seriodor

I know we haven't really been told the mechanism for how the Dawnshards shattered Adonalsium, but I have an idea based on what we know already. It seems that they didn't really attack Adonalsium, but that they enforced a division of it's power into 4 categories. They told the power that was whole that now it is divided. Four major splits into categories, and then four splits along those categories. So like one category was created with one Dawnshard, then that category was further divided by the other three. This leads me to believe that one Dawnshard can't be used to just make a shard different, because they seem to work by splitting off a piece of infinity and defining it by an Intent. So I think a Dawnshard could be used to further divide a shard based upon a different command, but I'm not sure if any of the four used on Adonalsium could do this, because each Shard has already had those commands applied to them. I think that maybe two Dawnshards could be used on a Shard to further refine it into two Intents based on the two Dawnshards used. I also think that a fifth Dawnshard that wasn't used on Adonalsium could be used to split any of the Shards based on it's Command, because it was never used to define any Intents in the first place.

I feel like Change was already used to split shards off Adonalsium. So Odium is already a result of the main power being altered by Change. Maybe Odium could be further split, but then I feel like you'd need two Dawnshards so that you could define two categories for it to be split into. Like if you had the Change and it's opposite Dawnshards you could break it down into transient passion and stable long lasting passion. So maybe Inspiration and Fervor? Or maybe there's a fifth dawnshard out there that could be used to split any Shard by completely different criteria than all the others.

I really don't think he's wrong about being passion. If he was only God's own hatred, then what happened to God's other emotions? I think maybe the shard is tuned more towards hatred for some reason that will be revealed to us later. I think that he was acting outside of his Intent by planning and scheming rather than doing. I think his shard wanted to him to act, to struggle with all he has until he can go back to whatever was driving him to travel around killing shards. Also just as a side thing, I bet that when everything's out in the open and the main mysteries have been resolved, we'll see that from Rayse's perspective he was doing the right thing for the Cosmere.

Yeah that seems like something Ambition would do. I'll go start my own Cosmere, better than the old one.

Just to throw something out there, what does everyone think about the idea that the second alien is a straight up Highspren? Ishar was trying to find a way to pull spren through to the physical, and Highspren seem like they would be good for traversing the stars.

It's been a minute since I read Sixth of Dusk. Is the Darkness First of the Suns cognitive realm? Or is that something we don't know yet? Also I wonder who enforces space laws? Is it Autonomy enforcing rules when someone wants to conquer one of her worlds? I'd imagine that all of Autonomy's worlds have a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to investiture technology. It doesn't seem to be as easily available for them. Maybe they're the ones that Dusk will be making contact with. I'd have to assume Sel is represented somehow, at least by some form of the Ire. I definitely think the second guy was a Warform, Warlight using, Singer Skybreaker.

So the rings are probably supposed to indicate that she is a Terriswoman from Scadrial, meaning she very well could be Mraize's babsk. The sleepless on Roshar have a variety of affiliations. We know that there's one in the ghostbloods. I don't think the others on Roshar have any sort of offworld affiliation. As for the Nalthis connections, we also saw quite a few Scadrial and Sel connections too, and even a few Taldain. I think this book in general was meant to tie Stormlight Archive more closely to the Cosmere. We're gearing up for the borders to blur on which series is which pretty soon.

I'm pretty sure Surges are actually laws written on reality by Honor. That's what Raboniel says at least, and the way that they're all downgraded versions of Yolen powers seems to support this.

I know Sanderson already wrote the Reckoners, but Valor seems like a good shard for a superhero setting. It would be wildly out of place in the Cosmere, but maybe a fantasy spin would work. I'm picturing a setting where a character that does something heroic, like saving someone's life while risking their own, is invested by Valor so they can be even more heroic. While someone doing something like risking it all to take what they want will be invested by Valor so they can be a terrifying villain. Then those two groups clash in epic battles that they couldn't have had without the investiture, reaching new heights of valor.

Couldn't it just mean that the humans that settled the Rose Empire on Sel are descended from the same humans that settled Iri on Roshar? It seems like the sort of name that would stick around like that.

I think any draconic influence on Roshar could be attributed to the whole Cultivation is a dragon thing.

