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Argent

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Everything posted by Argent

  1. Argent
    While I am flattered, you probably don't need 5 posts to tell me this @adbf, the politics venue hasn't been explored much from what I've seen. I personally don't think it's as likely.
  2. Argent
    I think Jasnah's and Shallan's concerns stem mostly from how little they know about the single species that is the Parshendi / parshmen. They seem to assume that the two are cousin races of some sort, or that the parshmen are just kind of laying low, waiting for something before they turn into Parshendi or Voidbringers. I haven't looked at the essences at all. I might some day. Right, I was explaining my theory, not the cosmere lore. I don't think there can be mixing between the two magic systems. That's the fun part. One of The Way of Kings epigraphs contains a transcript of something one of the Radiants supposedly said. The words amount to something like "they changed even as we were fighting them." So unless the Radiants of old really wanted to fight during highstorms, the Voidbringers must have had a way to change forms on demand. Charging themselves up during the last highstorm, holding the Stormlight for potentially days, and using it up when they need to switch forms sounds like a very plausible explanation to me.
  3. Argent
    I think all spren of a given type manifest in the physical realm with the same gender - when gender is applicable. Gut feeling only, unfortunately.
  4. Argent
    Yes. Humans have access to Surges, Parshendi have access to Voids.
  5. Argent
    Right. It could be Smokeform - it did create an Thunderclast, after all, and I hypothesized that it's possible that the Thunderclasts are created using the anti-Transformation Void. This would make this escort a Voidbringer of the anti-Lightweaver flavor.
  6. Argent
    I've been working under the assumption that it's the latter. It's been 4,500 years since the last Desolation - plenty of time for the Parshendi population to grow to large numbers. Previous Desolations did a wonderful job at keeping both human and Parshendi population low and technologically stagnant. This time things are different. Maybe, but I don't think so. The Radiant in the vision was pretty confident they were dealing with a corrupted spren. I think it mirrors the Surgebinding chart far too closely for this to be the case. If I read the songs epigraphs right, the Parshendi had no form other than dullform and slaveform before their "gods" helped them out. Some of the forms they gave them were pretty safe, presumably because they didn't come stuffed with power - warform, for example; others gave the listeners power similar to the Surges human Surgebinders had access to, but cost them their freedom, essentially - see stormform. So I don't think any forms could've predated Odium's arrival. I see where you are coming from, but I think I address this appropriately. I use the word Voidbringers the same way I use Knights Radiant - an umbrella label, if you will. So just like the Windrunners are members of the Knights Radiant (who are not composed entirely of Windrunners), the Stormform Parshendi are members of the Voidbringers (who are not composed entirely of Stormforms). I'll take a look at this Flameform. As for the new Rhythms, I had a theory somewhere (EDIT: here it is!) about what I called "Shardic wavelengths" - I believe all Rhythms would fall under that.
  7. Argent
    We know neither the names of the Orders, nor those of the Surges (in Alethi). The Surges alone would've been very helpful, as they seem to be mostly composed of about three lines, and the endsheet paints them very clearly. No luck though. Best we can hope for is figure out the consonants in the names of some Surges and then pray those consonants look like they came from glyphs we have randomly seen throughout the books.
  8. Argent
    Yea, I definitely thought of all those things when I was putting my theory together, and just completely intentionally left them out so the read doesn't get too long. I am not so sure about this one. You can get to 10,000 Breaths one at a time, so you'll never experience that kind of extreme emotion you would if you took, say, 50. Similarly, you can Awaken very small and simple things, so you never experience a drastic loss in sensory perception. Plus, remember, I talk about significant events, not significant emotions - if what you feel doesn't have any sort of lasting impact on you, I posited that your soul wouldn't change.
  9. Argent
    I was under the impression that Lift will be a major character, but not not necessarily a flashback one.
  10. Argent
    I wasn't clear, or you are not understand me well enough. It's not the act of adding and removing Breaths that rewrites your soul (though it certainly does that) in the first place. It's the fact that your ancestors have been trading pieces of their souls for such a long time, you've got spiritual pieces from all over the place. Your soul is fragmented to begin with. At least this is the kind of logic I was going through when I was writing the theory. This particular wording seems shaky to me now. I almost want to just say "well, you were born on Nalthis, so your sDNA already comes with the "can give/take Breath, can Awaken" piece attached to it, precisely because it is Endowment's nature to give things, and every time you given Breath to someone or something, you endow them - so the Shard is happy." But I want to think about it some more before I settle on this explanation.
