Gilphon

So, weird things about Lift: She can't breath in Stormlight She can turn nutrition into Investiture She can see into the cognitive realm, and touch spren She can invade the Stormfather vision The first two and last two can probably be unified in single affects, but neither looks like a great fit for what she asked for. It's possible to suggest that Cultivation fulfilled her wish by monkeying with her Cognitive Aspect in some way, and the unusual way her collects Investiture is her price. But that's unsatisfying to me; for Dalinar and Taravangian, the other two times Cultivation got directly involved, the Boon and the Curse are essentially the same effect; an effect that can be interpreted as either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective. So it really feels like we should be able to somehow condense all of Lift's weirdness into a single thing. But I'm just not seeing how we could do that. Well, no, that's the entire thing she's struggling with in this chapter. She's aging; she's going through puberty, and she's been forced to admit that to herself. So she mostly certainly did not get the kind of immortality she wanted; she's not ageless. I guess theoretically she could have some other form of immortality- certainly as a Radiant with Regrowth killing her would be difficult- but it's even more of a stretch for Cultivation to have interpreted her wish like that.

The Divine attributes. So Ishar for example is Pious and Guiding, so he shows up when those traits are important to what's going on in the chapter. So he might show up if the chapter talks about Bondsmiths, or if Ishar personally shows up or is discussed. And also there's the unofficial 'eleventh Herald', the masked man, whose presence almost always means 'Hoid is in this chapter.'

It's canon-ish. Like a reading from a book that he hasn't finished editing yet can't be 100% canon, but there are most likely only going to minor differences between what we just read and the canon version of the scene And I think she's trying to conceal all signs of puberty happening with that. What with her general antipathy towards growing up and everything. Also- I don't blame Cultivation for not interpreting what Lift asked for as 'I want immortality'. The wording really makes it sound more like 'I want to be an incorruptible beacon of hope to those around me'. And it feels significant to me that the Nightwatcher was created by Cultivation. I had kind of been assuming that the Bondsmith spren existed pre-Shattering and were then co-opted by Honor and Cultivation, but apparently that's not the case. There isn't 100% confirmation, but there are some pretty heavy text wise implications. Like the Stormfather tacitly agreeing that the Nightwatcher is 'like him', calling the Nightwatcher his sibling, and referring to the other two Bondsmith Spren as his siblings. It's tough to think of another explanation, y'know?

No, no, the thing is that it's impossible for a weather system to be that regular under normal circumstances. Like colliding with the Highstorm alone should mess it's speed and frequency pretty badly. Which is why the Highstorm became a lot less predictable once the Everstorm became a thing, and why the researchers were so reluctant to believe that the Everstorm could be that predictable. The fact that most of the time it travels at a constant speed and takes a set amount to get around the planet tells us that Odium is always controlling it; the only way it could possibly be that regular would be if Odium adjusted the speed every time it encountered something that should speed it up or slow it down.

To back up Karger on this, I'm going to go further and speculate that Restares, the leader of the Sons of Honor, is an Ardent who's gonna show up and make trouble for Jasnah and Dalinar in the next book. Though really both the Vorin church and the Sons of Honor are probably in their dying days as organizations.

I mean, I don't think it's gonna go away on its own, but really that's just symptom of the real problem- that any solution that doesn't involve finding a way to permanently get rid of Odium is a temporary one at best. The Everstorm is basically just a more immediately obvious manifestation of that fact. But- Odium does seem to be actively controlling it, what with seemingly breaking physics by maintaining a constant speed most of the time. And then just kind of randomly speeding up so that it could arrive at Thaylen City when Odium wanted to invade. So I think there's a good chance that if he was somehow prevented from maintaining it, it might dissipate. And on a tactical level, DiePie is completely right about almost everything, but I do dispute the idea that the Fused are definitely better commanders than the Humans. Like they're more experienced, but the majority of them are too mentally damaged to be all that good at giving out orders. There are some very skilled commanders among them, but you shouldn't think of that as the default.

Well, sure, but that's not quite what we're talking about? Like the codes were probably gonna be reasonably effective at preventing large-scale disasters like the Veden civil war and the battle of Thaylen fields, but I don't think they're gonna be enough to prevent Nergaoul from being attracted to Alethela, or enough to prevent him from slowly re-shaping Alethi culture around him over the course of the next few centuries. Like, everyone in the entire country growing up with embodiment of the urge to fight constantly trying to convince them to kill each other is gonna have consequences that are kinda beyond what the Radiants could deal with, y'know?

I mean, we see Dalinar resisting the Thrill in his flashbacks, well before the Stormfather would've started to bond him. Like when he gets that sudden urge to murder Gavilar and fights it back, or when he decides to spare Tanalan Jr. Personally, I've never really assumed that the Thrill is supposed to be undeniable in any way. Like Alethi armies don't regularly eat themselves whenever the battle ends; it seems like in most cases people can say 'ok, the battle's over, time to put the berserker rage away'. Which doesn't strike me as a concept Nergaoul would have an easy time understanding. The Veden Civil war, where they did just keep fighting after the enemy was gone and didn't seem to be able to stop, is noted as an extreme case, and not how Nergaoul normally operates. (In my mind, the closer you are to Nergaoul's physical location, the harder it is to resist the Thrill.) But all said that- I think Karger is giving the Alethela codes a bit too much credit. I agree that the idea behind the codes was probably to help their soldiers resist the Thrill, but I doubt that they were ever incredibly effective. They're always gonna be some people who choose to join the military because they want to fight things, or because they want to prove how strong they are. You're never gonna be able stop Nergaoul from getting a foothold in there somewhere.

