KandraAllomancer

That's Simonetti's art for the Name of the Wind on the Worldbuilders ad: https://art.marcsimonetti.com/various-cover-arts

Lack of an exoskeleton combined with flexibility of movement (e.g skyeel catching a rat here or lurgs being able to jump). I'm not an expert on biomechanics, but it seems rather hard to achieve this without a well developed internal skeleton similar to the one found in vertebrates Fair point We don't really know how native lifeforms use Investiture, really. That's pure conjecture for now, but they could theoretically produce it from food, like Lift does

I'm not sure what Brandon's plan for Moash exactly is, but I think he might be set up as a foil for El in book 5: El was stripped of the Rhythms, Moash is now blind El's title was given to Moash, and both are in the business of killing Cognitive Shadows El is fascinated by humans and wants them to achieve their final Passions. Moash, on the other hand, has given up on humanity and doesn't want to feel anything As for the unfortunate implications, they are there, but I feel Moash is just a symptom of a bigger issue here. We mostly see the events through the eyes of people bonded with spren, who have their own prejudices and seem to prefer bonding people already connected to other individuals with a Nahel bond. As a result, we have a weird system of magical segregation: You want to unite people as a Bondsmith? Too bad, the position is Kholin-only for now Darkeyed and want to join the fight? Please follow to the Windrunner recruitment center You want to free people from oppression? Join Willshapers! Oh, one thing: Singers only So you want to just help people without looking at the big politics? Do you prefer science or humanities? This will help us place you with either Truthwatchers or Edgedancers You're an outsider in Urithiru? Apply for your own corrupted Mistspren (limited edition)! Extra points for neurodiversity and non-heterosexual sexual orientation Fanatic and/or sociopathic maniac who would put even some Fused to shame? Don't you worry, Skybreakers and Dustbringers might still have some open positions So yeah, the KRs are currently kind o broken and the PoVs we get are limited to some established, restricted categories. However, things look a whole lot more interesting if we consider the flashback characters for Arc 2: Former street urchin with a traumatic past Corrupted Truthwatcher in a gay relationship with a Singer Atheist queen who tries to reform the social order Darkeyed Herald who kept the world safe for millenia Former Herald who will probably become a Dustbringer, an Order well familiar with righteous anger and the fact that you sometimes need to break something to create something new Seriously, what other proof do we need to believe that these issues will be handled in the future? Also, Dalinar being an honorable despot makes a lot of sense if he's going to Ascend to Honor – that way he would make a great contrast with both Taravangian's Odium and Sazed'd Harmony, all of whom will probably play important roles in Cosmere's future

The way I see it, there are two major native animal phyla on Roshar: A. "Vertebrates" - fish and amphibians (lurgs). Because of the presence of Highstorms they probably never fully colonized the land B. "Crustaceans" - pretty much everything else, including axehounds, chulls and greatshells. Santhids are related: and have tendrils, so I would include the tentaculous group here as well. As for singers, I would place them in the latter group. Real-life crustaceans might have either haemocyanin or haemoglobin in their hemolymph, so blood color is hardly a deciding factor. Given that the whole ecosystem was designed by Adonalsium rather than left to evolve naturally, we might not see any proper evolutionary links between shelled animals and singers, but the presence of gemhearts might indicate a relationship (I don't think skyeels need gemhearts to bond luckspren, but I can be wrong)

If I remember correctly, Brandon was supposed to be working on worldbuilding for some external franchise. My personal hope is The Elder Scrolls 6

That is obviously possible, but Tumi seems to share his fondness for future tense, and Dreaming-though-Awake doesn't. The simplest explanation I can find is that the Enlightening affects their perception of the world somehow On the other hand, the protection from futuresight works on the same principle as electrum/atium: and if you're out of either metal your protection is gone. It's not a perfect analogy, though, since atium allows you to see only seconds into future. It's hard to tell how long-term visions interact with each other, but the best mechanism I can think of is (borrowing terminology from computer science) cache invalidation. Odium predicts the future, but each time Renarin has a vision, things change - but Odium can still make new predictions. That would prevent Odium from making truly long-term plans, but planning , let's say, a week ahead (I'm not sure how often the visions occur) would still be a possibility. Only a more or less constant access to futuresight offers true protection in this case

