Child of Hodor

Not sure which thread I should post in, but as you said in the old thread we know Honor is bad at future-sight compared to Odium. I think that's where the Rosharan superstition comes from. It's definitely not of Honor and might be of Odium. Not worth the risk. I do think Cultivation is better at it than Odium, because her Intent is more concerned with the future, Odium seems to be more time-neutral. I guess she's doesn't like sharing that power with surgebinders/Radiants. I'm not sure exactly what a normal Truthwatcher's surge of Illumination would allow them to do, but it is apparently significantly different from what Renarin can do. In general, it's a bad idea to trust too much in glimpsing the future because we've seen both The Diagram (interpreting death rattles) and Renarin be wrong. Even Odium says things like "Dalinar wasn't supposed to Ascend" and has the black spots for Renarin. Mistborn Spoilers:

We don't have much on their origins other than that they were "We were made, then unmade" from Sja-anat and we know they are currently Spren and intentional splinters of Odium. If Odium took a person and Unmade them into a being of pure investiture wouldn't that being be classified as a cognitive shadow? Now they could be like the Stormfather, who is both a spren and a cognitive shadow of Honor/Tanavast. Odium could have taken existing spren, a cognitive shadow of a person and a splinter of his own power and combined them all. I get confused as to who the Parshendi gods are, is it just the Unmade or is it also the Fused? It seems like it's both, but they aren't the same thing and that makes it hard to figure out their origins. The first quote above sounds like the Unmade, the second one sounds like the Fused. The second quote sounds like people that allowed Odium to unmake or change them. Ulim refers to the Fused as the Parshendi gods in OB interlude I-6 "Look, your gods need bodies"

Each week I'm like "I hope they have another one, but what could it be about? They've covered so much." then I see the episode title and go "Oh yeaaaahhh". I agree with Ian that random people have some they aren't telling anyone about, like Liss, Some probably are buried under crem or underwater. I think there are too many missing for that to account for all of them though. Some group is probably hoarding a bunch of them. I think that group would have to be a group that doesn't use them much at all or we would know about them by now. My best guess is either the Shin or Skybreakers. The Shin are peaceniks and we know they hoard Honorblades. The Skybreakers would have known about the Recreance at the time and may have snatched up as many dead shards as they could either out of practical or sentimental concerns. Bonded Skybreakers already have a blade and can't use the dead blades without hearing screaming, so they would just sit on them. If the Skybreakers are hoarding a bunch and Nale has gone over to the Singers then I would expect to see Fused running around with them in book 4.

The WoB below isn't a total confirmation of your idea, but gets at the idea of something else created the Universe as a whole and Adonalsium playing a much smaller role. Doesn't mean Adonalsium was strictly limited to the Cosmere. Could be that the Creator god left some residual power around somewhere else and it either gained sentience or was picked up and became Adonalsium, then it went and made the Cosmere. For the purposes of the story I don't know that we'll ever need to worry much about the rest of the Universe outside of the Cosmere, other than as a footnote that it exists and maybe Adonalsium came from there. Adonalsium was still VASTLY more powerful than any combination of mortals, so whether it was the god of everything or the god of everything in a star cluster of 50 -100 stars it is still a ridiculous mismatch.

I think it is related to what is different about Rock that allows Rock to see Spren like Syl even when they aren't trying to show themselves to him. He is special in a way we don't understand yet, it probably has to do with his ancestry and being born and raised very near Cultivation's shardpool in the Horneater peaks. Not all horneater's have the ability to see spren when the spren don't want them to, but some do. They are called alaii’iku. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Lunamor https://coppermind.net/wiki/Horneater_Peaks

That's a cool way of thinking of it. I feel like the WoB I posted above previously suggests that Ati's resisting so hard for so long had a softening effect on the Shard, but I do like what your idea. He thought it was a monster, so even after he softened it, it was still monstrous in how it manifested. Like how Ati appeared to Kelsier as a weird spider infested puppet man. This WoB kind of supports that idea. Sazed was able to view these two powers as canceling each other out and being at peace and so they did. They could have been "Discord" or something similar where he's multiple personality disorder oscillating between wanting to protect and destroy. Ultimately coming to a similar conclusion of not being able to do much, but instead of having a hard time taking action in the first place he would decisively take a destructive action and quickly change his mind and take a separate action to protecting cancel the first one out, and vice-versa. OB spoilers:

