alder24

He wouldn't have a direct control over Shard's power, only indirect, limited in many ways. He can do a lot with it, more than a normal Bondsmith, but not even close to what a Shard can. Despite his power, Stromfather was not able to prevent Odium from breaking into Dalinar's visions twice. Dalinar has some control over Stormfather, but even Dalinar can't order him to stop blowing winds, as that would potentially damage Stormfather. They're walking on a thin line. He would never control more power than what was in the Well, because his mind isn't expanded enough to reach that power, and that amount of power would vaporize his body. He can command Stormfather to use more power, yes, but that's indirect, and limited by Stormfather's nature. That's the Shardic invasion I'm talking about. Autonomy was directly involved, she blinded Sazed. With Dalinar and Honor the way you describe it. she would have even less trouble. Dalinar's mind isn't expanded enough to control enough power even indirectly, to rival a Shard's full power thrown against him. Not without full Ascention. I see potential in your theory, but I don't think this can last for long. I don't think Dalinar would be able to resist full scale Shardic invasion without directly controlling Honor's power.

Why are there so many Nightblood threads recently? I love Nightblood but why? Yes, this WoB made me think the same, Nightblood converts everything into Ruin's investiture, and that's corruption. Or at least it's a mixed investiture with most of it being turned to Ruin's one. The blackness he leaks is Ruin's investiture. I don't think Nightblood purposefully keeps investiture inside of him as long as possible. The way you describe it sounds like Nightblood would have to consider investiture itself as evil to make it work like that, but per WoBs we know that's not the case. He just trusts his wielder to make a judgment and he converts to Ruin's investiture everything he touches - and that's his way of destroying evil - convert it into investiture. The command "destroy" makes it Ruinous, as Ruin is about destruction. But his goal isn't to keep that investiture away from the system, it's just a side effect (likely because Shashara never thought in her visualization what to do next with that investiture). Nightblood doesn't want to destroy investiture, because investiture is no longer evil. And yes, the investiture in Nightblood is leaking and is returning to the SR. Which makes me wonder if that additional Ruin's investiture is making Ruin constantly stronger? Is that a contributing factor to why Harmony is getting more and more unbalanced? Nightblood creation might coincide with Catacendre. Yup, I agree. If Ruin settled alone his magic system might be far more destructive. It wouldn't be based on Breaths (that would likely be the case if he were to settle with Endowment) but it wouldn't be based on metals too (likely). But everyone would still be able to use it to destroy, anywhere in Cosmere, as Ruin doesn't care about it, he just cares about increasing entropy. This is scary. This might be the reason why Ruin simply can’t settle alone, as everywhere he invests alone, people would gain access to far more destructive invested art and will just kill each other until no life remains. Then Ruin would be bound to a lifeless planet which he can’t leave without leaving a chunk of himself there. Now I wonder, how would an Awakened shield with a command to "Preserve life" act? Would this turn 1000 Breaths into Preservation's investiture? How would it interact with other investiture? With what Shard is Vivenna's blade associated, if at all? If Shashara were to choose a command that isn't aligned with any Shard would they make Nightblood the way they intended?

No, I think this will happen, Death Rattles are talking about it. Stormfather will be deadeye, Highstorms stop working, only endless weeping with no Stormlight. This will cause flooding across Roshar and destroy Kharbrant, wounding Odium for breaking his word to Taravangian. I wrote about is somewhere.

Even the number 1:18 isn't the true one among known Mistings. It's the biggest ratio we know about for sure. Just looking at how many Mistings we saw in Era 1: Ham had a team of Thugs, Breeze had multiple teams of Soothers and Rioters, Clubs with his Smokers, Steel Ministry with hundreds of Soothers, Seekers and Smokers in their soothing stations, all of those Vin had fought with, those used for making spikes etc. There were a lot of Mistings there and only very few Mistborn were known to us. We know for sure about around 10 Mistborns in Era 1, and there were like 200 Mistings in soothing stations in Luthadel alone (30-40 stations, each with 5 Mistings). And it really doesn't matter. Mistings of unknown metals are not important to us in most cases as they can't use their powers. And it's impossible to predict how many of them were in Era 1, because Mistings aren't equally distributed across all 16 metals, as proven in Era 2. There are disproportionately more Coinshoters than Pulsers in Era 2. While we were able to calculate something using this 1:18 ratio, it falls apart if you want to include all Mistings of unknown metals (unknown in TFE).

