Wandering Shade

Wouldn't the gemstones that power the Shardplate also be refreshed during the storm? That would, on top of the incredibly increased resilience of just being in Shardplate, really let you survive well in a Highstorm.

To summarize, you'd definitely be more okay than if you didn't have any. I'd say a good 60% chance of survival, possibly higher.

On 8/15/2021 at 11:45 PM, apepi said:

I do wonder how all the Deadeyes somehow knew to be at Adolin's case, it seemed like they were coming there on purpose, like they knew that they needed to be there.

I guess it could semi make sense, as Adolin has faced a lot of other shardblades before, they must somehow know who he is, he has won plenty of them dueling, so he might have more of a Connection with them than other people.

This post just made me go down a whole rabbit hole of theorizing.

Adolin has helped "heal" Maya a little. Why? Besides him being Best Boi, he's got a stronger Connection to her than most Shardbearers have with their Blades and with that was able to give her a little of his "strength" to let her speak her mind. Why? Because he's always treated her with respect and spoken to her, even before he knew she was a spren, and after he did learn he started really treating her like a person rather than an object.

Where did Adolin learn to treat his Blade so well? When training Radiant in swordsmanship, Shallan realizes that he talks a lot about treating the Blade with respect and theorizes that its from the ancient Radiants understanding of Shardblades as living creatures filtering down into duelist training. Fair enough, sounds about right. But, who taught Adolin swordsmanship? Zahel.

Vasher trained Adolin in swordsmanship. Now, Vasher clearly trained him in the traditional Rosharan dueling stances, but Vasher has his own unique perspective and experiences that he's bringing to the table as a trainer. Vasher has used Nightblood which is a sentient Shardblade, and we've seen him thanking his Awakened objects because he knows that its possible that they have sentience like Nightblood. Would Vasher have, consciously or unconsciously, taught Adolin to do the same to his weapon? Maybe, that sounds reasonable to me.

But lets take this theory one step further.

Despite training Kaladin and Renarin on screen in using Shardblades, we never once see Vasher hold a Shardblade*. Why?

I think Vasher can hear their screams. He's an Awakener with an unknown but probably large number of breaths and a Returned. He's heavily Invested. We know all Surgebinders and Fused can hear the screams, which seems to me like you just have to be Invested to hear them.

I'm decently sure that if nothing else, Vasher can hear the screams of Deadeyes and that combined with his experiences with Nightblood and the basic sword training philosophy of Roshar has resulted in Adolin being kinder and more respectful of Maya than any other Shardbearer in history.

*Edit: We have seen Zahel use a Shardblade while training Kaladin, but it was for an incredibly brief period of time. I think my point still stands.

1 minute ago, Pathfinder said:

Frustration is referring to this WoB. I believe there are more but I am still pulling them up

Quote

Herald (paraphrased)

Is there more significance to the 10 other planets around the Rosharan star system and them being gaseous? We know that Roshar's moons have unnatural orbits; so there seems to be some astronomical manipulation in the system.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes there is significance of 16 in cosmere and 10 in Rosharan system.

Herald (paraphrased)

The outer 10 gas giants in the Rosharan system suggest a tie to the number 10 that predates the arrival of the current Shards. Is the prominent numerology we see around the cosmere an inherent property of the planets, rather than the Shards who invest them?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Big RAFO.

Herald (paraphrased)

Would Ashyn/Braize share the 10-centric numerology of Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes 10-centric is for the entire Rosharan planetary system...wait Braize is 9-centric.

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing (Nov. 30, 2016)

 

 

Huzzah, thank you. Still, that doesn't answer the point of if Braize is only 9-centric because of Odium's presence there, or if it was always 9-centric, as BrandoSando specifically RAFO'd whether or not those numbers are based on the planets themselves or the shards that inhabit them.

The Everstorm was never needed to awaken Fused, it's just a more efficient way to doing so.

29 minutes ago, Frustration said:

It's Braize not Odium that is 9 centric

Frustration, I've noticed this with how you make your posts (since you reply all over the place lol).

You like to make blanket statements like this without providing any evidence to back it up. If you could edit to add a WoB that explains that, it would be nice. I trust that you're right, you know your stuff, but it is possible that you're misremembering something so having some proof would be nice

To bring this thread back around to its main topic, I think we've kinda proven that the theory of the Fused increasing with power as Radiants swear higher Ideals would be very weird and incongruent with how Shardic power has been portrayed, and also isn't necessary to explain the struggles that humanity went through during each Desolation.

