Proletariat

Well, it seems like the Oathpact would be antithetical to Cultivation's purposes. Humanity and the Singers were locked in an eternal and repetitive war that prevented change and progress, and IMO she ideally wants that cycle to end to fulfil her intent. If containment (Oathpact) is no longer an option, then that leaves changing Odium drastically or eliminating (Shattering) him. Her gambit so far has resulted in her co-opting Rayse's champion for her lover's legacy, and her child (Urithiru) being liberated which forced him to end the repetitive war between human and Singers that ultimately killed Tanavast. Her pawn then murdered Rayse and replaced him. It may blow up in her face, but if she wanted to satisfy both her Shard's intent as well as her personal drive to honour and avenge her lover, then it seems to tick all the boxes and we know she's risk taker from when Dalinar visited her.

IMO the Feruchemist in question was not from this current era. The hint that we were given was Navani seeing someone identical to the guy except for 20 years age difference, which suggests that they could store age. Atium mistings were only able to exist under Leras due to him altering the system and making it one of the 16 rather than the time metals. Sazed has since re-adjusted the system to allow for cadmium and bendalloy which would prevent Atium Mistings and Ferrings, and there are no more full Feruchemists born in this era. But tbh they might even be from an immigrant Terris population without any time dilation so long as leaving Scadrial predates the final purge by the Inquisitors. I mean, Iyatil is a Southern Scadrian immigrant with a descent of several generations, and the implication is that there's actually a community of Scadrians off world if she has maintained her culture. There's a lot of options for when they got to Roshar.

There's definitely indications that the Worldbringers knew about and could worldhop. WOB says that they have a mutual origin with Worldsingers on Roshar, and that Realmatic theory was part of the ancient Terris religion. The real issue is how time dilation works for worldhoppers who don't have an immortality hack, and therefore if it's reasonable for them to still be around.

It's worth noting that they don't need mateform in order to reproduce or form interpersonal bonds. Even as enslaved Parshmen they had children, and there were bonded pairs. The forms allow for specific forms of specialisation, but it doesn't mean that other forms aren't capable of similar functions. Also we don't know what other forms have been brought into being for the Listeners now - there could even be something specific like loveform, tbh.

The rhythms are probably universal, and I reckon you could fiddle with Preservationlight i.e mist and put it in a gem. But having it in a gem isn't enough for using it on Roshar, so yeah peeps are probably right and you would need to be an allomancer of some kind to use it. Though considering the plants that were nurtured with Stormlight, then maybe you could make globes of concentrated mist that acted like fridges for food? Or slow people's aging while they sleep? Kept them in stasis? Also I wonder if the gems, rhythms, raysium daggers etc. create a basis on which you could take Breaths from others on Nalthis without their permission, or from items that have been awakened? Or even from Lifeless? It's so much more sticky to people than others, but we have seen a method for extracting gaseous investiture now that doesn't involve death.

It is pretty rogue, tbqh. When Preservation was setting up Sazed as a future vessel he was essentially resolving an inter-Shard conflict, while also creating a Shard that would really struggle to make use of its power and thus was less likely to oppress the populace. Cultivation seems to have done the exact opposite, and now the conflict between Singers and humans might end but the one between Roshar and Scadrial's forces across the Cosmere is going to go off.