There is basically no point at which Endowment wouldn't be able to give Breaths to Nalthians.

There is a problem - Returned has a free will and can choose not to fulfill his purpose or that command. He can also choose not to Return - Lightsong was given a choice. The whole reason for his Return is shown to him after his death, and that's what he will see in his dreams later. Lifeless doesn't have a choice, nor does it have any predetermined purpose. A security phrase is to give a new Commend. Without the possibility to give any new Command, without the possibility to change existing Command, a security phrase can't work, as it can't do the only thing it was meant to do - and that's the case with Nightblood.. Everybody can give new Commands to Lifeless, if they know its security phrase, so identity isn't blocking them from doing that. Breaking Command is all about breaking through that security phrase in Lifeless. And because it can't be done with Nightblood, there is no way for him to be influenced by a security phrase after his command to destroy evil was given to him. I can't see it working the way you want it to work. Returned and type 4 entities aren't Lifeless - they have their own will and can make choices, or have such strong Command that it's impossible to break. Type 3 objects don't have any security phrase, so not everything in Awakening has to have a security phrase.

Welcome to the Shard. What Taravangian and Sazed did is called Ascension. A person Ascends to a Shard and becomes its new Vessel. There is also Splintering - a Shrad splintered into many small pieces - this can happen intentionally by that Shard without any harm to that Shard - that's how spren are made (spren are Splinters) - or invasively by another Shard, which results in death of the Shard and its Vessel - what happened to Ambition, Devotion, Dominion and Honor. A single Shard can be also split into two or more smaller living Shards with similar intents to the original one, then each of those smaller Shards would be independent from each other and can have their own Vessel. A Shard can also create their Avatar, which is like a massive, semi-autonomous Splinter connected to a Shard: There is also what happened to Devotion and Dominion - they were Splintered and killed, and then Odium pushed their investiture into the Cognitive Realm and forced them to merge together into Dor. This was done to prevent them from gainig sentience and to prevent somebody from picking up those Shards and Ascending. But investiture left alone can develop sentience, and this is happening now, slower however because they're in CR. It's possible for a Shard to change its intent under Vessel infuence - this is what Rayse tried to do with Passion, but mostly failed. This can be done - to some limited degree - we see it happening with Harmony. No, that's impossible. When Vin was Ascending, Preservation wanted to be separated from Kelsier but had to be given up by Kel voluntarily. Vin wouldn't be able to Ascend if Kelsier didn't give up Preservation. A Shard can create his Avatars which are separate, with a lot of power, but connected - Autonomy is doing that. This is kind of what you're proposing. But Avatars aren't Shard, they don't have that level of control like Shard's Vessel has, and are dependent on that Vessel's will.

Agelessness - not without someone messing up with her spirit web - and she can't do that as a Shard. But a dragon is mortal - a dragon can be killed despite being ageless. Yes, that's probably the only logical reason. She can give up the Shard and live (Kel did that), but this process would create the body like she had during her Ascension, I don't think she can make herself a new body just like that - she can't connect herself to that body as a Shard, and she still is connected to her previous body. Even if this was possible her spirit web would be coded to an ageless dragon. That wouldn't work without a different Shard intervention - or maybe Nightwatcher intervention at least. Nothing to be fair If I understand you correctly, that Indirect Ascension would prevent Dalinar from full Ascension, and from losing his body. That would mean he can manage far less power than what a Shard can do. He would have control over less power than what was in the Well of Ascension. Compared to other Shard, he wouldn’t even count as one. He would be unable to oppose Shardic invasion on full scale with so little power available to him.

Yes, that's enough to prevent your idea from working. Not to mention you can't just multiply them out of nothing with perception. Investiture, like energy, can't be created - 1st Law of Thermodynamics. How? That's impossible. This doesn't work like that. Breaths are Breaths, they come directly from Endowment only when a person is born. You can't make a Breath out to nothing, you can't even make a Breath out of investiture just like that. Even Hoid doesn't know how to convert investiture into Breaths.