First of all, I cannot take full credit for this theory, as the basic idea of “inverted Nahel Bond” comes from this post by @Seloun While re-reading Oathbringer I realized that it actually explains most, if not all, weird things and quotes about corrupted spren and Voidbinding, so I decided to write down all arguments in favor of it. The basic premise is that Voidbinding (at least the form shown in the Voidbinding chart) is an extension of Surgebinding and the Nahel Bond, caused by adding Odium's Investiture to the Radiant spren. As a result, a person gets two Surges from the bond, and the spren gets two matching Voidbindings, explaining the similarity between the two charts. This would make Voidbinding a magic system of all Rosharan Shards, with its name probably being a portmanteau of Odium/Void + Surgebinding Here are all the hints I was able to find: The Surgebinding chart shares the color theme with the map of Roshar, as beings from the Physical Realm get the powers; the Voidbinding chart using the colors of the Shadesmar map hints at spren being the ones to get powers Odium's Tone is now a pure Tone of Roshar, and Eshonai's last chapter in RoW implies that all Tones and Rhytms form a wonderful harmony. Spren getting powers and, by extension, a more equal footing with people, seems to be compatible with that way more than if Voidbinding was a separate thing purely of Odium. Also, spren now essentially share mortality with people, so getting powers would be a natural next step Voidbinding being the cousin of Old Magic makes a lot of sense now: people get Old Magic powers by being changed by the Nighwatcher, spren get powers by being changed by Sja-anat Corrupted Truthwatchers cannot control their visions, but their spren seem to have at least some level of control. Glys can record the visions to show to other people (possibly similar to how Lightweavers can capture Memories), and Tumi knows exactly what is going on during Rlain's first vision, even though Rlain is clearly surprised by the whole thing Glys having access to futuresight beyond what he shows Renarin would explain him talking in future tense and providing constant protection against Odium's futuresight Glys also wants to give his sorrow to Renarin, hinting at the reversal of typical roles in Voidbinding Tumi thanks Sja-anat for his eyes in her interlude in RoW, presumably referring to the futuresight We know about corrupted Truthwatchers and futuresight, which is most probably the Voidbinding of Illumination, but what about Progression? I believe that there might be some hints in Oathbringer about that. The quotes below were sometimes interpreted as Renarin having a gemheart: There's no way Renarin naturally has a gemheart, but what if Glys used his Voidish Progression to grow one in his body to have some place to hide? It wouldn't need to be big, as a cremling gemheart was enough for Tumi in RoW, and it would explain a lot, in my opinion

Yeah, thinking about this made me reconsider a lot of things about Selish Shards. Come to think of it, we know very little about them. Almost all of which assume comes from the nature of seons/skaze (hardly reliable, it would be like trying to infer the nature of Honor from honorspren or highspren) or religions - and it is entirely possible that the concept of unity was influenced by something akin to the Iriali religion, and only later modified to fit the nature of the Shards. The only thing we can attribute purely to Devotion seems to be the voice in the Shardpool (presumably Aona's CS?), and she wants to take Raoden's pain, which makes me want to include Devotion in the red category The other white Shards seen to represent concepts that are rather impersonal, though I've been thinking about this, and I wonder if some common themes in Cosmere might correspond to compatible pairs of Dawnshards. Unity would be white/red (even Odium wants some form of unity after all, being the sole ruler of Cosmere) and Passion would be black/red Depends of a definition of Whimsy, I guess - I can see Whimsy as anything except for white, really. I decided on black as Whimsy might be arbitrary, irresponsible an selfish, which stand in opposition to the values of the white Shards. Also, I was searching for pairs that would have problems with inaction due to opposing forces - and Dominion/Autonomy and Honor/Whimsy sound almost as bad as Preservation/Ruin in tat regard Demanding things to be better relies on knowing what is better and that's where I think Wisdom might fit in. I admit that it relies on a broad definition of the Change theme, though

