coolsnow7

We have a more than a few instances of pivotal moments on Roshar being driven by an unexplained failure of futuresight. There are more that I'll add later as I remember them from my rereads, but here are two major ones: The Recreance: Tanavast explicitly expresses surprise that he did not foresee that capturing Mishram would lead to the Parshendi losing their forms. And he explicitly notes that the power of Honor rejected him (and ejected him) because of the consequences of his betrayal. The power would not have ejected him absent his blindness to those consequences. Ishar and Kaladin: Ishar expresses wonder that he didn't notice Kaladin in all his plans. Ishar's "planning" sure seems a lot like futuresight. Now of course, it might not be - we have another 5 books minimum to develop new mechanics and such. But if it is, it failed him spectacularly if he was able to pick out Szeth but not Kaladin as noteworthy. Now let's consider Cultivation's role: We keep hearing about her "subtle touch" on events. What is more subtle than preventing someone from foreseeing the consequences of their actions - especially a Shard? By the time of the Recreance, Tanavast only senses coldness and revulsion from Cultivation - she clearly has no problem with him being ejected from Honor. Obviously there can be alternative explanations - this is extremely speculative with little in the way of evidence. But it would be quite delicious, thematically, if the way Cultivation tries to influence things is by using her superior - but clearly still fallible - futuresight to inhibit others' inferior futuresight. And it would fit the accusations/descriptions of her intervention deliciously.

Yes it does, thank you!

Something I noticed upon re-read is that when Sigzil’s armor starts peaking out into the physical realm, he refers to two sets from each set of oaths. Unless he actually bonded with a third spren, this must be referring to his Windrunner oaths with Vienta. But as far as I can tell, he had not achieved the Fourth Ideal with her. So what gives?

I agree - but given that all of this happens way later than the end of the Stormlight Archive, it seems highly unlikely that the Heralds are going to be at all involved.

Correct. Moreover, we have a glimpse of the future from TSM, where it is explicit that Adonalsium remains shattered.

I hate to be a party ruiner, but it’s fully impossible to even guess, because we don’t know what technological developments will take place with each planet’s magic systems.

HOID’S REAL GOAL: REPLACE ADONALSIUM WITHOUT TAKING A SHARD Instead of seizing a Shard, Hoid began a new path: To collect the echo of each Shard’s power — and rebuild divinity inside himself. Every magic system in the Cosmere is a manifestation of Shardic Intent. And Hoid is deliberately gathering them, one by one: Magic System Shard Hoid’s Access Allomancy Preservation Consumed a lerasium bead (Secret History) Feruchemy? Preservation/Ruin Strongly implied in The Lost Metal Awakening Endowment Confirmed; may hold a Divine Breath AonDor Devotion + Dominion Can use; seen in Lost Metal epilogue Surgebinding Honor/Cultivation Bonded a Cryptic (Lightweaver) Lightweaving Yolen (???) Origin unknown, possibly pre-Shattering Fortune ??? Uses it to be "where he needs to be" Yolen Magic Pre-Shattering Unexplained, but likely fundamental He’s not hoarding Investiture at random — he’s building a spiritual resonance that reflects the entire Cosmere. A self-made god without Intent, without Shardic madness. When the Shards eventually fade, Splinter, or collapse (as we’ve seen with Honor, Devotion, Dominion, Ambition…), the power will flow to the only being capable of harmonizing with all of it: Hoid. WHY HE DOESN’T INTERVENE Because he can’t. He’s still bound by the Pact of Peace — or possibly by his Dawnshard’s limitations (we know he once held the Dawnshard of Change). He doesn’t kill. He doesn’t fight. He tells stories. He manipulates events through words, art, and chance. Because that’s the only weapon the pact allows him to use. He is playing by the rules… While bending the story to his will. ENDGAME: THE COSMERE WILL BECOME HIM What if Hoid isn’t trying to stop Odium… He’s waiting for Odium to burn through the other Shards — until the power is free. What if he’s preparing to become something worse — or more divine — than Adonalsium? Not a tyrant. Not a savior. But a narrative being with the power of all, and the binding of none. The Shards are gods fractured by Intent. Hoid will be a god unified by story. TL;DR: After the Shattering, Hoid and the Shards created a Pact of Non-Intervention — no direct violence, no mortal warfare. Hoid doesn’t intervene because he’s bound by the pact — not by morality. Instead of holding a Shard, he’s collecting resonances of each Shard’s power via magic systems. His endgame is to replace Adonalsium, not by taking power — but by becoming the only soul compatible with all of it. The final threat to the Cosmere might not be Odium… It might be the man who’s been narrating the whole thing. What do you think? Could Hoid be preparing to override the Shards by becoming the soul of the Cosmere itself? Or is this just another trick in a very long story? Looking forward to your thoughts and counter-theories. -The Warrior Poet I just want to say that I’d be far more willing to entertain your theory if you wrote it normally. This exaggerated phony dramatization (be honest, ChatGPT wrote this right?) is intolerable. And bonus, it’s meaningless - I don’t know what “a god unified by story” means. Anyway the kernel of a new idea here - that Hoid was arranging this all from before the Shattering - I find too conspiratorial to make work. The idea that Hoid is seeking to replace Adonalsium has been proposed before; see here. I also don’t see any evidence that there was a pact that bound anyone, much less Hoid. This is gonna be funny to come back to…