If he's alive I think the first option will happen and SF will get hurt. If dead, then no problem, just like every Radiant death doesn't kill their spren. I think this would happen because of the way CS creation works - their soul gets infused with investiture, expanded, and in some cases just copied. This might cause separation of Radiant's soul and his spren soul, push them apart (investiture resist investiture) and fill cracks in Radiant's soul with Odium's investiture instead of spren. But I don’t think there is any concrete proof for this, we just don’t know, and those are just my speculations because I want Stormfather dead.

I think it would get brutally broken, harming Stormfather, as Dalinar's soul would get infused with Odium's investiture, pushing out the bond. But also it's more likely that if Dalinar dies, the bond would be released in the moment of his death, with no harm done to Stormfather.

Yes If he dies during a Contest he would become a Fused. He can die and live.

Well, I still think they can be related, but not the exact copy of fainlife, rather evolved one, cultivated, not so invasive, changed to live in harsher conditions. They might be evolved descendants of Fainlife or maybe Fainlife was a template for Adonalsium but he changed them a lot. This's what I meant, that's how I interpreted this WoB. I think Fainlife was mentioned more than once to be invasive and deadly to humans in some way or something like that. I thought that if Fain ecosystem was about spreading and taking as much as it can, this might be too far from Endowment's intent to create them. Just a wild thought, a single possible explanation among many many others I've listed. Evil has nothing to do with it. We don't know for sure, but it might be the case. This WoB suggests it too:

Feel free to add it. No need for any credit. I agree, everything should be in one post at the beginning. I'm not sure either. Both options sound equally likely to me. We have only one WoB on that unfortunately. Also, per Harmony's letter in RoW, Mercy fought in Threnody too - we don't know on which side. More WoBs on this. The agreement Shards made about settling alone wasn't an Oath, they didn't know that they needed Oath to bind Shards when they were making it. This left them a little wiggle room, and this meant that if they both agreed, they could settle together. But in the same way Odium could argue and justify his attacks by saying they had broken their agreement, and as seen on Sel, it worked. Perception is likely important. Plus Autonomy was involved in some way with Splintening Aona and Skai - how much we don't know. There is likely more to it than just it, like what is the difference between Sel and Roshar? But we know Odium didn't settle on Sel, he didn't settle on Roshar for a long time after his imprisonment too. Now Roshar is the first word Odium settles in. Oh yeah, good idea.

This: And we know that is Koravellium Avast. We know Fainlife spreaded off Yolen, but we've never seen it for now (WoB). It could be very hard to create a Fainlife off-Yolen with the power of only 1 Shard - just like it was impossible for Ruin/Preservation to alone create Scadrial. Or the Fainlife is so invasive that them a full planet would be too dangerous. Their invasive nature might be opposed to Endowment Identity, preventing her from creating them (WoB). Or there is Fainlife on Nalthis, on some undiscovered continent. Or this particular Sho Del is intrigued by humans and that's why she created them. Too many options to choose from.

Riina knows Hoid can't kill or hurt somebody because of his Dawnshard. This still works on him. But he can do something to her, which would be very nasty and unpleasant, might even cause her death, nut technically wouldn't count as hurting her. This is what she feared. WoB:

A security phrase for Returned? I don't think so. Why? How would it even work? Endowment in some cases doesn't have a certain task in mind for Returned to perform when she is choosing who will Return, but she's looking for some things. She isn't good at understanding humans, likely because she isn't human herself (likely Sho Del, definitely not a dragon). I think there might be a one-use only security phrase. I personally believe, because of the way it was explained by Vasher in Warbreaker, that the creation of type 4 entities is similar to type 2 Lifeless. Firstly it requires a general command to Awaken them (which might include a security phrase) which grants them sentience, and then you insert the specific command like "destroy evil" which grants them personality. But this security phrase would be only used to insert the specific command, "destroy evil", and later it wouldn't work, because not even Susebron can break Nightblood's command, and if it was possible to use that phrase again, Vasher would do it, because he was with Shashara back then. Warbreaker ch 51:

Yes, there is a pattern, good catch, and yes SA 5 book name will follow it. Partially at least. The name of the 5th book is "Knights of Wind and Truth", in short KoWT (or KoW to fit the pattern). Keep in mind, WoK's full name is "The Way of Kings", so technically KoWT fits TWoK but nobody calls WoK TWoK. Lastly, in one of the big reddit updates about SA 5, Brandon said that he often refers to this book as "Wind and Truth", so we'll see what the final name will be. From State of Sanderson 2022: Edit: Here is the SA 5 update:

Their intent was in opposition. Only intent. There is nothing to suggest they were actively opposing each other, fighting against each other's actions. From the Arcanum Unbounded: That early on after the Shattering it's very likely they weren't strongly influenced by their intent and were still fully in control. Is this the WoB you mentioned?

