LewsTherinTelescope

Maybe? Depends on a few factors: How the Heralds are immortal vs how the Fused are immortal. Don't know enough to speculate. The nature of the Oathpact. The Heralds' souls are bound together and also out making a prison, somehow. This might leave them more stretched out or more entangled, in which case trying to trap Jezrien's soul might not have been a very clean move and might've ripped off and/or left behind bits tied to the rest. What happens when the raysium does what it does. Raboniel seems to think the humans will work out a method more similar to how Nergaoul was trapped (though she doesn't really seem to know how she thinks a Fused will be trapped that way, which does make me think she's more exploiting others' fears than making a real argument), which may be less invasive than ripping a soul out of a body through a small knife. Also, the blackened wound + black smoke may indicate that the raysium caused damage and leaked out bits of soul, which probably is unhealthy. Additionally there's the fact that part of what Kalak attributes as a cause is the Oathpact being severed, but Jezrien's death itself is what severed it, so Kalak might not quite know the mechanics at play here as much as he acts like he does (which does make sense, as he hasn't really had a shot to play around with these things much). I'm also not fully sure if I think Honor being Splintered even should affect them or not, because the fact the Stormfather can still pull through Stormlight constantly and the Sibling can still pull through Towerlight shows there's still plenty to draw on in the Spiritual Realm. Plus, the other Heralds haven't pulled a Returned and dropped dead over the past couple thousand years, so I'm inclined to think they're still getting their juice.

A Fused trapped in a gem would, like Jezrien lack a valid connection to the Physical Realm. But I take it from Raboniel’s statement would retain a sufficient connection to the Spiritual. I'm not sure how much the Fused actually do or don't understand about what was happening with Jezrien, especially the ordinary ones who aren't super involved in the sciencey stuff. So Raboniel might a.) not know that's why that happened, or b.) be fearmongering to push them to go with her plan. Or c.) it might actually be accurate and a Fused wouldn't die.

Sazed does say that she's someone Hoid should approach again (and basically the only one of the sixteen who seems to have any positive feelings about Hoid lmao), so I doubt she's one of those who interpreted it as a hard oath. Considering his goal is "kill everyone else and be the sole remaining God", probably difficult to convince many others to join him. Plus, he's using the fact the people he's attacked have been paired up and thus breaking what some see as a pact as an excuse, which as we see with Endowment and Autonomy's letters has helped keep the other Shards off his back, so partnering with others would ruin this logic. And yet, she alongside Honor participated in his binding to the system (the Stormfather says her power and Honor's bind Odium's like the Oathpact), which would be odd if she didn't want him to be stuck there. She also worked with Honor to make the Sibling for the war effort, and the Nightwatcher has made Bondsmiths for that as well. She's been subtle with her direct actions, but she's been involved with all this from the start. Her plan with Taravangian also explicitly called for helping him control the Intent (making someone who can "bear this power with honor") and teaching him how to use it, which doesn't sound like she doesn't care and just wants it out, either. I do agree here. Maybe in the long term he'd consider it, or if she acted to stop his plans, but if he can have a friendly Vessel in his home base who is willing to teach him and help him improve his abilities and knowledge, I don't think he'll throw it away so quickly, especially when he's new to things and she is not. I don't know about Vivenna's Blade, but I did see someone else here point out something that originally I was skeptical of but that I've come around on because it fits so oddly well: Taravangian's moment of bravery. It's phrased remarkably similarly to the way the Intents of Ruin, Preservation, and Odium were displayed. Bravery, dying courage, glory of fighting to defend, the feeling of stepping off into the unknown.... those definitely sound like rather valorous concepts. And the moment is accompanied by him seeming to hear a voice right when he thought he failed that pointed out the opportunity, which could definitely just be an internal monologue, but with the other stuff... For reference, the description of Ruin: Preservation: Odium: It definitely feels like it fits the sort of pattern of these things, and just so happens to align neatly with the Intent of the one Shard that Harmony said seemed reasonable and wanted to speak with Hoid...

