Cocoa

Vin, Elend, Tindwyl, Clubs, Dox, Roial, Karata, Hrathen, Lightsong, Blushweaver, Lessie (...eventually), Liyun, Elhokar: "What are we, chopped liver?" I mean, I take your point (though I disagree about a character having completed their arc equaling no impact), but I'd argue that the whole setting only has two real resurrections, in a narrative sense; Kelsier and Yumi. There's quite a few close shaves and the mechanics of investiture means that the Cosmere is lousy with near-immortals, but pretty much every time that someone's "properly" died, they've stayed that way. To answer the original topic, my money's on Dalinar, Navani, and Szeth. Dalinar's discussion with Kaladin at the start about what happens if both he and Navani fall smacks too much of foreshadowing, and we know from the epigraphs that only two witnesses are avaliable to relate the events at Shinovar. Granted, that doesn't automatically mean the other three (two knights, two spren, Nightblood) are dead, but of the group (after Nightblood, because I'm not sure how you would kill him), Kal seems the most likely to survive; his whole character arc has been about reaching a point where he can live—and with a degree of peace and happiness at that—even with his depression and suicidal thoughts, so it feels weird to cap that off with his death.

I don't remember this bit about no spren in Dawncities being mentioned anywhere (in fact I was under the impression that we haven't had the identities/locations of any of the Dawncities confirmed at this point in time), could you point me to where you're getting that from?

I was bouncing around some ideas in my head for an Elsecaller fan character when I made an interesting connection in my head. I've long considered Forgery and Soulcasting to be very similar arts, since in both cases you're explicitly rewriting/persuading an object's Cognitive aspect to become something else using Investiture, transforming that object in the process. What stuck out to me this time though is the inks used to make Forgery work: Compare that to the two Orders with access to Soulcasting. Lightweavers and Elsecallers are associated with the garnet and zircon polestones, and by extension the essences of blood and tallow (oil), both of which are usable as or in ink for soulstamps. I've wondered for a long time why Inkspren are, well, Inkspren. Some Order/spren pairings make a certain innate sense; either directly (Peakspren give their radiants power over stone, Ashspren give their radiants the power to turn things to ash through division) or by means of contrast (the Cryptics that embody immutable mathematical principles bond radiants who immerse themselves in fictions and lies). But Inkspren? What does ink have to transporation and transformation, or on reaching your true potential? I have seen some people suggest that they represent written out arguments based on how logical they are, and I can see the merit in that idea, but it still feels like it's missing something. But I think this might be the missing link; not that Inkspren are the spren of soulstamps, but that this idea of ink and blood exist as a throughline between different transformation-type invested arts through the Cosmere. Kind of like how allomantic metals have similar effects when burned as when used in a fabiral or exposed to a wild aether, or how color is drained by both Awakening and shardblade wounds. What are your thoughts on this line of thinking? Am I maybe on to something here, or am I grasping at straws?

Now, now, it never specified that it was her safehand.

Something's begun to stick out to me in the preview chapters, and that's the sheer number of Very Significant Minor Events that seem to be cropping up one after another. First we have a Tien-esque rock finding its way into Kaladin's travel pack, then Gallant and Adolin just happening to encounter the musicspren herd that includes Sureblood's spren, and now Shallan's ludicrous luck with finding the beads she wants (assuming she's not creating them wholesale with Lightweaving or somehow using creationspren as beads, as some have suggested). Even the Radiants stumbling across Odium's invasion force in the CR seems suspiciously lucky. Now, all of this could be simple artistic license; most stories, real or imagined, become quite boring if you don't allow for some coincidences here and there. But this book already seems like it's going to be telling us more about Fortune (and the Spiritual Realm in general), and one of the very few things that we know about Fortune is that storing or tapping it can fiddle with a feruchemist's luck. With that in mind, I'd like to raise the possibility that all these lucky events are not isolated incidents, but indicative of something larger happening in the SR. It could be ripples moving backwards in time from the upcoming Contest of Champions or Mishram's retrieval, ripples moving forwards in time from Dalinar connecting Kaladin to Tien or Taravangian killing Rayse and ascending as Odium (which we already know has had side effects on Roshar since Wind is talking again), or some other side effect of Ishar or Dalinar's bondsmithing. Edit: Weird Shadesmar beads confirmed to be creationspren. The other evidence still holds for the moment, but that does put a bit of a dent in my theory.

