CognitiveShadow

I love this - Kaladin stepped up as a Herald in the place of Szeth so that Szeth could have a second chance at a peaceful life. Then Szeth takes up the sword again to take care of Kaladin's Moash problem to spare Kaladin the pain of having to be the one to deal with it. A debt repaid I know, I hate to have even put it into the universe but I was trying to think of what else Moash could do to be even worse. It was the worst thing that came to mind.

Most likely Heleran since he was the only one who didn't seem have some sort of clear supernatural mental illness like the rest of them.

And then Moash, in true Moash form, will accept that second chance and then use it to kill Bippy or something and we will all hate him even more. storm Moash

I thought the contract was written by Hoid but then discarded as unusable. And then Odium and Dalinar made their own terms, which the Sibling was able to generate into a written out document, no? I think Hoid would not have been able to add anything in that wasn't explicitly agreed to by Dalinar and Odium.

Well, Autonomy was literally interacting with Wax directly. It makes sense for Harmony to try and explain the situation to him. I thought the complaint was that there was not enough explanation from Harmony about the detailed history of the Cosmere: Personally, I think the explanations we've gotten and when we've gotten them all fit with the story lines and with the characters doing the explaining. Harmony is literally being invaded/attacked by another Shard... Autonomy. He's still relatively new to the Shard gig, and he is a little shackled by his intent. It makes sense to me that he would try to give Wax enough of a basic understanding that there is another 'god'-type being out there that is behind the stuff going on in their world. He shows him the red mist as a represenation of it. He explains enough for Wax to get what is happening to his sister, at least in part. It wasn't necessary for him to go into the details of the Shattering or anything, but I think it would be weird if Harmony didn't give any of the information relevant to the potentially world-ending-ish catastrophe that they were facing... no? But... that's what is happening in the Cosmere. We were being introduced to Autonomy. We learned that she has been expanding through the cosmere and creating avatars. Each of the shards is being driven by their intent - Odium wants to destroy the other shards and then finally be able to unleash his rage without fear of being destroyed by anyone else, Ruin wanted to tear everything apart and see it all decay and rot, etc. The whole premise of the Cosmere is that there are 16 of these beings (or were 16 anyway) who are sort of guiding/managing the universe and the people living there. I actually think the other shards have been introduced quite slowly, and it makes sense that this pace will start to pick up over time. Why else have all these shards if they are not going to interact with each other or with our main characters at all? It didn't have to be Autonomy, but it was Autonomy. She was the one behind the Set. Idk what the point of complaining about it is other than maybe thinking you could have made a better story than Brandon? At the end of the day, there is an end goal to all of this, and each story we read is going to point us in that direction. Whatever it ends up being. So maybe to that point, yes - it did have to be Autonomy. Not necessarily because of some really Meta reason, but maybe because thats just who and what she is. Maybe the way things are happening in the story are just due to the decisions that people and shards are making. And maybe we are just lucky to get to sit back and enjoy the show.

The way I see it, it went like this: Pursuer dies, goes to Braize El is reborn on Day 1, immediately destroys Jezrien's soul remnants This shows that the anti-light was able to clash with the remaining stormlight in the gem, which he assumes is what is left of Jezrien. However, the other Herald's already felt that he was dead and gone. Sure it works as an initial test, but this doesn't prove explicitly what will happen if a fused is stabbed with an anti-voidlight knife El has his chat with Odium, realizes that it is a new vessel, everything we just read today happens El writes his musings on Day 1 - they are called the musings on day 1, and we know that immediately after his encounter with Odium is when he chose to write them Therefore we can deduce that this encounter was taking place on Day 1 El likely has his confrontation with the 9, explaining that he is in charge now, and then proceeds with the ritual rebirth / summoning thing for the Pursuer / defeated one, still on Day 1 This works as both a further test of anti-light, as well as a test for the fused specifically. They must have had reports / information sent by Raboniel before she died with the details (she was adamant it was important to get the info out asap, which is how they had some made so quickly). But it makes sense that they would want to both punish the defeated one and see firsthand what would happen to one of them if they were stabbed. Separate test from the killing of Jezrien's remnants. I get that the interludes get clunky if we try to take them in order based on when they pop up in the books, but I also think it's ok for the interludes to be non-chronological and just focused on providing additional historical or future information when we need it in the text, regardless of when the events took place. For further clarification, this is the order of the excerpts as I understand them chronologically. Interlude with El meeting tOdium (WaT) Epigraphs with Musings of El (RoW) Interlude/epilogue with El killing Pursuer/Defeated One (RoW)

