Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Thanks, makes a lot of sense. I tried searching in Arcanum and couldn't find the WoB, but it was referenced in The Recreance Shardcast: @RShara or @Calderis do you know if there any other WoB's about what Cultivation has been up to? I know that there's been a lot of speculation that she is doing a long con on Odium with the Diagram (which I personally agree with and I'm pretty sure you do too Calderis), but it would be interesting to see more WoBs on this.

Just found this really interesting WoB that deals with Cognitive Shadows and Shades on Threnody (spoilered because it contains Shadows of Silence spoilers): And we also know that the cosmere is made of Matter, Energy and Investiture, and that these are convertible from this WoB : Given these two WoB's I think what might be happening when an object's soul is used to make the object manifest in the Cognitive Realm is that the soul of the idea of the thing is used as a template and the Stormlight, or Investiture, copies this pattern in the Cognitive Realm and creates Cognitive Matter (which I think is just a separate form of Energy) out of Investiture. A concrete example of this would be, say a Cultivationspren wants to manifest a chair. She would take the soul of the idea of a particular chair (a sphere) and then use this idea of a chair to convert Stormlight Investiture into the matter that things are composed of in Shademar in the shape of that chair, and the permanence of the chair created would be dependent on the inherent permanence of the particular chair in the Physical Realm (which is most likely a quality externally defined by sentient beings investing that object with the chair's sense of Chairness and the length of time sentient beings haved viewed the chair this way). Interesting to think about if once the chair is manifest and sentient spren begin to think of the chair in a particular way, would this additional thought about the chair propagate to the soul of the idea of the chair? And if this did, would this have repercussions for the chair in the Physical Realm? Say a spren painted it's chair yellow, and has had this chair for over a hundred years and painted it when he first manifested it, would this cause the soul of the idea of that particular chair to change, and if so would there be any noticeable effects of this in the Physical Realm?

Agreed, this seems like a good strategy to draw her out of hiding. You can't splinter what you can't find, and it seems like she has been trying to stay hidden.

The words are accepted, you are now a Skybreaker of the 4th ideal, you have picked a crusade worthy of a Skybreaker. Cleaning up the financial system of 2 separate realms is an ambitious and worthy goal. Your first task is to set up a futures trading system in Shadesmar.

13. I think this refers to Kaladin, even though the tower and crown initially sound like Dalinar. I think Kaladin is eventually going to need to become King of all Radiants like Jezrien. Totally agree that this is about Kaladin and it does seem to hint that he might be slated to be the new Herald to replace Jezrien. Here's some analysis about what the tower and crown possibly refer to. Kaladin saves Dalinar at the Tower on the Shattered Plains and he saves Elhokar (the crown) from Moash and the assassins. The spear is an obvious symbol for Kaladin. These death rattles are so well written. They have a strangely compelling mixture of vague specificity and they are all incredibly dark metaphors. Brilliant stuff really.

@Ciridae makes more sense, like @Glubbdrubb ideas. Spren based hacked super powers, using fabrial technology somehow joined directly to the spirt web. How about we come up with new possible Rosharan Fabrial Super Heroes? Here's one that would be pretty rad, The Human Half Shard, made just like a Jah Kevedian half shard. I wonder if the increased strength could be translated to physical strength as well as durability and the ability to stop a shard blade with his bare skin. Here's another one that would be pretty cool, the Pain Fist, could use Pain spren like Navani's panrial tazer, and could dull his pain when injured. If this was combined with the a progession surge enabled fabrial, the Pain Fist could be a lot like Wolverine with a low pain threshold, heightened healing powers and the ability to dish out pain, literally. Here's another one, Span Rita, could have a magic lasso that is conjoined to her Span reeded hand (so she can control it at a distance). Here's another one Breeze 2.0, using a fabrial matrix with a passion spren, a pain spren, a joy spren, and an awe spren, maybe you could have the ability to have the ultimate soother/rioter.

My thought was that the ominous black castle viewed in Dalinar's vision might at some point in the future rise again from the purelake. Here's a quote from Dalinar's vision in WoR that @Wit Beyond Measure pulled out for the Secrets to Parshendi Forms, Thunderclasts, & Urithiru thread: The physical description of the fortress matches how water manifests in Shadesmar (like black obsidian), and the fact that it rises out of the purelake makes me think that it might be some sort of magical projection from the Cognitive Realm. I think this castle sounds freaking rad, and the real reason for my interpretation of the Death Rattle is that I would really love to see this in a future SLA book.

