Proletariat

Adhesion seems impossible to replicate by the Fused. IMO it's not simply that its closest to Honor, but that it's more or less exclusively Honor. OTOH there is also no 'true' surge the Fused seemed to use that the Sibling couldn't suppress. I would suggest that Honor simply gave more of himself than either Odium or even Cultivation, and unlike either of those shards he has a unique surge even if some surges have more Cultivation than others. Similarly there are some that are going to be closer to Odium than others - Division is a potential example given the restrictions placed upon it - but I don't think they are quite comparable to Adhesion.

I don't think it's worth overthinking the Feruchemist thing as indicating another Shards intervention. There was clearly travel off Scadrial even before Rashek and the Final Empire. As an example there's the connection between Worldbringers, and Worldsingers, so there was some cross-pollination between Scadrial and Roshar around 2000 years ago or more which means it has happened. Given the singers element in Worldsingers I suspect they were interacting with Singers in the first instance (and Singers can't go offsystem due to spren) so there's been Feruchemists coming to Roshar for a very long time - potentially even before Odium. It seems time is also a super rubbery concept for world hoppers. Khriss and Baon would have been born thousands of years ago before the current Roshar/Scadrial books. Demoux and Felt are seemingly pretty normal humans still alive hundreds of years later. So there's no reason that the Worldbringers who went offworld before the Final Empire wouldn't be the exact same people we're seeing now. No Shardic intervention required. The real question mark for me is the Aimians. I'm guessing they're both species from a not identified Shardworld.

I imagine most Shards would not be that urgently focused on dealing with Odium just yet. There's just been a conflict that's seen him bound to a fixed location for half of his existence, forced him to invest himself and splinter parts of himself into the Unmade, Fused and Everstorm, and then his rogue vessel was devoured and replaced. Meanwhile the casualties at his hand seem to have required assistance and are either someone who may have similarly been seen as a threat (Ambition), or Shards that are believed to have broken agreements (Devotion, Dominion, Honor). If you were an infinite being who doesn't give a storm about other planets and people, then Odium might not seem that pressing.

Sure, but Odium is actively averse to splintering his investiture so that he is not diminished as cited in the WoB. And Harmony is not the most pro-active Shard, but that's not the point. The point is that Odium is not likely to create a powerful being that is a threat to his hegemony, and creating an Avatar or Splinter of significance, would be doing do that at his own expense. Meanwhile corrupting the Avatar of Autonomy would be starting a simultaneous conflict with them. Challenging Autonomy and Harmony at the same time seems unwise. This isn't to say that your thesis is impossible. Most things are possible in a story, and it's not an idea without merit. But it doesn't seem to the most plausible fit in this scenario. The most plausible being an alliance of convenience between Shards. What we do know from WoBs and also the set up from the early excerpts of the next Aviar story, is that there will be a conflict between Roshar and Scadrial, that Odium wants to move against Harmony, and Odium and Autonomy have collaborated in the past. Anything further than that is us taking guesses on the terms of the relationship between Odium, Harmony, and Autonomy without much to go off and we just have to accept that we don't have much to go off yet.

Technically...? But Brandon has eliminated every shard aside from Autonomy, Cultivation, and Odium. Odium has been bound in the Rosharan system, and is ideologically opposed to there being more Shardic forces. Autonomy is the only one known to have made avatars. I guess we could put forward the idea that Cultivation has been sending avatars to Scadrial for thousands of years if you really want, but it doesn't really make sense within the story to me whereas Autonomy's proclivity to create avatars has been intentionally mentioned in the books for a reason. I am persuaded that Odium is involved, but am unpersuaded that Odium would invest further to the point that he'd functionally hi-jack an Avatar to create an Unmade that's powerful enough to challenge a Shard, which would effectively be declaring war on Autonomy while creating a new rival. The simplest explanation seems to be that they have an alliance of convenience and have for some time based on these and your quoted WoBs:

It seems almost impossible for it not to be an avatar of Autonomy given that it is a Shard, but not one of the Shardholders. But that doesn't mean that Trell is the only force that's part of the attempted take over. Based on the red & gold allusions I think it more likely there's a collaboration against Harmony post-RoW rather than Trell being an unmade on steroids.

