goldthestar

Hi, first post, but long time reader/lurker. I've seen others kind of hit on this, but I think it deserves a more fleshed-out theory. I mainly just wanted to get it written down, so I can see if in the future I was right or wrong. tl;dr One anomaly is already associated with Nalthis - Nightblood. It follows that a second anomaly might be related to the first. I think the cognitive anomaly is something like a moon of Nalthis that was converted into investiture, which was then stuffed inside Nightblood to make it so extra. 1) Investiture is a third state of matter and energy, in the spirit of e=mc2 2) Planets have been created before (see Scadrial) in the cosmere. I don't think the mechanics of that creation have ever been fully explained, but it would make sense that it was a direct conversion of investiture to matter, since the shardholders have access to (essentially) an infinite amount of investiture with which to work. And the above WoB makes it clear that matter can be created from investiture, just as investiture can be created from matter. It's all the same stuff. So if planet-sized objects can be created from investiture, then investiture can be created from planet-sized objects. 3) A quirk of Edgli's system of magic (awakening) is that some physical aspect of matter (namely, color) is consumed in the process of awakening. The color of a thing...facilitates (for lack of a better word) the exchange of investiture from donor to recipient, in a sacrificial manner. This drain is necessary for awakening to happen; if there is no color to draw on, then the magic cannot happen. Typical awakeners can drain color to grey. 10th heightening awakeners can drain color to white. I'm speculating here, but maybe the shard of Endowment can drain the physical aspect of matter on a more complete level. For this massive infusion of investiture to Shashara's command, maybe Edgli used the entire moon as the physical aspect that was drained which facilitated the flow of investiture into Nightblood. 4) All post-shattering investiture is aligned with one of the 16 shards. Like some particular spin, or magnetism: Say, for example, that a pool of investiture is suddenly created by destroying a physical object. This destructive event might produce investiture that is naturally aligned with the shard of Ruin. And then maybe an awakener tries to create an awakened object with a particularly ruinous command. And then say that this pool of ruinous investiture is channeled into a type IV biochromatic entity upon its creation. That would satisfy this WoB. 5) Just a minor point, but the cognitive anomaly, as others have pointed out, is in the same general orbit around the star as Nalthis. Theory: Endowment foresaw the creation of Nightblood. She foresaw the (Ruinous) command "Destroy evil". She saw an opportunity to change the game by making a weapon that even other shards might fear. So, at the moment that Shashara uttered the command to create Nightblood, Endowment intervened by sacrificing an entire moon of Nalthis (note that it still has one moon, so this would have been moon #2) in order to supercharge the new weapon with an absurd amount of power. This destruction created a pool of investiture that was attuned to Ruin - but was useable in this instance because of the ruinous intent of the command. It was all channeled into Nightblood. Naturally, a moon is going to have a solid cognitive presence, since for as long as people have been alive on Nalthis, they have been observing and thinking about that moon. As the creation of Nightblood was a relatively recent event (on the order of a few centuries ago, not millenia), that cognitive presence might still be around in the time that Khriss is making maps. Maybe the moon's memory is preserved in folklore, or nursery rhymes, or old art, etc. It still has a cognitive presence, but no physical presence, aside maybe from the place where it was when it was destroyed. So now we have a supercharged anomaly of a weapon (Nightblood) that seems overly hellbent on destroying/ruining things, and a corresponding cognitive anomaly (the place where the moon was which was sacrificed to create the weapon).