stonehand

This would be so cool.

Interesting! Is that in a WoB somewhere? This is all I was able to find on the Coppermind about the creation of Shardmetals: "The God Metals are metals formed directly from a Shard and can be made from any Shard.[2] " Sorry, if there's a better way to quote the CM I don't know how to do it

Debatable! Nobody in-universe refers to ettmetal as harmonium. from the Coppermind: The term "harmonium" has never been used in the stories published so far, but Brandon Sanderson introduced the term in one of his talks even before the release of Shadows of Self[15] and has afterwards confirmed that it is another term for ettmetal.[2] Marasi probably did not know the term harmonium when Allik described ettmetal to her, as otherwise the word would have translated.[7]

What if Silver is Autonomy's God-Metal, and that's why it has a volatile reaction with other flavors of investiture? Autonomy having avatars scattered around could explain why her metal is on so many planets

Thematically and symbolically, everything about Kaladin is represented by a spear. He's always super duper hesitant about swords, even to the point of having Syl manifest as a spear more often than not. I think the epigraph where Harmony mentions a sword is supposed to function as a nod to/foreshadowing for the W&W series.

I like to imagine that by era 4 Hemalurgy has been refined to the point that there's no longer any loss of life and it's basically just magical acupuncture words cannot state how much i hope this happens This is less crack theory than my own silly head cannon, but Toril, the planet on which most of Dungeons & Dragons lore takes place is a Shardworld, and the Shard is Whimsy.

a buddy cop drama between a reformed war criminal and Zeus

I stand corrected!

Yeah TOdium is truly a mind-bending wildcard. It's worth noting that while his overall goal was to save as much of humanity as possible, the boon he specifically asked for was "to be given the capacity to stop what was coming." Well, the vessel of the shard Odium certainly has the capacity to stop what is coming, so Cultivation unequivocally gave him what he asked for. What he does next is anyone's guess! Will he continue trying to save as much as possible? Will he do so by going back on the deal and letting Dalinar win? (I hope not, because then what even is book 5 about?) So many questions. I have no idea where it'll go next. Needless to say, SA5 will give us some major resolutions to things, but it will also certainly leave us with some massive cliffhangers.

I mean that Cultivation gets a new vessel, yes

I just had another thought that lends credence to the idea that Kandra's forms influence their Identity, and it's how TenSoon became loyal to Vin while being in the dog's body. Dogs are super duper loyal, and maybe holding those bones for so long made TenSoon loyal too? Edit: I was watching Livestream #4 as I typed this and not five minutes after submitting, Mr. Sanderson explicitly refuted this about TenSoon

Since red typically denotes corrupted investiture, this could indicate Trell commandeering already extant hemalurgic spikes. Could mean either the spikes were corrupted and used in a new mistwraith or that an existing Kandra was corrupted entirely.

It would be super interesting to find out that Kandra have such a relationship with capital-I-Identity. It makes a lot of sense, too. Pre-Catacendric Kandra didn't leave their homeland outside of missions, and, as you pointed out, it's stated that many older Kandra don't seem to have a personality unless they are imitating someone. This is driectly juxtaposed by MeLaan, who while still being an expert at imitation, clearly has a strong sense of self and her own personality that comes through even when she has adopted a person's form instead of one she created for her self. Could it be that the active creating of a personal persona is the difference? Do kandra have the ability to subconciously affect their (Capital I) Identity? Does this bring Intent into the mix at all? As for your questions about Hemalurgy, I have a suspicion that Kandra don't have spirit webs of their own, and that their spikes are surrogate spirit webs for them. That's why they lose memories if they go without their spikes for too long, because of Hemalurgic decay. Chunks of their surrogate spirit webs are leaking out of the spikes when not embedded inside them.

Forgive me if I'm misremembering, but doesn't Raysium actively draw the investiture out of it's target? So the Feruchemist doing so would have to be very careful to make sure that all of their physical strength(assuming pewter) isn't drawn out at once, leaving them too weak to move the device away from them. Or in the case of steel, leaving them too slow to do so before their investiture was sapped out completely and they were (possibly?) killed. I don't remember any indication that Raysium has a multiplicative effect on the investiture that they transport, so the end result would still be end-neutral. Also, a small nitpick: gemstone quality doesn't effect how much investiture a gem can hold, size does that. The quality of the gemstone effects how quickly the gem leaks out that investiture, if at all. There are gemstones in universe that are so perfect as to hold stormlight effectively forever. (The King's drop, the voidlight sphere that Gavilar gave to Zseth, etc) Hope this helps! Edit: typos and clarity

!!!What if Kaladin takes up Honor, then purposefully splinters it into a billion pieces, perhaps putting those pieces......into the hearts of men?

