coolsnow7

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.

I’m going to sketch out this theory and maybe get around to providing quotes and stuff to substantiate it later. And I don’t love time travel mechanics. Just too messy. So I’m not thrilled with where the evidence is leading me. But a couple of thoughts, all paraphrased: * Cultivation to TOdium: “you’ve been on this path for a long time” - ie before you asked for a boon from me - “I just tried to help you learn to wield the power with honor.” This is in response to TOdium shocked that she would try something so audacious like putting him in position to because Odium - which would absolutely include the Diagram. In other words, the Diagram was NOT part of her boon+curse. I take this to be explicit in the text - that T’s path to TOdium-hood started long before Cultivation got involved directly, and that that path kicked off with the Diagram * Speaking of the Diagram, Taravangian: “thinking that the Diagram was about anything more than saving Kharbranth was dangerous.” Dangerous why? I think we know the answer especially when we reach T’s last days: “he cried over the lies [about trying to make utilitarian sacrifices to save a seed of humanity] he told Dalinar - because the truth was much more shameful”. Yeah the truth - namely that you were doing all this with the goal of usurping Odium - is pretty shameful. Finally, there’s that moment that I’m struggling to recall in detail where he says “you don’t understand, Odium sets things up so that if he loses, he still wins.” Does that sound like the Odium we know? L O L. Our Odium loses without winning left and right. Our Odium is almost a beautiful loser: he prioritizes sending a message about doing things his way over actually winning. (This was during his last conversation with Dalinar.) You know who sets things up so that if he loses, he wins? In fact you might say “the only way to agree to a deal is to make sure that no matter the outcome you are satisfied”? That level of craftiness I’ve only seen from T - especially as TOdium, when he makes fun of Odium’s foolishness and says this! One more related piece of evidence: the epigraphs in WoR: ”You must become King. Of Everything.” 1) Taravangian was still able to achieve his primary goal without being king of more than Jah Keved 2) Everything contains quite a bit more than Roshar! But it is consistent with trying to save the entire Cosmere from incompetent shards, and waging a “war for everything”. “You must destroy the Parshendi if this one starts to explore their powers it will form a bridge” Why destroy the Parshendi if they might form a bridge between the Singers and the Listeners? That would be bad for Odium if he loses the Singers as an ally! But it would be GOOD for TOdium who clearly does not want whatever is happening between Leshwi, Venli, Thude, Rlain (+Renarin perhaps), Sja-Anat, and their associated followers - very bridge-like. At a minimum, the Diagram contains information about Odium with Taravangian as the vessel. But I would go so far as to say that the Diagram was a vision Taravangian got of himself - not Rayse Odium - from the future, and that Cultivation was certainly not involved.

People keep thinking that shard’s vulnerabilities are overextending their investiture - but their power is always referred to as “infinite” or “essentially infinite”. By contrast, the one clear cut example we have of a shard being vulnerable is Odium as a result of divergence between the vessel and power’s intents. Shards are vulnerable through connection, identify, and intent. Not from pouring too much investiture into a box.

We know very little about Shard vulnerabilities. But we do know that a shard whose vessel’s intent diverges significantly from the power’s intent, is extremely vulnerable. Another thing we know is that Honor died to save humankind. (I’ll see if I can dig up the quote.) To me the clearest story is that the power’s intent would have been, for whatever reason, to harm or exterminate mankind, but Tanavast resisted, giving him the opening to die. We also know that somehow he “severely wounded” Odium in the *process* of dying, which was a wound that Odium carried with him til he died. But not a whole lot of information there. Finally, my own out-there theory: I think Cultivation was the one who helped kill Honor. It’s very Brandon for that to be the case; we don’t know much about Cultivation; and it’s easy to imagine, similar to how Mercy might help kill Ambition. The idea would be that Honor wants humans to stagnate too much, *is* too stagnant himself, refuses to grow - therefore his intent is opposed to Cultivation’s, and he must be taken out to preserve growth on Roshar. Do I have much more evidence than this? No. But I’m sure I will soon!

This is making some pretty enormous assumptions about what it takes to Enlighten a spren...

I think this is strongly correct. Emphasis on what Thaidakar said (paraphrasing): "we didn't really do much. This was probably going to happen without our efforts." True for his efforts, but also for Chanarach breaking the Oathpact, and maybe even true of the Everstorm. We've seen Shards - specifically, Ruin - line events up extremely precisely, exactly along these lines. No one should be surprised when an event that seems like it was a happy accident (for Odium) turns out to be him lining things up to coincide with his best opportunity at freedom. Ultimately we don't know what killed Honor. And that is going to be much, much more consequential for any of this than these random contingencies.

I haven't read far enough down the thread to see if anyone has suggested this, so apologies if I'm not the first: I think the Stormfather has been Enlightened (or whatever the word is) by Sja-Anat. Either that, or this is Sja-Anat pretending to the be the Stormfather or something like that. Reasons are the things you mentioned, plus the Stormfather looking like Sja-Anat does when the Herald dies. I'll dig up quotes if someone presses, but otherwise the similarities should be clear enough. I also think that what the Stormfather doesn't want the Heralds to know/see is this Enlightenment. But that's more speculative obviously.

I think this theory might actually be right

This is correct. “He’ll notice - and then he’ll kill me” = he’ll notice me, not he’ll notice that I violated our agreement.

That’s a very interesting angle. It implies that if Hoid knew about TOdium’s strategy, he could take steps to prevent him from pulling it off. I think you’re overemphasizing “doesn’t know”. TOdium might know who he wants his champion to be; he just doesn’t want Hoid to think it’s something he actually thought about. There’s some obvious champion that Rayse had in mind, and TOdium diverting from that choice is what he wants to hide. This also fits the theme of Hoid’s monologue perfectly - this is the sleight of hand. Tangentially it also supports the Gavinor theory. The Gavinor theory has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the fact that Hoid’s knowledge of the champion could derail TOdium’s plan is supports the possibility that it’s Gavinor.

We do?

Oh great point, this is definitely the right answer.

To be honest this seems a lot more like trying to fit the evidence to the theory (really to the proposed Cosmeric phenomenon of Cultivation+Odium) than it does a theory emerging from text. I could offer more specific criticism but a) I need to go to sleep and b)) it would all just elaboration on that one point.

Well, like, also her father trusted her not to kill him in cold blood. So there’s that.

I think you’re just underestimating the size of Roshar. Bridge 4 is like 30 people. The Recreance itself consisted of <400 Radiants. Ok, now Roshar is a planet that easily has 10’s of millions of people. Is it really that different if a Radiant is one-in-a-million versus one-in-a-hundred-thousand?

Odium is bound by agreements made by past holders of the shard. Rayse agreed with Taravangian to preserve Kharbranth no matter what. But now Taravangian holds the shard. Is he bound by that agreement? The simplest, and most likely, answer is that Taravangian can represent himself to himself and abrogate the agreement. But this still might not be so clear-cut. If that is the case, though, the tragic irony is that all that work and treachery and evil that T put into protecting Kharbranth was a complete waste of time.