Ulim is red but the envoy-like spren leading Kal and the band of Alethi parshmen are following was yellow. So there definitely appear to be yellow voidspren and red voidspren. And perhaps the violet lightning strikes (from the quote above) denote violet voidspren we've yet to see or just simply Voidlight, like the white lightning appears to represent Stormlight. Thanks again @Wit Beyond Measure for looking these up, I knew I got the impression that there were yellow voidspren that moved like lightning. This is only book three out of 10, Brandon has to keep some cards close to his chest, I think that we have very little actual information to go in in regards to voidbinding, maybe the coloration of the voidspren is similar to the coloration of the KRs order spren, with yellow and violet voidspren being associated with the 2 god surges of Voidbinding (while blue and green spren are associated with the 2 god surges of Progression and Adhesion). @Herald Of Justice mentions in his thread about Spiritual Progression that Brandon has said that Adhesion and Progression are the two god surges, so wouldn't that be rad if this was flipped for the Voidbinding god surges. That would make one voidbinding god surges Illumination (sounds like a good canidate for odious future sight) and the other god surge gravitation. And maybe, due to the fact that this is the god surge the manifestation of the surge would be different, maybe the Flying Fused can use Physical gravitation instead of Spiritual Gravitation (like Windrunners and Skybreakers do). Maybe this requires less investiture to maintain (mechanics of this effeciency unknown, but will think more ont this), that's why they are able to float seemingly without consuming investiture. Interesting, interesting.

In WoK, the only color associated with lightning would be when lightning is described as white teeth in the night, though I could see how natural lightning would be seen as white or light blue or light yellow (the Flash). In the first Venli interlude, I-3, Ulim is said to be lightning several times though the color isn't specified. Thanks a bunch for looking this up, really appreciate it! So I looked at the Venli interlude and it turns out that Ulim is red! What the heck? I just assumed since this was a voidspren it would be yellow, like the ones seen by Kaladin shepherding the recently awakened parshmen, I didn't notice this one very subtle reference to Ulim's color: Later on Ulim "..(zips) to the wall as a tiny streak of lightning", before I looked this up I saw this in my minds eye as a yellow streak of lightning. Always good to check the source material. I'm not quite sure what to make of the fact that one of the most involved voidspren helping Venli is red colored and moves like lightning, this definitely seems to show that @StrikerEZ is correct to not base speculative theory purely on color associations. More to think about.

Nice summation, and it's nice to see these re-examined. — Collected on Kakevah 1173, 22 seconds pre-death, by the Silent Gatherers. Subject was a darkeyed Selay man of unknown profession.[29] This refers to the corruption of the Queen of Alethkar by Yelig-nar. This one could also be referring to that mysterious black castle that Dalinar sees rising from the Purelake during one of his visions. This entry from Hessi's Mythica about Moleach is pretty clear:

Actually, I think his use of the term manifest is a case of him telling us readers the proper terminology for the process of manifesting physical objects in the cognitive realm. There is another instance where Shallan manifests a piece of a wall right in time for a flying Fused to crash into it. I think manifesting is very similar to soulcasting, both require access to the cognitive aspect of the thing to be soulcast/manifested and storm light to power the transformation or dislocation. I would be very interested to see what happens to an object in the physical realm that has been manifested in the Cognitive, though I think it might not actually affect the physical realm manifestation of that object (but the destruction of the PR object might also destroy the manifestaion in the CR). The next bit is spoilered because it contains Mistborn Secret History spoilers: The idea of the Stormfather as a Helicopter dad is hilarious! Funny stuff.

@Ciridae awesome post! The ethics of imprisoning sapient spren in fabrial gemstones to grant access to surges is little iffy though. Turning Syl into a fabrial super hero belt would probably anger all of the Honor spren and the Stormfather too. We know from Malata's spren Spark that there are sapient spren that are OK with siding with Odium because of the Recreance, I think more Sapient spren capable of granting access to surges would likewise side with Odium if Humans started imprisoning them in fabrial gemstones. They are self-aware, intelligent pieces of Investiture and they wouldn't appreciate being enslaved. Ryshadiums are an interesting case too, do they have a gemheart? Does that explain their increased size, stone hoofs and extra level of intelligence?

