LewsTherinTelescope

Not necessarily, spren bonds are a Cosmere-wide mechanic. But Honor and Odium are probably the top two candidates (Odium because "he was instrumental", Honor because that makes more sense than Cultivation). Thanks, I'll give it a read!

I could believe that too, yeah. In that case, presumably the Dawnshards would be directly given from a Shard, I think. The thing is, it seems like the Heralds didn't expect Surgebinding, iirc. Unless what they didn't expect was spren being able to repeat it without using a Dawnshard to initiate the bond? That's a fair point. In that case, some form of spren bond for their old magic seems likely.

If Dawnshards are aethers, those things are a lot more powerful than they were in AoN XD (though them being the aether sources could make sense, if aethers were somehow on Roshar) Your theory could very well be what gave me the idea, I only vaguely remember "I think I saw a theory something like what I just wrote" lol. If so, then thanks for the inspiration! (If not, thanks for making a theory anyway, because theories are fun to read.)

Tbh my tinfoil on why there's only 9 Fused types is that the Unmade are somehow related. That, or there are in fact Bondsmith Fused, just only a few and they don't go to battle, similar to real Bondsmiths.

Have we seen it have properties anywhere besides Threnody? It might just be a weirdness with shades specifically. Shades already have a lot of weird rules no other Cognitive Shadows have. (Also, WindJogger said it seemed "fishy" before they read Shadows.)

Why is it "fishy" that silver's not an Allomantic metal?

I'd say yeah, he can. The power gap between the two is insane, if he gets Cultivation out of the way and doesn't have to worry about exposing himself to an attack anymore, the Stormfather is doomed. Hell, Odium could probably break the highstorm, if he needed to do that to kill the SF.

TL;DR Dawnshards "bind" things to powers, sorta. They were used to make the Surge fabrials, and before that, were used on Ashyn to create the disease magic, a pandemic of which is what led to the Exodus. I can't actually take full credit for the theory; I saw the theory they were used to make Soulcasters elsewhere, but I can't remember where to give credit, unfortunately. So far as I know, however, the latter theory is my own. First, what do we know about these things? Now, for wild speculation connecting these things! Here's the ones I'm at least semi-confident in: But what about the parts you aren't confident in? Alright then, he's some much more stretch-y parts of the theory/smaller separate theories. I'm here for crazy theories, these at least have some evidence or logic! I want my money back! Closing thoughts [insert my usual disclaimer about typos and odd ways of phrasing things, because I'm too lazy for more than a cursory scan of what I wrote] I'm not convinced of this theory, but I prefer it to just Surge enhancers. So yeah. And I like it more and more as I think about it. And as usual, this theory is somewhat rushed and not super thought through. So may have some glaring issues I didn't notice, idk. Edit: Ah, I first heard the idea on this Shardcast episode. Turns out the base theory is... embarrassingly close to identical to one of the ideas they speculated on. I did expand on it a lot, and speculate about more details, but the basic idea I apparently subconsciously took nearly unchanged. Oops References

Personally, the way I want to see them is a Vessel (who presumably is still their parent) splitting the Shard they hold into two, and giving it up. I'm curious how that would work: could you get two smaller intents covered by the first (for example, Ruin -> Destruction and Entropy)? Because these would each have half of infinite power, I'm curious if they'd end up with still infinite power, but with the amount already Invested in any one location cut in half, or something.

Wonder if a lot of those hyphens come from Brandon manually hyphenating parts of the manuscript and not thinking about it lol.

Just found out the Rithmatist world is halfish the size of ours. Sel is 1.3x our world iirc. I will now insist, despite anything Brandon says to the contrary, that the third Great Domain on Sel is the Rithmatist world, and I will ignore any logical issues with that like people sailing around the world.

I like this theory, but the points other people brought up do seem to disprove it. Shame, it's an interesting idea.