I think Connection affecting other Realms is a bit different from specifically having Connection tying you to the Realm itself (Syl mentions if she goes too far from Kal, her Connection to the Physical Realm fades). That was my first thought, but the whole thing's weird enough I've given up on fully understanding it lol (Oh yeah, and it stops fabrials as well, iirc, which feels even weirder to me... it's all complicated.) That's fair. Lmao seriously yeah I'm not sure if I agree with this bit, but I could see the purpose (Intent, you might say) of the spren having some relevance to what they can do even beyond Surges, true. Yeah.... Bondsmiths do be scary. I don't know that I'd quite say the Tower was made around the heart as much as they, both being parts of the Sibling, were designed by Honor and Cultivation with both in mind to work together. Things like the Sibling manifesting as veins of metal and gem in the walls seem difficult to add in after the fact, but also I doubt they could stand on their own. That would be wild. Lmaoooo fair enough Then again, Ishar thinks he can "reset" it on his own... I think the Honorblades are capable of drawing through far more power than we tend to assume, though Honor probably used to keep them limited most of the time when he was alive to prevent Ashyn 2.0. But ultimately they are pieces of Honor himself that grant the bearer direct access to his essence (I think the wording was something like that), so I can see them getting pretty crazy. Though if Szeth thinks Abrasion is a Lashing... Side note, I love how the Windrunners using the Lashing terminology just comes from Kaladin overhearing Szeth mention the word in one of his insane rambles one time, lol. Hey if Lightweavers can have a gazillion passive effects so can Windrunners I think it's plausible that honorspren sort of being windspren influences the way the power can manifest, in addition to power levels. Just spitballing, though, and that doesn't answer everything either way.

Reminds me of the stuff Syl and Kalak mention about having Connection to the Spiritual, Physical, and Cognitive Realms... Still not sure how that works when Connection is a Spiritual attribute but I guess it does That's a fair distinction, you're right. Fits more with the "unite" theme as well. Ah, good catch. There are people nearby that may have gems (Lopen's only got drained very shortly before), but I don't know that it'd be enough to account for such a large blast. Huh, honestly yeah that makes sense. The suppressor does... stuff, for sure, but I have no idea what the mechanism is. Off the top of my head you have to account for: Knocking Radiants unconscious/Fused when normal Making Stormlight work more slowly for healing/Voidlight when normal NOT blocking (near) 4th Ideal Radiants due to strength of bond (but iirc Kal does feel a pressure)/Unmade when normal (but only sometimes, other times the Sibling was strong enough to suppress them) Knocking Windrunners less unconscious than other orders NOT blocking Honorblades despite the bond there being extremely shallow NOT blocking Kaladin's Adhesion or Lift's Progression NOT having a noticeable effect on Lift besides Abrasion being gone iirc? Allows a Reverse Lashing to be pushed through because of the Adhesion involved, but it takes active effort Can be healed away for 10 hours but then comes back Makes it harder to summon the spren as a Blade, and Teft is only able to summon a barely-substantial one with extreme effort from both him and Phendorana I've not seen any theory yet that really accounts for it all. Eh, the Tower's fabrials are made of the Sibling manifesting themselves. Dalinar and Shallan have to both do things (even if they don't fully understand those things) to get it to work. Not really the same thing imo. That does get some, yeah, but several of those (such as the heating fabrial and attractors) are explicitly noted to be part of the Sibling, and I'd find it really weird if the Tower at first came without doors or elevators lol. Yeah I really need to as well, there's soooo much. I'd just been assuming the Sibling created them like the SF makes honorspren, but I suppose that's not certain. More I meant if the Sibling can create new spren of that power level and with whichever Surge they want that feels like it has Implications for either the flexibility of Bondsmith spren or the way spren are made, but I'm not really sure what those implications are, lmao. True enough lol Listen if Syl considers the Vessel of Honor a mere Bondsmith I give up xD The Stormfather does in Oathbringer say this bit, though: And Ash talks about it as well: So it does sound like Ishar actually made the Oathpact, which is... wild. Huh, weird. Reminds me of some weird phrasing from the deleted Jasnah scene someone on the Discord pointed out recently: Jasnah please why no why LASH and GRAVITATION aaaaaa

Hmmm those are pretty interesting questions. I don't know that I have even theoretical answers to any of them, but it's something I'm definitely gonna be thinking on now.

