Ripheus23

I thought I had it with, "Cultivation's Honorblades," which I came up with due to desideratum #1: For some reason, the Dawnshards have been historically conflated with the Honorblades. However, if the Dawnshards were involved in the destruction of Ashyn, but if Honor and Cultivation did not Invest in Ashyn, that theory falls flat. So desideratum #2: The Dawnshards are not of Honor or Cultivation. Now we're also told that there was an appearance of Odium coming to Roshar with the Ashyn refugees. Since the refugees did not come in spaceships, this would not have been an appearance of a big blob of Odium-ness on the tail-end of an Ashyn space caravan. Maybe Odium took a physical form and showed up at the Oathgate-y site(s) where the Ashyn refugees came through. However, I think it was more likely that Odium's presence was more mystically recognized, like maybe the Dawnsingers had Stormfather-like visionary experiences into which Odium inserted himself, or whatever, and this started around when the Ashyn refugees showed up. Anyway, it doesn't seem, to my knowledge, that Odium Invested in Ashyn, at least not like he did on Braize. Maybe Odium had Odiumblades on Braize that ended up on Ashyn, but my intuition is telling me that the Dawnshards are not Odiumblades. Another option is that some other Shard has [Shardname]blades/things in the Roshar system. However, another desideratum I want to propose is: To prevent the SA story from being too convoluted, Sanderson is not likely to bring a fourth Shard of Adonalsium into the mix (outside of Nightblood, so to speak, or the epigraph-cameos). OR: the set up for the introduction of another Shard to the story, will not play out as far as fully introducing the Shard, until the back half of the SA. Prior to that, the Dawnshards would just be mysteriously powerful artifacts; the nuances of their use will be nuances of Surgebinding, not Shardic storytelling. (This option isn't totally unacceptable, since after all, the page count for the first Mistborn trilogy is less than that for the first SA pentalogy, and yet by MBE2 we have another Shard messing with the scene.) This depends, of course, on the Dawnshards showing up in the first SA pentalogy, to defeat Odium (or Rayse as Odium, at least). Here are some more desiderata: The Dawnshards are significant enough that Honor thinks they are relevant to the outcome of the True Desolation. The only other things known as Shards, on Roshar, as such, are spren-based weapons and armor. Honor sort of based the Honorblades on something prior (not quite like the Shardblades were based on the Honorblades). There was once something called "the Stone of Ten Dawns." So, drumroll... My best guess at this point is that the Dawnshards are something Adonalsium placed in the Roshar system, and which served as the inspiration for Honor's Blades. Adonalsium was mentioned in WoK so it wouldn't violate the no-convoluted-Shardicness desideratum, I think.

Like those, except it goes, "Honor is not Odium is not Cultivation is not Ruin is not Preservation... is not Shard Z," around the edge and, "is Adonalsium." towards the center. EDIT: Adonalsiumstormit I can't put the Shield of the Trinity picture in the post

Maybe they do, but there's a delay between whatever they do, and the production of a highstorm, such that when Cusicesh looks towards the Origin at the same time every morning, it's looking towards that "delayed reaction."

So now the sun is actually a star, but I'm not sure that average Rosharans are keen on this, so I wonder if there would be a difference between the spren of the Rosharan sun, and starspren. Szeth refers to the sun as "the god of gods" which got me thinking about possible moonspren, the Sibling, and all, not that I was able to hypothetically infer anything from it all, except that maybe the spren of the sun is the Sibling. Actually, hmm... Here's a nifty guess: Nightwatcher = Spren of Roshar the planet Stormfather = Spren of Roshar's moons (their gravity causes ocean tides that cause the highstorms) The Sibling = Spren of the sun EDIT: Also, I wonder if the Rosharan moons are colored differently due to an at least surface preponderance of corresponding-color gemstones. IIRC (I just read the section so I hope I'm remembering it correctly!) Kaladin says that one of the moons has a sapphire color. Sapphire is the polestone for air, which is a major part of highstorms. However, there's a violet moon and none of the polestones seem to be predominantly violet unless smokestone somehow counted (I don't know what smokestone is supposed to look like) and emeralds, the main green type, are the polestone for pulp, which doesn't seem too highstorm-y.

