Valtak

Ha, I love it. I'm still very new here, just learning all of these quirks.

Also, I agree with your theory that it has to do with the spren. The focus is what shapes what the power becomes. If the focus is even slightly off, you can get different (sometimes disastrous) effects. On Sel, a single line on your focus is the difference between an elantrian and someone suffering from the Shaod. On Scadrial, having your allomantic alloy off by a few percent is the difference between allomantic power and sickness or death. Now, what does this have to do with Roshar? Well, Brandon has said that the surgebinding granted to the knights radiant is the result of spren imitating what Honor did to make the Honorblades and grant the heralds their powers. He has also said that the powers the Radiants have are not exactly the same as the ones the heralds of their orders have. Slight differences exist. This is totally in line with your theory - the spren are imitating the focus that they see Honor having created in the honorblades, but it isn't a perfect imitation. It's damnation close, so the powers are super similar, but not a perfect copy. In Selish terms, it would be like a new elantrian copying an Aon he saw a veteran elantrian draw, and making a miniscule error that weakened the power of his magic. So, this rationale has me totally believing your theory. *Edit* is there some strange thing on this forum that replaces "damnation" with "damnation"? I keep editing to fix it and it won't take. *Edit 2* Ha! Apparently there is.

So, using your analogies, using allomancy to fuel feruchemy would be like lining up two fun factories nozzle to nozzle (one representing allomancy, one representing feruchemy), with the same blue attachment on each one, putting a big ole blob of Play-Doh (preservation investiture) in one (the allomancy one), and squeezing it directly through into the other one (the feruchemy one). Since they both have the same nozzle (for example, gold) the investiture can be stored directly in the feruchemical store. The Play-Doh fits the key perfectly to go into the second fun factory while coming out of the first fun factory. That's why you can compound to dump incredible stores of health into a gold metalmind, even though seeing past selves has nothing to do with healing. You just keyed the power the right way. You are "cheating" because the feruchemy fun factory isn't supposed to be able to get supplied with extra play doh. You have one can, and only one can, and you are supposed to push it in through the nozzle bit by bit, until you need it, and then you can squeeze it all out at once using the red handle. With compounding, you can grab as many cans of play doh as you want and force it on in there with your handy second fun factory.

That was an incredibly well thought out and informative answer, @Spoolofwhool. Thank you very much. If you don't mind, I have another question that the answer to can clear up a lot of my misunderstandings of how these systems may play together. If a transgendered person, say a woman (who has always felt trapped in her body, inside is totally a man) becomes a KR, would the stormlight alter her body to become male? I know this could be a touchy question depending on people's stance on real world things, but for the sake of the answer let's assume that transgender people (as described) exist (and agree not to crucify me for my pronoun choices in the preceding sentence).

Thanks for those WoB! They answered the question I was trying to get at. I need to get better at searching theoryland, it seems.

Yeah, I had the location thought as well, but I didn't want to make the post too ling. I thought I had seen a WoB that said it would be possible to hack the magic system to get things like Aondar to work off of Sel - I will try to find it when I am free (though that won't be for many hours now). This seems to suggest that you could get forgery to work as well. Maybe you could get it to work during a highstorm, as from what I always believed is that sellish magic is caused by the terrible fury that is trapped in the cognitive realm pushing out into the physical one, but being molded by the symbols (think of how we can create cool things with circuitry by forcing electricity to follow certain paths). I thought I read somewhere that the cognitive realm during a highstorm has the same kind of fury. That possible sticking point aside, I hadnt thought of the cognitive vs spiritual aspect. Thanks for bringing that up! Shari's soulstamp reawakening the emperor makes me think it is a spiritual effect (Brandon named it the emperor's soul, after all. Soul makes me think spiritual aspect more than cognitive). However, the more base mechanics of soulstamping tables and walls do smack a lot of soulcasting, which is purely cognitive. Hopefully we get another short story of Shai sometime soon to see more of forgery - I would love to know more about it. I find it by far the most interesting magic system I have seen in the Cosmere so far.

