GudThymes

This is not true. Prior to the shattering there was 1 type of Investiture anywhere in the Cosmere. Adonalsium's. Post shattering the existing Investiture was "split" along Shardic Intents everywhere in the cosmere. Despite this I really like what you've done here with the theory. I just don't agree with it. I think that you rely on only assumptions to form your theory that coincide well in your interpretation. Additionally, the Unmade were created fairly early on in the desolations (not before), and not all of them were present for every desolation. The sibling however, was likely one of 3 ancient spren that pre-existed the Oathpact (Stormfather, Nightwatcher, Sibling). While it's plausible that the Sibling breaks from the other two Bondsmith spren and was created later, I think that is a stretch.

On the topic of whatever it is that Renarin did. I saw a lot of comparisons to allomancy and malatium as well as Shallan's lightweaving and interpretation of self. What stood out to me though when reading was the Lightweaving that wit did with Shallan in OB in Kholinar. He shows her two versions of Shallan that could exist. The "child" Shallan with all her pain and is incapable of moving through the world and that same Shallan that has also "forgiven" herself and is standing tall and just. What Renarin did with his light felt more like that than anything else to me. He presented an alternative version of Moash that hadn't given up his pain and instead accepted it and became Radiant.

I don't believe it ever being a real plot point in the books, more of an off comment in one of the first two. I believe it was around when Amaram shows up with shards, there's a comment about how it was an unaccounted for set and was added to all the Alethi shards at the Shattered Planes (with an emphasis being that all the Alethi shards are there). Regardless, we know that the Alethi have about half the worlds shards, and they have at most 30 complete sets. I think the only opportunity we've had yet to really see the Fused with shards would have been at the battle of Thaylenah.

I love this idea and want to dig into it more. Though the scene were Venli becomes an envoyform rather than a Fused presents a few conflicting pieces of evidence, imo. First is Timbre, we know that it (forget if it's he/she) has been following Venli since they found Eshonai's body, and has found it's way to share Venli's gemheart. Is Timbre what made Venli special? Second is the voice in the that scene. We hear the fused speaking to Venli trying to enter her body, and another more powerful voice says that they plan on using her. I'm not sure who this voice is, Odium makes a lot of sense, given that he does end up using her as an envoy. However, I personally believe that it was the Stormfather. The voice is described to be grandfatherly (or similar) and the text is in the same italics as the Stormfather's booming voice. The last piece is thing to consider is how the singers change forms. They go into the storm and cultivate a certain feeling in order to attract the spren to bond with -- Or bring the spren with them in a gemstone and still have to cultivate the feeling. Even then, there's room for error, they aren't in full control. We know that Venli and Demid et. al were tricked by Ulim to believe they were getting a new form and not becoming the Fused. If that info becomes widespread and like you say the Singers refuse the bodies. Would that be enough to prevent Fused from inhabiting singers in the storms? Or are they at risk of being transformed anytime they are caught out in an Everstorm?

I agree with @Gilphon as well. I think it's unlikely that a "Fourth alter" did the deed, and I think this quote kinda shows it wasn't Shallan herself. I am on board with a 2nd knife in the shadows theory. Personally I think it's Ishnah, I feel like mistrust in one's allies is becoming a big trend among the Knights Radiant right now and that more betrayals are coming.

I don't think one example of Pattern remembering for her is enough though. Here's the excerpt I was talking about from Chapter 27 in OB There could be other reasons for why Pattern didn't remember (he might have been off somewhere else like Syl does from time to time). However, I think there's a lot we don't know about how Shallan and Pattern work specifically, so I'm not confident saying that Pattern is a source of truth. He can be, I think he is more likely to distinguish between the lies that Shallan struggles with. But he isn't foolproof.

People refer to Cultivation by name on Roshar at times, but that doesn't mean they have realmatic knowledge. The way they're discussed in the books it has always felt that the SoH are way behind when it comes to this stuff as compared to some of the other secret societies. Even the Diagram's realmatic awareness is incredibly limited.