This is probably going to be my final clarification. I don't think it's impossible for cognitive shadows to leave their planets of origin. My interpretation of Brandon's WOB that I posted above, the dilemma that Kelsier is trying to resolve [which Brandon refers to as being due to being a Cognitive Shadow here], and the restrictions upon the Heralds and Fused is that it is not possible without a specific method that is not generally known but that Vasher probably knows it. There are a wide variety of things you can do that are theoretically possible - like Awaken with Stormlight or enter into Sel - but are not viable under ordinary conditions unless you know some kind of hack [which is not to get into the mechanics of these, but simply to state that getting Cognitive Shadows off system is not an ordinary feat that anyone can just do at the moment]. This assumption is reinforced by this WoB about Kelsier, which compares his dilemma to a spren. I personally do not find your examples persuasive of the idea that Cognitive Shadows can usually leave their systems with ease since most of them are based on things that haven't happened yet like Dalinar becoming Odium's interplanetary Fused general, Threnody's shades invading the rest of the galaxy, or generalising Vasher's experience to all Returned. I do not find these examples persuasive not out of a belief that Cognitive Shadows will never be able to leave [because we know pretty much anything is possible], but because we do not have any understanding of the mechanism that any of these theoretical events may or may not happen such that we can add them in as evidence for something. Moreover, I don't think it makes sense for the story if Kelsier/Thaidakar is the exception to the norm, because it means any progress that the Ghostbloods make on transporting Investiture has no impact on any broader plot that involves him leaving Scadrial. It makes more sense if there's some hack, and that hints to what that hack is are seen in the Seon case which is why Brandon thinks whether a random Splinter can leave Sel is informative as to why a Cognitive Shadow could one day leave Scadrial. If there were no common mechanics at all, then there wouldn't be much to ponder or deduce and the answer would come out of nowhere rather than be seeded in the books.

In the prologue one of the stewards with 'too many rings on his fingers' and then later on Navani sees someone who could've been the steward but is 20 years difference. It's a blink and you missed it thing that's not really that relevant to the plot IMO. I think it's worth noting that the one you referenced is about Breath and Awakeners, it doesn't specify Divine Breath and Returned.

Kelsier, the Heralds, the Fused, and implicitly the Returned unless they know how to do it (as per the previous WoB) are almost every instance of Cognitive Shadow. We've never seen a shade of Threnody leave the system, and the dialogue of the Ire in Secret History implies that it has not yet happened. The gun that Nazh has is only described via an embellished broadsheet, and we're yet to see anything of the sort from Dalinar or the mechanics by which it happens. It feels pretty clear from what Brandon has said is that Investiture generally doesn't automatically have the same issues leaving its place of origin. We've even seen atium metalminds discretely used in RoW as well as hyper invested things like Nightblood and whatever Vivenna's sword is called, as well as users of the invested arts such as allomancers, feruchemists, awakeners, elantrians, and aviar. It is a bit more difficult for investiture in general linked to Honour (who may as well be called cohesion, binding, structure, or whatever) to leave the system. This is a separate question to Cognitive Shadows with the only person we've seen accomplish this being Vasher, and Vasher is meant to have mastered some kind of method. Kelsier wants to find out this method. I don't really understand where the strong certainty that Kelsier is the sole example of his issue is meant to be based upon.

Oh, thinking about it. Those pipelines of Dor that the Ire have set up allow them to effectively maintain their location while going incredibly far. It probably relies upon there being an Ire outpost in each system. The voidspren effectively were able to travel from Braise to Roshar via the Everstorm, so will similar events need to be instigated on other systems to allow spren to travel? Giving them outposts as it were?

Huh. Thinking about it the idea of Rhythms applying for all Shards across the Cosmere gives a whole extra punny spin on Harmony's name - the hybrid Rhythms, and their lights, are literally produced by two people singing them in harmony together.

No, there are obviously different organs that are used. No one is doubting the existence of sperm or eggs. This does not mean that sex isn't socially constructed, because sex is how we understand and label these things given that the things that we call sex aren't always necessarily grouped together whether there is medical intervention or not. We acknowledge that it is a linguistic shortcut, for example, rather than a perfect term when we might similarly refer to seahorses as males despite the fact that they have a different chromosomal situation, different pregnancy situation etc. with basically the only comparable thing being sperm or eggs. Insisting on the idea of 'biological sex' as an immutable category is not a useful shortcut to describe the situation of sex, and if you want to simply discuss whether someone has ovaries or whatever then do that. But someone isn't 'male' or 'female' by dint of having certain genitalia, and I think it is very important for you to understand that trans men aren't 'females' and trans women aren't 'males' both for the sake of this discussion but also so that you don't offend people irl. As someone in the trans community I also want to make clear that there is a difference between being accepted by society as having a gender (i.e not wanting to be invalidated by transphobia and cisnormativity), and the desire to change your body to meet these expectations (which is often, but not always, driven by dysphoria). Some people don't have the genitalia that society expects, but not everyone has a secret wish to change their genitalia because we already are how we identify. That this character did want that change is also completely fine, but it wouldn't have happened if they didn't deeply reject their body. Which is textbook dysphoria.

