Ripheus23

Possibly the most arresting (to me) image in the series so far is when Of course, as it pertains to something rather glorious, this event makes sense, but I wonder if there is any other, deeper(?), significance, here. Is it possible that gloryspren are more, err, powerful than might otherwise be supposed? Something along this line? I feel like the concept of divine glory is highly relevant, here, or would be, or whatever...

There must be a reason for the name "Surgebinding," and it seems to be that the Surges are bound to people (via the spren). So I feel like Voidbinding would involve binding with this "void" of Odium's that's been mentioned here and there in the books. Spontaneous claim: the Alethi relationship with the Thrill is an example of something to do with Voidbinding.

I liked this just because you tricked me with your signature

I read that topaz is technically some form of aluminum, or based on aluminum, or whatever. As a polestone it is connected to Regrowth and the Surge of Progression. So I could see some tie-in with Hoid-as-Topaz, the First Gem, etc. and Adonalsium being killed (although the image I'm getting in my head is of using healing magic to harm the undead in typical fantasy stories ).

I would guess that there's a relationship between the question of foreknowledge and free will on the one hand, and the idea that seeing the future is evil on the other. That is, in an "agency/personal integrity-and-responsibility is a fundamental good/value" system of ethics, something like "seeing the future" that might damage/limit/contradict/w/e agency, would be evil, or close to it, or something like that.

Random idea: Cosmere-dragons will have gemhearts.

So Shards don't/can't, err, you know? Or: the result of this activity, on their part, would not count sufficiently different from children-otherwise-born-of-them?

RAFO.

Sanderson's distancing of explicit statements of LDS doctrine, from exposition re: the Cosmere's essence and structure, notwithstanding, it still remains that Sazed's, "There is some truth in all these religions," theory, is almost verbatim a copy of something that LDS missionaries and General Conference members have said upon occasion. The system of the Devotaries, with Callings and Glories, is reminiscent of the specific calling-system administered (if I'm not mistaken) by local LDS bishoprics. Also Shallan's description of creation-from-nothingness is a translation of the classical ex nihilo doctrine into the from-preexistent-substance model (i.e. substance in itself is not created, because it is not the kind of thing that is created or destroyed; it is objects over and above pure substance that this concept applies, as such, to). These things are not simply fabricated out of nowhere. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, even. Whenever I write stories, my beliefs about God have to find a place in what I'm writing if I think of those beliefs as important, universal, possibly necessary truths, no? Now, Sanderson actually is a little subversive in his usage of the inclusivism-minded phrase, to be honest. But I would look at him not as a traitor to or opponent of his church, but something along the lines of a reformer or case-tester, such as these things are (if anything). EDIT: Before I forget, the whole, "I cannot trust anything not written on metal," or however that quote goes, is an almost obvious nod to the Book of Mormon being written on metal plates to preserve it during the post-Nephite era.

The Pilgrim's Progress is a classical allegory about becoming and being a Christian. It's also a little ironic, this passage that is, in that action is usually contrasted with passion (in these contexts), and agency with patience, whereas here Passion and Patience are at odds...

https://www.lds.org/topics/creation?lang=eng says: Also https://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-5-the-creation?lang=eng says: This is not a Gnostic demiurge scenario, but more like a Platonic one. In Plato's scheme, to my knowledge, the demiurge is not evil, but is still subordinate to the Form of the Good. As for the visitation/ministration of the Godhead in relation to the three kingdoms, https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-stories/chapter-26-the-three-kingdoms-of-heaven-16-february-1832?lang=eng says: I apologize for any untoward appearance in my original statements, although I am confused as to why anyone would think there was anything untoward in them? EDIT: On second thought, I realize my use of quotation marks in the OP might have been off-putting to the unawares reader. That is, it is possible to mistake them for scare-quotes. I have been obsessively rereading A Theory of Justice and picked up on Rawls' habit of using quotation marks to make special note of certain phrases, which is what I was actually doing in the OP. I would also like to note, for what it's worth, that the person I feel the most strongly about, more or less, of anyone I've ever met, is LDS, so having an unnecessarily sarcastic or hostile attitude towards the LDS community is totally not what I am about.

While reading The Pilgrim's Progress again I noticed the following passage: IDK if this is relevant to the debate over Odium's self-conception, but it seems like it might be...