Wholeheartedly agree there. WoB have confirmed Nightblood as being one of the most highly invested beings in the cosmere, having been "born" with 1000 breaths and eating more investigate since then. The GK, however, has access to...idk what was it like 50,000 breaths? So by definition he'd be 50,000 times more invested than a normal person? Sure, he didn't have any experience with that when he was finally able to use Commands, but Warbreaker is surely at least half a decade in the past by the time of RoW, so who k ows what he's capable of with a few years of practice.

Ah, because she couldn't do anything if she wasn't doing it by cultivating them. I like it!

For the sake of argument, this is discounting Vessels of Shards. I'm also tempted to exclude Hoid, but I'm interested in hearing your opinions. I'm also interested in who is the most powerful in different kinds of power, most invested, most politically powerful, most powerful combatant, etc etc. My first instinct is to say that Dalinar is a strong contender for the title, as I'm increasingly convinced that Bondsmiths are OP by design, especially now that Honor's limitations have been largely removed. What do you think?

I've been re-reading Elantris the last couple of days and stumbled across yet another thread discussing Dalinar's great line: "I am Unity!". This got me thinking. Below is the comment I left in that thread: "In Elantris, the parent religion of Shu Koreth and Shu Dereth was just some guy preaching a religious concept of unity, which his students (Koreth and Dereth, ofc) took elsewhere. The resulting religions they founded seem to preach Unity, with Shu Koreth preaching unity in love(Devotion) and Shu Dereth preaching unity in domination(Dominion). However, all magic on Sel is derived from the Dor, which is the remaining investiture of Devotion and Dominion just swirling around TOGETHER in the cognitive realm(yet another allusion to "unity"). Not sure how this would fit into your Unified Theory(see what I did there) but it caught my eye because I've been re-reading Elantris. The back 5 of SA are going to be a lot more cosmere-aware, it seems. Could this Unity concept be what brings together the Rosharan and Selish storylines? Will Dalinar mantle the Dor?" So what are our thoughts on AonDorlinar?

In Elantris, the parent religion of Shu Koreth and Shu Dereth was just some guy preaching a religious concept of unity, which his students (Koreth and Dereth, ofc) took elsewhere. The resulting religions they founded seem to preach Unity, with Shu Koreth preaching unity in love(Devotion) and Shu Dereth preaching unity in domination(Dominion). However, all magic on Sel is derived from the Dor, which is the remaining investiture of Devotion and Dominion just swirling around TOGETHER in the cognitive realm. Not sure how this would fit into your Unified Theory(see what I did there) but it caught my eye because I've been re-reading Elantris. The back 5 of SA are going to be a lot more cosmere-aware, it seems. could this Unity concept be what brings together the Rosharan and Selish storylines? Will Dalinar mantle the Dor? Edit: I've so excited myself with this idea that I'm going to copy this comment into a new thread

I was a bit unclear. While this was his overall goal, it wasn't what he asked when Cultivated interceded for the Nightwatcher. His request was "to have the capacity to stop what is coming". Fast forward a few years, and now he certainly has the capacity to stop it. Cultivation well, cultivated him until he got exactly what he asked her for.

Cultivation doesn't have a goal or an endgame. She wants to guide everyone and everything to be the best version of themselves. What does "best" mean here? Whatever the subject thinks it does. The alethi (as a group) think the best version of themselves have to be the best warriors. Taravangian thinks his best version is to have the capacity to stop what is coming. His stated goal is not to stop it....just to have the capacity to do so. Seems to me that the vessel of Odium has the capacity to stop what odium is doing. He's new, and the shardic intent won't begin to consume him for centuries, maybe millenia. And yet. Will he stop it? Taravangian's arc is over. Taravangian got what he wanted. TOdium's arc has just begun and we have no idea what He will do next.

I'm pretty sure that for Rosharans mink refers in a general sense to any small, furry creature in the same way that any bird is referred to as a chicken.

I've had David Tennant in mind as Hoid since day one. I also keep picturing Dave Bautista as Dalinar. Scarlett Johansson seems like an odd choice to play a character that's only 16ish years old, though.

Follows are some of my own predictions for things that may happen in book five. Nothing here is particularly groundbreaking, some are from my own musings, others are things I've read here. 5th windrunner ideal is something to the effect of "I will empower people to protect themselves" Honor returns and the vessel is Dalinar or Kaladin, (I'm leaning towards the former) Cultivation becomes more directly involved. Someone bonds the Nightmother Nightwatcher. Someone mantles Cultivation Navani and the Sibling figure out non-spren fabrials TOdium proves more reasonable an opponent than ROdium **OR** TOdium is far more dangerous because Taravangian is far craftier and intelligent than Rayse was. I am ABSOLUTELY convinced that Adolin will continue to rehab Maya. Maybe enough to form a Nahel Bond, maybe enough to become something else entirely. Either way, Adolin's personality and how he treats the people around him vibe real well with Edgedancer oaths. That's all I have for now, I would love to hear what all you theorycrafters think! Edit: typos