This doesn't actually fit with what we know about history. Homophobia and transphobia do not have any observable biological basis, and are entirely social. Heterosexuality in its current form was only developed as an idea in the 1800s following industrialisation, and the development of homosexuality as an idea followed on as did the nuclear family. We have a lot of examples of non-class societies where being what we would call trans actually entailed higher social status, and the general historical point now is that concepts like the gender binary and being cishet came to Australia and America via colonisation. As far as the question about us being opportunistic breeders, rather than seasonal breeders, and therefore predisposed to homophobia. The point of opportunistic breeding is also to be able to not reproduce, because manic reproduction during periods of resource scarcity would just be lethal. I'm not really sure what the link is here.

There's something that people are missing here, which can sound nitpicky at first but is actually quite important for the concepts. Both sex and gender are socially constructed, and while people are interpreted as having a given sex and gender at birth we know that this is really just a guess by the medical profession. The reason this is important is that people aren't just males who identify as women, or females who identify as men or people with bodies of a given sex. A transgender man is still male and so is his body whether or not he attempts medical transition. This is also a reason that terms like 'male to female' and 'female to male' are starting to fall into disuse and in some spaces are considered a bit crude to use. But what is really important to note is that many trans people do experience dysphoria, which can be traumatic, where there's a strong view of what your body is meant to be that clashes with what your body currently is. For some trans people the way they address this is via medical transition. This doesn't make a body more or less 'male' or 'female' before or after, but it can bring a lot of comfort. Overall this is a pretty different experience to how people experience culture and ethnicity which is more generally understood to be collectively experienced through things like family, language, music, food, customs etc. and the relationship to place which is not really able to resolved via physical transformation. It's not like Stormlight would be able to heal you by changing not only you but your family's physical appearance, and even their food practices, language etc. etc. Obviously the investiture can perform radical changes to the body, and probably the changes could be on any scale so long as there was the Stormlight to fuel it, but the specific premise by which the Reshi king transformed is not going to be a method for ethnic and cultural transformation. It would not even be a pathway for a number of trans people (though to stress this does not mean someone physically or spiritually is anything but the gender they identify as).

That question was me! Still trying to puzzle it out. As for Vasher/Zahel, there's a difference between someone who is just an Awakener (like Vivenna/Azure), and someone who is Returned. He's fundamentally the same as the Heralds except that he knows what he is doing as per WOB below. His case is different from the Seon, because the Ghostbloods don't even know how to get a wisp of Stormlight from the Rosharan system so clearly don't know how Returned can move around either. In the livestream Brandon also said there was something anomalous about things that come from Elantris, which suggests the rules are slightly different here. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/36-arcanum-unbounded-chicago-signing/#e1537