Since Madam Elsecaller was looking for the truth about the Voidbringers, this post has to do with trying to reconcile all the Biblical/related information about the Echthros [I'm using L'Engle's term, which is derived from the New Testament's Greek form]. So, first, I'm going with the tradition that has Satan's angel-name as "Samael." Too many reasons to go into on that count right now. Anyway, like the Apostles later, I'm assuming that there were 7 archangels ("the seven who stand before the Lord") at first, one of whom betrayed God's plan, so he was replaced by a different 7th. So, Samael was that original traitor. Presumably the archangels had the beatific vision. If this was so, it's difficult to understand how any of them, no matter their comparative power, could have believed themselves capable of defeating God. Milton in Paradise Lost is a semi-Arian kind of guy, I think, so he made sense of it by having Satan rebel against the Son, not God, as such. Still, I'm a Nicean Christian so I can't go with that option. What I'll propose is that "the sevenfold Spirit of God" mentioned in the Book of Revelation refers to the archangels as having been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now normally, only humans are indwelt by the Spirit (e.g. Jesus Christ par excellence). So these 7 (later 8) angels are special among the angels for having been so gifted. And supposing Samael was powerful enough as an angel, this dual empowerment might have given him "reason" to think he could defy God. At least, it would have been a factor. Also blasphemy against the Spirit is the eternal sin, and we can safely assume Samael is guilty of the eternal sin, so, yeah. So, Samael rebels. Later we're told about the Nephilim, and even later about other fallen angels, and demons. Classically, "angel" wasn't supposed to be a species term. Not even divisions like "seraphim" or "cherubim" or "ophanim" were. Species are divided by the ability to reproduce their instances. So, let's say that Samael had 12 "Apostles" of his own, i.e. 12 other angels, not indwelt by the Spirit, but who rebelled with him. These are the fallen angels. Samael, having the power of the Spirit (for however long), tried to imitate God's creative work. The direct imitation gave rise to the demons. But by fusing the natures of the fallen angels with human natures, Samael generated the Nephilim; this is the source of the metaphor of the "sons of God" taking wives from among mortal humanity (which could not literally be true as angels are not a species as such). (If I were to guess at the numbers, here, I would suppose that there were 666 demons generated, and 144,000 Nephilim. Or maybe there are 666 Nephilim who, due to their human side, are indwelt by the Spirit but who commit the eternal sin thereafter; or maybe there are 666 entries in the genealogy of the Antichrist, in relation to possible demon-human crossings; but see below.) Now, could the demon natures in turn get crossed with human or Nephilim natures? Off the top of my head, I can't remember anything in the Bible or the official tradition, clearly indicating so. If I were going to write a story based on these ideas, I'd suppose demon-human crossing would probably result in stillbirth (demon natures being inherently destructive, opposed to the creative power of God in the angels), and demon-Nephilim crossing... IDK. Monsters of some other form. My broader theory is that Michael, another one of the 7 archangels, is also the Incarnation of the First Person of the Trinity, and is the entity known as Apollyon. So let's say Michael/Apollyon also imitated the work of the divine nature in Itself, such as to create a demon nature. In the Catholic New Advent Encyclopedia, there's an interesting note in the entry on Asmodeus (from the Book of Tobit): IIRC the Book of Tobit has Asmodeus as "the worst of demons." Per the rest of the above, let's suppose the conflation of Asmodeus with Apollyon is due to Asmodeus being the sole demon uniquely generated by Michael.

I took the "9 shadows of Odium's champion" image to represent Odium's champion as bonding all the Unmade.

It occurred to me that if in Shadesmar, the oceans are landmasses, then it might be possible to walk to the Origin in Shadesmar. Probably with all sorts of attendant travails but still...

After reflecting on the trajectory of Cultivation and Honor, versus humanity with the Dawnshards on Ashyn, I have started to disbelieve that the Dawnshards are Cultivation's equivalent of the Honorblades. It seems as if Cultivation was not on Ashyn, that is. So there goes that embryo of a theory, I guess...