This really isn't true given most people don't have the opportunity to become a best selling author, and is an unreasonable way to shift a burden of responsibility. The absence of LGBTIQ+ people in media is 'unnatural' given how many of us exist in the world, and our absence is an unjustifiable political choice that writers make often without realising it. We all have a responsibility to evaluate our decisions. As someone who did an entire degree on writing I will say that this comment of yours reads less as about correcting people on writing, and was more on your values. We should always challenge each other on values otherwise we do not grow, and most of the population notices when people 'accidentally' write stories that are exclusively straight white cis men. A banal story lacking women or minorities is as forced and fantastical in a book or film as someone in real life attempting to take a plastic light saber to battle.

They has a long history as a gender neutral pronoun. I remember they being used even in the Chaucer book I had to do for high school, which would've been 500 years ago or something. It would be revisionist to try to use 'it' for a being with whom humans socially interact for grammar reasons. They might be too alien to express themselves as gendered, but they're still sentient.

The Sibling is a building without a body even in Shadesmar, and no name except a description of their relationship to Stormfather/Nightwatcher (Sibling) and Sja-Nat (cousin). And has been referred to in-text with 'they'. Doesn't really make sense to me to gender them as anything but they.

I don't think the space age era having figured out how to do something that Hoid does not yet know how to do is evidence of soon given it's probably hundreds of years in the future. Scadrial doesn't even seem to have toasters yet ... FTL still might be a way off. I do think more people will start figuring it out by end of the second Stormlight sequence though. The Ghostbloods haven't been introduced elsewhere so their storyline about exporting investiture has to be resolved in a Stormlight book, and Thaidakar and the Ghostbloods are kind of being set up to be more of a villain once there's a modicum of peace between the Dalinar and Odium factions.

This WOB indicates that it's bc the Stormfather is kind of everywhere: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/73-shadows-of-self-san-francisco-signing/#e4268 So unless Nightwatcher becomes mobile, or her bonded Radiant is a Sleepless, then we're not going to see them very much. Which I am sad about bc TBH I kind of want a corny moment where all of the Bondsmiths are together and work together to storm rust up. EDIT: omg these fake swear words the forums put in are lol

TBH the most interesting thing would be if one of the Sleepless bonded the Nightwatcher. I worry that whoever bonded the Nightwatcher would be locked into staying where she waits to grant wishes to people as there is no other source of Lifelight, and thereby would not be part of the story with everyone else. A Sleepless could potentially act as a Bondsmith from afar, and I don't want a boring Bondsmith that isn't part of the story.

No deal without consultation. Odium needs the deal as well, and that isn't going to change immediately. His fortunes are not suddenly going to be so good that committing to a war he no longer wants in two days will become be a good idea. He can shove it for a bit while we assert how negotiations work.

But they're not on equal footing. Even in standard combat the home team has an advantage in a siege or invasion, because the invading force has to organise resources and is exposed. In the case of having to organise armies to go across the cognitive realm - with food, water, and Stormlight that doesn't exist in there - and then swim in single file through a perpendicularity, the home team advantage is massive. The key resource of the Alethi armies historically has been its access to Soulcasters so the army can eat and drink, and having more Shardbearers than their opponents. They've also recently gotten Radiants - who need Stormlight. However this invasion will have none of these unless they can figure out a way to perfectly store and transport Stormlight en masse in order to replenish their Radiants, shardplate, and Soulcasters, and they also need to figure out how to get spren off planet. Even Hoid has not discovered how to do that yet as per WOB even though he has either broken his bond or figured out how to do it by the time he next visits Scadrial, Kelsier has not figured that out as of the Wax and Wayne trilogy, and Raboniel believes it impossible despite being a scientific genius amongst Fused. What I'm trying to make clear is that it's not just a case of comparing powers. Nalthis has a customs system for cross-dimensional travel and would be aware of an invading force immediately, and they can mobilise an army that is difficult to wound and doesn't need any food or water to sustain them. Meanwhile on Dusk's planet you then have three weeks travel to get to your nearest destination even if you get even through the perpendicularity alright, but you have no idea of which way to go ... without titanic resources they'll just die on sea of dehydration and starvation. Roshar is more powerful than any other planet right now except maybe Sel, but it doesn't mean they can pull this off. The argument isn't that Radiants aren't powerful. They are. If you put Allomancers and Radiants in Dragonball Z style thunderdome where everyone's powers worked perfectly, then Radiants would win. The actual argument is that now is not a good time for them to do something like invading a different planet since they're not in a position to resolve the logistics issues yet.