Huh, forgot all about bindspren. Weird. Wonder what's up there. I guess it depends how you treat the terminology, because a lot of the magics do work via that behind-the-scenes anyway (Gravitation, for example). I'd probably define it more in the vein of the way you do later in the post, a "Spiritual" use is one that solely affects the Spiritual, while a "Physical" one is one that affects the Physical. I do think they work via the same mechanic, however, just differing specifics. He probably vaguely knows about the concept as "that stuff Dalinar does and that Syl waxes on about sometimes", but I doubt he really understands it, yeah. That's fair. I agree in the broad scope, but don't quite agree with the specific terminology here. I think it all works via Connection, just in different ways. Not every bond of knowledge (as the SF talks about it) means the same thing, and not everything has the same meaning when shared. So Dalinar might make a Connection that is the "knowledge" that he uh definitely 100% totally grew up in Azir nope ignore that Alethkar line right there he's certainly Azish and so grew up speaking it, while Ishar makes the person and ground both "know" that they're one body and the person's actual body tries to share the Stormlight with the ground, and the Full Lashing does... something similar but not identical, etc. (Also, lol'd @ "Dalinar's Duolingo", Odium better hope he hasn't forgotten any of his Malwish lessons ) I think it might be plausible, depends on if it's pure Adhesion or involves Tension or is something else weird somehow. Though, if Ishar was specifically going to create the Oathpact I could see Tanny Boi giving his Blade admin rights but not the rest. But I'd lean towards either "yes" or "involves Tension", instead of the latter two options. Agreed, merely trying to think about what that means more. I'm actually curious whether it's really out of nowhere or not, because in most of the main cases I can find it described (Kaladin's Second and Third, and Lopen's Second), they actually drain all the spheres around them in one go, and in the other main one (Kaladin's Fourth) he's in the storm and might be drawing from there. So is it truly drawing from the Spiritual, or more something tied into the same thing as the Reverse Lashing and their "strength of squires" bit, with Gravitation and Adhesion doing wonky things and drawing alllll the nearby Light to them? That does make sense, I'm curious about that now. There's still that weird scene in tWoK where Shallan accidentally falls into Shadesmar after swearing an Ideal that then never happens again... It works for that distinction I guess, but it doesn't distinguish between, say, a Full Lashing and what Ishar does, or Dalinar using a language and Ishar stealing a Radiant bond, or whatever in Elithanathile is happening with the spren for Ishar's experiments. So I think narrow scope vs broad scope are better terms for the difference at hand (Windrunners vs Bondsmiths), instead of just trying to categorize it by where the most noticeable effect is. Tbf, Urithiru also has: Doors Heating Suppressor Pumps Elevators and in general just a lot of things, even including conjoined fabrials iirc. So I'm not sure that'll necessarily all fall under the Surges of Adhesion and Tension, as much as the Sibling being a super massive spren that's learned to use their Investiture more flexibly than most. (fwiw, Navani mentions the pressure fabrial is actually an incredibly complex network of attractors bringing in air.) (The Sibling is also referred to as "the parent" by the Oathgate spren, which is interesting but I have no idea the implications.) Navani also comes to the same conclusion for some reason, iirc even though Szeth is right there and can tell them it presumably doesn't match any of them in appearance... so admittedly that might just be a case of "doesn't seem to be a spren, maybe it's that"! But either way they are absurdly powerful from what Brandon's said, yeah. I do think that's most likely, yeah. I should note, by "honorspren come from windspren so they can do random wind stuff" I meant that perhaps it's something somewhat related to how the windspren can do wind things, as opposed to just something actually fully random, but I do still think it's less likely either way. Is this laid out and explained anywhere? I don't recall the exact mechanics being delved into but I might've just missed it. And apparently Szeth trained with all of the Surges, iirc, so this would mean even the Bondsmith Blade, because otherwise he'd be missing Tension from the list. That's a different thing from "this is the first time the Honorblades have been wielded since Honor's death", though. (But also yeah as Frustration mentions, Nale's been using his for a few centuries now.)

@RSharaput together a proper spreadsheet about this, lol

Not necessarily.

Ah, I see. Huh yeah that's interesting. Likely after it took over, but since we don't actually know how the Evil spread we can't be super certain on the specifics. Most likely, yeah. From the sound of it, the Evil is really bad news.