Maybe the Orders of the KR are like the Orders of the Catholic Church. Off the top of my head, I think the Benedictine Order is monastic-themed, the Dominicans are intellect-themed, and the Franciscans are compassion-themed (and I know little to nothing about other Orders, e.g. Cistercian or Carmelite, or even whether those are on the same level as the others or what). But John D. Scotus was a Franciscan intellectual, who "proved" an important theorem of the Church; so although being in an ecclesial order atmospherizes(?) the membership, it doesn't determine the mentality of its members. Or something along those lines. As for whether the honorspren are the most "of Honor," while there might be some in-world disagreement about that, I think the relationship between Tanavast, the Stormfather, and the honorspren, testifies to which side of that disagreement is right. Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow was infused into the Stormfather, who created [some] honorspren, so, yeah. As for what, "Journey before destination," really means, on my reread of WOK I am on chapter 58, which covers Nohadon to some extent. In the quantum-spren interlude, there's an emphasis that the subjective determination requires that the measurements of the spren are both actually carried out, as well as written down. Erasing the recording unbinds the spren. So, Nohadon possibly preceded the Orders of the KR, meaning The Way of Kings was written before the Orders came to be, possibly. I think Nohadon's book, especially given its historical influence, would have affected the Stormfather and the honorspren like the measurement of the flamespren affected those. That is, means-before-ends is what, "Journey before destination," is supposed to mean. But, since the real magic system is grounded not only in Honor but also Cultivation, and those two were married, when, "Journey before destination," was coupled to Surgebinding as part of an Oath, it also got coupled to Cultivation's power, so it was reinterpreted symmetrically. EDIT: So my model has it that the Windrunners are 99.9999%-90% of Honor, infinitesimally diverging from any Cultivation. By the time we get to the Skybreakers, those are 50+% of Honor, and that +% is an asymptotic convergence towards an infinitesimal abundance of Honor over Cultivation. (I don't actually know calculus so forgive me if I'm mutilating the ideas of it ) So the Skybreakers are asymptotic/infinitesimal mirror-images of the Edgedancers on a purely geometrical level, but they also are exactly parallel to the Dustbringers in a different sense. Like: WR SW BS WS SB | ED LW TW EC DB [horizon-mirroring] ______________________________ WR - ED SW - LW BS - TW WS - EC SB - DB [column-mirroring] Whether this matters almost at all, IDK The diagrams for the KR Orders semi-remind me of https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/llull/#Ars, specifically So they're either mystical geometry hocus-pocus hogwash, or they're deep intimations of socioethical mathematics, or what.

If Szeth and Nale are any indication, this is true. But it seems pointless to claim that an Order is a distinct set if it could be infinitely malleable as to its members' mindsets, so there should at least be tendencies for the members, and if Honor and Cultivation Invested in Roshar such as to allow the Orders to arise, the principles of that Investment (e.g. symmetry) will be reflected in those tendencies. I mean the Orders depend on specific spren, and spren are born from concepts, and while concepts are open to divergent analysis and expression (especially philosophically), still, there are limits. Language wouldn't work if any symbol could mean anything at any given time. If I were gonna try to get a prediction out of all this, it would be that Kaladin and Sylphrena's, "How do we really know right from wrong?" discourse will be resolved via a fusion of Honor and Cultivation's symmetrical moral natures. I see Kaladin becoming involved with Venli, romantically, as a very viable possibility, and Timbre and Sylphrena together would be amusing (although we haven't seen whether spren romantically bond parallel to those they're bonded to; the similarities between the daemons from His Dark Materials and the Nahel spren, call the image to mind but we will see...). So we'd at least have a Windrunner-Willshaper bridge, to explore the issue with, if things went in that direction. EDIT: I guess a way to look at membership in an Order, per an Oath, would be like having a certain "moral alignment" in an RPG. In D&D there used to be (or are, depending on the ruleset) 9 of these. IDK how many there are in Magic: The Gathering but at any rate, you can "deviate" to some degree from a strict alignment regimen, without losing your membership in that alignment. But too many deviations and...

Only if we're talking about deontological instead of teleological morality, which is what Honor sounds like it's about. By contrast, Cultivation sounds teleological, as morality as rational justification using ends over means (since, as noted, there is a very easy-to-see rational justification in using inference to derive means-imperatives from ends-imperatives---inferential reasoning is reasoning, hence rational). And as I said, the Skybreakers are near enough to the switching point on the spectrum, and are the internal opposite of the Windrunners, so they are the "heretics" on the Honor side of the spectrum. They also have a second-dimensional symmetry with the Dustbringers (as at the first fifth remove from the Honor-point, with the Dustbringers at the second fifth remove). As per a WoB: I wouldn't suspect the Orders of having all these complex symmetries applying to them, if symmetry were not an important Rosharan principle, and if mathematics were not so surface-important to Rosharan principles, and if philosophical reflection on moral theory were not such a prominent theme in the SA. But since symmetry, abstract mathematics, and moral philosophy are clear themes of this story, it stands to reason that Sanderson would meld them all in the philosophy of the Orders.

