Vortaan

19 minutes ago, SLNC said:

 

Maybe the fact, that he redeemed himself for that? That he also was responsible for the fact, that Elhokar wasn't actually assassinated and almost died for it? Besides, IIRC he pulled out of Graves' operation, before he knew details of the plan or the timeline. He figured that out when it was almost too late. He could have said, that there would be an attempt, but not much more and those attempts aren't really that rare either, so I'm not so sure if he would have been taken seriously.

I'm sorry but this is the point where I need to ask you to seriously ask if it's realistic to leave Kaladin in any kind of position of authority when he decided "The king threw me in jail so it's ok to have him assassinated." Because that is what literally happened, and just because you changed your mind doesn't mean that betraying the trust of people who put their LIVES in your hands is remotely ok. For all we know Kaladin STILL hasn't told Dalinar that Moash is an enemy and that might have huge repercussions now that Moash is effectively the new Assassin in White.

4 hours ago, SLNC said:

His biggest character flaw is his hate for lighteyes, which he is overcoming, but which had real consequences for him in WoR. Syl died. He literally lost all of his powers for the last part of WoR. He redeemed himself and regained Syl, but that is not the same as consequences just not being there, like how it is for Adolin.

The power-up in WoK was not because of a character flaw, but rather because he spoke the Second Ideal and he made the choice to rescue Dalinar. He could have just turned around and left him to die. That is not what I'm criticizing. I'm criticizing, that Adolin is constantly in over his head and always just... survives. That's it.

That is a big difference.

Kaladin commits dereliction of duty that resulted in the king of Alethkar suffering a possibly mortal wound... and is not thrown in jail, reprimanded, or punished in any way. How exactly did he suffer any kind of consequences for hiding the fact that one of the kings' guards was a possible assassin again?

5 hours ago, Extesian said:

Great first theory thread. Add to that list this

 I think the lack of a vessel for Honor will have huge implications as well. Ishar may be insane but I fear there's truth in that statement and surgebinders will become far stronger than they should. 

I'm hesitantly on board with this but I'm not sure -why- that's a thing. Honor binds thing, but that's not limiting them. Honor being dead shouldn't change anything unless there was some kind of oath between all Radiants and Honor to limit their powers. Adding to weird things Radiants do, by the way, is Kaladin creating that windbreak against the storm that Syl didn't think was possible.

Just now, SLNC said:

Care to elaborate?

Kaladin screws up constantly and has yet to face any real consequences for it. He gets powerups to save the day in Wok and WoR, and while he fails to do so in OB, he gets saved by Dalinar, and then by Rock. Kaladin's flaws are there but put him in no real jeopardy, no matter how bleak his situation. I mean that's exactly the things that bother you about Adolin correct?

2 minutes ago, SLNC said:

The point is not that Adolin is perfect, but rather, that the fact, that he comes out of every of these situations unscathed makes his flaws pointless. You never have to fear for Adolin, because whatever happens someone is going to be there to rescue him. His impulsiveness brings him in a bad situation again? Well, either he gets saved or no one cares (like him killing Sadeas). It makes him dangerously Mary Sue like, because it never gives the reader the feeling to have to worry about Adolin.

A flaw is only a flaw, if it bears consequences. But that is only how I see it.

You must really hate Kaladin then. 

So I'll break this down question by question... cause there are kind of a lot of question. 

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

My read on this is that the Heralds tap out of torture time in Damnation/Braise then come to Roshar, presumably ahead of the Unmade to train new radiants.

Then the Unmade come back, somehow power up the parsh (via BAM? void spren?) and fight the humans.

Then, do the humans win when they defeat Odium's champion? Does that mean in the past? 

Odium did not have a champion in past conflicts. That's a new development that Honor threw out there to try and bait Odium into a contest that would be more fair for humanity. The Unmade also do not go to Damnation in between Desolations. We have reports of them being active by the Radiants post-Last Desolation, and they are active in the current time, pre-Everstorm.

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

What does a win mean as far as what happens to the non-humans? (Not the wildlife)

If Odium's champion loses, and all the Heralds are  killed, do all the Unmade go back to Braise? Parsh warriors too?

Or just the Heralds? Maybe the Unmade don't all die, they just jump to the Cognitive realm and then do the electric slide over to Braise? 

Odium has to keep his deals. If Odium wins a Desolation, he presumbly shatters Cultivation and leaves Roshar, with the Singers in charge. I suspect that won't turn out how they expect. Odium has never had a champion before, the Unmade don't go to Braize, and the only Singers that would go to Damnation are the Fused.