I agree a vessel can't change a shard much only nudge it a bit. Ati got to a point where he was OK with creating life to eventually destroy it. But when he was finally free it wasn't like he was giving the world a slow death. He started detonating ash mounds and causing tidal waves. The reason the planet wasn't destroyed right away was because Preservation's power was still being used to resist him and he was missing some of his power due to TLR hiding the atium. Odium by itself is the most dangerous, but I think the idea of going around killing all the other Shards is more a thing of Rayse. Another Vessel might have been content to take up residence on a planet and make the beings living on it hate and fight each other. If another Shard came by they would probably attack it, but left on their own they may have been happy to play in their hate-filled sandbox. If Rayse had held Ruin he might have said "Let's go break everything in the Cosmere" and not bothered creating a new planet with Preservation. I do think all of these Shards are dangerous separated from other attributes. Preservation called TLR "perfect" in M:SH one way to preserve a consistent society is by having a permanent ruling class led by an "immortal" emperor and violent oppression was small price to pay for that consistency. That said, Ruin and Odium are particularly destructive forces.

I think Division could accomplish something akin to what we see in the vision. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Surgebinding#Division How literally to take his imagery? Fairly literally in broad strokes, but the details of the city and surrounding areas are so crude vision it's hard to say. What is described in the vision reminds me of some of these of a nuclear bomb being detonated underground. The earth falls inward and is thrown up in a bunch of dust outward in a wave. http://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons/underground-atomic-bomb-detonation/4830676554001 Something like what happened to create the shattered plains, but larger. Like a magical explosion that radiates outward and tears the ground apart. "It is unknown what caused the landscape to form this way, but during Kaladin's dream he saw the entire area as a symmetrical pattern, radiating outwards from the center as if something massive had struck there.[3]" https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shattered_Plains I like your idea for creating a "Sprenularity" of sorts. I'm not sure if that's possible, but I'm not ruling it out.

He may be wary of acting directly on Roshar too much for fear of opening himself to a counterstrike by Cultivation. He can't kill her right this minute and he's not sure exactly where she is. She could pop out and hurt him if he's not careful. His gambit of accepting Dalinar's challenge and choosing Dalinar as his champion backfired and now it is risky for him to show up in "person" as Taravangian tells Odium As for the Dawnshards, we know one of them can be used to bind. Since There are multiple and they are not all alike. I think he might want to get the people of Roshar to destroy the world like the people of Ashyn mostly destroyed Ashyn. (People still live on Ashyn in pockets). We don't know much of anything about the Dawnshards, but my guess is that they amplify surgebinding to a large degree and could devastate a planet. I suspect Urithiru will fall next book and I think this death rattle hints at that. Probably due to the Sibling not being there to keep the Unmade out. Then maybe someone finds the Sibling and the Radiants retake Urithiru.

Good point, my assumption is Amaram inherited. It may not be the same one though.

Dang, missed that one when I keyword searched Arcanum.

Yeah, we don't have confirmation yet. The Purelake could be an offshoot religion from Taldain worldhoppers. This thread in the OB spoiler section gets into other possible Taldain influences on Roshar.

I think the religion of the Purelake referenced in WoK Ishikk interlude is related to Autonomy because it has certain similarities to Trelagism on Scadrial. Both religions have jealous siblings that have to be avoided by followers when trying to worship their chosen god. The Trelagists have to worship Trell at night because the jealous brother is blocking the stars during the day. In the Purelake they can only worship in grottos, perhaps because they are underground and suffiiciently out of view of the stars/sun? I am thinking Autonomy's avatars don't always get along and compete for worshipers and attention.

Torol Sadeas uses it to help fight the Chasmfiend in WoK chapter 12. As the new leader of the house Amaram inherited it. "From a distance, Sadeas used his grandbow to weaken it while Dalinar and Adolin go for its legs and Elhokar distracts it" https://coppermind.net/wiki/Summary:The_Way_of_Kings#Chapter_12

I was thinking more along the lines of depth of character. People like Sadeas and Amaran are far more interesting, fully drawn characters. King Iadon seems chartoonish in comparison. He’s a dumb sexist and then the big twist is his human sacrifices. It fell flat for me. As for the brutality of Mistborn, I don’t think it’s that different from how slaves were raped and abused in America, Rome and elsewhere through history. Some were treated decently others were fed to lions for people’s amusement. Scadrial is a brutal, harsh world under the Lord Ruler.