I don't think Pattern provides an objective source of truth to Shallan. I'm currently on my OB reread and just read the section where Shallan takes on Re-Shepir, and prior to that encounter Shallan flips through her notebook and finds a lot of disturbing images. She asks Pattern when she drew them and he responds with "I don't know". I'm stewing on a theory that Shallan's DID plays a role with her Nahel bond, and that as Pattern integrates more fully into Shallan's spirit web it means the power he provides to Shallan may be less accessible to the alters (or vice versa as we see with Radiant + Blade).

Can you reply with the specific spoiler in spoiler tags? I intended for this discussion to be RoW spoiler free, and would like to leave them optional so that everyone can join in comfortably. I just re-read the thread and couldn't find it myself.

My assumption for why they don't lash the bridge directly is Center of Mass/gravity. We don't see a whole lot of it depicted in the text but we know that Lashing's are really changing the gravitational orientation of an object. So, for an object like a ship, where traditionally the center of mass is low and in the center (the ballast) if you were to lash it then it would likely flip around as it's orientation doesn't match the direction of gravity. Although, if you made an enclosed cube and lashed it in a direction, the objects within would likely retain their downward force, so would they push the lashed object down as well? I would imagine that your suggestion would work, although it would likely require a lot of specifically angled lashings to get it to not tumble through the sky weirdly.

From the wiki her boon is that she is partially in the Cognitive Realm allowing her to convert calories into investiture. Her bane is unclear, however, and I personally would speculate that like Dalinar her "bane" is either non-permanent or will actually prove to be beneficial. My reasoning is that since she saw Cultivation the boon/bane is not as delineated as it would be if she had just seen the Nightwatcher.

I personally believe in this theory and think that it's not that far fetched. On Earth a lot of religions have a similar "flood event" in their histories, even ones that were geographically isolated from each other. We've found anthropological evidence that a giant flood did really happen. I think having a religion evolve from a natural event and get twisted and turned into Stone Shaminism really brings the world of Roshar to life that much more.

While Honor may have an influence here the Singers actually pre-date his and Cultivations arrival, by a significant amount of time. They were created by Adolnasium himself and have been on Roshar pre-splintering.

I was thinking about why we haven't seen a Shardblade (dead) in the hands of a Fused yet. Given that they are essentially Odiumspren would they have the same reaction towards Shardblades as Radiants do? Just skull crushing screaming inside of them? I recall Syl once being upset that she can't attract her own spren, maybe the Fused are unable to bond shardblades because they're essentially spren? What are your thoughts?

I like this a lot. It makes me think, would the lattice be resistant to lashings? We know that invested objects resist other forms of investiture. I imagine that since the "thousands" of gemstones are embedded in the lattice that they would extend their resistance to the whole of the lattice? If not then at the minimum the gemstones themselves would resist the lashings, so your lattice could become weightless or be falling in a direction, but the actual gemstones would still retain their weight.

You don't like my analogy but you're proving my point, My "slippery slope" argument above does not provide sufficient strength to prove a point in an argument. There IS a causal link in this comparison. You're saying Columbus actions will cause people to die. There is not a causal link with regards to the two types of spren. The fact that creation of fabrials using minor spren could lead to the use of sentient spren does not mean that it will, there's no proof that at the time of creating a fabrial with a minor spren that they could do the same thing with major spren. It took a very long time for the scholars in Jah Keved to create half shards (which I find morally reprehensible). When Colombus was sent to the Americas they didn't know that it would cause death. You have to use the knowledge available to determine morality, it is unreasonable to expect someone to theorize all of the externalities their decision could cause.

But we're talking morality here (are fabrials humane) you can't determine that one action is immoral because a distinctly different (but related) action is not. Should we not make butcher knives because someone else can use it to kill a person instead of an animal?