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

If the Unmade are cognitive shadows, some are less sapient and can be in the physical realm without a body/vessel and others more aware and sapient who need a body/vessel to operate (I guess they have all been seen on Roshar in "spren" form, just seems some are smaller versions of themselves as seen on Roshar vs larger versions as seen in the Cognitive realm, I'm talking more avl out being able to use powers, their form of void lashings, etc).

I'm not sure what the question is here. All we know for sure about Unmade is that they are Splinters of Odium. Beyond that, if they are Cognitive Shadows fused with a Splinter, corrupted spren, or what, we have no idea. For most intents and purposes, there's incredibly little difference between a spren and a Cognitive Shadow. Both are highly invested Cognitive entities. Spren have less freedom in their actions than Cognitive Shadows, but that's really the major difference from my point of view.

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Is Damnation in the cognitive realm?

It might be the Cognitive Realm of Braize, or Braize might be Damnation. No way of knowing yet. Ashyn might be Damnation as well, since the land is burning.

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Because the Heralds are porting in their bodies, they aren't cognitive shadows.  They are akin to worldhoppers, though a forced transfer rather than voluntary, but moving at the time of death and somehow when they tap out from Braise to Roshar. This seems to be predicated on the deal between the Heralds, Honor and Odium (and maybe Cultivation). But for the Heralds, is it a forced trip from spot a, to the cognitive realm, to spot b? T'aln certainly wasn't in any condition to wander through the cognitive realm. Kinda picturing Braise spren bouncers bodily dragging him through and then giving him a heave ho through a portal. 

And what about the parsh warriors/people? 

Heralds are Cognitive Shadows with a Physical aspect. Their bodies might be solidified Investiture, much like people's bodies turn into in Shadesmar. Singers do not leave Roshar after Desolations... probably. Otherwise their presence in modern Roshar is unexplained.

15 hours ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Since this is not a true desolation, we don't really know what's up with the "leftovers"; the parshendi/Listeners and parshmen.  If the true desolation was ended, would the parsh people have left Roshar?

Would they be devolved? 

If there was a true end to the last desolation, and if the parsh warriors of old were taken off world, would the current Listeners and parshmen have been affected (again, if the parsh get taken offworld) since they were either without spren, in dullform, or somehow affected by BAM's imprisonment and either voidsprenless, depowered, spiritually lobotomized, tweased, or had their Connection severed?

Also, we know the Everstorm is new, so how did the Parsh get powered up back then in past desolations? Just BAM empowering? Did they have voidspren (seems likely), and then when Odium lost, what happened? The voidspren got flushed? The actual vessels/people/parsh went off world?

This is a true Desolation in current Roshar. There are Fused, Regals, and Odium's active. Singers do not leave Roshar, it's the Fused that are forced to leave after a Desolation ends. I have no real idea what devolved means in this context. BAM being imprisoned is almost certainly what caused the Singers to become the Parshmen. Previously when Fused were killed, they went back to Damnation, and then had to come back to Roshar. Now they just hang out in the Everstorm. Voidspren probably had to go back post-desolations with the Fused, since Regal forms showing up outside a Desolation was remarkable. And again: Singers do not leave Roshar after a Desolation.

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Adolin, as he stands by the end of OB, is a character without flaws. His only, only visible flaw would be "he is too nice", too nice with his father whom was abusing towards him and his brother as a teenagers (and childhood for Renarin). Hence, if Adolin turns out "saving Maya" by virtue of being "so nice" it just "works", then I personally feel it would be a great disservice to the character and to the story. It is also dangerously close to the Mary Sue character, this seemingly perfect character who's only flaw is something benign such "oups I am clumsy". 

 

So I have to disagree with this reading of Adolin. He's not Dalinar or Kaladin or Shallan, but those three are extreme examples of how people break. Adolin is the heir to a highprince and he's seen how Dalinar acts. I think Adolin has made a conscious effort throughout his life to not let loss bother him for long. I suspect that is extremely unhealthy in the long term, but it's how he deals with things. Adolin is far from perfect. He is impulsive and not nearly as tactically brilliant as Dalinar, and we see both of those flaws land him in situations where he almost gets himself killed in WoR and OB. He's also developing an inferiority complex about his lack of Radiant powers, which is a completely logical flaw for someone like him to have. Adolin also has a seemingly large distrust in his own abilities. It's there in WoK and WoR and is coming more to the foreground in OB. He holds himself to the idealized vision of Dalinar that Evi gave him, and finds himself always falling short of that perceived mark.

4 hours ago, Dahak said:

Explodomancy, it appears. From the blast craters in the prologue to the first book they seem to be the artillery order.

Adolin. Hoid. Szeth. Shallan.

Meant more Ideals than powers. I'm not sure if their Ideals would have led them to be front line troops or special ops. They might actually be godzilla threshold, since Pattern says that the problem is getting them to stop breaking things.