Yeah, I think it's a pretty high certainty that there could be more than 3 Bondsmiths. But I think only some of the Unmade have this potential and that the Adhesion surge would be pretty different for them. Here's what we know, IMO: we know that the Radiants believed you could expand the Bondsmith order, but that it would be seditious to do so (Epigraphs); we know that you need an appropriate spren to become a member of an order (for e.g Nale joining), but that this spren being corrupted is no barrier (for e.g Renarin); and we know that Unmade can bond people and would be seditious to bond. Where it gets murky is that we have already seen one of the Unmade bonds, such as Yelig-Nar, and they have not produced Bondsmiths. We have also seen that Odium has problems generating the Adhesion surge, which casts doubt on whether a Bondsmith linked to Odium could use Bondsmith surges. The counter-example is that the Sibling would've become Unmade, and the Truthwatcher precedent is that it would've loosely produced someone of the same Radiant order despite corruption but with one of the surges a bit warped. My conjecture is that most Unmade cannot generate Bondsmiths except either BAM or Sja-Anat, that the Unmade Bondsmith will make use of Voidlight, and that the Adhesion surge will work entirely differently for them. The other encountered Unmade are either completely mindless (Ashertmarn, Moelach, Nergaoul), still pretty animalistic (Re-Shepnir), or are known to bond differently (Yelig-Nar).

He also implied that the Nightwatcher (or Cultivation?) accepts the oaths for Cultivationspren, not Stormfather. This isn't surprising perse, but raises further questions: does Sja-Anat accept Renarin's oaths? The point about seons v spren was interesting in that the Elantrian splinters are seen as anomalous on the issue of going off world whereas this issue is otherwise somewhat uniform across world. There is a gap there, then, in that Nalthis is not anomalous and therefore whatever Vasher does can likely be transferred to Kelsier, the Heralds, the Fused, and spren. We also have not necessarily seen the 17th Shard (notably there are no Rosharan members) or any other worldhoppers achieve it if the Elantrian example is distinct. It's not the biggest scrap of info, but something.

There are eight lines running from Nale, because there are now only nine in total and therefore each Herald would be connected to 8 others via the Oathpact. So Jezrien is gone, 7 of Nale's cohort are weak, one is hunky dory, and then there's Nale who is insane but otherwise intact I guess.

Are there Rhythms of Preservation and Ruin, and can the 'mists' of these shards be drawn into gems via similar mechanisms as Stormlight, Lifelight, and Voidlight? And if so can the light/mist of any different shard be held in a gem, harmonised, or negated with the correct formula as seen in Rhythm of War? Mraize is trying to find a way to take investiture and cognitive beings off of their world of origin. We already have seen a seon, now in Shallan's company, that has evidently left their world of origin. Why are seons different from spren on this question? Does the inability of investiture to currently leave a system mean a Parshendi would have to revert to slaveform to worldhop beyond the Rosharan system? Are the Sia Aimians indigenous to Roshar's physical realm? Are the Nightwatcher, Sibling, Stormfather, and Ishar's swords the only things a being can bond with to create Bondsmiths? If a Kandra were to integrate a gemheart into their bodies, then would they be capable of using 'forms' or the abilities of fabrials?

Thanks!! We need to ask who subjugated the Singers though. It wasn't your average dark eyes, and despite everything the Singers seem to culturally identify with their region and without orders from Fused/Regals haven't been engaging in wanton violence against dark eyes from the depictions we've been given which is more than we can say for Dalinar before his redemption. We also have examples of characters like Rlain who have rejected the perspective of the Fused/Odium based on their relationships with dark eyes in Bridge Four. Singers might not feel so compassionate toward people like Amaram, but that's no great loss. I think it's important to also take it in context that chattel enslavement has lost support when it has ceased to be the most profitable way forward. In this context the light eyes who own Singers as slaves are basically being given the option of genocide (i.e exterminating their source of profit) or peace (integrating them into society) as the way to quell an uprising. And normal people would cringe even at a genocide upon cats or dogs, so rounding up dark eyes to eliminate an enormous population of people which then entails a huge loss of free labour i.e profit for light eyes is the most massive own goal even for the most evil people, even if it were logistically possible.

You release them from slavery, and start researching how to help them find an alternative to regaining sentience without Odium. If Navani can build a flying ship out of fabrials, then I'm sure people can figure something out to reunite singers with spren. It's only a small section of the population who benefited from enslavement of singers anyway, and having singers gainfully employed and participating in your culture is good for everyone. There's no excuse for genocide ever, but it's also not the only way to act on the info.

