alder24

Interesting idea, but Hoid is not an Avatar nor a Cognitive Shadow of Adonalsium. He was one of the people who killed Adonalsium and we have a WoB confirming he's not an Avatar. He's not Adonalsium because he killed him with 16 other people who later Ascended. He even was offered a Shard during the Shattering, but he refused to take it (Stormlight letters mentioned this). However, he seems to regret taking part in the Shattering and his ultimate goal is to "make that which once was," which probably is about restoring Adonalsium. Having invested art of the Shard you want to Ascend helps you Ascending, so that might be the reason why he's collecting all invested arts - but this isn't certain at this moment in time.

Yes, it's very possible that Chana was sent to Braize and broke there, starting the True Desolation. However we're unsure if she was sent immediately after she was killed, because there is the vault with "Shallan's mother soul" that Shallan kept remembering, the vault that Shallan's father accessed immediately after Chana was killed and put Testament there - it's possible he did something to Chana's soul and trapped it in the vault, which prevented her from going to Braize. It's also possible that Chana wasn't found immediately on Braize by Voidspren - the Stormfather in OB ch 38 said that Heralds spent some time hiding before being tortured, so it's possible that Chana's arrival was so unexpected, that they'd missed her for years. Anyway, we don't know when Chana arrived on Braize and when she broke, but once she broke all Heralds were sent back to Roshar by the Oathpact. Taln couldn't have stayed there longer than needed, so I don't think he was referring to this when he said he was too late. OB ch 38: Interestingly Hoid also said in WoK epilogue that Taln was too late. The simplest answer is that they both thought that Taln arrived too late to prepare humanity for the True Desolation. But Taln was asking himself "how long had it been" before answering "too long" (WoR I-7) which I think refers to how long had he been on Braize since Aharietiam - which seems to be the case as when he recovered his sanity in OB ch 119, the first thing he said was "how long." That is what was on his mind this entire time. Maybe by saying "too long" and "he's too late" in WoR he meant that Heralds might not be needed anymore?

The Oathgate spren from a few chapters back are your answer. Also the Suppressor Fabrial spren was more responsive than the Soulcaster spren. RoW ch 19: This is a good point, but we and Navani don't even know how manifested Fabrials are made. That should have been her top priority because it might be as easy as just asking a spren to manifest as a Fabrial. Navani wasn't thinking about what you wrote, she was only thinking about finding a compromise (which is fair), but she didn't even explore the most obvious and potentially most rewarding solution to this problem. That's my problem. She should be talking with the Sibling about how to manifest Fabrials, if Lesser Spren can be made into Fabrials and those sorts of questions. I do believe it's not as easy and it does require someone's assistance. It should work similarly to how Yumi was manifesting Spirits as devices, which requires special invested ability and investiture to facilitate the transformation.

I would argue they can return to their spren state, but not on their own. Radiant spren can turn into a Shardblade and back because they are bonded, fabrial spren don't have that. And spren also needs a little bit of Stormlight to turn into a Shardblade (said in TSM afair). But with the help of a Radiant, or maybe even a Bondsmith, they should be able to change back whenever they wish to end their sacrifice.

Good question and Brandon thought about it when writing Mistborn - unfortunately he forgot what was his solution, but they probably plated those steel plates in something that doesn't rust.

From Coppermind: Your math is correct.

Oh wow, that's... pretty out there. It definitely fits to what the Stormfather said to Gavilar in WaT Prologue: Is that even possible? Tanavast still was alive back then and still was Honor's Vessel when Mishram was imprisoned. Honor was Splintered some time after the Recreance.

Thank you, fantastic work!

I think you can Awaken a corpse with Hemalurgic spikes but not in the way you're thinking about. Awakening is essentially using investiture to give sentience and life to dead objects - any investiture. You don't need Breaths. You can use investiture in spikes to act as a fuel for Awakening replacing Breaths and it will create this "fake soul" - but you won't get powers that those charged spikes had. It will just act as raw investiture for Awakening to take. At best those stolen fragments of a spirit web, if taken from the same person whose corpse you're trying to Awaken, will act as Breaths owned by the corpse you're trying to Awaken and they will help him become more self-aware.

I should clarify that I meant "slavery with extra steps" as a joke and I wasn't thinking this situation is comparable to human slavery, because Lesser Spren are obviously not sapient. I agree, this is comparable to animal farms. The question I'm asking is if it's possible to avoid trapping spren in gemstones, thus fully avoiding ethical dilemmas of trapping spren in gemstones. I think the answer is yes - turn them directly into fabrials. Or at least I think that's the way Navani should be thinking, because she just discovered that ancient fabrials are manifested spren and she should be working on replicating this process right now.

