Ripheus23

So, I noticed there's a lot of talk about whether Ghostbloods might be related to Ambition. I wondered, what if my idea about their symbol is sort of correct, that it is quasi-"trishardic," but instead of being three Shards, it's three Splinters, on/around Threnody? One is a moving weather-like phenomenon, carrying the "morbid" perpendicularities. Another is the Shades, and the third is the Evil. Maybe by the time she was Splintered, Ambition had gathered enough Investiture to be equal in power to three baseline Shards, who knows but anyway, maybe the ideal of the Ghostbloods is to train to endure all Ambition's implied "trials," so that they can become Slivers of Ambition (sort of), which might be a really powerful status (Threnodite versions of the Lord Ruler???).

Well, if there is never a situation that is "Bladewar"-like, then does it follow that it is unlikely that Nightblood will have a prominent role in the future of the Cosmere, or will his purpose turn out to be entirely served by the end of the SA?

I want to read this book...

IDK what everyone else's opinion of Kaladin's dirge in OB is, but I really appreciated it. It reminded me that I was "on his side" in the argument with Syl about hurting the Parshendi in the first place, or whatever. So anyway, I was wondering, we seem, sort of, to be building up to a "typical" Battle-of-the-Pelennor-Fields moment---allowing that the Battle of Thaylen City wasn't our example of that in the SA. But what if it was? I know it's hard to swallow the pacifist claim that nonviolent resistance can work against any form of weaponized, gathered evil, but there are actually some interesting cases where even Nazi agents somehow were (or at least felt) stymied by the efforts of these resisters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chambon-sur-Lignon are two cases worth reading about as such. Now I suspect that at some point, Odium is gonna be like, "Well, I don't really NEED the Parshendi to destroy this world," and he'll incite a greatshell stampede kind of event (like the Daikaisho in the Nausicaä story). At any rate the Parshendi will end up in a position where humans can commit genocide against them, and there'll be a risk of this happening and fueling Odium's power (I keep thinking that if swearing oaths mediates Honor's relationship with the Surges as such, then in Odium's case, it's those who feel profound hatred who gain access to the Surges through him). Even if there's not a Nazi-analog event in the SA at this or whatever other relevant point, there's still a chance we might have a situation where nonviolent resistance could, or should, be used, against some plan of Odium's (Taravangian as a Soviet-like fellow, for instance?).

Any vague chance that "remove" means "evacuate" instead of "destroy"?

If different worlds developed Shardblade equivalents (Awakened swords on Nalthis, Seon/Skaze analogs on Sel, etc.), do you predict that one day, in the Great Crossover, there will be a major war going on somewhere, involving many/most/all the different Shardblade-like arsenals?

I guess there'd have to be a time constraint or something.

That would be an interesting way to defeat him: get him to agree to the contest of champions, appoint a champion for Honor, and then surprise, no one accepts Odium's mantle and he loses by default?

Also: most WoBs

Ooooh has there ever been a Kaladin and Talenel ship? Kalalenel? Talaladin?

@the OP, Multiple times per book, on average.

I kind of always imagine the stories like, well, the Stormlight stories make me think of anime or manga, so I end up seeing an anime in my head. The Mistborn stuff reminds me of Final Fantasy or some other Japanese video game, so I kind of have a vague half-medieval Russian/half-JRPG image for those books. I think I did Elantris mostly straight and I'm not sure about Warbreaker. A lot of the shorter AU stories I don't know about either.

I was just thinking, the Unmade were/are like a pantheon, so it's possible Bavadin would be of a mind to "infiltrate" it if possible. Especially if she worked with Odium at some ancient point in time or something? Maybe he gave her an avatar that she didn't have to "hack" so much to get to work... I was thinking, too, then, that maybe another Shard also had a "representative" among the Unmade, if this was the reason for the hacking-aspect of the red Thrill. I mean is there a WoB that says something about Odium possibly working with other Shards besides just maybe Autonomy? However, there's another possibility: Let's say that Odium was able to "kill" nine of the Purposes of Honor, so to produce the Unmade, he has to "sort of" hack Honor's Investiture, or something? (Maybe there are "angelspren," so to speak; Heralds are more like the Three Nephites or the Apostle John (in the legends of Christian immortals); Nohadon is like Moses (or King Benjamin in the BoM); etc. And the angelspren named Unity was killed by Odium's "We"...)

Breath, so one day I could Awaken something wild...

For some reason I always gravitate towards imagining Adolin with black hair. IDK where that even came from but it's how it goes on average in my mind. LOL

This is an incredibly interesting idea. AFAIK, the magic numbers go with planets more than Shards even in cases where Shards are associated with numbers specifically, but at any rate the idea that not all the magic numbers are positive integers is very tantalizing as the basis for theory-building more generally...