  11. Argent
    If this is the case, then the tradition of including the rose compass to specific locations on maps must be very old, because knowledge of Urithiru has been shaky for thousands of years. Shallan didn't even know about the city, and she was classically trained. Jasnah was pretty much the only person who believed the city was real. It seems unlikely that modern cartographers would be adding either the city's location or directions to it on so many of the maps they make.
  12. Argent
    So it works. Your sDNA depends not only your parents' sDNA, but on other factors as well - one of which is where you were born. It makes sense - a part of who you are is defined by where you come from. Forgers don't have to go through the whole "soulbreaking" experience, because their spiritual makeups already include the "can Forge" sequence all people from the region get.
  13. Argent
    I actually wonder about Amaram's glyphpair. Shallan mentions three categories of glyphs - major, minor, and topical; she also says that she can paint them calligraphically. The fact that she doesn't even mention the radial way of painting glyphs - which seems far more complex than the calligraphic than the calligraphic is than the basic - leads me to believe that there might be other... things about writing glyphs she doesn't mention. For one reason or another. For example, what if Amaram's glyph's are combined in a manner different from Kholin's? For Kholin, we take one half of each parent glyph and stitch them together. But half the reason this works is because when we do that the first glyph's half ends with a vowel and the second glyph's half begins with a consonant. Amaram's glyphs are not so nice, though. So what if the algorithm for producing his (and others like it) is "take the name of the first glyph and replace its vowels with the second one's vowel"? You'd start with merem + khakh, replace each e with a, and add an extra a in the beginning because the screw you lines have now evolved into screw you letters and glyphs are maybe not meant to be read phonetically. Actually, we might be onto something here, with the screw you letters. If you are an Alethi, chances are you are pretty familiar with the most important people in your nation - the highprinces and the most powerful nobles. You know their names. So if you see "Maram" on a flag, you are going to instantly recognize that as "Amaram." Glyphs are not meant to be a fully fleshed out writing system - just something that's good enough. If you could say anything using glyphs, the women's script wouldn't be so dominant of a writing form. If I am right about all this, I have to wonder whether Aladar's glyphpair was similarly created. "L" and "R" are so similar, they could use the same line, and an unfamiliar reader could think his name is Aladal, perhaps composed of the glyphs ledel + khakh (or any other pair of the form [L][vowel][L][same vowel][L] + [consonant][A][consonant]).
  14. Argent
    Yea, I can see how a magic system that manipulates Investiture entirely outside the user's body wouldn't require cracks in the soul. I think I might revise my opinion on the matter and dump Forging into the "you have to have the right sDNA" group - so in it and Feruchemy, you don't need to break your spiritual makeup in order to let the "Shardic genome" in, it's already in there.
  15. Argent
    I've looked at the Stormseat map, but haven't been able to find anything interesting.
  16. Argent
    Oh, naturally, I am not saying that the Parshendi are the Voidbringers. That's not the point I am trying to make at all, I completely agree with you. The Parshendi are no more Voidbringers than the humans are Radiants.
  17. Argent
    Do you honestly think he is going to say "nah, not worthy, you may cease your self-induced torture"?
  18. Argent
    Re: good feelings Snapping people Err, right. Completely forgot about that. Interesting... I think this could be explained with the deeper reasoning behind the process of "breaking" one's spirit. It's not really about breaking, or wounding, or shattering, it's about change. I kind of hinted at this when I talked about Forgers, but I guess I should've elaborate on it. If you live your entire life without anything interesting happening, your soul (Realmatically speaking) is going to be pretty static. Your Spiritual Aspect won't change because you don't change who you are. But pretty much any event significant enough to make you think about life is going to disturb your soul, shake it up a little - and here you see why "wound" and "break" or not the best words. I believe that it is during this process of your soul... adjusting, changing, restructuring itself that "something else" can hitch a hike. Permanently. So yea, I guess if you experience something really awesome, it's possible that it's going to affect you in a way that can be defined as life-changing). Having lived your entire life as a cold-blooded criminal who never bats an eye in the face of danger or pain, you save a few dozen kittens or puppies from a burning building, and this act fills you with so much joy and sense of self-satisfaction and fulfillment, that it literally changes who you are. Normally, we'd say that this act healed your soul, not broke it - but in Realmatic terms, your soul is now "broken." Your spiritual aspect was changed suddenly enough and dramatically enough to force it to change and adapt - and so now you have a chance of getting a tiny Splinter of a Shard in your own soul, which in turn allows you Invest with that Shard's power. I now wonder if there is a requirement on the type of event that changes your soul... For example, I live on Scadrial during the events of The Well of Ascension. Is it even possible for me be Snapped by the mists if I am thinking destructive thoughts and feeling ruinous feelings? Even if my emotions are strong enough to qualify as trauma, can a piece of Preservation come cuddle with me on my soul couch if my mindset is pretty much diametrically opposite of the idea of preservation (e.g. the mists are torturing me and I am not thinking about saving myself or my friends, but of annihilating those mists). Re: external forces Snapping people As I understand it, the mists were providing the (external) stimulus for the Snapping, but it wasn't they that did the soul-wounding. People experience the mists as a purely physical phenomenon. So while you might get a little extra incentive from them (in the form of excruciating pain), it's your own mental state that needs to change for the Snapping to occur. In other words, I posit that if you could somehow stop feeling pain, both physical and emotional, you can spend your entire life in the mists and never Snap. Compare that to, say, the Shaod - in it you get no choice. The Shaod comes uninvited (not intentionally, at least - you probably have to be pretty devoted) and turns you into an Elantrian - it's a force outside of yourself and you don't get to choose whether you want to change or not.