Yeah honestly, we have to accept that he’s either gonna farm out some Cosmere material to other company authors proactively, or it’s going to get de facto farmed out when he passes. Because I simply don’t see how he can keep his (quite aggressive) current pace and get to the Cosmere finish line.

Jeez this guy has no chill

This actually came up in WaT: Vienta tells Sigzil that “she wishes to break and burn this world”. (p. 663) And I agree that that’s contrary to the intent. That said, I’m comfortable waiting for more context before writing it off; I usually don’t like to theorize on the basis of similar mechanics, but in this case the similarity is hard for me to ignore.

I think this is correct. It’s a bit ridiculous for a 4th Shard to be hanging around Roshar. By contrast, a 4th Superspren would have preceded the Shards’ entry to the system, which is why they wouldn’t be aware of it.

My guess: Sja-Anat: Odium-warped remnants of Ambition Dai-Gonarthis: same, but Dominion Ba-Ado-Mishram: same, but Devotion What we know of Sja-Anat is her ambition to subvert Odium and become a God herself. The specific way she’s doing that is the Odium-inflected direction of granting freedom to Spren; but ultimately her goal is a pretty clear expression of ambition. And we have a WOB for this one. Ba-Ado-Mishram is similar in that what we see of her is her devotion to her people, the Singers, being paramount for her. When we see her in Odium-inflected moments, her rage is at her imprisonment and their enslavement. But much more interestingly, when we see her during the False Desolation, she doesn’t seem Odium-esque at all! Peace is decidedly the opposite of an Odium-aligned goal. I speculate that gaining access to the Well of Control granted her some measure of ability to recover her true self (even though it did the opposite to Ishar.) Another piece of evidence is we see her going around healing Singers - consistent with Aona’s identity as a healer. (WaT ch. 113) As for Dai-Gonarthis, we know exactly one thing about her: that she transports people for a price. Have we seen this mechanic before? Certainly, with the Dakhor monks on Elantris! My speculation is therefore that the price Odium had to pay was sacrificing tens of thousands of Singers to transport the troops that facilitated the assault on the Shattered Plains. (By the same token: in the WoR epigraphs on the Unmade, we see speculation that Dai-Gonarthis was involved in the scouring of Aimia - well, she might have facilitated the transportation of soldiers onto the island chain, such that they could completely negate Aimia’s defenses!)

I just don’t understand how or why you’ve decided this is a theme.

My wife has - finally! - started reading the Cosmere, and is now in the middle of Oathbringer. She is not so into it (apparently her favorite aspect of these books is the Shallan love triangle, which is not so prominent in the beginning of Oathbringer). I realized that before I make big claims like “Oathbringer is considered by the Cosmerenauts to be the best of the series”, I should actually check if it’s true. So please vote away!

I think that to answer this question, you should be asking: who did the other Shards perceive as the most dangerous? And Odium not only goes after Ambition first, but keeps casually presuming that others agree that Ambition was going to need to be dealt with somehow. I’m pretty confident that the answer is Ambition somehow, and we’ll find out eventually the specifics.

Brandon has made it very clear that Kelsier straddles the line between good and evil, and is willing to do things that would be considered straight up evil. And Hoid is terrified of Kelsier’s plans for reasons we know nothing about so far. Meanwhile we don’t even know what Iyatil and Mraize were after with Ba-Ado-Mishram (how would she help them coerce the Shards? Why would they want to coerce Harmony?) or why it’s in any way worse than what Kelsier is trying to do. So to sum up I disagree with this comment completely. I find this interpretation confusing. To me it is clearly saying that someone else’s claim overrides Retribution’s, thereby giving Dalinar the freedom to escape Retribution - not that they specifically kept him around. Look we saw Dalinar go into the Beyond. To start speculating now that actually it’s all a giant fake out and really he’s still alive is, in my opinion, entering Stormfaker conspiracy theory territory. And there’s nothing I have more disdain for than hanging on to the Stormfaker idea post-WaT release.

