Leyrann

I am. Yes, derivative and analogous are different words with different meanings, but if something is derived from something else, it is by definition comparable - or analogous. Yeah of course I am not trying to say they predate Adonalsium's Shattering or something like that. The thing is, if they were made one at a time, their number wouldn't be fixed, while if they were made all at the same time, their number would have been fixed. That's what I meant. Let's stop calling it "breaking". The only use of "broken" in reference to the Heralds is in the prelude, where Kalak sees a broken man in Jezrien's eyes, after realizing he himself is also a broken man. Heralds didn't break when a Desolation started. They willingly returned to Roshar to stop the torture, and that is what caused a Desolation to start. It's similar, but it's by no means the same. And once you look at it as "returning to Roshar to stop the torture", rather than "breaking", then the whole theory makes no sense anymore. It's also a very simple case of Occam's Razor. We have no reason to assume there have been exactly 9 Desolations (in fact arguments can be made that there have most likely been more than that, though I will admit they are not conclusive) and there is no reason to assume a relationship between the Heralds and the Unmade, other than that one Herald hasn't broken yet and that there happen to be an equal number of Unmades. Remember, 9 is Odium's number. Why would the 9 Unmade be a coincidence that happened to agree with the amount of broken Heralds, when Odium is working with the number 9 anyways? If there's reason to assume that this theory is true, then I'll start believing in it, but right now, there really isn't anything substantial, and I don't see why I would go for such a convoluted explanation when a simple "9 is Odium's number, hence 9 Unmade" also fits.

Not sure wheter you're saying @FeatherWriter isn't human or Renarin isn't fictional.

Then why does Ash still feel so much self-loathing? She clearly hasn't given up her emotions, and the same seems to be the case for Kalak and Jezrien in the prelude. Both of them have trouble making the decision to abandon the Oathpact. I would think they'd just be like "eh **** it" if they'd given up their emotions. I disagree. If they're derivative, they're analogus. This WoB is also very much not in favour of the theory, as Brandon straight out says the number of Unmade is fixed. No but's, no if's, it's fixed. So it's always been fixed. If Unmade formed out of Heralds breaking, he'd have said no (unless he'd RAFO it of course). And lastly I just disagree with the notion that the 'breaking' of the Heralds is literal. We're talking about their minds breaking due to torture, just like happens to 'normal' humans. Additionally - again - it wouldn't fit the information we got in Oathbringer that the Desolations kept happening closer and closer together, with Aharietam happening but a year after the Desolation before that, but the first Desolations having hundreds of years of peace in between. Why would it first take like, three hundred years, for the first Herald to break, while the next ones would continually break faster and the eighth and ninth breaking just a year apart? That would imply that there was one weak Herald (relatively), then one quite a bit stronger, one stronger, one a little bit stronger, one a tiny bit stronger, etc. If a new Herald would have to break for each new Desolation, the timespan between Desolations would be much more random than it is said to be in Oathbringer. And most of all it wouldn't make sense that it would then take four and half a millenium until Taln would - or would not even? - break. Yes, I agree that he'll be much stronger than the other Heralds, but it again goes against the "Desolations continued to happen closer and closer to one another" statement. Once a Herald willingly gave in to the Torture and went back, they'd all go back and the Desolation would start. Not a new Herald, but simply a Herald. It was just never Taln, because he could endure so much more than the others.

Tension, not Cohesion. Anyways, my problem here is that, while we're indeed told that different Orders use their Surges differently, and we indeed see this in action with Tension and, at least a little bit, with Adhesion, we also see Dalinar use Adhesion to stick Kadash to the ground, which is the same way Kaladin uses Adhesion.

I got nothing to give up on because I'm sceptical of it anyways. But if you go with "first time each Herald broke", I feel like you're just starting to bend the theory on and on until you can fit it on what we know. While, in a way, that is how science works, I expect Brandon to not create something as... ugly as that. And of course there's also the above WoB which I'll quote again, which I think is quite deadly for this theory no matter what else:

And now you've got me wondering "what if it isn't Dalinar who will pick up the Shards and become Roshar's version of Harmony, but rather Renarin?"

In all the books? And that while she didn't even appear in Way of Kings.

You're actually arguing my point now. We don't know how many Desolations there have been, and therefore there is no reason to assume that there were nine and that one Herald broke each time, and when the next one broke they all went back. In fact, if that had been the workings of the Oathpact, the Heralds would, without doubt, have known it, and would have known that there had been nine Desolations yet, and only Taln yet had to break, and they'd have just gone back and said "okay, one last time and then we're over with it". But that wasn't the case. They knew that if they went back, one of them would break, and a new Desolation would come. This time, all except Taln, who had never broken, had survived, which granted them the unique chance to break the Oathpact by refusing to go back. Tl;dr: We don't know how many Desolations there would have been, and if a different Herald would have to break each time, causing a new Unmade to spawn every time, they would know that they simply had to count down 10 of them, and they would have known that only one still had to break, and they'd have decided to go back to Damnation. However, it was the lack of knowing when they'd be out of it that drove them to quit, so to speak. (oh and if you want to tag someone, make sure to click their name in the dropdown menu that appears while typing, or that person doesn't actually get a notification)

That's some nudging you're doing in the quoting.