Something else to think about is that the screamers could also detect when some fabrials were being used. They could sense spanreeds and soulcasters.

I think that I've read all of the WoB's about the voidbinding chart, and it seems to me that Brandon is mostly qualifying that the border of the Voidbinding chart isn't significant, particularly the Woman that appears in the border. If you have any links to interviews/blog posts where Brandon talks about the voidbinding chart I would love to see them! I'm a technical illustrator, I know that color is used particularly in thinks like the voidbinding chart a means of signifying some relationship. There was obvious forethought/intent behind the coloration of the lightning bolt connections. Also the fact that the connections are lightning bolts is significant because the Voidspren we have seen onscreen zip around like bolts of yellow lightning (in the first Venli Interlude especially). I think that the color is keyed to represent different sources of Investiture, and I believe it shows that there are 4 different types of investiture that are used for the orders of Voidbinding. We have a long time until the next SLA book comes out, I think it makes sense to scrutinize this chart and create reasoned conjectures about what the color, connections and overall makeup of the chart is showing, and I am looking forward to what other Sharders come up with in terms of explanations for these relationships. As far as the color for the shards, I do think there is some signifigance on Roshar at least, to color. I think part of Brandon's caution about having people ascribe to much significance to color is that he doesn't want people to make false correlations. Like he does want people to think that Sadeas troops are of Cultivation because they are wearing green uniforms. But the fact that Lifespren are green, the Nightwatcher is green and Cultivation spren seen in shadesmar appear to made of coiled green vines and this seems significant to me. I know Cultivation appears herself to be brown, but the accoutrements of Investiture I believe are the things that show the color bias of the shard (Like Odium's yellow gold scepter and his yellow gold voidspren). But I'm ok agreeing to disagree on this point too. In the OP I was makiing a case for the fact that Adonalsium had set up Roshar prior to his being shattered, and that the magical framework was set up before Honor, Cultivation and Odium began to Invest Roshar. Their was a pre-existing magical ecosystem that Cultivation and Honor inherited, and I believe that the intents of their shards made certain portions of the pre-existing magical system come under the aegis of their investiture (because their intents were aligned with the pre-existing magic (like spren being largely Cultivation's Investiture, especially the natural Spren). Roshar is not like Scadrial, scadrial was created out of whole cloth by Ruin and preservation (the planet, the people, the fuana, etc). Honor and Cultivation came to a planet that had Highstorms, Spren, Listeners with gemhearts, great shells with gemheartss, and an ecosystem that had to be magically sustained (the distribution of Crem, which Brandon has said is similar to God poop). These were pre-existant and the elements of this pre-existant system that were inline with Honor and Cultivation's intents were Invested by them. Part bolded above I can agree to, I'll stop calling it violet light investiture and call it voidlight again, but I still don't believe that it's Investiture from Odium. The other part about voidlight being created by the transformation of gemhearts (stored physically manifest investiture) to voidlight (kinetic useable investiture) is totally speculation, something to think about but by no means certain. I think it's an interesting idea and would explain the seemingly limitless amount of voidlisht that the Fused use, but it's just speculation. The Fact that BAM can fuel the Fused with voidlight doesn't necessarily preclude the fact that in the absence of BAM the Fused could have a different means of obtaining voidlight. This whole topic is on the level of reasoned surmise, totally conjecture. I think that we don't have enough information for anything other than speculative theories about voidbinding at this point, but I appreciate your posts a lot @StrikerEZ, you bring up a lot of good points that are important to think about. The Unmade are splinters of Odium, but they have different powers and are able to inlfuence/affect different things. We have lots of examples of humans being influenced by the thrill without their eyes turning red. The two points in the SLA where we see humans eyes turn red under the influence of the thrill are when Dalinar the beast is walking towards the rift to burn it all down and when Sadeas' troops have spren bonded to them while being prepared for this by being under the influence of the Thrill. The first case seems to me to be a matter of Dalinar temporarily letting the thrill into his soul (like a semi-bonded state) and the second case seems to be an Odiuos hack, insertion of spren into the prepared void in Sadeas's troops' souls that allows them to be controlled somewhat (it's obviously not complete control because they are just as happy hacking apart lightwoven troops as they are attacking the defenders of Thaylen city). Re-Shephir is an active PR monster that kills (kind of like a leashed hound that Odium can unleash on his foes, like in the Vision from the Stormfather that Dalinar takes all of the rulers of Roshar into), so there is no influence/control being exerted over another being, hence no red eyes. With Sja-Anat we know that under the influence of her corruption the form and the color of the spren thus corrupted are altered, but we haven't seen anyone on screen that we know for certain has been corrupted by her, but I doubt that this type of corruption would result in red eyes (pretty hard to have a corrupted spy do any secret infiltrations if they have glowing red eyes). Yelig-Nar is obviously a case of a serious biological hack going on with a gemheart fusing with human, and it makes sense that this level of a hack would cause the host's eyes to glow red. The scene where Kal is fighting Amaram and you get a view of Amaram's ruined chest (just a hollow rib cage with viscera connecting to the gemheart) I felt bad for Amaram. Power, yes, but at what cost? So @The One Who Connects what exactly do you think this hint is saying? That her soul has been displaced by the bonded Stormfrom spren and is currently in Braize being tortured?? I can't seem to get any other interpretation out of this somewhat cryptic WoB. This totally makes sense, the ancient paternal voice is the soothing voice that Odium uses a lot. Nice catch on that one!