Gratzi Graywatch

1 minute ago, Ymawgat said:

There is the evidence I just provided: The stormfather is a CS and existed at the same time as Honour, therefore it makes more sense to assume our idea of CS was at leas partially incorrect than it does to make up a pretty complicated story about how the SF became a cognitive shadow but was something else before that (since Brandon calls the SF a C.Shadow with much more consistency than he calls him a splinter).

Stormfather directly says to Dalinar that he wasn't what he is now when Honor was still alive. Also when Dalinar summons Honor's perpendicularity, he tells the Stormfather that they are different. Dalinar, and Honor, and the Stormfather, something that did not exist the last time the Stormfather was bonded to a human. Since we're pretty sure Honor was alive during the Recreance, then the Stormfather can't have been a CS when Honor was still alive.

4 minutes ago, Ymawgat said:

A: what is your actual evidence for all/any of this?

B: how is this stronger evidence/reasoning for the evidence and reasoning that I've already given?

C: How is this actually relevant to the original topic of the thread, and the theory of mine that you quoted?

A: Show us any actual confirmed CS of a person that is still alive that isn't Honor, since the timeline there is extremely fuzzy. You're occam's razor is making a lot of assumptions, so please give a secondary source.

B: It's stronger reasoning because there is no evidence at all that you can make a CS from something that still has a physical aspect. We have seen absolutely no evidence of it.

C: The topic of the thread is about the Unmade, which someone suggested were CS of Rayse. Rayse can't make CS of himself, much less nine of them, which is how this whole conversation started.

On 12/15/2017 at 6:02 PM, Ymawgat said:

I think the Sibling (the third bondsmith spren after the stormfather and the nightwatcher) is the tenth Unmade and also Odium's/Rayse's cognitive shadow.

Evidence for this includes:

• Sja-Anat wanting to switch teams, thereby providing a precedent (well, other way around chronologically but still) for another unmade switching sides.
• It's super weird that there are only nine unmade, especially seeing as there are 10 voidbinding surges and types according to the voidbinder chart.
• Occam's razor says that the bondsmiths actually only bond to one, super rare type of spren rather than three completely different types/races of spren, ergo: cognitive shadow spren; the shadows of each shard in the oathpact.

Also how did you get that word in yellow beside your post title?

I don't think you can split off CS from a living person. We haven't seen anyone do anything similar to that, and although the second letter implies the author is making Avatars of themselves, we have no idea what that entails. Are they separate entities or connected or... who knows. 

If Gavilar's perfect gem was something he had made, how could BAM have gotten into it? I find it more likely she was trapped beforehand and the perfect gem Gavilar had made was A) not the sphere he gave to Szeth and B ) something he made to trap BAM again after he'd gotten the Heralds to come out of hiding.

Kalak also seems like the least confidant Herald we've interacted with so far. Taln is... Taln, Jezerin might have been broken but he still held himself like a king, Ash is a lot like her dad, and Ishar is apparently confidant enough to consider himself Honor's heir. Kalak is more unsure. He's also the Herald that founded the Willshapers and that scene is the collective breaking of the Herald's will.

3 minutes ago, Greywatch said:

Oh, for real? Do you have a chapter/WoB, I wanna go see.

It's likely given their Ideals that Windrunners and Stonewardens threw themselves into combat a lot. The Stonewarden record from those humming gemstones says something about looking to sacrifice himself and Windrunners are all about protection. I can see Skybreakers being involved a lot too, depending on what they swore to in their Ideals. If we're just going by what orders would have been most likely to be on the front lines, I can easily see those three from the orders we have examples of. I'm still not really sure what Dustbringers were about, and Edgedancers were probably more involved in helping the common people. Truthwatchers, Elsecallers, and Lightweavers seem to have been regarded as the more scholarly Radiants and while I'm certain some of them fought, maybe even a majority, they were probably like Jasnah, Renarin, and Shallan, fighting in specific missions where their skills would be useful. Spec ops instead of frontline fighters.

20 minutes ago, Korbin said:

I don't think that we should say that only one type is important. I think they are all important. And just because the windrunners are good physically I think we should understand that this is a war on many fronts as well as in many ways. Each order can help in its own way.

That's not what I said. I said they need scouts, and they are aware what Kaladin can do. It makes sense that they'd try to recruit the Order they know about that has immediately useful skills.

4 hours ago, Calderis said:

Except that unlike the blades, without gemstones the plate is completely non-functional. It's a locked up statue that no one can wear to fight in. 

The blades were gem free for an amount of time that we don't know, but prior to that they were just physical blades that could not be dismissed and summoned. The gemstones were added later, and the bonding ability was discovered through "an accident of ornamentation," according to Navani. Gemstones were added to plate shortly after. 

