability to bond most formed and that made them immune to whatever Melishi did to make parshmen (listeners that are trapped in slave form). But because the parshendi retained more intelligence than parshmen they could discover new forms. Most forms were only discovered very recently. But i think listeners were in Roshar between previous Desolations. What nale says in edgedancer isn't clear but I think he means between previous Desolations

Thanks Maxal I had fun with it I'm glad you of all people enjoyed it whether Feather does is another matter, I'm kinda loving on your man and hating on hers. But i do actually love Renarin. And luckily she'll never see it I suspect

I have a bit of catching up to do J @Oversleep, I can’t find anything more formal for the ‘hemalurgy doesn’t work on trees’ claim. Reddit user Phantine has put it up a few times, it seems it’s @Phantom Monstrosity on the forums? Phantine I know you haven’t posted in 3 years, but if you see this and have a transcription or formal reddit answer I’d love to see it. I’ve wondered about this one for a while. We do have confirmation about Kwaan understanding realmatics and wanting to interact with trees’ cognitive aspect. The conflicting WoBs on stealing breaths with hemalurgy are on my Unmaking the canon thread I think it leans towards normal breath being impossible, because it’s physical, and Divine Breath being non-canonized, Brandon’s making up his mind, as that WoB I posted is very new. If Divine Breath is on the Spiritual Realm, unlike normal Breath, it should be spikable unless there’s something more going on. @Calderis, I don’t think the bit about Divine Breath being spiritual undoes the theory of Returned dying completely when they give up their splinter, in fact it’s the very reason I agreed with you on that. If a Divine Breath is integrated into the Returned’s spiritweb, then expending the Divine Breath to heal is actually expending part of the investiture that makes up the Cognitive Shadow.

This one And this one And this one And this one And this wonderful one

You were right about this, I listened to it yesterday. One of the Shardcasters, pretty sure it was @WeiryWriter, asked Peter, who confirmed Nazrilof is his last name. It's at the 1:06 mark of the Shardcast.

While it's the obvious one, I don't believe it's right because of this Brandon clearly indicates Cusicesh is a spren of a different order to the Nightwatcher and the Stormfather. I think Cusicesh has some serious potential, and I'm fascinated by the changing faces. I think it has to do with the Iriali, or the Recreance (though not as a Bondsmith spren), though with little evidence. It would make so much sense for it to be the third Bondsmith spren, with it being trapped like that. But because of that WoB, and because it's almost too obvious, I think the third spren is quite different.

There are many obscure WoBs it takes time to discover. Being wrong here doesn't matter, proposing interesting ideas, finding patterns and opening up topics of discussion are always worthwhile That WoB is recent so it was still a question worth asking! And welcome to the Shard

Brandon could be misleading us, but yeah

Watch your 1337 there bro. I expect it'll be up in 30 hours or so

I hate to end a good conversation but we don't need to speculate on this one.

1. Shallan will be annoying but horribly powerful 2. Kaladin will save thousands of people by killing thousands of Parshmen and will, understandably, brood 3. Dalinar, having bonded the most powerful thing on Roshar, will use his new abilities to be nice to everyone in the world except Adolin. 3. Adolin, the only person in all of Urithiru to not yet form a Nahel bond, will defend himself at trial, being awesome and sweet and impressing everyone. He's acquitted. Then dies a lingering, heartbreaking death from salmonella. Maxal's scream will be heard throughout the Cosmere. 4. Renarin will turn out to be a bad guy. Not because of some magical possession or evil-Glys. Just...a jerk. He was the one who salmonella'd Adolin. Feather's scream will be heard throughout the Cosmere. 5. Szeth will go to Shinovar. The grass will die and the chickens will weep at the aftermath. Nightblood will be contentedly full and remember none of it. 6. Lift will be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. 7. Taln will break my heart into 16 pieces 8. Taravangian will have another genius day, and his insights will completely contradict the Diagram. Mrall will eat his bones and report back to Harmony. 9. Jasnah will Elsecall to Braize. Find out what happens to surgebinders when they die. Will keep her mouth FIRMLY shut about it. We will spend 40,000 words debating whether she was written unnecessarily sexy. 10. Hoid will unequivocally, on screen, use more than one allomantic power. Brandon, when asked, will refuse to confirm it comes from lerasium, while accidentally revealing that Cultivation's Vessel is named Ursula. 11. (Coz I'm a rebel) - Stick will be outed as Dai-gonarthis, the Black Fisher. Stick will be put on trial, condemned and burnt at the stake. Half of fandom's screams will be heard throughout the Cosmere. I will feast on those screams, gathering them to me, nourishing me, while I giggle and giddily snap sticks in half, chanting in Dawnate. Calderis will fly to Australia just to high five me.