We know that stormlight healing has to do with how one sees oneself. Lopen regrows his arm because he still sees himself as having two arms, Kal keeps his slave brand because it is part of his identity. Now, say Shai finds her way to Roshar. Some spren notices her, decides to form a Nahel bond (elsecaller or lightweaver or something). Would her having access to stormlight drastically increase her soulstamp's powers? If she crafted a soulstamp to believe that she had always been a 6'5" musclebound monster that makes Rock look like Lopen, would the stormlight "heal" her to make this a reality, since she now truly believes that is her identity? (I understand that crafting such a stamp may be impossible given the minutia of how soulstamp's work, but we don't know for certain. For the sake of argument, let's assume it is a possible stamp) Even more interesting, if she somehow learns enough about a radiant to craft an accurate soulstamp of them, could she somehow force bodily change onto them by altering their sense of self? Stamp them, and let their access to stormlight do the change?

@The One Who Connects You bring up many good points. However, I think a potential flaw in the reasoning is assuming that all Listeners would decide as one. You are absolutely correct that, to some, the idea of submitting themselves to a compulsion (even if it is completely voluntary) would be terrifying, and out of the question. If anyone would have trust issues, it would be ex-voidbringers. However, I can imagine another camp of Listeners who simply do not trust themselves to not repeat the atrocities that happened. Listeners who are wracked with guilt, and are willingly submitting themselves to a compulsion to safeguard against the horrors being repeated. We have a false view that it must have been a large portion of the population which took an oath (again, if such a thing even happened) because parshmen far outnumber free listeners. However, there have been thousands of years since such an act occured (or not). If the humans have been using them as laborers for even a quarter of that time, their numbers would flourish. Humans think them almost akin livestock, and likely breed them the same way. You can never have too many parshmen! By the time modern day rolls around, their would be far more parshmen than free listeners. Anyway, I admit this is only one possibility among many. It could be that all Listeners reverted to the mateform/dullform life voluntarily, and then humans just captured some dullform from the scattered tribes, figured out how to force a transformation into slaveform, and the rest is history. Either way, I look forward to learning more about the history of the Listeners in coming books.

Thanks for the answers. @Spoolofwhool Regarding to the Shadesmar point, Which is confusing, because I also found this ...But then I found this Ignore the extra spoiler tags. I don't know how to get rid of them. GODKING KURKISTAN IS THE BEST. Either way, I'm going to assume that Brandon intends Shadesmar to be a local word for the cognitive realm around Roshar, but he isn't very clear and he is misinterpreted sometimes.

So, I know from WoB that how invested a metal is has a direct effect on how difficult it is to push or pull with allomancy. Regular metal presents no problems, Nightblood would be damnation near impossible. This leads me to believe the same is true of a heavily invested feruchemical storage metal, or a hemalurgic spike. What I don't know however, is if heavily invested metals have weak "blue lines" when burning steel. The only point I recall seeing feruchemical stores under steel (or in this case, iron) vision is when Vin was attempting to divest the Lord Ruler of his bracers. In that case, the lines were very dim, but also piercing his body (which is implied to be the reason for the dim lines). I can't recall ever having a PoV attempt to view a hemalurgic spike with steel vision. So, my question is: do heavily invested metals have a weak signature (blue lines) under steel vision? Do we have a WoB on this? Does the community have any evidence one way or another? Secondary question regarding steel and iron: we learn in SH that metals glow in the cognitive realm around Scadrial, similar to souls. I assume this is not the case in Shadesmar, since we haven't heard of it or noticed it in our PoV visits. This leads me to believe that metals have innate investiture on Scadrial. Does this mean that a worldhopping mistborn would have an easier time pushing on, for example, the Rosharan counterparts of common metals on Scadrial?

Thank you for finding that! Since he doesn't address Parshmen in the question, the logical conclusion is that they are gendered and give live birth themselves.

I can believe that if he had children after the Ascension, they would have a good chance to have powerful allomantic powers. Dilution of the bloodline from the time the Lerasium was ingested by the original nobility has weakened the power, so it stands to reason that the Lord Ruler (who has full allomantic strength (and maybe then some)) would have powerful children, with them being second gen allomancers. However, I don't think he had any children post-ascension. If he did, he SURELY didn't allow them to breed. He has devoted incredible effort to weed out the feruchemical genes. He possesses the feruchemical genes. He would not allow his children to reproduce, maybe going so far as sterilizing them if he couldn't bring himself to have them killed outright. He does NOT want another full feruchemist/allomancer to challenge him.