Stuff below is copied from a word vomit into the 17th Shard Discord. It's not particularly thought through, and so may have typos and things may be worded oddly. Also, the lines between paragraphs are because I posted them as separate messages (though I wrote it as one post), due to character limits on Discord, and so I needed a better separation since you can't have a blank line at the start or end of a message. I've kept them because eh, it works. And it emphasizes that I did not at any point go back and change anything in earlier parts. I also definitely brought some things up in multiple paragraphs because I forgot I wrote the earlier ones/came up with new ideas inspired by something I just wrote after the earlier paragraph. Oops. Aaaand this paragraph is ugly. --- Finished Rithmatist, and now I can join everyone else in a painful wait for the sequel. Loved the book. Bad at giving explanations, so I'll leave it there and just give thoughts below. --- I tried so hard not to fall for tricks, but still fell for Nalizar's red herring redemption... Welp, that's why I love Brandon. --- I actually wonder if Joel will somehow win Nalizar over eventually, because of the latter's curiosity. Of course, a redemption arc may be too cliche. --- I did expect the ceremony thing to fail, but I also sort of expected he'd still get power somehow. Though there's always the sequel.... But honestly I like him not having magic, and having to work together with Melody to counteract each of their flaws. That does however leave them vulnerable if they're separated. I expect Melody to develop her skill and be capable of holding her own without Joel, but I'm curious what'll happen to him. --- Current theory on Rithmatists, they're bonded to Shadowblazes, in a more symbiotic form of a Forgotten's possession. This gives an easy explanation for why one Rithmatist needs to die before another can gain power. This does however leave me curious why what I assume was the Shadowblaze left without bonding Joel. I hope Joel and Melody talk about Melody's inception or whatever it was called, so they can wonder about this themselves. Also, I hate characters refusing to communicate. So please *talk*. --- I can definitely see the Cosmere influence. Rithmatics would be right at home on Sel (if you lived in a circular country, which you could probably blame Adonalsium for). I think "the Tower" may have something like a Perpendicularity. I believe Brandon has said that avoiding Cosmere stuff in it would require changing where he intended the story to go a lot, and I could see a Perpendicularity being one of those things left over. --- But yeah, the magic just screams Sel. Very specific instructions, shapes made in a specific way and pattern, Intent.... However, Brandon had a different Shard planned that would have been in Rithmatist, so it can't even have originally taken place on Sel. So probably just a similar thing to there. --- I remember Brandon saying certain creatures (I don't remember which) were originally beings from the Spiritual Realm. I assume these are the Forgotten and possibly Shadowblazes. I remember him giving a fascination with time as one effect of that, and Forgotten and chalklings both seem to exhibit this. Shadowblazes are similar to both and so probably are as well. Assuming they're even different.... I could see them being the same as Forgotten and just choosing not to fully possess or something. Though I'll need to wait for the sequel to learn that... --- So glad that Joel and Melody didn't kiss at the end, no offence to those who like it but I hate the "celebratory first kiss" sort of thing. Now that I think about it, I don't know that Joel and Melody have moved on beyond "good friend" yet. I really hope they don't go romantic, because we need more platonic opposite-gender besties. This is probably the thing I feel the most relief at from the ending, honestly. I would bet money that they'll become romantically involved in the sequel, but for now I can pretend. --- I'll leave that as my last thought on the book.

Oh yeah, I forgot the other things Ferrous do besides the Corpates. The Ferrous are actually to me the most interesting of the Aethers. Amberite and Verdant are cool, but we mainly see Amberite used as just another magic weapon and armor (although I'm curious to see other ideas with it), and Verdant's basically green Spiderman (though being able to use it as a food source is cool). Bestarin's also sorta interesting, but only has one very specific use that we've seen. Ferrous however.... you can get transportation that will never break down, very strong foundations, and maybe even more they haven't come up with yet. But it comes at the cost of a single human life for each thing you make. I want to see the ethical ramifications of that. And it could definitely exist in a dystopian society, with people bred and raised to bond Ferrous to give their lives for society as a whole (which iirc we've even seen beginnings of in Aether of Night).