What happened to the Singers is really sad it probably contributed to the Radiants desire to quit. It seems like they got the idea for the mechanics of the Recreance from the effect imprisoning BAM had on the Singers. They broke the bond in such away to tear out a piece of their souls which made them incapable of bonding any Spren. The radiants then did the same thing to their Spren. Broke the bond in such a way as to make the Spren incapable of bonding. From OB ch. 81 epigraph the effect on the Singers seemed to be incidental, they were focused on imprisoning BAM. But they saw the result and it gave them an idea. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Oathbringer/Epigraphs

I like everything that takes place in the city itself, so about 1/3rd of it. The other two parts i didn’t like so much. My biggest issue is the nobles don’t feel like real people. Compared to Mistborn or Stormlight where the ruling classes similarly terrible people, but they feel like people in those series.

I think the strongest evidence of Autonomy influence is that the Iriali have three separate, but equal monarchs. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Iri It is not a committee either, the queen has total authority over foreign policy. The other two presumably have total authority over two other aspects of government. That is such a weird set up I feel like it reeks of Autonomy. 3 autonomous rulers who can’t check each other as far as we know each one just does their own thing, but it is somehow in service of the one whole. in addition, Ym, who is Iriali, speaks of the god that split itself into many pieces intentionally, but remains one being. This could apply to Adonalsium, but is very much what Autonomy is doing with it’s Avatars as well. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Ym

The gold crown and scepter are him putting on airs. The old man appearance might not be how Rayse looked pre-Odium either. Considering he looked Parsh to the Parsh at Thaylen, we really don’t know what Rayse looked like. Not sure all manifestations of a Shards power have to have the same color. Honorspren are blue, but the perpendicularity is blinding golden light. The high storm appears white-ish in the cognitive realm. We’ve seen a Shard pool on another planet that was blue and it wasn’t Honor’s. In Dalinars vision of Odium the dark violet light was at the core of his being. I assume it is his.

I think it is a secondary Spren associated with the Stoneward order. Like the Windrunners have windspren. I think they are attracting the more simple minded stone spren or similar nature-based spren that form the plate for an order. mr. T says “Bless a Radiant” it could be like bless a radiant with Plate. He doesn’t exactly say create a radiant.

This kind of reminds me of an old radar detector from WW2 with all those green screens. Or patient monitoring equipment in a hospital. I know it is a mistake, but it being radar detectors is a bigger mistake than it being a boom box. It accidentally implies they also have airplanes or other fast moving aircraft that need tracking.

I agree, it seems like part of their spiritweb / soul was removed. I wonder if a storm could be crafted to restore what the "dead" spren are missing?

I see what you are saying, the painrial is kind of tricking the body into sending pain signals, maybe that's all it is. I guess I'm getting what powers this thing? It doesn't work without the spren trapped in there and spren feed off of human emotions/ideas. It seems to harness and channel the spren's natural attraction to and "feeding" off of emotions, in this case pain. Painspren on their own don't absorb physical pain, maybe just they are feeding off of the pain's cognitive aspect. By putting the spren in the gem it connects them to the physical realm and now it now can absorb the physical sensation of pain. Spren normally feed off of emotion cognitively, the device makes it more physical/literal.

Yeah, I feel like the prologue to OB showed Gavilar at his worst intentionally. Being arrogant and condescending to Eshonai and thinking they'd be happy to have their gods back. He was a warmonger when he was younger, but even then he was a much better man than the other Alethi leaders. After he started getting the visions he became a better person and tried to guide the Alethi on a better path. I think we will get a prologue with his POV in 5. We will understand him more and view him more favorably.

This is just something I was thinking about, would Nightblood appear as a being, aside from as a sword, if Szeth entered the cognitive realm? If it manifests as something other than a sword there what would it look like. I don't know whether Nightblood would appear as something other than a sword, but for the sake of fun I am assuming it does. I was thinking it is really powerful, maybe it'd be a giant thing. Then I thought it being a giant monster would be too obvious. It has the personality of a child and mindset of child, a very creepy, kill-crazy child. I think it would be cool if he looked like one of those creepy ghost children who haunt orphanages and boarding schools in horror movies or the kid from The Omen. Putting some examples under the spoiler tag because they are scary, be warned.