Brightlord M. Alhstrom

I agree completely. My point was that with the similarity of timeline between the two lockups, there might be a correlation/causation somewhere, which would reinforce the idea that Odium was locked up using similar means to the way Ruin was locked up.

Now I'm really interested in all of this. And if you guys don't mind, I have questions: - What says that Bondsmith can't be made from normal Honorspren (that's the right term right?). Where did you guys get the idea that Bondsmith mean mega spren? - Why would you think that there could only be one from each order? The Visions show an army of KR dropping their swords and leaving. To me this seems to imply that each order was large (anywhere from 10-40). What am I missing? Did I read that vision wrong? - If the other orders number in the dozens, but you only have 3 bondsmith, does that mean that Bondsmith are OP compared to other KR?

Do you mind giving supporting evidence or linking to a thread on the subject? I don't remember anything in the books about there being a lack of Bondsmith spren.

Just to throw in another couple ideas to support that: - It is possible that there is a relationship between the plan to trap Odium and the plan to trap Ruin. I'm not sure which one happened first, but considering that there are at least a couple thousand years between Ruin's lockup and MB Era1, I think Ruin got trapped first. So, what if Honor and Cultivation became aware of Ruin being trapped and based their plan on that? It's a stretch, but possible. - I had a conflict with this in that I'm not sure how Odium could have broken the Heralds while locked up, but I actually am starting to think that the Unmade are the ones who broke the Heralds. In a way this makes sense in a lot of ways. I think Odium may have intentionally created the Unmade when he realized he was trapped. And he created them with the ability built in for him to communicate with them even while within his cell. Thus everything Odium has "done" on Roshar has actually been done by the Unmade. This would explain why the Listener's songs speak so much of the Unmade, but not of Odium. The Unmade would make a lot of sense as the listener's terrible "gods" in that case.

One problem with this theory: If I get the mechanics right, when the KR betrayed their oaths, their spren died, but their corpses remained as the Shardblades. So how could you have any spren who have held a bond and not died? The only other case I can think of is if their bond wasn't a KR bond, but one to a Listener, but I'm fairly sure that the KR and Listeners use different types of spren.

Unless you have a situation similar to the Preservation/Ruin one. Honor filled Preservation's shoes in making the prison. and Odium is the prisoner. The difference is that where with R&P, it was only a matter of time before Ruin went free, in this case Cultivation can make it much more permanent by personally keeping the door locked. So now we have the Unmade coming in, and somehow their job is to find a way to counter Cultivation and free Odium.

In my defense, there were a solid 5 years between my reading of Warbreaker and SA, and both only got read once. So while the fact that you have a black sword talking about evil that's pouring out smoke should be a giveaway, I didn't remember much about nightblood in the first place. Since I've started doing Cosmere stuff, I've reread Warbreaker twice, though, so I think I would have caught it myself if my friend hadn't told me. As for saying yes.... I tend to be suspicious, and would probably ask a couple questions first.

Guys. Not only did I not catch any of the hints that Zahel was Vasher, but I didn't catch that the sword was Nightblood. Seriously. It wasn't until a friend of mine mentioned that Nightblood was in the book that I noticed. Now, at the time of Reading WoK and WoR, I hadn't ready any Cosmere theory but I had read all of the Cosmere books, and was aware that worldhoppers were possible. Still can't believe I didn't catch any of it. I guess it doesn't help that I don't own the two SA books, and have only read them once each.

Except that the two changes are opposite. One goes from a useful song to a useless one, because the form is peaceful one. The other goes from a warning song, to a more enticing one, because the form is one that would be useful in war. Now, considering that Brandon knows about the Cosmere community, I'm fairly sure he intentionally leaves us with a few goose chases like this. It does a couple things: 1. It makes the Cosmere cooler, and the 17th Sharders more numerous and more excited. Thus you have more guys guarantied to buy his books (going a bit too far with it, but you get the idea). 2. It keeps us from guessing everything. If we have 20 avenues to follow, we'll follow most of them. If we only had 2-3, we follow those 2-3 very thoroughly. This way, he can hide the main plotline among other plot related, or Cosmere related hunts. And I agree, this specific one goes a LOT deeper. I mean, this is Brandon Sanderson!!!!!

I doubt it. If you are right, it would mean that whenever a Shard died, all of the investiture that that shard expended would come zooming back. Which means that any investiture on Sel pre D&D splintering wouldn't be there (um, maybe i guess), and that when preservation died, all allomancers would lose their allomancy, as well as the mists disappearing. Or on Roshar, that all of the spren who are splinters of Honor would disappear. I mean, remember, Investiture is a zero-sum-game. If you get new investiture, it means someone else lost it. If a new vessel meant that he regained all of the investiture, then that would mean divesting from a planet every time a shard died, and we'd have noticed that.