A problem? Worth noting that, according to Khriss, the Cognitive Realm representation of the Homeland is also really dangerous. Some people being able to access the CR is also different from being able to evacuate en mass—Khriss mentions that "there is no stable perpendicularity—only very unstable ones that cannot be predicted easily, and have a somewhat morbid origin." Yeah, was just curious about the "The same essay also mentions that Khrissalla did not get her information about pre evacuation magic in person" bit.

That's why I drew the distinction I did–the powers aren't different abilities, imo. One seems to be a subset of the other, I feel. (With the exception of the Windrunners messing with the air, which seems completely unrelated to the Full Lashing mechanically, and which Dalinar cannot do, so who knows if that one is even pure Adhesion or is a combo Surge, or just an "honorspren come from windspren so they can do random wind stuff" thing, or what).

Depends on the context. Sometimes people just mean it like that, which is fair enough (though I still think it's more appropriate to use different terminology because Bondsmith powers are really broad and "Physical" and "Spiritual" don't capture all the variations, but also we don't really have terminology for anything beyond Full Lashings so it's not like we can do much there lol). But I have seen people propose it as a completely separate power to the normal Surge a la Renarin's abilities vs a normal Truthwatcher's before, and express uncertainty over whether it's possible for a Bondsmith to use "Physical Adhesion" (which they can) because they see them as two different things. That's more the stance this is against (though perhaps my post was not clear there, because it was rushed a lot more than my usual).

Mostly, yeah. Mainly just pushing back against the idea that Bondsmiths are like, accessing an entire different version of the Surge like the way Renarin's futuresight is or something. It's just accessing a narrower part vs a broader part that includes said broader part, imo. Imo, yes. If the bond is a similar level of depth (and I think it'd be odd if it wasn't, though this is just gut feeling on my part), then it will probably involve significantly more Investiture simply because the spren has significantly more Investiture. Plus, Bondsmiths can do crazy things like create Light, and Dalinar can open a whole Perpendicularity. Combine that with the in general far more expansive access to the powers (which, as we see with the Bands, is something higher levels of Investiture can cause in at least some cases), and I think it's reasonable. Maybe? Wish we'd seen Tension literally ever to be able to say I don't think that's an unreasonable idea, but it does make more sense to me for the absolutely staggeringly absurd level of power a Bondsmith is capable of achieving to be due to the wayyyyy larger spren than due just to the combo of Surges, because otherwise you'd expect orders with similar levels of craziness from the combinations and we just don't really seem to see that (and also it adds a much stronger limit: much harder to make a new "godspren" than a bunch of normal-sized spren of Adhesion and Tension, if on a meta level you want to keep things from getting too out of hand).

Honestly, might not've been. He keeps referring to himself as "not fully alive" and "just a wind" before Honor started messing with him shortly before the False Desolation. Perhaps even up to that point he wasn't fully sapient, or perhaps in the distant past wasn't and Honor just messed with him multiple times. Maybe, but Brandon has insisted the SF and NW are parallels to the point that answering whether the NW predates the Shattering would be a spoiler for Stormfather reveals, so I think it's more likely that she's been in a similar boat to the SF most of the time, and that Wyndle mentioning Culti "creating" her refers more to changing her in the way Honor changed the Stormfather towards his end, making her actually alive. After all, spren are concepts, so defining when they were "created" is... complicated, either way. I think it's pretty likely. The Divine Attributes of the Heralds all seem to line up with the Radiants of the orders pretty well, and the Honorblades are similar enough to the spren that ten types of spren could work out how to each imitate one of the Honorblades. (Plus, Honor is... Honor, he probably would want to pick people who exemplified the ideals associated with the Essences and Surges for the symbolism, and that probably affected the Heralds when they got CSified.) Timeline doesn't really work out here, unfortunately. We know the Unmade existed during the Desolations (Midnight Essence is in the Starfalls vision, and Yelig-nar is mentioned by Nohadon). As for Honor, he didn't fully die and get Splintered until shortly after the False Desolation, by which time the Unmade definitely existed. It's an interesting idea if not for that, though! My personal opinion is that the Unmade probably have a few different origins: Ba-Ado-Mishram seems likely to have been a Sibling-esque spren, going off the breakdown of her name (have I really not made a proper post about it? anyway, can find my theory on the name here... though the table might break if you're on mobile, can be a pain sometimes) Yelig-nar's user grows carapace, a gemheart, etc, and Yelig-nar is intelligent and looks person-sized in the Cognitive (as well as requiring a host in the Physical to do anything), so perhaps he's basically an omega-Fused: a singer soul twisted even further to grant all the Surges. Sja-anat looks like a human woman wearing archaic clothing, when not in her weird shadowy form, so perhaps she was a human in the distant past who got warped and twisted as well Shallan speculates, after seeing Re-Shephir's soul, that it feels almost like her curiosity about humanity is like she's trying to regain something she lost, so perhaps she was a singer or human in the past too. Though, Shallan also says that she's "like a creationspren. Only so, so wrong", so perhaps either the soul has been messed with to be creationspren-like, or Re-Shephir is some abomination made from both a human/singer and creationspren combined. This might apply to the above two as well: Sja-anat says "it wasn’t that she had a foot in each realm; more, she was like two entities that shared a mind" about the nature of her being in both Realms, so perhaps Sja-anat is also some monstrous combination of spren and human. Nergaoul seems basically mindless beyond its Intent. Additionally, Jasnah's notes say "most were not considered individuals, but instead personifications of kinds of destruction", and the Diagram says "Many are mindless. Like the spren of human emotions, only much more nasty." In that case, maybe Nergaoul and the other mindless ones are pretty much just normal spren of Odious concepts like the thrill of battle, but super juiced up.

