ElMonoEstupendo

So Odium ended up trapped in the Rosharan system in variety of ways: First by some inter-Shard agreement with Honor and possibly Cultivation. This is the one he pretty clearly wants to get Dalinar to free him from. Secondly by the Oathpact, forced upon him and his minions by Honor and the Heralds. This is one he's found a way around with the Everstorm, although it seems there may be hope yet for it. It's unclear whether it actually applies to the Shard himself, but it's imperfect one way or another. Thirdly, by becoming heavily Invested in the system. This is why he's furious with Ba-Ado; her actions ended up trapping him a third way. He's found a way around #2. #3 it's implied he could reclaim his Investiture, probably by destroying an awful lot. But to do that he'd have to violate the agreement in #1, so that's the critical one for him to break free of. It's also worth pointing out that the duel won't resolve any of these (directly). The stakes are 1,000 years of imprisonment vs. Dalinar's soul. I think even if TOdium could manipulate Dalinar into breaking their pact, it wouldn't free him of his previous bonds, because they're not part of the arrangement. Oh yeah! I really really like that parallel. I like that we're still in the dark on what exactly they are - corrupted Splinters of other Shards? Splinters of Odium himself? Or like the Stormfather, ancient mechanisms given sentience and harnessed. Either way, they can't be new Splinters after Honor's Splintering, because they long predate that. It's not quite a direct progression either, because one of his purposes on Sel was to avoid them becoming sentient, whereas it seems the Unmade are sentient to begin with. Perhaps that was his new solution, but it also seems to be causing him some degree of trouble. Yes, I want to do another read-through and pay close attention to exactly what happens and what is speculated upon. Trouble is, for me that means starting with WoK again. I'll get back to you in a few months.

Most gracious of you, thank you. This character is quite wealthy.

Well damn, you got it in one.

Good clues! This character has loved and lost.

Oh yeah, this is a whole other pet theory to chew on! Let me open with this: Odium didn't want the whole perpetual planetary explosion thing, didn't know it would happen, wouldn't do the same again. But he did deliberately pack them into the Cognitive Realm, whether he knew that's what he was doing or not, and he did it to stop them either being taken up or forming their own sentience. He's since found a better way of preventing that, but the important detail is that just Splintering them and leaving the Investiture in the Spiritual Realm is not enough. I was neck deep on a hypothesis about who (Cultivation?) actually Splintered Honor for a while (and he definitely was Splintered, not just dead, per WoB). While there's plenty of evidence that Rayse or his minions or an ally killed Tanavast, I can't find anywhere that outright says straightforwardly that it was him that actually Splintered Honor. Somewhere there's a WoB explaining that being bound to Braize just means he's trapped in the Rosharan system, and that pretty much killed that theory, but damned if I know the keywords to find it again. Nevertheless, Rayse and the Stormfather are shocked that anyone, even someone bonded to the Stormfather, could be manifesting anything close to what Honor is capable of. They both think that power is inaccessible. Rayse did something or arranged for something to happen to lock it up - a better version of what he haphazardly managed on Sel. Hey, perhaps arranging for the Stormfather to take up most of the Shard was Rayse's plan. Stormfather is confined by all sorts of rules, far more than any normal Vessel. Dalinar is breaking the rules by helping Stormfather change. Edit: The trouble with saying all his Investiture is in the hearts of men, spren, the Stormfather etc. is that all those existed long, long before he died and none of them changed much after Honor was Splintered. Perhaps that was his protracted, maddening death - slowly voluntarily fracturing into millions of Splinters.

Raoden. NO, Ien.

Sarene.

Well well well, how the turntables.

HMMMM The Emperor's wife. Whatshername.

Shallan's mother? Was she never seen on-screen?

Exactly! The power's still there. In the planet. What else could be containing that much concentrated Investiture? The honorspren population? It doesn't seem dense enough if we're comparing it to perpetual armageddon. Not confirmation exactly, but there's a highly suggestive sequence: Sibling lost its Light around the time Ba-Ado-Mishram was bound. It's also implied it was gradually losing it beforehand too - when BAM was dispensing Voidlight like candy to Connected singers. Sibling only believed there were two True Tones. Navani discovers that Tones in the presence of each other shift to harmonise. She speculates that Odium's Tone becoming a True one caused the others to shift. Navani restores the Sibling's Towerlight by providing the shifted Tone of Honor. The logic works, right? But there may be other explanations for why Honor's Tone changed, why Odium's Tone got introduced, why the Sibling believed what it did, etc... A large perfect gemstone was enough for Nergaoul, but Ba-Ado is on a whole other level to that chump. She's capable of dispensing forms of power and Voidlight to a whole race. It's possible a perfect gemstone of a size necessary to contain her doesn't exist. Or you're right, and she's stashed away in Feverstone Keep or that weirdly active part of the ocean. But it's still possible! I think you're referring to this WoB; Which for my theory would mean that the Stormfather would have to be partially trapped. Yeah, I can feel it falling apart there.

