coolsnow7

Yes it is true that if you assume your conclusion - namely, that the intent of the Change Dawnshard is actually Cultivate, and that the intent of the Connect Dawnshard is actually Honor - then it will be hard to fit other Shards into a 4x4 format with Dawnshards. An exercise for the reader as to whether this says more about the 4x4 format, or the evidence adduced for this theory.

I absolutely love your post as a whole. Problem I have with El as champion is all this buildup to “who would you choose as your champion if you were me?” Maybe we’ll understand more about El and why Rayse wasn’t willing to bring him back whereas Taravangian did, but right now the setup is all but explicitly that Todium’s choice of champion is the loophole, is not what Rayse would have done, and is very counterintuitive.

As we all know, the intent of a shard is subject to the interpretation of the bearer. So while the intent we got for Honor + Odium was War, some adjacent concepts might work as well. Let’s review some facts about Szeth: - he really is devoted to Dalinar and would feel quite lost without him - he is at the edge of sanity - Taravangian continues to manipulate him and he’s not a fan - in fact successfully exploiting him to ascend to divinity - Brandon seems to be foreshadowing (heavily) that Taravangian’s manipulation of Szeth is coming to a head. Especially now that Taravangian is Odium, I expect this to be a major issue in book 5. Why do I bring Szeth up? Because I think a natural alternative to War is Vengeance. I’m not sure exactly how it would work, but I could see Book 5 ending with some kind of Shardic Intent shuffling, whereby Taravangian kills Dalinar, gets (the heretofore unspecified) combination of Cultivation and Odium, someone else (Navani?) gets Honor + Cultivation, and Szeth ascends to become Vengeance - setting him up to hunt Taravangian down across the Cosmere in Revenge for what he did to Dalinar. (Another alternative is that this is the spin Szeth puts on the Honor shard. I’m not in a position to ask Brandon questions for WoBs, but if someone out there is, I strongly recommend asking whether Vengeance would be an intent more suited to Honor+Odium or Honor alone - if he RAFOs then we know we’re on to something.)

The question we’ve all been more or less obsessed with since 2020 has been: what sort of loophole can TOdium cook up to weasel his way out of the contest? I want to say off the bat that “force a tie” is a ludicrous suggestion and if Brandon goes this route I will be ludicrously disappointed. Hoid literally highlights this trick as he’s trying to write up the agreement - how exactly would he manage to overlook it? This clearly is not the loophole; we need to be more creative. Dalinar’s legitimacy It’s important to note that a key clause in the agreement is that Dalinar undertakes it as a representative of humanity: Dalinar’s position as representative of humanity rests on his leadership of the coalition, which in turn rests on his role as de facto king of Alethkar. But Dalinar actually has no legitimacy to rule Alethkar; (speculating only slightly) if Jasnah withdrew Alethkar from the coalition and ordered Dalinar to resign from it as well, at a minimum Dalinar could no longer claim to represent humanity in his negotiations with Odium. But let’s recall, Jasnah doesn’t have much legitimacy either. She’s a woman and is not meant to be in line to the throne - she only has it because Gavinor is too young. Well, what if Gavinor sides with Odium? Even if Gavinor doesn’t serve as Odium’s champion, Gavinor can claim that he was unfairly held from assuming the role of king, order Jasnah and Dalinar to withdraw from the coalition, and likely undermine Dalinar’s ability to negotiate with Odium at all. If he does serve as champion, then Dalinar winning would almost certainly destroy the coalition: everyone - Alethi population, Emuli and Thaylen leaders, everyone - would see Dalinar as ruthlessly trying to seize the throne from Gavinor by killing him under the pretext of this “contest of champions”, and consequently collapse Dalinar’s ability to represent humanity at all. Heads Odium wins the contest, tails the contest is void. There’s obviously a fair bit of speculation here, but at a minimum I think it represents the sort of direction we should take our theorizing for the next 8 months. (The other perhaps clearer option is that Dalinar holds “the remnants of Honor’s power” - unclear if he can negotiate if he no longer does. Odium may try to find a champion that threatens either the Stormfather or the bond…)

These are good points, but some of them are off the mark IMO. - Thematically I agree Pailaiah working at the hospital fits. But what is the payoff of Taravangian being wrong? “Haha! Actually Dova isn’t one Herald you’ve never met and have no flashbacks of, it’s a totally different one!” At this point we can safely presume that Taravangian has her identity right. - If anything, Aesudan working with Gavilar is further support - as you note Kalak is working with him too! So you can say “well his motivations were different” but we don’t know her’s in the first place, except for taking what she says at face value. - that said it is true that she comes off as a petty villain more than a significant force. We still don’t know anything about her, and given the emphasis put on her in the plot, I expect we will. In fact, she reminds me a lot of Gavilar himself. Could be that seeking her out was just Elhokar’s way of trying to live up to his father’s expectations, could be that Gavilar chose her for him like he’s trying with Jasnah, who knows. I think that if/when Gavilar himself plays more of a role in either Book 5 or back half, we’ll learn a lot more about Aesudan as well. - I’m not sure how much weight to put on Odium saying she’s dead. I lean towards “he probably wouldn’t lie” along with you. But it’s not a crazy possibility to suggest that he doesn’t want them to know she survived (or that she’s a Herald). Bottom line, I say: when we find out more about Gavilar we will learn more about her as his counterpart in some ways. But the one thing we can be sure of is that Brandon set her up as both the opposite of the Ardentia and as their corruptor.

