drunkenbotanist

I mean the shard magic in the Rosharan system manipulates Surges. Odium was the shard on Ashyn and tricked them into destroying the planet with Surges (kind of hinted this may be because of overpowered invested people holding Dawnshards) But the cities of Ashyn floated due to the having specific people who were capable of manipulating Gravitation because of a communicable magical Ashynite illness Odium's Ashynite magic is supposed to still be related to the Surges right? Manipulating the surge of Transformation or Division or anything by using Odiums investiture would still be manipulating the Surge of division, but it would be Voidbinding. (According to basically the forum-wide assumption even though we don't really know what Voidbinding is. I also agree that this makes a lot of sense to be what Voidbinding is, I'm just highlighting that we still don't actually super understand that) Odium's surge could be Division even if no human bonded to a non-voidspren could ever access Division the same way a voidbringer could. But there's something about the "truest surge"that really doesn't make sense. Why do the Fused say that there are only 9 Surges? If the Cultivation/Progression relationship was the same as the Honor/Adhesion relationship why are there Fused that can use Progression, and consider it a real Surge? Why can the Knights radiant use all of the surges including Division? I do really like the idea of Odium having a relationship with Division, but these things don't all seem to line up that well yet

And we know that demoux became a worldhopper likely through some association with his Terris wife, who he met back when there still was relatively high (compared to MB era2) likelihood of having full feruchemists running around

Do we know necessarily that bondsmiths have access to more investiture or become more invested? Is their strength not also just explained by their particular power being over spiritual aspects of Connection/adhesion vs a windrunners that gives them the ability to manipulate physical realm adhesion? It sounds like most of the theorizing here relies on the assumption that if kaladin's bond gave him the ability to manipulate spiritual connection which it doesn't, Kaladin would still never be able to do what Dalinar can...and do we know that? It's like a misting burner pewter has a lot easier time killing someone than a misting burning bronze, but in the investiture sense, the misting burning pewter is equally as powerful. I think it's reasonable to suspect that having a massively invested spren on the other end of the bond enhances many things, but if the nahel bond/the spren is the "key" that determines what you're able to do while invested/with investiture then a lot of the differences it seems can be explained with different keys, not more powerful ones. Why are bondsmiths OP? Because those are the powers that defines being a bondsmith

The whole Ishar maybe becoming more lucid thing near a bond being sworn makes me wonder what the spiritual/cognitive impacts are of a bond being broken. Maybe the mass breaking of oaths was meant to damage the spren enough for *something* (maybe capture of BAM but who knows) but the damage was a lot more severe than intended or after the capture of BAM the combined damage wasn't something that could be healed. Regardless, we have the current explanation that they broke their oaths because they were scared they'd break the planet with their powers. But my feeling is that's one of the lore assumptions Brandon likes to leave us with that maybe a little true but he's going to flip on its head for a Big Reveal Maybe it was meant to destabilize honor more? Could BAM connecting to the singers be using honor to a degree and they needed to cut that off? Or could it have been something to damage cultivation? Maybe the oathpact? There's the line about Meleshi (sp?) having a plan to destroy the voidbringers but it was going to be terrible and costly. And then late in the night he had another idea that had to do with the "nature of the heralds" and their role or something like that, and he had to get the plan together really fast and couldn't detail all his thoughts about it. The oathpact is kind of like a bridge between Braize and Roshar, could BAMs trick have been to subvert that bridge to get odiums investiture to Roshar to the Singers? With the help of a traitor/crazy Ishar?

And if the fused come through a perpendicularity, Cultivation's makes a bunch of sense Also, kind of an aside, but correct me if I'm wrong but we don't actually have too much information that Cultivation is super disapproving of the war do we?

"It was captained by Derethil, who had the ship built to travel through highstorms. The ship sailed into the open ocean in an attempt to find the origin of the Voidbringers. It was shipwrecked on a ring of islands in the middle of the ocean that surrounded a giant whirlpool "where, it is said, the ocean drains". Derethil and his men met a people known as the Uvara, or the People of the Great Abyss. The crew of the Wandersail were welcomed by the Uvara, and the ship was repaired in their shipyards. Eventually, Derethil and the crew uncovered some disturbing aspects of Uvara society and quickly left the islands on the Wandersail, using the momentum of the whirlpool to get them away from it. They were accompanied by a single Uvara woman named Nafti" From https://coppermind.net/wiki/Wandersail I'm not up for figuring out if the geography matches up (could origin of voidbringers mean they traveled to the origin of storms? And would this be the right direction?)