One thing that struck me during the OB endgame was This is highly reminiscent of Lucifer in LDS theology, whose goal was to have all agency given to him for the sake of the plan of salvation. So this got me to wondering: what if the 16 were Cosmere-analogues of prominent members of the premortal council in the LDS theory of history? For that, we have: Elohim [the proponent of the plan], Christ [executor of the plan], the Holy Ghost [somewhat mysterious role], the Heavenly Mother [even more mysterious?] Lucifer [self-proposed alternate to Christ] Adam and Eve Mary Of course Abraham, Melchizedek, Aaron, Peter, John the Baptist, and Joseph Smith's spirit-children forms might have been prominent, too. So we have almost 16 people in play. Now, the demiurgic aspect of the LDS Son might subtract him from this picture and square him more with Adonalsium, ditto for Elohim [the Father] (as possibly like "the God Beyond"). I propose here that Hoid is like the Holy Spirit. Moreover, I don't want to say that Adonalsium had a plan of salvation in mind like that of Elohim in the LDS system [that is, such a plan as involved where people go when they die, and their eventual resurrection and exaltation---or damnation]. Rather, I want to explore what I will call semiotic Realmatic theory: [Axiom of Realmatics] Physical information is like the pieces of words [letters] and individual words themselves. Cognitive information is like those pieces being put together into orderly sentences. Spiritual information is like arranging those sentences into an elaborate composition, with themes and typographical features and so on [think Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves: the way the words and sentences are ordered is another level over that of the words and sentences, another semiotic level that is, with a "spiritual" dimension to it]. So the 16 Shattered Adonalsium insofar as they took up 16 spiritual roles, that is, become participants in 16 narrative-level concepts vis-a-vis the Cosmere. They add a "story" to the Cosmere per se. Hoid is an outlier in the process and "began [his] life... as words on a page" in the sense that he is involved with the narrative level of the Cosmere as well. Now, I also want to analyze the fact that "The Dark One" was at one point supposed to be a Cosmere story. Let's suppose, then, that Adonalsium wanted to "save the universe" somehow. He gave a group of people the chance to become the Saviors. Odium wanted to be the only Savior and has hereby become the anti-Savior, instead. Hoid, in his humility, chose to serve Adonalsium in a different way. But the narrative-level order that all these exchanges are taking place on, is that of some kind of salvation-plan.

At t = 0, matter and energy would not have been differentiated, neither therefore would have Investiture, I suppose. I don't know the details (if anyone knows them!) about when the force-carrier particles split from leptons and quarks (the "matter" particles), although I am somewhat familiar with the photon-vectron* split and the idea of a prior "electronuclear epoch" when gluons and photons/vectrons were all one. IDK if there was supposed to be an electrogravitational or gravitonuclear epoch, aside from just a "grand unified" epoch. *[Not the technical name for the weak-force carriers. The tech name is "W+/- and Z bosons," which is an example of the physics community's sometimes questionable lexical decision-making . Since the W/Z bosons were originally photons and are also referred to under the heading of "vector bosons," then even though photons and gluons would "technically" be vectrons, I feel like using this word for the W/Z bosons.] But anyway, in quantum field theory, the division is not of clumps of stuff into other kinds of clumps, but across the multiplicity of fields that occur at the possible coordinates of objects in space. That is, instead of a super-particle breaking up into different types of particles, we'd have a single field somehow "stacking" into a plurality of fields.** So, I wonder, would Investiture be its own single field? Would it have something like negative spin, or spin = 3, or some weirder spin number? I don't know if it could have these even if it was not quite a particle field. In QFT, anyway, particles are considered intensifications of the field, so it might be that we could speak of Investiture particles although not as we would normally think of little flying bits of stuff. Now, I had this idea of late, that if consciousness is a molecular effect, then during a primordial epoch when matter and energy were closely packed together, then "virtual" molecules might have existed, that would have subserved the dynamics of consciousness. Like Boltzmann brains, I suppose, but only during the initial expansion. So, let's suppose the Investiture meta-field was intrinsically conscious, automatically, and had agency. (Think something like the Rusakov field from Pullman's multiverse, maybe.) Or, as it were, it was the agency-field. Now, if this was so, maybe it had a choice whether or not to inflate/expand along with matter and energy, or of how it would so develop, or whatever. And maybe it had a choice about how its field would interact with the other, emerging fields. I think this would be related to whatever Adonalsium was supposed to be. Indeed, maybe the Shattering of Adonalsium was the decoupling of a single field into 16 fields? (That the Shards' powers are field-like follows from there being Preservation everywhere, to some degree, in the Cosmere, for instance.) Of course, this doesn't explain why the Investiture-field decoupled from the lepton/quark and force-carrier fields in the first place. Nor does it say what kind of field Investiture has for itself, mathematically-speaking. Like, it seems like it would be similar to a scalar, e.g. the Higgs, field [which brings up the ironic label for the Higgs as the "God particle"], maybe. And if it was a scalar field, then it would have some quasi-fractal aspects, I think, which would help explain why Adonalsium used a quasi-fractal template for the world It directly created [Roshar]. **[The inflaton field is the "place-holder" field for this process. So a model of inflatons, Cosmere-wise, would have to be folded over Investiture as well as leptons, quarks, and the force-carriers/Higgs.]

