aemetha

That's kind of my point. The longer a good man or woman holds a shard, the less of a man or woman they become. Instead they become an embodiment of an unchecked aspect of personality, which is always bad for the inhabitants. Harmony is actually two aspects in opposition, making him impotent, but I think it's a mistake to dismiss inaction as not harmful. On the contrary, Scadrial seems to be lined up by some malevolent force that Harmony should be acting to prevent, but can't. In all likelihood the malevolent force is there precisely because of the shards Harmony holds, and so the inhabitants are worse off than they would be had they no shards at all.

It was always Mr T's plan to join Odium. He sought to unite as much of the world under his control, and then negotiate with Odium from a position of strength. Odium wasn't having any of that though, and Mr T ended up with significantly less than he had hoped for.

Why do you think Honor needs to be reformed? Honor is a shard. Shards are, as a rule, not particularly good for lesser beings. Preservation dumped Scadrial into hundreds of years of stagnation. Ruin tried to blow it up. Harmony is increasingly completely incapable of action at all. Autonomy closed a whole planet. Honor by the admission of his Spren cared more about the letter of the oaths than the spirit. Cultivation intervened with Dalinar not out of compassion, but because she had to intervene, she had to make him grow, and so she found a way to do it that suited her own ends. Odium is, well, Odium (Passion who smoked too much crack). Shards are not good guys. The best outcome for any shardworld is for the shards to be blown up completely, or reformed into a functional, multi-faceted, proper deity that isn't driven to the extremes of a single aspect. Any other outcome just inevitably ends in suffering for the people of the shardworlds when the shards lose themselves to their shardic intent.

Hmm, they wouldn't actually be splinters, since a splinter means it never was alive. I will adjust the theory. I think they are cognitive shadows anchored to a piece of Odiums investiture that was broken off in his battle with Ambition.

Did anyone else notice a lot of parallels between the voidbringers and the shades? Red eyes when they become enraged, exactly what happened to the humans and listeners under Odiums influence. Shades respond to fire. Odium on several occasions is shown as an inferno. Shedding of blood might be considered the end result of passion gone too far. Running - people run when they need to get somewhere with urgency, which implies a certain level of passion. The Shades demonstrate a level of malevolence that we see in the voidspren. Threnody was influenced by the battle between Ambition and Odium. We also know Odium has been wounded in the past and does not wish to repeat the experience. There is also some suggestion that the Shades do not restrict themselves strictly to Threnody. I posit that the shades of Threnody are in fact splinters of Odium (or perhaps splinters of Odium combined with splinters of Ambition). It just seems like a lot of similarities. I'm probably reaching, but the similarity stood out to me, especially the eyes changing colour when enraged and the symbolism of fire.

My understanding was that the oathpact as a method of binding the voidspren to Braize was made redundant by the everstorm. They don't have to travel back to Braize now, they can go back to the everstorm and find a new host next time it passes over them. If that's the case, I don't really see a lot of value to having heralds at all. I think some heralds will join each of the sides and just be really, really experienced radiants, with some constrained immortality, but no greater role anymore. Odium just wanted him out of the way because he was in the past a strong leader, and he presents the same problem to Odium as the voidspren do to the radiants - killing them is largely redundant. Did I misread that part of the book?

Shortly after he single handedly apparently exceeded the death counts of Rambo parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the span of a few minutes.

With regard to Hoid, I don't think he has as much freedom to act as his character sometimes suggests. He knows where he has to be and when, but not why. He can't harm mortals (at least in the physical realm) and is really hard to hurt himself. He's also overmatched in a fair fight by Odium and actively hunted by him. He's also likely quite insane, I don't know that his eccentricity is all an act. Certainly anyone who held a grudge for the length of time has would be considered at least slightly disordered in our society. The idea that power is a synonym of freedom is fallacious in the cosmere. As the shards themselves indicate, the more power a being accumulates the more restricted its actions are. Even the invested mortals need some kind of impairment (broken) to attain that power. That's not completely at odds with real life. Power attracts opposition, which restricts freedom. Without the notice that power attracts you are free to move and act. Hoid strikes me as someone powerful trying to avoid notice so that he can act, but finding the freedom only allows the smallest of interventions.

I don't think passion (his stated intent) and excess (the effect of shardic intent on holders) incompatible with embodying and inspiring hatred and wroth. Passion has two possible outcomes in most cases. It fades, or it turns to hatred. In the case of an excess of passion in lovers, they don't stay passionate lovers for ever, they develop into something more stable and less intense or they bitterly separate. Passionate opponents in a conflict don't stay simply passionate, they find common ground or they hate and try to exterminate the opponent. Passion + excess = odium in other words.