There is no reason to think that the Stormfather can come to Scadrial, and he definitely couldn't do it without disrupting life on Roshar since he literally is the highstorm. The Sibling can't move. Nightwatcher hasn't joined the cause of the Radiants. We have to suspend everything about bonds that makes the Rosharan system what it is to go with the assumption that Bondsmiths can join the battle. And Lasting Integrity is only one city, but the Honorspren also tried to conquer the entirety of Shadesmar. They seem to be the largest population despite all fitting into one building. The cryptics are one of the other large populations and they only managed to create 9 or 10 lightweavers. Dalinar's forces even after the revelation are not going to be more than a couple of hundred Radiants across the 5 orders supporting him. Even if they could get to Scadrial. There are some truly amazing Fabrials, but just because Navani has seen and understands them doesn't mean they are mass produced. There could literally be hundreds of thousands of guns, as compared to one scientist who has seen that a unique godspren can create certain effects. And again there's no indication that she has deciphered how they can be taken out of the system, and so it's questionable that they're a factor for this time period. If we suspend these rules, then we also allow ourselves to make assumptions like the Set having access to heaps of Inquisitors with full feruchemy and allomancy because of their breeding program and hemalurgy. They technically understand how to do it - which is more than we can say for Rosharans knowing how to go off world - and have the materials to do so. And that Elendel has unlimited access to Southern Scadrian tech so that we have unlimited airships with bombs, hundreds of essentially fullborn Inquisitors, and rioters mind controlling a million kollos or whatever. But that'd be stretching the concept with a whole bunch of assumptions that we cannot yet justify for this scenario. This'll become an interesting scenario in the space age saga, but there's no planet where an invasion by one of the Rosharan factions wouldn't currently be a disaster. Invading Sel would be mass suicide in the Dor. Taldain is blocked off. Dusk's planet probably would result in a lot of normal soldiers being killed by cognitive predators, and then not even knowing what direction to go from the island. Nalthis has a legion of undead soldiers on hand to eliminate Roshar's mundane forces etc. Things still need to change a heck of a lot.

I think there's a few assumptions that are worth unpacking here. The most important thing is that an army invading in this era would have to do so from the Cognitive realm, and this creates a massive handicap for the invader. The weaknesses that you're identifying in Scadrial almost don't matter. And secondly, I think there's a misdiagnosis of the populations involved. The spren are still recovering from near genocide in the Recreance, and this means there's never going to be a lot of surgebinders. Almost the entire population of Lasting Integrity fit into one building to watch Adolin's court case. And there are only nine or ten Cryptics who've bonded humans even though they're dedicated to the idea. Meanwhile the divisions mean that you can either have a force of Fused (and Skybreakers), or you can have a force with only 5 orders of Radiants in those small numbers of a couple of hundred at best. None of whom will be able to refuel. And this is assuming they can even figure out how to make it off planet which is something Kelsier, the Heralds, and the Fused all cannot do. Meanwhile Elendel has a population of up to 5 million, and is one of about 15 cities in the country including a city of koloss. If we assume that only 0.01% of them have either Allomancy or Feruchemy and only count people in the capital, then that's still 50,000 people with powers. And guns. And food supplies. And fortifications. This isn't just a question of whether a Misting can beat a Radiant. It's a question as to whether this is a good time to invade, and it's really not. If you put a cost-benefit analysis to this situation, then it'd be the most costly endeavour for really unclear gain.

Now is a terrible time for any planet to attempt to wage war, but most especially Roshar: They are still politically divided, and vacating a large amount of troops from any single population would be an invitation for invasion. Their greatest resources - surgebinders and fabrials - cannot yet leave in this time period. And even if they could they have almost no means for re-fuelling Stormlight once they enter into the Cognitive Realm which functionally nullifies their abilities either way. There is no food in the Cognitive realm, so they haven't the means to appropriately resource a large travelling army. They would be sending their soldiers effectively single file through Harmony's pool which means they could be taken out one at a time by a much smaller defending force. They may be martially trained, but they are likely to not have appropriate armour to deal with bullets, let alone the bombs and airships from the South. FTL space travel is going to be vital for this kind of conflict to take place in a serious way.

I don't know that it's due to it necessarily more true to Honor, but perhaps that it was the surge that he found most concerning. There's the implication that Bondsmiths (and therefore the ability to bind things with Connection) existed before the Oathpact and Radiant bonds, that the aspiration was to restrict this power, and that they were aligned to Odium before Honor. This suggests that the power was either something independent of shards, or was granted via another shard like Odium. So perhaps it's less that it's associated with Honor but that there's something fundamental about the surge, which is why its use has been restricted so tightly to only those connected to godspren, or the very moralistic honorspren who Honor personally created?