Here are some interesting factoid about the stuffs, from Wikipedia: Here's some info about crystals in general [from the "Crystal system" Wikipedia article]: I'm wondering if the possible different Shatterings of Adonalsium would correspond to differences like these...

The quote says it is unlikely that the Nightwatcher would forcibly bond someone with a spren. However, I am not thinking that Lift asked to be bonded with a spren. First off, she thought Wyndle was a Voidbringer at first. So I'm guessing the bond would have been the Nightwatcher's solution to the puzzle of what Lift asked for. As for when it happened: didn't Kaladin discover that Syl had sort of been trailing him for far longer than he remembered seeing her? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wyndle is plant-like. If plants can be made to grow better using Stormlight, if plants can directly metabolize Stormlight or some such thing, I suspect being bonded to a plant-like spren would transfer some of the qualities of this metabolism to the person thus bonded. Whether Wyndle would understand this process, IDK. He seems a little... out of the loop... to some degree? But anyway, if spren are based out of the Cognitive Realm, and spren generally (on Roshar) have a special relationship with Cultivation, and she has her own namesake-spren, I would think bonding with one of her spren would result in a person being "closer" to the Cognitive Realm than would be normal. (I recently read somewhere on the Internet that plants apparently use quantum entanglement in the process of photosynthesis. I can only imagine that there is some kind of chloroplastic crystallography involved with Rosharan plants whereby they have, or can have, quasi-gemhearts with which to absorb Stormlight...)

Or at least one child? I have a feeling that the Sibling was their offspring, or related to their child/ren, and in this sense is a Sibling to both the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher, while also not having to do with Odium.

Is bonding with the Unmade the same as Nahel-bonding? (Who/what was "Nahel," anyway?) Or maybe: the Unmade can't individually fully bond with someone, which is why they were supposed to be the champion's shadows. Dalinar was going to be a Voidknight(!), so to speak, with nine spren (and nine weapons?! like a Nine-Tails )?

@Scion of the Mists, IIRC the Ars Arcanum section for the Metallic Arts associated Allomancy with the Physical Realm, Feruchemy with the Cognitive Realm, and Hemalurgy with the Spiritual Realm. Since the reader's "intuitive" sense of "how many magic systems there are" is geared towards how the Metallic Arts got split up, the reader is going to feel that the number of Realms is connected to how an overarching system (per book series) gets split up, even if this is not a fast-and-hard rule. (Of course the Ars Arcanum information is to be filtered through a recognition that they are Khriss' theories.) Now, at one extreme, we might say that there is only one magic system in the entire Cosmere whatsoever, namely the abstract mathematical system underwriting Investiture as such. However, there is some set of subsets of the pure Investiture system, of which we are presumably speaking when we compare different sets of "spells" and label them "a magic system," in this context. That might be the way to look at it: "sets of spells," where a spell is understood as a specific use of a specific focus/Shardic relation/etc.

Isn't her spren a cultivationspren? Maybe her boon/curse from the Nightwatcher was to get one of Cultivation's special spren, with all that this entails...

I guess my question is for this reason: Supposing a Hoid book or whatever, where he has multiple powers of all different sorts, Sanderson is going to write a scene where Hoid has to figure out how to use as many systems at once, as he can, of those he's "acquired." It'd be like how the end-battle in A Memory of Light tethered the crystal sword's weakness with the use of "the True Power" and so on and on. It would showcase the logic of the systems to special effect. But I doubt Sanderson will describe more magic systems in detail than would be simultaneously computable by readers, so to say.

Maybe they're the spren of the magic systems themselves Or nine spren incapable of the Nahel bond, made so by Odium (Rayse "castrated" them, so to speak...).

@Calderis, that's why Lift can get Stormlight from eating, maybe? Because her spren is plant-like, it can absorb Stormlight in a special way and transfer it into Lift when she "grows," or "cultivates," herself by eating food.

Maybe they're the spren of the gravitational bond between Braize and only nine of the gas giants?

They were the nine shadows of Odium's champion-image, too, weren't they? Maybe they're nine spren that are drawn towards the concept of this champion (championspren, even), and so towards the person meant to have this role, or the process of bringing him into existence. EDIT: Or, the spren of the number 9, in a system where 9 maps to "evil"?