In that case either Adonalsium created the species capable of magically interbreeding, or the species were subsequently altered to allow it. Smells like a kind of cultivation-ish thing to happen. New theory. Humans and Parshendi were created or evolved, and Cultivation altered them to cultivate a hybrid.

On the listeners being on Roshar first, and humans being there before the shards. Consider that listeners and humans have interbred, making them of the same species by real world terminology. It's possible that listeners were once humans who adapted to the ecology of Roshar, and that a second group (and third for the Iriali plus any later world hoppers) of humans arrived that hadn't adapted to the ecology. The groups are still closely enough related to interbreed. In other words, the listeners could be both the listeners and the humans that were there before the shards. Of course, it could just be a case of "Well, it's magic so real world science doesn't count" too.

Yes and no. I would say the difference between honor and good in most cases is that good never accepts that the ends justifies the means. Honor is intolerant of what it perceives as unworthy, and so fights it no matter the cost, even when the cost of fighting is greater than the cost of submission or compromise. Good on the other hand will choose the path of least harm. Hitler is an example of honor gone wrong. Adherence to a code and belief that his actions are for the greater good. Millions of people dead for a misguided and immoral goal, but that is not how he viewed it. He viewed himself as crusading for a more perfect world. He believed his goal was worthy. Nobody would ever accuse him of being good by our subjective appraisal, but you can make a convincing case that he had honor as I believe I have here. My personal theory is that the secret that broke the knights radiant involved honor fighting and essentially driving the human race on Roshar towards extinction when it wasn't necessary. The fight with Odium is a fight between shards. Odium doesn't give a whit about humans, they are beneath his notice. Odium has never that we've seen sought to exterminate humans before. The other worlds he has visited all still have flourishing human populations. Honor tied Odium to Roshar and its humans and forced them into conflict with the shard. He did that because the ends justifies the means. Because it's always better to fight, no matter the cost. It isn't though. Good demands better. Good demands that harm is minimised. So I see the conflict between Honor and Odium more as two people shouting at each other "I'm right!" "No, I'm right!". Shardic intent doesn't make any shard good, it only makes them extremist. Unless the shard is named "Compromise" they can't help but oppose each other, because they are incapable of seeing the conflict from the perspective of the others. The nature of the conflict may change according to intent such as (mistborn spoilers) and conflict always has some collateral damage that needn't have occurred if the conflict had been resolved through compromise. So no shard that has been affected by intent for any significant period can really be called good. Good is subjective, I admit that, and there will be different interpretations of it. I think ultimately almost all interpretations of good though involve minimising harm, and I don't think that is what Honor or any of the shards does.

They could be both. We don't know how heralds are made, but we do know that radiants were made by spren copying what Honor had done with the heralds. Perhaps Honor took humans he believed were deserving and created splinters of himself (likely embodying the attributes that came to be associated with the respective heralds) which the humans then bonded with. Spren saw how splinters bonded and repeated the process with other humans creating the Knights Radiant. Odium saw how Radiants and Heralds were bonded to splinters and copied the feat by creating the unmade to bond with humans and creating his own heralds.

People keep equating "honor" with our subjective interpretation of "good". Aside from that being a subjective evaluation, and that it could be seen as good to harm evil, honor the idea is an adherence to a code of conduct. If that code involves harming voidbringers or opposing Odium then it not only doesn't contradict the intent, it is required by it. Honor the being is not a good guy. He's not even a nice guy. He's not a benevolent deity. He is unyielding and inflexible and intolerant. He is far from what we call good. At least he was, Honor is dead.

A religion disabused. What is more heretical than killing god? The more invested a person the longer they hang. A certain someone has previously been quoted as saying a certain other someone sees the future more clearly than he. He became less, so much less. Lucidity and regret after a long period of delusion. Warning that investiture is more than just power. It is corrupting intent as well. His power stripped bare, he can no longer protect the one he loves. It's a metaphor, he hasn't actually killed her, he's just indirectly responsible for her yet unrealised death. This is an allusion to the ardents demands not being consistent with the things he has said, not the ardents demanding of him. Whatever the secret was that broke the knights radiant is what he refers to here. Something so monstrous every knight radiant except the one chapter that holds that what is directed of them is more important than what is right abandoned their oaths. The oathbringer was Honor. He was the origin (bringer) of the oathpact. The author of the book is Tanavast, the missing vessel of Honor stripped of Honors power. FYI I haven't checked a single WOB to evidence this theory, I just thought it was fun to creatively interpret the epigraphs this way. Feel free to immediately debunk it.

I think what Shallan is doing is something only possible for a character in a fantasy novel with the same or a similar set of abilities. What I am certain of however is that it cannot be compared with DID because of the simple fact that Shallan is consciously choosing it. DID is an unconscious response to trauma, it is not something that is at any point consciously chosen by the sufferer.