This has been discussed before, but as far as I know it was never updated to include the new Shards from RoW. The basic premise, obviously, is that the Dawnshards would correspond to the cards colors in Magic: The Gathering. The WoB below provides some crucial information here: There are two major issues that need to be solved, though: There are 5 card colors and 4 Dawnshards. I believe that's not really a problem, as the Change Dawnshard covers two colors: green and blue Devotion and Dominion have two colors, quite possibly because Elantris was written before Cosmere fully took shape. I think, however, that, when other Shards are taken into consideration, they can be reasonably placed within red and white colors, respectively All the colors description below were copied from here. Also, as I've realized while writing this down, Dawnshards and Awakening work in a kind of similar way, and Awakening uses colors White Shards (Dawnshard of Order/Unity/Morality?) White color description: Shards: Honor, Preservation, Dominion, the 16th Unknown Shard They seem exceptionally important for the Cosmere as a whole, as all core worlds (Roshar, Scadrial, Sel) have at least one Shard from this category. This is possibly the Dawnshard from the Poem of Ista, as well as Hoid's Dawnshard, based on his old quasi-Stoneward oath and inability to hurt people. Black Shards (Dawnshard of Individuality/Destruction?) Black color description: Shards: Ambition, Ruin, Whimsy, Autonomy (the "main" Shard, Avatars can probably have different colors) Red Shards (Dawnshard of Emotion?) Red color description: Shards: Odium, Devotion, Valor, Mercy Green & blue Shards (Dawnshard of Change) Green color description: Blue color description: Shards: Cultivation & Endowment (green), Invention and (non-canonical yet) Wisdom / Prudence (blue) The Change Dawnshard seems to cover both natural growth and intentional human activity, making it compatible with both green and blue colors

Modern fabrials require only a lesser spren captured in a gemstone, which sounds like something possible even before H&C Invested on Roshar. It definitely fits the description of a minor Shardworld magic from this WoB:

I agree, but these weren't necessarily meant to be in chronological order. Despite creating the Radiant Spren, though, Honor did seem to have suppressed Surgebinding for a long time; the history is murky, yes, but I don't think Surgebinding existed fully in current form until after the creation of the Honorblades