I get that Calderis, and I approve. If my Roshar theory recently had just been "hey guys, I reckon Braize is both the Tranquiline Halls and Damnation, and Rosharan humans came from Braize. Discuss" it may have been more useful Sometimes all you can do is point out a pattern and co-opt others to help figure it out. Hence also my relatively useless contribution to this post, but maybe one that helps trigger other ideas. I'm super keen as well to figure out the connections between the 10 everythings, other than the simple fact that 10 is Roshar's number. And whether all the Dawn-things are related, or if it's just a linguistic device that means 'something super old'.

I only just thought of this, and realised I've never seen anything on it. Can the Heralds have children? Have any (since becoming Heralds - I'm assuming Shalash was born before the two became Heralds)? If so, before or after the Oathpact (and would it make a difference to those who did break the Oathpact)? I'm wondering this because we know Shards can. But we know, for example, Returned can't without something special happening. What I'm really trying to find out is how Cognitive Shadows are limited with having children, and whether different types of Cognitive Shadows have different limitations. And of course I'd like to wildly speculate about which bloodlines have Herald in them, just like we see with Idris Royal Family.

This may be a strange Q&A question. I’m about to start my pre-Oathvember re-read of WoK and WoR. My last two were for enjoyment, this one I’ll take a forensic approach to. I’m reasonably full-bottle on general Cosmere lore, realmatics and WoBs so it’s about time I really get down some specific quotes and references from the books themselves. So my question is – any things I should look out for? Any issues people can think of where WoBs are just not sufficient but you think there may be hints in the books I can look out for over the next 2 months? I’m far better at finding specific patterns than noticing them.so throw at me any thoughts. I’m thinking of things like eye-colors (not them, I’ve already done that, but things like that that are very hard to search for, but much easier when you track them as you read). Things on my list so far: trying to identify the remaining Heralds; looking for evidence of the Iriali; looking for evidence of Honor’s perpendicularity; general evidence of potential worldhoppers, particularly kandra or DRAGONS; trying to find any mythology that may have been inspired by Cultivation (other than the Nightwatcher); evidence of any differences in the way different Nahel-bonding spren manifest, behave, self-identify and the way their surgebinders manifest new Oaths (eg Kaladin’s glyph explosions); any evidence at all of the main secret societies that isn’t immediately obvious; evidence of the origin of various ‘dead’ Shardblades; any evidence of cremlings or similar things that could be Aimian; anything that could indicate Rosharan and Cosmere timelines better than we know; and just generally any evidence that matter we consider canon or canon-ish may be mistaken. Thanks in advance for any suggestions guys.

Interesting idea @Calderis, makes some sense. I'm not sure about Taln=Alethela and Ishar=Urithiru though. I've tried to find something real to potentially assign Heralds to regions, but the best I can come up with is the names of the regions themselves or other lore we know. Ishar - number Ishi - Silver Kingdom Rishir - current region Herdaz Taln - number Tanat - Silver Kingdom Natanatan - current region Frostlands (and part of Alethkar) Kalak - number Kak - silver kingdom Shin Kak Nish - current region Shin Jezrien is known as Yaezir, Kadasix of Kings in Azir, silver kingdom Makabakam Vedel - Vedelev's golden keys is an expression in Kharbranth, Silver Kingdom Thalath Completely speculative of course, and no idea for the others. But the only three that really linguistically fit are Ishar, Taln and Kalak. But then the idea of Taln being in Alethela, the war kingdom, makes sense. Anyway, I've realised this post has no point Other than to draw your attention to the linguistic connections between some Heralds/numbers/kingdoms.

I never need to include the last part but always will

I agree with you though the question is how Invested something can be before Nightblood is unable to affect it. I expect, unsheathed, he can destroy a Shardblade. But I think a 'dead' one more easily than a live one because dead ones are closer to the Physical Realm. If Nightblood can't destroy them in the Physical Realm, because they're so highly invested, it may make it easier if you take Nightblood into the Cognitive Realm. WoB below is about hemalurgy but same principle could apply (and yeah he cuts on all three Realms so maybe it makes no difference anyway).

That makes sense. I'm not a visual reader, I don't actually imagine anything visual when I read, not even setting out characters, so I tend to miss that side of things. Same with Mistborn where I never really pictured the grimness of the world. I only really focus on plot, character (through dialog and 3rd person limited) and, certainly as you say, hard magic. I'm never as taken by soft magic systems. I could see Threnody being amazing on-screen.