Maybe in Era 3, Harmony will have become Discord and he himself will be the serial killer.

~The Way of Kings, pg. 733 [hardcover edition]

I think that Elsecallers could be Machiavellian (as per a WoB) in that they fall closer to the ends-over-means end of the spectrum. Machiavellians couldn't be Windrunners, though. The overall symmetry is just the order of the two concepts of means and ends, which Honor being means-prioritized and Cultivation being ends-prioritized. It all fits together into one magic system on account of Tanavast and [Larsta?] being married and the mathematical symmetry of Rosharan magic in general. (It's not because of a hypothetical 5-centric Nalthianism that there are five Ideals per Order (Edglian interference), but due to the symmetrical splitting of Roshar's 10-centrism as 5 * 2.) If the system were purely Honor-based, then the First Ideal would admit of only a means-over-ends application; but t'isn't so. (I rather wonder whether Sanderson is proposing the so-called "intuitionist" solution to deontology versus utilitarianism, where the principle of utility is balanced against a rights-preserving principle, neither being the final absolute. According to A Theory of Justice this "intuitionism" is a common-sense reaction to the strictures of either pure utility or pure rights, and Shallan's moral analysis of Jasnah's execution of the brigands in the City of Bells, testifies to Sanderson being aware of these kinds of philosophical nuances/suggestions/etc.)

Actually he's melodramatic and says, "These were the first," and then, "These were the last," so who knows what he meant!

I don't think that could be so. Even if their content is open-ended, their form is not, and I think it helps structure the next 4 Ideals. Namely, the middle 3 of the 5 correspond one by one (with Order-derivative differences) to the three parts of the First, and then the Fifth sums them up. Besides which, they have elementary philosophical interpretations that pair nicely with the distinction and marriage of Honor and Cultivation, which Sanderson is not likely to be unaware of.

She doesn't do it (IIRC), but she talks about doing it. The scene is seared into my memory. It's why I stopped reading the series at all. (I'd skipped from 2 to 6 and then... yeah.)

I hadn't thought of that. Upvote time.

Semi-wild theory: The Song of the Last Summer will be the title of Book 4. IDK if this has been suggested before?

The reasons I despise the SoT series are the "let's kill enemy children" passages. Like in book 2 when discussing intertribal extermination, or in book 6 when Richard's wife explicitly says something about hunting down "enemy" children to torture and kill them (and everyone around them) to find Richard, or however that went. I hate the idea of killing people who are weaker than me, and children are weaker than me, so killing them... It makes me incredibly morally sick to think about. EDIT: Which is why, on the flip side, one of the reasons I love the Covenant novels so much. Covenant even refuses to kill Cavewight children to get to Foul while the Worm is about to destroy existence in the event that they don't get to Foul...

A maybe-relevant WoB: I think the Dawnshards are Cultivation's equivalent of the Honorblades. We've been told that Soulcasters come from Aimia, which gives off a Cultivation-y vibe to my mind, so I would suggest a pairing like [Honorblades - Shardblades :: Dawnshards - Soulcasters], possibly.

We have to swear the Ideals of the Order of Lovemakers ? "I will love those who hate themselves," or something?

I still say Venli would go best with Kaladin, and I will defend that theory until Books 4 or 5, or a WoB, say otherwise

Yeah, I wasn't sure about the side I put the Lightweavers on... I was going off an intuition that their honesty protocol sounded more Honor-y than Cultivation-y, although if Honor was free will-y then Willshapers sounded like they went with his side more. It was a toss-up whether Bondsmiths or Windrunners would be the most Honor-y. I went with Windrunners due to their spren being honorspren specifically, though of course bonding the Stormfather himself... Well... In any event, I think the general idea helps explain how Malata can swear the same First Ideal as Kaladin but seem diametrically opposite in mindset. Actually, this also plays into a wild 'ship/theory about Kalalata or a theory that Malata might end up as Odium's champion. Odium being "God's own divine hatred" and hatred being the emotional motive of punishment, and Spark wanting to punish humanity for the Recreance, is my evidence/indicator for this championship option. (I also have a Moalata/Maloash 'ship in mind, here )