Quick summary of why this theory was posed:
Radiants are more powerful than Fused, capable of using more Stormlight per-second (more Lashings) than Fused are. They also have the added benefit of Shardblades and Plate which drastically increases their power output.
We see Fused get beaten by our new Radiants a lot in O and RoW despite our new Radiants not having the long history of the previous orders and almost no Shardplate.
If the Knights Radiant of the past had more people with Shardplate (which we know is true, at least of the False Desolation time), then it should not have been too difficult for them to kill the Fused with impunity given their greater power, weapons, and armor.
If the Fused scaled in power with the Radiants, it would be an easy explanation as to how they were constantly a threat to humanity no matter how strong the Knights Radiant ever became.

"Quick" summary of why this theory is probably inaccurate:
It doesn't really make too much sense for Fused to have their power scale off of the Knights Radiant as they would need to be Connected to each other which we haven't seen too much evidence for.
While Kaladin can compare with Leshwi in combat, no other Windrunner can due to her thousands of years of experience. Kaladin is special and should not be treated as the baseline for Radiant power.
The Fused and Singers greatly outnumbered humanity in the past, causing the Radiants to be spread thin defending everyone at all times. And, as we learned in WoK "Shardbearers can't hold ground," which applies to Radiants and Fused as well. While the battles might be won by the Invested forces, it is the regular soldiers that do the bulk of the fighting.
Modern humanity has incredible fabrial and warfare technology which allow their regular forces to be far more efficient than in the past.
The other forces in the Fused's arsenal (Thunderclasts, Voidspren, Regals/Forms of Power) greatly enhance their army combat powers, and not all of the Fused and Thunderclasts have transferred from Braise to Roshar yet.
It is highly likely that the Fused have some type of Raysium weapons or something else which allow them to fight against Shardplate which we have not yet seen simply because there has not been a reason to use them yet and the Fused do not want to lose the element of surprise.

And yet, even with all the advantages the Fused and Singers have had against the Radiants, Humanity still won every Desolation in the past, something which can probably be attributed to the incredible power of the Knights Radiant, but also the determination and ingenuity of humans.

Because they wouldn't be useful yet. There's only one person who had reached the fourth ideal and Odium/the fused wanted this to be a surprise weapon.

I understand your perspective about how it seems like the Radiants should have wiped the floor with the Fused every single Desolation because they're stronger, but I think you need to remember two things. One, humans won every single Desolation, no matter how technologically degraded they were after the last one. The Seven bring this up during the meeting that we see in RoW. So, you're right. Yeah. Knights Radiant are stronger than Fused, without question.

Two, in Surgebinding, skill is more important than power. Soulcasting is not about raw output, its about skill. Sure, with a ton of raw power in Gravitation you can fly at Mach 1 or even 3, but you'd run out of Stormlight so fast it wouldn't be useful. The Fused are more skilled than the modern Radiants and have always outnumbered them as well. That skill difference is made up for by the extra power that Knights Radiant have, but they still can't do anything about the Fused coming back again and again.

Another thing, I think you're underestimating the power of Thunderclasts. The two Thunderclasts we've seen only got killed because 1) Nightblood is OP AF and 2) Renarin can do weird stuff. Shardblades were absolutely made to kill Thunderclasts, but it takes multiple cuts to take out any limb, and a Thunderclast could always just drop their body and find a new one.

I love this theory. Can't wait to see if you're right when book 5 comes out.

Kelsier absolutely got a mistwraith to consume his bones, then spiked himself into said mistwraith to replace its mind with his. Then he recreated his body, scars and all, gained some feruchemical powers (but probably not all of them. At first) and went down to save the Southern Scadrians and become their god.

Quote

rxience (paraphrased)

Would a single spike be sufficient to staple a Cognitive Shadow to a mistwraith?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that could happen.

rxience (paraphrased)

Did that happen in the past?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That's a RAFO, I'm afraid. Who are you thinking about?

rxience (paraphrased)

Kelsier of course!

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well, he is somehow in the Physical Realm. And he does look like himself, doesn't he?

Berlin signing (May 14, 2019)

Now, BrandoSando doesn't outright say that Kelsier stapled his soul to a mistwraith, but he basically says it. That's how his new body looks like his original. Because Kell knows what his body should look like and Mistwraiths instinctively know how to make bodies. Combine that information and boom. Kelsier can look like himself. With a metal spike in one eye, but hey. Nobody's perfect.

I will admit, the theories yall brought up about mistwraiths having latent Feruchemical abilities are pretty sick and I like them a lot. I think that the reason Kelsier entering a Mistwraiths body might give him Feruchemy while kandra are missing it is because of the fact that he's Mistborn. He has a greater levels of innate investiture and that might "awaken" the latent Feruchemical talents within a mistwraith's body. Maybe. I will freely admit I'm kinda spitballing here.

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

That kind of replaces problems. Why are Progression and Illumination affected to different degrees?