After thinking about it for quite some time I have finally come up with something that, I believe, might be a satisfying solution to the problem of genesis of three different magic systems on Roshar. Unlike other planets, we shouldn't consider Rosharan magics to be of this Shard or that; Roshar is simply too complicated for that. It has a long magical baggage of being designed by Adonalsium for something, and a lot of things were either changed / repurposed by Honor an Cultivation, or corrupted by Odium. Instead, we should split the issue into two independent questions: which Shard shaped the fundamental forces – the answer would be obviously H&C for Surges and Odium for Voidbindings who bound the fundamental forces – which usually means creating (or changing) some spren and making the powers accessible for people to use. The answer, I believe, could be H&C, Odium, or selected types of special, large spren – most notably, the Sibling and the Unmade Surgebinding The Surges are obviously of Honor and Cultivation, we have both book quotes and WoBs to confirm that. Surgebinding, however, was created (or, in other words, Surges were bound) at least three times: Ishar bound the Surges on Ashyn, possibly using Dawnshards and Odium's Investiture Odium created the Fused on Roshar Honor and Cultivation created the Radiant Spren and then added the Oaths The KR Surgebinding is, in my opinion, the only Rosharan magic system where the Shards behind the fundamental forces and the binding of powers are exactly the same Voidbinding Things get slightly more complicated here. I think that Voidbinding (the binding of Void i.e. Odium) is the direct result of Odium being forcibly bound to the Rosharan system by the powers of H&C, rather than Investing on a planet willingly. As a result, the powers (Voidbindings) are of Odium, but the whole structure of the magic system (10-centric, two Surges per “Order” / level) are identical to KR Surgebinding, not the Fused Surgebinding. This is obviously rather speculative, but I think the history might have been more or less like this: Odium creates the Fused and gives them Surgebinding Odium is bound to Braize by Honor. Voidbinding is created and Odium's Tone becomes one of the pure Tones of Roshar, as the effects of Honor's actions extend to all habitable planets in the system Odium creates the Unmade and realizes that they can grant Voidbinding, which hurts him. Still, they are too useful to throw away, so he keeps them and tries to control them. He doesn't create new Fused, though, as they might have Voidbinding rather than Surgebinding now Honor tells the Heralds about Voidbinding, who then warn people about the dangerous power of futuresight. Ishar creates the Voidbinding chart Honor tries to suppress the Voidbinding (or, more generally, Odium's Tone), but fails shortly before he dies, which leads to Odium's powers becoming stronger and causes the False Desolation I believe that true Voidbinding would require bonding a sapient Voidspren, which is currently fully suppressed by Odium. The only way to get Voidbinding is through the Unmade, which are actually tied to the third magic system Fabrials and beyond The third magic system is tricky, as we know that it includes fabrials (Surge fabrials, presumably, as modern fabrials look like they could exist on a minor Shardworld) and some unknown esoteric powers. The possible solution to this, I believe, is the Sibling. The Sibling has a specific ability to suppress magic of the enemy, which can be replicated by a fabrial (Voidfabrial used by Lezian), but not any Surgebinding we know of. They most likely can change some spren to be used in fabrials and give them restrictions on their own, as demonstrated by the Oathgate spren that refer to them as their parent. My proposition is that the esoteric powers Khriss mentions in Ars Arcanum are the powers of binding spren and forces by ten powerful spren, the Sibling being the only one we've seen in uncorrupted state. As you can guess, I believe that at least some of the Unmade used to be the same class of spren as the Sibling (Sja-anat even refers to them as a cousin). They would include: Yelig-nar – grants all ten Surges, yet another method of binding Surges Sja-anat – her Enlightening changes spren and gives them new powers Ba-Ado-Mishram – can grant Forms of Power, Voidlight and Voidbinding, possibly crucial for Ghostbloods' plan to et Investiture off-world The fact that Voidbinding currently seems to only be granted by large spren (and only one Vodibinding for that) has some nice parallels with the Surges being widely known and understood only from Soulcasters before the return of the Knights Radiant. That's also the reason Khriss treats Voidbinding as a cousin to the Old Magic, which would technically refer to the Unmade alone, not the Voidbinding itself. I'm not convinced that all Unmade were like the Sibling before, particularly the mindless ones. There are some weird large spren around (Cusicesh, the Stormstriders) that might be relevant here. Also, Aimia was, until relatively recently, kept habitable by some incredibly powerful fabrials, possibly linked to another huge spren. Interestingly, as a result of the creation of the Unmade, the third magic system seems to be of all three Rosharan Shards now, with H&C powers (fabrials) working as an equivalent of Scadrian magitek and Odium's powers (granting enormous powers at a cost, merging powers of different Shards, working outside Roshar?) largely covering the niche of Hemalurgy

That is a very real possibility, but, on the other hand, the original Epellion Forces seem to correspond nicely (at least better than Surges, in my opinion) to the powers of the Unmade: Time - shared by all Unmade, not tied to any specific one Wind - Yelig-nar, based on being called Blightwind Movement - assuming that Movement is more or less the Transportation Surge (which we see in WoK Prime), Moelach would fit, as he grants visions "at the transition point between realms" Energy - Nergaoul gives people the strength and ferocity to fight beyond the point where they would give up. He was also imprisoned in a ruby, and Energy is Connected to the Essence of Fire Decay - Chemoarish, based on being called Dustmother Life - Re-Shephir creates Midnight Essences that imitate living creatures Thought - Dai-Gonarthis can apparently consume emotions, possibly leading to the sociopathic thinking that characterizes Moash or Nale Adherence - Ba-Ado-Mishram was able to Connect to the (almost) whole Singer species Awakening - what we know from WoK Prime matches Sja-anat's Enlightening quite well Stasis - Ashertmarn induces inaction by causing people to indulge in excess

Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of "Men" can be gender-neutral, technically (e.g. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal")

I mean, technically adherence and adhesion are synonyms (at least according to synonyms.com :)). I think it's entirely possible that Wind is the pressure part of Adhesion, while Adherence covers sticking things/surfaces together as well as Abrasion. As for Awakening, WoK Prime clearly indicates that it is (spoiler)

I think the fact that it was Taln who broke is supported well enough by a Death Rattle, but I'm not gonna lie - the theory has huge appeal for me. "I've killed a Herald" seems like a natural progression for her Truths

There's also one more interesting thing about Yelig-nar - the bonding process. For some unknown reason it seems to require an amethyst, associated with Willshapers in Surgebinding. In the Eppelion chart though, the Order occupying Willshaper's spot and Essence has Adherence, which is probably an early version of Adhesion, potentially explaining the role in bonding spren. Venli also gets Adhesion-like powers due to Envoyform, which might or might not be a nod to what we see the chart. Although, as I realized, the right and left part of the chart has two Orders getting the same one Force, which seems hard to explain.

Yeah, you're right. I was looking at the Truthwatcher/Bondsmith equivalents only In WoK Prime the powers only hurt users in a visible way if they use it too much. Renarin is also a Surgebinder, which might be a factor here - even if he is hurt by his futuresight somehow, he is eventually healed by Stormlight anyway

My main analogy was Allomancy + atium (using a magic system to "burn" Shard's power, hurting them in the process), but hemalurgy works as well, to some extent. Although, as @LewsTherinTelescope pointed out, the analogy is not perfect, as hemalurgy can steal things other than powers The one thing that still bothers me is that Khriss refers to Voidbindings and some esoteric fabrial-related powers as "sets of abilities". They must be different from the Surges somehow, and Surges are already quite extensive in what they cover. I think that it might be possible that Voidbindings are an alternative set of fundamental forces, based on the fact that the Double Eye chart from WoK Prime seems to match the Voidbinding chart (I posted more details here)

Thanks

I feel like one of the Ten Fools for not seeing this before. WoK Prime has the Double Eye chart on the twelfth page, showing ten Essences and ten Forces: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-Way-of-Kings-Prime-by-Brandon-Sanderson_web.pdf I treated it as an early version of the Surgebinding chart, with Forces being an early attempt at Surges. However, after looking at it again for one of my new theories, I realized something: the topology of the chart is slightly off. The two Essences at the center are not connected to any Force. I doesn't look like a Surgebinding chart, but it's the same as the Voidbinding chart, just upside-down, with time manipulation / futuresight at the top. We know that Brandon cannibalizes a lot of elements from early books into later ones. Is it possible that the whole Magical Knight Magic (I don't remember the name, sorry) from WoK Prime became Voidbinding? That the Forces are the "set of abilities" Khriss calls Voidbindings? Something like a set of fundamental forces alternative to the Surges? There is actually one clue: in WoK Prime, using the Forces hurts the users somehow, which would indicate it might be an end-negative magic system. And we have this WoB from 2016, which possibly refers to Voidbinding:

Maybe, but both are winning fights against multiple very powerful enemies without breaking a sweat due to their special connection to a dead Shard. Also, Vin is literally Ascending at the moment, which is as fundamental as it gets

Unchained as a certain crazy Bondsmith

A funny line I found in the original Mistborn trilogy, gaining a new level of meaning after reading RoW. When Marsh removes Vin's earring and she starts fighting the Inquisitors using her suddenly overpowered Allomancy, she describes it this way (Hero of Ages, chapter 73):

I really like the idea, but also wonder if the KR Orders wouldn't be a better match than Surges. Stonewards for Hoid's Dawnshard, Bondsmiths for hypothesized Unity, and Lightweavers for the Change Dawnshard (as both Transformation and Illumination match it quite well)