It's kind of weird that thee moons aren't mentioned more often. They're clearly related to three shards that are Invested in Roshar, so they have to be pretty important, but we never hear anything big about them. Is it possible that their size is indicative of how invested a shard is? I'm assuming a Shard can just make a giant tinted rock orbit a planet if Ruin and Preservation can create Scadrial from scratch, so maybe they're just symbolic? Like planting a flag and saying this is my territory.

Maybe, but the scenes where it's redacted are similar to when Kaladin was using reverse lashing. That makes me think it might have been the Yolish version of adhesion or gravitation. Maybe microkinesis is the same thing, but the part of the Ars Arcanum it's mentioned in makes me think it's tied to Cohesion instead.

I found this WoB, and I'm not sure if him saying that he did atom splitting magic in Dragonsteel Prime indicates that microkinesis can do that, or if him saying that "we'll not be splitting atoms." is and indication that he won't make that magic system again.

I think that when they say that a lot of the wisdom the heralds is lost, that just really means that they used to know that the heralds taught humanity a bunch of stuff, but nobody knows what that stuff was anymore. Pieces of it might have entered the common knowledge of different cultures over the years, or been written down by other scholars in a way that wasn't attributed to the heralds. I also feel like things having to do with air pressure are going to be studied a lot more on a planet with a crazy storm that destroys everything. Also they have probably been influenced by worldhoppers, I'm sure the second heightening of breaths would be really useful for figuring things out like sound frequency.

Oh I see, I'm dumb. Yeah I see how this theory could work. I still think that with the Everstorm being a new thing that Odium has been building for centuries, it doesn't seem likely that anyone needed to break for them to come back.

Isn't this pretty much confirmed? We know only Taln was on Braize, and in RoW we saw that the Everstorm was a workaround Odium had been building for centuries.

I thought the big discovery was that you could use aluminum to isolate planes of movement. Like only laterally or vertically.

Yeah that'd do it. I still think there might be something to the fain connection though. I'm assuming that you could probably do some interesting genetic modification with microkinesis and enough finesse.

Well that makes me wonder what qualifies a spren as a bondsmith spren. I'd assume it's a spren that was made that way by Cultivation and Honor. I don't think it's something Sja-anat could be unless she was already something capable of that before she was Unmade.

Khriss indicates that it's a power that they had on Yolen, and this version is toned down by Honor to avoid the mistakes they made there. It apparently has far more utility because it works on anything, and can be used to make things explode. So it's kind of like the the Bondsmith abilities where it's a version of a power that already exists, but toned down by Honor so people don't mess things up. That makes me wonder if there's a version of each of the Radiant abilities in the Cosmere that doesn't use Surgebinding. Also what mistakes on Yolen? We haven't heard about anything really bad happening there other than the Shattering, which I don't think involved microkinesis. Maybe microkinesis was involved in how the Fain came to be? Khriss seems to think of them as a negative thing, because she noted that of course ruin and preservation didn't include them on Scadrial.

I was thinking more like the calligraphic versions of the older glyphs. Like the glyphs for the Radiant orders, or the glyphs of the Heralds. They're different from the standard Alethi glyphs that you'd see on store fronts. Also the glyphs are supposed to be descended from the Dawnchant, which is a singer language. My thought process is something like would the Dawnchant transcription of the name Odium have the tone represented in some way? If you wrote down a representation of Odium's tone, while Intending to write that, would it be able to channel investiture in some way? Is it possible that trait has somehow carried on to the glyphs that humans made from the Dawnchant?

I feel like there's definitely something here. Aside from all the Navani stuff, there's the way the glyphs for Koravellium Avast, Tanavast, and Rayse make Roshar. I've been trying to look through the various glyphs and see if any of the rest of them inspire anything when transposed or combined and haven't seen anything. I feel like someone better with visual stuff would probably find something though.

I think what I like most about this diagram is that it accounts for how Shards on the edge of each category bleed over into the other category a bit in intent. Wouldn't it make sense for Preservation to be opposite of Ruin though? Also the mural was split into 4 mostly symmetrical piece, which means that some of the command sections would be bigger and smaller. I feel like determining a reason for why a section or sections are different would be another big clue.

I would say that it could still mean it was mad even if Rysn couldn't tell from the mural, but I just went back and read that part again and I was reminded that she also said confident. Which ties in better with the idea that Adonalsium knew it was gonna be shattered and this all according to plan. That still leaves Odium as a pretty weird Shard.