Splintering doesn't stop it gaining sentience - if anything, the spren and the seons show it might even make it easier to develop sentience with smaller bits. Honor splinters himself to create the Stormfather. Splintering is not enough, otherwise Odium wouldn't have pulled Devotion and Dominion into the Cognitive Realm. Roshar the continent is a crem and natural stone outgrowth on the planet, grown deliberately by God. Plus, isn't the flora and fauna weird and interesting? It also set fire to the whole planet in one Realm. Good point. Mars is much closer to that density. But it's also tectonic. Yeah, every Shard has a Tone. Why is Honor's still there, albeit shifted? Why did Odium's only show up after BAM was bound? It's the presence of huge amounts of Investiture. (Highstorms) Indeed - there was Investiture in the planet before the Shattering. There's a WoB somewhere that all Investiture got associated with a Shard at the time. Rayse specifically put them there: It seems to me that the Splintering of these Shards and the placement of their power in the CR are two separate events with the same motivation - if anyone has contradictory evidence I'd love to see it.

Just left lying around? Isn't that what Odium specifically wants to avoid? He wouldn't be so surprised at someone starting to take it up if that were the case.

TLDR: Roshar is a gemstone, a trap for Investiture, and currently holds big parts of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium. Time for some wild speculation! A question arose in an earlier thread: just where did all the Splinters of Honor go after Tanavast died? There should be insane amounts of Investiture floating around developing sentience. When Rayse trapped Devotion and Dominion's corpses in the Cognitive Realm, it was sufficient to set Sel's entire mental plane into permanent nuclear holocaust! With Roshar, we get one erratic windy boi, ten erratic kooks, some neato swords, and a planet's worth of spren - almost all of which existed long before Tanavast died. Where is the rest of his phenomenal cosmic power? In an itty bitty living space, that's where. So the hypothesis is: the bulk of Roshar is a titanic gemstone, big enough to trap gods. Roshar is a weird place. Here's a few weird things about Roshar's geology: No Plate Tectonics. Low Density. Super-continent (grown by Adonalsium, no less). Having a gemstone core explains the oddities. There's no plate tectonics because there's no mantle - it's crystal all the way down. I crunched a few numbers - Roshar's density is about 4.3 g/m^3, roughly in line with certain types of zircon and garnet (and who knows what else), and much lower than Earth's 5.51 g/m^3. You'd expect some variation from the crem and the natural rock we see in places. Like spheres, it won't have to be all gemstone. It's a possible explanation for why Adonalsium would take specific interest in it, although that's way beyond the scope of this post. More than that, though, it explains why there are True Tones and Highstorms, why the Everstorm showed up, what happened with Ba-Ado-Mishram, why Odium still can't leave, and maybe a few other things. True Tones: Investiture sings. Singers and spren can attune to the True Tones and the Rhythms of Roshar. Stormlight and Voidlight hold the note of their respective Shards, but can lose it once isolated. There must be an enormous amount of the three Shard's Investiture in Roshar itself to do this, but this isn't like Scadrial - they didn't make the planet. Highstorms: Roshar isn't a perfect gemstone. It leaks. The highstorms are the manifestation of that leak, which Honor bound with the Stormfather to regulate. Cultivation's Investiture leaks in other ways, such as through crem and the ocean floor. The Everstorm is a result of a lot of Odium's Investiture getting trapped. Speaking of which... Ba-Ado-Mishram: Old BAM made a big mistake Connecting with the singers, Roshar's original inhabitants. She ended up trapped somewhere. Odium's Tone joined the other two, and the Sibling lost track of Honor's. The Everstorm started appearing. I think the dots join together into a nice picture: Much Ado is stuck in Roshar itself, and with her a ton of Odium's power. This is why Tanavast was convinced that the Knights Radiant would destroy the planet with the Binding. That might be why he died - specifically to counteract the effect of Odium's power being introduced. Side-speculation: The Shattered Plains are a result of the Binding. This is why there's no indication of where BAM is. Honor's Splinters: Finally, back to the first question. There aren't more Splinters of Honor because a big chunk of him is stuck in the planet. This is Odium's solution to his Splintering problem. He can't leave Investiture lying around because it gains sentience, gathers together, and can be reformed and reclaimed. He tried trapping it in the Cognitive Realm on Sel with imperfect results. He came to Roshar specifically because gods or pieces thereof could be safely trapped. One last bit of speculation: when different Shards' Investiture is successfully mixed, it creates a new type (Warlight, Towerlight, etc.). Is that the purpose of Roshar?

Shashara.

Trell.

Ishar.

Tonk Fah.

Gavilar.

Neither, I'm afraid. It was Grandmother Forescout. The turn is up for grabs.

Nay, not Vasher.

Not Szeth. Not Dalinar. Not Kaladin. Not Adolin. Not Vin. Not REDACTED x3. This character killed a villain. This character has been imprisoned. This character broke new ground. This character unexpectedly remembers something. This character is a cognitive shadow.

Neither of these REDACTED folks. Not Kaladin. Not Adolin. Not Vin. Not REDACTED x3. This character killed a villain. This character has been imprisoned. This character broke new ground. This character unexpectedly remembers something.

Not Kaladin. Not Adolin. Not Vin. Not REDACTED. This character killed a villain. This character has been imprisoned. This character broke new ground.

Not Vin. Not REDACTED. This character killed a villain. This character has been imprisoned.