Ripheus23

I'm not asking you to read my mind, I know there had to be something that suggested this to me when I read OB. I remember that it wasn't even like, "Oooh I have a crazy theory that Mr. T is now Odium's champion," but more like, "What! Mr. T is Odium's champion??!?!!" Unfortunately I don't have my copy of OB anymore...

IDK why I got this impression but I thought Odium ended up picking Taravangian as his champion?

Maybe the Honorblades are spren in the sense that they're of Honor-as-a-spren. They're his personal Shardblade-like form. He's their sapience. /endfoil

The Pearl of Great Price becomes the Black Sphere of Great Mystery...

So it begins. First ones I got (they've got to be special because they're the first): Marsh saves Nalthis by Soulcasting chouta/Cultivation is working together with Navani.

The black sphere: able to disguise itself as an object that Sanderson believes his audience can identify.

Eight years ago, a forum lurker swore never to become an official member. They failed. Probably not quite true... I am, unfortunately, a member of this forum. What is the most important post a man can make?

The Thomas Covenant books: Series 1: A depressed leper inspires his daughter-by-rape to break the laws of physics, then ghosts laugh at the dark side of God and the leper uses his wedding ring to shatter an evil emerald that was changing the color of the moon. Series 2: A doctor befriends and falls in love with the leper when she discovers him feeding his ex-wife with his own blood and accompanies him to a magical world where she can help mentally ill people only by demonically possessing them. Series 3: The leper, the doctor, and their autistic son wake up a giant worm who eats the planet before the entire universe is recreated in a single sentence.

I was trying for it to make sense... The three-body problem has to do with gravity, perpendicularities are a gravitational function of Investiture, ergo...