MI don't remember how exactly it was relayed to the household they need to fix the soulcaster But a "broken" soulcaster could also apply to shallan at this point in time if this theory is true. And she goes to the only other active radiant who can soulcast

Worth considering that although he's not very reliable, Nale was convinced that radiants coming back would lead to another desolation, even just another "False" desolation. Worth keeping open the possibility that radiants existing in some way gave BAM the ability to start a false desolation, or made it more likely and that was part of the decision to abandon their oaths at the same time as capturing BAM

It fits thematically with the oaths becoming more and more difficult because of more and more responsibility, less restrictions on powers, more danger for the spren So we don't know 100% but it's probably safe to assume, and if not I still lean towards the fifth oath requiring a significant mental effort This is exactly the point I'm trying to make. It's not *really* contradictory, but if you're a skybreaker it's very difficult to understand why that is. This is what I meant by kaladin would have no problem with "becoming the law" but szeth really would say I think the 4th oath was about accepting failure We already know there's a lot of variability in how this can be applied even if it is the same for every order, dustbringers for example joining Odium I really like the way you put this

Does Ba-Ado-Mishram neccesarily have to have originated on Roshar? I believe in RoW somewhere she's referred to as a spren capable of Connecting the minds of an entire people We don't know much about the Realmatic shenanigans that are neccesary to bring a civilization associated with Odium that was using Odium's Investiture from one planet associated with Odium to one without him, and for those people to become part of Roshar in a real way. But it sounds like if Ishar and/or other Bondsmiths had access to or were able to create some spren-like entity that could influence the Connection of an entire people at once, that would really help. Other weird offshoots of that idea- maybe that process accidentally unseated the Dawnsingers somehow, damaging their Connection to whatever Venli is reaching back to in RoW. And this let Odium in Or Mishram corrupted by Odium after being used to integrate humans with Honor was then used on/used by the Singers to Connect them with Odium. And because Mishram/Ba-Ado-Mishram was spliced into Roshar could be why the effects of imprisoning her were so unpredictable I know it's out there but the back five books are a lot more about the Heralds and that seems like an important part of their story

My name is Shodium and my passion is worldbuilding.

In the scene in RoW where Shallan visits her brothers did anyone interact with them but Mraize? Now I'm worried all her brothers are lightweavings because she killed them pre-book 1

Okay this made me think: what if *she* was actually their soul caster all along and the one they found was fake like Jasnah's. And the ghostbloods put the fake one there after she broke her oaths, blocked out all her memories, and killed her parents. Just made me think how so far everything she's done is what Mraize wanted, what if she actually was sent to spy on Jasnah to see how close see was to getting to Urithiru

My feeling was that the 5th oath is less about self -awareness and more something that is almost counter-intuitive to the previous oaths. A couple people have also posted something along these lines. Achieving the 5th level is supposed to be very rare and difficult. I see the "becoming the law" bit of the skybreakers as functionality opposite the rest of the oaths, but part of the what makes swearing that oath so difficult for a skybreakers is they have to accept the clear limits of the law and how sometimes they have to be *above the law* to be just I've been thinking the windrunner 5th oath is about either accepting that protecting someone is actively harmful or could deprive them of deserved accountability (or murder I dunno roshar is a harsh place), and it could be about accepting that he can't kill moash to protect others, or protect moash to try to save him, but he has to leave him in whatever situation he gets himself into. But whatever it is, not accepting that he can fail -his 4th oath already was "there are some I can't protect" But "there are some I shouldn't protect no matter how much I want to" Accepting that sometimes protection should be withdrawn, like he has to let Dalinar die or something I feel like it the 5th ideal being something intuitively opposite for that specific person/order would be a good reason for why no one has reached the 5th ideal for a really long time. Like kaladin could easily say the 5th ideal of the skybreakers, but it would be very rare for a skybreaker to decide that their judgments can be extralegal. Just a guess!

So in the CR: Physical realm bodies of water are land, and physical realm land masses are not traversable by foot in the CR. (Mistborn secret history, oathbringer, ROW) Vertical distance is compressed or non-existent (sja-anat interlude ROW, climbing down from Urithiru in ROW in Shadesmar) And distance between planets is compressed in Shadesmar. I'm assuming these things happen for the same reason. I see two main possibilities for why these things happen one of them has slightly more support I think from WOBs. The more supported one is that travel between planets is faster in CR because no one lives there, there are no minds there in the physical realm. I didn't go looking for the WOBs but I believe this has been said a few times. And this phenomon also causes water to become land, etc However, I've always wondered how much perception has to do with it instead of just *no minds exist in space*. Humans see a body of water as a single entity and cannot be traversed. So it manifests as a solid area in the CR because of the perception of the obstacle from the physical realm. The physical realm land isn't solid in the CR because people in the physical realm move through it. It's more plastic in the CR because it's more accessible in the cognitive realm. -mist on Scadrial and beads on roshar. I believe people have asked and gotten RFAO'd about how if people start living in space then would the distances in Shadesmar expand. Before interplanetary travel entered the picture i had wondered if a civilization got really used to boat travel, would that affect the land in the CR because the perception of the water as this solid intractable entity changes. If this is the case, then the advent of space travel could make interplanetary travel in Shadesmar more difficult without people even living in space. The ability to traverse space in the physical realm could change the perception of space, affecting CR distances. In all of this when I say perception I kind of mean the like societal understanding that could affect somethings cognitive aspect.