I wonder if this happens to anyone restored to life by a healing fabrial, or if it's specific to Szeth. Note that even sufficiently invested will do it but the connection to the Cognitive Realm helps. So that will be a huge weakness for Szeth fighting any Surgebinder or, say, 8 Shin with Honorblades.

After nominating myself I'd better do this 1. Provide a picture (if you are comfortable with that). Sorry that's ridiculous Here's one with my lady 2. Provide your real name (if you are comfortable with that). David! Dave usually. 3. Which book is your favorite and why? For most of my adult life it was The Silmarillion. Such glory, tragedy, history, subtlety of language and epic scale for something so short. And the most beautiful creation myth I've ever read. That was until The Name of the Wind. For me, it is perfection. The most compelling fictional character I've read. Beauty of prose that captures my emotions the way Kvothe describes music as doing (not as perfect prose as Book of the New Sun, but BEAUTIFUL). A story where my heart breaks, in a way no Red Wedding could make it do, over (Name of the Wind spoilers) Brandon is my favorite author because of the world he's created, his characters and his narrative structure. But nothing can touch Rothfuss for me for a single story. Favorite Brandon? Stormlight, no contest. I love Warbreaker, and Mistborn has an extraordinary story. But Stormlight is utterly glorious. 4. What have been your main contributions to the community? What are you known for? Probably known for nominating myself for this thread now... No I think my main contribution has been WoB-hunting. With the absence of some very obscure old sources, or certain WoBs that are only posted on this forum and can't be searched, I can find most of them quickly. I probably used to be known as the most prolific daily contributor until Calderis accelerated his efforts. Now that I post less I'm probably most known for banter with Calderis Or just my rep:post ratio as someone who's been on here only 7 months. But if I can be known as a good resource for others, and maybe one day a decent theorist, that will be all I want 5. What made you join the forum? I started reading Brandon two years ago, found this site pretty quickly but, once I realized what it was, avoided it diligently until I'd read every Brandon book for spoiler reasons. That took about 6 months, then I started lurking, learning everything I could. I started an account 7 months ago to be able to respond to interesting threads but then everything changed. By posting it made me research. I'm an evidence - based person. I have to see a textual reference or WoB before I'll accept an idea as established. That meant researching before I posted. And very quickly getting far more detailed understanding of the Cosmere through that process. Then I read all the books again, and now my knowledge is pretty good (but still nothing on many of the long - time Sharders). 6. How many hours do you spend on the shard on a given day? Wow. Less than I did 3 months ago. I still read almost every Cosmere thread, though the last few weeks I've dropped off. But yeah the window is always open (I only use my mobile) and it's the first and last thing I check on my phone each day. So addiction level, but not yet problematic. Perhaps..... 7. Describe your fondest Forum experience. As an ongoing thing, the interplay between me, @Calderis and @The One Who Connects, as we're the three most prolific Cosmere posters (Connects a fair bit less but he's a WoB master). Particular post, I guess the one on the mechanics of Elantris with the AonDor, which may not be right but was the best and most supported one I've done. But I love this place generally. The welcoming culture, the diversity of people with one common niche love linking them. The level of academic rigor and scientific method applied to theories. The incredible job the admins and mods have done, and keep doing, to make this site so enjoyable and actually truly meaningful to a lot of people. I love it 8. What is one thing that Brandon does really well? Reversals of standard narrative, perfectly foreshadowed shocks, perfect pacing of character development. Basically, the things that make the Brandon Avalanche successful. And characters. His characters are so varied, compelling and relatable for a genre that is often plot-driven. 9. What is one thing that he could work on? Prose. I'm not saying he should, he knows his strengths and plays to them, and his writing pace would suffer if he tried to be Rothfuss. But he has some outstanding lines and passages of intense beauty, and if he could be like that consistently he would be unrivalled. I hope he never tries to. 10. Which fictional character is the best representation of yourself? I've answered this elsewhere but there are facets to this. My id wants me to be Kelsier. My ego wants me to be Kaladin. My superego wants me to be Hoid. My friends would think I'm Lightsong. My colleagues would think I'm Sazed. My family would think I'm Khriss. My girlfriend would think I'm Adolin. I think I'm most like Lightsong, if Lightsong didn't have everything he wanted at his fingertips 11. Any additional comments, whether it be about your life outside of the forum, favorite food, your website, or...anything! I'm a traveler (35 countries or so) and I lived in Prague 2015-2016. I'm Australian and live in Canberra. My partner is Czech. I have a big black fluffy cat named Toast (he thinks his name is Kitty). And I'm a Sanderholic.