I mean, my basically understanding of this situation is that they were always very militaristic, which attracted Nergaoul, and then that made them from 'militaristic' to 'locked in an eternal civil war' and gave them the focus on competitiveness.

This scene from Jasnah's point of view right after she 'dies' that shows her escaping into Shadesmar. I call it a 'Deleted Scene' in quotation marks because it wasn't ever actually supposed to be part of the book.

I've seen it theorized that they might be Painspren, which makes sense to me; they show up in the PR as tiny hands, they're usually orange but corrupted ones are green, and they were responding very readily in Kholinar, suggesting there were a lot of them nearby. The only real problem is that in Jasnah's 'deleted' WoR scene Ivory says that Painspren are dangerous in Shadesmar. But just because they're small doesn't mean they're safe to attract and that scene is only sort of canon anyway.

We don't know that. The Parsh existed before Cultivation, but Fabrials could very well not have been a thing before the Shattering; Surgebinding certainly wasn't: To me it makes sense to assume that the Forms were something that Cultivation added to them when she settled on Roshar.

I mean, Dova the Ardent is a real person, but the only sign that Dova and Battar are the same person is Taravangian making that claim at the end. It's for me easy to imagine him deciding to make that claim so that Dalinar won't find it suspicious if he goes off to privately talk with Dova and comes back with a bunch of new information. What? No, I'm referring to the WoB quoted above that says we haven't seen all of the Secret Societies because we haven't visited the countries where some of them operate, and the fact that we really have no information whatsoever about what Chana and Vedel are doing these days. Like I haven't even seen any theories about Vedel. I would not call Tukar a secret society, and we know plenty of things about what Ishar's been doing lately.

I'm skeptical of the idea of Battar being in the Diagram. It feels plausible to me that Taravangian just made that up that because he didn't want to reveal the real source of his information. But, well, I feel bound to mention that there's at least one secret society we know nothing about, and at least one Herald we know nothing about. So there's no way we can answer this question definitively.

I think that what's going on here is that he wants the glory for himself; that he wants to beat the Parshendi without Sebrial or Aladar. Which might've been doable if it hadn't been for the thousands of Stormforms. He appears to have been sincere in his desire to bring back the Heralds. Odium had just been whispered in his ear for a while, (probably by reaching through Nergaoul) in order to influence and manipulate him. And then at some point in OB, Odium started visiting him more openly, and told him about how the Sons of Honor's plan couldn't possibly work; that they couldn't bring back the Heralds because the Heralds had never left; that the Heralds had abandoned humanity. Though the fact that we never really see what's going on inside Amaram's head and it's not entirely clear why he decided to join Odium is probably the biggest problem with OB's climax.

I mean, I feel like Axies is pretty well-traveled, and has explored many of the world's jails; I don't think it's a matter of the region. But I do think that Axies rarely if ever thinks of himself as trapped anywhere

I kinda feel like this has to be what's going on- Like where else could he have gotten a body that looks just like his old one, all the way down to the scars? But I also feel like getting the Mistwraith body to match his old one exactly is something that's gonna take a bit more effort than just stapling his soul to it. Finding bones that work right is probably gonna be an issue, for one thing.

I mean, 'it's natural outgrowth' strikes me as a kind of incomplete answer; it leaves the issue of why those particular pairs are the natural ones, when surely fundamental forces should be able to combine in any way they want. But it's entirely possible that there isn't a particularly good answer to that version of the question; that that's like questioning why specific alloys are the 'correct' Allomantic ones.

I think his Perpendicularity is on Braize; that's where he spends most of his time after all. I don't think it's easy for a Shard to alter where their perpendicular is located; I don't think Cultivation would let Moelach camp on hers if she had a choice in the matter. But it's also possible that he just doesn't have a Perpendicularity; given how much he likes to conserve his own Investiture, I feel like it's possible that he just made sure that it never settled down in large enough quantities to form a Perpendicularity. But if it does exist, I imagine using it is part of how the 'Fused and Heralds travel between Roshar and Braize' part of the Oathpact works. But- on Roshar, it seems like he can only act directly if the Everstorm or one of the Unmade are nearby. As for how he was able to kill Honor despite those limitations: Good question, we don't actually know. Certainly he spend thousands of years trapped in a stalemate, unable to get at Honor or Cultivation. But then something happened to break that stalemate, and although I have a theory on that, the bottom line is that that's a pretty mystery. It had to have happened some point after the Recreance, because he was able to set up a vision of the Recreance for Dalinar, but there's very little information beyond that.