Well, Gold and Electrium are pretty useless if you aren't a Forger and Atium is no longer a thing. Aluminum is another one. I could also see Hoid giving up Chromium and Nicrosil. Unless those two metals apply to investiture in general, or he intends to work with allomancers a lot, then it would make sense to give those up for a double dose of a couple others. And I could see Hoid boosting the 4 mental metals, as well as tin.

Too much for me to write it all tonight, but I wanted to throw in my tidbits: 1. I think Rayse needs to die. As a Cosmere antagonists, he can't grow any bigger, since he refuses to take up other shards, and his plan of taking out all of the other shards isn't going to happen now that Harmony exists. So, Rayse is doomed to die. When is the only question. And I think that SA is the best option. He is already a part of the story, and it's a glorious setup to kill him off. 2. If Roshar is going to be destroyed, there needs to be a gap between the moment when it becomes inevitable and the moment when the planet finally blows up. Maybe at the end of book 5 Rayse is dead, and Roshar is slowly dying. Maybe whoever took up Odium is even worse than Rayse and set something in motion to destroy Roshar? I think it's unlikely, but possible. Then the next 5 SA books would be how they survive. Might work, but I feel like it's too jury rigged. 3. I think that the current issue (the desolations and voidbringers/listeners) will be resolved, one way or another by the end of book 5. I think that 6-10 will deal with the originators of the Desolation more than the Listeners themselves. So, dealing with the Unmade and Odium (whoever his shardholder might be). I just feel like the threat level of a 10 book epic needs to go up throughout the series, and it's hard to bring the scale up from what the Desolations threaten us with. (Who knows, maybe the results of the SA will include the "cataclysm" on Ashyn that forces them into the flying cities.)

You know, that's really interesting. So, if Odium got D&D to fight each other, without their knowing it was him, he could ambush them when they are weakened and splinter them both that way. I don't really see that happening with Cultivation and Honor though. Their relationship seems like it might, but probably wouldn't lead to all out fighting. If you add in that the result was a splintered Honor, a weakened Odium, and (as far as we know) unscathed Cultivation, then what might have happened is Odium trying the same trick, but both H&C catching on, then using it to ambush Odium, with Honor taking point like a good honorable guy. And this would explain why he didn't go for Preservation and Ruin, since they already hate each other, already fight each other, but are at an impasse. Plus all the stuff @The One Who Connects said about Preservation and Ruin.

Honestly, this reminds me of Mistborn Era 1. I mean, you have the prophesies twisted by Ruin to release him from his prison. It would make sense for him to do the same thing to the Listener's songs to make sure that the forms that they actually find are the ones that will lead to war. Artform is a form that would only take away from a warlike people. At the same time, you also have smokeform: Though I feel like it applies to this one too. Most of the Songs of Secret are about the Unmade, and a couple speak of avoiding specific forms, like this one. However, while the Song of History's Stanza on Smokeform is very similar to it's Song of Secrets equivalent, it goes from heavy warning to avoid it all costs to saying that it is powerful, and ought to come again, despite being from an Unmade source. So, Artform, a form that does not lend itself to war is made less likely to be discovered, while Smokeform, a form probably as dangerous as Stormform, if not worse, has it's song altered to seem less evil, and more enticing.

I think it might have been Cultivation. I could see Cultivation being a shard that would try to grow power, maybe finding ways to increase Investiture, or otherwise threaten Odium. Also, lets keep in mind that while Ruin and Preservation were enemies, Honor and Cultivation were lovers (at least, I think I remember a WoB saying that). It would seem much more likely for Honor and Cultivation to become a dual-shard than for Ruin and Preservation to do so. I think that Odium may have gone after Cultivation, but Honor (oh, dear honorable Honor) stepped in to protect her, sacrificing himself to keep Odium contained. Or something similar. Point is, the nature of the relationship between Honor and Cultivation, as well as their Intents would make it more likely (if still unlikely) for them to merge than Ruin and Preservation (which seemed extremely unlikely). I mean, who could see Preservation killing Ruin? And Ruin would be more likely to Splinter Preservation than take it up. The only way you'd get those two together is if both died and a third party took them up (which is what happened). So, to recap. Odium went after Ambition first (no duh, biggest threat), then the dual shard worlds. He started with Devotion and Dominion, because Dominion is also a threat, and I could see Dominion exercising power over Devotion. Plus, unlike Ruin, Dominion would take up the power instead of splintering it. Then he went after Honor/Cultivation, because they might willfully join, and left Ruin/Preservation for last as they seemed the least likely to unite.