What is the point of explicitly telling us that Dalinar is permanently dead, Cosmere-wise, if not to stop us from speculating this way? I agree with others who said having the Blackthorn just wind up as Dalinar as we knew him would be redundant. And they’re separate people, so the whole “10 orders represented on the battlefield” bit still wouldn’t work. A question I would ask Brandon at the next opportunity is whether the 10 Radiant orders represented at Thaylen Field was just symbolic, or if it had more substantive significance for the battle or for Dalinar’s Ascension or what. Because otherwise I’m not sure what that was about.

This is helpful but still does not bear on Kelsier’s overarching goal that has Wit freaking Jasmah out and setting himself in deep opposition to the Ghostbloods. Why would Wit so strongly oppose Kelsier taking Preservation back sort of? There are answers here - non obvious ones. So far what we know for sure is that it’s short of controlling a shard directly (which is what Iyatil and Mraize somehow want to do) but that’s about it. This business with BAM still sounds like means to Kelsier’s end rather than the end itself.

I think having the Ghostbloods ruined as it were before starting the Stormlight is… not bad? Maybe net positive?

It’s an idea that has some appeal I’ll say. I like it. But it’s not clicking with me. And one main reason is that so far all of Wit’s stories have turned out to be about the past and to even have actually happened (to some extent, in the case of the emperor in the tower one). It’s also important to note that Shallan apparently had heard this story before too, and it’s not clear how she’d get access to the future. I remain convinced that this is some deep origin Yolen story about the discovery of investiture or something like that.

We had Wit mention what he thinks Retribution will do:

Guys it’s a chapter title. Chapter 138 is “The Burdens of Nine”. Based on the content of that chapter, it’s all but explicit that this is Ishar like you said. There are several chapter titles that similarly reference some Deathrattles, that we all speculated about and then got our answers. (For example “the suckling child” did indeed turn out to be Gavinor; the man standing upon a cliffside turned out to be Dalinar, on the verge of destroying Roshar; etc.) Consistent with my theory that Szeth is The Broken One (and hence will eventually reign), I think this is Szeth: all the other Heralds appear dead to him, and like I said, he’s Broken (also, he lost his arm so he’s quite literally broken.)

I think, like with Taravangian=>Odium, people will start figuring it out. The question is will they figure out the full extent, ie that the Heralds are planning for a comeback. I don’t think that information is accessible - to anyone, at all, full stop. So it’s not clear what they’d do with it.

But for all we know Nightblood was also patterned based on this weapon, or both the weapon and Nightblood were tapping into the same mechanic. I would keep your theorizing alive; so far Nightblood is the only thing that we’ve seen that can allow a human to kill a Shard’s Vessel, so it’s a decent candidate for whatever this weapon was.

Well since you asked: of course there are more than a few whacky theories in this forum, and that’s part of the function of the forum: for people to take long-shot guesses at what the future holds. But I hold a certain set of theories that are unfalsifiable in contempt. The two versions that come to mind (and that I’ve made fun of this way) are a) Stormfaker and b) “Cultivation was the puppet master all along!” The reason is because, well, they’re unfalsifiable: the evidence can be clear as day that, for example, Cultivation is muddling through godhood the same way the other gods are. And yet, there’s always some combination of future sight, assuming motivations that just happen to align perfectly with the outcomes, and the fact that her Intent is effectively to be puppetmaster that a reader can cobble together to speculate “well what if it was always her plan?” Brandon has already made it clear that a) Cultivation’s reach exceeds her grasp in the planning department b) she’s realized a whole bunch of unintended consequences already c) that no one could anticipate the outcome of WaT d) that futuresight is irrelevant to inter-Shard activity. And yet this wholly unappealing possibility, that the entire Stormlight Archive is just one giant Deus Ex Machina on the part of Cultivation, just won’t die - because it can’t be disproven! There’s always “what if her futuresight is actually so good that she could plan it all anyway?” Let’s dwell on (a) for a second. Every revelation of the origin and nature of the Vessels that we’ve seen has been underwhelming. It’s to the point that it’s clear that this will be a major theme of the Cosmere, as it already is with the Heralds in Stormlight: how behind the curtain of religious myth - even or especially when all the myths turn out to be true! - the divine persons involved are just… people. They make mistakes, they scramble to fix them, they get caught off guard, their arrogance leads them into trouble, they get in over their heads, and they wind up dead despite being immortal. And yet some people want to read this as foreshadowing that Cultivation is actually just an omniscient, omnibenevolent mastermind all along! Are we reading the same book? So yes, because actual arguments don’t work - indeed can’t work - to rebut “what if actually Cultivation is a secret mastermind puppeteer”, I will mock these theories. Not least because, contra you, mockery is ultimately harmless and probably won’t even succeed in shutting down this set of theories, much less discouraging this kind of speculation broadly.