Hmm, there's no overarching force to authorise the Ghostbloods' activity and they're in breach of local customs and law. That means they're either profiteers or dissidents, and they have clearly expressed a profit motive on the issue of energy so it makes them basically mafia IMO. However that doesn't mean they won't become legitimised by another power later, and become like the East India company as mentioned. It was a corporation that effectively colonised large sections of Asia on behalf of Britain's interests, and at one point it had gained control of the south east of the continent and its army became larger than the official British army. While the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland etc. represented settler colonisation directly by the British, the East India Company's operations in India was what we'd call mercantile colonisation since it didn't involve wiping out the original inhabitants in favour of direct settlement by British populations, but rather was the forceful control of another nation's commercial interests.

I don't think anything is really fleshed out with the sand stuff. We know what it's doing, and that it's hereditary to some degree, but not enough to establish there is some symbiotic bond happening. In terms of Allomancy there is no bond. Due to imbibing of lerasium in the ancestral line there are people who are more connected to Preservation and can therefore tap into that investiture when stimulated by specific alloys but it's not a bond that is really created through any conscious intervention. People are born that way. I very much doubt Preservation is even capable of creating that kind of bond given he cannot even project a single thought toward someone. That there's an external power source for something does not immediately follow that there is a symbiotic bond. The Pathians are probably the only thing comparable on Scadrial, in that they maintain a two way connection to Harmony via those earrings. And I think we can't really call the Dor a 'bond' either, since it's a mindless force and the primary thing that seems to shape their expression of their abilities is their culture, ethnicity, and place. At this point it's more similar to the way Allomancy taps into a pool of investiture. It's a power source not a bond based on a spiritual connection. The bonds that do exist on Sel that are comparable are the Seon bonds, but that's not where magic comes from and I think it's informative that these bonds exist and don't determine the powers of people on Sel.

I don't think it's about an essential experience of bonds, but really just where a shard decides to throw in resources and shards haven't always been people-centric with their investment. On Scadrial the shards created everything, and so everyone is a micro-sliver and that's why magic like feruchemy and hemalurgy is based on the little bit of preservation inside of everyone. On Nalthis the shard consciously splinters itself into every human on the planet and non-human creatures and objects would only get access if given it by humans. OTOH on Roshar rather than creating or investing in humans the shards created spren as their thing, which are splinters of them and so for every other creature on Roshar their experience of magic is mediated via bonds with those beings. Unless a shard directly invests in or creates humans, then magic is only going to exist in so far as people can relate to what actually is invested. If they can't relate to it then you just get like the dark side of Taldain, or on Threnody. This doesn't mean that everything is a bond, IMO. Just that for humans that are not invested, they can only experience these powers through relating to other beings who are invested.

I think fuelling one of the arts with a different shard's mist/light doesn't necessarily have huge impacts on its own. Venli seems to see it as much of a muchness as to whether she draws on Voidlight or Stormlight, and Lift presumably is a little generator of 'Cultivationlight' which doesn't impact what surge she has. Nightblood also eats Stormlight and Breath indiscriminately. I suspect if you had a Mistborn holding an Honourblade, then they'd still have the allomancy and surges you'd expect. And the hacking to make personal inhalation easy is ginormous - most Rosharans cannot inhale Stormlight, and almost no Scadrians can inhale mist. What's more significant for the ghostbloods and mixing and matching, I imagine, is if they can take expressions of investiture like god metals, 'light', or cognitive beings off world then incredible technology becomes possible and they would be able to control its development by having a monopoly on its fuel. The automated versions of the Metallic Arts, and the fabrials, can make for a potent mix meanwhile Awakening from Nalthis can make these mystical machines self-aware. I'm also wondering how influential Sja-Anat is in the questioning of mixing and matching investiture. If she can 'enlighten' the investiture inside a metal mind, or an awakened metal the way she can a spren then she can also completely change how these technologies work if she can get off world.