That's true! But the uselessness of the species concept in terms of Singers and humans remain, IMO. They have no common ancestry, and one has a heart with red blood and the other has a gemstone so who knows how that orange blood gets around or if it even does, but somehow they can hybridise.

I think where this becomes compromised is when there is an insistence on using terms in a way that is not useful. The species example is interesting, because most of the classifications were created before any genetic testing or verification of ability to hybridise. They were made up to help create mental bookmarks, and then retroactively justified which is why they're constantly re-shuffled. Many species can hybridise and even have fertile offspring, which is dependent on whether the chromosome numbers match up to create even rather than odd combinations. It's also a concept that's entirely useless in the cosmere since Singers and humans can have completely fertile offspring despite having different colour blood (which implies it does not carry oxygen), different fundamental organs (like hearts), and different reproductive processes. We can use it as a generic term in science where it is less a rule, and more a loose way to communicate concepts, such as concept of sex with an 'all-female' type of lizard. Exploring the roles and reproduction of a parthenogenetic lizard show that thinking of it in terms of female in any depth is pretty useless except to introduce to people the idea that all members of the species can lay eggs. We call a spade a spade, because we created and defined it. Sex is not a spade, and nor is race. Challenging this is important because this topic IMO doesn't work if you try to base it on a scientific concept in this selective way, when we already know that people shift form to align with their genuine conception of body. We have it with Lopen, the Returned, and the Reshi King. And that's driven by how people understand their body, and not every trans person wants to undergo gender affirmation surgeries or similar so it won't always work like this. Understanding this, and how it links to why Lopen got his arm back, is key to your other musings. If you were to insist on race as a coherent scientific concept [and the scientific theory of race has more or less been discarded], then it not only is wrong but doesn't help us understand how bodies are changing. We can surmise that people changing race via healing is something that would not easily happen because people experience ethnicity collectively unlike gender. It would probably require a resurrection and mind wipe to allow for someone to be properly convinced about their heritage to use healing to transform their ethnicity. This is not to say that investiture doesn't have capacity - potentially unlimited - to change bodies, but that the healing mechanism cited has a limit due to its connection to how someone understands self and the body. Whereas someone like the Siah Aimians (and to an extent Vivenna) can probably already do every single physical element of what you're asking, and for Siah like Axies they can get rid of their nose without any identity shift.

I'd have to re-read it, but it's possible that this was also part of the point in that Cultivation was not only changing Odium's vessel to someone who was more equipped to handle the power, but maybe even that him being a dead vessel restricts the Shard overall so he's less of a personal threat. We don't really see Taravangian do a whole lot with the power after his ascension to have a good idea of how much of the power he has in contrast to someone like Cultivation.

Well, generally existing spren-like beings are from the cognitive realm and either stapled to what is basically a corpse, or able to mostly manifest due to bonding with a physical being though neither seems to involve directly crossing into physical. It seems like it would be the same for seons otherwise they'd collapse in on themselves like Ishar's spren experiments. The only other precedent we have for these beings is that they generally cannot leave their system of origin - which seons definitely have departed from on two occasions. But IMO the stuff about looking different doesn't yet seem to be a pattern that we can suggest the seons stand out for breaking. In fact if they chose to the Honorspren could shapeshift to functionally look identical between realms, much as seons do.

Also in the wake of the False Desolation and Recreance, whose to say there wasn't a genocide attempt? We have a slave population of Parshmen, and what's essentially a refugee population of Listeners. Those are both things that happen in the real world when genocide is attempted, and there's been thousands of years since the False Desolation for small slave/refugee populations to grow again. I think it's also worth looking at this in the context that humans were a small group of traumatised refugees from Ashyn, and the world was probably covered in Singers. The numbers have shifted, and that's logically happened due to violence at the hands of humans.

Oooh, good catch. This actually makes me wonder - is perhaps the double/triple barrel name a signifier on this? It doesn't seem coincidental that BAM is entirely conscious, the 3 mindless Unmade are all singly named, and then there's Sja-anat in the middle based on that description.

I'm not completely sure but if I remember correctly, Renarin saw visions of the Everstorm which suggests she enlightened Glys in advance of Odium's arrival and is not reliant upon him. But you're right that aside from those two Unmade we haven't been given much hint of sapience Think it's also probably worth remembering that we've seen an Unmade bond before via Yelig-Nar and it didn't create a Bondsmith. I reckon that being an Unmade doesn't preclude a spren from being able to create Bondsmiths (for e.g the attempted Unmade Sibling) and they're the most likely candidates for creating additional Bondsmiths, but it's definitely not an ability all of them have.