Almost certainly not. Last we heard of Battar in RoW she had been in Kharbranth and working with/for the Diagram in some way, whereas this is at Urithiru.

These were my thoughts as well. If it points in a fixed direction, then it's homing in on a distant point not in the Rosharan subastral proper. Yolen (or at least wherever Adonalsium was Shattered) is the most likely candidate due to sheer significance imo, but others include the site of Ambition, Mercy, and Odium's battle in the Threnodite System (I find this particularly likely given that it's called the Grand Knell, fitting with the system's naming scheme revolving around funerary music) or the site of Virtuosity's splintering. The only reason I don't think it's pointing towards the Dor is because we're told it's the site of the death of a god, singular. Probably a combination of the Oathgates and Cultivation's perpendicularity. For the latter, we know from Oathbringer that there was heavy Fused activity in that area of Shadesmar, and Song told Rock that there was something terribly wrong happening in the peaks (and the Diagram managed to ascertain that Moelach had migrated there at some point). For the former, the Oathgate spren in Kholinar have been corrupted to break their prohibition on allowing people into the Cognitive realm, and Odium has bladed Skybreakers who can operate it.

I am... strongly skeptical of this theory. First, every corrupted/enlightened spren we've seen up until this point has had some pretty drastic visual changes, in terms of color palate if nothing else, far more drastic changes than would get one mistaken for their near-visually-identical cousin spren. Second, Syl specifically identifies Lusintia and doesn't make any commentary about her being corrupted, which feels like a pretty glaring thing for her to leave out. Third, we're given no indication that Sja-Anat was active in the immediate vicinity of Lasting Integrity (though I will concede that it's near to where Emul is in the Physical Realm), and Unmade activity feels like something that Honorspren would be on the lookout for. Occam's razor suggests that Lusintia simply struck out on her own before the other twelve Honorspren, possibly without telling anyone, and then kaladin mistook her for a windspren at a quick glance (not the first time the two have been confused in the series) and had to do a double-take.

Pretty sure that's BAM, Edit: should've scrolled further down the thread before replying, someone beat me to it.

The residents of Threnody would beg to differ. I mean, Theopolis is pretty evil, imo. Why, what did you think i was talking about? Jokes aside, I don't think she's going to be especially happy with humans when she gets out, though trying to turn herself into a mini-god makes me wonder if she's too ambitious to just bend the knee to Odium as well. We could be looking at a new faction entering the fray (especially if her long absence means she isn't covered by the ceasefire between Dalinar and Odium after the contest of champions). The only was I can really picture her not being antagonistic towards the Radiants is if she was already in the process of dying due to overdoing it with the Connection shenanigans during the False Desolation, in which case imprisoning her—unwelcome as it might have been—ultimately saved her life.

See also the Eila Stele: "We took them in, as commanded by the gods. What else could we do? They were a people forlorn, without a home. Our pity destroyed us. For their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, stone, and wind." Up until this point, we the readers (and the characters in-universe, as evidenced by Kaladin's conversation with DDalinar at the start of RoW) have reasonably been assuming that "the gods" meant Honor and Cultivation. But with the revelation of capital-W Wind, it definitely throws the quote into a different light, especially if translation from dawnchant doesn't account for capitalization of proper nouns. Perhaps it should be "For their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, Stone, and Wind." It certainly feels like that would match what we saw of the ancient singers in Venli's Cohesion-vision in RoW. Now I'm questioning if this isn't Brandon having played us all for fools in past books by giving us just enough information to draw all the wrong conclusions. We know that Honor and Cultivation settled the Rosharan system after the Shattering (and that most Rosharan investiture was already 'assigned' to them), but do we actually have confirmation that Honor and Cultivation, specifically, were the dawnsingers' gods? If not, could it be possible that it wasn't a case of Honor and Odium 'flipping sides' at all, but the singers beginning to worship Odium and driving the Old Magic gods away, while Honor's allegiance to humans remained static? This is only tangentially related to the above points, but it's mildly interesting to me that Windrunners and Stonewards are on the same latitude of the surgebinding chart, and both of them adjacent to the Bondsmiths at that. I doubt that every order has an analogue in the Old Magic, but for those two in particular it feels significant.