Just a nitpick, Ambition escapes in Threnody, in the meantime Odium went to Sel and Splinter Aona and Skai, then he found Ambition and finished her. Or even Ambition was attacked in Threnody system after Devotion and Dominion was Splintered. WoB: Another hint that Nalthis was created after the Shattering is in this WoB: Yes, Odium came to Roshar after Honor and Cultivation already settled there and he even got their permission to settle there too. I think they arrived after Ashynites were already there and maybe after a few Desolations. They need to arrive after Ashynites for them to be the first humans on Roshar, to be Rhythmless etc. I don't find it weird, that they would choose a word with devastating wars happening, they worldhop because of religious reasons, that's enough to convince them to go to Roshar. Nitpick: 1 Rosharan year is equal to 1.1 Earth years, Aharietiam would be around 5000 standard years before WoK. I have no doubt Brandon would do that math - he included this for a reason I don't think they ever lost their Cosmere awareness. It just wasn't as common as you think. Even during Warbreaker, there are customs on traveling off world, they keep people with Breaths from leaving Nalthis and there are some tariffs to pay. There clearly is detailed Cosmere awareness, much greater than in other places. But it just isn't widespread, and likely never was. Nitpicking again. AoL takes place 341 years after Catacendre. I think you should include the founding of Ghostblood too - they play a major role across Cosmere. We don’t know when they were founded, but this can be just placed after Catacendre. Overall this is great. Fantastic work. It's very clear and covers almost everything we know. Thanks for doing that.

That makes sense. Taravangian on very emotional days learnt how to control his emotions and even act in opposition to what he felt. That was especially visible in RoW, when he was mostly dumb, yet he planned and figured out a way to kill Rayse, which was very successful despite his emotional limitations. Till this time I thought his emotional state was to align him with Odium's intent, to create a connection sufficient enough for him to Ascend. But you're right, it much more than than. And we even saw that after his Ascension, when the Shard is telling him to "burn and destroy" but he remains in control and starts to "plan how to save them all". I'm not so convinced about Dalinar and this Indirect Ascension. If that's the way Dalinar would control a Shard, he would be very limited and he wouldn't be a Shard at all, no future vision, no control over Shard's power, no investing etc - at least we've never seen Dalinar use the Shard like that. I think Cultivation wants to reforge the Honor Shard under a different intent, so it wouldn't be just about Oaths, but more - something like Unity. And for this she needs a Vessel that has a vastly different view on Honor than Tanavest had. Possibly, a long term plan is for Dalinar to Ascend to both Honor and Odium, merging those two Shards together - Cultivation herself said that Dalinar belongs to both Odium and Honor, he would have a great connection to both of those Shards, great understanding of their intent and great control over them too - he is proving this already with his rejection of Odium in OB and life full of Honor. This would ultimately resolve the Odium's problem for good. And Lift it's a weird one as always. For her it might not only be about control over a Shard, but rather learn that change is necessary. This is something Lift struggles with. But with her current "unchanging" nature and her future realization of the need for change, she might be able to control Cultivation far better. However I'm not sure why Koravellium Avast would want to make a replacement Vessel for herself. This is something I have never figured out. Does she not want to be a Shard anymore? Did she lose control over the Shard (I don't think so, she seems very in control)? She is a dragon, she might be better at resisting Intent than humans, so I don't think it's just about Intent. Maybe she saw in the future her own death and she wanted to have somebody there to pick up Cultivation to prevent Splintering from happening? I can't find any good reason for why she would want to make a replacement Vessel for Cultivation, but I think that's the case with Lift. We still know too little about Cultivation.