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This was originally written by me to post in the Discord because someone asked, so it's pretty hastily written, though I have gone and tweaked a few things people pointed out as wrong. Disclaimer aside, here's what I remember of Aether's magic. Full spoilers ahead. --- Magic revolves around "Aethers", things that you can bond, and give power. Amberite is a gem embedded in the palm, and I think Verdant was a vine around the wrist. We don't see what the others look like. I don't think Aethers are sapient, although I believe it was hinted they do have minds of a sort. There are 4 main types: Ferrous, Bestarin, Verdant, and Amberite, and two "god" Aethers, Night and Illuminous. --- Ferrous allows a user to become a machine. Permanently. Really sounds like they get a rough deal, to be honest with you. There may be more to it, we unfortunately get little information on it in the story. Bestarin allows its user to graft animal parts on. I think some have claws, for example. They can also heal by grafting on animal skin. Verdant allows the user to essentially control and grow vines from the Verdant on their wrist. They can use it to climb things, to shoot balls of vine that wrap people, etc. The vines it makes are also edible and make up a large portion of the diet of a lot of people. Amberite allows growing "amberite" crystal from the one embedded in the palm. It's very tough, and can be used to grow armor around you, a sword extending from your palm, trap people, etc. Note that someone can be strong or weak with an Aether. For example, the main character has Amberite, but incredibly weak. He can barely grow a sword, and can't grow armor. Some of this is due to the strength of the "bud" you're bonded with, but some people just plain aren't powerful. --- Now, the God Aethers. Night allows teleporting yourself, your clothing, and anything you're holding (this includes people: if you hug someone you'll take them with you). Illuminous allows teleporting others but NOT yourself. And then it gets weird. You see, the god Aethers are actually part of the Shardpool, and some weird things can be done. For example, someone bonded to Night can essentially project themselves to an avatar made from the liquid in the Shardpool (similar to Midnight Essence). It can also be controlled into pretty much any shape. I expect this to be removed, because it's wayyy too OP. For whatever reason, only Night seems to do that, however. Illuminous was never used to do those, but that might just be a plothole rather than it not being able. Considering they're supposed to be "the pure power of creation" or something, Illuminous being so weak compared to Night is odd. Each Aether is made by one of two gods, who wanted to counteract each other. One made Bestarin, so the other made Ferrous to make things they can't destroy. One made Verdant, so Amberite was made to cut it. Finally, the two gods made the God Aethers, to just be OP as hell. Illuminous is associated with Verdant and Ferrous. Night is associated with Amberite and Bestarin. The God Aethers can supercharge Aethers made by their god. For example, one character could barely make a blade with Amberite, but could make a full set of armor after bonding Night. Once again, this strangely seems to be Night-only. Someone with an Aether by one god CANNOT use the God Aether from the other god (I think it's still unknown whether they can use normal Aethers by the other god or not). There's a lot of worldbuilding behind the history of the Aethers, but that's a quick rundown of all the relevant stuff I remember. --- Something else to note: there may be more now than when he first wrote the novel. Syl started as a character in a planned rewrite, as an Aether of Wind most likely, for example. This is part of why we think Aethers might be sapient now, I believe (as well as the Liar of Partinel sample chapters, where he experimented with moving Aethers before deciding against that). Fun fact, that means that at one point he had them down as pre-Shattering, although that likely changed when he decided against them being in Liar. --- Anyone else who's read Aether, please add to or correct what I said here, I have a horrible memory.

This one especially kept annoying me, because we have the word "tens" in English, if he really wanted to stick to ten lol. I guess he probably thought it sounded too similar to "tons", but I feel like it'd still sound better than "tensets". Of course, his eventual decision to just go with the word "dozen" and use the "creative translation" excuse is better than both the other choices.

I didn't even think of this, but now that you say it, you're right. Yeah their society could use a good slave rebellion about now. I don't actually remember that being in Aether (granted, my memory of it's kinda fuzzy). I'm already planning to keep an eye out for similarities between it and the other unpublished works when I reread it soon, so this is another thing for me to watch for. Yeah lol. You see things like Siri and Vvenna and go "oh yeah Warbreaker", then things like Skaa and go "oh yeah Mistborn".... and then things like Kkoloss and go "why do these even share a name" lol. Same. Obviously things like Siri and the Emperor would have to be replaced, and things like the Skaa and Kkoloss would have to be renamed, but there's enough left of the world to do some cool things. Probably some of the plot could even be kept, though I could see arguments that he's already done something too similar in Mistborn. I didn't really like the book much until the final few chapters, but I don't think that's something unsolvable, and a polished version of it could actually be good.