The type of spike is a good point too. I'm a bit torn on the topic. My gut instinct is to say it's still a steel spike, because that's what we saw in the eyes back in Era 1, and the Hemalurgy diagram has the eyes marked as physical bind points. But on the other hand, back in Secret History Kell was talking to Spook about finding a new "string" to anchor him to the Physical Realm—and that sounds a lot like a duralumin spike stealing Connection to me.

Does anyone else find it strange that Kell apparently sees spiritual lines simply by virtue of having a spike through his eye? Back in Bands of Mourning, I had assumed that he was just burning steel or iron to compensate for his missing eye, same as I assumed the Inquisitors had been doing back in the original series. But now that we know he can't use allomancy anymore, that would seem to imply that it's having the spike itself that grants metal-vision, regardless of if you're burning metals or not. Why do you think that happens? Could it be that having a spike pierce through a physical sensory organ to your spiritweb lets you observe the Spiritual Realm in a limited way? Would having a (bronze?) spike piercing your eardrum let you hear rhythms, in addition to whatever stolen attribute the spike itself conferred?

(Sunlit Man spoilers will be spoilered) I don't think it's going to be as simple as that. While Cosmere novels almost always center on very sympathetic and well-intentioned characters, Brandon seems to have a fondness for setting up morally grey conflicts; not in the way it's often used of "nobody involved in the conflict really feels 'good,'" but in the sense that everyone involved has at least somewhat good reasons for fighting. The main exceptions up to this point have been Shards like Ruin or Odium whose Intents make it almost impossible for them to not stir up trouble (and their presence is, I think, part of why his conflicts are good at not devolving into "everyone is just awful" grey morality). So with all that said, I don't think there will be a single big bad, but it'll depend heavily on which series we're viewing them from. That said, I think there are a few different people who will show up as a Big Bad: Autonomy is in a weird position of being simultaneously isolationist and interventionist. "I want everyone to leave me alone, and in order to accomplish that I'm going to meddle and make sure none of them are strong enough to interfere with me," basically. This puts her in a position to step on a lot of toes, so it's hard to imagine her teaming up with any of the existing main factions without taking them over from the inside, but the fact that there seems to be some ongoing Scadrial-Roshar (Cold?) War in Era 4 means that she's probably not such an incredibly powerful threat that her presence can enforce an uneasy alliance between warring factions, not to mention that the probably-Scadrian Ones Above were able to just drop in on a planet inhabited by one of her avatars. If end-series Cosmere has a true Big Bad, I'd vote for her, but I think her role is more often going to be scheming in the background. It's also possible, depending on how exactly her Intent works, that one of her will be the ultimate Big Bad, but that other branches of her will team up with various existing factions even if it puts two of her instances at cross-purposes. The Ghostbloods and Scadrians in general seem to be shaping up to be a nightmare for anyone not actively allied with them. From their perspective in Era 4, they'll probably be a heroic Trek Federation-style faction, but we've already seen them being antagonistic on First of the Sun, Roshar, and Now, from the Scadrians' perspective, they've probably got perfectly good reason to be wary of Rosharans and Radiants in particular. We've still got book 5 and the whole back series for things to go to Damnation, whether that be Todium pulling a fast one, Cultivation turning out to be a lot less altruistic than might be hoped, a War composite-Shard forming, Roshar getting glassed by surgebinding and turning Rosharans into superpowered refugee-invaders (history repeating with that one, eh?), or whatever. It's... possible that the Ire are going to wind up being a major antagonist in the endgame, but if so, I don't think it'll be just them on their own independent of anyone else. I can see them being allied with the Scadrian, Rosharan, or Autonomy factions, but the Scadrians seem most likely to me if only because Riina's spaceship felt like it had Scadrian influences to me. Finally, we still have no idea what makes Hoid tick. Sure he's been, on the balance, altruistic up to this point, but all we actually know about his end-goals are Brandon saying he would probably not join up with Hoid's cause if he personally lived in the Cosmere, and Hoid's own admission to Dalinar that he'd let Roshar burn, however regretfully, if it would achieve his goals. That ruthless streak is something we've seen before in Travanagian and possibly starting to grow in Kell, and it's part of what makes them so dangerous.