Years ago(ish), I wrote a lot of Thomas Covenant fan fiction. The idea was to fill in the gaps in the ancientwards legendarium, to explain the origins of the Insequent in general and the Auriference and the Mahdoubt specifically, or the captivity of Kastenessen, or the fall of Kevin. I was superimmersed in Donaldson's style off and on so I got into the swing of it pretty well. Well, I had a mirror-image(ish) Cosmere fan fiction idea just as of yesterday or so. The problem is it runs the risk of being beyond pretentious. Like, it would be an imaginary version of the Cosmere endgame. The emotional logic is that the canonical resolution to the mysteries of the history of the Land are as far away from me as the finale of the Cosmere saga is; I have lived X years since the days of the Land and will have lived an equivalent number of years for the duration of the Cosmere saga, or something. So, why not? Even if it is all falsified completely (not just the wording/names/etc. but even the scenarios or themes), it could be taken as a special prediction. The argument: Sanderson writes in style A, has WoB-wise said things B, books C&D&c. have come out, etc. so from these, I am inferring certain possibilities (at the least possibilities) about how it would all turn out. I actually have scenes written out in my mind for early "chapters" in the "book" but due to time constraints (per today) I am going to just outline it through the climax and its epilogue. Prologue scenario: some rando Shardworld POV character's society has developed space flight, and the POV character is one a ship, heading towards an interesting site, when Hoid's time-bubble falls or some other cloaking mechanism of his fails and he reveals he's on the ship and oh by the way that Spikey-looking ship is this (Scadrian) and that pretty sparkling human-shaped suit of armor is that (Rosharan mecha) and so on, then too-da-loo the POV guy freaks out and leaves back to his world while Hoid boards the Scadrian ship. The Scadrians are meeting up with representatives from (some) other spacefaring societies to investigate the Autonomy situation, among other things. Trell destabilized Harmony in MBE3 enough to cause him to lose control of the two Shards, which instead of long-term peacefully fusing, have abruptly collided and "detonated," extinguishing Scadrial from the Cosmere. Harmony had the Foresight to expect this cataclysm (the Second Catacendre) and helped evacuate as many people as possible from Scadrial. In the aftermath, therefore, the Scadrians are trying to find out what Trell really was and so on. But there is something else going on too... When Hoid interrupts the meeting, he begins to explain something. He starts with, "All of this began with words on a page..." and he proceeds to the story of how there once was a God known as Adonalsium, who created an Invested book, and when the holder or holders of the book would write in it, if enough people read what was written, it would become true. (A fusion of the Bible and the Neverending Story, basically. There's supposed to be some flippancy here in that Hoid says, "Once upon a time, God wrote a book. We know He wrote it because it literally fell out of the sky. Hit my master on the head when it did... He, Hoid, was the first to read from it. The first of those who bore the legends of God in their hearts and minds. The first of the Worldsingers. The one who wrote the story that I was born from," or something like that. Anyway, he also reveals that a lot of the Shardworlds were created before the Shattering, by the use of the book. Ati and Leras were two people who used a similar power to create Scadrial, although Ati didn't read the story that much (his contributions were more tangential on average) so he didn't have as much Foresight as Leras did about how the story would go. (Explanation for how Leras wrote the prophecies and Ati could mess with anything not written in metal: they were copying Adonalsium's "book from the sky" maneuver.) Frost and two Awakened dragons attack the gathering to try to get Hoid. So a space-battle with dragons. Hoid and Co. win the fight and Hoid meets the holders of the Shards of Ruin and Preservation (who are on the Scadrian flagship, variously going crazy/under immense strain from having to try to hold the Shards in the aftermath of the Second Catacendre). Hoid explains about something called the Darkening of Adonalsium. This is based off Answer to Job's talk about the darkness of the shards of God. The idea is that as the Cosmere as a whole evolves towards having a unitary consciousness spanning the entire region of space, Adonalsium's power and its echoes are causing the distinction between the Physical and Cognitive Realms to blur more and more. Eventually, if the evil that was within Adonalsium and now split between the Shards is not cleansed from existence, then when the Shards coalesce back together, this evil will unify itself as a single agent of darkness (the Dark One will be created by the apocalypse of the universe, so to say). This thing will be born from the beliefs/knowledge of evil that people in the Cosmere have, and the increasing intersection of the Realms. Elsewhere, Khriss observes aluminum raining from the skies on Taldain. [This is based on the "ashes from the sky" recurring words in MBE1 and the fact that there is a planet somewhere IRL, I think, where it has rained metal at some point.] Part of the cause of this is that vast swathes of the Cosmere are spontaneously tunneling through perpendicularities that are percolating across the worlds. There is a Ghostblood, Ghrenze (long-term relative of Mraize's