Hmm. That's an interesting idea that I don't see any obvious reason to dismiss. It's a good angle to approach the issue of their shadows, which has always kind of defied explanation to me. If you're right, then to me the question becomes 'do they look human because their origins post-date the arrival of the humans, or is that just their malleability at work?'

That's a really good point- Spanreeds as The Breakthrough makes a lot of sense. On another note- I also think there's a good chance that whatever Rysn discovers in her Novella could be a relevant part of the arms race.

You misunderstand me. I'm not referring to the arms race that's apparently about to happen. I'm talking about the tech boom seems to have been already in progress when the series began, what with Spanreeds and Heatrials and Half-Shards and stuff like that. Like all the stuff we see Navani use is stuff that's been invented in her lifetime. It kinda feels like every actually useful (new) Fabrial was invented less than a century ago. I'm very curious about what breakthrough let them suddenly start advancing by leaps and bounds, and what was preventing that from happening sooner. Like, yeah, the translation of the Dawnchant and discovery of Urithiru are gonna make things accelerate even further, but that's pouring gasoline on the fire; I'm wondering about what actually lit the fire.

My suspicion has always been that we might be in for a Nergaoul-Fabrial. On a related note, I hope we find out why it seems like they've only recently started to make real progress with Fabrials.

So, to give a bit of backstory, I walked away from Oathbringer just kind of subconsciously assuming that the Aimians weren't native to Roshar. Strongly enough that it caught me off guard when I found out that some people hadn't been assuming that. So I've decided that laying out of my case might be beneficial. And then maybe somebody who believes they are native will lay out a case for the opposite position. But without further ado: 1. Aimia as a biome. So what is Aimia is, in essence, is a landmass far to the west of Roshar that's very isolated from the rest of the continent and as a bunch of animals that aren't seen anywhere else. Which is a description that reminds me a lot of the other far western Rosharan country. Now, this might be the totally natural consequence of the island being isolated- it might be the Australia of Roshar, but if there was a second sizeable wave of refugees, one from a world whose Biome was dramatically different from both Rosharan and Ashyn, surely that island would be where they'd set them up. And the special case study here are the Larkins. They seem to be a pretty hardy animal, with Chiri-chiri surviving just fine in both Thaylen city and the Reshi sea. But they're still heavily associated with Aimia- and rare enough outside of it that it's assumed that they went extinct with the Scouring. Not sure what's going on there- less likely Ashyn animals have spread to the rest of the Continent, but it's gonna be interesting to watch what happens as Chiri-chiri grow. And it's notable to me that Larkins don't seem to have any obvious relatives among Rosharan fauna- being able to use Stormlight as a food source is a pretty useful adaptation on Roshar; one you wouldn't think would be confined to a single species. Unless, of course, it's not a trait that evolved on Roshar. 2. Siah Aimians So I feel pretty confident about these guys not being native. At the very least, we can say with confidence that the writer of the Elia Stele wasn't aware of them, since they share may of the 'Alien' traits that seemed so strange in the humans. And nor do they feel Ashynite to me; for the record- I feel like the Natan people having Aimian blood would be less notable if they'd all just mixed together immediately after arriving on Roshar. And now's probably a good time to mention that Aimian is a distinct language family from the rest of Roshar, which is further supporting evidence. And, more vaguely and subjectively, they just don't feel like any other lifeform on Roshar. 3. The Sleepless Now, we know that the Sleepless are Cosmere-aware, and that there are Sleepless on other Planets, and Brandon's mentioned that Hordelings are bred to look like Cremlings so they can blend in on Roshar, which paint a pretty clear picture to me when taken together. But it's the last point I'd like to focus in on; the Hordelings are bred to look like Cremlings. This is project that doesn't appear to have been entirely successful; Hordelings are consistently described as being 'weird' or 'oddly-coloured'. Although Rosharans categorize them under the broad umbrella of 'Cremling', they're visibly an unusual species of Cremling. Despite thousands of years of trying to blend in, they still don't look entirely right. Which is odd; insects tend to be pretty good at pretending to be a different kind of insect. This implies to me that they're not relatives of 'true' cremlings in any way; that without the thousands of years selective breeding they wouldn't look even vaguely similar. I mean, the Sleepless don't immediately ping as non-Natives like the Siah do, but I feel reasonably confident that that's because they're making more of conscious effort to blend in with the natives- that they'd be just as if not more visibly alien if they weren't trying to hide. And, as final note, I'd like to point out that the magical effects we've seen on Roshar fall into two broad categories- interaction with Spren, and direct Shardic intervention. And, in fact, Jasnah would probably argue that those are basically the same thing; that Shards are effectively just the most powerful spren in existence. The only exception is when Aimia comes up; both sapient races and the Larkin are magical in ways that don't seem to fit into that paradigm. Aimia just feels like a place where the normal rules don't apply. Which, of course, is exactly how it would feel if it was full of alien magics.

I mean, of course, we discard the idea that the Regrowth fabrials and Soulcasters use Cultivationspren or Inkspren, it raises the question of what they heck they are. Like surely lesser spren aren't gonna be powerful enough to fuel something like a Soulcaster.