Aluminum cage won't prevent you from using Radiant powers (as seen in OB when they were using a Soulcaster in a room with aluminum walls to feed Kholinar), but aluminum primer cube will. Ghostbloods and Kelsier specifically have some contacts with Malwish and Southern Scadrians, they should have access to at least a few of them. Charging them with aluminum will prevent anyone from using their powers in the range of the cube. It should also prevent a Radiant from summoning their plates and blades as Leeching can do it. And of course, aluminum will also block any Shardblade cut. The suppression Fabrial wasn't powered by aluminum, it was a spren manifested in the PR as an unknown metal (definitely not aluminum as aluminum reduces the area of effect of a Fabrial) fueled by Voidlight, but it works on the same principles as Allomantic aluminum. Ghostbloods were dealing with Fused in RoW, so it’s also possible that they have some suppressing Fabrials ready to be activated. As for how aware is Shallan of aluminum's properties, it's unknown. She should know how it interacts with Fabrials and that it blocks detection by Secretspren, but she might not know that it can block a Shardblade and it is generally non-interactive with investiture and most definitely would not know that aluminum in Allomancy can act like a suppression Fabrial.

No, they've been using it for two decades to fund their organization, but they could have been producing it for even longer. Anyway, it doesn't matter as Era 2 takes place in between SA5 and SA6, which is a 10-15 years long gap. Timeline fits. Please, Molli is obviously the hidden Kandra.

How are Flamespren doing it willingly? What Navani is doing now is throwing a treat into a cage and locking the gate after a dog runs into it to eat that treat. It's not a willing participation, it's still forced imprisonment, but now with deception and broken trust. Sapience isn't required for a spren to manifest as a Shardplate, Creationspren are quite willing to be manifested as a Shardplate and change based on Shallan's needs, Flamespren should be capable enough to manifest as a fabrial per Navani's instructions. Navani is already commanding Lesser Spren all around her, even if some kind of bond is needed, she should have enough Connection to them to make them into Fabrials. Ghostbloods produce aluminum with electrolysis by this point. More than half of the aluminum available in Era 2 was made and sold by Ghostbloods. TLM ch 40: The reason they follow him is because he convinced them he's the right person to be followed. This isn't a legitimacy issue, Gavilar suddenly showing up won't change this, he shouldn't even get the Alethi throne back as he quite literally died. They found the time to capture Re-Shephir, why not another Unmade? And I personally don't believe you need to be a Radiant to do it, it may be easier with powers, but having proper understanding and strong Connection to an Unmade should be enough. We didn't see Dalinar using his powers when capturing Nergaoul.

I must say, I’m not a fan of those PoV divided chapters. Yes, they were in previous books, but usually during the finale. Almost every chapter of WaT is divided between different PoV. This does invoke the feeling that WaT is one massive finale and it increases the pacing a bit, but on the other hand it’s way too fragmented, too unfocused and we’re spending less time with the main characters in those chapters without giving them enough time. We got just a teaser from Shallan’s PoV with not much progress being made there and Navani’s chapter of more or less the proper length. I would rather have both full length PoVs in separate chapters. Shallan has way too easy a time, at this point I will be massively disappointed if this doesn’t end up badly. I’m wondering if there is a Tineye among Ghostbloods - they are rare, but they should have one for just those moments. Kelsier always had Tineye guards, this is a lesson Iyatil should have learned. They would be able to hear every conversation Shallan and her team had and they could be hidden further away, the third watchpost Shallan’s squad was worried about. Navani’s idea is just a slavery with extra steps. Better than before, but why not work on manifesting Flamespren as heater fabrials, just like Soulcasters are created? They aren’t trapped, they do it willingly, they can be dismissed and replaced after some time. It’s a step in the wrong direction. Thankfully, Rushu was there to inspire Navani to domesticate Flamespren, which is a step in the right direction. The Sibling already gained a fangirl. That was fast. Looks like Rushu might be non-binary. Anyone willing to translate Navani’s notes? Szeth’s flashback, let’s go! And it starts with the Wind - those words seem very obvious now, just like how the Wind was present in Kaladin’s life, it’s present in Szeth’s life as well. This flashback wasn’t very different from the version read by Brandon 2 years ago. I think this ended up with Nohadon establishing the Vorin right of travel.

There probably were more Shardblades at the beginning, but now it's probably more or less the same amount as the number of Shardplates. We know there are around 80 known Shardblades on the entire Roshar, but we don't know how many Shardplates there are. My guess is simple - Shardblades are much easier to lose compared to a Shardplate. A Shardblade weighs almost nothing, it can cut through everything and it's not physical when not used. Many Shardbearers will travel without their Shardplate performing day to day tasks because it's so inconvenient to carry their Shardplate everywhere they go, and they always have a Shardblade ready in the mist. It's very easy to lose the plate by accident when traveling and being caught in a Highstorm, or tripping and falling off the cliff, or being stuck on a sinking ship and stuff like that. Compare it to a Shardplate which weighs 600 kg. Crem won't cover a Shardplate, but it will cover a Shardblade stuck fully in a rock till its handle. Winds would have a hard time picking a Shardplate up from the ground during a Highstorm, but a Shardblade is basically a wing with its mass to surface area ratio. And we know many Shardblades were lost in accidents like this, covered by crem, sunk to the bottom of the sea.