Let’s be real: none of this is dispositive. None of this is even close to strong evidence. And a point against is that it’s a bit weird for Heralds to integrate themselves into Alethi elite circles that heavily - at some point someone has to be like “so… who are your parents?” Not impossible to work around, but it’s a point against. All that said, I like this theory a lot. Right now we simply have no clue what Aesudan’s deal was in any way. Hell for all we know she survived her interaction with Yelig-Nar. It’s clear that whatever it is she’s doing, it’s the exact pathological opposite of what the Ardents are all about, and the Ardents seem to be in the mold of Pailaiah. Indeed, the chapter in WoR suggests that she thoroughly corrupted the Ardents; maybe they were in decline over time, but at a minimum she clearly sealed the deal in a significant way. Ironically the fact that there’s no dispositive evidence makes me like the theory more. Brandon tries to keep some secrets close to the chest, and given the giant void around Aesudan, this seems like that’s what’s happening.

KoWT prologue is literally called “To Live” lol.

I’ve been playing with this idea. I think there’s something to it. Gavilar would need to be alive, which is not impossible but not obvious from the prologue. (At the same time, Brandon has hinted pretty heavily towards that in the prologues…) Anyway he’d need to have been heavily invested at his death. Not impossible but not obvious how. Secondly it’s not clear how having Gavilar as the champion helps Odium achieve his goals. It’s clear to approximately everyone that Dalinar is the better fighter. Again not impossible - we don’t know anything (and all the theories around it are junk) about how Odium plans to win - but not obvious yet. Bottom line I’m starting to think this is correct just because the foreshadowing is so goddamn heavy. But what it means in terms of the rest of the story, I got nothing. It’s kind of a meaningless piece of the puzzle right now. Have we read the same prologues?

I would think that the words “‘work’ thematically” would be easily understood, but I guess not.

IIRC Thaidakar is explicitly interested in democratizing Invested abilities among Scadrians so that they can keep up in the arms race. So perhaps what he’s looking into is to be a Scadrian Unmade.

Now THIS idea I like. But for it to “work” thematically, Harmony will need to transform into a villain of some sort. Not impossible for obvious reasons, but feels like a stretch right now.

It’s possible but extremely uninteresting. We didn’t need a Deathrattle for that. If book 5 is just “Odium get Dalinar to lose via a perfectly conventional fight, and then gets him to break the agreement by having him kill a child”, aside from not fitting other pieces (the Deathrattle itself refers to “give us further breath to draw” - who’s “us” if Dalinar is already protected in the agreement?) would just make for an extremely boring book. It’s also not consistent with Hoid needing an expert on intershardal law, which we know from a pre-read. And it’s this reason that I think any theorizing about the precise mechanics of how Odium wiggles his way out of this is a waste of time (since we certainly are not experts on intershardal law).

I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with this. Is it still possible that this theory winds up being true? Yeah maybe, though I’m not convinced. Would I be disappointed if it is? Massive understatement. It would just be such weak writing on Brandon’s part (which is one of the main reasons, though certainly not the only one, I’m not convinced by the theory.) Anyway there were a lot of very popular theories before RoW that turned out to be total gibberish in the book, and I’m looking forward to a lot of nonsense getting deflated in 11 months.

Given the Jasnah excerpt, the place to look for the loophole is the mechanics of this Contest of Champions in Shard terms. Moreover, the foreshadowing has made it pretty explicit that “even if Odium loses, he wins” - in other words, we should be thinking about an Odium loss that frees him from the system via Shard/oath mechanics. One option is for him to lose, then be able to break the deal in such a way that he’s not vulnerable to Cultivation - either because Cultivation is no longer against him, or because of other mechanics yet to be revealed.

Forget all the good reasons alder24 raises for why this theory is bad - the starting premise is just terrible. Honor is supposed to intervene in the Oathpact and if he doesn’t he’s evil? What? Why would anyone just naturally assume that he can intervene, much less that the shard of Honor would want to intervene to modify the outcome of an oath?

A shard of War that starts Cosmere War always made sense to me, but I don’t see enough other pieces lined up to have a concrete theory about it.

TLDR of this entire thread is that there are obviously a whole bunch of Shard mechanics we don’t know and a whole bunch more we don’t understand and it’s reasonable that as of the 4th book of a 10 book series in a universe with god knows how many books by the end that we won’t understand every unusual interaction.