That's a good question and one that my theory can only give a shrug as an answer to. This is a fair flaw in my theory. I'd say that different surges react to Voidbinding in different ways, but that's again something of a cop-out.

I'm not going to try and say my theory is correct, I'm more arguing that its difficult to really fully understand what's going on with Renarin, his Surgebinging and his Voidbinding yet. We know that he is a Kight Radiant and a Voidbinder, that he can do limited things with his Illumination, he can heal people with his Progression, and he can see the future through Voidbinding. But are the surges that he's using Void versions of those surges, or are they Surges that have just been affected by the presence of his Void(s)? I dunno and I'm not sure there's a good way to find out. I personally think its the later, but I look forward to anyone who can present a theory that changes my mind.

Thanks for these questions, it really fires up my theorycrafting brain.

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

1. Then why does Navani say that he cannot do Illumination?
2. Why does he have two Surges but only one Void?

Reasonable. But what are his powers?

Those are fair questions.
1. He can use Illumination, it's just messed up because he also has a Void. But if you said he has V-Illumination, I disagree but understand the theory.
2. Why wouldn't he have two surges and only 1 void? Lol I know that's a bad answer. He might have a second Void, he just hasn't learned it yet. Kaladin only used Adhesion for a while before he learned how to use Gravitation.

Well, I think I just explained that. He has Illumination which has been heavily disrupted by the presence of his Voidbinding, Progression which has also probably been altered but not as much if it has, Foresight from his Voidbinding which I think he's using a combo of Progression and Illumination to access, and maybe one other Void that he just hasn't learned yet.

You all really are overthinking this, I think.

Renarin is something new. A Knight Radiant who can Voidbind. The fact that he can Voidbind messes with his Radiant powers and makes them act in weird ways. Renarin's ability to see the future is 100% Voidbinding. He might be accessing it with a combination of Illumination and Progression, or he might just be using it directly, but the ability itself is Voidbinding. It's not his resonance, because those are things like a Windrunner's incredible capacity for Squires and a Lightweaver's mnemonic memory and seeing the future doesn't feel like anything related to that.

I'm fairly certain that what Renarin can do is 1) Illumination, 2) Progression, 3) [Insert-name-of-Voidbinding-ability-here].

Renarin seems to be both a Surgebinder and a Voidbinder in the same way that you can be a Misting and a Ferring. Would you call that a Surge-Voidbinder? I dunno, that sounds dumb to me lol. I think he's just both.

Love the analysis of all the things the Unmade do and what might or might not be Voidbinding though. That's good theorycrafting.

18 hours ago, StanLemon said:

I've always viewed Endowment's Letter as her just being haughty and arrogant. Her future sight hasn't looked all that impressive to me and more just a shotgun approach and hope for the best. Nothing compared to the meticulous planning we've seen from Cultivation and Preservation in comparison. The only proof anyone can even attempt to point to that she planned Odium's death is that Nightblood was on Roshar. Which is equally possible to be a coincidence that Cultivation took advantage of rather than some ingenious plan to kill Odium.

That's totally fair. I agree that I don't think Endowment's foresight is incredible. I think she uses it a lot though, such as each time she makes a Returned, but I agree that I don't think she planned Odium's death. I was more meaning that Nightblood was her ace-in-the-hole in case Odium, or another Shard, came to Splinter her. Yeah, her letter really is haughty and arrogant, which is why I considered that she might have been bluffing, but still. Thanks for your reply, I really liked the way you picked apart Endowment's foresight abilities. The shotgun approach.

Thanks, glad to be here. Seems like yall have great fun.

Yeah, I know that Endowment doesn't really care about what's going on outside of Nalthis, so it's entirely possible that her line to Hoid was a bluff, but I personally feel like she made a plan just in case. And that plan was Nightblood.

The fun thing about my theory is that if I'm right, then Endowment's plan has already worked, in a way. lol

There's not much to really disprove this theory, annoyingly. I'd like something that could actually disprove my theory, that would be fun.

So, in Endowment's letter to Hoid in Oathbringer she mentions that "If Rayse becomes an issue he will be dealt with."
This implies she has something of a plan in case Odium comes to Nalthis to try and Splinter her, and I think I know what the plan is?

I think Endowment was going to wield Nightblood and use it to help her Splinter Odium or just kill Rayse.

We know from a wob that Endowment was "involved" in the creation of Nightblood somehow, which means that she saw something in what Vasher and Shashara were doing and helped them along.
We've seen that Odium was scared of Nightblood and for good reason, given how RoW ended.
Now, maybe a Shard can't wield Nightblood for complicated Realmatic reasons or something, but if that's the case then Endowment could've planned on having a champion use it.

Thoughts? Disagreements? I wanna hear everyone else's opinions on this because I don't have irl friends who I can talk to about this