Because Honor is the equivalent of the spren who became the Honorblades (although as a Shard he doesn't have to convert all his physical presence into Blade-form).

So in The Neverending Story there is a sword, Sikanda, that likes to leap from its sheath of its own accord and wield its wielder, as it goes. When Bastian draws the sword of his own free will, his mantle turns pure black (not a part of the sword, I think it's a cloak he's wearing or something...). After using Sikanda to do something evil, Bastian eventually buries it beneath the earth. I realize that Nightblood would not actually be Sikanda, as although Fantastica is the equivalent of the Cognitive Realm in the Cosmere, Fantastica would be the CR of Earth's universe, and Earth is not in the Cosmere universe. However, I think there's an off chance that Sanderson might end up having Nightblood's original name be something along a similar line...

I wish I had better memory, have we been shown a Cosmere religion on another world where people look up when praying? Or is this an indication that Kabsal has Worldhopped to/from a currently unwritten Shardworld?

IDK if the Melkor/Sauron situations are quite "sealed in a can" scenarios. Well, I don't think the evil inside of Adonalsium was literally a separate being, more like the dark side of his personality. (Granted, that's technically the same proviso as concerns the Despiser, who was the Creator's shadow.) And as far as this evil's occurrent Cosmere role, I would say it's like an infection (maybe related to the fainlife...?) that is corrupting the Shards. (Since none of the Shards are good or evil as such per their Intents, it is rather that there is an evil form of all the Intents.)

This is a meta-argument for there being something wrong with Adonalsium. The idea is that the two ultimate* literary examples of Sealed-Evil-in-a-Can are the Dark One from the WoT, and the Despiser from the Covenant novels. At least, they are prominent expressions of the trope. In the first case, the Evil is sealed outside of creation, and does not clearly seem able to affect God. In the second, the can is creation itself, which serves as a barrier between the Evil and God. So, I stipulate the possibility of a Sandersonian twist: the Evil is sealed INSIDE God. Or, rather, was. Now it is sealed in the Shards. (Guess-theory: the Evil of Threnody was the part of Adonalsium's darkness that was trapped inside of Ambition.) The second-order twist is that the Covenant series concluded with the Evil being sealed inside God (effectively speaking; Covenant at least assumed the "role" of Creator, by the end), so to invert the trope's application more, Sanderson has this fact be the precursor fact for the overarching scenario. (Of course, Sanderson was writing about the Cosmere well before the Covenant novels ended, and I doubt Donaldson told Sanderson the ending before it was published; but I digress: there is an IRL reason to think that ultimate evil is inside of the IRL God, but that is another story for some other time...) *Arguable, granted, but in my defense these are the two with which I am most familiar, and they are iconic enough, and WoT was finished by Sanderson, and...

That may be so but what did Odium say to Taravangian that could have even resembled appointing the man to be the Shard's champion? The best guess in my memory is the thing where Mr. T offers to sacrifice the world to save his own city.

[OK, so I realize RAFO is from the WoT-era, it was also the name for the website that succeeded wotmania IIRC (I was a member of the predecessor). However, the quote that is the title of this thread is from The Neverending Story (the book).] Also, Hoid has twice involved himself in/founded/w/e (I don't remember the absolute details) groups devoted to storytelling, he is way into telling stories personally, he says, "I only tell stories, Your Grace. They may be truths, they may be fictions. All I know is that the stories themselves exist and that I must tell them," to Siri. Then there's his remark about Adonalsium: In my thread on the Terris prophecies, I asked if Preservation was known to be their author (I didn't remember and don't have the books at hand). It was said that yes, this is so, but also And Ruin has a special power to mess with books. Why? Also, when Shards are bound by their agreements, how can they go back on the intent behind the words of the agreement? Or more precisely, how are physical words involved at all? Wouldn't the Spiritual Shards have nothing to go on besides Intent? They would, unless... ... there is an Invested book, or books, or some such thing, somewhere. A remnant or incarnation or something of Adonalsium's original power, I suspect. Words written in the book can become true, more or less. The Shards have access to this book and in it they write their agreements; this is what binds them, but gives them the room to loophole their way out of the relevant Intent. So, also: SHATTERING THEORY: Adonalsium had a name that could be written in the Invested book, and depending on how many symbols were used to write it, then when those symbols were divided from each other, Adonalsium was divided into as many Shards.

Amen and welcome!

But they do write in stone, don't they? Actually, if Dawnchant is their language then isn't it written down somewhere?