Freedom from the cycle of desolations. Odium has no interest in men except those that oppose him. He has never before bothered to exterminate all men, he exterminates shards, men are below his radar, inconsequential. Even the embodiment of divine wrath needs a certain level of stimulus to trigger it, and men just don't have that power, so he exterminates shards and moves on. Perhaps when he is done with all the shards he'll come back to deal with men, but that's a problem for the great, great [insert a million or so greats here] grandchildren of the current generation of men to worry about.

I think brave and obedient may not be guiding principles in the case of dustbringers, just the perspective of someone witnessing them at war. If you need to send someone to fight an intimidating enemy, who better than someone who lives to "break what is around them. They want to know what is inside."? To someone watching, they appear perfect soldiers, following orders and showing no fear. In reality it is a means to a mutually desired end. From the perspective of the dustbringer, they aren't being brave and obedient, they are being unleashed. Dalinar is a bondsmith, but if the blackthorn from his flashbacks was a radiant, he'd be a dustbringer.

Has anyone suggested Heleran? There are lots of theories that he's not as dead as he appears, and with Mraize name dropping him, seems like a possibility to me.

No, I don't. What the ordinary person thinks and does is a matter of community standards, it is relevant to the making of law, but not to the adjudicating of it. The adjudicating of law is a matter of impartially adjudicating whether the accused had the motive, method and opportunity to commit a crime and that the evidence supports their commission of it beyond a reasonable doubt. To properly assess that a person needs a minimum level of training in psychology, criminology, the law, criminal investigation and critical thinking. The ordinary person is just not qualified, which is why we keep institutionally killing innocent people. If it were up to me I would address the issue by replacing juries with panels of experts trained specifically for the task. It minimises the bias and ignorance that causes poor judgements. Having the ordinary person make the judgements isn't justice, it's a popularity contest. I wouldn't include sociologists. They study groups of people, not individual cases of human behaviour. They would be more relevant to the making of law, not the adjudication of it. The problem with expert testimony is because you've excluded the experts from the jury, they have no way to judge the veracity of what the expert is saying. There is also the issue that you get cherry picked experts arguing both sides of a case - is an ordinary jury member with no expertise capable of deciding which experts testimony is more broadly supported? This is why a minimum level of expertise needs to be a requirement in order to have a judgement based in fact, and not on opinion or popularity. Okay, I'm going to stop now. This is heading way off topic. I'd be happy to debate it further in a direct message if you would like to.

If we get sick, we go see someone who spent many years learning how to treat illness. If we need a weather forecast we see someone who spent many years learning to forecast the weather. If we need to organise the finances of our business we see someone who spent years studying finance and accounting. If we need to make a decision about the life, death and liberty of some accused of something we grab a phonebook, select a bunch of random names, go through a process of removing anyone qualified to make judgements about human behaviour and the law, then call it justice. I would say there is a very compelling case against using juries. Literally any other method short of having a politician make the decision would be better. The evidence against juries making correct decisions is overwhelming, impartiality is not in their nature.

Well, the incident I referred to with humans being created occurred on Scadrial, so there are at least two instances of humans having been created occurring on different worlds. I believe the third humanoid race is Siah Aimians.

Well, it might not be that clear. Species is usually defined as the largest group in which the individuals that make up the group can produce fertile offspring. By that definition listeners and humans would be of the same species. It's not that wild a proposition really given that we earthbound humans are the result of neanderthal and homo-sapiens coupling. I would assume in world that Adonalsium either created both races to be of the same species, or he created one race on many worlds and the unique ecology of Roshar led to some pretty distinct divergence from the listeners in the passage of time. Personally I lean toward the second scenario in that. Humans are widely disseminated throughout the cosmere and we have seen the creation of new humans previously so it's not a stretch to have had them created identically in different locations and then take divergent evolutionary paths while retaining the ability to interbreed. The rest of Roshars native wildlife has quite clearly adapted to the unique nature of Roshar in an evolutionary manner.

My personal belief is that listeners have little control over the spren bond. Eshonai notes in one of her chapters that most listeners prefer to use a captured spren when taking on a new form rather than taking a random chance in a storm. That seems to imply that if a listener were caught in a storm they'd be at risk of taking on a new spren bond and form - even if the spren were a voidspren. If the listeners do actually have little control over taking a new form then preventing them from taking any forms isn't as monstrous as it first appears. That doesn't excuse any treatment of them after the fact of course, but if all odium had to do to deplete the forces of honor and supplement his own forces was knock down the east wall of a storm shelter, it's easy to see something would have to be done about that.

It fits with the copycat murders too if Ialai is behind them. Son and heir kills a family rival who probably deserved it, embarrassing but not house ending. Son turns out to be a twisted serial killer, that's much harder to come back from.