@scottos and @Heir of the Void What if this is a feedback loop? The Heralds abandon Taln to damnation (not very honorable), because Honor has so heavily invested himself in the Herlads this causes honor to splinter, and because the heralds are so heavily invested in by Honor his splintering causes their spirit webs to splinter and break apart as well, the cycle keeps spiraling in on itself until honor is fully splintered and the Heralds are fully insane. I just posted this on a separate thread, this is Syl's explanation of the functional cause of the awakening of the Parshmen: Sounds a lot like what might have happened to Taln when Dalinar seized Honor's perpendicularity and Investiture sloshed out over all of Thaylen City.

I don't think that it's all there is to voidbinding, in fact I think it's a special case of his Investiture and intent being uniquely suited to accomplish this Investiture hack. I don't think we are going to see real Voidbinding based solely off of Odium's investiture until the army comes from the Island at the Origin "with light in their pockets" (from the Puuli interlude).

As per usual, awesome quotes @Wit Beyond Measure. In in Chapter 17, Trapped in Shadows, we hear from Kaladin's talk with Sah, his recently awakened Parshman captor that: Syl, in the same chapter, explains the functional cause of this by explaining how this process was reversed: This explains a lot about what parshmen were before the Advent of the Everstorm, they are functionally an animate corpse capable of perceiving and responding to stimulus in their environment but unable to think, and unable to feel any sort of connection, to the place they live or those around them. There has been some speculation (which I think has merit) that the event that caused this transformation in the Parshmen was teh real reason for the Recreance. To knowingly rob an entire people of their ability to think and act with any sort of volition seems about as wrong as anything possibly could be. But this also gives a clue as to how Singers change forms, we know that Singers can view spren and that this most likely indicates a greater awareness of and presence in the Cognitive Realm. So when they bond with a spren in their gemheart, they use the free kinetic investiture available during a high storm (and possibly an Everstorm) to merge their cognitive aspect (their mind, which is possibly the CR component of Identity) with that of the bonded spren. This creates a fusion, which due to the Singers greater presence in the cognitive realm, allows for the Cognitive change to manifest as a physically altered form. This is at least how I understand the process. I think the Fused are a different case that uses a mechanism that is similar. We know that Singers have to allow the ancient ghostly spren into their gemhearts for the transformation to occur, but when the Fused fuse with their Host, the Identity and Connection of the Singer host is destroyed and supplanted by that of the Fused. This probably is due to the fact that even though the Fused are Cognitive Shadows, they have their own seperate and unique Identities and Network of Connections. So the mental and spiritual components of the Fused completely supplant the Identity and Spiritual Connection of the host Singer. This is how I understand the process at least. So, the restoration of Identity and Connection to the parshmen was vital for the Fused to be able to join the battle. There is a lot of speculation that the thing that destroyed this connection to the Parshmen was something that Melishi the bondsmith did. A lot of the speculation is that it has to do with capturing Ba-Ado-Mishram, which I could easily see being the case. If BAM was supplying violet investiture to the vast amry of Singers, either the Fused or those who were bonded to spren which granted forms of Power, then application of the proper surge directed to propogate out to all who were Connected to BAM, might have been able to sever their Connection and Identity. This is pure speculation, but it seems like it's going along the right lines to me at least. The other interesting thing about this is that this removal of Connection and Identity did propagate to the parshmen's children (as evidenced by Sah's daughter, because we know that she was born to Sah in the same Identity-less and Connection-less state that Sah was in while he was still a parshman). So I think that this a case of the Parshman having their minds (Identity) and souls (Connection) completely removed. Their whole people were relegated to the insensate life of Chulldom in one fell swoop, that's even worse than genocide. In WoR Eshonai and Venli's mother mention the Last Legion, a group that intentionally turned away from the old gods. I think they accomplished this by becoming dull form Listeners, and without a bonded spren, they weren't subjected to the same Mental and Spiritual lobotomy that the rest of the Singers experienced. As for Venli's transformation sequence, I think this is most probably the voice of Envoy form spren that bonds her. My first time reading through OB I thought it was Timbre, but the bit "It was a warm voice. An ancient, paternal voice, kindly and enveloping." makes it seem more like it's older spren, with a higher level of sapience than Timbre seems to show. So in answer to this, I think that what is happening here is that Odium is using pain as a lever with anger as the fulcrum to open the spiritual web of the target so that he can insert something controlling and damaging into the spiritual web of the vessel. This is pure speculation, but it seems to fit. I think also that we have yet to see the Odium invested manifestation of Voidbinding, all we have seen so far is the investiture corrupting manifestation of Odium's powers, which like @Calderis mentioned are just a means of hacking surgebinding, and this really isn't what true voidbinding is.