Well, if it wasn't for the passage from Elantris, I think it could have made for a really cool (if wacky) theory. But then, we already have Legion to keep us occupied in that direction.

From Elantris: Emphasis mine. So, this seems to be heavily implying that the Dor does not have sentience. And considering how long the Dor had been in that state when Elantris happened, I don't see the Dor gaining Sentience without something else entering the picture.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see Odium killed, and his shard taken up by another antagonist. The way I see it, Odium's reluctance to take up other shards makes it hard for him to really become a bigger threat than he is. He really is at the height of his potential, especially with Harmony in the picture, being close to twice as powerful as odium. So, what I see happening in the general Cosmere plot is another "Evil" shard killing Odium and taking up his shard. Thus you would have an Evil Shard, but a much greater threat than Odium, since this shard would actually be able to eventually completely rule the world. How this fits in with the SA plotline, I'm not sure. But I think you might see Odium's death here.

Well, there is also a WoB saying that at this point the Dor is a single entity. But what you are saying does make some sense. My problem with it is that I think it would make more sense for it to form a sentience with a very chaotic intent, like Discord, or Conflict, or something to that extent. Maybe Dilemma? I mean, I'm fairly sure there is a WoB saying that Harmony could have become Discord or some other confrontational intent if a different Vessel had taken it up.

In that case, you might want to look at ways you could use AonDor, or Forgery to do the same. For AonDor, I think Aon Shao (Transform) might be your best bet, though if Aon Ien (Heal) also applies to corpses, then that could have some promising results. The nice thing is that once you had the required modifiers memorized and optimized, you might be able to carve in a permanent version of the Aon, which would mean you wouldn't need to rewrite it over and over again. You could have a Phantom factory up in no time. The only concern would be taking the Phantoms off-world. From the way Dilaf undid Raoden's Illusion, it would seem that some applications of Aon Shao keep relying on the Dor, instead of doing a one time change. However, Aon Ien was used to heal foreigners who came to Elantris for healing. I would be surprised if the healing was undone when they left Arelon. So some effects of Aons are permanent, and others are location-dependent. Forgery. If Forgery worked on other planets, or if you could used other sources of Investiture (like stormlight) to power it, then you could use forgery on Nalthis to change the history of a Lifeless into a Phantom. Just a bit of a change in which body got chosen to become a Phantom. And, yea, I'm totally game for doing OP stuff by mixing different magic systems in cool ways. Though this throws in another couple question for Brandon: 13. If an Elantrian used Aon Shao to turn Stone into Meat, or vice versa, then you took the transformed object off-world, would it revert? And if you ate the meat, then went off-world, would you die, as part of your body turned to stone? 14. Could you use Aon Ien to turn flesh into something else? Like stone? 15. Could you power Forgery through another source of Investiture? Like stormlight?

Are you thinking about awakening? Because this would be a very easy way to turn a corpse into a statue, which would mean that you'd have a much easier time creating Kalad Phantoms. Now, it would probably take more than 1 breath to awaken one of these Phantoms, but considering that they were originally bodies, I might be wrong. It would be especially interesting if you could turn the flesh into stone, and the blood into ichor-alcohol. Or maybe some stronger material instead of stone.

OK, so after some WoB hunting, I'm giving up on this theory. The theory was based on the idea that There was a difference between the investiture in the Seons and the investiture of the Dor. And that the Seons/Skaze were the shards, while the Dor was the Shard's power. That falls apart in view of this WoB that addresses this subject specifically: (Spoiler for size) So. Where I had assumed that the reason the Dor didn't have sentience is because you need something more than just large amounts of investiture to gain sentience, Brandon goes ahead and breaks that. Now the questions behind this thread becomes: What really is stopping the Dor from attaining sentience? How could you pull the Dor into yourself without dying or going mad? I actually really like the "Use the Shardpool" idea.

What does I337 mean? Something about Hoid?

I'm saying that you don't the majority of the power, you need the majority of the shard. Combine all of the Seons/Skaze and you would have the entire shard, minus most of it's power. I'm saying that once you have that, you've ascended. Once you've ascended, you can worry about reclaiming your power from the CR. That make sense? I'm saying that even if you had the entirety of the Dor in you (and didn't go mad or die) you wouldn't ascend. Why? Because You'd have the shard's power, but you wouldn't have the shard. It would be like Swallowing all of the Atium, then taking up Ruin's Shardpool, which Ruin is still alive. You'd have his power (if you survived that much investiture), but you wouldn't become Ruin. He already exists. I'm saying that the Dor is the Investiture, and that the Seons/Skaze are the shard. I'm saying that there is a very real difference between the investiture and the shard.