seriodor

I had a thought on this topic. If you can play the tone of the hypothetical shard combination of Honor and Odium and get Warlight, then that means there's a tone for Adonalsium, that is a combination of the tones of all the shards. So if you had a source of investiture from all 16 shards, and you knew what their tones were, you could combine all that and create the Light of Adonalsium. Presumably you could do crazy stuff with God's own Investiture, if you could tack it onto your spirit web somehow you would probably have some unique and potent powers that reflect all the magic systems of the Cosmere. Which I think is maybe one of Hoid's goals. We see him travelling around the Cosmere picking up investiture as he travels, and I used to think that was a means to an end, but now I think that might be the end itself.

On this same topic, I realized that the strange stuff about Kaladin has the same place in my thoughts as the strange stuff about Shallan. Stuff like: the red hair which is supposed to be a sign of singer ancestry on Roshar, something about her was able to entice a Cryptic to bond her after she'd already killed one, her mental split thing is some weird magical version of dissociative identity disorder that we haven't seen in other lightweavers so its her own thing. There's something strange about those two that is unrelated to the normal investiture stuff we see on Roshar.

Maybe they're trying to determine if the corruption can in some way inure them to the whatever effect caused the change in spren when BAM was imprisoned.

I like this approach. I'm gonna say that because Ruin and Preservation are so opposite that they can form Harmony when mixed, that Preservation takes up a place under an opposite command. Stasis, or Maintain as 2xMachina wrote. I think Honor is a safe bet for that, because it's about hard laws and keeping oaths. I think Autonomy should actually go under stasis, because she seems to let her people self-govern: they come up with their own gods, and she just plays the role. Devotion could be the last one on that list, because its investiture seems to play a passive servile role. I guess creation and destruction could be the other two categories, but I kind of feel like that isn't the case because Ruin and Preservation were able to create things when they worked in Tandem.

I think it's either just loose investiture and intent somehow influencing things in the spiritual realm. Or it's a part of whatever magic was around before Adonalsium was shattered. You have to assume this is all part of Adonalsium's plan somehow, considering it could see the future and it allowed itself to be shattered.

5. We know that Vessels have more freedom to act right after ascending, and Taravangian became Odium right after Odium locked himself into a pretty restrictive set of oaths. Right before he died, Odium told Dalinar that he pretty much can't break his word. He assured Dalinar that it was backed up by his own destruction, but by this point Odium was more Odium than he was Rayse, which means he probably couldn't even act in a way that would break his contract. I think Cultivation timed things so that Taravangian would come into his power looking to squirm his way around his Oath, and then at just the right time she'll position things so that the only way to get exactly what he wants is stepping just too far out of line, and opening himself up to attack. Then she'll kill him and splinter his shard into pieces so small nobody can take it up, saving the Cosmere in a more long-term fashion then pushing him back for another thousand years.

Passion and Create could be Ambition. Destroy and Others could be Mercy. Create and Others could be Cultivation.

I think maybe the Unmade used to be the spren through which Honor and Cultivation enacted all their changes on Roshar. Maybe Sja-Anat is the originator of all sentient spren, like the mechanism she uses to corrupt spren was originally how honor was introduced to Windspren to make Honorspren. In Ba-Ado-Mishram's case, she was how Cultivation added the whole gemheart system to Roshar, where all the creatures have little crystal radios inside them that can react to investiture. Nergaoul might have been a more noble version of the thrill, something created by Honor to inspires people to stand and fight in the defense of others etc.

If I were just using my observations about the Cosmere to think of an answer I'd say: Autonomy Avatar seems really likely, or maybe it's just a bunch of loose investiture from Ambition, Mercy, Odium from their fight, or maybe it's Taravangodium hiding that it's him. If I were answering based on my knowledge of epic fantasy then I'd say it's the first glimpse of the forces of Anti-Adonalsium. Anti-light has to be Anti-Investiture, which has to come from somewhere. It only makes sense that Adonalsium, whatever it was, had an enemy, or an opposite. The devil to it's god. We haven't seen any direct evidence of this yet, but if you look at the Cosmere as one titanic epic fantasy series, then it makes sense that the biggest baddest bad will be something larger in scope and more powerful than a mere Shard.

I'm surprised that they're common enough for us to know there are 3 on Roshar. I thought it was really hard to travel to Sel in the cognitive realm. It seems like smuggling Seons offworld for use as communication devices would be a risky endeavor.

Hmm, I think the last shard has to be an antoginistic one. For story reasons, and to balance out the rest of the known shards. I think Rebellion. I think the holder of the Rebellion shard could be the one who orchestrated the shattering. I also think they could be the hidden big bad, trying to overthrow the Cosmere entirely just to see what comes next.

To add something to the list of weird Kaladin stuff: he's really really fast. He killed a dude in full shardplate because he's just that fast. He nonchalantly merced the pursuer and a few heavenly ones like it was nothing. At first I figured he's just that fast, but that does't seem right now.