seriodor

You can be resigned to your fate and still mad that it's happening.

I don't think you have to wiggle to turn Mercy nefarious. Is it merciful to smother a future conqueror as a baby to prevent the bloodshed? Is it merciful to kill a wounded animal instead of letting it suffer? If you have the foresight and perspective of a god, then any violent act can be considered Mercy.

That does make sense. I guess scientifically there's no reason for there to be an Anti-Adonalsium. I'm pretty sure Trell is Autonomy, but my story sense still tells me Anti-Adonalsium is a likely biggest bad.

I'm gonna say this is less a theory than my brain snagging on something. I've always thought Shallan had a bunch of weird stuff about her character that implies she's more than she seems, other than the stuff we already know. One of the things that has always stuck out to me is the way her disassociated identity disorder seems to be magical. Her personalities have too much life, and especially this book Veil acts in a way that really just doesn't seem like a mental illness alone. I was considering what the nature of her situation is when my mind remembered someone else in the Cosmere who does the same thing, Autonomy. Autonomy splits off entire personas that act independently as gods on whatever planet she invests. Autonomy is the Sand Lord, and Patji in a way that seems really similar to the way Shallan is Veil and Radiant. I was thinking that maybe Shallan is someone that Autonomy invested just a little to keep an eye on things on Roshar. It wouldn't even be that hard to do, because Autonomy can invest anywhere the light from the Taldain sun shines, even if it's only as a star.

We know that the longer someone has been a Vessel the harder it is for someone to act against their Shards intent. From what we've seen of Odium, eventually they end up more Shard than person. Even Sazed is unable to go against the intent of Harmony and he's only been a Vessel for 300 years. Mercy has been a Vessel for like 10,000 years.

I mean our universe doesn't have a God everyone knows created matter either. Adonalsium existed, and it was the source of all Investiture. I guess anti-investiture could just be something that happens, but it just seems kind of weird and unbalanced if there's a source for all of something, but not for all of it's opposite.

Yeah I don't think it's a bias. The whole misstep idea doesn't sit right with me mainly because it assumes the person that perfectly manipulated a million variables to complete delicate and far reaching plans, could't account for Taravangian being a wanker. If Dalinar Kholin can plan for Taravangian betraying him, then Cultivation can. That is a weird underestimation of what is basically a goddess.

I'm pretty sure you would need a new type of Dawnshard to split a shard into two other concepts. We know that 4 Dawnshards split Adonalsium, and it seems like the mechanism they used involved splitting it's power off according to four commands. So all the Shards have already been split after the four commands were applied to the whole. Maybe if you used a Dawnshard from a different category, like a shard from the Change command having one of the others used on them. I just feel like you would need a command that hadn't already been applied to Adonalsium to split other shards concept wise.

I also just noticed that if you didn't know that the rosil part of nicrosil was chromium and silicon, you might make the assumption that it was nickel and silver. If Raboniel was told that it was made of an alloy called nicrosil, then she might have just mistakenly believed that was short for nickel-silver.

That's a good question. He kind of seems like he might run on anti-endowment. Maybe part of making Nightblood involved inverting the breaths used somehow.

Maybe she meant nicrosil and silver? Would adding chromium and silicon to the mix make alloying nickel and silver any more doable? Or maybe it's just nicrosil and saying nickel and silver is easier than nickel, chromium, and silicon. That would still mean that Raboniel was lying or lied too.

Odium gave us the answer to this. He hasn't made himself vulnerable in that way yet. He specifically tells Dalinar that the moment he breaks the contract, it will open a hole in his soul and Cultivation will immediately kill him.

There's a WoB that says that Cultivation fought on Honors side against Odium.

This has made me wonder if it's possible to store other forms of investiture in spheres. Or if maybe mixing it with ant othe Rosharan forms of investiture would allow you to.

Another thought I had on this topic. I've seen a lot of people theorizing that Cultivations actions are either calculated to help Roshar in the long run, or to Cultivate Odium as a weapon somehow. I think people are overlooking the vessel a bit too much here. Odium killed her husband. Whatever part of her is still her probably hated Rayse a whole bunch, and she probably even hates the shard of Odium itself. Maybe she wants to shatter Odium because it's personal, and not for any big reason.

I don't think it would be reflected in any other shard, because he's the only shard of emotion. Except for maybe Whimsy, but even that isn't just an emotion like Odium is.

I think it went something like this, Honor and Cultivation ordered the singers to let humans settle in Shinovar, the singers are annoyed by this, but they were commanded to do it by their gods. They're probably pretty surly about it, so when humans start trying to expand a bit, the singers get disproportionately pissed. Maybe they decide to harshly punish the transgressors. Some spren witness this and work with Ishar to form nahel bonds so they can protect themselves against the singers and their forms. Giving the humans the ability to defend themselves is a huge betrayal to the singers because this is their world and their spren. So they throw a hissyfit and purge all their own bonds with sentient spren. This doesn't cause deadeyes because it was before BAM was imprisoned, making it a lesser betrayal. Leshwi sees it as their bad all these years later, because if they hadn't been so prideful and secure in their righteousness then there wouldn't have been this whole 7000 year kerfuffle in the first place.

I believe him when he says this because none of the other shards have a name that's just an emotion like Odium does. It actually threw me off pretty hard when he was revealed because it seemed pretty out of place. I'm sticking with the theory that Adonalsium was pretty ticked when they killed it, and that influenced the shard.

My take is that the Unmade were all Honor/Cultivation spren tied to all the ways Cultivation and Honor changed Roshar, like how the animals all have crystal radios that react to investiture, or how they added bits of themselves to already existing spren to make sentient spren (windspren->honorspren). Then Odium unmade, then remade them.

That was before Rayse died though. Wouldn't it be Taravangium now? It's not like he would make a different type of metal if he made his Investiture solid.

I wonder how this ties into the Radiant healing ability. Lift could heal the unconscious Radiants out of there comas, but their own healing couldn't do it. It wasn't completely suppressed, because Kaladin was still able to heal when he was wounded. Did he stay conscious because his extra connection gave him extra healing compared to everyone else? Also, if healing wasn't completely suppressed doesn't that mean it doesn't work the same way other Radiant abilities do?

I think this could maybe be a result of the properties of Raysium (do we still call it that?). Raysium channels investiture from one source to another. Maybe whatever spirit realm mechanism it uses to do that allows anti-voidlight to pass through without touching the Raysium. Or if there's a physical channel that the investiture passes through, maybe only the innermost layer was destroyed as it passed through.

Exactly. We know from WoB that Cultivation fought alongside Honor, so we know he isn't talking about Tanavast. I think he saw Unity, a shard with the intent to Unite things (like the remaining shards) and a rebirth of Adonalsium. I think that's going to be one of the sides in the Cosmere-wide wars coming up. Maybe Odium is the main flavor of the Shard of Passion because Adonalsium wasn't too chuffed about the whole being killed thing. We know from Dawnshard that it was resigned or understanding about the whole thing. Doesn't mean it was happy about it. Random thought.

This has been my headcanon since Oathbringer and I'm happy to see someone else thought that too. It seemed so obvious to me but you're the first person I've seen with the same theory.

Huh, you're right about Stargyle also using a version of it. As to her geolocation, I think it was kind of indicated from some of Jasnah's chapters that supernatural positional awareness was an Elsecaller resonance. Like how she knew exactly where she was after she made it back from Shadesmar. Maybe Shallan is Invested enough as a Radiant of the third ideal for her to get some overlap with the Elsecaller resonance, similar to how they can both Soulcast.