Welp, that settles that then.

I agree with your first point, but I disagree that Kokerlii's power being passive/constantly on means that it's not kinetic investiture. It always seemed to me that he was projecting something like a coppercloud, and Allomantic copper is a kinetic ability.

How do you think a misting with an external enhancement metal would (or wouldn't) affect an Aviar's abilities? It doesn't seem that they keep any particular store of investiture in their bodies that could be burned/wiped away, so would it work a bit like how a Leecher burning chromium while holding onto a shardbearer can keep them from summoning their blade, but actually destroying a shardblade with leeching is near-impossible?

This is very much a swing in the dark, but I think the Admiral is William Ann. I was suspicious that we didn't get a name or even much of a description for her, which in turn made me think that this is someone we already know. The three main female Threnodites we know are Silence, William Ann, and Sebruki. Silence was already past her prime in Shadows, so it feels strange to imagine her embarking on a whole military career after the events of that story. We also have this WoB saying that she'd be unlikely to appear in the The Night Brigade novel: Sebruki we simply don't have a good grasp on as a character due to her young age as of Shadows. William Ann, however, still had her life ahead of her at the end of the story. Due to her disfigurement drastically cutting down on her chances of marrying, she might have thrown herself into a military career. She's known to be tall, which is one of the few details we're given of the Admiral's appearance. She'd have had a mentor in the art of being a 'hunter' in the form of Silence. Technological disparities aren't a necessary issue due to the various forms of time dilation or life-extension in the cosmere.

I do want to make one minor note: we don't know how drastically these capabilities are impacted by Sigzil being a former Dawnshard, and I'm willing to bet it's a non-zero amount based on his comment that Hoid is straight-up unkillable after having held the Dawnshard for so long. At 1000 BEUs, Sigzil has physical enhancements in the form of boosted strength and a healing factor, but someone at the fourth heightening (i.e. a thousand Breaths) has aura recognition, perfect color differentiation, perfect pitch, perfect life sense, and strong but imperfect delayed aging/boosted immune system. I'm willing to bet that stormlight is indeed a very... idk what term to use, "BEU-dense" form of investiture, but we can't rely on equivalent effects to establish numerical thresholds just yet; the nature of how someone's body/spiritweb use investiture seems to be a big component too.

I suspect so (since Sigzil comments on how rare ShoDel are), but if it wasn't then I think that it was still intended to give us a bit of information; both times we've seen ShoDel in the physical, it's been in aquatic/atoll biomes, so they might have lived in similar environments on Yolen and gravitate towards settling waterworlds/pseudo-waterowrlds as a result.

