Gilphon

I imagine that in theory it does, but there'd be nothing obvious to distinguish it from any other Bead in Shadesmar, so you'd have to search manually.

So. If Nergaoul has an obvious manifestation in the Cognitive, that's a pretty big flaw with the plan. But I feel like they would've thought of that, and used an Oathgate to check what it looked like. So I would suggest that either it's been pulled entirely into the physical and doesn't have a manifestation in the Cognitive, or they did go with the Aluminium cube plan and found that that blocked the manifestation.

I am of the opinion that this is a context where strength is irrelevant, because it's not just about keeping it safe in the current war, it's about keeping it safe from all future generations. No amount of strength could ever be enough. So the rationale decision is to go all in on secrecy; if there's only one person who knows where it is, that's one person too many.

I'm of the opinion that picking a particular place to dump the gem would be a mistake- that's leaving clues that somebody looking to find the gem could pick up on. If its location is known, then it's just a matter of breaking through whatever security they've placed, and there more security there is, the more conspicuous the location will be. Personally, I can't think of a defensive measure that's better than 'if you want it, you're literally going to have comb through the entire storming ocean'.

So I'm saying that the Black Sphere contains a Fused- it's clearly not just regular Voidlight, it's being emphasized too much to be a regular Voidspren, Navani would've noticed if it was an Unmade, Gavilar was talking about trapping Singer Gods, Rlain was talking about it being bad for his soul, and the Fused are worried about the humans learning to trap them- implying that that's been successfully done at least once. Everything fits. I also think that tossing Nergaoul in the ocean is a good call. Like keeping the gem somewhere where humans can get to it is just begging for it to get broken someday, so keep it out of everyone's hands forever. And, in a more meta sense, getting rid of the Thrill was the entire emotional climax of OB; undoing that would just be undermining OB for no reason other than to throw antagonist the heroes have already beaten at them all over again. I honestly not think that that gem's getting found.

People focus too much on gunpowder when deciding this sort of thing. It was discovered 1200 years ago in the real world, after all, and most Cosmere worlds appear to be further along than that. For my money, Threnody appears to be the most primitive- although we have no idea what things are actually like in the Homeland. But in the society we've seen, the Simple Rules are gonna do a lot to limit technological development- they represent severe restrictions on trade, travel, agriculture and fire. And if you're struggling with those, just about everything else is gonna be even harder. They should count themselves lucky that they haven't been blasted back to the stone age yet. This does appear to be a case of them having lost a lot of what they once had, rather than technology never having been developed at all, but that's possibly also the case for Sel, since Odium's visit there was probably pretty dramatic. As for Nalthis, well, they have relatively easy access to the rest of the Cosmere, and scientifically-minded worldhoppers meddling in politics, so they can't be that far behind.

I mean, I feel like we're using the term 'organic fabrial' because 'fabrial' is the only word we have to refer to the magic system under discussion here. Technically you're probably right; I believe there's a WoB saying that fabrial is gonna end up being a general term for magitech, and therefore it should only refer to the metallic ones, but we don't have any better terms.

You're definitely focusing on the wrong detail there, given A) that he immediately explains that 'Type 1 Invested entity' refers to spren, so there's minimal opportunity for confusion, B), he's not using the term in the same way he did in Warbreaker, so having read Warbreaker doesn't actually help you understand what he's talking about, and C) pulling out a bunch technical jargon out of nowhere that the PoV character doesn't understand and just kind of hoping they'll catch up as he explains was exactly how he operated in Warbreaker; it was meant to be initially confusing there, just as it was here.