It's possible to push rebar in concrete, but the strength of that push should be weakened because it's covered in concrete. Using reinforced concrete as a spike road would be very inefficient. I don't know how many roads are made out of reinforced concrete, most are made out of asphalt. TLM ch 41:

We've seen Ruin in SH ch 2-1: Here's Preservation SH ch 1-1: Here's Odium OB ch 57: I like your description of Honor, which uses steel and chains. It fits very well. For Cultivation I would see like you said - growing life, a living forest, trees spawning a new leaf, vines climbing onto the tree, moss growing on rocks, insects crawling on it, birds singing, animals running around. Devotion might be described by motherly love, a warm embrace, a passion of lovers, parents taking away troubles from their children, a child caring for their ill parents. Hard to say about others, Autonomy might be described by a lone wolf traveling through a forest, a trapper surviving in a wild, an eagle flying high and free, feeling of uniqueness and individualism experienced by a single person. Endowment might be a warm welcoming, joy experienced by sharing and receiving, art full of colors created to be admired, a breath shared with others, a meal given to those in need. Dominion is greed and possessiveness, kingdoms and empires stretching beyond the horizon, kings and queens ruling over their people, riches collected by nobles, planets kept in hands of gods.

Most definitely that's not the case. There were the Nightwatcher Bondsmiths before the Recreance and the Sibling knew the Nightwacher as she visited the Tower before that event. The Nightwatcher had to be created long before the Recreance as after it the Sibling went into a slumber and no Radiants existed. She was most likely created around the same time as the Stormfather. They had to be attuned to Shards. All investiture after the Shattering was assigned to Shards, as they originally were tuned towards specific aspects of Adonalsium. In previous books Syl said that "the winds are of Honor." All of this most likely means that the Wind was already made primarily out of Honor's investiture, before even Honor settled on Roshar. OB ch 6: Dust can be made from stone, so she would fit to the Stone more. I would say yes, at least when he was created I think it should be similar. But what he is now is different from what he was after he was created. He was still conscious and sapient before he merged with Honor's Cognitive Shadow, he still was the Stormfather, more like a child as the merger changed him a lot. In my opinion the previous Bondsmiths were bonded to the fundamental forces themselves, not to those ancient spren (the text said they weren't bound to spren but to forces left by gods). This made them more dangerous as they were unbound from the morality of a spren. who could limit the use of those forces. But ultimately it was Ishar's idea (not Honor's) to create Knights Radiant and he bound Surgebinders with Oath to spren, so maybe around the same time Honor and Cultivation created new large Splinters made from Old Magic spren to make a new Bondsmith order, restricted by both Oaths and spren's perception of what's right or wrong.

Yes, we've known this for quite some time already. There are 5 sources for this date on Coppermind - Cosmere: The Shattering of Adonalsium, one from RoW I-1 (can't see anything there honestly), one from TSM ch 11 (quote below) and three different WoBs, the earliest from 10 years ago. Cosmere is very young, Roshar was created by Adonalsium around 12,000-13,000 years ago. We don't know how old Adonalsium, Yolen or humanity in Cosmere are, but I would expect them to be just a few thousand years older rather than millions of years.

Yes, Rosharan year is 500 day long, but 1 Rosharan day is 20 Rosharan hours, each Rosharan hours is 50 Rosharan minutes (1 Rosharan hour is ~58 minutes). As for how many seconds are in 1 Rosharan minute, I can't find anything - doing some quick calculations, in 1 Rosharan minute there has to be 60 standard seconds. I bet they would say there are 50 Rosharan seconds in 1 Rosharan minute, which would make 1 Rosharan second be 1.2 standard seconds long. As for Rosharan foot, Kaladin is 6'4" in Rosharan feet, which is around seven standard feet. Yes. A dozen is also equal to 10 on Roshar. Also units of weight are probably a bit different on Roshar as well, that's because Rosharan gravity is only 0.7 that of Earth's gravity, but we don't have specific numbers for example we don't know how much a stone weighs on Roshar compared to standard.