  19. Argent
    I think this little laugh finally broke my mind. I have no embraced my insanity and wallow gleefully in it.
  20. Argent
    Go ahead and email them when you get a chance. Even if I don't end up using them, I would like to have them handy.
  21. Argent
    I've been getting my friends pregnant interested in the cosmere lately and wondering how I would go about doing it... The Intro 101 thread is solid, but out of date, and it's not structured the way I think about things. I've been considering writing one on my own.
  22. Argent
    I support this.
  23. Argent
    I felt the OP nudged a few stereotypes in the ribs (heretic homosexual, doesn't believe in god, believes in his mythical enemies, the demons - ring bells?), but I figured it was accidental and not worth potentially derailing the thread for.
  24. Argent
    In all fairness, this is not a real theory - because it's kind of been confirmed by Brandon. But when I was searching through the Theoryland database, I found an old WoB I had either missed in the past, or hadn't considered in its due depth: The part about "wounded" spirits being easier to fill with something else sounded pretty much exactly like the description of Words of Radiance from Brandon's site: The reason I am so excited about this is because of the scope of the older WoB. In the Words of Radiance bit, we've been (correctly) assuming it refers to the Knights Radiant - a Surgebinder must have a "broken soul" for a spren to bond with him or her. But considering the other quote and how... free of context it sounds (e.g. Brandon says "it has to do with a person's spiritual makeup," not "it has to do with an Allomancer's spiritual makeup"), I am beginning to think that this applies throughout the cosmere. The good news is, Nalthis might be pretty easy to explain in a way that fits the model. This whole "broken soul" thing is essentially a requirement people must meet before they can start doing magic; and since everyone on Nalthis could do magic, then they must all have broken souls. Which, in a way, they do. With all the Breath being passed around, I get the feeling that the spiritual make, the sDNA, of pretty much everyone is all over the place. Changes to the spiritual aspect of things take time to sink in, the soul needs time to adapt - and if people are constantly trading BioChroma and using it to Awaken things, then their spiritual aspects are constantly shifting and changing. The bad news, Sel might be a little more difficult to explain. The Elantrians and AonDor are easy - the Shaod comes and rewrites a person's spiritual aspect, breaking their soul if you will, and now that person can do magic. The requirement doesn't apply to the Shaod because it's external to the future Invester; It works the same way lerasium does - you don't need to be spiritually wounded to eat and burn a piece of lerasium and become an Allomancer, that's a process you personally don't need magic for. The other magic systems on Sel, though... well, we don't know enough about them. And I can't figure out how they fit the model from the little we do know about them. Forging might be the easiest to explain, because of reasons similar to the ones I provided for Nalthis. If you live in MaiPon, where Forging is pretty common and accepted, then there is a good chance you've been stamped or Resealed at one point or another - which, almost by definition, would have wounded your spirit. From this point on, it would've been easier for Brandon's "something else" to find its way in. Something like the Dor, maybe. TL;DR: A person's soul / spirit / Spiritual Aspect must be modified in a way that would live it "wounded" in order for that person to gain access to magic, the ability to Invest. This spiritual damage could be caused by emotional and / or physical trauma (Surgebinders and Allomancers), the simple passing of (spiritual) DNA from parents to child (Feruchemists), an external force that targets the spirit (Hemalurgically created Mistings & Allomancers, Elantrians, Dakhor monks), or high levels of exposure to Investiture that touches the spirit (anyone who has been Forged or Resealed (or Bloodsealed?), or practically everyone on Nalthis).
  25. Argent
    Yea, it looks like I missed a parallel or two - though the personality thing and the colors are supporting evidence, not establishing. Regarding the Bondsmiths, I wanted to stay away from them. We don't know anything about their powers, and while you argue your case well, my entire theory is based on (displays of) power. And from the surges' perspective, I think anti-Windrunners makes more sense.
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