I think this sums up a lot of my thoughts much better than I thought of lol. I agree with all 3 of those. Seems to be the most common opinion I've heard, they probably took a lot of the criticism from earlier parts and tried to improve on it for the later ones. On one hand, I agree, but on the other, not sure it would have been done well, considering that iirc most of the internal conflicts tended to be cut, so it probably would've had only an occasional brief mention rather than being a proper thing. But adding a third layer in there could be interesting, if the conflicts were covered more. I kinda wonder if this is because Brandon changed Ais's gender, and then they realized "maybe 'too emotional for this job' plus woman could come off badly" lol. The graphic novel in general kinda suffered from the internal conflicts not showing as well, from my memory (probably because that's just plain easier in books than a graphic novel).

I prefer novels to graphic novels in general, so for the medium, I prefer the novel. The first half of the prose version just felt painful. Had to put the book down between each chapter. But somewhere in the second half, I finally got hooked and read through probably 2 or 3 times faster than the first half. I prefer the ending to the Drile fight in the graphic novel, but the exact word choice they used was just cringy to me ("No sand masters die under my watch. Not today, not ever!"). So that ending but with better dialogue is my preference. Really that applies to most of it, the prose had some terrible dialogue at times, but the graphic novel used that as a base and then cut out most of it, leaving even the better parts bad. Although Ais's "The Sand Lord may judge me a heretic, but I am grateful" felt better to me than the prose (even though I liked the scene as a whole better in the prose). Speaking of Ais, because I read the graphic novel first, I still imagined Ais as a woman the whole book, and got tripped up almost every single time it used male pronouns. Not really a pro or con between the two necessarily, just that one ended up sticking in my head and somehow never changed. While graphic novels aren't something I love, there are definitely some benefits, like being able to see Elorin speaking to the Sand Lord in the background during Kenton's confrontation of him. I think I prefer that scene in general in the graphic novel (or once again, I would if the dialogue was better). A confrontation with Drile, where both Kenton and Drile ask the other why they sent assassins, would probably be better than either, but I still prefer the GN's version to the prose's. The epilogue on the ship was obviously better in the GN, considering it was non-existent in the prose. Not sure if I prefer seeing the priest dude take over (prose epilogue) or just the Lady Judge predicting it, possibly leaving it for a sequel. I prefer the GN's ending with Kenton, him just rushing off on an in-the-moment decision with no real preparation in the prose was kinda lame. His whole arc was learning responsibility, that kinda undoes that part. Undecided on the Gevin reveal scene (besides, once again, the prose having superior dialogue). Gevin turning out to be pretty terrible in the prose was interesting, but not sure how I feel on it I do wish some of the scenes cut from the GN (such as Khriss's arrival) were included. I do remember there being some scenes I was glad were cut, but I was too lazy to take notes, so I forget which scenes. Somewhat surprisingly to me, I think I might have to say that I actually like the graphic novel, when it comes to enjoyment. I don't like graphic novels, and most of the graphic novel had inferior dialogue, and I missed some of the deleted scenes, but the first half of the prose, and even a lot of the second half, was just so. painful. that I think it successfully (if that's really an appropriate word here) managed to outweigh every flaw of the graphic novels for me. Going to reread the graphic novels tomorrow, because I haven't read them in a couple months, but I don't think that my ultimate opinion will change. [Insert here my usual disclaimer about being tired, because for some reason I never finish a book before one in the morning, and using the tiredness as an excuse for typos or weird-sounding phrases.]

Reminds me, I had a thought at some point that the Ferrous might be one of the reasons he's really wanted to find a place for Aethers. I could totally see them being useful. Might try and brainstorm some uses and make a post in the Aether forum later. A way zquiz could fit into Aether:

He could also just not kill off every single other person with it lol. Then it would still be somewhat diluted.