I suppose because the perpendicularity Nightblood collapsed was not in the process of being used to travel to the Spiritual Realm. I kind of expected it to act the way it did, and offered some thoughts on the previous chapters threads about why I predicted that. Essentially, in my mind, it's because Nightblood was consuming and drawing out stormlight from a practically infinite pool. Not too different from how the nearby gemstones suck in stormlight from the perpendicularity or how radiants do as well. But Nightblood was too intense and it disrupted the 'structure' of the perpendicularity which takes effort from Dalinar to maintain. Therefore it just collapsed on itself and needed to be re-created by Dalinar if he were to open it again. The anti-investiture didn't pull out or absorb investiture, but instead instantly obliterated a portion of it. so instead of the perpendicularity pushing out investiture, it was left with a hole where the investiture was supposed to be, which created a vacuum effect that sucked in the nearby people/items. TLDR: Nightblood disrupted and collapsed the perpendicularity, while the anti-investiture destroyed investiture and left a void that needed to be filled, hence the vacuum effect as it collapsed.

There's a lot of chatter recently about this death rattle referring to Kaladin ascending to Honor or stepping in Dalinar's place. The crown and tower is what makes up Dalinar's family glyph thing and people anticipate that Kaladin will just add a spear for his. Again, I'll admit to being an Ishar hater, but I'll say that he's got mad scientist vibes. I don't think the stuff he says can be trusted at all as being true/relevant, but I do think he is able to use his powers to make some crazy stuff now that Honor is not holding him in check. I don't think there is much of the sane Ishar present at the moment, so he's just driven by instinct and wherever his madness takes him lol

There is definitely room for this interpretation to be correct, but I personally lean towards Ishar being out of his mind. The fact that this tidbit of information was sandwiched with ramblings of madness lead me to be skeptical of it's truth. I lean much more towards the weight of the entire oathpact resting solely on 1 (as seen by Dalinar when touching Nale and seeing the Connections), and I believe that one person is Taln. If the burdens of 9 became anyones at a certain time it was Taln when the others abandoned the Oathpact. It also just doesn't make sense that Ishar would actually be siphoning off the darkness from the others and still bearing it - if anything he might be siphoning it off from them to him... and then from him to Taln.. But maybe I'm just an Ishar hater? Lol I just think hes a bad dude, disguised as a good dude masquerading as a bad dude. But deep down he's just a selfish, ambitious, 'my ends justify my means regardless of how my means impact other people' kinda guy that causes massive problems and then convicnes others to give him more power so he can fix the problems he causes

Where was this? I thought he just had one but it was in the wrong direction? Also, just want to brag about being correct that the collapsing perpendicularity would suck in the people nearby! Called it

I've wondered if this was intentionally set up by Honor and Cultivation (but kept secret from the Heralds and others. I could see them deciding that they needed to sacrifice their own little slice of the cosmere in order to keep Odium from rampaging out and destroying others. They could have used Roshar as a trap to keep him contained, and set up the cycles of desolations to keep him preoccupied but with little hope of an escape. Perhaps that is what opened up Honor to Odium's attack eventually? The dishonesty and the way he was sacrificing others in brutal destructive wars just to keep Odium trapped there... which in turn would lead to more and more war/destruction... Cultivation probably wouldn't be impacted, but Honor would likely be conflicting with his shard's intent.

That makes sense, but we have seen Design in RoW during Kaladin's vision and before Odium appears to Wit at the end. She seemed pretty similar to the way she acted in Yumi.. I'm assuming that she is just chilling as a pattern on his coat or something for now and hasn't been intruding herself into conversations, but hey it's possible that maybe she is handling some other task for him at the moment?