or something), who is a Sliver of Ambition, whose goal is to recapitulate the Ghostbloods' original tri-Shard plan by harnessing the fusion of the final three Shards (as it stands, Autonomy has absorbed a lot of the Shards and can mentally handle their power because of her avatar system; but she can feel her own Shard, as such, also being pulled "from" her, by the coalescent tendency of Investiture; and we'll get to why there will only be three Shards in the end, in a little bit). The Lord Fire is a wicked dragon who is the embodiment of the Darkening of Adonalsium. That is, the darkness-essence in the Shards is being distilled from them as the Cosmere evolves, and while Hoid is cultivating the pieces of Adonalsium's goodness and light, Fire is incarnating God's evil. He is when first described a dragon-Inquisitor, basically. Hoid instructs the Scadrians to go to Sel, which is an Ascended planet by this time. Something called the Tide is about to strike Sel and Hoid has a plan for how to deal with this fact. The Tide is the long-term physical shockwave given off at the Shattering and when it strikes a perpendicularity, it aggravates the spatial-Realmatic distortion in question, which can weaken/alter Shards (and if it collides with the Dor, the Tide will have special, devastating consequences). The Scadrian captain/team of course agrees because they're good, sympathetic people who just escaped the explosion of their own planet, after all. Khriss ends up on Sel in the midst of the crisis, too. The interference of Fire prevents the protagonists from saving Sel. While the residue of darkness in Dominion and Devotion is siphoned into the dragon, the Tide catalyzes the shattering of the world. The Scadrians escape on their ship but Hoid, Khriss, and one or more other protagonists escape when Hoid super-uses Feruchemical Fortune to teleport them away, each to where they need to go. To Khriss he gives the Moon Scepter, which because it is an Aon-like image of all Sel itself, will retain the last vestiges of Selish Investiture as such. Now Fire is a dragon with Hemalurgic Spikes going through him, making him look terribly evil and all, but as of his absorption of Dominion's shadow, he now has an aura of Skaze surrounding him also. Khriss ends up in Silverlight, Hoid on Obrodai (where he has to team up with an Aviar POV character), and someone else, elsewhere. Meanwhile Fire goes to Roshar (the system) to gather the darkness of Odium, an event shown in an interlude from a Parshendi POV (the Parshendi is/are on Braize, like tourists almost, and then...). At some point Lift, wielding Nightblood, makes an appearance. Maybe also Taln. Autonomy argues with Hoid, telling him something like "this is exactly why Shards weren't supposed to be reunited." The 17th Shard at some point are shown as helping Fire. The 17S is afraid of the awakening of the Cosmere and the reforging of Adonalsium and is willing to help Fire stop this, although how this being will do so is not necessarily shown at the same time. Fire, in the form of a dragon-Inquisitor with red lightning and dark spheres encompassing him, takes the shadow from Honor and Cultivation and transforms into a giant sword-like being (some Dakhor-monk step being taken in the process). By now, only the Scadrian Shards and one 14-Shard exist (Autonomy has perished or been subsumed into the convergence of the other Shards). Fire transits into some super-dimensional path-space, towards a Cognitive-Realm representation of the final convergence. Essentially, it would look like three vast crystals were converging towards the mystic sun in Shadesmar. He is following the Scadrian ship there, in fact, because they are trying to keep the Vessel of Ruin away from him, since if he inherits the void of Ruin, he will transform into a nova that will destroy the entire Cosmere to prevent it from becoming a unified living thing (the 17S consent to this since they dread that this unified being will destroy the rest of the universe). So a play on the ol' "if Ruin gets the atium" danger. The Scadrians kind of have to go to the convergence-space due to the Spiritual pressure of the Vessels on their ship (if they get too "far away" then the Shards will be ripped from their Spiritwebs, killing them, etc.). Now IDK how to set up how the final battle takes place, but somehow, in the focus of the convergence, the protagonists square off against Fire in himself. The image I have is of Fire drawing in Ruin's darkness and Hoid attaching the First Gem/Topaz to the evil sword-dragon, to convert Fire into a sword that can be bonded and then dismissed. However, Hoid knows he can't bond to the evil that Fire has become because this evil would consume his mind. Luckily, Lift is there with Nightblood, so Hoid inspires Nightblood to bond with Fire and dismiss him. (Nightblood is cynical or wary, now, towards/of claims that this or that is evil; Hoid tells him that of all that anyone has ever told Nightblood to be evil, this thing surely is; and Nightblood remembers a time when in the war with the Shard of God's rage, he was held by Kaladin (for whatever reason), and learned right from wrong in a pure way; and he knows that Fire is evil. So he is driven into the First Gem (crucified into the Fire-sword), bonds with it, and dismisses it (since they're already in the Cognitive Realm, the dismissal is to the Spiritual, which ultimately defeats Fire). The Cosmere awakens and Ascends through the last three Shards, which cannot fuse but are sealed in a tri-spiral around the heart of reality. Khriss helps this happen using the Ire Ascension mechanism. The epilogue...