I just mean that it's on his mind a lot, and he's had to keep it for himself for what, close to two months? Maybe even more than that? If you truly feel guilty about something, and you can't tell anyone, that can eat you up from the inside out. Not saying it happened - we haven't seen enough from him for that in my opinion - but I don't think you can discard it that easily.

Either I have a very special family, or it indeed runs in families... But it's a good thing, as my family typically understands me a lot better than non-autistic people do (even though I try my best ). As an autist, I disagree. I am simply worse at social contact than most people, and I actually spend quite a bit of my time (most that isn't used for gaming, study, discussing Cosmere or writing) just thinking about how to handle social contact. It's something I've learned to do subconsciously, just playing out conversations in my mind, because if I don't practise it, I just can't manage to have conversations with people without autism, as I simply don't have the social skills needed for that. Yes, I can manage to have friends and a life and everything, but it does not come nearly as easy as for most people. I am worse at social contact than other people, and therefore autism is not a social construct. Yes, you could argue that "autists" are simply the edge of the spectrum of "ability to have social contact", but that doesn't make it any less real. Calling something a construct implies that it doesn't actually exist, and that's just not true. Okay, I think that's enough rant, hope my intention got through even though it's a mess of a paragraph.

But as I said, Oathbringer contradicts this. We hear from the Heralds that each time someone broke, a new Desolation started, and they could handle less and less because of having already been tortured many times, until Aharietam came, where they realized that only one had been killed, and where they also realized that he had actually never broken (which also implies it's no simple "counting down the Heralds left). It's explicitly called a miracle at some point, I believe by a Herald in a vision or by the Stormfather, that only one of them died. Additionally, Oathbringer also explictly tells us that there was hundreds of years between the first Desolations, not thousands. This also makes sense with the timeline we know from Brandon, which quite clearly tells us there's no time for thousands of years between Desolations if we're halfway through the Cosmere timeline and the last happened 4500 years ago. I understand the allure of one Desolation for each Herald breaking and then one Unmade as well, but there is absolutely nothing that points into that direction. All comments we know about Desolations imply that there has not been a special number of Desolations, and if one Herald had to break each time, it would also beg the question how, at Aharietam, the Heralds were not aware of this and simply said "we have to wait for Talenelat to break, fight one last time and it's over". They told humanity it was over, and that wasn't because there was one more to come, that was because they had no idea wheter it would ever be over and because they wanted to be rid of their burden.

Also I don't think we've had a single PoV from him this book where he didn't think about having murdered Sadeas. That still stings in him.

There goes my theory that it was related to Adonalsiums enemy and that some Vessels (Odium included) were working for said enemy. Oh well, this works too.

I think we can learn more about the listener's past from Eshonai's flashbacks than Venli's flashbacks, as Eshonai was an explorer and had frequent contact with the leaders, while Venli was *just* a scholar.

I'm pretty sure that this one doesn't hold. I could be wrong, but I'd want to see a source of that. This is very unlikely with the release of Oathbringer, as it contradicts that Desolations started happening faster and faster because the Heralds had suffered more, all the way from "hundreds of years between Desolations" to "the last two Desolations happened within a year of one another". This both implies that there have been more than 9 Desolations, and that "breaking" isn't something that happens for good, but rather something that has to happen every time again.

Well, if Ash becomes a Dustbringer, that would mean Division, Abrasion, Lightweaving and Soulcasting... Four Surges instead of the usual two. Would be very interesting.

"Any more questions?"

Now that's what they call foreshadowing.

He can definitely use Progression, so that's not it. Also, we know he uses Stormlight.

Yeah, it can be vague. Intent capitalized is, well, the intent of a shard; what the shard is supposed to do: Cultivation, Honor, Preservation, Ruin, etc are all Intents of the shards. Wisdom could be a shard, but it's very vague; it could be Hoid's manner of speaking, or it could be him casually name-dropping a new shard. Trouble is also that he uses "wisdom" at the start of his sentence, so we don't know wheter it should be capitalized in that sentence. Purity... Is that from that theory about a planet in... Threnody's (?) system? I can't remember it from Oathbringer. As for Fortune, it's a Spiritual property, just like Connection, Investiture and Identity, and appears as such in the Feruchemical table. I personally think it is related to the ability to predict the future.

I don't have any evidence against this, but I do wonder what, then, Cusicesh would do. Apart from the "draining people" there seems to not be much danger coming from it, and in fact it's an attraction in the area. I'd think that if an Unmade was doing stuff there, there'd be more signs than just "some creature appears every day and then disappears again".

Jasnah recognized them from pictures she had. Someone else here mentioned that they were from Hoid, so if we assume that is the case they're probably accurate. Also you shouldn't read much into what Brandon is implying. If he doesn't outright say something, it could go either way.

Don't let Odium control you.