The copy is made of investiture and Brandon has mentioned that there are challenges that cognitive shadows have when holding a shard that living people do not. There is a constant theme about abdication in these chapter headings. We are told that there is a secret about something that happened with Tanavast and the power of Honor, and that the power now needs to be convinced to let someone take it up (this goes beyond the normal need for finding someone with connection to the shard and its intent). We learn that spren and other gods can feel / hear the change in the shard's tone when a new vessel takes it up as long as they look for it This means they would all have known if Tanavast had swapped with someone or just left the power on its own We know that Honor got more and more obsessed with Oaths at the very end, and it seems to have been somewhat sudden and a drastic decline, not just the effect of his shard's power slowly changing him over the millenia I think this theory hits on all those points. The duplicate would have matched him completely at first, but then it would make sense that as a cognitive shadow it would be influenced by the power quite quickly. Plus it would not have it's own connection to the physical realm. Unless Tanavast connected the power to himself still while he lived as a mortal (Nohadon). Is there anything here that would not fit thematically or logistically?

Part of it is that this is one of the very few actions one can take in the Cosmere that makes Hoid nervous. He's trying to get them in a safe spot where they can have as much control as possible, without others surprising them or intervening with them. He's probably also extra paranoid now since the new Odium messed with his memories and showed some dangerous craftiness. That said, I'm surprised he didn't look into the CR and spot Shallan and others gathering around them as they got ready to start the process. You'd think Hoid would have seen them and gone "hold up, let's take a beat and figure out wtf is happening here first"

I agree - the perpendicularity is not a stable thing that will just sit there regardless of what happens to it. It's a very temporary and (in my mind) unstable thing that Dalinar has to intentionall keep open, using effort. We see him even straining to keep it open in RoW when talking to Ishar. When it gets disrupted and consumed by Nightblood, it just collapses on itself and is shut down. But the SF tells Dalinar it's not a big deal, it can't be damaged by something that mortals make, so he would be able to summon it again. I do think the anti-light is a different story - this isn't just disrupting the perpendicularity with something that is consuming the stormlight and sending it back to the Spiritual Realm, but is instead causing both an explosion and the destruction of a portion of the investiture that makes up the perpendicularity. I personally would not be shocked to find out that when the investiture was annihilated by the anti-investiture, it resulted in a bit of a vacuum effect that also sucked those nearby into the Spiritual realm as it collapsed.

Yes, there are multiple WoB's where he has gone into detail about how/why he decided to have Taravangian ascend. It was ultimately something he finalized after writing out the scenes and getting feedback from beta readers. But he did it because he felt that Rayse Odium had failed too many times, and was therefore a less intimidating or scary 'bad guy'. He put Taravangian in so that there would be more mystery around what he might do and how his crafty nature might come into play, whereas Rayse was much more direct and blunt in his plans. I think you are right that the contract will still have some kind of impact. Though I would not be surprised if it is voided. Sja-Anat specifically points out that becuase of his agreements with Odium he is in Odium's power - so he didn't have the protections that other people have naturally against Odium destroying them. Then again, he had already met all the terms of the agreement, so it's possible that the power is still bound to protect Kharbranth. Regardless, we have a WoB that get's RAFO'd about this topic: So this makes it seem like there will be an impact to some degree - just how big of an impact is still unknown.

It's a good theory! But Adolin is already the High Prince now - that's what Dalinar was considering abidcating from, not as King of Uruthiru. Adolin turned down the throne already for Alethkar, and has made it clear he does not want to be Dalinar's heir. Renarin has also turned that down. Kaladin is next in line to the throne after Dalinar and Navani, who are both conveniently gone. Now, if Kaladin bonds the Wind and becomes an OG bondsmith, then perhaps he will be able to enter the spiritual realm and track them down or something. Or if he does that AND heals Ishar (at least temporarily by him and/or Szeth swearing an ideal), then perhaps he can get the details from him on how to transport himself quickly back to Uruthiru in time to take over for Dalinar as the champion.