The likely answer is "yes". However, I would highly recommend against Dalinar doing this. We can reasonably assume that there is no upper limit to the amount of investiture that Nightblood can consume -- I dare say infinite. Fortunately he has been limited in his consumption due to his sheath as well as existing in the physical realm (sometimes in Cognitive, space travel and all that). However, the way that Dalinar gets an endless amount of Investiture is by creating a perpendicularity on command and linking the three realms directly with Honor's power. We have no idea what the consequences of that would be but I imagine that giving an entity with infinite ability to consume investiture access to an infinite amount of investiture will likely cause HORRIBLE things. Here are a couple WoB that I think directly relate here

Thanks for sharing the WoB. I meant my comment more as a joke, I didn't know the full extent of the naming between the two though.

ehhh, just because it is being used differently doesn't mean that it improves your argument. The issue I have with it is that you're comparing two wildly different things and saying that it naturally leads to the other. Creating a conjoiner fabrial using a non-sentient spren has a different moral basis than drawing a sentient spren like an Honorspren for a Half-shard. Saying that one will naturally lead to the other is misleading. It depends on your morals, if I draw the line at does the spren have it's own feelings, where I'll exploit one that does and won't exploit one that doesn't then clearly I won't ever make a half-shard. The slippery slope argument is wrong because you are saying that no matter what my morals or how I draw a line I will end up making a half shard. It doesn't make sense

Right, thank you. I assume that you could give two different commands, but if you have the same visualization that could align the end product better than the same command with two different visualizations. Although they both have a role. I'm excited for the Nightblood book that will provide more answers. One nitpick is that I wouldn't necessarily say "stored" as I don't think Nightblood is able to access his investiture in a way that other entities can. Although I believe it adds to his Invested-ness? Like how a coppermind is invested, Nightblood is gaining more investiture beyond the breaths that went into his creation -- I just don't believe that there is any way to remove the investiture from him. My conceptual headcannon is that he's kind of like a black hole for investiture in the Cosmere. It adds to him but can't be used.

From what I've read and seen on the topic I agree with the theory that the Nightwatcher had a heavy hand in the creation in Nightblood (besides the fact that they share the root Night). It's clear that Cultivation is definitely aware of Nightblood and it's implied that she knew about the sword before it came *back* to Roshar. We know that the form (sword) of the awakened object plus the words given to it (Destroy Evil) created the personality Nightblood, and we know that if either of those were different the way that he would work/think would be different. Diverging from the creation for a second here. I think that the WoB could be perceived as that Nightblood has gained some of Ruin's investiture at some point in time. Nightblood is actively consuming the investiture around it when it is exposed. I believe that the "consumption" is Nightblood actually claiming that investiture from the Shard's intent and storing it as it's own investiture. So there could definitely "be some Ruin in Nightblood" if Nightblood ever consumed a hemalurgic spike.

Seconding what @datalaughing said. Odium definitely intended it to be Dalinar. We know that futuresight is flawed, it's probabilistic and the actual future is not constrained to what is seen (foreseen). In the battle for Thaylen City we saw that Odium intended for Dalinar to consume Nergaoul and become his champion, but Dalinar was able to withstand this influence and instead capture Nergaoul in a perfect gemstone. Given that Odium failed in converting Dalinar into his champion I believe that he/she/they still have not been chosen and the climax of the first 5 will be a fight between Dalinar who is know becoming a splinter of Honor since he's merging with the stormfather and whomever Odium picks. In my headcannon his champion is going to be Moash and Dalinar (now some weird offshoot of Honor splinter thing) will pick Kal as his. So we'll see a battle of the foils.

I'm going to second (or is it third) this as well. I just finished my re-read of WoR and in the scene where Kal swears his third oath he says the words in his head first, but Syl tells him he must *speak* them, as soon as he says them out loud Syl is brought back and able to form as a blade. Maybe some Spren work differently within the bonds but I highly doubt it given that the whole structure of the oaths was magically set in stone so to speak.

I think Szeth specifically is an edge case given that he is so unique about following orders, and he swore to follow Dalinar. So I imagine that he was just told to sit in jail and he has been since then. I imagine Moash is going to try something slippery before they even get to jail (if Kaladin accepts his surrender), he has Jezrien's blade right? So he could just lash himself away at any point?