@The One Who Connects: Yeah, there are still some things that we would need to learn before I can fully support the theory. I would imagine that you need to believe that the thing you swear to do is honorable. Personal belief and how you see yourself seems to be a big theme in different magic systems. As to Szeth fundamentally betraying his people, I already assumed that. We know from Nale that the Shin see the Herald's as their gods (or at least worship them). In my idea, Ishar (or another herald, I suppose) rules Shinovar. When Szeth betrayed his people (my personal pet theory is that he began the process of forming a Nahel bond himself, which if Nale's reaction to such things is any indication, the heralds are very against), he was punished by their leader and made Truthless. In this thought, being made Truthless is the highest punishment handed down by Ishar (or again, whoever leads). @The One Who Connects @Ari: The way I now see it (a little differently than when I first wrote this post, but that is why I came to these forums in the first place - to get more information to modify my views), oathbinding (if it exists) is more of a voluntary process than I originally envisioned it. The oathbinding doesn't force you to do anything, it just makes you more likely to hold to an oath that you already see as honorable. My imaginings for the Parshmen are as follows: After the previous desolation, the Listeners ejected their voidspren and were horrified by what they did. You can see vestiges of that horror remaining in modern day Parshendi - they absolutely DO NOT want to get voidspren again. They swore to never bind a spren again, and this oath was reinforced by an oathbinding. Parshmen can rebond spren (so I understand), they just choose not to. I find it hard to believe that after 4,500 years, the parshmen are still feeling the "sins of their fathers" strong enough to choose to stay in absolute slavery. I imagine they didn't think they would end up a slave race when they first swore not to bond a spren. The theory, as it stands now, is that there is an oathbinding helping to ensure that choice. @The One Who Connects @Ari: Yeah, the Ishar causing the Recreance theory and Ishar betraying the others theory are dead. I was under the impression that the heralds were leading their orders until the Recreance, which is not true. I am throwing my support behind the theory you led me to, Ari. It has led me to see some awesome parallels I hadn't noticed before. I will think about them further and make a post sometime later.

I don't think there is any information on this. Having her be another Skaa-born mistborn seems unlikely though. They are supposedly extremely rare, to the point where just having Kelsier and Vin was super shocking.

It is a term I made up to describe what I imagine the bondsmith's power to be. There is no official source on it. Sorry, I should have specified that sooner. Basically, what I expect is that the bondsmiths is using his tension/adhesion surges in a unique way to perform a binding directly to someone's spiritual or cognitive aspect. Not to the level of altering sDNA, but reinforcing a promise that they make. Perhaps it makes them more likely to keep an oath. I call it oathbinding because it seems like an apt name for it.

Do we know this for certain, or is this just the accepted wisdom concerning the topic? I don't recall hearing anything about breeding parshmen in my recent re-read/listen, and I was paying pretty close attention to the background stuff this time through.

@The One Who Connects: I have been thinking more about how oathbinding works, and I have decided that the oathbindings may have different strengths over different people. Oaths can be broken, but it becomes more difficult the more "honorable" you are. Your own willpower and sense of honor is what fuels the oathbinding. This could be why Nale praises Szeth at the end of WoR - he knows that it was Szeth's incredible will that made his oathbinding so effective. Ah, I mispoke. I don't think Ishar created the physical parshendi - I meant to say that Ishar created the Parshmen. I will edit to make it more clear. I think an oathbinding was in place, perhaps an oath to never bind another spren. Recall that Kaladin observes that the Parshendi (free listeners) act incredibly honorably, even on the field of battle. If the idea that oathbindings are fueled by a personal sense of honor is true, then I think this has a decent chance that an oathbinding could have such an effect on the Listeners as to turn them into Parshendi. I hadn't realized that Slaveform was gendered, though. Thanks for the information. Taravangian holding the key to cause a second Recreance does seem to be a big problem for this theory. It is referred to as a secret that could shatter the KR should they begin to form again (I believe, working from memory), I assume that secret is just knowledge of how to cause them to break their oaths. "Kill switch", or otherwise. I will relegate this to "something I suspect but have no evidence for". I also think that the paragraph refers to the Recreance. I think that perhaps it is saying that after the Recreance, Ishar entertained great deception on behalf of the other 9. In my theory, Ishar had something to do with the Recreance itself, and then put the mystical voodoo down on the other Heralds (explaining Nale's weird, seemingly irrelevant, obsession with stopping the resurrection of the Knights Radiant). Turns out Kandra do bleed. I couldn't recall, but I had a hunch I could find out where, so I just searched this quote from the beginning of The Well of Ascension: Yeah, the second method would definitely have time constraint for some people. But a lot of guys wake up with some visible stubble they need to take care of. That would be easy to notice its absence. People who are completely bald would be a harder nut to crack, though almost everyone has some body hair. Good to hear that people think it would work, even if it is not that feasible.