This might be why so much Plate is missing, actually. IT took some time for gems to be affixed to Shardblades didn't it? Any Plate that didn't have gemstones would have probably run out of power quickly and then just been a useless statue with maybe a person trapped in it

Just now, RShara said:

Other than being the sister-in-law of the guy with 10,000+ Breaths

Valid point. But fifth heightening is 2000 of those. Pretty sure Susebron, nice as he is, wouldn't give that up. Maybe to Vasher, but Vasher doesn't seem to have much Breath at all

She also can't be Fifth Heightening. That's extremely noticeable even to people without any Breath. She's probably First or Second, if she hasn't gained any new Breath since the end of Warbreaker. She might be keeping Breath in her clothing to keep it from being noticeable, but Fifth Heightening is a lot of Breath and she had absolutely no resources at the end of Warbreaker to buy any more.

Also: Windrunners are the most tactically viable order of KR for their current needs. They need scouts and something to counter the flying Fused, so it makes sense that they are focusing their efforts on finding more Windrunners. 

T's group opened the oathgate for the Singers, and the corrupted spren work for Odium. They aren't going to destroy his forces

7 hours ago, Cenanin said:

I still don't know why people say a Radiant spren was following Eshonai around, and there's no proof that Timbre is an existing Radiant spren. 

How will book 4 be Eshonai's PoV if she's dead, which she obviously was.

Also: if Eshonai turned into a spren, how did she manage it? Fused are invested by Odium to pull off their trick. How would Eshonai have managed the same without intervention from Cultivation or Honor? If Timbre is Eshonai, then why does bonding with Venli not destroy Venli like the other Fused do to their hosts? There are many many problems with the idea that Eshonai is Timbre. I thought the same when the preview chapters were coming out but there is a lot of evidence in the book as to who Timbre actually is that disproves all of it.

6 minutes ago, Ookla the Hatter said:

I totally get that. I just think that we can go ahead and assume that Odium is able to leave Roshar by the end of Book 5.

I think the "back 5" are going to be about bringing other Shards in to vanquish Odium once and for all once it is revealed that Odium is no longer bound to Roshar and presents a threat to all the other Shards of the Cosmere. You'll note that the letters all cite Rayse's imprisonment as a reason not to get involved. I suspect that their responses will change without that excuse.

In short, Book 5 ends with a win for Odium. The remainder of the series is the story of how Dalinar's Radiants snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Even if that's the case, the next cosmere book is Lost Metal. So getting any kind of appearance of Odium ruins the end of the front five of SA

7 minutes ago, Ookla the Hatter said:

I think we may very well see his influence, but that he won't make an appearance on screen. It will all be vague enough that we might still be questioning the identity of the Shard behind Trellium. I think that story arc is more likely to refer to the attacking Shard as "the enemy" and set up Kelsier as a force/personality to unite the Northern and Southern Scadrians. It will probably set them up for the next series on Scadrial as a potential space-faring culture/people. FOr all we know that might be Keliser's (but not necessarily Harmony's) solution to the looming threat of "the enemy."

I'm not sure whether Brandon has abandoned his plan to do a 1980's-era set of books on Scadrial as he mentioned once upon a time, but by the '80s IRL we had already been to the moon and first started to worry about "star wars" with the Russians.

Basically, I'm saying there's enough there for the finale of the Wax & Wayne era of Mistborn without going all Hero of Ages and making it a battle for Olympus/Scadrial. Properly done, that conflict can be built up in The Lost Metal but the actual conflict can be saved for the next Mistborn series.

What I'm saying is that these two series are running pretty close to each other in the timeline and seeing Odium or his influence on Scadrial ruins any tension for SA, especially since we have 6 more books that take place close enough together that Jasnah is a main character for book 8 or so.

39 minutes ago, Ookla the Hatter said:

Oooh, I just had another thought...

Odium's big temptation/sales pitch is "it's not your fault; ___ made you do those things." How much would that have found purchase with Lessie after Harmony had (more or less) forced her to stage her death to manipulate Wax? She would have certainly wrestled with a lot of guilt over the pain her death inflicted on Wax whom she genuinely loved. I think that "it's not your fault; Harmony made you do those things" would have been nearly impossible for her to resist.

Assuming that Autonomy & Odium are aligned in attacking Sazed/Scadrial, winning her allegiance with Odium's passion and then directing her to behave subversively makes perfect sense.

I mean I doubt that would find purchase because it's the literal truth, Paalm knows it. Harmony took direct control over her, she had no choice, and then instead of suiciding she removed a spike and did her whole kill god plan. I really doubt we are going to see Odium's influence on Scadrial at this point since Lost Metal comes out before SA4.