Well, obviously Lirin is Tanavast in hiding, because Kaladin is the Child of Tanavast

Obviously they're both Heralds too!

TL;DR: Pretty sure that "Physical Adhesion" is just an extremely limited form of Spiritual Adhesion, as opposed to a separate manifestation of the concept. (This theory's a lot less complex than many of my others, so it's gonna be way shorter and less formatted.) Rereading the Ars Arcanum, a couple things stood out to me about Adhesion: If it's just a Physical binding, it's odd it's so completely unbreakable, and "binding objects together as if they were one" certainly doesn't sound very Physical when put next to the other powers of Adhesion. In fact, it sounds somewhat similar to what Ishar did: Now, obviously the effects are not exactly the same—the Pursuer doesn't get all his Voidlight drained out, and neither does Lopen. But it might be a version of the same thing with a weaker Connection, or perhaps making them "as one" in a different way than directly making the surface part of the target's body. But yeah, after what we saw with Ishar and the emphasis in RoW of Adhesion as a much more spiritual force ("Honor’s Truest Surge, the Surge of Binding and Oaths"), I think that "Physical Adhesion" isn't a separate manifestation of the Surge from "Spiritual Adhesion" at all, it's just that Windrunners don't have enough raw power to manipulate the Connection in more complex or deeper ways than a quick "you, you're that now". Perhaps it's similar to how normally Allomancers can only Push and Pull on metal, but if you chuck enough Investiture into the spiritweb via something like the Bands of Mourning, you reach the point you can see and nearly interact with the souls of objects and people, like Marasi and Wax mention? A Bondsmith spren probably has enough Investiture that when it starts to enter your spiritweb, it pushes the limits of what's possible pretty far compared to a normal sapient spren. (None of this is particularly groundbreaking as a concept, but "Spiritual Adhesion" and "Physical Adhesion" are still distinctions I've seen thrown around and even used myself until very recently, so I think it's still worth a discussion even if it's probably happened before.)

We can also guess this from the timeline of the books: Shadows for Silence is between Warbreaker and Stormlight (which have a gap of "a few generations"), and the evacuation of the Homeland was during the lifetime of Silence's grandparents (which we know is not abnormally long for a human, despite a probable continuity error in S4S implying otherwise). This means that when we see Nazh in Secret History, this is likely a couple centuries before the evac happened. Huh, interesting point, you're totally right that all the information strongly implies this. Perhaps it took a while for it to work its way across the entire continent, and so at first people just moved to other areas (or died) before they decided it was bad enough to have to flee to the Forests of Hell? Perhaps at the beginning they thought its spread could be contained and so risking the shades on the other side of the ocean wasn't worth it? Skimming, is there a bit about pre-evacuation magic? The bit I can find is just about pre-battle magic. (Though either way she clearly hasn't visited the Homeland, you're right, since she doesn't know what's literal and what's metaphorical with regards to the Evil.) I'd guess not, since they've been working together for several centuries now. WoB is that she's his employer, but doesn't really tell us how they met. So I'm definitely curious on that first meeting too, but unfortunately don't have any guesses.