I think this is the correct way to theorize rather than “why would Gavinor want to kill his uncle” - there’s a whole 5th book still to be revealed! Details like that can be addressed in the course of the book. As long as we see the foundations laid - eg, Gavinor’s clearly messed up mental health - then we can assume Brandon will work out how Gavinor develops from nice but disturbed child to adoptive-grandfather-killer. Personally I agree that I’d find this outcome dissatisfying. That said, I think this theory is dead for two reasons: * we see from Gavilar’s prologue that the Deathrattles are extremely literal, but Gavinor is not “suckling” age at all. Note that this was the main motivation for the theory, at least for me - forcing Dalinar to fight an opponent he refuses to kill doesn’t require Gavinor at all. * In Jasnah’s excerpt, Hoid says he needs to consult with a Shard for their expertise. That implies that whatever TOdium has cooked up is based on mechanics we don’t know yet. This theory certainly does not - quite the opposite. (Though thankfully that also implies that the idiotic “a tie means any and all prior agreements are rendered void” theory can storm off as well.)

Apologies, I typoed Stormfather as Honor. Gonna go back and edit.

I don’t really have the patience to address all of this. I’ll just note that literally nothing you cited is even slightly inconsistent with my theory. Figuring that out is left as an exercise for the reader.

My personal favorite (possibly because I’m the only one who thinks it, but also because I’m pretty sure I’m the first to voice it) is that Stormfather has been infected (or whatever the word is) by Sja-Anat. Hence the eye holes when he appears to Gavilar sometimes, hence why he doesn’t want the Heralds to figure out something about his condition, and hence his lying to Gavilar.

I’ve been sitting on this one for about 2 years; the recent pre-read chapter from Jasnah pushed me over the edge. Let’s jump into the “evidence” such as it is: * The pattern whereby Odium kills/splinters a shard by teaming up with another shard has been well-established; we’ve just been ignoring the most available teammate because Cultivation is a “good guy”. * “We killed you” enough said. * It would fit as part of an overall goal of selecting new bearers for each of the 3 shards, including potentially Lift to replace herself. She was clearly instrumental in Taravangian killing Rayse, and by the same token would be grooming Dalinar as a successor to Honor. * Why is Hoid no longer on speaking terms with Cultivation? (Yes I know he wasn’t explicit about it - come on.) This is a pretty good reason. This is quite substantive - if Cultivation is actually trying to preserve Roshar, this should be a no-brainer to help out on - yet Hoid doesn’t even try. * Hoid’s parable of the people pushing a boulder, where he says “the person who just gives it a nudge is the most dangerous” - Cultivation is that person, and yup that would fit. * From a meta-plot, Sanderson point of view it just makes too much sense. Probably the biggest source of pushback I’m going to get is the idea that Cultivation has no motive to do this. Even given as little as we know about Cultivation, frankly that’s nonsense: Odium’s propaganda about how Honor represents calcification and stagnation would definitely ring true to the shard of growth and progression. From her point of view, oaths, commitments, and moral principles should change in response to circumstances - not be ironclad for eternity. Moreover I urge you all to stop thinking of Cultivation as a “good guy”. None - literally none - of the shards that we’ve met so far have been close to unambiguously good. Preservation was last seen regretting the death of the Lord Ruler because of just how stable his kingdom was. Cultivation is definitely going to have a dark side just like the rest of them, and my money is that this will be it. Where does that leave us? I’m not sure. We still don’t know anything that will let us parse Cultivation’s goals. But I’m pretty confident that when we get around to finding out how Honor died, she’ll turn out to have been a participant.

How did Nale convince himself to ditch his honorblade and leave Taln to rot in Braze? It’s clear that he still attempts to adhere to his ideal of justice. In fact he is still bonded to his spren. I think it’s pretty safe to say that he didn’t just have some moment of weakness and then go straight back to doing what he did before; rather I think he must have convinced himself this was the right thing to do. Well, how did he do that? One thing I’m sure about is that that convincing argument had a central concept: “I’m adhering to the letter of the law, therefore I am not breaking the law or acting unjustly”. This is in strong contrast to his flashback, where we see him crafting the law to embody the ideals of justice and honor, and evaluating different implementations of the same legal structure on those terms. What we see of Nale in present times is a complete 180 in the opposite direction: a willingness to degrade the spirit of the law into irrelevance as long as he maintains adherence to the literal law on the most superficial level. I’m sure this could be extended to the other Heralds, but it’s late and I need to get some sleep. Perhaps we’ll need more flashbacks like Nale’s to be certain. But given the evidence available (not much) I’m pretty confident about this.

Frankly I think this theory is wrong because it’s too easy to see coming. There’s a fine line between foreshadowing and giving the big reveal away, and this is just to Linear A path. We have one good example of an era ending: we have Mistborn 3. That stuff was so out there, so far removed from anything anyone could have guessed, that I have to believe Brandon is going to make things much more interesting than just this Michael Bay Transformers clash of the titans situation that we could see a mile away.

I’ve thought more about this and I think I’m right. “They must not see… they must not know…” - what? What’s he hiding? I can think of one answer: the Heralds wouldn’t want to find out that he’s down with Sja Amat. And if getting sent back to Braize would somehow make them aware of that, then yeah he should be afraid.