What? No. Perception won't magically multiply the number of Breaths somebody has. They can feel how many Breaths they have. You can't make something out of nothing. And that's not how Endowment works. Yes, I'm pretty sure animals don't have Breaths. They aren't humans, they aren't sentient, no animal has ever said to Returned etc. Not to mention they can't speak. They can't understand what Breath is nor can they visualize what they can do with them, they can't give that Breath to somebody. It's impossible to use animals for various reasons.

Just to make myself clear - I don't want to argue that this is what happened, that Odium had the help of another Shard with Splintering Honor. I just wanted to show that there is some evidence to support that claim, contrary to what you've written. Shards don't need to fully invest in Roshar to aid Odium. There are multitudes of ways for Shards to attack Honor without being in Roshar. TLM spoilers: I don't remember that it was said Cultivation directly trapped Odium with her power alongside Honor. I can be wrong here but it was said it is all Honor's doing and that Honor alone has the power to release Odium. However both Honor and Cultivation allowed Odium to enter and settle on Roshar. This in my opinion is what caused Honor's death - he broke his promise and imprisoned Odium on Roshar permanently. That left him exposed and Odium finished him. But Cultivation was not involved in the trap - she didn't break her word to Odium and didn't expose herself to his strikes. Otherwise she would be slowly dying through all those years (just like Leras). That was likely part of Honor and Cultivation's plan - one would trap Odium in the system, the other will continue fighting against him, helping humanity to make sure Odium will never find a way out of this trap. That's wrong. In the eastern, Vorin side of Roshar, Cultivation is forgotten or treated as a pagan superstition, that's true, but that's not the case in the west. There she is still worshiped and people remember her and know about her to some degree. In the times of Radiants, from Coppermind: "Cultivation has been honored on Roshar for a long time, at least since the era of the Knights Radiant" And we know she was fighting against Odium with Honor. Radiants are the evidence of it. They're using powers which are the combination of both Honor and Cultivation's power. True spren are a mixture of both Honor and Cultivation and there are literally Cultivation spren, Nightwatcher, and many Radiant orders whose Oaths are accepted not by Stormfather, but by Cultivation herself. She was and is highly involved in the fight against Odium - she literally perpetrated a coup which killed Odium's Vessel, Rayse. How much more involved she needs to be? There is little to no information about Honor's death at all, that leaves a lot of room for speculation. Stormfather wasn't fully sentient back there, he has foggy memories of those events. A partial involvement of another Shard, blinding Honor's vision, would be missed by Stormfather back then. I didn't suggest that for thousands of years Odium was fighting with the help of other Shards. No. Likely someone just got to Roshar at the very last moment to aid Odium with a finishing blow, not earlier. That's not true. Firstly Honor and Cultivation were romantically involved, they wouldn't turn against each other just like that and Rayse knew it for sure. The same is likely with Devotion and Dominion - they could be also romantically involved. This wouldn't give Odium any way to Splinter them. But there was an agreement made by all Vessels not to settle in the same system, as Endowment said in the OB letter. The pact wasn't a strongly binding Oath, but it still gave a little edge to Odium, as he can argue that they all violated this agreement. And that's likely what he used to Splinter Aona and Skai, and what he wanted to do with Honor and Cultivation too. Plus we know Autonomy was somewhat involved in Splinening of Devotion and Dominion. Odium didn't do that alone either.

Well, there is. Odium wasn't just fighting against Honor himself, but both him and Cultivation at the same time. Unless Cultivation teamed up with Odium, which is very very unlikely, it's possible that Odium got some outside help in killing Honor. But this isn't strong evidence.

We know almost nothing about it. It's for sure a type 4 Awaken entity, like Nightblood, because it looks like it's sentient. Color change is significant - when a Shardblade cuts a limb, it turns gray, because the soul is severed. In Awakening color draining changes something in the spirit of the soul. Similar things should be happening here - something is cut off, consumed or changed in a spirit that makes the entire body gray. Does the blade consume some of the soul's investiture? We don't know. But I think that it does that, because type 4 objets should be like Returned, and Returned needs to feed on investiture to stay alive. But you don't need to feed Returned with Breaths - you just need any investiture. That's why Vasher is on Roshar, he's feeding on Stormlight instead on Breaths. If Azure's blade consumes some amount of investiture, it is clearly very little, just enough to feed those Breaths that were used for Awakening, nothing more. It doesn't accumulate in the sword like in the case of Nightblood.