Hello all, I have yet to see any interesting WoB on this issue, but do we have any details on how Parshmen reproduce? The Parshendi use Mateform (they used to only have Mateform and Dullform, implying Mateform IS essential) to reproduce. Obviously, this isn't an option for Parshmen. Are parshman immortal, with the same parshman around now that existed as free listeners/voidbringers at the end of the last desolation? Do they have another means of reproducing that bypasses the need for Mateform? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you!

Though, this theory doesn't really mesh well with the Stormfather apparently choosing to conjure up a highstorm on a whim to collide with the everstorm.

If there is just one highstorm, couldn't it be in the same relative position with respect to the celestial coordinates (pointing towards braize, or towards some other celestial body), while Roshar rotates "underneath" it? This would give the impression of it travelling quickly around the world from the Rosharan frame of reference, and some sort of axial wobble on behalf of Roshar could explain why there isn't a highstorm every day, it traces a spiral pattern from north to south pole, only passing over the parts of Roshar where our PoV characters reside every now and again. Kind of like the great red spot situation o Jupiter, a permanent storm. Oh, I just thought of something neat. Brandon had said that the highstorm existed before Honor, but that its nature has changed now. Maybe before they hit the PoV lands, they pass over Honors shardpool and suck up some extra magical oomph. By the time they reach shinovar, they are back to being normal storms.

Oh, I see the miscommunication. I don't think the storm wardens know they are modeling orbital mechanics. It has been a theme in science that people observe the effects of something, and make a model that predicts outcomes while having no knowledge of the actual cause of the phenomenon. Then, some super smart person comes along later with a theory as to why the phenomenon happens, it lines up with existing models, and everyone says "hey! This person is like Einstein or something!" (in at least one case, literally). They probably see highstorm prediction as completely separate from orbital mechanics, but, unknown to them, the mathematics they are developing also predict the location of planets they do not even know exist.

I wasn't meaning to imply that the math involved is complicated, merely that it leads to complicated outcomes. Anyone with a working knowledge of geometry could craft a model of relative distances of points orbiting inscribed circles (note: I am saying this from the point of view of someone for whom higher mathematics is an integral part of my daily life, so I may be suffering from delusions as to how simple the problem is). It isn't actually hard, it just seems so to the uninformed. Liren seems to be an educated man, I have no doubt he could do the requisite calculations. Also, note that the planets wouldn't need to be visible with the naked eye in order to exert influence on Roshar. Planetary bodies exert influence on one another from great distances, and if we are assuming this is a celestial form of investiture based tides, visible presence would not matter. Good points on the desolations though, I had discarded the theory already and had only included it as explanation for why I was thinking about orbital mechanics. I didn't have all of the information you provided, though, and it is super interesting.