The thing is, there's just so much background and lore and things to explain that it's not really worth it for the people who do have an understanding of it all to bother telling everything to the people who are clueless. Look at it from Sazed's or from Hoid's perspectives: do they want to constantly be giving the entire background story of the cosmere to every single person they interact with, who will then have thousands of follow up questions? No, they basically just want to manipulate those people with less cosmere awareness into acting in a way that will benefit their long term goals. It sounds bad, but it's true. Wit has said he would watch Roshar burn if it meant he got to achieve his larger goals. In fact, in the most recent chapter release, we get this beauty of a line from Wit after he mentions that he was on Ashyn during the migration to Roshar: Imagine you had lived for thousands and thousands of years, and were hopping between planets, your brain full of knowledge that would instantly skyrocket the planet's technology to new heights. In that context, yeah it makes sense to try and share information, give people the deets about what's really going on. But then imagine that the universe is kind of in a chaotic tailspin ever since you personally destroyed god and split them into 16 pieces, and that at least one of those 16 pieces is hell bent on destroying all the others and subjecting all mankind to their will... in that case, there are more pressing matters at hand. I can understand why he has the attitude of "Yes, I was there. Can we focus on the experiment?" Plus, from a literary perspective, Brandon already gets a lot of criticism for explaining things TOO frequently in his books, particularly in Stormlight.

I really think Nohadon is Tanavast. That Tanavast stepped down from Honor and became a mortal, was a king for a while, then stepped down from that too.

Ah, yes - this is actually a really good point. It did seem a little strange how rushed she was, and how she just ignored questions from Renarin and pushed for him to ignore those questions too and just trust her, keep moving, that sort of feeling. They could have been soothing her doubts/nervousness and rioting her confidence to help keep her focused on acting instead of thinking too much. I sometimes forget to consider the magic systems from outside Roshar being a possibility, especially when dealing with the Ghostbloods! Hmm I don't know if I would take it that far. I guess we will see if there seems to be a marked difference in the Wind's strength or ability to communicate with Kaladin after this event. My gut says it was just a regular rushing of wind or perhaps just symbolizing a connection to Honor (the Wind is of Honor-type thing) as they enter the Spiritual Realm. From what we know, it was rOdium being replaced by tOdium was what caused a significant difference in the Wind's ability to manifest/interact with people

That's a fair point, but I feel like a perpendicularity being hit by something that consumes investiture (Nightblood) would have a different effect from something that destroys investiture (anti-light). Nightblood basically just sucked it up and shut it down right? Whereas this was much more explosive, and I could see that creating some kind of vacuum effect

That's exactly what I think they did, and I think Mraize knew what he was doing. He clearly knew something about what happens when a perpendicularity collapses. I think he wanted to get into the SR by any means necessary, but this was their plan Z. It means getting back out will be really really tricky

All we've gotten from Brandon is that Honor's cognitive shadow is attached to the Stormfather. This gives plenty of leeway for it to be the copy of Tanavast (techinically a cognitive shadow anyway) that slowly developed and morphed into it's own entity while Tanavast was back on Roshar as a mortal playing king instead of god. It would still make total sense for this Tanavast 2.0 to attach part of their awareness to the Stormfather as they were being killed by Odium. In fact, I think that Honor did this specifically with the intent of helping select and guide an unchained bondsmith. I think they set the power in a semi safe place in the Spiritual Realm so that when they had an unchained bondsmith bonded to them, they could then get that bondsmith to force Honor's power to connect to and merge with Odium's power, hopefully neutralizing some of Odium's more destructive tendencies. But I believe this plan backfires and Taravangian ends up holding at least two shards, but with more control over them than he would have had over just Odium alone.

You'd think that from the glimpses/visions of BAM would kind of encourage her away from that intention

It's possible, but I think that's just too much like Mistborn too. There's something really really wierd going on here with Tanavast, Nohadon, Honor, Stormfather, etc. Plus, we have a lot of warnings about the dangers of a shard developing it's own awareness and becoming it's own vessel. I think that's foreshadowing some things we are going to see in the book. And it appears a major goal for the rest of this book is for Dalinar and Navani to see what happened to Honor and how he died. I think this theory of mine ties together all of those aspects in a really interesting and new way, and makes a lot of sense. Even explains why the power is refusing to accept new vessels as they talk about in today's chapters.