So, really, I suspect that the organic fabrials are the 'true' fabrials- it's what the things that evolved on Roshar use. The metal-based versions developed by the humans are a weird hack designed to get around the way they can't hear the rhythms. Most visibly, this has got to be what the Singer forms are- they transform by going out into the Highstorm, attuning the right Rhythms, and trapping the right kind of spren in their gemhearts. From a more Realmatic point of view: In the Metallic Arts, the molecular structure of the metal acts as a 'key' that tells the Investiture what to do. We have seen other keys that have similar functions elsewhere in the Cosmere; most notably the language-based magic systems on Sel. And if a language can act as a key in this context, it makes perfect sense that a Rhythm can as well- the Rhythms do seem to be something fundamental about Roshar, after all. Then we get that the humans have replaced one type of key with another. But the real holy grail here, I think, lies in combining the organic and metallic fabrials. The Rhythms are probably gonna produce some effects you can't get with metals, and vice-versa. Using both in a single fabrial could lead to all kind of crazy things. Priority one, though, should be finding a way to make an organic fabrial that's more efficient than 'have a guy sitting there, constantly beating a drum'. Perhaps that why the Heralds and Fused have been so impressed by the things accomplished by the metallic fabrials; metals are a lot easier to mass-produce and scale up.

Surely Spontaneous Mindless Manifestations in a Deceased Host are what Shades are. Or perhaps what would happen if a Shade got shoved into a body.

My thought was that he no longer draws a hard distinction between Returned and Lifeless- we know from WoBs that Lifeless are more aware than they believe. They're both Cognitive Shadows stapled to a body, Lifeless just have less agency (and perhaps that's solely a function of how Invested they are; perhaps a Lifeless would become something extremely similar to a Returned if given enough Breath). So both are Type 2 is his new classification. Indeed, I suspect that realizing that was the reason he was forced to acknowledge that his old classification was wrong. He might be drawing the distinction between Cognitive Shadows with and without bodies- certainly the definition of a Type 2 he gave in this chapter would imply that- but the Fused show us that that's not a hard distinction either, so I doubt it. I would suspect that his new Type 3 is beings that didn't arise naturally and aren't based on a dead being; things that were artificially created. So Awakened Objects, spren that were directly created by a Shard, and stuff like that. I don't know if he needs any other Types at all after that; Nightblood would just the Returned to the Awakened Objects' Lifeless; the distinction based purely on amount of Investiture, rather than any actual fundamental difference. But, y'know, it's all ultimately just the way Vasher has decided to refer to things in his head, not any kind of fundamental truth.

Hmm. So. The fabrials that Navani's been talking about in the epigraphs have three main components: gem, spren and metal. But here we see that the Listeners knew of a different type of Fabrial, made from gem, spren and rhythm. This is probably exactly the kind of fabrial that Singers just naturally are, and indeed probably why the Rosharan fauna doesn't need metals; they can just use their heartbeats, or perhaps attune to various rhythms like the Singers do. Really this has to be the 'natural' form of the fabrial magic system, with the metal-based version being more a hack; combining the system with Allomancy. But, we also have the epigraph talking about Logicspren pulsing in a specific pattern when poked the right way. Pulsing in one of the Rhythms, surely. And metals let you modify this pulse, perhaps moving it to a different Rhythm. So perhaps this could be used to combine the two types of fabrials, which could lead to a lot of new things.

That's technically true, but only technically, because you can soulcast things out of air.

Very good question that I hope we learn the answer to next week. My favourite of the theories I've seen is that it can as a logic gate, letting you predict and control the effects of stringing multiple spren together into a single fabrial.

I suspect the insane ones still have some uses. Like maybe they can still be cajoled into following orders, and the old instincts take over when a fight breaks out, or something like that. I fully believe that Odium would pull the plug on them if they had become truly useless to him.

Mhm. That comment really makes me think specifically of Lezian. Like his entire schtick is aggressively going after people who have beaten him in the past, and I think he has a pretty low chance of actually managing to kill Kaladin. So I find myself wondering how that's gonna be handled.

Oh, right, just remembered a thing: Jasnah can not directly Soulcast Fused. She can kill them pretty quickly by doing stuff like soulcasting the air around them into fire, but they're too Invested for her to be able to target them directly. So, whether or not it would kill them permanently, it's not a thing Jasnah can do, and therefore not why they're cautious of her.