I have been reading some discussions about stormwardens, and I wanted to make a new thread so we could discuss what it is they actually do. We know that they are basically the mathematicians of Roshar. In the olden days here on earth, a common pursuit among mathematicians was mathematically modeling the heavens - figuring out planets orbits and the like. The stormwardens were founded to predict highstorms. Where do these two things connect? As I assume many of you here did, I grew up reading a lot of fantasy. Among my favorite stories were Anne McCaffrey's dragonriders of Pern novels. In these books, an important theme is that there was a "red star" (another planet in the system) that, when getting close enough to the planet, rained a spore-like lifeform on the planet that upon reaching the more life-friendly climate of Pern, transformed into a devastating thread-like substance that devoured all organic matter. There was always a couple hundred years between the occurences of these attacks, as they only happened when the two planets were close together (and the red star had a highly eliptical orbit that took it through the system Oort cloud, and as a result wasn't in the inner system very often). Why am I talking about this? Well, originally, before I learned more about desolations, I had assigned them a possible astronomical significance. They happened like clockwork, on a kind of cycle, with hundreds of years between. This reminded me the plight of the people of Pern - their menace also happened on a cyclical basis, with hundreds of years in between. However, in the modern day on Roshar, there hasn't been a desolation in ages. This ALSO reminded me of Pern, since the Pern books take place in a time where there hasn't been a threadfall in a very, very long time. The people have basically forgotten about it. This is because of the way the orbits worked, the red star hadn't passed close to the planet in its last couple trips through the inner system. I thought that perhaps the desolations worked the same way, and the reason there hadn't been one for a while was that the planets hadn't "aligned correctly". When I learned that Odium was trapped (supposedly on Braize), this made me believe this theory even more strongly. He could only exert his influence when Braize's orbit aligned with Roshar's. I now know that this is likely not the case. However, Brandon has said that the gas giants in the system have an effect on Roshar. What if the effect has to do with the highstorms? The highstorms seem to happen on a cyclical, yet complex, basis. The stormwardens have been trying to predict them. The complex system of when highstorms happen could easily be the result of the complex (to an uninformed observer) orbital mechanics that would come about from the relative positions of 10 different gas giants and Roshar, all of which are orbiting with a different period. The orbits would be complex, but predictable. The stormwardens, in their efforts to predict the coming of the highstorms, may have unwittingly been developing the mathematics of orbital mechanics. Basically, I am thinking that there is some sort of tidal system that the other planets exert. The actual tides caused by gravitation would be miniscule, but if the planets are invested in some way (which makes sense if they are actually part of the cage keeping Odium in the system), perhaps there is an investiture based analogue of tides that trigger the highstorms on Roshar. I would welcome any comments on this idea, as well as what you all think the Stormwardens are doing when they are creating their model to predict highstorms.

I will admit, I am reasoning from a point of view that wants Melishi to be Ishar, so take the following with a grain of salt. Brandon has said that the powers of the heralds are not the same as the powers of the orders they lead. They are very similar, but the Radiants get their powers from spren imitating what Honor did to make the Honorblades. So there are some slight differences. Perhaps in the passage, Ishar is making connections he hasn't made before. He has observed the "unique power" the bondsmiths have. The surges associated with bondsmiths are supposedly just tension and cohesion. Somehow, the bondsmiths use these to bind souls. In this train of thought, I am assuming that Ishar had only ever used his tension and adhesion "surges" in the physical sense, and this passage is him realizing that if the bondsmiths can bind something's spiritual aspect, there may be a way for him to use his "surges" to do so as well. Once he figured that out...Bye bye voidbringers. *Edit* I just realized that this is not internally consistent with my thought that Ishar was responsible for the Ideals the KR say.

John203: I hadn't read that WoB - thanks for directing me to it. That seems to nix that particular theory, as that was the majority of my (admittedly weak) support for it. I will relegate it to "personal theory that I think will happen with no real evidence." As to Mrall - I actually wasn't aware he was Kandra! That is super interesting. I knew Brandon had said there were Kandra worldhoppers around, but I hadn't realized we had identified any of them. Him being bald doesn't seem to directly provide evidence for or against the detection method, though if Kandra are indeed unable to produce such complicated microstructures as hair follicles, being bald would likely be a clever option for long-term impersonation. Spoolofwool: I agree with you, I interpret that passage to be a quickly thought of manipulation on behalf of Taravangian. The interesting part is when Szeth is under the impression that Taravangian is being truthful with him, he thinks that it must be one of seven honorblades that have been stolen, not one of eight. Szeth recognized Nale (perhaps he saw him before in Shinovar), so perhaps he knew that Nale was out and about with his Honorblade, but again I don't yet see why Nale's situation would be unique among the heralds in that he has his blade and the others do not. Pagerunner: I hadn't thought of that! Melishi is totally Ishar. That makes a bunch of sense.