Adonalsium: "I was my own brother, and all my brothers and sisters killed me."

If the Unmade can count as characters, what about them?

So my suspicion is that the goal of the Ghostbloods is to control a tri-Shard scenario. They know of at least two possible cases (Roshar::Honor, Cultivation, Odium & Scadrial::Ruin, Preservation, {Trell}) and so have agents actively working those two cases. I think historically, it will turn out that the Ghostbloods do not achieve their goal of developing a tri-Shard Vessel. However, I predict this will as such be historically so. Once the Cosmere endgame comes into play, a different tri-Shard scenario will arise. I predict that eventually, enough Shards will have merged so that there are only three left. Each will have a perpendicularity, and a "three-body problem" will arise in consequence. Someone from the Ghostbloods (maybe Mraize, maybe Thaidakar, maybe Iyaltil, who knows!) will be in a position to attempt to take the three final Shards. Due to the Shattering, these three will never be able to be internally recombined, and trying to hold them will destroy the Ghostblood who attempts to hold them. BONUS RANDO THEORY: When the entire Cosmere becomes a unit of self-awareness and the final tri-Shard is not being held by anyone, the Cosmere itself will take those Shards and Ascend. However, Khriss and the Ire will need to assist in the process using the Ire Ascension mechanism (I'm guessing the Ire themselves will not do so but Khriss will have an "Aha!" moment and voila...).

Depends on how long he lasts

IDK if dragons are supposed to at all look like "usual" dragons, in the Cosmere, but can you imagine a classical dragon that had been Spiked? Do you think that outer-space battle might involve dragons in space? Could you Awaken a statue of a dragon? A metal dragon-statue?

IDK, sulfur is brimstone so I could guess at a few thematic reasons for it to matter otherwise, too...

Sulfur's atomic number is 16, so do you think there is a significant chance for sulfur to be important to the Cosmere in terms of Investiture potential?

It's been a while since I read MBE2 books and even then, I wasn't paying enough attention, so I missed out on the in-story examples of chromium use (if there were any?), but I was wondering, given the similarity in Allomantic effect, if you could make some kind of alternate scabbard for Nightblood (or a similar sword) out of chromium. I mean sure you could probably make all kinds of scabbards for all kinds of swords out of all the Allomantically viable metals but this one's specific similarity to aluminum makes me wonder what peculiar role it could play. Aluminum's general magical inertia/resistance is presumably not a shared trait, though perhaps chromium shares an analogous trait (the Wikipedia IRL history of the stuff identifies it as a late-discovered element, so arguably few of the societies we've been shown in the Cosmere would have had reason or opportunity to discover it themselves, as such, in which event its utility by hypothetical analogy with aluminum might be widely unknown even if such were otherwise the case).

Isn't this due to Ati's temperament, in both senses of that word (Ati tempered Ruin due to his temperament)? Also, I think if he'd gotten his "body" back, he'd have executed a nova-style move to destroy Scadrial.* I mean he was already (indirectly) setting off volcanoes so he'd moved on to a flashy style of apocalypse, not just a slow spiral into the grave. *EDIT: Though to fit the entropy image, maybe it'd've been more Thanos-esque.

How many?

Chromium perhaps?

... where there's a scene with an army of living books? I know there have been book-monsters in, say, the Final Fantasy series, or the Ildatch in the Shannara books, or that Care Bears movie with the evil book... And other examples... But a whole army? Like thousands of them? I have an explanation, sort of, for how this would happen (a magic-logic explanation, that is), but if the image itself seems absurd then at best it would only be good for an absurdist story.

It refers to theories of the black spheres. Only when all possible black-sphere theories are merged will we truly understand these precious beings.

This is an issue of whether the WoB is about Shards or Vessels. But now (perhaps obviously?) the Shards of Honor and Cultivation were not romantically involved, but the Vessels were. (Then again, there is that thread about impregnated gems or what...)

@VirtuousTravellerThe Skaze are yet another set of beings in the Cosmere whose name starts with an "S" and has a "z" near the middle (e.g. Sazed and Sigzil). I hope that helps!