I've honestly wondered if it's not possible for Fused to form one half of a Nahel bond rather than their current possession shtick. We know that mortals are able to bond with Type One Invested entities (Radiant spren, Seons, maybe Skaze), and now with Yumi we've seen a human and a cognitive shadow form something halfway between a possession and a Nahel bond, using a hijo as an intermediary. So I think it's possible Fused could do something similar with singers (or who knows, maybe even humans), but Odium's Intent probably acts as a hurdle. At the very least, you'd need something other than Oaths to use as a foundation for the bond. Strong emotional resonance, maybe? Like... actually, like what seemed to happen between Adolin and Maya, come to think of it. (Complete tangent, but RoW feels like it's setting up a Sanderlanche on a Cosmere-wide scale. Just off the top of my head we had; hybrid lights, anti-investiture, a Regal Radiant (and normal singer radiants, though that seems less out there), rebel Fused, BAM weirdness, unchained Bondsmithery, whatever Maya and Adolin are now, and whatever other thing was going on with those chasmfeinds at the end. It's like Roshar has so many invested artsthat it's hit critical mass and just started spitting out infinite offshoots, and it makes my head hurt.)

Something that really got me about Aux's fate is the bitter irony that he arrived at his destination before we ever saw his journey; his whole arc as both a character and as a Knight Radiant has been twisted around to play out backwards. It's not necessarily a bad writing decision, but man, it's gonna be a gut-punch and a half whenever he's on-page from this point onward. Then again, I suppose maybe there's meaning in that. After all,

I've been fiddling around with an attempt to place Warbreaker in the larger Cosmere timeline recently, and that led to me trying to figure this question out. We know for a fact that the Five Scholars were Worldhoppers and fairly Cosmere-aware, both via WoB and because they hacked Awakening to create a Shardblade. So at this point we know that there were Nalthian Worldhoppers at least before the Manywar, who most likely passed through Endowment's perpendicularity in Hallendren since that's the easiest known method for most people to reach the CR. If I remember correctly, there was also mention of Nalthian traders in RoW, which we know takes place after Warbreaker (though due to Vasher's immortal nature and the possibility of Vivenna extending her life with Breaths, we don't know how far after). The trouble comes in that we don't know how open the 5 Scholars were with their knowledge, like how the Ghostbloods existing doesn't translate to the Elendel government being especially Cosmere-aware. We also know for a fact that at least some of their legacy has been forgotten; i.e. people forgetting that the D'denir statues were Kalad's phantoms. My best guess is that in establishing the Court of Gods, Vasher entrusted the highest rung of authority with the knowledge that there's a gateway to other worlds out in the jungle so that they wouldn't be completely caught off-guard if another shardworld launched an invasion, unless he decided to withhold that info to lower the risk of more Nightbloods getting created. But even if he did tell them, then there's still the question of whether or not that knowledge survived the deaths of Susebron's predecessors and then the deaths of his priests during the Pahn Kahl revolt. The other option I can imagine is that some of the court is Cosmere-aware, but it's treated like the lifeless command codes; the knowledge is restricted to a handful of returned, so that they can shape policy with the larger Cosmere in mind without turning Nalthis into an expansionist force.

Not for the most part, no, though I do concur with a few other people here that it's a bummer that the Shroud just up and vanished. Having a "then the sun emerges" moment was the right way to go for sure, but I think it'd have been cool if it had changed to start working a little like the mists. Without being specifically sustained by the Father Machine, the Shroud burns away in daylight, and then re-emerges at sundown. Nightmares become more docile and intelligent, but some of them still pose a risk, since "a person can still hurt you." Something like that, maybe.

For the first big chunk of Yumi, I'd been imagining the Shroud as something more like Midnight Essence; not exactly the same, but there's some noteworthy similarities. But when I got to Hoid's explanation about what exactly the Father Machine was and did, I actually froze in my seat for a second and said, "Oh rust, they made a Nightblood," because an inky black haze of corrupted investiture suddenly comes off as eerily familiar when put in the context of a soul-devouring Awakened machine. Obviously there's some major differences in the Commands used, and Nightblood is still significantly more sapient and more invested, but I can't help but feel we're looking at the same class of object here. Did anyone else come to a similar conclusion, and if so, how can we use this to speculate about Nightblood's nature and capabilities, as well as the probability of other Awakenings of Mass Destruction cropping up in the future?