Concedes defeat:

If he did he would be ridiculously powerful. He would have an honorblade, a shardblade and access to 8 more surges. Maybe then we would finally see Nale smile. Honestly, that's a pretty good guess for the next vessel for Yelig-Nar and I agree with @Necessary Eagle that @Belzedar's name "Yelig-Nale" should be the what this beast of Herald/Demon should be called. Personally, I would prefer to see Moash swallow the gem, if anyone deserves to be turned into a Crystal growing kit it's that jerk.

Okay, time to pull out the big guns: How 'bout now?

Darn it, I know I should have used a picture of a celebrity smoking instead... How about now @RShara, see the smoke is still blueish white.

@MonsterMetroid I love where your post is going! Sounds kind of like blue-white doesn't it? This is my last attempt to sway the unbelievers that the white of stormlight might in fact be pale blue light. The most often metaphor used for describing visible manifestations of stormlight is smoke, so here are a couple of pictures showing what I know from the first hand experience of being a smoker, smoke has slight blueish tinge to it. The two pictures below show this coloration in two different lighting conditions with two different backgrounds. You can find pictures of smoke that look more whiteish, but believe me, I have observed enough smoke in my lifetime to know that it is in fact blue-ish tinged, and the fact that smoke sometimes appears white is a subtle confirmation of it possibly being mistakenly referred to as white: I don't recall what color the shades are, I just remember that their eyes change to red when they are enraged, having them be violet would be visually amazing! I personally like this idea a lot, I have to think about it more to be sure, but very interesting to speculate about. Just got my upvotes back, enjoy one! I still am partial to stormlight being ostensibly white with a faint blue nimbus at the margins of the light.

These are amazing! Awesome job @Jofwu. You should see if they would sell these on the Brandon Sanderson store, they are awesome. One small modification that might make the chart cooler would be a slight revision to the God's eye Knights Radiant Hourglass in the center of the disk. I made a version to show you what I am talking about: This version emphasizes the connections between the orders of KRs and shows the double pupil of the Gods eye. The position and the coloration make it pretty obvious which circle in the KR hourglass corresponds to which order. I have an AI file of this if you want it, I don't think the colors are exactly right, but I think this implementation is pretty cool, and you could alter it to get the colors looking better (if you want). Truly outstanding job on this, I would totally buy one of this from the store (printed out on thick shiny cover stock). One possible modification idea, it already looks like a color wheel, what kind of information could be revealed/connected by spinning different levels of the wheel. I honestly haven't given it much thought, but one possible idea would be to have a die-cut window where the Glyph for the order appears, and an outer concentric ring with the Ideals for a given order, when you spin the outer ring, only when the ideals match the correct order would the glyphs show up in the die cut window. Just spitballing, but really this is beautiful, you did a great job with this, and it's an incredibly handy reference beautifully put together.