Eh, we know that Brandon considers even Mistborn to be barely Invested. A medallion to grant someone a single power is probably actually pretty low on the scale. Stormlight has a few major benefits over metalminds as a fuel: When you Compound, the power is limited to a very specific form and you can't really do anything else with it, you just get a lot of the attribute. We don't even know how one would be able to extract the Investiture from a metalmind besides by tapping it, let alone put it into a usable generic form. The Lights, on the other hand, seem close to pure already, and so it's probably easier to hack them into fueling other magic systems. Acquiring a massive amount of Stormlight is easy, you just need to leave some gems out in the highstorm. Compounding requires a specific person, and for that person to have an incredibly rare powerset (or to kill people to give them such a powerset), and for them to manually burn and store over and over. And if that person dies or gets injured or trapped or just isn't nearby, you're screwed until you can get another. Also, the Ire have tech that can hold massive amounts of Stormlight, so that makes transporting it much easier than even the gems, using existing technology. There's multiple types of Light from multiple different sources, but they seem to resemble each other enough that working out how to hack one into things is probably relatively easily adaptable to the others, if one source somehow becomes unavailable (and considering the power level of said sources, one being damaged in the first case is incredibly unlikely outside very extreme circumstances). And the pure-seeming form of Light means it might even be adaptable to other types of Investiture if you can learn how to refine them, meaning Stormlight is a very good tool to experiment with to work out things that would be necessary for other types of Investiture anyway.

Prior WoBs on the subject also indicate that new metal would act the same, at least for a while: I think this is something of a false analogy, for a couple reasons. One, as far as we know, the Fused are made of Odium's power. A godmetal from a different Shard would not be. And if you did somehow take the godmetal from another Shard and swap out its Investiture, I doubt it would act the same anymore, like how Enlightening a spren causes some pretty drastic changes to how it functions. Two, I disagree with the premise that the powers are of the Shards in the same way as Investiture, and that the Fused using Surgebinding is "corrupted Surgebinding". It's a different method of access, but I wouldn't describe that as the same thing as corrupted Investiture, any more than fabrials are corrupted Allomancy.

Autonomy is also the only one of the Shards we know so far that Harmony does not seem to know or be likely to know. Ruin and Preservation: obviously knows of these Odium: obviously knows Devotion and Dominion: mentioned them Ambition: mentioned it Endowment: mentioned it Invention, Whimsy, Mercy, and Valor: we only know about these because he mentioned them Honor and Cultivation: he doesn't seem to have mentioned them, but surely if Hoid's reaching out to him to ask for help on Roshar, he'd have mentioned the other Roshards, right....? right....? okay who knows, Hoid's an ass So that leaves three Shards: Unknown Shard #1, Unknown Shard #2, and Autonomy. And only one of these is one of the nine we knew. We have a WoB that it's not likely to change: (Also, it would be pretty odd on a meta level imo to introduce the anti-Lights that are mostly only useful alongside raysium... and then remove raysium from the picture and make them mostly useless.) The Shard associated with the metal is Trell, though: Theoretically, but he's kind of been trapped on Braize for eight thousand years, how would he have made one on Scadrial in this time (or made a large enough one elsewhere and disconnected it from the planet)? (Personally, my opinion on Trell is that it started as Autonomy, but after the end of Stormlight 5 has become a joint venture, because of how often freedom and passion are intertwined for followers of Trell.)

Yep! Or at the very least it didn't grow to be enough of a problem to require fleeing for a long while after, whatever it actually is. (It's really hard to say much with how little we know )

I don't know if that timeline would work out. Shadows for Silence takes place between Warbreaker and Stormlight, and people fleeing to the Forests of Hell to escape the Homeland was within her grandparents' lifetimes. While the Evil might've been around a little while before it forced a full evacuation, I'm not sure if I think it would've forced people to flee to an entire other world eight thousand years before it forced people to another continent.