The reason Hoid is careful about soulcasting is because soulcasting Savantism is really nasty, so it's not a power that he wants to get comfortable relying on. Which is the context of the WoB you're referring to; it was answering why he's more excited about lightweaving than soulcasting. And, like, if permanently killing a Fused was as simple as just throwing any random Lightweaver or Elsecaller at them, they would've, y'know, just done that centuries ago. Hell, the Transformation Fused probably would've done that to get rid of the Heralds, if that was all it took. Like entire reason this cycle has continuing so long is that neither side has any way of permanently killing the other! That's the entire reason the Oathpact was formed in the first place; they had no means short of Shardic intervention of ending the war! Certainly Raboniel would not be bringing up 'what if they stick us all in gems' as a game-changing possibility that proves this will be the final Desolation if the humans have had a far easier way to permenantly end them all along.

Surely the cohesion Brand would be 'the ones who soften' or 'the ones of stone' or something along those lines. Something that directly invokes their powers, not something that invokes the powers of an entirely different Brand. And I disagree that it would be more efficient. Like Cohesion would need a source of stone that they don't mind using up, whereas Transformation just needs Voidlight, and they don't seem to be lacking in that.

What? No it can't. The only way we know of to permanently kill a Fused is Nightblood. Do you just mean that soulcasting doesn't give them a chance to heal with Voidlight? Because there are plenty of ways others Radiants can do that much; Jasnah isn't uniquely dangerous in that context.

Strictly speaking, I can't prove it, but Transformation seems a lot more likely. First, they're called the Ones who Alter, a turn of phase that invokes transformation far more than cohesion. Secondly, soulcasting is a much easier way to make large structures in a short period of time, especially since you have to worry about making huge gaps where the displaced rocks used to be. Third, if Raboniel is any indication, they're more a scholarly type, more of an Elsecaller equivalent than a Willshaper or Stoneward equivalent. Fourth, soulcasting seems more useful to Raboniel's plan than Cohesion would be.

'Those Ones who Alter' sounds a lot more like Transformation than Cohesion to me. Like it's almost literally 'the ones who can transform things'. Though really her having cohesion would just make this question more important; that doesn't have any obvious applications to this plan at all.

I've always been very confident that he uses Transportation, and this chapter cements that in my mind even more. The main alternative theory was that it was Transformation; that he was Soulcasting up new bodies, but now we've met the Transformation Brand and they're clearly different. We've also had Venli implicitly not having to deal with any Transportation Fused, and now we have Lezian's brand being called out as rare enough that she'd never seen one before Lezian. And, y'know, having a Fused's signature ability being teleportation and then that guy not being in the Transportation Brand would just be Brandon intentionally confusing us for no obvious reason.

So, what, exactly, is Raboniel planning to do to the gemstone column? What she says is this: And she later implies that her plan doesn't involve holding the entire tower, just getting her close to the column, further reinforcing the idea that she intends to do something magic to it. But what? She's a Fannahn-im, so I think we can assume she's a Soulcaster. Is that enough to accomplish her plan? I can't entirely rule that out- perhaps changing up the metals and gems in the columns could be enough- but she made it sound like she's planning to do something to the Sibling itself. And then there's her phrasing; her natural talents and the gifts of Odium. As if those are two separate things. Are we hinting at Voidish Transformation here, maybe?

We never seen any of them using more than one surge, and all of their names refer to a single surge. And, like, in this chapter we have them saying 'we don't need an airship, we have the Heavenly Ones', not 'we have the Heavenly Ones and [whatever the Skybreaker equivalent would be called]', and the new palace was built by the Fannahn-im, not the Fannahn-im and Mavset-im or anything like that. And we have Lezian relying entirely on Transportation in combat, never using Transformation or Cohesion. None of them have noticed that Venli has an extra spren, which would fit with the Nex-im being small in number is none of the others being able to use transportation. There's... just a lot that implying they get one surge each, and nothing that points to them having more than one.