I think on the meta level it makes a lot of sense. This is the same universe, the same rules are applied, Shards and Adonalsium are a big thing here. Sazed successfully merged two Shards and that's a big deal, any Shard that would want to compete with him would be at big disadvantage unless they themselves also take up another Shard. We know that in the future there is a conflict between Scadrial and Roshar - we can assume Shards are involved as well. I highly doubt that Cultivation and Honor will be willing to stand together with Odium, unless they are merged with him. Moreover I doubt Honor or Cultivation would be interested in interstellar politics - Odium is interested, Cultivation showed no signs of this. If in the future Odium is competing against Harmony, then he needs to merge with another Shard and he needs to get rid of Honor and Cultivation, otherwise they will try to kill him while he's distracted by Harmony. And there is also Adonalsium's plotline - will he be restored? There are some clues pointing towards restoration of Adonalsium and for this to happen we need to see Shards other than Harmony being merged. This will set up a conflict and a race to combine all Shards. The alternative is that all Shards will be Splintered even further to prevent any mortal from accessing the infinite power of gods ever again. While I believe in the future there might be individuals advocating for killing all Shards, I think we will see restoration of Splintered Shards and slow merger until someone holds all 16 of them once again. However this is a plotline for the space era of Cosmere, but some foreshadowing and set up has to appear in SA for it to work. Will Shards merger happen in WaT? I doubt it. I think we can at best see Honor being restored and someone Ascending to it, but not Honor merging with Odium - that's something I would expect to happen in SA10 - the final solution for Odium's problem. Of course, this is all highly speculative, but I think it makes a lot of sense to see another merger on Roshar. The merger doesn't have to be a good thing, Sazed saved Scadrial by merging Ruin with Preservation, on Roshar merging Honor and Odium might stop the war, but might not change Odium's plans and it would only make him stronger, more dangerous. Peace? With Taravangian, who wants to save them all? No. Chances for peace died with Rayse.

It was described in the in-world Words of Radiance book and Taravangian used it in his Diagram. Moreover Nohadon used it during Dalinar's vision so it's likely the term was mentioned in the Way of Kings as well. He might have either learned it from those books, or deduce it during his single day of transcendent brilliancy. WoK ch 60: WoR ch 35 epigraphs: WoR ch 77 epigraphs:

This is an interesting and well written theory, I like it, however I doubt that Ishar's Honorblade is a Dawnshard. Dawnshards are one of the most invested objects in Cosmere - in fact they seem to be more invested than Nightblood is. Nomad by just being a Dawnshard was more invested than Susebron and in another WoB Brandon slightly implied that Susebron and Nightblood might be similarly invested. Personally I doubt Nightblood is more invested than a Dawnshard - Nightblood is already full and can't fit anything more inside of him, a Dawnshard should be more invested. This means If Ishar's blade was a Dawnshard, Nightblood should be unable to chip it. The fact that it was chipped means it's something less invested than a Nightblood is, a regular Honorblade, not a Dawnshard. Another problem is that Ishar's Honorblade was weakened by Honor's restrictions put on Surges after humanity arrived on Roshar. If that was a Dawnshard, Honor should have been unable to restrict it at all. Honor's restrictions are now equally fading from both Dalinar's abilities and Ishar's Honorblade. Ishar is not capable of doing things he wasn't able to do before.RoW ch 111: Lastly, I don't think you can use a Dawnshard on its own - you need to have access to an invested art. If Ishar's Honorblade was just a Dawnshard, it wouldn't do anything, it wouldn't be able to bind, you would need to be a Surgebinder first to use it. Dawnshards are Commands, but Commands are just one necessary ingredient of Surgebinding, along with Intent and Investiture. Rysn can't use her Dawnshard at its full potential because she lacks any other ability and the Dawnshard in her is just passive. Bondsmithing still requires Stormlight to perform, you need to use Stormlight to create Connections, you need investiture to bind - without the ability to acquire Investiture, you can't use the Bind Dawnshards in the same way Bondsmiths use their powers. Anyone who holds Ishar's Honorblade will become a Bondsmith, no matter if they are Surgebinders, or some random farmer from Herdaz. Dawnshard ch 19: Seems like the Night Brigade never found Hoid, instead they want to find him after catching Sig, TSM ch 10:

I believe this is the correct description. The future sight does exist, but the future isn't deterministic, it's probabilistic. On short enough timescales it just becomes deterministic (Atium). You always have to deal with probabilities when looking into the future, sometimes your ability might show you just one, most likely possibility, but it doesn't mean it will happen (Renarin). Cultivation saw a probability of Taravangian becoming Odium, she had no idea if this would happen, she only hoped that her gift would be enough to push Taravangian in this direction. On the other hand Taravangian created the Diagram using only his intelligence and logic - option 4. He created the Diagram without any access to the Spiritual Realm or Fortune, just his mind. Yes, but he didn't use that to create the Diagram, just to get some more information to interpret the Diagram correctly.

I don't think there are other glyphs scripts corresponding to different languages, glyphs are a Vorin thing (at least now) and there is just one system, symbols are memorized, not read. Everyone on Roshar would use the same symbol to represent the same idea, no matter what language they use. No wonder Nohadon was able to recognize glyphs of those people as those were the same glyphs used in Alethkar.